he mother of Georgina, Jane,
and Cornelius James decreed it was time for bed, and the best game of
all began.

The Captain's wife gathered six pairs of vasty pyjamas over her arm.
"I'll take the girls all together and look after them in my husband's
cabin," she said. "We'll come along when we're ready. Will you all
look after the boys?"

Freckles fell to the lot of the Junior Watchkeeper; David, specialist
in raspberry puffs, had already attached himself to the Indiarubber
Man. The A.P. found himself leading off a young gentleman with an
air-gun which he earnestly desired as a bed-fellow. The remaining two,
red-headed twins who had spent most of the afternoon locked in combat,
were in charge of Torps and the Young Doctor.

"Where's Cornelius James?" asked the First Lieutenant suddenly. "What
a day, what a day!" A search party was promptly instituted, and the
Captain's son at last discovered forward in the Petty Officers' mess.
Here, seated on the knee of Casey, his father's coxswain, he was being
regaled with morsels of bloater, levered into his willing mouth on the
point of a clasp knife, and washed down by copious draughts of strong
tea out of a basin.

"I went to say 'Good night' to Casey," explained the delinquent as he
was being led back to civilisation, "and Casey said I ought to be
hungry after mustering my bag this afternoon. What does that mean?"

"I shouldn't listen to everything Casey tells you," replied the First
Lieutenant severely.

"That's what daddy says sometimes," observed Cornelius James. "But I
like Casey awfully. Better'n Nannie. He taught me how to make a
reef-knot, an' I can do semaphore--the whole alphabet . . . nearly."

"Here we are," interrupted his harassed mentor, stopping before the
door of his cabin. "This is where you've got to sleep." He lifted his
small charge on to the bunk. "Now then, let's get these shoes
off. . . ."

The flat echoed with the voices of children and the sounds of
expostulation. The Marine sentry (specially selected for the post "on
account of 'im 'avin' a way with children," as the Sergeant-Major had
previously explained to the First Lieutenant) drifted to and fro on his
beat with a smile of ecstatic enjoyment on his faithful R.M.L.I.
features. For some moments he hovered outside the Junior Watchkeeper's
cabin. There were indications in the conversation drifting out through
the curtained doorway that all was not well within. At length Privat