e
Phillips could contain himself no longer. "Better let me do it, sir.
Bein' a married man, sir, I knows the routine, in a manner o'
speakin' . . ." he said, and plunged into the fray.

"Oh, is that you, Phillips?" the relieved voice of the Junior
Watchkeeper was heard to say. "I can't get the lead of this infernal
rice-string--don't wriggle, Jim--it's rove so taut. . . ."

"What '_normous_ pyjamas," said Cornelius James, suffering himself to
be robed in his night-attire. The operation was conducted with some
difficulty because of the sheathed sword which the visitor had found in
a corner of his host's cabin and refused thereafter to be parted from.
"Have you ever killed anyone with this sword?" A blustering sea broke
against the ship's side and splashed the glass of the scuttle with
spray. "Hark at the waves outside! Can't I have the window open?
Shall I say my prayers to you?"

"No," replied the First Lieutenant, with a little wry smile, as the
shadow-fingers of the might-have-been tightened momentarily round his
heart. "No, I think you'd better wait till Mummie comes." Shrill
voices and peals of laughter sounded outside. "Here she is now."

He stepped outside, and met the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius
James at the head of her flock.

"Here we are," she exclaimed, laughing. "But, oh, Mr. Hornby, our
pyjamas are so _huge_!"

"So are ours," said the First Lieutenant, and stooped to gather into
his arms a pathetic object whose pyjama coat of many colours almost
trailed along the deck. "Cornelius James wants you to go and hear him
say his prayers. . . . I will find sleeping quarters for this one."

Ten minutes later the last child had been swung into its unaccustomed
sleeping quarters; the twins in adjacent cabins had ceased to hurl
shrill defiance at each other; and silence brooded over the flat. By
the dim light of the police-lamp Private Phillips paced noiselessly up
and down on his beat, and the mother of Georgina, Jane, and Cornelius
James passed softly from cabin to cabin in that gentle meditation
mothers play at bedtime.

On her way aft to the after-cabin she met the Torpedo Lieutenant. "The
children all want to say 'Good night' to you," she said softly. "Only
don't stay long. They are so excited, and they'll never go to sleep."
Of all the men on board the Torpedo Lieutenant's heart was perhaps
nearest that of a child. He tiptoed into the cabin-flat and drew the
curtain of the n