right. Turn the cuffs up."

"I've turned them up three times already," replied the excavator,
donning his find. "There are limits."

Another Midshipman came across the crowded flat and calmly rummaged in
the open till of the speaker's sea-chest. "Where's your hair juice?
All right, I've got it." He anointed himself generously with a
mysterious green fluid out of a bottle. "My people are staying at a
pub ashore here. Will you come and have tea, Jaggers? Kedgeree's
coming, too."

The owner of the green unguent, who was feverishly dusting his boots
with a pyjama jacket, signified his pleasure in accepting the
invitation.

The sentry on the aft-deck stepped to the head of the ladder with a
bellows, on the mouth of which a small fog-horn was fitted, and gave a
loud blast. It was the customary warning that the officers' boat would
be alongside in five minutes.

The Assistant Clerk ran distractedly for the ladder.

"There's one 'G'! Have I got time to borrow five bob from the messman
before the boat shoves off?"

"You might borrow five bob for me while you're about it," shouted a
belated Engineroom Watchkeeper, struggling into his clothes.

"And me, too," called another. "Buck up, for the Lord's sake, and
we'll have poached eggs for tea."

"And cherry jam," supplemented another visionary voluptuously, "and
radishes."

Here a figure, who had been sitting on the lid of his chest swinging
his legs, tilted his cap on to the back of his head with a snort that
suggested outlawry and defiance to the world at large.

"Hallo!" exclaimed a neighbour, wielding a clothes-brush with energy.
"What's up? Aren't you coming ashore? It isn't your First Dog, is it?"

The outlaw shook his head. "No; my leave's jambed. You know that
beastly six-inch wire hawser? We were bringing it to the after capstan
yesterday, and the Commander----"

The aft-deck sentry gave two blasts on his fog-horn. Chest lids
banged, keys rattled.

"Jolly rough luck!" commiserated his friend, and joined the stampede
for the quarterdeck.

In thirty seconds the flat was deserted save for the disconsolate
figure swinging his legs. Presently he climbed down from his chest and
wended his way by devious and stealthy routes to the after
conning-tower, where he smoked a surreptitious cigarette in defiance of
the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions (his age being
sixteen) and felt better.

In the meanwhile the picket-boat was driving