my hair and the tan off my skin. I am
going to have a sharp touch of influenza, which is a useful disease
when one wants to lie in. Since Sunday I have only been twice to bed."

We filled him up with coffee and flattery--as one fills a motor car
with petrol and oil--but asked him no questions until we were safely
in Cary's study and Mrs. Cary had gone about her household duties.
"Your good lady," remarked Dawson to Cary, "is as little curious as
any woman I have met, and we will leave her at that if you don't mind.
The best thing about our women is that they don't care tuppence about
naval and military details. If they did, and once started prying with
that keen scent and indomitable persistence of theirs, we might as
well chuck up. Even my own bright team of charmers never know and
never ask the meaning of the information that they ferret out for me.
Their curiosity is all personal--about men and women, never about
things. Women--"

I cut Dawson short. He tended to become tedious.

"Quite so," I observed politely. "And to revert to one big female
creature, let us hear something of the _Malplaquet_."

"You at any rate are curious enough for a dozen. It would serve you
right to keep you hopping a bit longer. But I have a kindly eye for
human weakness, though you might not think it. I joined the ship on
Thursday afternoon, slipping in as one of a detachment of fifty
R.M.L.I. who had been wired for from Chatham. They were an emergency
lot; we hadn't enough in the ship for the double sentry go that I
wanted. All my plans were made with the Commander and Major Boyle, and
they both did exactly what I told them. It isn't often that a private
of Marines has the ordering about of two officers. But Dawson is
Dawson; no common man. They did as I told them, and were glad to do
it. I had extra light bulbs put on all over the lower decks and every
dark corner lit up--except one. Just one. And this one was where the
four gun-cables ran out of the switch-room and lay alongside one
another before they branched off to the fore and after turrets and to
the port and starboard side batteries. That was the most likely spot
which any one wanting to cut the gun-wires would mark down, and I
meant to watch it pretty closely myself. We had double sentries at the
magazines. The _Malplaquet_ is an oil-fired ship, so we hadn't any
bothering coal bunkers to attract fancy bombs. I was pretty sure that
after the _Antinous_ and the _Antigone_ we had