more, we was
on a lonely and desolate ocean near Portsdown, surrounded by gorse
bushes, and a Boy Scout was stirring my stomach with his little
copper-stick.'

'"You count ten," he says.

'"Very good, Boy Jones," I says, "count 'em," and I hauled him in over
the gunnel, and ten I gave him with my large flat hand. The remarks he
passed, lying face down tryin' to bite my leg, would have reflected
credit on any Service. Having finished I dropped him overboard again,
which was my gross political error. I ought to 'ave killed him; because
he began signalling--rapid and accurate--in a sou'westerly direction.
Few equatorial calms are to be apprehended when B.P.'s little pets take
to signallin'. Make a note o' that! Three minutes later we were stopped
and boarded by Scouts--up our backs, down our necks, and in our boots!
The last I heard from your Mr. Leggatt as he went under, brushin' 'em
off his cap, was thanking Heaven he'd covered up the new paint-work with
mats. An 'eroic soul!'

'Not a scratch on her body,' said Leggatt, pouring out the
coffee-grounds.

'And Jules?' said I.

'Oh, Jules thought the much advertised Social Revolution had begun, but
his mackintosh hampered him.

'You told me to bring the mackintosh,' Leggatt whispered to me.

'And when I 'ad 'em half convinced he was a French vicomte coming down
to visit the Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, he tried to take it off.
Seeing his uniform underneath, some sucking Sherlock Holmes of the Pink
Eye Patrol (they called him Eddy) deduced that I wasn't speaking
the truth. Eddy said I was tryin' to sneak into Portsmouth
unobserved--unobserved mark you!--and join hands with the enemy. It
trarnspired that the Scouts was conducting a field-day against opposin'
forces, ably assisted by all branches of the Service, and they was so
afraid the car wouldn't count ten points to them in the fray, that
they'd have scalped us, but for the intervention of an umpire--also in
short under-drawers. A fleshy sight!'

Here Mr. Pyecroft shut his eyes and nodded. 'That umpire,' he said
suddenly, 'was our Mr. Morshed--a gentleman whose acquaintance you have
already made _and_ profited by, if I mistake not[7].'

[Footnote 7: 'Their Lawful Occasions,' _Traffics and Discoveries_.]

'Oh, was the Navy in it too?' I said; for I had read of wild doings
occasionally among the Boy Scouts on the Portsmouth Road, in which Navy,
Army, and the world at large seemed to have taken part.

'The