The captain shook his head. 'Merely a cloud,' he explained. 'If you look at your so-called lights now, you'll see they haven't moved a fraction of an inch since you first saw them. The nearer clouds travelling across them gave you the impression that they were moving. One of 'em does look rather like a green light, I'll admit, but that's merely the dampness in the air.'
'I'm awfully sorry, sir,' FitzJohnson stammered, covered with confusion. 'I had no idea'----
'Of course you hadn't,' Captain Spencer interrupted. 'Nobody realises he's made a fool of himself until afterwards. However,' he added with a chuckle of amusement, 'I'm not really angry; but nobody, except perhaps the Astronomer-Royal, likes being dragged out of bed to look at celestial bodies. Good-night.'
'Good-night, sir,' said the culprit sheepishly.
The captain and the commander left the bridge together. They both seemed amused.
Chase came across to FitzJohnson. 'Dook, old man,' he laughed, digging him in the ribs, 'you've made a bally ass of yourself. The least you can do, after digging me out of my cabin at this unearthly hour, is to give me a cup of your cocoa. Grr, it's beastly cold!'
'Well,' remarked the yeoman of signals when they disappeared, 'I could 'a swore I'd seen 'im!'
Perhaps he could; but he, the cause of all the trouble in the first instance, had taken very good care to maintain a discreet position in the background during the captain's presence.
Dinner in the wardroom had been over for some time, and the long table in the centre of the apartment was cleared. The mess, though it was close on ten o'clock, seemed very full of officers, far more crowded than on ordinary evenings, and it was noticeable that all wore 'monkey-jackets'--the ordinary eight-buttoned reefer coats usually seen in the daytime--instead of the customary mess-jackets, low waistcoats, and starched white shirts.
The unusual size of the gathering was accounted for partly by the fact that it happened to be the evening of 4th August 1914, when people were expecting things to happen, and partly because a six-inch gun casemate, which ordinarily served as an officers' smoking-room, had been bereft of its furniture, supplied with a number of evil-looking shell, and had otherwise been converted to the grim legitimate function for which it had originally been intended--that is, as an armoured position for the gun and its crew.