“A very fine bit of work. Tell him I want to see him when he has a few minutes, and thank you, doctor, thank you!”
“Who does the old man want to see?” inquired Sally, who, with Hopeton and Booth, happened to be passing.
“The chaplain,” snapped the M. O., going on his way.
“The chaplain? By Jove, he's a queer one, eh?”
The M. O. turned sharply back, and coming very close to Sally, said in a wrathful voice:
“A queer one? Yes, a queer one! But if some of you damned young idiots that sniff at him had just half his guts, you'd be twice the men you are.--Shut up, Hopeton! Listen to me--” and in words of fiery rage that ran close to tears, he recounted his experience of the last hour.
“By Jove! Doc, some guts, eh?” said Sally in a low tone, as he moved away.
A long, weird blast from the fog horn, followed by two short, sharp toots, recalled Barry from his morning dream.
“Fog,” he grumbled, and turned over to re-capture the enchantment of the Athabasca rapids, and his dancing canoe.
Overhead there sounded the trampling of feet.
“Submarines, doc,” he shouted and leaped to the floor broad awake.
“What's the row?” murmured the M. O., who was a heavy sleeper.
For answer, Barry ripped the clothes from the doctor's bed.
“Submarines, doc,” he shouted again, and buckling on his Sam Brown, and seizing his lifebelt, he stood ready to go.
In the orders of the day before had been an announcement that officers and men were to sleep fully dressed.
“Oh, the devil!” exclaimed the doctor, hunting through his bedclothes in desperation. “I can't sleep in my boots. Where's my tunic? Go on, old fellow, I'll follow you.”
“Here you are! Wake up, doc! And here's your Sam Brown.”
Barry dropped to lace the doctor's boots, while the latter was buckling on the rest of his equipment.
“All right,” cried the doctor, rushing from the room and leaving his lifebelt behind him.
Barry caught up the lifebelt and followed.
“Your lifebelt, doc,” he said, as they passed up the companion way.
“Oh, I'm a peach of a soldier,” said the doctor, struggling into his lifebelt, and swearing deeply the while.
“Stop swearing, doc! It's a waste of energy.”
“No, I prefer Heaven, if I must leave this ship, but for the present, I believe I'm needed here, and so are you, doc. Look there!”