'"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.
'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.