"What's happened?" he asked, stumbling across Uncle Podger.
"Something blown a hole in the _Aennie Rickmers_, and the Sub's gone across in the cutter to bring back our wounded."
"Don't bother; no one knows. Come and have a look at her."
He took him round to the other side of the turret, into the wind, and out in the pitch-black night they could just make out the darker mass of the hydroplane ship, apparently tipped up by the stern, and a signal-lamp flashing on board her. They heard shrieks coming from her, and the China Doll's heart beat fearfully fast.
Near them, on the quarter-deck, the querulous voice of Dr. O'Neill, the Fleet-Surgeon, was lamenting that he had ever come to sea. "Mother of Moses!" he groaned, as "Glaring Gertrude" turned her light towards the _Achates_ and everybody's face showed up, and the turret and the superstructure, the masts and the funnels, stood out clearly against it. "Mother of Moses, they'll torpedo us next if we wait here much longer! They _must_ see the ship every time that beastly thing passes across us."
As "Glaring Gertrude" swept away, and everybody and everything was left in darkness again, the Fleet-Paymaster's loud, cheery voice bellowed: "Cheer up, old 'C.D.'; if you have to take to the water, you won't find any whisky in it!"
The officers and men standing by tittered, for they well knew that Dr. O'Neill was a rabid teetotaler, and that "C.D." stood for "Converted Drunkard".
"I've never tasted the beastly stuff in my life, and know it you do!" snapped the Doctor furiously.
"Sadly lacking in the sense of humour you are, old C.D. What could be funnier than the whole seven hundred and fifty of us to go drifting ashore, under those salt-heaps, with swimming-collars round our necks?"
The Fleet-Surgeon stalked away, muttering angrily: "I hate fools."
By this time everything that could be done to make the _Achates_ safe, in case she was attacked, had been done; water-tight doors and hatches were all closed; the Orphan was under the fore-bridge with his 6-pounder guns' crews; Bubbles was on the after-shelter deck with his; look-out men, all round the quarter-deck and fo'c'sle, peered into the darkness; the Sub had gone across to rescue the wounded men and, if need be, bring back everybody from the _Aennie Rickmers_, and all the officers and men who had no jobs to do stood waiting for whatever was going to happen.