“She was a swell ship,” Scoot said sadly.
“_Was!_” exclaimed March. “She still is! Just because Bailey and Anson have left her, don’t you think she can carry on any longer?” A slow smile spread over his face as he turned to look at his friend. But Scoot was serious.
“Oh, sure, March,” he replied. “But she’s out of our lives now. She’s past tense for us. And—well, she’s been just about everything to us for a year now—home, mother, and sweetheart!”
“I know what you mean,” March said. “And it’s natural for us to wonder if we’ve done the right thing in being transferred. Right now we’re looking at what we’re leaving. In another ten minutes we’ll be concentrating on what we’re going to!”
“I’m going to start right now,” he grinned. “No use getting sentimental about the old _Plymouth_ at this point. I’m going to start thinking about the _Lexington_ or the _Shangri-La_ or whatever aircraft carrier I’ll be on in a few months.”
“Good idea,” March agreed, sitting beside the tall and gangling young man who now stared ahead at the Navy Yard. “But that’s one trouble right now, Scoot. Neither one of us knows exactly where he’ll be. If you knew exactly what ship you’d be attached to, you could make your thoughts more specific. When you get there, you know you’ll love her just as much as you’ve loved the _Plymouth_—more, in fact, because you’ll be flying at last!”
“Yes, I know, but what about you?” Scoot asked. “I still can’t figure out why you want to be a pigboat man. And what can you dream about now as you look into the future? The name of some fish, that’s all.”
“Sure, subs are named after fish,” March replied. “And they have some swell names, too—the _Barracuda_, the _Dolphin_, the _Spearfish_, the _Amberjack_!”
“Yes, they sound all right,” Scoot grinned. “But what if you’re assigned to the _Cod_ or the _Herring_ or the _Shad_? No, I can’t figure out what you see in those stuffy, cramped, oversized bathtubs!”
This light-hearted argument had been going on ever since March Anson and Scoot Bailey had been in the Navy together. Neither one minded the jibes of the other, but the dispute as to the respective merits of air and underwater craft never ended.
“Cozy and snug,” March said stoutly, “that’s what subs are! Not cramped and stuffy! Why—they’re all air-conditioned now!”