"What shall it be? Nocturne, Sonata, Valse, or, just name your opera. Come, here is a little bit of Wagner." The officer leaned back in his chair, really or truly delighted.
"Why," he said, "you are--why you are a juvenile freak. Come on deck with me."
"Quartermaster, just take this lad forward, and he'll play you a hornpipe."
He did. Kep played, and didn't the men dance too. It was half an hour of the best fun ever seen on board a man-o'-war.
Then the young lieutentant gave the boy ginger wine, grapes, and much good advice, and bade him be sure to go home to his parents.
No, Kep had not succeeded in joining the _Breezy_, but he really had made an impression on board, and those who met him would not soon forget him.
The boy did not go directly back to the _Blue Ensign_. The day was very beautiful and though already far spent there was plenty of time of stroll around and see things.
Now Plymouth down by the docks is always a busy place. It was ten times more so just at present, for complications had once more arisen betwixt this country and Russia. Since the close of the terrible war against the Japs, the Russians appeared to be intriguing very much in European politics. She desired a war with Britain, she longed to invade India, but the trouble was that unless supported by another power there was little chance of her being able to regain her lost prestige.
Be that as it may, orders had only a few days before Kep's arrival been received at Plymouth dockyards that make things hum, as the saying is, and the lad wondered a good deal at all he saw in the dockyards. A swarm of bees about to swarm could not have been more busy and bustling.
The tall policemen who guarded the gates eyed everyone who sought entrance with considerable suspicion unless wearing the king's uniform, and even Kep came in for his share of this.
"Are you a young officer, sir?" said one, as the lad essayed to pass in, just as coolly as if the place were all his own.
Kep smiled his blandest, though with a slight air of hauteur in his manner.
And an Irish marine who was doing sentry-go, seeing this, shouldered arms as he passed, and Kep returned the salute with a flourish of his hand capwards as he had seen real officers do on the street, when the blue-jackets saluted.