Sometimes, for one reason or another, or perhaps without reason at all, it just happens.  So, say a handful of gossiping yeomen find themselves together, and when that comes about, from some member (if the session stretches to any length at all) is sure to come a story of particular interest to the guild; and perhaps it ought to be explained that a yeoman’s story is never mistaken in the Navy for a stoker’s, a gunner’s, a quartermaster’s; never for anybody’s but a yeoman’s.

One night, a pleasant-enough night topside, but an even pleasanter night below, at least in our part of the ship below.  A few of us were gathered in the flag office, where Dalton, the flag yeoman, sometimes allowed us to call when his admiral was ashore.  Getting on toward middle-age was Dalton, with a head of gray-flecked hair and an old-time school-master’s face.  A great fellow for books.

In the flag office store-room, which to get into he had only to lift a hatch in the deck under his revolving chair and let himself drop, he had a young library, which after-hours he, used to delve into for anybody’s or everybody’s benefit.  He was particularly strong on folk-lore, and could dig up a few fat volumes any time on the folk-lore of any nation we had ever heard of.  He liked to lie flat on the coffer-dam to read, with a row of tin letter-files under his head for a rest, the electric bulb and its shade so adjusted as to throw all the light on the page of his book.  He had done a lot of reading and writing in his time, and his eyes were getting a little watery.  If he had had his way he would have been an author.  In the hours of many a night-watch he had tried his hand at little sketches; but somehow or other he could not catch on, he said.  Perhaps if he had tried to write as he talked, tell the things just as they popped into his mind, he would have been luckier; but that wasn’t literature, he said, and so most of his written things read like one of Daniel Webster’s speeches.  We could listen to him talking all night long; but when he brought out one of his manuscripts, it was good-night and hammocks for all hands.

Taps had gone this night, and so it should have been lights out and everybody below turned in; but this, as I said, was the admiral’s office, and only separated from the admiral’s cabin by a bulkhead; and even the busiest of Jimmy-Legs don’t come prowling into the cabin country of a flagship after taps.  And the flag lieutenant and the flag secretary were pretty savvy officers who never by any accident came bumping in on Dalton’s parties at the wrong time.

There came a knock at the door, and following the knock came the captain’s yeoman.  Nothing wrong with the captain’s yeoman, except that his bow name was Reginald and he was rather fat for a sailor.  Also he had ambitions, which was all right too, only we knew that privately he looked on the rest of us as a lot of loafers who would never rise to our opportunities.  He’d been wearing his first-class rating badge a month now, and before his enlistment was out he intended to be a chief petty officer; which was why he was working after-hours.  But the captain’s yeoman, this particular captain’s yeoman, has nothing to do with the story, except that his errand set Dalton off on a new tack.