Thomson moved his chair next to his host’s Geraldine’s father, Admiral Sir Seymour Conyers, was a very garrulous old gentleman with fixed ideas about everything, a little deaf and exceedingly fond of conversation.  He proceeded to give his prospective son-in-law a detailed lecture concerning the mismanagement of the field hospitals at the front, and having disposed of that subject, he opened a broadside attack upon the Admiralty.  The rest of the men showed indications of breaking into little groups.  Ralph Conyers and Granet were sitting side by side, engrossed in conversation.  More than once Thomson glanced towards them.

“Wish I understood more about naval affairs,” Granet sighed.  “I’m a perfect ass at any one’s job but my own.  I can’t see how you can deal with submarines at all.  The beggars can stay under the water as long as they like, they just pop up and show their heads, and if they don’t like the look of anything near, down they go again.  I don’t see how you can get at them, any way.”

The young sailor smiled in a somewhat superior manner.

“We’ve a few ideas left still which the Germans haven’t mopped up,” he declared.

“Personally,” the Admiral observed, joining in the conversation, “I consider the submarine danger the greatest to which this country has yet been exposed.  No one but a nation of pirates, of ferocious and conscienceless huns, could have inaugurated such a campaign.”

“Good for you, dad!” his son exclaimed.  “They’re a rotten lot of beggars, of course, although some of them have behaved rather decently.  There’s one thing,” he added, sipping his port, “there isn’t a job in the world I’d sooner take on than submarine hunting.”

“Every one to his taste,” Granet remarked good-humouredly.  “Give me my own company at my back, my artillery well posted, my reserves in position, the enemy not too strongly entrenched, and our dear old Colonel’s voice shouting ‘At them, boys!’ That’s my idea of a scrap.”

There was a little murmur of sympathy.  Ralph Conyers, however, his cigar in the corner of his mouth, smiled imperturbably.

“Sounds all right,” he admitted, “but for sheer excitement give me a misty morning, the bows of a forty-knot destroyer cutting the sea into diamonds, decks cleared for action, and old Dick in oilskins on the salute—­’Enemy’s submarine, sir, on the port bow, sir.’”

“And what would you do then?” Granet asked.

“See page seven Admiralty instructions this afternoon,” the other replied, smiling.  “We’re not taking it sitting down, I can tell you.”

The Admiral rose and pushed back his chair.

“I think,” he said, “if you are quite sure, all of you, that you will take no more port, we should join the ladies.”

They trooped out of the room together.  Thomson kept close behind Ralph Conyers and Captain Granet, who were talking no more of submarines, however, but of the last ballet at the Empire.  Geraldine came towards them as they entered the drawing-room.