There had been news, red hot but wrong, of dhows loaded to the water-line with guns and ammunition somewhere up the Gulf.  India, ever fretful for her tribes beyond the border, had borrowed Applewaite and his destroyer by instant cablegram, and jealously held records had been broken while the Puncher quartered those indecent seas and heated up her bearings.  It was almost too much to have to come back empty-handed.  It was quite too much to have to run for shelter under the lee of Adra’s uninviting coral reef.  And to be told by an acting engineer that he would have to stay a week was utterly beyond the scope of polite conversation.

“Why a week?” asked Commander Applewaite, with eyebrows raised to the nth power of incredulity.

“Why a week?” asked Mr. Hartley, breaking down the barrier of self-restraint at last.  “I’ll tell you why.  Because, although the guts of her are so much scrap-iron, you’ve a crew of engineers who could build machinery of hell-slag—­build it, mind—­and could get steam out o’ the Sahara, where there isn’t any water at all.

“Because—­conditional upon the act o’ God and your permission—­I’m willing to perform a miracle.  Because the whole engine-room complement is dancing mad for shore leave, and there’ll be none this side o’ Bombay; and because, in consequence o’ that, creation would be a mild name for what’s about to happen under gratings until the shafts revolve again.  Man, I wish ye’d take one peep at her bearings, though ye wouldn’t understand.

“Because you’re lucky; any other engineer in all the navies o’ the world would take a month to tinker with her, even if he didn’t have to send to Bombay for a tow.  Because—­”

“That’ll do!” said Applewaite, his mind wandering already in search of suitable employment for the crew.  “Get the repairs done as soon as possible; we stay here until you have finished what is necessary.”

It looked like an evil moment for asking favors, but it was the time laid down in Regulations when such things as favors may be had; and it was the moment Curley Crothers had picked out for asking for shore leave.

“Come ’ere, Scamp.  Come along, Scamp.  Come along ’ere—­good boy!” he coaxed, dragging by a short chain in his wake the sorriest-looking bull terrier that ever acted mascot in the British or any other navy.  Courteous and huge and cap in hand, his weather-beaten face smiling respectfully above a snow-white uniform, he took his stand before the little table.  His outward bearing was one of certainty, but his shrewd, slightly puckered eyes alternately conned the expression of his commander’s face and watched the dog.

The lee, scuppers were the goal of the dog’s immediate ambition, for he was a well-brought-up dog and such of the decencies as were not his by instinct he had learned by painful and repeated acquisition.  But at the moment Curley Crothers showed a wondrous disregard for etiquette.