destroyer's business to find out what their business may be through
all the long night, and to help or hinder accordingly. Dawn sees them
pitch-poling insanely between head-seas, or hanging on to bridges that
sweep like scythes from one forlorn horizon to the other. A
homeward-bound submarine chooses this hour to rise, very
ostentatiously, and signals by hand to a lieutenant in command. (They
were the same term at Dartmouth, and same first ship.)

"What's he sayin'? Secure that gun, will you? 'Can't hear oneself
speak," The gun is a bit noisy on its mountings, but that isn't the
reason for the destroyer-lieutenant's short temper.

"'Says he's goin' down, sir," the signaller replies. What the
submarine had spelt out, and everybody knows it, was: "Cannot approve
of this extremely frightful weather. Am going to bye-bye."

"Well!" snaps the lieutenant to his signaller, "what are you grinning
at?" The submarine has hung on to ask if the destroyer will "kiss her
and whisper good-night." A breaking sea smacks her tower in the middle
of the insult. She closes like an oyster, but--just too late. _Habet!_
There must be a quarter of a ton of water somewhere down below, on its
way to her ticklish batteries.

"What a wag!" says the signaller, dreamily. "Well, 'e can't say 'e
didn't get 'is little kiss."

The lieutenant in command smiles. The sea is a beast, but a just
beast.