Martin watched them with a new interest, for to him it seemed nothing short of miraculous how such slender-looking vessels could stand the weather he had seen them in a few hours before.
'Wot yer lookin' at, Pincher?' asked Billings, stopping on his way to his mess for breakfast.
'Them,' said Martin, jerking his head in the direction of the destroyers.
'Them!' said Joshua, rather surprised. 'Wot's up wi' 'em?'
'I wus thinkin' it must be a dawg's life to be aboard one o' 'em. They looked somethink horful larst night.'
Billings, who had served in a destroyer himself in his young and palmy days, grinned broadly. 'They ain't so bad,' he murmured. 'You gits a tanner a day,[8] 'ard lyers in 'em, an' that's a hextry three an' a tanner a week. It's werry welcome in these 'ere 'ard times.' The old reprobate smacked his lips longingly, for three-and-six a week meant many pints of beer.
[8] Men serving in destroyers receive sixpence a day extra pay. It is known as 'hard-lying money.'
'I reckons they deserves it,' Martin remarked.
'I reckons all matloes deserves double wot they gits,' laughed his companion. 'But larst night weren't nothin'. You wait till yer sees 'em in a gale o' wind; then they carries on somethin' horful. Larst night it weren't blowin' nothin' to speak o'. They 'ad a bit o' a dustin' p'r'aps, an' got their shirts wet, but that ain't nothin'!'
Martin gasped. He had seen the destroyers plunging about like maddened racehorses, with water breaking over their decks; but yet Billings referred to it casually as a 'bit o' a dustin'.' If their behaviour of last night was nothing out of the ordinary, he prayed his gods he might never serve in one of them. 'A bit o' a dustin',' indeed! What must they be like in a gale of wind? It nearly made him seasick to think of it.
As a start to his seagoing training, Martin found himself put in the gunnery-training class with eleven other youngsters like himself; and here, under the expert guidance of Petty Officer Samuel Breech, he was soon being initiated into the mysteries of squad drill, the rifle and field exercise, the various parts of a rifle and their uses, gun drill, the anatomy and interior economy of lighter weapons and machine-guns, and their ammunition. Much of it he had already learnt before, during his period of preliminary training at the barracks, and the instruction, essentially practical, did not overtax his intelligence.