Once issue warm clothing to a bluejacket and never will he leave it off, whatever the temperature, unless he is made to do so.
The chirpy little gunner's mate had reported "all correct, sir, guns cleared away, night-sight circuits switched on, sir, and four rounds a gun ready."
The Orphan had reported himself to the officer of the watch, on the bridge above him, and now had nothing to do, for the best part of two hours, but walk up and down and keep warm.
"They tells me that one of 'em submarines was nosing round these parts two days ago, sir," one of his petty officers said, as he stopped at one gun, looked through the telescope sight, and tested the electric circuit. "It ain't much weather for the poor murdering blighters."
It was not. Darkness was rapidly closing in, and the gale howled angrily out of the west, driving masses of dark rain-clouds and a heavy sea before it.
The _Achates_ dipped her fo'c'sle constantly, and when she lifted and shook herself, the spray shot up far above her bridge screens.
The Orphan and his guns' crews on the wind'ard side would feel the ship quiver as a wave thudded against the casemate below them, and then had just time to duck their heads before millions of icy particles of spray soused viciously over them.
Presently the Orphan took shelter in the lee of the conning-tower and leant moodily against it, thinking of the warmth and gaiety of the dance he had been at the night before, also of a certain little lady in white and blue.
In peace time it is depressing enough to leave a cosy harbour, and face a wild winter's night in the Channel; but in war time the chance of blowing up on a mine and the risk of being torpedoed make the strain very considerable.
For the first night and the first day or two, most people are inclined to be rather "jumpy"; though afterwards this feeling wears off quickly, and one leaves everything to "fate" and ceases to worry.
Only a few days before, Germany had announced to the world the commencement of her submarine blockade of the English coast, so the Channel was probably already swarming with submarines; though even the Orphan, depressed and miserable as he was then, could not have imagined that these submarines had orders to sink merchant ships and mail steamers at sight and without warning, and that a civilized nation had sunk so low, nineteen hundred years after Christ was born into the world, as to plot the whole-sale murder of inoffensive women and children.