g, looking about him as if he found the universe at this hour a
grossly over-rated place. After a few minutes' contemplation of it
thus, he turned up the collar of his great coat, pulled his cap down
until it gave him the appearance of a sort of Naval "Artful Dodger,"
and walked gloomily to the port gangway. The Officer of the Watch, who
was partaking of hot cocoa in the shelter of the after superstructure,
sighted this forlorn object.

"Morning, Pills!" he shouted. "She's called away: won't be long now."
He wiped his mouth and came across the deck to where the other was
standing. "Fine morning for a pull," he observed, throwing his nose
into the air and sniffing like a pointer. "Smell the heather? Lor'!
it does me good to see all you young fellow-me-lads turning up here
bright and early with the roses in your cheeks."

The Young Doctor turned a gamboge-tinted eye on the speaker.

"Dry up," he said acidly.

The Officer of the Watch was moved to unseemly mirth. "Where's your
crew, Pills? I don't like to see this hanging-on-to-the-slack the
first morning of the training season. You're too easy going for a cox,
by a long chalk, my lad. You ought to be going round their cabins now
with a wet sponge, shouting 'Wet Bobs!' and 'Tally Ho!' and the rest of
it."

"Dry up!" was the reply.

"An even temper, boundless tact, a firm manner and an extensive
vocabulary--those were the essentials of the cox of a racing boat when
_I_ was a lad at College. Why did they make you cox, Pills?"

"'Cos I'm light," retorted the Doctor. "'Cos I'm a damn fool," he
added with a sudden access of bitterness. "Look here, Tweedledee, what
about this bloomin' boat? Here I've been standing for the last five
minutes--ah, there she is."

He gazed distastefully at the lower boom, where two members of the
galley's crew were casting off the painter that secured the boat to the
Jacob's ladder.

"Now, then," said a loud and cheerful voice at their elbows, "where's
this boat we've been hearing such a lot about?" A tall, athletic
figure in football shorts and swathed about with many sweaters, with a
bright red cushion under his arm, stood gazing in the direction of the
lower boom. "Well, I'm blowed," he said, "not alongside _yet_? You're
a nice person, Pills, to leave the organisation of a racing boat's crew
to." He looked round the quarterdeck. "Where're all the others? Lazy
hogs! Here we are with the sun half over the foreyard an