Format: Triple
Mr. Moorshed, black-haired, black-browed, sallow-complexioned, looked me over from head to foot and grinned … ‘You didn’t happen to hear what Frankie told me from the flagship, did you? His last instructions, and I’ve logged ’em here in shorthand, were’—he opened a neat pocket-book—“Get out of this and conduct your own damned manœuvres in your own damned tinker fashion! You’re a disgrace to the Service, and your boat’s offal.” |
This is from “Their Lawful Occasions” collected in Traffics and Discoveries. Mr Moorshed, commanding Number 267 Torpedo Boat has been grievously ticked off by the commander of the flagship of the rival fleet in naval maneuvers. Later that night, by various Stalky-like stratagems, he navigates in thick weather up close to that flagship, and marks her as sunk. |
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…my Corporal of Marines—the fattest man in the Service bar one—fell down the landin’ steps. The Headman had a Prime Minister—about as fat as my Corporal—and he helped him up. Well, that broke the ice a bit. |
This is from “A Flight of Fact” in Land and Sea Tales. It tells how an early sea-plane and its crew, were stranded among tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, and their hilarious times with the local islanders. |
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‘About seven feet, isn’t there?’ said he. ‘That must be the tail-end of the shoal. There’s four fathom in the fairway. Knock that buoy down with axes. I don’t think it’s picturesque, some how.’ The Kroo men hacked the wooden sides to pieces in three minutes… |
This is from “Judson and the Empire“. Collected in Many Inventions. Lieutenant Judson in his flat-bottomed gunboat has been sent upriver in East Africa to deal with trouble in a Portuguese colony. Here he is removing a buoy over a shoal which enables him in a little while to disable the local naval vessel. He then proceeds up river and carries out his mission without trouble or bloodshed. |
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