Down The Hatch Read Online Free PDF Page A

performance. He had gained in confidence with each minute. The old commands, the familiar submarine street-cries, had all come back to him, as Captain S/M had predicted they would. Having laid his first foundation, he could safely pass on to the next item.
    “Now,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Let me see some of the correspondence.”
    Rusty, who was the ship’s correspondence officer, guiltily brought out a file marked “Captain to See”. The worst moment of any submarine correspondence officer’s day was the moment when the Captain called for the correspondence pack. It nearly always meant trouble for someone.
    “Yes,” said The Bodger doubtfully. “The one I’d like to see is the ‘Captain Not To See’ pack. I always had one when I was Black Sebastian’s correspondence officer. Who on earth are the EetEezi Catering Company?”
    “They supplied the food during our contractor’s sea trials, sir,” said Rusty.
    “Why have we got a letter from them still in here? Ditch it. What’s this gauge all this stuff is about?”
    “It’s a gadget for the distiller, sir,” said Derek.
    “Have you all seen it?”
    “I think so, sir.”
    “Well, take all this rubbish away and put it in your own pack. I don’t see anything about this place we’re supposed to be going to tomorrow?”
    “I’ve made a special pack for that, sir.”
    Rusty handed The Bodger a bulky pack marked “Oozemouth--For Sunny Holidays.”
    The Bodger rubbed his chin. “I see we’re open to the public every day from two to six. Is that O.K. with you, Chief?”
    “It should be, sir,” said Derek. “We haven’t got anything big on, unless something expensive happens on the way there.”
    “Good. I don’t see any visits from schools or sea cadets here?”
    “We haven’t fixed that yet, sir.”
    “That must be done, right way. We’d better have a Schools Liaison Officer. Dagwood. . .”
    “Sir?” said Dagwood, apprehensively.
    “. . . You’ve been selected from a host of applicants. As soon as we get there, I want you to go ashore and ring up every school in the place and ask them if they’d like to send a team down. Ask them all--sea cadets, girl guides, Band of Hope--everybody. Give the local crèche a ring, too. They may have some embryo submariners for all we know. This is supposed to be a flag-showing visit and we’re going to show the flag if it kills us. I don’t give a damn about the general public. They’ve all seen too many gloomy films about submarines and they’re only coming to satisfy their morbid curiosity. But the schools are a different thing. Unbelievable though it may be, that’s the Navy of the future you’re looking at, under that disgusting school cap and behind those indescribable pimples. You give a boy a good time when he comes to visit your boat and he’ll remember it all his life. So schools and sea cadets are the number one priority, no matter when they want to come and no matter how many they want to bring. They won’t want very much, no detailed descriptions or anything like that. Just being in a submarine will be enough. And if they don’t give the ship a cheer when they leave you can take it that the visit’s been a failure. So don’t forget. It’s Billy Bunter, Just William and the Fifth Form at St. Dominic’s we’re after. Mum, Dad and Uncle Henry can look after themselves. It’ll need a bit of organizing, Dagwood. We don’t want them all at once and yet we don’t want the boat looking like a Giles cartoon twenty-four hours a day for six days. Think you can do it?”
    “Oh yes, sir.”
    “I’m told we’ll have some boffins, too, from some Admiralty Research Establishment or other. You’d better deal with them, Chief. They’re the worst of the lot, of course, but go easy with them. They've been sitting on chairs so long the iron has entered their souls.”
    Dagwood relished the last remark on the boffins. He had been a little overpowered by The Bodger’s speech on Billy