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Bunter et al. but now he was relieved, and delighted, to see in The Bodger the gleam of a dry sardonic sense of humour. “Have we got a press hand-out?”
    “Yes, sir. S/M had a couple of thousand run off before we left.”
    “Has it got a photograph?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Splendid.” The Bodger began to turn over the papers in the ‘Oozemouth’ pack. “Football against the police. Cricket against the fire brigade. Badminton against King William IV Grammar School. Visit to a brewery. Visit to a chemical works. Visit to an oil refinery. Reception in the Mayor’s parlour. Free tickets to We Couldn’t Wear Less at the Intimate Theatre. Darts against the ‘Drunken Duck’. We’re going to have our work cut out, men.”
    As The Bodger sifted through the invitations, he began to understand that the City of Oozemouth had exerted itself to be hospitable. There were honorary memberships of yacht clubs, tennis clubs and golf clubs; free tickets for plays, concerts and dances; and a card for every member of the ship’s company entitling him to travel free in municipal transport when in uniform.
    “What’s this, supper and classical records with the Misses English-Spence, for two sailors? Have we got any classical music fiends, Dagwood?”
    “I think the Radio Electrician and the Chef know a bit about it, sir.”
    “The Chef! Good God! Well, there we are. Obviously we’re going to have to wave the old flag until we drop. What time do we get there, Pilot?”
    “Nine o’clock tomorrow morning, sir,” said Gavin.
     
    At nine o’clock, in a light drizzle of rain, Seahorse reached the fairway buoy and passed up the channel to the City of Oozemouth. In spite of the rain, they were cheered all the way up. The main road which ran close to the water’s edge for part of the way was packed with drenched holiday-makers. People perched on the roofs of cars and leaned from windows to wave. The inner harbour was swarming with sailing boats and pinnaces. Seahorse ’s black hull moved among them like a shark’s fin in a shoal of minnows. A sodden sea cadet band was playing on the jetty as Seahorse secured.
    “Zero hour,” said The Bodger. “Synchronize your watches, men.”
     

3
     
    “But don’t you get terrible claustrophobia?”
    “No ma’am, only thirsty.”
    “But I thought you got rum?”
    “Yes ma’am, but not enough.”
    H.M.S. Seahorse was open to the public for the first day and the citizens of Oozemouth were determined to make the most of the first submarine to visit their city since the day the war ended, when a German U-boat stupefied the local coastguards by surfacing next to the fairway buoy and hoisting a white flag. A squad of policemen with linked hands held back a surging, thrusting mass of holiday-makers, sea-cadets, tradesmen and seamen from neighbouring merchantships. Behind the public, mustered in ominous phalanxes, were the First Seven Schools.
    Dagwood had spent a lurid two hours on the port harbourmaster’s telephone immediately Seahorse had secured. He had discovered that there were forty-two educational establishments in Oozemouth and district, ranging in size and denomination from Oozemouth Secondary Modern School, with over a thousand pupils, to Miss Elizabeth Warbeck’s Academy for Daughters of Gentlewomen in Reduced Circumstances, with ten girls. Bearing in mind The Bodger’s strictures on the subject of Billy Bunter, etc., Dagwood had telephoned them all and every school had said it would like to bring all its pupils. Dagwood had made a swift calculation. Forty-two schools, in six days, made seven schools a day.
    The First Seven Schools had arrived and were being held back by the brute force of the police, assisted by depressed-looking men in faded sports-coats and ginger moustaches and large women in tweed suits and pork-pie hats, who were circulating amongst the tide of coloured school caps, squashed velour hats, satchels, hockey-sticks, and straw boaters like cow-hands at a