"After two or three days of anxious waiting there came a crushing
communication from the Admiralty which confirmed my worst fears and
set me at crossing the bridge again. I was ordered to report next
morning at eleven, at Committee Room 5, in the Admiralty, and bring
with me full particulars pertaining to the firing of gun number
so-and-so of the 'Consternation's' equipment on such a date. I wonder
since that I did not take to drink. We have every facility for that
sort of thing in this club. However, at eleven next day, I presented
myself at the Committee Room and found in session the grimmest looking
five men I have ever yet been called upon to face. Collectively they
were about ten times worse in appearance than the court-martial I had
previously encountered. Four of the men I did not know, but the fifth
I recognized at once, having often seen his portrait. He is Admiral
Sir John Pendergest, popularly known in the service as 'Old Grouch,' a
blue terror who knows absolutely nothing of mercy. The lads in the
service say he looks so disagreeable because he is sorry he wasn't
born a hanging judge. Picture a face as cleanly cut as that of some
severe old Roman Senator; a face as hard as marble, quite as cold, and
nearly as white, rescued from the appearance of a death mask by a pair
of piercing eyes that glitter like steel. When looking at him it is
quite impossible to believe that such a personage has ever been a boy
who played pranks on his masters.
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