From the top deck the Lintons, with the Rainhams, watched the men
go--disembarkation was for the troops first, and not till all had gone
could the unattached officers leave the ship. The captain came to them,
at last a normal and friendly captain--no more the official master of
a troopship, in which capacity, as he ruefully said, he could make no
friends, and could scarcely regard his ship as his own, provided he
brought her safely from port to port. He cast a disgusted glance along
the stained and littered decks.
"This is her last voyage as a trooper, and I'm not sorry," he said.
"After this she'll lie up for three months to be refitted; and then I'll
command a ship again and not a barracks. You wouldn't think now, to see
her on this voyage, that the time was when I had to know the reason why
if there was so much as a stain the size of a sixpence on the deck. Oh
yes, it's been all part of the job, and I'm proud of all the old ship
has done, and the thousands of men she's carried; and we've had enough
narrow squeaks, from mines and submarines, to fill a book. But I'm
beginning to hanker mightily to see her clean!"
The Lintons laughed unfeelingly. A little mild grumbling might well be
permitted to a man with his record; few merchant captains had done finer
service in the war, and the decoration on his breast testified to his
cool handling of his ship in the "narrow squeaks" he spoke of lightly.
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