We Saw The Sea by John Winton Page B

the services of a Chinese girl; and to garish places full of American airline pilots and thin girls in slit-skirt dresses. Freddie Spink was known wherever he went. Bartenders hurried to serve him when they saw him standing at the bar. Taxi-dance girls clustered round his table and rickshaw boys understood his directions.
    “You seem to know where the heads are in every bar in this place,” Paul said.
    “I ought to,” answered Freddie. “You know, I get the feeling there’s a pretty powerful team ashore tonight. Are any of your wardroom ashore tonight?”
    “Not that I know of,” said Michael. “Nothing special, anyway.”
    Freddie Spink was not convinced. He was sure that somebody had been stirring up his favourite haunts.
    “Everyone seems very excited tonight.”
    Freddie Spink was as sensitive as a great fish feeling the presence of an alien current in his own pool. He arranged his tour so that they arrived back at the dockyard at one o’clock.
    “Well,” he said. “That’s that. I must go and say my tender good-byes now. I’m off to Australia the day after tomorrow.”
    “Whatever for?”
    “I’ve got quite a bit of leave due to me and I thought I might go and see some relations. A friend of mine has offered me a lift in a plane so I might as well go home that way as any. It’s almost as quick from here.”
    “Who have you got to say your fond farewells to, if you don’t mind my asking?” asked Paul.
    Freddie grinned. “I have got a little Chinese popsy here actually. I didn’t know anyone knew about it. It shook me quite a lot when you mentioned it. Just shows, you can’t fool the grapevine. Good night, fellows.”
    As Michael and Paul turned in at the dockyard gates, they saw that there had indeed been a powerful team ashore that night. Their attention was attracted by an uproar coming from the direction of the ferry. While they watched, a large crowd came running round the corner, headed by two rickshaws. In the leading rickshaw sat The Bodger, ringing a handbell and shouting “More revs! More revs!” Second by half a length and on the outside of the bend was the Commander who was waving a vast ivory fan and bellowing “Mush! Mush!“ at the top of his voice. The rest of the crowd was made up of several yelling small boys, three or four sailors who had lost their caps, an empty rickshaw, a yellow mongrel, and, in the rear, two breathless members of the Hong Kong Constabulary.
     

6
     
    “This new Jimmy,” said Leading Seaman Jones, known to the messdeck as Hooky, “bit of a fire-eating bas tard.”
    “He’s a --- menace,” said a swarthy Able Seaman called Golightly sitting opposite. “Trooped me yesterday for a --- haircut.”
    “How’s that, Golly?” enquired the rest of the messdeck.
    Golightly glanced round to make sure of his audience.
    “I was standing outside the --- Regulating Office when along comes the Jimmy. Get your hair cut Golightly, he says. I’ve just had it cut, I says. Well, get it cut again, he says and stand a bit closer to the razor this time. I thought --- .“
    Able Seaman Golightly relished the laughter of the messdeck.
    “And then he says, what you doing standing outside the Regulating Office anyway, he says. Why ain’t you working in your part of ship?”
    “So what did you --- say to him, Golly?”
    “I said, this is my part of ship, outside the Regulating Office.”
    The Bodger’s personality had swept through the mess-decks and life of Carousel like a breath of cold fresh air. The organization of a ship and the care of sailors was The Bodger’s profession and he had had nearly fifteen years experience in it. The tools of his trade were a knowledge of the Navy’s resources and an ability to study men; The Bodger read the sailors’ faces as accurately as his predecessors of two hundred years had read the clouds to predict the wind. The Bodger understood the sailors’ chief needs and he knew how far the Navy’s official organization could