M.S. Puncher and she
gradually lost what little weigh she had, rolling her bridge ends
under in the heave and hollow of a beam-on monsoon sea.
"How much does he say he wants?" asked her commander.
Joe Byng in the chains and Curley Crothers at the wheel both recognized
the quarter tone instantly, and diagnosed it with deadly accuracy;
every vibration of his voice and every fiber of his being expressed
exasperation, though a landsman might have noticed no more than contempt
for what he had seen fit to log as "half a gale."
"He says he'll take us in for fifty pounds, sir."
"Oh! Tell him to make it shillings, or else to get out of my course!"
It is not much in the way of Persian Gulf Arabic that a man picks
up from textbooks but at garnering the business end of beach-born
dialects--the end that gets results at least expense of time or
energy--the Navy goes even the Army half a dozen better. The
sublieutenant's argument, bawled from the bridge rail to the reeling
little boat below, was a marvel in its own sweet way; it combined
abuse and scorn with a cataclysmic blast of threat in six explosive
sentences.
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