Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/221

 an extra-hazardous one, volunteers were called for to man the boats and as an inducement for bluejackets to do so a good bonus, that is, extra pay was offered. Now Bill Adams knew all about submarines, as I think I told you before, for he had worked for the  long before the world-war started.

“Let’s me and you go to it, matey,” he said, in one of his bursts of patriotism; “it isn’t quite as soft a snap as we’ve got on this here chaser but we gets more time ashore and then we helps our Uncle Sammy. Besides I’ve made up me mind to buy me mother a flivver; all the washladies in our neighborhood is ridin’ to and from work in them baby land-tanks of, and I guess what they can do she can do, eh, matey?”

“Why not?” I allowed. “She’s got a better right to ride in a motor car than a lot of those high-falutin’ women who live in glass conning towers on Fifth Avenue and never had a son to fight for Uncle Sam. They take everything and they give nothing.”

“Well, I wouldn’t quite say that, matey,” Bill answered thinking hard within the limits