As we bumped past him, I started the "Flowers of the Forest"-- the old version--on the antique stringed instrument I carried, and I sang the words very plain.
Tommy's eyes bulged out of his head, and he shouted at me in English to know who the devil I was.

I replied in the broadest Scots, which no man in the submarine or in our boat could have understood a word of.
"Maister Tammy," I cried, "what for wad ye skail a dacent tinkler lad intil a cauld sea?
I'll gie ye your kail through the reek for this ploy the next time I forgaither wi' ye on the tap o' Caerdon." 'Tommy spotted me in a second.

He laughed till he cried, and as we moved off shouted to me in the same language to "pit a stoot hert tae a stey brae".

I hope to Heaven he had the sense not to tell my father, or the old man will have had a fit.

He never much approved of my wanderings, and thought I was safely anchored in the battalion.
'Well, to make a long story short, I got to Constantinople, and pretty soon found touch with Blenkiron.