They had coffee in M.’s study and smoked the thin black cheroots of which M. allowed himself two a day. Bond burnt his tongue on his. M. continued with his stories about the Navy which Bond could listen to all day — stories of battles, tornadoes, bizarre happenings, narrow shaves, courts martial, eccentric officers, neatly-worded signals, as when Admiral Somerville, commanding the battleship Queen Elizabeth, had passed the liner Queen Elizabeth in mid-Atlantic and had signalled the one word ‘SNAP’! Perhaps it was all just the stuff of boys’ adventure books, but it was all true and it was about a great navy that was no more and a great breed of officers and seamen that would never be seen again.
Queen ElizabethQueen ElizabethIt was three o’clock. A car’s wheels scrunched on the gravel outs
