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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of H.M.S. ----, by Klaxon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: H.M.S. ----
+
+Author: Klaxon
+
+Release Date: November 1, 2010 [EBook #34190]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK H.M.S. ---- ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Brian Foley and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  H.M.S. ----
+
+  BY
+  KLAXON
+
+  William Blackwood and Sons
+  Edinburgh and London
+  1918
+
+  _ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_
+
+
+
+
+_TO
+
+D. V. B._
+
+
+    When Homer launched his epic on the literary sea,
+    The critics were as merciful as they can ever be:
+    "We take it that the author did the best that he can do,"
+    "And the book should be remembered for at least a year or two...."
+    But Homer let the critics go, and listened with a smile,
+    For he had heard a verdict that was better by a mile,
+    In a code that only Homer as a husband understood,--
+    "You _are_ a funny clever thing--I'd no _idea_ you could."
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+                                                   PAGE
+
+  "1923"                                              1
+
+  PRIVILEGED                                         18
+
+  ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS                          22
+
+  A NAVAL DISCUSSION                                 32
+
+  THE GUNLAYER                                       42
+
+  A WAGE SLAVE                                       54
+
+  AN "ANNUAL"                                        61
+
+  "OUR ANNUAL"                                       68
+
+  MASCOTS                                            70
+
+  THE SPARROW                                        73
+
+  A WAR WEDDING                                      80
+
+  A HYMN OF DISGUST                                  94
+
+  THE "SPECIAL"                                      98
+
+  BETWEEN TIDES                                     106
+
+  LIGHT CAVALRY                                     116
+
+  A TRINITY                                         139
+
+  IN THE MORNING                                    144
+
+  AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS                             147
+
+  1917                                              155
+
+  IN FORTY WEST                                     169
+
+  A RING AXIOM                                      171
+
+  CHANCES                                           173
+
+  THE QUARTERMASTER                                 185
+
+  A LANDFALL                                        188
+
+  NIGHT ROUNDS                                      195
+
+  IN THE BARRED ZONE                                201
+
+  A MATTER OF ROUTINE                               204
+
+  WHO CARES?                                        211
+
+  THE UNCHANGING SEX                                213
+
+  TWO CHILDREN                                      216
+
+  AN URGENT COURTSHIP                               234
+
+  LOOKING AFT                                       254
+
+  GRIT                                              258
+
+  A MAXIM                                           270
+
+  FROM A FAR COUNTRY                                272
+
+  THE CRISIS                                        279
+
+  A SEA CHANTY                                      281
+
+  THE WAR OF ATTRITION                              284
+
+  THROUGH AN ADMIRALTY WINDOW                       303
+
+  A MOST UNTRUE STORY                               318
+
+
+
+
+H.M.S. ----.
+
+
+
+
+"1923."
+
+     [The following is the description by Professor J. Scott, F.R.S.,
+     of his recent Airship Journey across the old Bed of the North
+     Sea. July 1, 1923.]
+
+
+It is perhaps unnecessary for me to state the objects and purpose of
+my journey of last week, as it would be false modesty in me not to
+recognise the great interest taken by the geologic and antiquarian
+worlds in my proposed enterprise. For the benefit, however, of those
+for whose intelligence the so-called "Popular" geologic works are
+compiled, I will recapitulate some points which are ancient history to
+my instructed readers.
+
+The winter of 1922 witnessed the greatest geologic change in the
+earth's surface since the last of the Glacial epochs. Into the causes
+and general results of this change I do not propose to enter, beyond
+mentioning my opinion that the theory propounded by Professor
+Middleton (a theory designed only for one purpose--that of attempting
+to throw doubt on the data and reasoning of my first monograph on the
+subject) is not only childish, but based on a fallacy.
+
+I will confine myself to the results as they affected this country and
+the continent of Europe, of which it is now a prolongation or
+headland--not, as the Daily Press erroneously labels it, a peninsula.
+
+The total change in elevation of the land is now calculated at 490
+feet 7 inches, but more accurate measurements are still being taken.
+This great change brings us back to a geologic age when man and
+mammoth co-existed in the primeval forest of Cromer, and when the
+Dogger Bank was a great plain where wild beasts roamed and palaeolithic
+man left the traces of his industry in the bones and shaped flints
+which we hope soon to collect in quantities from the mud and ooze with
+which thousands of years of sea-action has covered them.
+
+I had little difficulty in obtaining Admiralty permission to accompany
+the Captain of a Naval Airship on one of his regular patrol trips
+across the great expanse of mud which was once the North Sea.
+
+Of course in the six months since the departure of the Ocean from the
+new lands, the district has been regularly patrolled by the Navy, but
+the air is as yet the only safe route by which to cross it. It will be
+some time, perhaps years, before the surface becomes safe to walk on,
+although the Government is plentifully sprinkling grass and other
+seeds from all passing aircraft. In the large and powerful airship in
+which I was privileged to travel, we had every modern device for
+enabling a close inspection of the surface to be taken. A trail-rope
+was used when it was desired to drift slowly or to actually hover over
+some of the points of interest which we observed on our passage.
+
+The day was fine and clear, and I could not have wished for better
+weather conditions when we rose over Dover and started the main
+engines on a north-easterly course. As no maps can yet be compiled of
+the New Lands (as popular clamour has most inaccurately labelled them)
+owing to their dangerous surface, we navigated by the old Admiralty
+charts, marked in depths of water, and I was amused at having the
+Varne and Goodwin "shoals" pointed out to me--the objects indicated
+being long ridges of sandy hills rising from the shining surface of
+the Channel bed. Off Deal and Dover a few of the wrecks are being
+worked on by enterprising local Salvage Companies--a road being laid
+out to each composed of gravel, sand, and brushwood. I fear, however,
+that the speculators will not profit greatly. The roads are good
+enough over the sand, but where they cross the mud-flats they swallow
+not only their traffic but the funds of their owners.
+
+As we travelled up the valley with the drone of our engines echoing
+from the whale-backed ridges on either side, with our gondolas barely
+a hundred feet from the ground, I discussed our programme with the
+Captain, whose views and reminiscences I found most entertaining. On
+general subjects he was like most of his service, almost contemptibly
+uneducated (I might mention that he did not understand what
+Magdalenian culture was!), but he was evidently well read in his own
+trade. He told me several stories which were no doubt excellent, but
+which were marred to a point of incomprehensibility by a foolish
+interlarding of technical terms. I gave him a short precis of what is
+known or deduced of prehistoric life on the New Lands, and spoke of
+the bones and fossils occasionally found in trawl-nets by the
+fishermen. His point of view was that the war overshadowed everything.
+He seemed to think that that event was one from which all others
+should date, although it had lasted such a short time. As very little
+of interest to me could yet be seen owing to the general coating of
+slime with which the land was covered, I amused myself by listening to
+his experiences on his weekly air patrols, his conversation being
+somewhat after this style:--
+
+"Yes, it was a fair snorter while it lasted--that gale,--damn lucky we
+hadn't many ships out. Yes, most of 'em got in. They either ran down
+Channel (Lord! the Straits were like opening the caisson gates to a
+graving-dock!) and made New Queenstown, or else they got into harbour on
+the East Coast and stranded there. You see, what with mines and wrecks,
+the North Sea wasn't being used much, and as the navies were taking a
+rest there wasn't much of value at sea. Some ships got stuck
+though--fishing boats mostly. No, they were all right--it took a week to
+drain off, and it was calm weather when they grounded. Most of them have
+wireless now, and they yelped for help, and we took 'em off. Those that
+hadn't were a bit hungry when we found them, but I don't think we lost
+many. You see, all nations sent air fleets out. Have you read the U.S.
+Magazine? You ought to; there's a damn good argument going on as to
+whether it would have paid us or Germany most if it had happened during
+the war. I think us, myself. You see, there's only a narrow channel now
+running past the Norwegian coast, and we could have mined that. Look at
+that, Professor! How's that for mines? That's Zeebrugge with the houses
+showing over the sand-hills. Whose? Oh! both sides put 'em there--that
+hollow to the east is proper stiff with them, isn't it? Port
+fifteen--Quartermaster! steer east--What? No, just going to show you
+something. You said it seemed a wicked waste of material; well, look
+over there--two of them got it. One's a U.C. boat but the other's a big
+one. They picked them up coming back, and that big chap's nearly in two
+halves--Starboard twenty, Quartermaster! No, we needn't go closer,
+you'll see one every half mile between here and Heligoland--some of ours
+as well as theirs. Yes--that's a Dutchman--torpedoed by the look of
+him. See the hole in the stern? Oh, butter and bacon and that sort of
+thing! No, nobody in her. Why? Well, look at the davits--they left her
+before she sank--all the boats are gone.
+
+"Like these glasses? That's the _Hinder_ over there. Yes, they still
+live in her, and she's still useful. A fine big lightship, isn't she?
+She settled down at her moorings as peacefully as could be, and when
+we sent a line down to them on our first patrol trip after the show,
+they sent up a note asking for some 'baccy, and would we post some
+letters for them? Nothing ever did worry the _Hinder_ in the war, and
+it won't now. You see, English and German used to fight under her tail
+every other night, and as she was an international light she just
+flashed away and looked on. I wonder none of their crew have written a
+book yet--'Battles round the _Hinder_,' by an Eyewitness. It would be
+better than most of the truck that has been written in England about
+it. Yes, she lies in a bit of a hollow, but the light shows up all
+right, and that's all we want. Here you are; this is what you wanted."
+
+We had reached the first object of interest in my journey. More
+trail-rope was paid out, and we swung with our engine stopped, downwind,
+lying twenty feet above a great pit torn in the earth by some tremendous
+explosion. All around the pit-mouth lay masses of earth and rock, and
+the face of the crater was thick with bone-breccia and fossils of every
+kind. The explosion had occurred over an old beach on the bank of what
+had once been the old Channel River. For thousands of years prehistoric
+men and beasts had lived and died there, and had left their skeletons to
+enlighten us. And more than bones had been left. Almost the first
+basket-load that our light electric "grab" produced for us contained
+among its numerous specimens of surpassing interest a rough "hand-axe"
+of dark flint, possibly of Pre-Chellean culture. However, the whole of
+my notes and specimens obtained on this visit are now being examined
+and classified, and I will postpone description of them until the
+meeting of the Society on the 18th.
+
+I would have liked to have descended into the pit by a ladder or other
+means, but was dissuaded, partly by the motion of the airship, which
+swayed to and fro in the light wind, and partly by the blunt negative
+with which my suggestion was greeted by the Captain. We took only
+three baskets of specimens from this spot, as we had others to visit,
+and our carrying capacity was limited. As we slowly hauled in the
+trail-rope and prepared to continue our journey, I asked the Captain
+whether this crater had been intentionally formed by the Government
+for purposes of research, or whether it had been produced accidentally
+in the late war.
+
+"Accident?" he said. "Well, no, hardly that--but still, I expect he
+_thought_ he might pull it off without doing himself in." He pointed
+to one of two big submarines which lay on opposite sides of the
+crater. The one indicated was the smaller of the two, and the least
+damaged. She lay upright with a slight tilt up by the bow (which was
+dented and torn rather badly). The other was in two halves, and lay on
+her side with a mound of earth, bones, and rock, making a sort of
+rough junction between the halves. The two submarines looked like
+great guardians of the pit, and I wondered at the madness of man that
+makes him revel in war and killing to no purpose. I mentioned
+something of this thought to the Captain, who was still gazing at the
+more intact of the two boats, and tapping a flint "Coup de poing" on
+the side of our gondola.
+
+"Well, Professor," he said, "the man who made this tool didn't make it
+to clean his nails with, did he?" I observed that it was now generally
+agreed that most of prehistoric man's weapons were for use against his
+greatest foes--which were wild beasts, and not men. The Captain jerked
+the flint implement back into the basket.
+
+"My oath! you've said it," he snapped. "_We've_ been fighting wild
+beasts, and that chap in the smaller boat was a friend of mine. He
+took that Fritz fairly amidships with his stem, but he couldn't get
+free, and they went down locked. When Fritz hit bottom his mines went,
+and that blew them apart, and so there's your bone pit, Professor."
+
+I looked back at the pit and the two hulks beside it, now dwindling
+astern. "How do you know all that?" I asked.
+
+"Read his number on the conning-tower for one thing, and the chap who
+had that boat would be pretty sure to take a Hun with him when he had to
+go. The rest? Well, his bows are bashed in, you see, and his lid is
+still open, so he gave Fritz his bow first on the surface. You may have
+some relics of curious beasts in that basket, Professor, but I can show
+you a relic, or a hundred if you like, of a damn sight nastier beast.
+See the masts over that mudbank? That's a Dutch liner--two torpedoes and
+no warning. Full of women too. Like to go and look? I thought not. Yes,
+Professor, I can show you two hundred sunken ships in a few hours' run
+here, and they haven't all got their davits empty by a long chalk. Never
+mind--here's something more amusing."
+
+Our engine slowed and almost stopped while we drifted across a flat,
+broad, muddy plateau which sloped away to a valley on each side.
+
+"See those lines?" said my abrupt naval friend--"those long straight
+scores along the mud, I mean. Those are where the submarines--ours and
+theirs--have been taking bottom for a rest. Taking bottom? Oh! on
+winter nights, when it's too dark to see or when they're waiting for
+anything, or got defects or struck fog, you know. They used to take
+bottom a lot here, because it's good surface and they had twenty
+fathom of water, too. The marks haven't washed out yet. See this one?
+He bumped three times before he settled: he must have had a lot of
+headway on--his track's all of half a mile. That bed is where he
+settled for the night. It's soft there, and he worked in over his
+bilge keel. There's another, fifty yards off him. Of course it was
+probably made a year before or after he made his, but there must have
+been cases when our boats and Fritz's lay that much apart all night
+and didn't know it. Pretty queer idea, isn't it? Perhaps a banjo
+strumming in one boat and a gramophone going in the other. Oh yes,
+they used to have concerts on the bottom before turning in! One of our
+chaps gave me a programme once. There were twenty items in it, and it
+was headed 'C/o G.P.O.--126 feet.' This was a regular submarine
+traffic lane for both sides. Some parts of the surface up north aren't
+marked at all,--it was either too deep water or there were too many
+mines about. Funny thing is, that some of the areas which both sides
+seem to have studiously gone round and avoided have no mines at all in
+them. Just rumour, I suppose. They gave the place a bad name and
+damned it. Eh? No--that's all right--tip 'em out on the deck--we can
+scrub the place out when we get in."
+
+He spoke to a sailor, who stepped forward and turned the nearest
+basket of specimens upside down. As he did so, something rolled from
+the heap to my feet, and with a thrill which could only be understood
+by my brother scientists I gazed on the greatest archaeological
+discovery of the ages. I have already announced my discovery to the
+press, and the scientists of all nations are now gathering in London
+to inspect it, so I shall not enter now on a detailed description. I
+may say that my first thought was that I had in my hands a copy of my
+confrere Keith's reconstruction of the Piltdown skull, and that my own
+reconstruction had been to a certain extent false; but on mature
+reflection I decided that this could not be so, and that I must
+classify my find as belonging to a hitherto unknown branch of the race
+of Homo Sapiens--akin to, but yet distinct from, Eoanthropus. This
+prehistoric man I have called Homo Scoticanthropus, and my full report
+and conclusions will be shortly before the Society.
+
+The skull is intact and requires no reconstruction. The lower mandible
+is of the chimpanzee-like type found with Eoanthropus, and as it was
+picked up by the same basket, must undoubtedly belong to the skull.
+
+As to the remainder of our voyage, I can only say that I spent the time
+on the floor of the gondola measuring and inspecting my find. I could
+not tear myself away from it, and we therefore omitted our visits to
+other spots where explosions were known to have occurred near the old
+sea-bed, confining ourselves to a hurried round of the Naval patrol
+route. Beyond a casual inspection and a remark that it looked like
+Hindenburg, the airship captain took no interest in this now famous
+skull, but confined himself to his duties of navigation and control.
+
+It is unfortunate that the exact depth and geological strata of the
+skull's position cannot be given. The basket was drawn from the bottom
+of the pit, but the skull may have been either thrown up by the
+explosion or rolled down later by the action of the tides.
+
+When the new lands have dried we hope to have a careful inspection of
+that and other pits, when more and perhaps equally valuable
+discoveries may be made.
+
+I have perhaps made undue mention of my naval friend in this pamphlet,
+but to tell the truth his type was new to me. Though, like all his
+fellow-officers, his limited education had tended to make him
+narrow-minded, he nevertheless deserves mention here as having assisted,
+albeit in a humble way, in the most wonderful discovery in history.
+
+
+
+
+PRIVILEGED.
+
+
+    They called across to Peter at the changing of the Guard,
+      At the red-gold Doors that the Angels keep,--
+    "Lend us help to the Portal, for they press upon us hard,
+      They are straining at the Gate, many deep."
+
+    Then Peter rose and went to the wicket by the Wall,
+      Where the Starlight flashed upon the crowd;
+    And he saw a mighty wave from the Greatest Gale of all
+      Break beneath him with a roar, swelling loud--
+
+    _Let us in! Let us in! We have left a load of sin
+      On the battlefield that flashes far below.
+    From the trenches or the sea--there's a pass for such as we,
+      For we died with our faces to the foe._
+
+    "_We haven't any creed--for we never felt the need,--
+      And our morals are as ragged as can be;
+    But we finished in a way that has cleared us of the clay,
+      And we're coming to you clean, as you can see._"
+
+    Then Peter looked below him with a smile upon his lips,
+      And he answered, "Ye are fighters, as I know
+    By your badges of the air, of the trenches, and the ships,
+      And the wounds that on your bodies glisten so."
+
+    And he looked upon the wounds, that were many and were grim,
+      And his glance was all-embracing--unafraid;
+    And he looked to meet the eyes that were smiling up to him,
+      All a-level as a new-forged blade.
+
+    "Ye are savage men and rough--from the fo'c'sle and the tent;
+      Ye have put High Heaven to alarm;
+    But I see it written clear by the road ye went,
+      That ye held by the Fifteenth Psalm."
+
+    And they shouted in return, "_'Tis a thing we've never read,
+      But you passed our friends inside
+    That won to the end of the road we tread
+      Long ago when the Mons Men died._"
+
+    "_Let us in! Let us in! We have fallen for the Right,
+      And the Crown that we listed to win,
+    That we earned by the Somme or the waters of the Bight;
+      You're a fighting man yourself--Let us in!_"
+
+    Then Peter gave a sign and the Gates flung wide
+    To the sound of a bugle-call:
+        "Pass the fighting men to the ranks inside,
+        Who came from the earth or the cold grey tide,
+        With their heads held high and a soldier's stride,
+        To a Friend in the Judgment Hall."
+
+
+
+
+ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS.
+
+
+The world was a streak of green and white bubbles, and there was a
+great roaring noise which disturbed his thoughts. "Boots--boots--I
+must get them off." He remembered the only occasion on which he had
+experienced an anaesthetic, the mental struggle to retain his ego, and
+the loss of will-power he had known at every breath. He was going down
+now, the roaring was less terrible and he felt very tired. A check in
+his descent and a little voice at the back of his brain: "There was a
+big sea running." Then a blur of white foam and a long gasping breath.
+Something rasped his forehead and a rough serge sleeve was across his
+throat. He fought feebly to keep the choking arm away, but as they
+rose on the crest of a long blue-green swell, he was jerked from the
+water by the neck and the belt of his overcoat. His first clear
+sensation was one of intense chill. Although there was little wind, it
+was cold in the air. He raised his head and moved to avoid the
+uncomfortable pressure of something on his chest. As he saw his
+situation he dropped his head again quickly and lay still. He was
+across the keel of a broad grey boat which pitched and heaved at
+terrifying angles as the seas passed. He crawled cautiously round,
+pivoting on his stomach till his legs straddled the keel and he had a
+grip on it with his hands under his chin. Facing him in a similar
+attitude was a seaman he knew, a tall brawny torpedoman whom he had
+noticed rigging the lights in the Wardroom flat on occasions when
+Evening Service had been held there. What was his name--Davies? Denny?
+No, Dunn! of course--the ship's boxer, and the funny man at the
+concerts. Were they two all that was left? He opened his mouth and
+gasped a little before speaking.
+
+"All right, sir--take it easy--I've been off this billet twice, and
+it's no joke getting back to it. Good thing you're a light weight,
+sir, or you'd've pulled me in just now."
+
+"Are there--are there any more, Dunn?"
+
+"God knows, sir--beggin' your pardon, that is--the mine got us forr'd
+and the magazine went. This is the pinnace we're on, and it's the
+biggest bit of the ship I've seen floating yet."
+
+"Good God! Where were you?"
+
+"On the bridge, sir, just sent for by the Officer of the Watch about
+the telephones; but I'm--I don't know 'ow I got away, sir--flew, I
+reckon. Where were you, sir?"
+
+"Coming up the Wardroom ladder, and as I got on deck I was washed
+away. Dunn! do you think we'll be picked up?"
+
+The seaman raised his head and shoulders cautiously and took a rapid
+glance around as they topped a sea, then resumed his attitude along
+the keel, his chin on his crossed wrists. "You're a parson, sir," he
+said, "and you're ready for it, so I'll tell you. We were on detached
+duty, and there mayn't be another ship here for a week yet."
+
+"A week! But, man, a merchant ship or fisherman might pass any time."
+
+"A fisherman might, sir; but I never saw a merchantman since we came
+on this trip, and I don't see anything now."
+
+There was a pause, and the padre shivered in his thin wet clothes.
+"The sea was going down this morning; how long do you think we could
+stay alive on this?"
+
+"That's the trouble, sir. This is the pinnace, and she's stove in a bit."
+
+"Do you mean she'll sink? But they float when they are waterlogged,
+don't they?"
+
+"Not this one, she won't, and she's got the launch's slings in her
+too--half an hour I give her; but you're right, sir; the sea's going
+down, and I'm keeping a watch out for more wreckage if it goes by, sir."
+
+The shivering-fit passed and he tried to collect his thoughts. Yes,
+the pinnace _had_ settled a bit since he had been dragged aboard. She
+did not lift so easily to the sea, and had lost the tendency to
+broach-to which had made him grip the keel so tightly at first. He was
+quite calm now, and everything seemed much more simple. Half an hour!
+He lowered his forehead to his hands and his thoughts raced. What had
+he left undone? Yes, the ship was gone, so he had nothing to think of
+in connection with her. As Dunn would say, his affairs in her were all
+"clewed up" by her loss. But ashore, now--ah! For a full minute he
+fought with his panic. He felt a rage against a fate that was blindly
+killing him when he had so much more of life to enjoy. He wanted to
+scream like a trapped rabbit. He felt his eyes wet with tears of
+self-pity, and at the feeling his sense of humour returned. He thought
+of himself as a child about to be smacked, and when he raised his head
+he was smiling into Dunn's eyes. "Half an hour is not long, Dunn," he
+said, "but it is longer than our friends had."
+
+Dunn took another swift glance to right and left, then, reaching a
+hand cautiously into his jumper, pulled out a wet and shiny briar
+pipe, and began to reflectively chew the mouthpiece.
+
+He was a young _padre_, but he had been in the Service most of the
+war. He knew enough to choose his words with care as he spoke again.
+
+"Dunn," he said, "we haven't got long. I am going to pray."
+
+"Yessir," said the bony, red face before him.
+
+He tried again. "Dunn, you're Church of England, aren't you?"
+
+"Yessir. On the books I am, sir."
+
+"You mean you have no religion?"
+
+Dunn blew hard into the bowl of his pipe and replaced the mouthpiece
+between his jagged teeth. "Not that sort quite, sir--but I'm all
+right, sir."
+
+The _padre_ moved a little bit nearer along the keel. The pinnace was
+certainly deep in the water now, but his mind was at ease and he did
+not feel the cold. "Listen, Dunn," he said; "I am going to pray--I
+want you to repeat what I say after me."
+
+Dunn moved his hands from under his chin and took his pipe from his
+mouth. "Yessir," he said.
+
+The _padre_ paused a moment and looked at the long blue slope of a sea
+rising above his eyes. He wondered vaguely why he was not feeling
+sea-sick. "O God, Who made the sea and all that therein is, have mercy
+on us Thy servants called to-day to Thy judgment-seat. Pardon us the
+manifold sins we have committed, and lead us to a true repentance; and
+to us, who have in the past neglected Thee in our hearts, send light
+and strength that we may come without fear before Thy throne. Have
+pity, O Lord, upon those who are made widows and orphans this day.
+Grant to our country final victory and Thy peace. Amen."
+
+The sun was behind clouds now, and the seas were washing occasionally
+along the sinking boat.
+
+"You did not join me in the prayer, Dunn," he said. "Was it not within
+the scheme of your religion?"
+
+Dunn put his pipe carefully back in his jumper and took a firmer grip
+of the keel. "Yes, sir," he said, "it was--but I don't whine when I'm
+down."
+
+"Do you mean I was whining, Dunn?"
+
+"No, sir, I don't. You've always prayed and you're not going back on
+anything. I don't go much on Church, and God wouldn't think nothing of
+me if I piped down now."
+
+The _padre_ was, as has been said, a young man, and being young he did
+the right thing and waited for more. It came with a rush.
+
+"You see, sir, it's God this, and God that, and no one knows what God
+is like, but I'm a Navy man and I think of Him my way. If I'm not
+afraid to die I'm all right, I think, sir. It wasn't my fault the ship
+sank, sir. I've always kept my job done, and I've got 'Exceptional' on
+my parchment. When I joined up I took the chance of this, and I ain't
+kicking now it's come. I reckon if a man plays the game by his
+messmates, and fights clean in the ring, and takes a pride, like, in
+his job--well, it ain't for me to say, but I don't think God'll do
+much to me. He'll say, 'Jack,' He'll say, 'you've got a lot of things
+against you here, but you ain't shirked your work and you aren't
+afraid of Me--so pass in with a caution,' He'll say. You're all right,
+sir, and it may be because you're a good Christian; but I reckon, sir,
+it's because you know you've done your job and not skrimshanked it
+that you ain't afraid, just the same as me.... Hold tight,
+sir,--she'll not be long now."
+
+The _padre_ ducked his head as a swell passed, but the sea had no crest
+now, the weather was certainly improving. "I don't say you're right," he
+said, "but I haven't time to bring you to my way of thinking now."
+
+The pinnace began to stand on end with a gurgling and bubbling of air
+from her bow. The two men slipped off on opposite sides, still holding
+the rough splintery keel between them.
+
+"Listen, Dunn--repeat this after me: 'Please God, I have done my best,
+and I'm not afraid to come to You.'"
+
+"'Please God, I've done my best, and I'm not afraid to come to You,'
+sir. Good-bye, sir."
+
+"Thank you, Dunn--good-bye."
+
+The sunset lit up the slope of a sea that looked majestically down on
+them, and flashed on something behind it. As they looked the wet grey
+conning-tower of a submarine showed barely fifty yards away. The
+startled sea pounded at her hull as she rose and grew, and a rush of
+spray shook out the folds of a limp and draggled White Ensign that
+hung from the after-stanchion of her bridge.
+
+
+
+
+A NAVAL DISCUSSION.
+
+
+The air was thick with smoke, and a half-circle of officers sat
+clustered round the stove in the smoking-room. True--there was no fire
+in the stove, but that did not count. A stove was a place you sat around
+and jerked cigarette ash at, or, if you were long enough, rested your
+heels on. The party consisted of six ship's officers and a guest. A few
+feet away a Bridge-party was in progress. It was the usual Naval party,
+and was composed of one man who could play, two who thought they could,
+and one who had come in in response to urgent demands to "make up a
+four," and who held no illusions about his own play or his partner's.
+However, he argued well, which was a help. The game appeared to go in
+spasms--a few minutes' peace punctuated only by subdued oaths, and then
+a cross-fire of abuse and recriminations--usually opened by the fourth
+player, who had somewhere learnt the wonderful feminine art of getting
+in first accusation, and then dodging his opponents' salvoes behind a
+smoke-screen of side-issues.
+
+The group by the stove were not in the least disturbed by the game
+behind them. They had heard Naval Bridge played before, and knew that
+it was only when the players became polite that trouble was in the
+offing. The talk, as always, was of the War, and swung with startling
+suddenness from one queer aspect to another. The Senior Engineer was
+leaning back in his chair, his pipe between his teeth, listening to
+the mixture of views and voices from either side of him.
+
+"What do they want this saluting order at all for? They're making
+everybody salute everybody in London now, and they say it isn't safe
+to walk down the Haymarket to the Admiralty, because the traffic
+stands to attention for you."
+
+"All damn nonsense. There's too much saluting--that sort, I mean--and
+there's too little of the other sort. Let's have an order that every
+civilian must salute a wounded man, or a man with a wound stripe, and
+then I'll take Provost-Marshal and see it done."
+
+"They'd chuck their hands in. They're all talking of Democracy now,
+and a wounded man would count as a gilded autocrat."
+
+"Democracy, my foot! I know their sort of Democracy. It's like
+Russia's special brand--do as you please, and make all you can for
+yourself. A civilian's no good till he's a conscript or done his time
+in the Territorials. If they want democracy they can come here. This
+is the most democratic Service in the world."
+
+"But you can't run down civilians over this war; why--the whole Army's
+civilian now. They haven't done so badly, though they had to wait for
+war before they moved."
+
+"Whose fault was it they didn't help before? It wasn't ours. But
+that's just what I'm saying. They're all right once they've been
+drilled, but no damn good till they have been. We ought to put the
+whole lot through a short course of drill and a week of trench work,
+and let them go again."
+
+The guest's voice broke in--"You mean, I take it, that the people who
+are going to make the peace are the people who have not yet learnt
+discipline?"
+
+"Yes, sir--that's about it. They haven't learnt to think for their
+side instead of their own private ends."
+
+"Call 'em politicians and have done with it, Pongo!"
+
+"Well, they are--aren't they? They get the politicians they like, and
+they appoint men of their own sort, so they are all politicians really."
+
+"Well, I think that's being rather hard on them. They have to take the
+men the party whips gave them. I think they're a poor lot, but I
+wouldn't call them politicians."
+
+The guest moved uneasily. "I don't quite see your point," he said. "Is
+the term 'politician' one of reproach or praise? I once stood for my
+local constituency and----"
+
+The young officer with his heels on the stove gave a sudden snort.
+"Don't you believe him, he's pulling your legs--so don't apologise.
+He's no politician, anyway."
+
+The guest laughed. "Well, I'm not in politics now," he said. "What is
+your definition of this strange animal?"
+
+There was a pause, and then a cautious reply, "Well, he's an M.P."
+
+"But I know some very charming M.P.'s--are they all politicians?"
+
+"Oh no, sir. They're different. It's a question of standards, really."
+
+"Ah, but what are the standards?"
+
+"Well, you see--we have one--and civilians have another, business
+people and so on, and then there's the politicians."
+
+"You ought to write a dictionary, Pongo--you snub-nosed old shell-back.
+No, I ain't scrapping, and if you get up I'll take your chair."
+
+"Whose got a cigarette? No, not one of your stinkers--gimme one of
+yours, Guns."
+
+The officer addressed politely passed a cigarette across in his
+fingers, and turning in his chair beckoned to a marine servant who was
+just returning with an empty tray from the Bridge table.
+
+"A cigarette, please, waiter--and debit it to the account of my
+honourable friend Mr Maugham, here. I'll stop your cadging, Pongo--if
+I have to take on the tobacco accounts to do it."
+
+"Lucky there's no shortage of 'baccy, or all the armies would strike."
+
+"Well, that'd be one way to stop the war. You can't fight without it.
+Wish we had some tobacco shares. Some people must be making a lot."
+
+"Not so much as the food people."
+
+"I don't believe the food people do make so much. It's the world
+shortage that causes the trouble, not the prices--or rather one
+involves the other."
+
+"It isn't so much that. It's a rise of prices all round. Things get
+expensive, so the country strikes for higher wages and gets
+them--then prices go up because the sovereign has depreciated, and
+they strike again. It goes on in a vicious circle."
+
+"Can't be a circle--because that's progression. You've got to get to a
+smash in time."
+
+"Yes, it means there'll be just as much cash in the world, but every
+one will be poor. Cash isn't wealth--work is wealth, and all work
+nowadays is wasted. We're chucking it into the air in Flanders."
+
+"Well, we'll last out this war, and then have to lash out."
+
+"Oh yes--there'll be room to lash out in, too. We'll be back in
+Elizabeth's days--lots of room for every one, but no capital."
+
+"So long as there are no Huns we'll be happy, so what's the odds? Give
+us a match."
+
+"Well, I want a few Huns left to compare notes with after this. It
+would be dull to hear our own side only. One couldn't meet their Army,
+of course, but their Navy's not so bad. They've tried to fight clean,
+at any rate, and they fight good and 'earty. Yes, I know about Fritz,
+but if you had orders to torpedo liners, wouldn't you do it? 'Course
+you would, if you were told they were carrying munitions and you were
+saving your country by it. There are Fritzes who _like_ it, certainly,
+but we have to give the others the benefit of the doubt."
+
+"Well, I'd like to read their logs and so on after the war, though
+we'll be so damn sick of all the truck they'll publish here when the
+Censor pays off that we wont want to read much of anything."
+
+"It isn't the stuff just after the war one would like to read. I'd
+like to be alive in a hundred years to read the truth."
+
+"Well, you wont be if you knock my drink over with your hairy
+hoofs--sit still!"
+
+"It'd do you good if I did knock it over--your hoary-headed old rip.
+Guns, do you think they'll have raised our pay in a hundred years'
+time?"
+
+"I doubt it. They'll pay off the Navy and economise as soon as peace
+is signed--"
+
+"--And we'll have another war on our hands inside six months--we
+always do; we've always retrenched after a war, and then had to give
+bonuses to get the men back inside a year."
+
+"Well, they'll pay off the battleships, anyway--and only keep the fast
+cruisers and the submarines."
+
+"You and your submarines! Have you heard from your brother lately?"
+
+"Yes, he tells me if I'm going to join I've got to remember it's the
+greatest honour to be--half a sec., I've got the letter here--to be
+alive and able to get into the greatest and most efficient Service of
+the Greatest Navy the world has ever seen, in the Greatest event in
+History since the Moon broke off."
+
+There was a two seconds' silence (which is long for a Naval
+discussion), then--
+
+"Well, cutting out the swollen-headed tosh about the Greatest Service,
+which I take it he means to refer to submarines, I don't know that
+he's far wrong."
+
+"Well, I suppose we shall have our pasts and presents all looked up,
+and that people at the U.S. Institution will argue about us like they
+did a few years ago about Trafalgar."
+
+"No fear. They'll all be peaceful then, and we'll be barbarians, and
+not to be spoken of."
+
+"Barbarian, my foot! We're the cleanest lot in England, and the
+English are cleaner than most races."
+
+"Do you think there'll be another battle?"
+
+"Oh, help! If that cag's going to start, I'm off. Good-night, sir."
+
+"I must go too, Jim," said the guest, with a startled glance at the
+clock. "Where did I leave my coat?"
+
+The Senior Engineer rose and followed them out, hearing as he passed
+through the door an unwearying voice by the stove--"I know a chap on
+Beatty's staff, and he says they'll fight next spring or summer."
+
+
+
+
+THE GUNLAYER.
+
+
+"_Hit first--hit hard--and keep on hitting_, is a good rule, but what
+I want to impress on you is that in this war the last part of that
+rule is the most important. The enemy shoots remarkably well--at a
+target--but he does not appear to stand punishment well himself. It is
+remarkable how the German shooting falls off once he gets a few big
+shells aboard him, and up to date it has been noticeable that our own
+practice is, up to a certain point, improved by our being hit. It is
+just a matter of sticking power...."
+
+The Gunnery Lieutenant paused in his lecture and sighed. "Would these
+pasty-faced beggars stick it?" He had had a week to train the
+crew--most of them raw hands--of the latest and fastest light
+cruiser, into a semblance of war efficiency, and the effort was tiring
+him. They were so very new and unintelligent, and he had had to go
+over the A B C of gunnery with them as if they had never been through
+their course before joining. Seven bells struck, and he dismissed the
+class and sent them shuffling and elbowing out of the flat.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They had been stationed at the guns three hours and had seen nothing.
+This was their second day out, and the first nervousness and feeling
+of shyness at being in enemy waters was wearing off. The mist that had
+been with them since dawn was clearing away too, and the gunlayer of
+No. Five straightened his back and stretched himself against the
+shield. This was a silly game, he decided. Two cables astern the
+knife-edge stem of a sister ship was parting their wake into two
+creamy undulating waves which seemed to spoil the mirror-like surface
+of what the German wireless has with inimitable humour termed "The
+fringe of the English barred zone," or as their Lordships more drily
+put it, "The mouth of the Bight."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The gunlayer spat carefully over the side and felt in his cap-rim for
+a cigarette. He calculated that he would make the "fag," with care,
+last till breakfast. Fourteen days in commission had at any rate
+taught him that the art of shortening up the frequent spells of
+boredom consisted in a judicious mixture of tobacco and thinking, and
+as smoking was barred under heavy penalties during the dark hours, his
+brain had been somewhat overworked since four. As he fumbled for his
+matches he froze suddenly still as a bugle blared "Action stations!"
+from the bridge above him. He heard the beginnings of the clatter of
+men closing up and the hum of activity along the deck, but till the
+cold shiver had passed from him he could not move. His one idea was
+that this was _real_, and he would give anything to be out of it. Then
+in a flash he was at his sights, his hands on the focussing-ring and
+his head close up to the telescope, in fear that others might see
+something in his face that he did not want them to see. For exactly
+the same reasons some hundred other men on the upper deck were
+becoming feverishly busy, but before the last note of the bugle had
+died the guns' crews were over their stage fright, and were, with
+perhaps a little more care and intelligence than they had shown at
+drill, closing up to their guns.
+
+The gunlayer of No. Five stepped to one side and looked out on the
+beam. The mists had cleared, and far to the east he could see a line
+of little smoke puffs that could only mean one thing--ships in station
+and burning high-speed fuel. The cruiser heeled a little, and the
+smoke dots swung from abeam to nearly ahead as she turned, and he lost
+sight of them behind the shield of the next gun. He wanted to go
+forward and watch them. It seemed worse to have it hanging over him
+like this. He did not know if he would be quite ready if the ship
+turned suddenly to bring his gun to bear and he should see the enemy
+at close range, and no longer as little brown smoke blurs.
+
+The sight-setter, a boy of seventeen, spoke to him and he looked round.
+The boy's face was rather white, and his lips trembled a little. The
+gunlayer woke up at the sight, and broke into a pleased grin.
+
+"Only little beggars," he said, "hardly enough to make a mouthful.
+Don't you make no blinkin' errors this morning, my lad, or I'll land
+you one you'll be proud of!"
+
+The speech cheered him up, and he began to believe he _might_ come out
+of it alive--with luck. The ship was travelling now. The white water
+raced past at a dizzy speed, and a great sloping V of bubbling foam
+followed them fifty yards astern. Every few seconds a quivering
+vibration started from forward and travelled through the
+hull--reminding him of a terrier waiting at a rat-hole. He wanted to
+smoke--there would be just time for a cigarette--but although he was
+afraid of death, he was afraid of the Gunnery Lieutenant more. He
+snuggled down to the shoulder-piece and began working his elevating
+wheel slowly. There was little roll on the ship, and he realised
+thankfully that there was going to be no difficulty about keeping his
+sights on. The oblong port in the shield through which his telescope
+passed worried him: it seemed so unnecessarily big. That was just like
+the Admiralty designers, he thought--so long as they didn't have to
+stand behind the hole they didn't care how big it was. Why, it would
+let a six-inch shell through! He felt quite a grievance about it.
+Then, with a heel and an increase of vibration the ship turned. Lord!
+there they were--one--two--three--four--five of them--going like
+smoke, too. He pressed close to his telescope, and the enemy sprang
+into view--many times magnified. The boy sight-setter in a cracked
+voice repeated an order, and he heard the quick shuffle of feet and
+the word "Ready" come like a whip-crack from behind him. The leading
+enemy danced in the heat-haze as his telescope swayed up and down her
+foremast. It all depended on him and a few others now. The
+responsibility worried him. The gun's crew behind him were invisible,
+but he felt that their eyes were glued to his back, and that they were
+wondering if he was going to make good.
+
+Boom--Br-r-room--Boom! That was the next ahead. It sounded a rotten
+salvo. Was she ranging--or would they all start now? He saw no
+splashes by the ship in his sights. Was it a complete miss, or was it
+fired at another enemy?
+
+Boom--B-r-_room_! That was a better one. Weren't _they_ going to do
+anything? As he wondered, the enemy cruiser flashed like a red helio,
+and he gasped in admiration at the simultaneous firing of her battery.
+A great sheet of white shut out the view in his telescope, and a
+deafening crack announced the bursting of a short salvo. _Wow_-ooo!
+Something whined overhead, and his own gun spoke--rocking the shield,
+and making him flinch from the sights. _Gawd!_ had he fired with the
+sights on, or were his eyes shut? Anyhow, the men behind him did not
+seem to notice anything wrong. The breech slammed viciously, and the
+word "Ready" came on the instant. "_Clang_"--something hit the shield
+and glanced upwards as his gun spoke again. He knew he hadn't had the
+sights on then--he hadn't been ready,--how the hell could a man keep
+the sights on with this going on? Behind him a man began a scream, a
+scream which was cut short suddenly with the crack of a bursting H.E.
+shell and the whistle and wail of splinters. Gawd! this was
+chronic--the ship must be getting it thick. The enemy swung into his
+telescope field again, and he saw the throbbing flame jerk out and
+vanish from her upper deck.
+
+B-r-r-_oom_! That was a better salvo. He must have been on the spot
+that time--another one--no, he was aiming high then. Still, it didn't
+matter. They'd all be dead soon and nobody would know who'd fired well
+or badly. Right abreast the enemy's bridge a great spout of water shot
+up, and behind it he saw the yellow sheet of flame that told of half
+a broadside going home. "He _must_ keep his sights on"--"_Must_ keep
+his sights on." His gun rocked as it fired, and he swore under his
+breath at the delay before the crew reloaded. Were they all wounded?
+They might be--as he estimated at least three full salvoes had been
+aboard since the first shot. The enemy swung out of his field of view
+again, and he took his eye from the telescope a moment. What the hell
+was the ship turning for? The flagship must be crazy--just when we
+were hitting, too. He froze to his eye-piece again, and saw the
+familiar bridge and curved stem of his target as before. A haze of
+purplish-grey smoke was over her forecastle, and as he fired again he
+saw the flash of another salvo along her side. What was it "Guns" had
+said? _The one that sticks it out._ Why couldn't they load quicker
+behind him? They seemed so slow. The target vanished suddenly in a
+pall of brown smoke, and he lost her for a moment, his sights swinging
+down with the gentle motion of the ship. He saw splashes rise from the
+sea, but heard no whine and hum of splinters following. There she was
+again! And there was another salvo in the same place. A voice from
+behind him said something, and he barked a profane response,--a demand
+for quicker loading. The voice replied with, "Stick it, Jerry--you're
+givin' 'er bloody 'ell!" And he realised suddenly that the hitting now
+seemed to be all one way, and that his target was on fire from the bow
+to the forward funnel. His sights swung off again, and a moment later
+his gun brought up against the forward stops with a bump. He raised
+his head and looked round. Their next astern was on the quarter now,
+and they must have all turned together towards the enemy. The bow gun
+still banged away, sending blasts of hot air back along the deck, but
+no reply seemed to be coming. The gunlayer scrambled up on the shield
+and looked ahead to the east. A blur of smoke hid the enemy--a great
+brown greasy cloud--and he dropped on his knee to the heel that
+announced another change of helm. Round they came--sixteen points--and
+he had a view of the Flagship, with a long signal hoist at her
+masthead, tearing past in her own wake.
+
+"What the hell--ain't we going to finish it? What's the game?" a
+chorus of voices spoke from the deck below him, and then came the
+"still" of a bugle and the pipe, "Sponge out and clean guns--clear up
+upper deck. Enemy is under the guns of Heligoland."
+
+"Well, who cares for Heligoland?" said the gunlayer--and on the words
+he came down from his perch on the gunshield with a run. A roar like a
+twelve-inch salvo and a huge column of tumbling water a hundred yards
+on the beam had answered him. The next shell pitched in their
+wake--then another well astern, and they were out of range. He
+suddenly realised that he was thirstier than he had ever been before,
+and started forward to the water-tank. As he moved, a hand clutched
+his arm and he found the boy sight-setter at his side, a fountain of
+words, dancing with excitement.
+
+"My Christ! that was fine. _Gawd_--what a show, hey? An' you that
+cool, too. I didn't 'alf shake, till I looked at you, an' saw you was
+laughin'. We didn't 'alf brown 'em off, did we? an' they----"
+
+"Aw, go chase yerself," said the gunlayer. "That weren't nothing. Wait
+till you sees a battle, my son--and you won't think nothing o' to-day."
+
+As he turned to lift the drinking-cup he glanced at the clock and saw
+with amazement that it was seven-fifteen. With a vague memory of
+having done so before, he fumbled in his cap-lining for a cigarette.
+
+
+
+
+A WAGE SLAVE.
+
+
+The Coxswain nodded to the boy messenger and reached for his cap.
+
+"All right, my lad--'ook me down that lammy. What's the panic, d'ye
+know?"
+
+"No, _I_ dunno. Sez 'e, 'Tell 'im to come up. I want 'im at the
+wheel,' 'e sez. An' I come along an'----"
+
+"All right--'ook it, and don't stand there blowin' down my neck."
+
+The Coxswain jerked his "lammy" coat on, and clumped heavily out of
+the mess, chewing a section of ship's biscuit (carefully and
+cunningly--for the shortage of teeth among torpedo coxswains amounts
+almost to a badge of office) as he went.
+
+"What's up, Jim--steam tattics?" asked the Torpedo Gunner's
+Mate--another Lower Deck Olympian--looking up from a three-day-old
+'Telegraph.'
+
+The Coxswain grunted in response. It is not the custom of the Service
+to answer silly questions. The reason the question was asked at all
+may be put down to the fact of the 'Telegraph' being not only old but
+empty of interest.
+
+As he reached the upper deck he buttoned his coat and felt in his
+pockets for his mittens. It was very cold--a cold accentuated by the
+wind of the Destroyer's passage. There was no sea, but it was
+pitch-dark, with a glint of phosphorus from water broken by the wakes
+of six "war-built" T.B.D.'s running in line ahead at an easy
+twenty-four knots. The Coxswain could never, in all probability, have
+explained his reasoning, though the fact that the speed had been
+increased was noticeable; but he knew, as he swung up the ladders to
+the unseen fore-bridge, that he had not been sent for a mere
+alteration of course. His brain must have received some telepathic
+wave from the ship's hull which told him that the enemy had had
+something to do with the break in his watch below.
+
+His sea-boots ceased their noisy clumping as he reached the bridge,
+and he was standing by the helmsman with a hand on the wheel before
+the man had noticed his arrival. With an interrogative grunt he
+stepped to the steering pedestal as the man moved aside, and he stood
+peering at the dimly lit compass card, and moving the wheel a spoke or
+two each way as he "felt" her.
+
+"North Seventy East--carryin' a little starboard," said the dark
+figure beside him, and he accepted the "Turn-over" with another
+characteristic growl--
+
+"That you, Pember? Follow the next ahead and steer small." The
+Commander had spoken, the white gleam from his scarf showing for a
+moment in the reflected compass light.
+
+"Next ahead and steer small, sir." He leaned forward and watched the
+blue-white fan of phosphorus that meant the stern-wave of the next
+ship. Low voices spoke beside him, and the telegraphs whirred round
+and reply-gongs tinkled. Half, or perhaps a quarter, of his brain
+noticed these things, but they were instantly pigeon-holed and
+forgotten. He was at his job, and his job was to hold his course on
+the next ahead. Without an order, nothing but death would cause him to
+let his attention wander from his business. He heard the
+sub-lieutenant a few feet distant crooning in a mournful voice--
+
+    "How many miles to Babylon?"
+    "Three score and ten."
+
+The back of his brain seized the words and turned them over and over.
+Babylon was in the Bible--he wasn't sure where it was on the map
+though. How much was three score and ten? Three twenties were sixty,
+and--"_Action Stations_"--Babylon slid into a pigeon-hole, and he
+relaxed for a second from his rigid concentration on the next ahead.
+He straightened up, stretching his long gaunt body, and a suspicion
+of a smile lit his face. Then he resumed his peering, puckered
+attitude, oblivious to everything but that phosphorescent glow ahead.
+The glow broadened and brightened, and he felt the quiver beneath his
+feet that told of a speed that contractors of three years ago would
+have gaped at. A vivid flash of yellow light lit up the next ahead and
+showed her bridge and funnels with startling clearness against the
+sky. By the same flash he saw another big destroyer on the bow
+crossing the line from starboard to port. His own bow gun fired at the
+instant the detonations of the first shots reached him, and in the
+midst of the tearing reports of a round dozen of high-velocity guns,
+by some miracle of concentration, he heard a helm order from the white
+scarf six feet away. The little fifteen-inch wheel whirled under his
+hand, and with a complaining quiver and roll the destroyer swung after
+her leader to port. In the light of a continually increasing number of
+gun-flashes he saw the next ahead running "Yard-arm to Yard-arm" with
+a long German destroyer, each slamming shell into the other at furious
+speed. He gave a side-glance to starboard to look for his opposite
+number on the enemy line--and then came one of those incidents which
+show that the Navy trains men into the same mental groove, whether
+officers or coxswains.
+
+The enemy destroyer was just turning up to show her port broadside.
+She was carrying "Hard-over" helm, and her wheel could hardly reverse
+in the time that would be necessary if----. The coxswain anticipated
+the order he knew would come--anticipated it to the extent of a mere
+fraction of port-helm and a savage grip of the wheel. The order came
+in a voice that no amount of gun-fire could prevent the coxswain from
+hearing just then. "_Hard-a-port!_ _Ram her_, coxswain!" The enemy saw
+and tried to meet the charge bow-on. There was no room between them
+for that, and he knew it. His guns did his best for him, but a man
+intent on his job takes a lot of killing at short range. Two shells
+hit and burst below the bridge, and the third--the coxswain swung
+round the binnacle, gripping the rim with his left hand. His right
+hand still held the wheel, and spun it through a full turn of
+starboard helm. The stiffened razor-edge bow took the enemy at the
+break of the poop, and went clean through before crushing back to the
+fore bulkhead. At the impact the shattered coxswain slipped forward on
+the deck and died with a smashing, splintering noise in his ears--the
+tribute of war to an artist whose work was done.
+
+
+
+
+AN "ANNUAL."
+
+
+A grey drizzly morning, with yellow fog to seaward and every prospect
+of a really wet day. At each side of the black basin gates stood a
+little group of men, the majority "Dockyard mateys" of the rigger's
+party. A few wore the insignia of higher rank--bowler hats and
+watch-chains. The bowler hats conferred together in low voices, while
+the rank and file conferred not at all, but stared solemnly out at the
+wall of mist that cut the visibility in the harbour down to a bare
+four hundred yards.
+
+Round the corner of the rigger's store two uniformed figures appeared
+walking briskly towards the basin entrance. Both wore overcoats. The
+shorter man was grey where the hair showed beneath his gold-peaked
+cap, while the pale face and "washed-out" look of the younger man
+indicated that the hospital ship which took him away from Gallipoli
+had done so none too soon.
+
+As they approached, one of the bowler-wearers detached himself from
+the group and spoke to the senior of the two. There was a
+three-cornered comparison of watches and then a move to the wall, over
+the edge of which they gazed down at the slowly moving yellow water.
+
+"We'll give her another quarter of an hour, Mr Johnson, and then pack
+up," said the officer. "I think it has cleared a little since six, and
+I know they'll bring her up if they possibly can."
+
+Through the medley of horns, syrens, and whistles that had been
+sounding through the fog, four short blasts caught the ear of a rigger
+who leaned against the outward capstan bollard. He lounged forward a
+couple of paces, and the men nearest looked round at him with a
+symptom of interest. The blasts sounded again, and he turned and
+looked at the foreman rigger behind him. The foreman nodded and spoke
+and the group separated a little, some of the men picking up long
+flexible "heaving-lines" coiled in neat rings on the cobble-stones.
+
+"She's coming, sir," said the foreman, turning to the King's
+Harbourmaster; "she'll just do it nicely. That was the new tug's
+whistle."
+
+A couple of capstan bollards began to clatter round as steam was
+turned on and a heavy wooden fender swung with a crash over the
+rounded edge of each entrance wall. The mist was clearing now, and the
+traffic in the harbour could be dimly seen. A foreman pointed to
+seaward, and the younger officer followed his arm with his tired eyes.
+Over the fog a slender dark line showed with a blurred foretop below.
+The unmistakable tripod mast of a big ship showed gradually through,
+and as he watched he was reminded of a magic-lantern picture out of
+focus being gradually brought into definition by the operator. The
+mist cleared faster than she approached, and at a quarter of a mile
+he could see the great looming bow surmounted by tier on tier of
+bridges, which mounted almost to the high overhanging top. She crawled
+slowly on, using her own engines, the hawsers leading to the furiously
+agitated paddle tugs on bow and quarter sweeping slack along the
+stream. On the tall "monkey's island" a group of figures clustered
+together, and the gleam of gold-peaked caps showed among the blue
+overcoats. At half a cable's length the voices of the leadsmen,
+inarticulate and faint before, could be clearly heard. "And a
+_ha-a-a-f_ nine"--"and a _ha-a-a-f_ nine." The bow tugs sheered off to
+each side, and whistles blew shrilly. The heavy bow hawsers fell
+splashing in the water, and the jingle of engine-room telegraph bells
+echoed up the walls of the entrance. A couple of dingy black "rigger"
+boats, propelled "Maltee fashion," with the rowers standing facing
+forward, appeared between the dockyard wall and the great curved stem.
+Heaving-lines sailed through the air, uncoiling as they flew, and the
+boats rowed furiously back to the entrance. From somewhere aft by the
+turret a great bull voice spoke through a megaphone. The riggers at
+the entrance leapt into sudden activity, and for five minutes the din
+and clatter of capstans, shrilling of whistles, and splash of hawsers
+in the water broke the spell of silence. The noise died suddenly, and
+the note of telegraph bells came ringing again from the high grey
+monster. Slowly she gathered way, and to the clatter of the dockyard
+capstans as the slack of the hawsers was taken in, her forty-foot
+curved stem passed the black caisson gates. The two officers, the
+young and the old, stepped to the edge of the wall and looked across.
+Her stem had hit off the exact centre of the entrance, but there was a
+good two hundred yards of her to come yet. In dead silence, with
+groups of men fallen in at attention along her side, she flowed on,
+her speed a bare two knots, but a speed in keeping with her enormous
+bulk and majesty. As she entered, and the finer lines of her bow
+passed, she seemed to swell, till she almost filled the entrance, and
+it looked as if one could step aboard her from the lock-side. The eyes
+travelled from the mighty turret guns that glistened in the rain, and
+were attracted up and up till heads were tilted back to look at the
+highest bridge of all. A quiet incisive voice could be clearly heard:
+"Port ten"--"'Midships"--"Stop both." Again the "kling-kling" of bells
+and then silence. The grey-haired officer on the wall raised his hand
+in salute, and a tall grave captain, looking down from above, saluted
+in return, showing a flash of white teeth in a smile of recognition.
+
+As she passed the hawsers came with her, transferred from bollard to
+bollard by gangs of staggering men. The passage of her stern past the
+outer entrance seemed to break a spell, as if the hypnotism of
+hundreds of staring eyes had passed away. The caisson gates ground to
+with almost indecent haste behind her, as some castle portcullis might
+do as the last prisoner was dragged through. Whistles blew, answering
+each other across the oily, rain-pitted water of the basin, and to the
+_weeep we-ooo_ of pipes and the roar of the boatswains mates' voices,
+the lines of rigid men on the great ship's side broke up and fell
+back. She had left the open sea and had become "Number 955--for
+refit--in Dockyard hands."
+
+"How long is she for, sir? Ten days?"
+
+The grey-haired officer turned: "No, only eight. They want her back as
+soon as possible. Four days' leave to each watch and she'll be off
+again. You're looking cold, boy--come up to breakfast. That malaria
+hasn't left you yet."
+
+"I wish it would, sir. I want to get to sea again.
+
+"I know. It's not so bad to watch them come in, but it makes me feel
+old when I see them leaving again. But you needn't worry, the War's
+going on a long time yet."
+
+
+
+
+"OUR ANNUAL."
+
+
+    Up the well-remembered fairway, past the buoys and forts we drifted--
+    Saw the houses, roads, and churches, as they were a year ago.
+    Far astern were wars and battles, all the dreary clouds were lifted,
+    As we turned the Elbow Ledges--felt the engines ease to "Slow."
+
+    Rusty side and dingy paintwork, stripped for war and cleared for
+                   battle--
+    Saw the harbour-tugs around us--smelt the English fields again,--
+    English fields and English hedges--sheep and horses, English cattle,
+    Like a screen unrolled before us, through the mist of English rain.
+
+    Slowly through the basin entrance--twenty thousand tons a-crawling
+    With a thousand men aboard her, all a-weary of the War--
+    Warped her round and laid alongside with the cobble-stones
+                   a-calling--
+    "There's a special train awaiting, just for you to come ashore."
+
+    Out again as fell the evening, down the harbour in the gloaming
+    With the sailors on the fo'c'sle looking wistfully a-lee--
+    Just another year of waiting--just another year of roaming
+    For the Majesty of England--for the Freedom of the Sea.
+
+
+
+
+MASCOTS.
+
+
+    When the galleys of Ph[oe]nicia, through the gates of Hercules,
+    Steered South and West along the coast to seek the Tropic Seas,
+    When they rounded Cape Agulhas, putting out from Table Bay,
+    They started trading North again, as steamers do to-day.
+    They dealt in gold and ivory and ostrich feathers too,
+    With a little private trading by the officers and crew,
+    Till rounding Guardafui, steering up for Aden town,
+    The tall Ph[oe]nician Captain called the First Lieutenant down.
+    "By all the Tyrian purple robes that you will never wear,
+    By the Temples of Zimbabwe, by King Solomon I swear,
+    The ship is like a stable, like a Carthaginian sty.
+    I am Captain here--confound you!--or I'll know the reason why.
+    Every sailor in the galley has a monkey or a goat;
+    There are parrots in the eyes of her and serpents in the boat.
+    By the roaring fire of Baal, I'll not have it any more:
+    Heave them over by the sunset, or I'll hang you at the fore!"
+    "What is that, sir? _Not_ as cargo? _Not_ a bit of private trade?
+    Well, of all the dumbest idiots you're the dumbest ever made,
+    Standing there and looking silly: _leave the animals alone_."
+    (Sailors with a tropic liver always have a brutal tone.)
+    "By the crescent of Astarte, I am not religious--yet--
+    I would sooner spill the table salt than kill a sailor's pet."
+
+
+
+
+THE SPARROW.
+
+
+A perfectly calm blue sea, a blazing June sun, and absolutely nothing
+to break the monotony of a blank horizon. The sparrow was deadbeat,
+and was travelling slowly to the north and west on a zigzag course,
+about two hundred feet high. The sparrow had no right to be there at
+all. He hailed from a Yorkshire hedgerow, and nothing but a real
+three-day fog and westerly winds could have brought him over such a
+waste of waters. He had been flying in a circle all night, swerving at
+intervals down to the water in the vain hope of finding rest for his
+aching muscles. Now he was heading roughly towards his home with but
+slight hopes of ever reaching it.
+
+A faint droning noise to the north made him turn, and low over the
+straight-ruled horizon he saw a silvery-white line that every moment
+grew larger. He headed towards it, but at a mile range swerved away to
+pass astern of it. It was not an inviting object for even a lost
+sparrow to rest on. With engines running slow--so slowly that the
+blades of the great propellors could be easily seen--with a broad
+white-and-black ensign flapping lazily below and astern, the Zeppelin
+droned on to the south'ard, a thing of massive grace and beauty on
+such a perfect summer's day.
+
+With a vague idea that the monster might lead him home, the sparrow
+turned and followed. The Zeppelin slowly drew ahead and rose higher,
+while far to the south another monster rose over the skyline, black
+against the sun. The great craft passed each other and turned away,
+the first one heading back to the north whence he had come, and the
+second disappearing to the east, climbing slowly as he went.
+
+The sparrow turned also and fluttered and dipped in pathetic
+confidence after his first visitor. The fact of having seen
+_something_, however unpleasant and strange-looking, had given him a
+new access of strength, and he was able to keep the great silver thing
+in easy view. Suddenly the Zeppelin tilted like a hunter at a high
+fence, and the note of his engines rose to a dull roar. He climbed
+like--well, like a sparrow coming up to a house-top--and at three
+thousand feet he circled at full power, levelling off his angle, and
+showing a turn of speed which left the frightened bird gaping.
+
+The sparrow fluttered on vaguely, passing at 100 feet above the water,
+below the Zeppelin. He had decided that a pilot who played tricks like
+that was no sort of use to him, and that he had better stick to his
+original idea of working to the north and west, however lonely a
+course it might be. He swerved a little at a rushing, whistling noise
+that came from above him, and which grew to a terrifying note. A big
+dark object whipped past him, and a moment later splashed heavily into
+the mirror-like surface below. The rings made by its impact had
+hardly started to widen, when there was a great convulsion, and a
+column of smoky-white water leapt up behind him, followed by the roar
+of an explosion. The sparrow started to climb--to climb as he had
+never done in his life. Twice more--his weariness forgotten--he was
+urged to further efforts to gain height, by the shock of the great
+detonations from the water below. The Zeppelin was down to a thousand
+feet now, swinging round on a wider circle. Five hundred feet below,
+the sparrow saw a faint streak on the water which faded at one end
+into blue sea, and at the other narrowed to a little feather of spray
+round a dark point that was travelling like the fin of some slowly
+moving fish to the north-westward. The Zeppelin saw it too, and came
+hunting back along the line. Bang--bang--bang! Great columns shot up
+again ahead and astern of the strange fish, and away went the sparrow
+to the south once more. Any course was bad in this place, and it was
+better to die alone in the waters than to be pursued by such a
+monster of the air. As he went he heard more and more detonations
+behind him, until the noise of the droning engine had died, when he
+was again alone over the sparkling unfriendly sea. The exertions and
+alarm of the last hour had taken the last of his reserve forces, and
+in uneven flutterings his flight tended lower and lower, till he was a
+bare twenty feet from what he knew must be his grave. Then came a
+miracle of war. A bare quarter-mile ahead a thing like a tapering
+lance began to rise and grow from the water. It was followed by a grey
+black-lettered tower which also grew and showed a rounded grey hull,
+moving slowly south with a white band of froth spinning away astern. A
+lid on the tower clanged open, and two figures appeared. One raised
+something to his eye, and faced south. The other stood on the rail and
+pivoted slowly round, staring at sky and sea.
+
+"I wonder what the deuce he was bombing--bit of wreckage, I suppose,"
+said the man on the rail.
+
+"Well, it wasn't us anyway. The blind old baby-killer." The man with
+the sextant lowered it and fiddled with the shades. "_We've_ got no
+boats near, have we, sir?"
+
+"Not for donkeys' miles. I hope it was a Fritz, anyway. I say, look at
+that spadger!"
+
+"Where? I don't see it. Stand by. Stop, sir."
+
+"All right, I got you. Here, catch this watch. That spadger's gone
+down into the casing, and he'll drown if we dip with him there. Look
+out for those Zepps. coming back."
+
+The Captain swung quickly down the foreside of the conning-tower, ran
+forward and peered into the casing in the eyes of the boat.
+
+"Zepp. coming, sir,--north of us, just gone behind a bit of cloud."
+
+"Zepp. be damned. Ah! got you, you little beggar." He reached his arm
+into a coil of wet rope and rose triumphantly to his feet. The sparrow
+cheeped pitifully as he ran aft again and took the ladder in two
+jumps. He gave a glance astern and another all round the horizon
+before following his sextant-clutching subordinate below. The lid
+clanged, and with a sigh, a gurgle, and a flirt of her screws the
+submarine slid under, the blank and expressionless eye of her
+periscope staring fixedly at an unconscious but triumphant Zeppelin
+that was gliding out from a fleecy patch of cloud astern.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here you are, Lizzie. Skipper said I was to let him go soon's we got
+in, but I just brought 'im to show you. We've 'ad 'im aboard five days
+now, and 'e can't 'alf eat biscuit. 'E's as full as 'e can 'old now.
+Open the window, old girl, and we'll let 'im out afore I starts
+'ugging yer."
+
+The lid of the cap-box opened wide and the sparrow hopped to the
+table. He raised his cramped wings and fluffed out his feathers as he
+felt his muscles again. There was a flutter and a flip of his impudent
+tail, and quicker than the eye could follow him the wanderer was gone.
+
+
+
+
+A WAR WEDDING.
+
+
+Old Bill Dane? Yes, he's married now. We got a week's refitting leave,
+and I've just been seeing him through it. Ye--es, there was a bit of a
+hitch when they were engaged, but----Well, I'll tell you the story. I
+saw most of it, because I was sort of doing second for him then too.
+You see, he and I got it rather in the neck in the August scrap, and
+we came out of hospital together. I had a smashed leg and he had a
+scalp wound. Nothing to write home about, but it didn't make any more
+of a Venus of him when it healed. They sent us on sick-leave, and we
+stayed with his people. His guvnor's the eye specialist, you know--got
+a home in town, and keeps the smell of iodoform in Harley Street, and
+doesn't let it come into the house. We were all right. We led the
+quiet life, and just pottered around, and saw the shows and so on. We
+gave the social life a miss until Bill's sister let us in. Bill didn't
+want to go, but she put it to me, and as I was sort of her guest I had
+to make him come. Who? The sister? Oh! all right, you know. Don't be a
+fool, or I won't tell you the yarn. Well, she took us poodlefaking,
+and it cost me a bit at Gieves' for new rig, too. It was about our
+third stunt that way when Bill got into trouble. We were at some bally
+great house belonging to a stockbroker or bookie or some one, and they
+were doing fox-trots up and down the drawing-room, and Bill and I were
+rather out of it. I was lame and he's no dancing man, unless it's just
+dressed in a towel or two to amuse guests in the wardroom when there's
+a bit of table-turning going on. Some woman came and told him he'd got
+to join up, and took him over to the girl. She was dressed regular
+war-flapper fashion, you know, like a Bank of Expectation cheque,
+except she hadn't got a top-hat on as some of them had lately. Most
+of 'em in the room were togged out like that, and Bill and I had just
+agreed we didn't go much on the style at all, but Bill is a proper
+lamb about women. He did one turn of the room with the girl, dancing a
+sort of Northern Union style, and then she stopped, and he brought her
+over to me and plumped her on the sofa between us. I think he wanted
+to see if I was laughing. She started on me at once, and asked me all
+about my leg and Bill's head, and talked like a Maxim. Asked me if we
+were great friends, and made me laugh. I said we had only forgathered
+because I had beaten him in the middle-weights in the Grand Fleet
+championships, and though I had never seen his face before, his left
+stop had touched my heart. She dropped me then--she thought I was
+pulling her leg--and turned to Bill, and then his sister took me off
+to get her tea. I didn't realise Bill was getting soft about it till
+his sister told me, though the fact of our going to tea and dinner at
+the girl's home that week had seemed funny to me at the time. The
+sister was rather pleased about it--said she knew the girl and liked
+her. I said I didn't think much of that sort, but she smoothed me down
+a bit. She thought that they would do each other good. I said Bill was
+such an old lamb he'd only get sloppy, and do what the girl told him;
+but she laughed. She told me I might know Jim in the ring, but I
+didn't know much about him otherwise. I was rather shirty at that, but
+I think now she was talking sense, though I didn't then. Well, Bill
+can get quite busy when he makes his mind up, and the way he rushed
+that girl was an education to watch. They were engaged in ten days
+from the first time we went to her house, and I don't think we missed
+seeing her for more than twelve hours in that time. I? Oh, I and the
+sister were chaperons. I didn't mind. I was sorry for Bill, but I
+wasn't going to spoil things for him if he was set on it.
+
+The girl's people were all right. They were rather the Society type,
+you know--thought London was capital of the world, and that a Gotha
+bomb in the West End ought to mean a new Commander-in-Chief to relieve
+Haig; but they were quite decent.
+
+The trouble? Well, I'm coming to that. It came about a week after they
+had announced the engagement. Old Bill had been getting a bit restive
+over things. You see, he had begun to wonder just where _he_ came into
+the business. He wanted to get the girl off by her lonesome to a
+desert island, and tell her what a peach she was, for the rest of her
+natural life; but the girl hadn't got an inkling of what he thought
+about it. He was towed round like a pet bear and told to enjoy
+himself, while people talked over his head. She was just a kid, and
+she didn't know. It seemed to her that being engaged was good fun, and
+getting married was a matter they could think about later, when she'd
+had time to consider it. She was all for the tango-tea and the latest
+drawing-room crazes. I didn't feel enthusiastic about his affairs, and
+I told the sister so; but she laughed about it all. I didn't. The
+girl, Hilda--her name was Hilda Conron--was just like a kid with a
+toy. She took him around and showed him off, and she went on quacking
+away to all her pals as if Bill wasn't in the room. She seemed to take
+it for granted he was going to join up with her crowd and learn to do
+the same tricks and talk the same patter as they did. Bill certainly
+tried; but they treated him like a fool, and he told me several times
+he felt like one. Well then, we came to the smash. Lord, it _was_ a
+queer show, and I'd sooner have had my leg off than have missed it. We
+were taken off to a charity auction, Red Cross or something, where
+they sold bits of A. A. shell with the Government marks on them as
+bits of Zepp. bombs, and Pekinese dogs for a hundred quid or so. After
+the sale, about twenty of the household and the guests that had paid
+most clustered round to add up the takings and drink tea and talk.
+Miss Conron had been selling things, and was dressed up to the nines.
+There was a bishop there, and some young staff officers and some
+civilians, M.P.'s, or editors or something like that. Old Bill was
+sitting with me and his sister, looking like a family lawyer at a
+funeral, and the girl was perched on a sofa with a lanky
+shopwalker-looking bloke alongside her. He was an indispensable of
+sorts--Secretary to the Minister of some bloomin' thing or other. He
+was the lad, I tell you,--sort of made you feel you were waiting on
+the mat when he talked. He was laying down the law about the War and
+all about it, and he talked like all the Angels at a Peace Conference.
+But it was the bishop that put his foot in the mulligatawny first. He
+agreed with the smooth-haired draper-man about the need of peace, but
+he said we should see that Germany provided suitable reparation for
+Belgium. Bill sat up and got red and stuttered, and said: "I don't
+think Germany or anybody can give Belgium back what she has lost."
+
+They all looked at Bill as if he had just dawned on them, and Bill
+looked more foolish. The draper-man shipped an eyeglass and looked him
+over like a new specimen. "Ah!" he said, "our naval friend? Perhaps
+you will tell us in what way you consider the War can be ended before
+the world comes to economic ruin. Must we wait until you have had your
+fill of fighting or have destroyed the High Sea Fleet?"
+
+Bill stood up and stopped looking silly. Miss Dane leaned back in her
+chair, and I heard her sigh as if she was pleased about something.
+
+"Never mind the High Sea Fleet," said Bill. "That's not your business
+to worry about. But as to 'fill of fighting,' you've said it there.
+When we've had our fill of fighting Germany will have had more, but
+we're a long way from that yet."
+
+The long stiff turned to Miss Conron. "Why, little Miss Hilda," he
+said, "your fiance is charming. He should speak in the Park on Sundays
+and we would all come to listen."
+
+The girl got red and looked daggers at Bill. She didn't like his
+making a fool of himself, and she wanted him back in his chair again.
+The long man put a hand on her knee and spoke quietly to her, and she
+shook her head at him and laughed. That did it. My oath! that did it
+all right. Bill shrugged his shoulders back and took station in the
+outer ring of draper-worshippers, and spoke like a--a Demosthenes.
+
+"You blank, blank, blank," he said, "get off that sofa and get away
+from Miss Conron."
+
+The Bishop looked as if the end of the world had come and he was
+adrift with his cash accounts. The staff officers looked blank and the
+women got scary. I got up and took station on Bill's quarter in case
+any one got excited. The long man put up his glass again and showed
+symptoms of an approaching oration.
+
+"You stay then, you half-breed dog," said Bill; "I'm going to talk to
+you." Bill put his hands in his coat pockets and looked around. "Now
+listen," he said; "I'm talking for a lot of men who aren't here.
+_We're_ fighting this show, and there are some millions of us. Who
+are you to talk of War or Peace? By God, if you try and pack up we'll
+put you to work again. If you're going to compromise with Germany, we
+won't. Have you forgotten what the Germans can do? My oath, you make
+me sick. What can it matter if the nations are all broken and ruined
+so long as we smash Germany? _We_ don't want money and luxuries to
+fight on. Give us food and munitions till we have done what we started
+to do. You whining people--what do you know of it? Have you got no
+guts at all? Have you read the Bryce Report? Yes, I bet you have, and
+locked it away so that your women shouldn't see it. I tell you, it
+doesn't matter to us, and we're about four million men, if we are all
+killed so long as we kill eight million Huns. I know a sergeant who
+has killed five Prussian officers, and I think he's a real man, not
+like you. He took to it after he saw a five-year-old girl with her
+hands cut off hanging like a sucking-pig on a meat-hook in a wrecked
+French village. Doesn't that make you feel it? I tell you, if you
+play the fool behind our backs we'll take charge of you. Yes, Bishop,
+you'll keep up the good work in a munition factory, and you'll work
+hard too. If you can't be a patriot now, you will be when you've been
+caned across your lathe."
+
+They were as still as mice, and the rumble of traffic along Piccadilly
+sounded very loud. Miss Conron was as white as a sheet, and her eyes
+were staring as if she were scared to death. Bill took a long breath
+and went on--
+
+"I've tried to see your point of view while I've been among you, and I
+can't. I'm going to leave you and get back to my own lot. I'm giving
+up something I didn't think I could give up, but I won't join you just
+to get it. There are not so many of us as there are of you, but you'll
+do what you're told if we take charge. Most of us have seen dead men,
+and some of us have seen dead women. None of you have seen either, and
+you don't understand. You want to hide things away and pretend
+they're not there. They _are_ there, and they are going on wherever
+the Germans are, you fools. There's a man here who has been
+impertinent to me because he thinks I'm a fool. I'm a better man than
+any six of his sort, and I'm going to show him how. It will do the
+rest of you good to watch, because you haven't seen death yet, and a
+man with a bruise or two will seem a big thing to you. Come along, my
+sofa-king, you're for it."
+
+Bill walked up to him with his hands down and the women began to
+squeal. The draper-man was game. He took a step forward and swung his
+right. Bill hooked him under the chin and gave him the left in the
+stomach. The poor beggar backed off, taking a wicked upper-cut as he
+did so. As he straightened again Bill sent a couple of full swings to
+his head. He was going down, but Bill wouldn't let him. I think if he
+hadn't been so clever with Miss Conron on the sofa he would have got
+off fairly cheap, but a girl makes a lot of difference to any scrap.
+He took about six more before he hit the deck, and then he looked
+like a Belgian atrocity picture by Raemaekers. Bill came over to me
+and signalled his sister to the door. She moved off. My oath, she
+hadn't turned a hair--she's a sportsman. He looked across at Miss
+Conron, who was still on the sofa looking at the huddled figure in the
+middle of the carpet. "I'm going now, Hilda," he said; "your people
+aren't my people. I'm sorry."
+
+She never moved, but the colour had come back into her face again.
+Bill shrugged back his shoulders and turned his back, and we started
+for the door. Miss Dane was there, holding the handle and looking past
+us at the horrified group we had left. As we got almost up to her she
+smiled and came to Bill. She took him by the shoulders and turned him
+round, and I turned to see what she was looking at. Miss Conron was
+walking that sixty-foot plank after us, and I knew when I saw her face
+that she and Bill were going to be all right. She didn't say anything,
+and the four of us went out, and Bill kissed her in the hall in front
+of the servants. Trouble? No--not much. You see, Bill had had a scalp
+wound, and they put it all down to that. The draper-man didn't want to
+publish things much, and Miss Conron's father has got a bit of a pull.
+If he had no kick coming other people could shut up, and--oh yes!
+Sound as a bell--he wouldn't have got married otherwise. But, by gum,
+his sister was right--wasn't she?
+
+
+
+
+A HYMN OF DISGUST.
+
+
+        You wrote a pretty hymn of Hate,
+        That won the Kaiser's praise,
+        Which showed your nasty mental state,
+        And made us laugh for days.
+        I can't compete with such as you
+        In doggerel of mine,
+        But this is certain--_and_ it's true,
+        You bloody-handed swine--
+
+    We do not mouth a song of hate, or talk about you--much,
+    We do not mention things like you--it wouldn't be polite;
+    One doesn't talk in drawing-rooms of Prussian dirt and such,
+    We only want to kill you off--so roll along and fight.
+
+    For men like you with filthy minds, you leave a nasty taste,
+    We can't forget your triumphs with the girls you met in France.
+    By your standards of morality, gorillas would be chaste,
+    And you consummate your triumphs with the bayonet and the lance.
+
+    You give us mental pictures of your officers at play,
+    With naked girls a-dancing on the table as you dine,
+    With their mothers cut to pieces, in the knightly German way,
+    In the corners of the guard-room in a pool of blood and wine.
+
+    You had better stay in Germany, and never go abroad,
+    For wherever you may wander you will find your fame has gone,
+    For you are outcasts from the lists, with rust upon your sword--
+    The blood of many innocents--of children newly born.
+
+    You are bestial men and beastly, and we would not ask you home
+    To meet our wives and daughters, for we doubt that you are clean;
+    You will find your fame in front of you wherever you may roam,
+    You--who came through burning Belgium with the ladies for a screen.
+
+    You--who love to hear the screaming of a girl beneath the knife,
+    In the midst of your companions, with their craning, eager necks;
+    When you crown your German mercy, and you take a sobbing life--
+    You are not exactly gentlemen towards the gentle sex.
+
+    With your rapings in the market-place and slaughter of the weak,
+    With your gross and leering conduct, and your utter lack of shame,--
+    When we note in all your doings such a nasty yellow streak,
+    You show surprise at our disgust, and say you're not to blame.
+
+    We don't want any whinings, and we'd sooner wait for peace
+    Till you realise your position, and you know you whine in vain;
+    And you stand within a circle of the Cleaner World's Police,
+    And we goad you into charging--and we clean the world again.
+
+    For you should know that never shall you meet us as before,
+    That none will take you by the hand or greet you as a friend;
+    So stay with it, and finish it--who brought about the War--
+    And when you've paid for all you've done--well, that will be the End.
+
+
+
+
+THE "SPECIAL."
+
+
+She was not new, and nobody could call her handsome. She was evidently
+more accustomed to rough weather than paint, and her sloping
+forecastle and low freeboard were old-fashioned, to say the least of
+them. She jogged slowly along, rolling to a short beam sea, with an
+apologetic air, as if she felt ashamed of being what she was--a
+pre-war torpedo-boat on local patrol duty.
+
+She steered no particular course, and varied her speed capriciously as
+she beat up and down. Being in sight of the land--a grey, hard, low
+line to the westward--there was no need for accurate plotting of
+courses. On the bridge stood her Captain, a dark, lean, R.N.R.
+Lieutenant, pipe in mouth and hands in "lammy" pockets. The T.B. was
+rolling too much for any one to walk the tiny deck of the bridge; in
+fact, a landsman would have had difficulty in standing at all. He
+turned his head as his First Lieutenant swung up the little iron
+ladder behind him.
+
+"What's for lunch?" he asked, carefully knocking out his pipe on the
+rail before him.
+
+"The same," said his laconic subordinate, who was engaged in a rapid
+survey of the compass card, revolution indicator, and the horizon
+astern. The two stood side by side a moment looking out at the sea and
+sky to windward. "Any pickles?" said the Captain.
+
+"No, only mustard."
+
+The Captain sighed and turned to leave the bridge. The First Lieutenant
+pivoted suddenly--"It's better'n you and I had off the Horn in the
+_Harvester_. You'd 've been glad to get beef then, even if it was in a
+tin." He snorted, and turned forward again to look ahead. The Captain
+remained at the foot of the ladder, reading a signal handed to him by a
+waiting Boy Telegraphist. The argument on the subject of tinned beef had
+lasted a year already, and could be continued at leisure.
+
+The boy received the signal back and vanished below, while the Captain
+climbed slowly to the bridge again. He spoke to the man at the wheel,
+and himself moved the revolution indicator.
+
+"Panic?" said the First Lieutenant (neither of them seemed to use more
+than one word at a time, unless engaged in an argument).
+
+"Sure," was the reply. "Tell 'em to make that blinkin' stuff into
+sandwiches and send 'em up."
+
+The First Lieutenant went down the ladder in silence. The matter of
+the tinned beef was to him, as mess caterer, a continual sore point.
+
+The T.B. started on a more erratic course than before, tacking in long
+irregular stretches out to seaward. Smoke was showing up against the
+land astern, and there was a sense of stirring activity in the air.
+
+Two more torpedo-boats appeared suddenly from nowhere, hoists of
+coloured flags flying at their slender masts. The three hung on one
+course a moment, conferring, then spread fanwise and separated. The
+first boat turned back towards harbour and the growing smoke-puffs,
+which rapidly approached and showed more and more mine-sweepers coming
+out.
+
+A droning, humming noise made the Captain look up, and he pivoted slowly
+round, following with his eyes a big seaplane a thousand feet above him.
+
+As the sound of the engines died away, it seemed to start swelling
+again, as another machine appeared a mile abeam of them, and following
+the first.
+
+The T.B. swung round ahead of the leading sweepers, and turned back to
+seaward. Her speed was not great, but half an hour after the turn the
+sweepers were hull down astern. A small airship slipped out of a low
+cloud and droned away on the common course. Every type of small craft
+seemed to be going easterly, and the sea, which an hour ago had been
+almost blank, was now dotted with patrol ships of every queer kind
+and rig. From overhead it must have looked like a pack of hounds
+tumbling out of cover and spreading on a faint line. But, like the
+hounds, the floating pack was working to an end, and whatever the
+various courses steered, the whole was moving out to sea.
+
+The Boy Telegraphist hauled himself, panting, on to the bridge, and
+thrust a crumpled signal before the Captain's eyes. The Captain
+grunted and spoke shortly, and the boy dashed off below. A moment
+later the piping of calls sounded along the bare iron deck, and men in
+heavy sea-boots began to cluster aft and at the guns. The funnels sent
+out a protesting spout of brown smoke as the T.B. began to work up to
+her speed, and the choppy sea sent up a steady sheet of spray along
+her forecastle and over the crouching figures at the bow gun. The rest
+of the pack appeared to have caught the whimper too, for everything
+that could raise more than "Tramp's pace" was hurrying due east. A
+faint dull "boom" came drifting down wind as the First Lieutenant
+arrived on the bridge, and the two officers looked at each other in
+silence a moment.
+
+"Bomb, sir?" said the junior, showing an interest which almost made
+him conversational.
+
+"Sure thing," said the other. "She gave us the tip when she saw him,
+and that'll be one to put him under."
+
+"How far d'you think it was?"
+
+"Seven-eight mile. You all ready?"
+
+The First Lieutenant nodded and slipped down the ladder again. Three
+miles astern came a couple of white specks--the bow-waves of big
+destroyers pushed to their utmost power. The Captain studied them a
+moment with his binoculars, and gave a grunt which the helmsman
+rightly interpreted as one of satisfaction. Slow as she was, the old
+T.B. had a long start, and was going to be on the spot first. The dark
+was shutting down, and the shapes of the other T.B.'s on either beam
+were getting dim.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The night was starlit, and with the wind astern the T.B. made easy
+weather of it. The two officers leaned forward over the rail staring
+ahead towards the unseen land. Lights showed on either hand, and
+occasionally they swung past the dark squat shape of a lit trawler,
+also bound home.
+
+"Are you going to claim?" asked one of the watching figures. The other
+paused before replying--
+
+"We-ell," he said, "I'll just report. I think we shook him to the
+bunt, but it's no good claiming unless you can show prisoners, Iron
+Cross and all." Another ruminative pause. "Your people were smart on
+it--devilish smart." Another pause. "What's for dinner?"
+
+A dark mass ahead came into view, and turned slowly into a line of
+great ships coming towards them.
+
+The T.B. swung off to starboard, and slowed her engines. One by one
+they went past her--huge, silent, and scornful, while the T.B. rocked
+uneasily in the cross sea made by their wakes. The Captain watched
+them go, chewing the stem of his unlit pipe. They were the cause of
+the day's activity, but it was seldom he met them at close range
+except like this, in the dark on his way home.
+
+The line seemed endless, more and more dark hulls coming into view,
+and fading quickly into the dark again. As the last swung by the
+T.B.'s telegraph bells rang cheerfully, and she jogged off westward to
+where a faint low light flickered at intervals under the land.
+
+
+
+
+BETWEEN TIDES.
+
+
+A stranger, if suddenly transplanted to the spot, would have taken
+some time after opening his eyes to realise that the boat was
+submerged. He would probably decide at first that she was anchored in
+harbour. Far away forward, under an avenue of overhead electric lamps,
+figures could be seen--all either recumbent or seated--and from them
+the eye was led on till it lost its sense of distance in a narrowing
+perspective of wheels, pipes, and gauges. All the while there was a
+steady buzzing hum from slowly turning motors, and about every half
+minute there came a faint whir of gear wheels from away aft by the
+hydroplanes. From the bell-mouths of a cluster of voice-pipes a murmur
+of voices sounded--the conversation of officers by the periscope;
+while the ear, if close to the arched steel hull, could catch a
+bubbling, rippling noise--the voice of the North Sea passing overhead.
+
+The men stationed aft near the motors were not over-clean, and were
+certainly unshaven; some were asleep or reading (the literature carried
+and read by the crew would certainly have puzzled a librarian--it varied
+from 'Titbits' and 'John Bull' to 'Piers Plowman' and 'The Origin of
+Species'): a few were engaged in a heated discussion as they sat around
+a big torpedoman--the only man of the group actually on duty at the
+moment. His duties appeared only to consist in being awake and on the
+spot if wanted, and he was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied as one
+of the leading spirits in the argument.
+
+"Well, let's '_ear_ what you're getting at," he said. "We 'eard a lot
+of talk, but it don't go anywhere. You say you're a philosopher, but
+you don't know what you do mean."
+
+"_I_ know blanky well, but you can't understand me," said the
+engine-room artificer addressed. "Look here, now--you've got to die
+some time, haven't you?"
+
+"Granted, Professor."
+
+"Well, it's all arranged _now_ how you're to die, I say. It doesn't
+matter when or how it is, but it's all settled--see? And you don't
+know, and none of us know anything about it."
+
+"That's all very well--but 'oo is it knows, then? D'you mean God?"
+
+"No, I don't--I'm an atheist, I tell you. There's _something_ that
+arranges it all, but it ain't God."
+
+"Well, 'oo the 'ell is it, then--the Admiralty?"
+
+The Artificer leaned forward, his dark eyes alight and his face
+earnest as that of some medieval hermit. "I tell you," he said, "you
+can believe in God, or Buddha, or anything you like, but it's the same
+thing. Whatever it is, it doesn't care. It has it all ready and
+arranged--written out, if you like--and it will have to happen just
+so. It's pre--pre----"
+
+"Predestination." The deep voice came from the Leading Stoker on the
+bench beside him.
+
+"Predestination. No amount of praying's any good. It's no use going
+round crying to gods that aren't there to help you. You've got to go
+through it as it's written down."
+
+"Prayer's all right," said the Leading Stoker. "If you believe what
+you pray, you'll get it."
+
+"That's not true. Have you ever had it? Give us an instance now----"
+
+"I don't pray none, thank you. All the same, it's good for women and
+such that go in for it, like. It ain't the things that alter; it's
+yourself that does it. Ain't you never 'eard o' Christian Science?"
+
+"Yes; same as the Mormons, ain't it? Is that what you are?"
+
+"No, it ain't--an' I'm a Unitarian, same as you are."
+
+"I'm not--I'm a Baptist, same as my father was; but I don't believe in
+it."
+
+"Well, if you believe in one God, that's what you are."
+
+"But I'm telling you, I _don't_. Look here, now. I don't believe
+there's anything happens at all that wasn't all arranged first, and I
+know that nothing can alter it."
+
+"Well, 'oo laid it all down first go off, then?" said the Torpedoman.
+
+"Ah! I don't know and you don't know; but I tell you it wasn't God."
+
+"Well, 'e's a bigger man than me then, an' I takes me 'at off to 'im,
+'ooever it is. I tell yer, yer talkin' through yer neck. You say if
+you're going to be shot, there's a bullet about somewhere in some
+one's pouch with yer name writ on it. Ain't that it? Well, 'oo the
+'ell put yer name on it, then?"
+
+"It doesn't matter to me so long's it's there, does it?"
+
+"Well, if that was so, I'd like to know 'oo 'e was, so's I could pass
+'im the word not to 'ave the point filed off of it for me, anyway."
+
+"Well, you couldn't--and he couldn't alter it for you if he was there,
+either."
+
+The Torpedoman moved along the bench and twisted his head round till
+his ear was against one of the voice-pipes. The others sat silent and
+watched him with lazy interest.
+
+"We're takin' a dip," he said. "Thought I 'eard 'im say, 'Sixty
+feet.'" The faint rolling motion that had been noticeable before died
+away, and the boat seemed to have become even more peaceful and
+silent. The Leading Stoker leaned back against the hull and rested his
+head against the steel. From the starboard hand there came a faint
+murmur, which grew till the regular threshing beat of a propeller
+could be distinguished. The sound swelled till they could hear in its
+midst a separate piping, squeaking note. The ship passed on overhead,
+and the threshing sound passed with her and faded until again the
+steady purr of motors remained the only reminder of the fact that the
+boat was diving. They felt her tilt up a little by the bow as she
+climbed back to regain her patrol depth.
+
+"That's a tramp," said the Torpedoman; "nootral, I reckon."
+
+"Squeaky bearing, too," said the Artificer judicially. "Don't suppose
+he's looked at his thrust since he left port. What's the skipper want
+to go under her for?"
+
+"Save trouble, I s'pose; didn't want to alter helm for 'er. What was
+you talkin' of--yes, Kismet--that's the word I've been wantin' all
+along. You're a Mohammedan, you are?"
+
+"Aw, don't be a fool; I tell you I'm nothing."
+
+The fourth wakeful figure, another Torpedoman, spoke for the first
+time. "If you're nothing, and you think you're nothing, what the 'ell
+d'yer want to make such a fuss about it for?"
+
+"_I_ don't make a fuss. It's all you people who think you're something
+who make a fuss. You can't alter what's laid down, but you think you
+can. You fuss and panic to stave things off, but you're like chickens
+in a coop--you can't get out till your master lets you, and he can't
+understand what you say, and he wouldn't pay any attention to it if he
+did."
+
+The big Torpedoman put out a hand like a knotted oak-root and spoke--
+
+"You an' your Kismet," he said scornfully. "Look 'ere, now. This is
+Gospel, and _I'm_ tellin' of yer. S'pose there _is_ a bullet about
+with your name on it, but s'posing you shoot the other ---- first, and
+there's to 'ell with yer Kismet. Gawd 'elps those that 'elp
+themselves, I say. S'pose we 'it a Fritz now, under water--'oo's
+Kismet is it? Never mind 'oo's arranged it or 'oo's down in the book
+to go through it, the bloke that gets 'is doors closed first and 'as
+the best trained crew is goin' to come 'ome and spin the yarn about
+it. I say it may be written down as you say, but there's Someone
+'oldin' the book, an' 'e says: 'Cross off that boat this time,' 'e
+say. 'They've got the best lot aboard of 'em,' 'e'd say. Is it Kismet
+if yer thrust collars go? Are you goin' to stop oilin' 'em because
+it's in the book an' you can't alter it? Yer talkin' through yer neck.
+Call it luck, if yer like. It's luck if we 'it a mine, and it's luck
+if we don't; but if we met a Fritz to-night an' poop off the bow gun
+an' miss--that's goin' to be our blanky fault, an' you can call it
+any blanky name, but you won't alter it."
+
+"But you don't understand," said the Artificer. "I didn't----"
+
+"_Action Stations--Stand by all tubes._" The voice rang clearly from
+the mouth of the voice-pipe, and the group leapt into activity. For
+sixty seconds there was apparent pandemonium--the purr of the motors
+rose to a quick hum, and the long tunnel of the hull rang with noises,
+clatter and clang and hiss. The sounds stopped almost as suddenly as
+they had begun, and the voices of men reporting "Ready" could be heard
+beyond the high-pitched note of the motors.
+
+The big Torpedoman stretched across his tube to close a valve, and
+caught the eye of the fourth participant in the recent debate. "Say,
+Dusty," he whispered, "'_ere's_ Someone's Kismet--in this blanky tube,
+an' I reckon I ain't forgot the detonator in 'er nose, neither."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Captain lowered the periscope, his actions almost reverent in their
+artificial calm. He looked up at the navigating officer a few feet away
+and smiled. "Just turning to east," he said. "We'll be in range inside
+three minutes." He glanced fore and aft the boat and then back at his
+watch. "By gum," he said, "it's nice to have a good crew. I haven't had
+to give a single order, and I wouldn't change a man of 'em."
+
+
+
+
+LIGHT CAVALRY.
+
+
+I.
+
+Peter Mottin was an acting Sub-Lieutenant, but even acting
+Sub-Lieutenants from Whale Island may hunt if they can get the
+requisite day's leave and can muster the price of a hired mount. The
+hounds poured out of Creech Wood, and Mottin glowed with intense
+delight as his iron-mouthed horse took the rails in and out of the
+lane and followed the pack up the seventy-acre pasture from whence the
+holloa had come. It was late in a February afternoon, and most of the
+dispirited field had gone home, so that there was no crowd--and a
+February fox on a good scenting day is a customer worth waiting for.
+Mottin sat back as a five-foot cut and laid hedge grew nearer, and
+blessed the owner of his mount as the big black cleared the jump with
+half a foot to spare. Two more big fences, cut as level as a rule, and
+the field was down to six, with three Hunt servants. The fox was
+making for Hyden Wood, and scent was getting better every minute. A
+clattering canter through a farmyard, and Mottin followed the huntsman
+over a ramshackle gate on to grass again. The huntsman capped the
+tail-hounds on as he galloped, and Mottin realised that if they were
+going to kill before dark they would have to drive their fox fast.
+Riding to his right he saw Sangatte--a destroyer officer, whom he knew
+only by name, but whom he envied for the fact that he seemed able to
+hunt when he liked and could afford to keep his own horses. As they
+neared a ragged bullfinch hedge at the top of a long slope, he saw
+Sangatte put on speed and take it right in the middle, head down and
+forearm across his eyes. Mottin eased his horse to give the huntsman
+room at the gate in the left-hand corner. The pilot's horse rapped the
+top bar slightly, and as Mottin settled himself for the leap, he saw
+the gate begin to swing open away from him. There was no time to
+change his mind--he decided he must jump big and trust to luck, but
+the black horse failed him. The hireling knew enough to think for
+himself, and seeing the gate begin to swing, decided that a shorter
+stride would be safer. The disagreement resulted--as such differences
+of opinion are liable to do--in a crash of breaking wood and a
+whirling, stunning fall. Mottin rose shakily on one leg, feeling as if
+the ankle of the other was being drilled with red-hot needles, and
+swore at the black horse as it galloped with trailing bridle down the
+long stubble field towards Soberton Down. He saw Sangatte look back
+and then wrench his brown mare round to ride off the hireling as it
+passed. He caught the dangling reins and swung both horses round, and
+came hurrying and impatient back. As he arrived he checked the mare
+and turned in his saddle to watch the receding pack.
+
+"Come on," he said. "_Quick_--you'll catch 'em at Hyden." He turned
+to look at Mottin by the gate-post, in irritation at feeling no snatch
+at the black horse's rein. His face fell slightly. "Hullo--hurt?" he
+said, and leapt from his mare.
+
+"Go on. Don't wait. Go _on_," said Mottin. "I'll be all right. You get
+on--it's only my ankle."
+
+"Damn painful too, I expect. I'm not going on. They'll be at Butser
+before I could catch them now, and I bet they whip off in the dark."
+He threw the reins over the mare's head and left her standing. "Now,"
+he said. "It's your left ankle; come here to the near side, and put
+your left knee on my hands and jump for it."
+
+Mottin complied, and to the accompaniment of a grunt and a
+pain-expelled oath arrived back in the muddy saddle.
+
+"I say, this is good of you--you know," he said; "but you've----"
+
+"Cut it out--it won't be anything of a run, anyway," lied Sangatte
+gloomily.
+
+"Come along--it's only three miles to Droxford, but you'll have to
+walk all the way, and we'd better get on."...
+
+
+II.
+
+The big seaplane circled low over the harbour and then headed seaward,
+climbing slowly. There were two men aboard--a young Sub-Lieutenant as
+pilot and Mottin as observer. Mottin sat crouched low and leaning
+forward as he studied the chart-holder before him and scratched times
+and notes in his log-book. They were off on a routine patrol, but
+there was the additional interest to the trip that on "information
+received" they were to pay a little more attention than usual to a
+particular locality.
+
+From his seat Mottin could see nothing of the pilot but his head and
+shoulders--a back view only, and that obscured by swathings of leather
+and wool. The two men's heads were joined by a cumbersome arrangement
+of listeners and tubes which, theoretically, made conversation
+practicable. As a matter of fact, the invariable rule of repeating
+every observation twice, and of adding embroidery to each repetition,
+pointed to a discrepancy between the theory and practice of the
+instrument. The machine was a big one, and its engines were in
+proportion. The accommodation in the broad fuselage was considerable,
+but on the present trip the missing units of the crew were accounted
+for by an equal weight of extra petrol and T.N.T. "eggs."
+
+The morning had been hazy and they had delayed their start till nearly
+noon. It was not as clear as it might be even then, for in a quarter
+of an hour from leaving the slip the land was out of sight astern. At
+a thousand feet the pilot levelled off and ceased to climb. He flew
+mechanically, his head bent down to stare at the compass-card. At
+times he fiddled with air and throttle, twisting his head to watch the
+revolution indicator. The occasional bumping and rocking of the
+machine he corrected automatically without looking up. He had long ago
+arrived at the state of airmanship which makes a pilot into a
+sensitive inclinometer, acting every way at once.
+
+Mottin finished his scribbling and sat up to look round. He raised
+himself till he sat on the back of his seat, and began to sweep the
+sea and horizon with a pair of large-field glasses. The wind roared
+past him, pressing his arm to his side as he faced to one side or the
+other, and making him strain the heavy glasses close to his eyes to
+keep them steady. An hour after starting he touched the pilot on the
+shoulder and shouted into his own transmitter. He waited a few seconds
+and shouted again, with the conventional oath to drive the sound
+along. The pilot nodded his swathed and helmeted head and swung the
+machine round to a new course. Mottin crouched down again and began to
+study his chart afresh. Navigation was easy so long as the weather was
+clear, but with poor visibility, which might get worse instead of
+better, he knew that it was remarkably easy to get lost in the North
+Sea, and at this moment he wanted to see his landfall particularly
+clearly. Five minutes later he saw it, and signalled a new course to
+the pilot by a nudge and a jerk of his gloved hand. A low dark line
+had appeared on the starboard bow, a line with tall spires and
+chimneys standing up from it at close intervals. The seaplane banked a
+little as they turned and headed away, leaving the land to recede and
+fade on their quarter. The hazy sun was low in the west and the mist
+was clearing. It had been none too warm throughout the journey, but it
+was now distinctly cold, the chill of a winter evening striking
+through fur and leather as if their clothes had been slit and
+punctured in half a dozen places.
+
+Mottin had just slid back in his seat after a sweeping search of the
+sea through his glasses, and was slowly winding, with cold fur-gloved
+fingers, the neat carriage clock on the sloping board before him, when
+he heard a yelping war-cry from the pilot and felt the machine dive
+steeply and swerve to port. He half rose in his seat and then slipped
+back to feel for his bomb-levers. The submarine was just breaking
+surface eight hundred feet below and a mile ahead. As he looked she
+tucked down her bow and slipped under again, having barely shown her
+conning-tower clear of the short choppy waves. The pilot throttled
+well down and glided over the smooth, ringed spot which marked where
+she had vanished. As it slid past below them he opened up his engines
+again and "zoomed" back to his height. He turned his head to look at
+Mottin, but said nothing. Mottin made a circular motion with his hand
+and they began a wide sweep round, climbing all the while. Mottin sat
+back and thought hard. No, it had not been indecision that had
+prevented him from dropping bombs then. He knew it was not that, but
+the exact reasons which had flashed through his mind at the fateful
+moment must be hunted out and marshalled again. He knew that his
+second self, his wide-awake and infallible substitute who took over
+command of his body in moments of emergency, had thought it all out in
+a flash and had arrived at his decision for sound reasons. Yes, it was
+clear now, but that confounded fighting substitute of his was just a
+bit cold-blooded, he thought. They had petrol for the run home with
+perhaps half an hour to spare. Fritz had not seen them, as his lid had
+not opened--or at any rate if he had seen them through his periscope,
+the fact of no bomb having been dropped would encourage him to think
+that the seaplane had passed on unknowing. Of course they might have
+let go bombs, but, well, Fritz must have been at anything down to 80
+feet at the moment they passed over him, and it was chancy shooting.
+Yes, it was quite clear. Fritz should be up again in an hour (he
+evidently wanted to come up), and if they were only high up and ready
+they would get a fair chance at him. Of course, they would not get
+home if they waited an hour; but if that cold-blooded second self of
+his thought it the right thing and a proper chance to take, well, it
+was so. Mottin looked over the side and wished it was not so loppy. A
+long easy swell was nothing, but this short choppy sea was going to be
+the devil. The pilot shouted something to him and pointed at the clock
+and the big petrol tank overhead. Mottin nodded comprehension, and
+shouted back. The Sub took a careful look overside and studied the
+water a moment. Then he laughed back at Mottin, and shouted something
+about bathing, which was presumably facetious, but which was lost in
+the recesses of the headpieces.
+
+The sun was down on the horizon, and the hour had grown to a full
+ninety minutes before the chance came. They had not worried about
+clocks or thoughts of petrol after the first half-hour of circling.
+They were "for it," anyhow, after that, and it was going to come in
+the dark too, so that the question of whether it was going to be fifty
+or a hundred miles from land did not make much difference. Almost
+directly below them the long grey hull rose and grew clear, the
+splashing waves making a wide area of white water show on each side of
+her. The seaplane's engines stopped with startling suddenness, and to
+the sound of a rushing wind in the wires and of ticking, swishing
+propellers they began a two-thousand-feet spiral glide, coming from as
+nearly overhead as the turning circle of the big machine would allow.
+At two hundred feet the pilot eased his rudder and began a wider turn,
+and then the German captain saw. He leapt for the conning-tower,
+leaving a startled look-out man behind. The man tried to follow him
+down, but the lid slammed before he could arrive at it. He turned and
+looked helplessly at the big planes and body rushing down a hundred
+yards astern. With his hands half raised and shoulders hunched up the
+poor devil met his death, two huge bombs "straddling" the
+conning-tower and bursting fairly on the hull as the boat started
+under. Mottin had a vision of a glare of light from the rent hull, a
+great rush of foaming, spouting air, and then a graceful knife-edge
+stem, with the bulge of torpedo-tubes on each side of it, just showed
+and vanished in the turmoil of broken water. The seaplane roared up
+again, heading west, the young pilot--apparently oblivious to the fact
+that he hardly expected to be alive till morning--displaying his
+feelings on the subject of his late enemy by a series of violent
+"switchbacks."
+
+Mottin checked him, rose, and began a careful look round. Any ship
+would be welcome now, neutral or not; but this was an unfrequented
+area to hope to be picked up in. The petrol might last five minutes or
+half an hour--one could not be certain. The gauge was hardly accurate
+enough in this old bus to work by. As he looked the engines gave a
+premonitory splutter and then picked up again. Well, it was five
+minutes, he reflected, not half an hour--that was all. The pilot
+turned and headed up wind. With the engines missing more and more
+frequently they glided down, making a perfect landing of the
+"intentional pancake" order on the crest of a white-topped four-foot
+wave. Instantly they began to feel the seas--the hard, rough,
+senseless water that was so different to the air they had come from.
+The machine made wicked weather of it, and it was obvious that she
+could hardly last long. She lurched and rocked viciously, constraining
+them to cling to the sides of the frail body. Mottin pulled off his
+headpiece, and the pilot followed suit.
+
+"Well," said Mottin, "it was worth it--eh?"
+
+"By gum, yes! It was that, and I give you full numbers, sir. I thought
+for a moment you had taken too long a chance, but you were right."
+
+A wave splashed heavily over the speaker and laid three inches of
+water in a pool around his ankles.
+
+"This is going to be a short business, sir, unless we get busy."
+
+"I know," said Mottin. "Case of four anchors and wish for the day. Sea
+anchor indicated, and mighty quick too."...
+
+An hour later it was pitch-dark, and a semi-waterlogged seaplane
+drifted south, head to sea, bucketing her nose into the lop. Two
+figures crouched together in the body of her, baling mechanically. On
+the upper plane an electric torch glowed brightly, pointing westward.
+The figures exchanged disjointed sentences as they baled, and
+occasionally one of them would stretch his head up for a glance round
+for possible passing lights.
+
+"Cheer up, Sub!" said Mottin. "Your teeth are chattering like the
+deuce. Bale harder and get warm."
+
+"It's not the cold, it's the weather that's doing me in, sir. I'm so
+damned sea-sick."
+
+"Yes, it's a filthy motion, but she's steadier than she was. 'Fraid
+she's sinking."
+
+The Sub-Lieutenant ceased baling for a moment and looked into his
+senior's face, dimly lit by the reflection from the torch overhead.
+"Do you know, sir," he said, "I don't feel as bucked as I did? I
+believe I've got half-way to cold feet about the show."
+
+"Do you know, Sub"--Mottin copied the hesitating voice--"I've had cold
+feet the whole blinkin' time? If it wasn't for one thing I keep
+thinking of, I'd be properly howling about it."
+
+"And what's that, sir?"
+
+"D'you remember a line of Kipling's in that 'Widow of sleepy Chester'
+poem? It's about 'Fifty file of Burmans to open him Heaven's gate.'
+Well, that's keeping me cheered up."
+
+"'Mm--that's true. How many do you think that boat carried?"
+
+"Round about forty--she was a big packet."
+
+"Only twenty file--still, that's good enough. Besides, they'd have
+done damage to-morrow if we hadn't got them."
+
+"True for you, Sub--and they might have killed women on that trip. Now
+they won't get the chance."
+
+"Twenty file. Ugh! I'll make 'em salute when I see them. Hullo! See
+that, sir?" The two men rose to their knees and stared out to the
+west. A bright glow showed beyond the horizon, and through it ran a
+flicker of pulsating flashes of vivid orange light. The glow broke out
+again a point to the northward, and the unmistakable beam of a
+searchlight swung to the clouds and down again. As they looked, the
+glow spread, and the rippling flashes as gun answered gun came into
+view over their horizon. Mottin fumbled for the glasses, but found
+them wet through and useless. The action was evidently coming their
+way, and was growing into a pyrotechnic display such as few are
+fortunate enough to see.
+
+"Destroyers--coming right over us--Very's pistol, quick! We may get a
+chance here. Don't let the cartridges get wet, man--put 'em in your
+coat." The guns began to bark clearly above the straining and bumping
+noise of the crumbling seaplane, and a wildly-aimed shell burst on the
+water half a mile to windward. Both men were standing up now, staring
+at the extraordinary scene. A flotilla of destroyers passed each side
+of them, one leading the other by nearly a mile. The searchlights and
+gun-flashes lit the sea between the opposing lines, and the vicious
+shells sent columns of shining water up around the rapt spectators, or
+whipped overhead in a continued stuttering shriek.
+
+A big destroyer passed at half a cable's length in a quivering halo of
+light of her own making. The short choppy beam sea sent a steady sheet
+of spray across her forecastle, a sheet that showed red in the light of
+the guns. As she passed the Sub-Lieutenant raised his hand above his
+head, and a Very's light sailed up into the air, showing every detail of
+the battered seaplane with startling clearness for a few seconds. A
+searchlight whirled round from the destroyer, steadied blindingly on
+their faces a moment, and was switched off on the instant. As swiftly as
+it had approached, the fight flickered away to the eastward, till the
+last gleam was out of sight, and the two wet and aching men crouched
+back into the slopping water to continue their baling.
+
+"If they _do_ find us, it'll be rather luck, sir," said the younger
+man. "She isn't going to last much longer."
+
+"Long enough, I reckon. But they may go donkey's miles in a running
+fight like that. Is that petrol tank free?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Yes, I couldn't get the union-nut off--it was burred; so I broke the
+pipe and bent it back on itself. It'll hold all right, I think--at
+least it will only leak slowly. Hullo, she's going, sir."
+
+"Not quite. Pass that tank aft and we'll crawl out on the tail.
+That'll be the last bit under, and we may as well use her all we can."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With gasps and strainings they half-lifted, half-floated the big tank
+along till they had it jammed on end between the rudder and the
+control-wires. They straddled the sloping tail, crouching low to avoid
+the smack of the breaking seas, their legs trailing in the icy water.
+With frozen fingers the Sub-Lieutenant removed two Very's cartridges
+from his breast-pocket and tucked them inside his leather waistcoat.
+
+A flurry of snow came down wind. The two were too wet already to
+notice it, but as it grew heavier the increased darkness made Mottin
+lift his head and look round. At that moment a gleam of brightness
+showed through to windward; as he looked it faded and vanished. He
+leaned aft and shouted weakly--
+
+"Come on, man--wake up! Fire another one. They're here!"
+
+It seemed an age to him before the pistol was loaded, and his heart
+sank as a dull click indicated an unmistakable misfire. He watched the
+last cartridge inserted with dispassionate interest. If one was wet,
+the other was almost certain to be, and--Bang! The coloured ball of
+fire soared up into the driving snow, and the pistol slipped from the
+startled Sub-Lieutenant's hand and shot overboard. The searchlight
+came on again and grew stronger and nearer, and as the glare of it
+became intolerable, a tall black bow came dipping and swaying past at
+a few yards' range. Mottin almost let his will-power go at that
+point--the relief was too great. He had a confused memory afterwards
+of crashing wood as the tailplane ground against a steel side, and of
+barking his shins as he was hauled across a wire guard-rail and
+dropped on a very nubbly deck. The wardroom seemed a blaze of intense
+light after the darkness outside, and the temporary surgeon who took
+charge of him the most sensible and charming person in the Service.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Sit down--take your coat off--lap this down. That's right. Now, I
+have two duties in this ship--I'm doctor and I'm the wine caterer.
+They are not incompatible. You will therefore go to bed now in the
+Captain's cabin, and you'll have a hot toddy as soon as you're there;
+come along now and get your clothes off. Your mate is in the First
+Lieutenant's cabin, and he won't wake up till morning."
+
+Twenty minutes later Mottin, from beneath a pile of blankets, heard a
+tinkle of curtain rings and looked out. A muffled, snow-covered figure
+entered quietly and began to peel off a lammy coat. Mottin coughed.
+
+"Hullo! How are you feeling? I've just come for a change of clothes. I
+won't be long--I'm Sangatte. No, that's all right. I won't be turning in
+to-night; we're going right up harbour, and I'll be busy till daylight."
+
+He bustled round the chest of drawers, pulling out woollen scarves,
+stockings, &c., and talking rapidly. "Lucky touch our finding you. I
+noted position when your first light went up, but as the chase looked
+like running on ninety mile yet, I didn't expect to find you. Your
+joss was in, because the snow came down and they put up a smoke-screen
+and ceased fire, so we lost touch, and I hadn't far to come back to
+look for you. Got a Fritz, did you? Good man! We'll have a bottle on
+your decoration when we get in. The Huns? Yes, they lost their rear
+ship right off, and the others were plastered good and plenty. We lost
+one on a mine, but we took the crew off and sank her. I sank your
+'plane just now--tied a pig of ballast to her and chucked it over. I
+thought you might have left some papers--oh! you've got 'em, have
+you? That's good."
+
+"Yes, they're in my coat pocket. I say, haven't I seen you before? I
+seem to remember you. Do you hunt?" Mottin stretched his legs out
+sleepily as he spoke.
+
+"Yes--met you with the Hambledon or Cattistock, I expect. Haven't been
+on a horse for all of three years, though; and I don't suppose there'll
+be much doing that way for a long time, now they're putting half the
+country under plough. S'long. I'm for the bridge; ring that bell if you
+want anything. The Doc.'s got one or two wounded forrard, so he'll be
+busy, but my servant'll look out for you." The curtain clashed back, and
+Mottin, turning over, slid instantly into a log-like sleep.
+
+
+
+
+A TRINITY.
+
+
+      The way of a ship at racing speed
+      In a bit of a rising gale,
+      The way of a horse of the only breed
+      At a Droxford post-and-rail,
+      The way of a brand-new aeroplane
+      On a frosty winter dawn.
+        You'll come back to those again;
+        Wheel or cloche or slender rein
+        Will keep you young and clean and sane,
+          And glad that you were born.
+
+    The power and drive beneath me now are above the power of kings,
+    It's mine the word that lets her loose and in my ear she sings--
+      "Mark now the way I sport and play with the rising hunted sea,
+      Across my grain in cold disdain their ranks are hurled at me.
+      But down my wake is a foam-white lake, the remnant of their line,
+      That broke and died beneath my pride--your foemen, man, and mine."
+    The perfect tapered hull below is a dream of line and curve,
+    An artist's vision in steel and bronze for gods and men to serve.
+    If ever a statue came to life, you quivering slender thing,
+    It ought to be you--my racing girl--as the Amazon song you sing.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Down the valley and up the slope we run from scent to view.
+    "Steady, you villain--you know too much--I'm not so wild as you;
+    You'll get me cursed if you catch him first--there's at least a mile
+                   to go,
+    So swallow your pride and ease your stride, and take your fences
+                   slow.
+    Your high-pricked ears as the jump appears are comforting things to
+                   see;
+    Your easy gallop and bending neck are signals flying to me.
+    You wouldn't refuse if it was wire with calthrops down in front,
+    And there we are with a foot to spare--you best of all the Hunt!"
+            Great sloping shoulders galloping strong, and a yard of
+                   floating tail,
+            A fine old Irish gentleman, and a Hampshire post-and-rail.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+    The sun on the fields a mile below is glinting off the grass
+    That slides along like a rolling map as under the clouds I pass.
+    The early shadows of byre and hedge are dwindling dark below
+    As up the stair of the morning air on my idle wheels I go,--
+        Nothing to do but let her alone--she's flying herself to-day,
+        Unless I chuck her about a bit--there isn't a bump or sway.
+            So _there's_ a bank at ninety-five--and here's a spin and a
+                   spiral dive,
+                And here we are again.
+    And _that's_ a roll and twist around, and that's the sky and there's
+                   the ground,
+            And I and the aeroplane
+    Are doing a glide, but upside-down, and that's a village and that's
+                   a town--
+            And now we're rolling back.
+    And _this_ is the way we climb and stall and sit up and beg on
+                   nothing at all,
+            The wires and strainers slack,
+    And now we'll try and be good some more, and open the throttle and
+                   hear her roar
+            And steer for London Town.
+    For there never a pilot yet was born who flew a machine on a frosty
+                   morn
+            But started stunting soon,
+    To feel if his wires were really there, or whether he flew on ice or
+                   air,
+        Or whether his hands were gloved or bare,
+            Or he sat in a free balloon.
+
+
+
+
+IN THE MORNING.
+
+
+          Back from the battle, torn and rent,
+          Listing bridge and stanchions bent
+              By the angry sea.
+          By Thy guiding mercy sent,
+          Fruitful was the road we went--
+              Back from battle we.
+
+    If Thou hadst not been, O Lord, behind our feeble arm,
+    If Thy hand had not been there to slam the lyddite home,
+    When against us men arose and sought to work us harm,
+    We had gone to death, O Lord, in spouting rings of foam.
+
+          Heaving sea and cloudy sky
+          Saw the battle flashing by,
+              As Thy foemen ran.
+          By Thy grace, that made them fly,
+          We have seen two hundred die
+              Since the fight began.
+
+    If our cause had not been Thine, for Thy eternal Right,
+    If the foe in place of us had fought for Thee, O Lord!
+    If Thou hadst not guided us and drawn us there to fight,
+    We never should have closed with them--Thy seas are dark and broad.
+
+          Through the iron rain they fled,
+          Bearing home the tale of dead,
+            Flying from Thy sword.
+          After-hatch to fo'c'sle head,
+          We have turned their decks to red,
+            By Thy help, O Lord!
+
+    It was not by our feeble sword that they were overthrown,
+    But Thy right hand that dashed them down, the servants of the proud;
+    It was not arm of ours that saved, but Thine, O Lord, alone,
+    When down the line the guns began, and sang Thy praise aloud.
+
+          Sixty miles of running fight,
+          Finished at the dawning light,
+            Off the Zuider Zee.
+          Thou that helped throughout the night
+          Weary hand and aching sight,
+            Praise, O Lord, to Thee.
+
+
+
+
+AN AFFAIR OF OUTPOSTS.
+
+
+The wardroom of the Depot ship was just emptying as the late-breakfast
+party lit their pipes and cigarettes and headed for the smoking-room
+next door, when a signalman brought the news in. The Commander,
+standing by the radiator, took the pad from the man's hand and read it
+aloud. He raised his voice for the first few words, then continued in
+his usual staccato tones as the silence of his audience showed that
+they were straining their ears in fear of missing a word:--
+
+     "_Lyddite_, _Prism_, _Axite_, and _Pebble_ in action last night
+     with six enemy destroyers--_Pebble_ sunk--fifty-seven survivors
+     aboard _Lyddite_--enemy lost two sunk, possibly three--_Lyddite_
+     with prisoners and _Prism_ with _Axite_ in tow arriving forenoon
+     to-day."
+
+There was a moment's pause as the Commander handed the signal back,
+and then half a dozen officers spoke at once. The Fleet-Surgeon was
+not one of them. He gathered up his two juniors with a significant
+glance, as one sees a hostess signal to her Division as the
+dessert-talk flags, and the three vanished through the door to get to
+work on their grim preparations. The Engineer officers conferred for a
+minute in low tones and then followed them out. The signal had given
+clearer data for the workers in flesh and bone to act on than it had
+for those who work in metals, and there was nothing for the latter to
+do but to get their men ready and to guess at probabilities. The
+remainder of the Mess broke into a buzz of conversation: "_Axite_, she
+must be pretty well hashed up; it must have been gun-fire, a torpedo
+would have sunk her.... Rot! why should it? What about the _Salcombe_
+or the _Ventnor_? _They_ got home.... Yes, but not from so far out,
+and there's a sea running outside too.... Well, the Noorder Diep isn't
+a hundred miles, and that must be where...."
+
+The Commander beckoned the First Lieutenant to him, as that officer
+was rising from his chair at the writing-table. "You'd better warn the
+Gunner, Borden, that the divers may be needed; and tell my messenger
+as you go out that I want to see the Boatswain and Carpenter
+too--thank you." He turned to the ship's side and looked out through
+the scuttle at the dancing, sunlit waters of the harbour. He had
+supervised the work of preparation for assisting and patching lame
+ducks more than once before, and he knew that his subordinates needed
+little assistance from him. What was troubling his mind was the
+question of the casualties. The _Pebble_ was gone, so there was no
+need for spare hands to be provided for her, while her survivors were
+actually a gain. They would not be fit for work for a bit, though, a
+good few of them probably wounded, and the remainder perhaps needing
+treatment after immersion in a December sea. Then the three others--it
+sounded like a hard-fought action, and hard fights meant losses. That
+was the worst of these destroyer actions, the casualties were mostly
+good men, and it took so long to train good ratings. If only one saved
+the officers and men it wouldn't really matter how many destroyers
+were lost, he reflected, as he walked out of the mess towards his
+cabin and the little group of Warrant and Petty officers who awaited
+him by the doorway.
+
+It was barely an hour later, and the bustle of preparation aboard the
+Depot ship was still in progress when they came in sight. The outer
+forts had reported them as approaching the entrance, and the next news
+was good also, for it was simply the deduction on the part of the
+watching ships' companies, when they saw the big black-and-yellow
+salvage tugs that had been out since dawn come chugging up harbour
+alone, that the victors had disdained assistance. Then the _Lyddite_
+showed her high bow and unmistakable funnels as she swung round the
+entrance shoals and steadied up harbour at a leisurely ten knots. At
+that distance she looked dirty and sea-worn, but intact. Close astern
+of her came _Prism_ and _Axite_, and as they showed, the watchers
+involuntarily caught their breaths.
+
+The _Prism_ looked queer and foreign somehow, with no foremast, a bare
+skeleton of a bridge, and a shapeless heap where the forward funnel
+had stood. The _Axite_ looked just what she was--a mere battered hull,
+with very little standing above the level of her deck, her stern
+nearly awash, and her bow bent and torn as if some giant hand had
+gripped and twisted it. As the pair of cripples neared the dock
+entrance, two smaller tugs which had followed astern came hurrying up
+to close on the _Axite's_ sides, while the towing hawser that had been
+watched with such anxiety through three cold and stormy watches
+splashed in the churned-up water under the _Prism's_ counter. The
+_Prism_ increased speed slightly, and up against the blustering wind
+came the faint sound of cheering from the cruisers down the harbour as
+she passed them. She eased down into station astern of the _Lyddite_,
+and the Yeoman of Signals on the Depot ship's bridge shifted his
+telescope from the shaking canvas of the wind-dodger to the steadier
+support of a stanchion.
+
+"What's she like--can you make 'er out?" A Leading Telegraphist had
+walked out from the wireless office, and, in obvious hopes of getting
+hold of the telescope, was standing at his elbow.
+
+"Pretty sight, I don't think," replied the Yeoman grimly. "Dirty work
+for the hospital there, and I reckon it's 'Port Watch look for
+messmates'--all along under the bridge she's been catching it, and I
+can't see--Yes, O.K.--He's up there on the bridge--_Who?_ The skipper,
+of course. Mister Calton, Commander--begging his pardon. Me and him
+were in the old _Cantaloup_ two years. Gawd! but ain't they been in a
+dust-up! What do you say? _Lyddite?_"
+
+He turned to look as the big destroyer passed, half-raised his glass,
+and then lowered it. There was enough for his naked eye to see to
+discourage him from a closer view. Her decks were crowded with men,
+lying, standing, or sitting down. The white bandages showed up clearly
+against the general background of dull grime, and the bandages were
+many. A torpedo-tube pointing up like an A.A. gun, and a dozen or so
+of splinter holes in funnel and casing, showed that some, at least, of
+the wounded were her own. About the casing, between the wounded, lay
+dozens of dull brass cartridge-cases, and aft--a curious touch of
+triviality--two seamen and a steward were emptying boxes of smashed
+glass and crockery overside. A few men waved and shouted in reply as
+the Depot ship roared a welcome across to her, but the greater number
+were silent. The two scarred and blood-spotted craft swung gently in
+to the jetty, where the lines of ambulances and stretchers awaited
+them, and as the first heaving-lines flew, the Yeoman turned to the
+Telegraphist with a look almost of pride on his dark saturnine face--
+
+"Well, I'm ----," he said admiringly, "if that ain't swank! Did you
+see 'em? Why, stiffen the Dutch--they've got new Sunday Ensigns
+hoisted to come up harbour with, and"--he swung round and levelled his
+glass at the _Axite_, now almost hidden in the smoke and steam of the
+group of tugs around her at the lock gates--"I'm damned if she ain't
+got a new one up too. Here, have a look at it, man. It's on a boathook
+staff sticking up in the muzzle of the high-angle gun----"
+
+
+
+
+1917.
+
+
+The "liaison officer" felt distinctly nervous as his steamboat
+approached the gangway. He had no qualms as to his capabilities of
+carrying out the work he was detailed for--that of acting as
+signals-and-operations-interpreter aboard the Flotilla leader of a
+recently allied destroyer division--but the fact that he had been told
+that he must be prepared to be tactful weighed heavily on his mind.
+His ideas on the subject of Americans were somewhat hidebound, but at
+the same time very vague. Would they spring the statement on him that
+they had "come over to win the War for you," or would they refer at
+once to their War of Independence? Did the Yankees hate all
+Britishers, or---- His boat bumped alongside the neat teak ladder,
+and he noted with a seaman's appreciation the perfectly-formed
+coachwhipping and Turks' Heads on the rails. A moment later he was
+standing on a very clean steel deck, gravely returning the salute of
+what appeared to be a muster of all the officers in the ship.
+
+A tall commander took a pace forward. "_Malcolm_," he said, "I'm
+Captain--glad to meet you." The Englishman saluted, and they shook
+hands. "My name's Jackson," he replied, and turned as the American,
+taking his arm, ran through a rapid introduction to the other
+officers. Each of these repeated the formula, accompanied by the quick
+bow and handshake. Jackson followed suit as best he could, and began
+to feel that on such formal occasions he had the makings of a real
+_attache_ or diplomatist in him.
+
+A few minutes, and he found himself sitting in a long-chair in a
+wardroom which might have been a counterpart of his own, and accepting
+a long cigar from the box handed him. "Did you have a good trip
+over?" he ventured.
+
+"We sure did, and saw nix--not even a U-boat. Had a bit of a gale
+first day out, but it blew off quick. But say, there wasn't a German
+ship for three thousand miles. Don't you ever see some about?"
+
+"Well, you see--er--no. They only show out now and then, and it's only
+for a few hours when they do. Of course, there are plenty of Fritzes,
+but they keep under most of the time--you don't see them much."
+
+"Well, we thought it real slow, didn't we, Commander? We were just
+ripe for some gunplay, but we never got a chance to pull."
+
+Jackson looked across at the Commander and smiled. "We felt that way
+for a long time, sir. But now we just go on hoping and keeping ready.
+We've had so many false alarms, you see."
+
+The Commander laughed. "That's one on you, Benson," he said. "We won't
+get so excited next time we see the Northern Lights."
+
+There was a general shout of laughter, and Jackson turned cold. This, he
+thought, was a little early for him to start putting his foot in it. The
+officer called Benson, however, did not appear to be about to throw over
+the alliance just yet. He walked to the sideboard, and returned with a
+couple of lumps of sugar in his hand. "Lootenant," he said gravely, "in
+the absence of stimulants in the U.S. Navy, I can only give you what
+we've got. We've no liquor aboard, but we've sure got sugar."
+
+"Yes," said the Commander. "We're all on the water-waggon here,
+whether we like the ride or not."
+
+Jackson sat up in his chair and shed his official pose. He could, at any
+rate, talk without reserve on Service subjects. "Well, sir," he said,
+"I'm not a teetotaller, but it doesn't worry me to go teetotal if I've
+got to. I don't worry about it if I'm in training for anything; and the
+fact is--well, if there was a referendum, or something of that sort, in
+the Navy as to whether we were to be compulsory teetotallers or not, I
+believe the majority would vote for 'no drinks.' _I_ would, anyway, and
+I'm what you'd call an average drinker."
+
+"They didn't ask us to vote any, but if they had--in war-time--I guess
+we'd have voted the same way. If you can't get it you don't want it,
+and we've kind of got used to water now. And so your name's Jackson?
+Any relation?"
+
+Jackson's brain worked at high pressure. This was a poser. Sir Henry
+Jackson? Stonewall? How many noted Jacksons were there? He played for
+safety and replied with a negative.
+
+"Ah, well! there's perhaps some connection you don't know of," said
+the Commander encouragingly. "Which part of England are your folk
+from? Birmingham. Well, of course, it's a big family.... My father
+knew him well, and was with him through the Valley Campaign."
+
+Jackson sighed with relief. "You're from Virginia then, sir?"
+
+"No, sir--I'm from Maryland. My father joined the Army of Virginia
+two days before Bull Run."
+
+"Are you all Southerners here, then?"
+
+"We're sure _not_," came a chorus of voices. "Nix on Secesh ... John
+Brown's Body...." Jackson developed nerves again. He felt as if he had
+asked a Nationalist meeting to join him in drinking confusion to the
+Pope. The company did not seem disposed to let him off, however.
+
+"Which do you think ought to have won, Lootenant? You were
+neutral--let's hear it."
+
+Jackson looked apologetically at the Commander.
+
+"Well, sir, I think the North _had_ to win; and" (he hurried on) "it's
+just as well she did, because if she hadn't there wouldn't be any
+U.S.A. now--only a lot of small states."
+
+"That's so; but there need not have been any war at all."
+
+"There needn't, sir; but it made the U.S.A. all the same. The big
+event of the Franco-Prussian War wasn't the surrender at Sedan; it was
+the crowning of the German Emperor at Versailles. And in the Civil
+War--well, it made one nation of the Americans in the same way as the
+other did of the Germans."
+
+"Well, Lootenant, if wars are just to make nations into one, what was
+the good of our wars with you?"
+
+Jackson was getting over his self-consciousness, and it was dawning on
+him that the American Navy has a method of "drawing" very similar to
+that in use in his own.
+
+"They were a lot of use," he protested. "We sent German troops against
+you, and you killed lots of them."
+
+There was a general laugh.
+
+"Say, Jackson," came a voice, "this little old country of yours isn't
+doing much with the Germans now except kill them. Say, she's great!
+You're doing all the work, and you've kept on telling us you're doing
+nix. Your papers just talk small, as if your Army was only a
+Yale-Princetown football crowd, and you were the coon and not the Big
+Stick of the bunch that's in it."
+
+"Well, you see, we don't like talking about ourselves except to just
+buck our own people up."
+
+Jackson's tone as he said this was, I regret to say, just what yours
+or mine would have been. It could only be described as "smug."
+
+"You sure don't. We like to say what we're doing when we come from New
+York."
+
+Jackson prepared for an effort of tact. "I hear," he said, "you've got
+quite a lot of troops across already."
+
+They told him--and his eyes opened.
+
+"_What!_" he said. "And how many----?" He digested the answers for a
+moment, and decided that his store of tact could be pigeon-holed again
+for a while. "But what about--your papers haven't--I don't call that
+talking much. We still think you're just beginning."
+
+"So we are,--we've hardly started. But our papers were given the wise
+word, and they don't talk war secrets."
+
+Jackson readjusted his ideas slightly, and his attitude deflated
+itself. The transportation of the First Expeditionary Force had been
+talked of as a big thing, but this--and he had until then heard no
+whisper of it.
+
+"And the country?" he asked. "What about all your pro-Germans and
+aliens?"
+
+"They don't," came the answer. "What do you think of Wilson now?"
+Jackson edged away to cover again. "He's a very fine statesman, and a
+much bigger man than we thought him once."
+
+"Same here; and he knows his America. He waited and he waited, and all
+the time the country was just getting more raw about the Germans, and
+then when he was good and ready he came in; and I guess now he's got
+the country _solid_."
+
+Jackson pondered this for a moment, studying the clean-cut young
+faces--all of the universal "Naval" stamp--around him.
+
+"I don't know," he said slowly, "that it wouldn't have been better for
+us if we'd been able to stop out a few months ourselves at first. It
+would have made _us_ more solid too. But we simply had to come in at
+once."
+
+"You had; and if you hadn't, we'd have talked at you some."
+
+Jackson laughed. "What! 'Too proud to fight,' and all that sort of
+thing? Yes, we'd have deserved it too. I say, what a shame Admiral
+Mahan died right at the beginning! There's nobody to take his place
+and write this war up."
+
+"Yes, he'd have been over here first tap of the gong. And he'd have
+seen it all for himself, and given you Britishers and us lectures on
+the war of 1812--and every other war too."
+
+"Yes, it's a great pity. He taught us what sea-power was, and till
+then we hardly knew we had it at all."
+
+"Well, he taught you enough to get us busy mailing you paper about the
+blockade last year."
+
+Jackson grinned. "You couldn't say much. You made all the precedents
+yourselves when you blockaded the South in '61. We only had to refer
+you to your own letters to get out of the argument."
+
+The First Lieutenant beckoned for the cigar box again. "You knew too
+much diplomatic work for us in those days. We were new to that card
+game. But I'd sooner hear our talk now than the sort of gentle
+breathing of your folks when it comes to diplomacy."
+
+"Never mind," said Jackson. "We're getting better. We'll have an
+autocracy, like you, before the war's over, instead of the democracy
+we've got now."
+
+The circle settled down and waited. This was evidently not an unarmed
+foe, in the ancient Anglo-Saxon game.
+
+"Amurrica's the only real democracy in the universe," said an
+incautious voice. Two heads turned towards the speaker, and several
+pairs of eyes spoke volumes.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Jackson. "America's a great country, but as
+you told me just now, she's solid. That means she's so keen on getting
+on with the work that she's chosen a boss and told him to go ahead and
+give his orders, and so long as he does his best to get on with the
+work, the people aren't going to quarrel with him. Now we are not
+really solid, just because we're too much of a democracy."
+
+"Say, you wouldn't think that if you'd been over and seen our last
+elections; but there's sense in it, all the same. But Lloyd
+George--isn't he the same sort of Big Stick over here?"
+
+"You read our political papers and see," said Jackson. "Do you take
+much interest in politics in your Navy?"
+
+"Do we hell--does yours?"
+
+"Not a bit, except to curse at them. Navies are outside politics."
+
+"Except the German's, and their army and navy and politics are all the
+same thing; and they'll all come down together, too."
+
+"Yes, but it's going to take some tough scrapping to do it. Let's hope
+no one starts fighting over the corpse when she's beaten."
+
+"Well, I guess you won't, and we won't. We've both got all the land we
+can do with, and if there are any colonies to hand out after, we
+won't mind who gets 'em so long as the Kaiser doesn't. What we ought
+to do is to join England in a policing act for the world, and just
+keep them all from fighting."
+
+"That'd be no good. The rest of them would combine against us. It
+would only mean a different Balance of Power."
+
+"Oh! Now you're talking European. We stand out of the old-world
+Balance."
+
+"You can't now. You've got hitched up in it, and you'll find you're
+tangled when you want to get back."
+
+"We sure won't. We'll pull out when this round-up's over--you watch us."
+
+The Commander glanced at his watch and rose. "Dinner's at 'half-six,'"
+he said. "You'd better let me show you the way to your room."
+
+Jackson rose and followed him aft to the spare cabin. "Here you are,"
+said the American. "Hope you'll be comfortable. The boys will do their
+best to make your stay here real home-like, and I hope you'll stay
+just as long as you can."
+
+"I sure will, sir," came the answer, in a voice that was fast losing
+its English drawl; and Jackson, alone with his thoughts, stared at the
+door-curtain, and wondered why on earth it should have been considered
+necessary to tell him that a supply of tact would be useful to him in
+his new job.
+
+
+
+
+IN FORTY WEST.
+
+
+    We are coming from the ranch, from the city and the mine,
+    And the word has gone before us to the towns upon the Rhine;
+            As the rising of the tide
+            On the Old-World side,
+        We are coming to the battle, to the Line.
+
+    From the valleys of Virginia, from the Rockies in the North,
+    We are coming by battalions, for the word was carried forth:
+            "We have put the pen away
+            And the sword is out to-day,
+        For the Lord has loosed the Vintages of Wrath."
+
+    We are singing in the ships as they carry us to fight,
+    As our fathers sang before us by the camp-fires' light;
+            In the wharf-light glare
+            They can hear us Over There,
+        When the ships come steaming through the night.
+
+    Right across the deep Atlantic where the _Lusitania_ passed,
+    With the battle-flag of Yankee-land a-floating at the mast,
+            We are coming all the while,
+            Over twenty hundred mile,
+        And we're staying to the finish, to the last.
+
+    We are many--we are one--and we're in it overhead,
+    We are coming as an Army that has seen its women dead,
+            And the old Rebel Yell
+            Will be loud above the shell
+        When we cross the top together, seeing red.
+
+
+
+
+A RING AXIOM.
+
+
+    When the pitiless gong rings out again, and they whip your chair
+                   away,
+    When you feel you'd like to take the floor, whatever the crowd
+                   should say,
+    When the hammering gloves come back again, and the world goes round
+                   your head,
+    When you know your arms are only wax, your hands of useless lead,
+    When you feel you'd give your heart and soul for a chance to clinch
+                   and rest,
+    And through your brain the whisper comes,
+        "Give in, you've done your best,"
+           Why, stiffen your knees and brace your back--and take my word
+                   as true--
+           _If the man in front has got you weak, he's just as tired as
+                   you_.
+    He can't attack through a gruelling fight and finish as he began;
+    He's done more work than you to-day--you're just as fine a man.
+    So call your last reserve of pluck--he's careless with his chin--
+    You'll put it across him every time--Go in--Go in--_Go in!_
+
+
+
+
+CHANCES.
+
+
+The boxing-stage was raised a clear three and a half feet above the
+deck, and the mat showed glaringly white in the northern sunshine. The
+corner-posts were padded and wound with many layers of red and blue
+bunting. A glance round showed a great amphitheatre of faces, rising
+tier on tier up to the crouching figures of men on the main-derrick,
+funnel-casings, and masts. The spectators numbered, perhaps, close on
+three thousand, and there was hardly a man among them who had not
+qualified as a critic by personal experience at the game. The last two
+competitors had just left the ring in a storm of hand-clapping, and
+the white-sweatered seconds ceased their professional chatter and
+their basin-splashing employment to jump up and place the chairs back
+against the corner-posts as the next two officers entered.
+
+Lieutenant Cairnley of H.M. T.B.D. ---- pulled the loose sleeves of
+his monkey-jacket across his chest and stretched out his legs as he
+sat down in the Blue corner. He looked across at his opponent, who was
+standing talking in a low voice to a second. Yes, he was evidently
+only just inside the middle-weight limit, and he, Cairnley, must be
+giving away all of half a stone. Still, that was half a stone less to
+carry about the ring, and he felt really fit and well-trained. An
+officer was standing in the ring, with a paper in one hand, and the
+other raised to call for silence.
+
+"First round of the Officers' Middle-weights. In the Red corner,
+Lieutenant Santon of the----, in the Blue corner, Lieutenant Cairnley
+of the----." He slipped under the ropes and jumped down from the stage
+as the voice of the timekeeper followed his own--"Seconds out!"
+Cairnley felt the coat plucked from his shoulders, and he stood up as
+his chair was drawn away. "_Clang!_" went the heavy gong, and he
+walked forward with his right hand out and his eyes on his opponent's
+chest, in the midst of a great silence. As their gloves touched,
+Cairnley jumped quickly to one side and began his invariable habit of
+working round to his opponent's left hand. He was not allowed much
+time for "routine work." He had an impression of a looming figure
+getting larger, a whirl of feinting, and he was being rushed back
+across the ring in a storm of punches. His habit of keeping his chin
+down, shoulders up, and elbows in, saved him. He felt a thrill of
+respect for Santon's punch as his head rocked from heavy hook-blows on
+either side, and then he was inside his opponent's elbows, working his
+head forward, and lowering his right for a body punch before they
+struck the ropes. As he felt their springing contact at his back, he
+stiffened up and pushed his man away. The recoil of the hemp assisted
+him, and Santon gave ground a yard. Cairnley jumped at him, and,
+taking an even chance, sent a straight right over, which landed
+cleanly on the mouth. His left followed at once, but only touched
+lightly. Santon gave ground again, and the lighter man slid after him,
+sending a long left home to the nose. Cairnley thrilled as it landed.
+This man was strong, he felt, but not quick enough in defence. He
+half-feinted with his right, and sent his left out again. As the punch
+extended he slightly lifted his chin, and the ring whirled round him
+as he took a tremendous cross-counter that came in over his elbow. He
+came forward quickly to get to close quarters, but his opponent had no
+intention of letting him. There was a whirl of gloves and a sound of
+heavy, grunting hitting, and Cairnley found himself on his hands and
+knees, with a very groggy feeling in his head, looking across at
+Santon's white knees by the ropes at the far side of the ring. He
+stretched his neck, took a long breath, and rose shakily. He did not
+feel as shaky as he looked, for he had been in the ring before, and
+knew that a knock-down blow sometimes entraps the optimistic giver of
+it into sudden defeat, but in this case he was engaged with a boxer
+who took no chances. Santon approached quickly and began rapid
+feinting just outside hitting distance. Cairnley gave ground slightly
+and waited for the rush. This chap had a wicked right, he reflected,
+and he did not want to get caught napping again. Then Santon was on
+him slamming in lefts and rights, and working furiously to get him
+into a corner. Cairnley stooped and struggled to get in close. A
+muscular change in the body a foot from his eyes gave him warning of
+an approaching upper-cut, and he brought his right glove in front of
+his face in time to stop it. He felt Santon's left on the back of his
+head, and instantly shifted feet and escaped round his opponent's left
+side. As he shifted he jerked a hard, short left punch into the mark,
+and then repeated the blow. Santon broke away, and received a
+perfectly-timed straight left on the nose as the gong rang. There was
+a storm of applause as the men went to their corners, for Cairnley's
+recovery had been well guarded, and his quick hitting at the end of
+the round showed that he had not lost much speed. He lay back in his
+chair while his seconds fussed around him, and thought hard. That
+right cross-counter of Santon's was certainly a beauty, so much so
+that it must be his favourite punch. Could he be absolutely certain of
+its being produced if he gave it the same chance? Well, he had to win
+this on a knock-out, or not at all. He could not pick up all the
+points he had lost in the first round with only two to go, so it was a
+case of chancing it on his brains alone. Yes, he would just check his
+idea once, and if that proved that Santon would use the same punch for
+the same lead, he would go all out on the next. _Clang!_ He rose and
+walked straight forward to meet his man. At six-feet range he jumped
+in and drove his left for the mark. It did not land true, but it
+enabled him to close and start a succession of furious body punches.
+The two hammering, gasping white figures reeled about the ring for
+half a minute, heads down and arms working like pistons.
+
+Cairnley knew that his man was too strong for him at that game, but for
+that round, brain and not muscle was his guide, and he wanted Santon to
+be warmed up and made to act by habit and use. They locked in a clinch,
+and a moment later broke clear at the word of the Referee--the first he
+had spoken in that fight. For a second they stood on guard swaying from
+side to side as they waited for an opening. Then Cairnley leaped in and
+sent out a full straight left. Even with his chin tucked well down he
+felt the jar of the right that slid again over his elbow, and striking
+full on the cheek, made his head ring and his neck ache. He stopped the
+left that followed, then landed on the face with his own left and closed
+again to hammer in short arm punches. He felt as he did so that the work
+he was engaged on must be done soon, as at this high-speed work he would
+not have the strength for a hard punch for long. Santon appeared to be a
+little inclined for a rest, too, for it was he who clinched this time.
+Cairnley rested limply against him and took a long breath as the voice
+of the Referee called them apart. He caught his breath again and called
+up all his reserve strength as they posed at long range, then he jumped
+forward as before, sent his left out three-quarters of the way, and
+showed his chin clear of his chest. Without a check in the movement his
+left dropped, his body pivoted, and he sent a full "haymaker" right up
+and across to the half-glimpsed head in front of him. A bony right wrist
+glanced from the top of his bent head, and at the same instant a jar,
+from his right knuckles to his back, told him that brains had beaten
+skill. He slipped aside, his hands mechanically raised in defence, and
+stumbled over Santon's falling body. As he scrambled up to cross the
+ring he looked back, and knew at once that not ten nor twenty seconds
+would be enough for that limp figure to recover in.
+
+
+II.
+
+"Yes, I've got leave now, and Cairnley's in hospital; he had a couple of
+splinters in him, and they packed him off, though he wanted to get
+leave and treat himself. The old packet's got to be just about rebuilt
+from the deck up, and he's certain to get a bigger one instead. He's
+going to take me on with him,--good thing for me,--as I'll be pretty
+young to be Number One of one of the Alpha class ships. I tell you, it
+was a devilish funny show, and all over in a second. It came on absolute
+pea-soup at four and we had only heard the guns in the action. Never saw
+a thing. We had been out away from the line four hours. Had nothing but
+wireless touch to tell us they had got into a mix-up. We went to
+stations at full speed trying to close on them, and we'd hardly got
+ready when the Hun showed up four hundred yards off. My word! she was
+smart on it. She was only a cruiser, but in the fog she showed up like
+the _Von der Tann_, and she was going all of twenty-four. She let fly at
+the moment we saw her, and she spun round and charged right off. We let
+go too as she fired, but her turning to ram saved her. We turned too and
+bolted, and she just cut every darned thing down from the casing up.
+The mast went on the first salvo, one funnel and most of the guns. The
+shooting was just lovely, and if it hadn't been such close range we'd
+have been shot down in one act. As it was, they just shaved us clean as
+if we'd gone full speed under a low-level bridge. At six hundred yards
+we could only see her gun-flashes, and we yanked round across her bow
+and opened out. The skipper gave her five minutes and then levelled up
+on the same course we had been on before, and eased a bit to keep
+station on her beam. We did a bit of clearing up and he sent for me. He
+was on the bridge--which had damn little left on it, bar him,--it was a
+proper wreck--and told me to arrange hands to shout orders to the
+engine-room if required, as the telegraphs were gone. The wheel was all
+right--or at least the gearing was,--the wheel itself had only a bit of
+rim and two spokes on it. He told me to get what fish we could fire set
+for surface, and that he was going to go for her again and fire at
+twenty-five yards. I thought he was mad, but I went down and got 'em
+ready. (The gunner was killed.) I shouted up to him when I had done, and
+had mustered a tube's crew, and we whacked on full bat again and began
+to close. You see we had crossed her bow once, and Cairnley reckoned
+then that she would have altered back to her original course of East, so
+he had kept on her port beam at about a mile, going the same speed. I
+did not get what he was driving at till afterwards. At the time I
+thought he was just going to do it again, because he thought he ought to
+make another effort. We saw her first this time as we were closing on
+the opposite side, and the skipper told them to poop off the bow gun,
+which was all we had, to wake them up. They woke up all right, and we
+got the same smack from all along her side we'd had before. She was just
+abaft our starboard beam going the same course, and I was wondering what
+the deuce he'd meant by telling me to train the tubes to port, when we
+went hard a-port and came round all heeled over and shaking. I just
+thought to myself, Well, if the Hun keeps on and doesn't try to ram,
+we're going to look damn silly, when I saw her again and she _was_
+ramming. Her guns did no good then,--the change was too quick for any
+sights to be held on. He banged away all right, and I believe he put
+more helm on--but he couldn't get us. The skipper had said twenty-five
+yards, but it looked to me like _feet_. He was going all out, and so
+were we, and I pulled off as his stem showed abreast the tubes--all
+spray and grey paint--and those fish hit him abaft the second funnel.
+Eh? Well, perhaps it was a few yards, but it's the closest I've seen to
+going alongside a gangway. Well, that's all I knew about it for half an
+hour. The bang put me out. Skipper said he turned back and searched for
+her, but it was so thick then he couldn't have found an island except by
+mistake. We'd been hit below water too and couldn't steam much. We got a
+tow home. Good egg! Here's St Pancras, and there's a flapper--thirty if
+she's a day--Good old blinkin' London!"
+
+
+
+
+THE QUARTERMASTER.
+
+
+    I mustn't look up from the compass-card, nor look at the seas at all,
+    I must watch the helm and compass-card,--If I heard the trumpet-call
+    Of Gabriel sounding Judgment Day to dry the Seas again,--
+    I must hold her bow to windward now till I'm relieved again--
+            To the pipe and wail of a tearing gale,
+                Carrying Starboard Ten.
+
+    I must stare and frown at the compass-card, that chases round the
+                   bowl,
+    North and South and back again with every lurching roll.
+    By the feel of the ship beneath I know the way she's going to swing,
+    But I mustn't look up to the booming wind however the halliards
+                   sing--
+            In a breaking sea with the land a-lee,
+                Carrying Starboard Ten.
+
+    And I stoop to look at the compass-card as closes in the night,
+    For it's hard to see by the shaded glow of half a candle-light;
+    But the spokes are bright, and I note beside in the corner of my eye
+    A shimmer of light on oilskin wet that shows the Owner nigh--
+            Foggy and thick and a windy trick,
+                Carrying Starboard Ten.
+
+    Heave and sway or dive and roll can never disturb me now;
+    Though seas may sweep in rivers of foam across the straining bow,
+    I've got my eyes on the compass-card, and though she broke her keel
+    And hit the bottom beneath us now, you'd find me at the wheel
+            In Davy's realm, still at the helm,
+                Carrying Starboard Ten.
+
+
+
+
+A LANDFALL.
+
+
+The dawn came very slowly--a faint glow in the sky spreading until
+first the streaming forecastle and then the dirty-yellow seas could be
+seen. The destroyer was steaming slowly along the coast with the wind
+just before the beam. She made bad weather of it, lurching at
+extraordinary angles from side to side, yawing from two to four points
+off her course, and throwing her stern up as each wave passed under
+her, until the water spouted in the wake of her slowly-moving
+propellers. The wind and the mist had come together, and the
+visibility extended to perhaps three or four foaming wave-crests away.
+They knew within a dozen miles where they were, but a dozen miles is
+too vague a reckoning to make a mine-guarded harbour from, and her
+captain, with the greatest respect for the fact that he was on a dead
+lee shore, and a most inhospitable and rocky shore at that, was
+feeling for the land with an order for "Hard-over" helm running
+through his head. Occasionally he ceased his staring out on the lee
+bow to look back along the deck. The sight each time made him frown
+and tighten his lips. The beam-sea was sweeping across the ship
+regularly every half-minute. The water shot across her 'midships three
+feet deep, and foaming like a Highland burn in spate. The squat
+funnels showed through the turmoil of water and spray, streaked
+diagonally upwards with crusted white salt, through which showed
+patches of red funnel-scale; from them came a steady roaring note--the
+signal of suppressed power below them. Battened-down as she was, he
+knew that the hatches were not submarine ones; built as they were on a
+foundation little thicker than cardboard, they could not keep out such
+seas, and he visualised the turmoil and discomfort there must be
+beneath him on the flooded decks. He, personally, had not seen in
+what state she was below, having been on the bridge for the last nine
+hours, but he felt he would like to take a look at his own cabin and
+see if his worst foreboding--a foot of water washing to and fro across
+a sodden carpet--was true.
+
+He glanced at his wrist-watch, and then to the east. Half-past seven
+and full daylight. Well, he thought, it might as well be just dawning
+still for all the light there was. Air and sea were the same colour, a
+creamy dull white, and they merged into one at a range of perhaps five
+hundred yards. If only he could--he raised his head sharply and turned
+to face out on the beam. Bracing his feet and gripping the rail with
+wet-gloved fingers he held his breath in an intensity of listening
+concentration. Yes, it was clearer that time, a faint high whine broad
+on the beam. He walked, timing the roll so that he had no need to
+clutch for support, to where the helmsman crouched over a wildly
+swinging compass-card, and gave an order. The destroyer came bowing
+and dipping round till she met the full drive of the sea ahead. With
+a roar and a crash the water tumbled in over the forecastle, shaking
+the bridge, and falling in tons over the ladders on to the upper deck.
+The destroyer still turned, shaking from end to end, until she had the
+sea on the other bow. The telegraph reply-gongs rang back the
+acknowledgment of an order, and easing to barely steerage-way, the
+ship settled in her new position--hove-to in the direction from which
+she had come overnight. The faint sound he had heard had seemed too
+distant for the captain to be assured of his position, and until he
+could hear it clearly and from fairly close he was not going to risk
+taking a departure from it. He knew that hove-to as she was the
+destroyer was going to be driven closer in, and with a steep-to shore
+he could allow her to accept the leeway for some time. He moved across
+and stood on the other side of the bridge, looking out to leeward, his
+attitude less strained and anxious now, as the ship was making fairly
+easy weather of it. The motion, it is true, was far more
+uncomfortable. She sidled, dived, and wallowed in a way that would
+have thrown a man unaccustomed to T.B.D.'s completely off his feet;
+but far less water was coming aboard, and the amount that did so
+arrived on a bearing from which she was better fitted to receive it.
+At the end of twenty minutes the captain began to resume his rigid
+attitude. There was something wrong somewhere. Sounds came erratically
+through fog, but this could not be counted on. He knew he had made no
+mistake in the sound he had heard. It was certainly the high note of
+the lighthouse, and not a steamer's whistle. The low note should have
+been heard in between the high ones, but the fact of not having heard
+the low was not surprising to him. One seldom heard both notes in a
+fog. But this silent gap was a nuisance, considering the rate at which
+they must be closing the land. At half an hour from his first hearing
+the sound he turned uphill to gain the wheel again, but froze still as
+the voice of the fog-horn came afresh, this time with no possibility
+of doubt. A great thuttering roar broke out, as it seemed, almost
+overhead, a deep bass note that made the air quiver. The captain
+jumped amidships and barked an order. The wheel spun hard down and the
+telegraphs whirred round, bringing the destroyer diving and leaping
+back head to sea. Looking aft, the captain had a glimpse of three
+pinnacle rocks showing a moment in the trough between two seas, and
+then the fog shut down over them again, leaving only the regular deep
+roar of the fog-signal, that grew gradually fainter astern. Two points
+at a time he eased the ship round till she was hove-to on the opposite
+tack, then he called to another oilskinned figure that stood swaying
+to the roll by the helmsman. "Will you take her now?" he said; "I am
+going to look for some breakfast. Hold her like this half an hour, and
+then turn her down wind for the run in. The tide's setting us well
+round the point now. All right?"
+
+"Yes, sir. I'll lay it off again on the chart before I turn. That was
+a queer hole in the fog, sir."
+
+"Yes, quite a big blank. Glad it wasn't much bigger. Still, we could
+see four cables under the land, and the land's alright if you've got
+your stern to it."
+
+With a huge yawn of relief he stretched his arms back and up, then
+started down the thin iron ladder on his perilous trip to the
+inevitable chaos and confusion of his cabin.
+
+
+
+
+NIGHT ROUNDS.
+
+
+It was a dark night with no moon, while only occasionally could a star
+be seen from the leader's bridge. The next astern could be made out by
+the bands of blue-white phosphorescence that fell away from her bow,
+but the rest of the line was quite invisible. The flotilla slid along
+at a pace that to them was only a jog-trot, but which would have been
+considered rather too exciting for night work by the big ships. The
+night was calm, with hardly a breath of wind, while the
+_hush_--_hush_--_hush_ from the bow-waves seemed to accentuate the
+silence and to increase the impression the destroyers gave of game
+moving down on a tiptoe of expectancy to the drinking-pool, ready at a
+sight or sound to spring to a frenzy of either offensive or defensive
+speed. On the leader's bridge men spoke in low tones, as if afraid
+that they might be overheard by the enemy--actually to enable them to
+listen better to whatever sound the echoes from the sea might carry.
+On bridges and at gun-stations look-outs stared out around them at the
+night, and there was no need for the officers to be anxious as to
+whether their men kept good watch or slept. The crews knew the rules
+of destroyer-war in the Narrow Seas--that "The first one to see,
+shoots; and the first one to hit, wins." It is true that they did not
+always see first. There were exceptions. Not so long before, they had
+been seen at a range of perhaps half a mile by an officer on the low
+unobtrusive conning-tower of a submarine. This officer had instantly
+and accurately smitten on the back of the head the sailor who shared
+his watch, and had rapped out one word "_Down!_" The sailor (evidently
+quite accustomed to this procedure) had vanished down the
+conning-tower like a falling stone, the officer's boots chasing the
+man's hands down the ladder-rungs. The lid had clanked down and
+locked just a few seconds before a little "plop" of water closed over
+the swirling suction that showed where a big patrol submarine had
+been. The boat was English (that is to say, her Captain was Scotch,
+and her First Lieutenant Canadian, while the remainder of her officers
+and men together could hardly have mustered half a dozen men from the
+Home Counties), but she had no intention of risking explanations at
+short range with her own friends. She had been warned of their coming,
+but she looked on it as a piece of extraordinarily bad luck to have
+been met with at visibility range on such a dark night and to have
+been inconvenienced into a matter of ninety feet in a hurry. But it is
+known that submarines dive for almost everything and swear at everybody.
+
+As the flotilla moved on its way a portent showed on the bow to
+landward. A faint red glow began to light up the low clouds over the
+Belgian frontier, and the bridge look-outs whispered together as they
+watched it brighten. As it grew clearer it showed to be not one
+light, but a rapid-running succession of instantaneous lights far
+inland. The white pencil of a searchlight beam showed and swung to the
+zenith and back--perhaps half-way between the watchers and the flicker
+in the sky. Ten minutes later, as the light drew farther aft, a faint
+murmur of sound (that began as a mere suspicion, and grew to be
+unmistakably but barely audible) announced the origin of the glow.
+
+On the leader's bridge the tall officer in the overcoat spoke to the
+shorter one in the "lammy." "That's a bit on the big side for a night
+raid--they must be attacking round by----"
+
+"Yes, sir; there's something like what they call 'drum-fire' going on.
+Wonder why they put searchlights on for it, though?"
+
+"Can't guess. They'll have 'em on on the coast in a minute too, if I
+know them. Perhaps when they hear guns inland they think it's airbombs
+coming down. There they go! Two of 'em----"
+
+The searchlights came on together, and on such a clear and dark night
+they seemed startlingly close. They swept the heavens over and back,
+steadied awhile pointing inland, and went out again, leaving an even
+inkier blackness than before, and setting the watchers blinking and
+rubbing their dazzled eyes. Away to the south-east the pulsating growl
+of the guns continued, though the breadth and height of the glow in
+the sky was gradually decreasing.
+
+"There isn't any fighting on near the coast now, sir. That must be
+away down in France. If they'd only fire slow we'd be able to get a
+sort of range by the flash."
+
+"You'd have to hold your watch for some time, then," said the taller
+officer. "I haven't the inland geography well enough in my head to say
+where it is, but that scrap's nearer seventy than sixty miles from
+here. Good Lord! And I suppose we'll read in the papers when we get in
+that 'there was activity at some points.'"
+
+"And from here it looks like Hell. What it must be like close to----!
+Wish we could run up one of the canals and join in, sir."
+
+"You'd be too late if we could. It's dying out now. Just as well, too;
+it keeps all the look-outs' heads turned that way. How's the time? All
+right, we'll turn now and try back."
+
+The glow faded and passed, and left the velvety dark as blank as
+before. The leader swung round on a wide curve, and, as if held by one
+long elastic hawser, the flotilla followed in her gleaming wake. At
+the same cantering speed as they had come, they started on the long
+beat back of their bloodthirsty prowl, at the moment when the Scotch
+submarine officer turned over the watch to his Canadian subordinate.
+
+"I've sheered right out now, and they ought to be clear of us all
+right, but keep your eyes skinned for them and nip under if you see
+them again. They're devilish quick on the salvoes in this longitude,
+and 'pon my soul I don't blame 'em either."
+
+
+
+
+IN THE BARRED ZONE.
+
+
+    They called us up from England at the breaking of the day,
+    And the wireless whisper caught us from a hundred leagues away--
+            "Sentries at the Outer Line,
+            All that hold the countersign,
+    Listen in the North Sea--news for you to-day."
+
+    All across the waters, at the paling of the morn,
+    The wireless whispered softly ere the summer day was born--
+            "Be you near or ranging far,
+            By the Varne or Weser bar,
+    The Fleet is out and steaming to the Eastward and the dawn."
+
+    Far and away to the North and West, in the dancing glare of the
+                   sunlit ocean,
+    Just a haze, a shimmer of smoke-cloud, grew and broadened many a
+                   mile;
+    Low and long and faint and spreading, banner and van of a world in
+                   motion,
+    Creeping out to the North and West, it hung in the skies alone
+                   awhile.
+
+    Then from over the brooding haze the roar of murmuring engines
+                   swelled,
+    And the men of the air looked down to us, a mile below their feet;
+    Down the wind they passed above, their course to the silver
+                   sun-track held,
+    And we looked back to the West again, and saw the English Fleet.
+
+    Over the curve of the rounded sea, in ordered lines as the ranks of
+                   Rome,
+    Over the far horizon steamed a power that held us dumb,--
+    Miles of racing lines of steel that flattened the sea to a field of
+                   foam,
+            Rolling deep to the wash they made,
+            We saw, to the threat of a German blade,
+            The Shield of England come.
+
+
+
+
+A MATTER OF ROUTINE.
+
+
+There was little or no wind, and only a gentle swell from the south.
+The ships rose and fell lazily as they steamed to the south-eastward,
+while only occasionally a handful of light spray fell across a sunlit
+forecastle, drying almost as it fell. But if the air was still the
+ships were certainly not so--as vast as a great moving town, the Fleet
+was travelling at the speed of a touring car. From the Flagship's
+foretop the view was extraordinary. Destroyers or light cruisers when
+pressed seem to be slipping along with something always in hand and
+with no apparent effort; a battleship, however, seen under the same
+conditions, makes one think of St Paul's Cathedral being towed up the
+Thames; she carries a "bone in her teeth," and her bows seem to
+settle low and her stern to rise. In this case the Grand Fleet was
+hurrying--moving south-east at full speed, because--well, they _might_
+just cut the enemy off; but the Hun was canny, and knew exactly the
+danger-limit in this game of "Prisoner's base."
+
+The visibility was good, and as far as the eye could see the water was
+torn and streaked with the wakes of ships--cruisers, destroyers,
+battleships, and craft of every queer and imaginable warlike use. The
+great mass of steel hulls had one thing only in common--they could
+steam, and could steam always with something in hand above the "speed
+of the Fleet." From the ships came a faint brown haze of smoke that
+shimmered with heat and made the horizon dance and flicker. From the
+foretop, looking aft, it seemed incredible that there could be any
+power existing which could drive such a huge beamy hulk as the
+Flagship was, and leave such a turmoil of torn and flattened water
+astern. Battleships in a hurry are certainly not stately; an elderly
+matron in pursuit of a tram-car shows dignity compared to any one of
+them. But if they looked flustered and undignified, they carried a
+cargo which no one could smile at. "_Battleships are mobile
+gun-platforms._" I forget who said that--probably Admiral Mahan--but
+it is true; and if these ships showed an ungraceful way of moving,
+they certainly complied with the definition of gun-platforms. The
+low-sloped turrets all pointed the same way--out to the starboard bow.
+The long tapering guns moved up and down, following the horizon
+against the roll, and sighing as they moved, as if the hydraulic
+engines were weary of the long wait. On the tops of the turrets the
+figures of officers could be seen pacing to and fro across the
+steel--checking now and then to stare at the southern horizon.
+Somewhere out there beneath the blazing sun were the scouts, and
+beyond them--well, that question was one that the scouts were there to
+answer. The smaller ships in sight seemed like motor-cycle pacers
+escorting a long-distance foot-race. With their sterns low and their
+bow-waves running back close to the beautifully-shaped hulls, they
+gave the impression of sauntering along at their leisure and of
+looking impatiently over their shoulders at the big heavy-weights
+astern of them. A destroyer division suddenly heeled and altered
+course like redshank, each ship turning as the leader swung, and with
+a fountain of spray at their sharp high stems they cut through the
+intervals of a Battleship division, swinging up again together to the
+south-east course as they cleared. The watcher in the top had seen the
+trick before, but familiarity could not prevent his eyes from widening
+a little as he saw the stem of his next astern throw up a little cloud
+of spray as it met the foaming V-wake that followed a few yards from
+the leader's counter. He smiled as he thought of an old picture in
+'Punch' of a crowd of small children urging and dragging a huge
+policeman along to a scene of disturbance. The darting, restless
+destroyers seemed like the small bloodthirsty boys--hurrying on ahead
+to see the fun, and then back to wait for the ponderous but willing
+upholder of the law--anxious to miss nothing of the excitement.
+
+The Fleet was running down to intercept, and might be in action at any
+moment if the luck held, but there was no signalling or outpouring of
+instructions. There was just nothing to be said. Everybody knew more
+or less what the tactical situation was; all knew that the enemy might
+be met with any time in the next few hours, but in the turrets the
+guns' crews proceeded with the all-important task of getting outside
+as much dinner as they could comfortably stow. The procedure of
+endeavouring to meet the High Sea Fleet and of dealing with it on
+sight had been rehearsed so often, that the real thing, if it came,
+would call for one signal only, and no more. Many prophets have said
+that the increase of Science and Applied Mechanics in the Navy would
+make men into mere slaves of machines, and into unthinking units. This
+is another theory which has been shown to be hopelessly
+wrong--certainly so in the Navy, as in it both officers and men are
+taught, and have to be taught, far more of the reasons for and the
+object aimed at in the Rules for Battle than ever Nelson thought it
+necessary to communicate to his subordinates in the last Great War.
+The Prussian system may be good, but it produces a bludgeon--ours
+produces the finest tempered blade.
+
+The sight from the foretop was a thing that one would remember all
+one's life, and be thankful not to have missed. The almost
+incalculable value of the great mass of ships--the whirl of figures
+conjured up by a rough estimate of the collective horse-power and the
+numbers of men present; the attempt and failure to even count the
+actual ships in sight; the vision of a scared and wondering neutral
+tramp lying between the lines with engines stopped as the great masses
+of grey-painted steel went past her along the broad highroads of
+churned water,--this was the Fleet at sea; and the known fact that it
+would wheel, close, or spread at the word of one man, from the ships
+that foamed along four hundred yards away to those whose mastheads
+could only just be seen above the horizon, made the wonder all the
+greater. One thought of the thousands of eyes looking south in the
+direction of the big gun-muzzles, of the shells that the guns held
+rammed close home to the rifling, and of the thousands of brains that
+were turning over and over the old question, "Is it to be this time,
+or have they slipped in again?"...
+
+
+
+
+WHO CARES?
+
+
+            The sentries at the Castle Gate,
+            We hold the outer wall,
+            That echoes to the roar of hate
+            And savage bugle-call--
+    Of those that seek to enter in with steel and eager flame,
+    To leave you with but eyes to weep the day the Germans came.
+
+            Though we may catch from out the Keep
+            A whining voice of fear,
+            Of one who whispers "Rest and sleep,
+            And lay aside the spear,"
+    We pay no heed to such as he, as soft as we are hard;
+    We take our word from men alone--the men that rule the guard.
+
+            We hear behind us now and then
+            The voices of the grooms,
+            And bickerings of serving-men
+            Come faintly from the rooms;
+    But let them squabble as they please, we will not turn aside,
+    But--curse to think it was for them that fighting men have died.
+
+            Whatever they may say or try,
+            We shall not pay them heed;
+            And though they wail and talk and lie,
+            We hold our simple Creed--
+    No matter what the cravens say, however loud the din,
+    Our Watch is on the Castle Gate, and none shall enter in.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNCHANGING SEX.
+
+
+    When the battle-worn Horatius, 'midst the cheering Roman throng--
+    All flushed with pride and triumph as they carried him along--
+    Reached the polished porch of marble at the doorway of his home,
+    He felt himself an Emperor--the bravest man of Rome.
+    The people slapped him on the back and knocked his helm askew,
+    Then drifted back along the road to look for something new.
+    Then Horatius sobered down a bit--as you would do to-day--
+    And straightened down his tunic in a calm, collected way.
+    He hung his battered helmet up and wiped his sandals dry,
+    And set a parting in his hair--the same as you and I.
+    His lady kissed him carefully and looked him up and down,
+    And gently disengaged his arm to spare her snowy gown.
+    "You _are_ a real disgrace, you know, the worst I've ever seen;
+    Now go and put your sword away, I _know_ it isn't clean.
+    And you must change your clothes at once, you're simply wringing wet;
+    You've been doing something mischievous, I hope you lost your bet....
+    Why! you're bleeding on the carpet. Who's the brute that hurt you so?
+    Did you kill him? _There's a darling._ Serve him right for hitting
+                   low."
+    Then she hustled lots of water, turning back her pretty sleeves,
+    And she set him on the sofa (having taken off his greaves).
+    And bold Horatius purred aloud, the stern Horatius smiled,
+    And didn't seem to mind that he was treated like a child.
+    Though she didn't call him Emperor, or cling to him and cry,
+    Yet I rather think he liked it--just the same as you and I.
+
+
+
+
+TWO CHILDREN.
+
+
+His age was possibly nineteen, and his general appearance had decided
+the members of his last gunroom mess in their choice of a nickname for
+him. "Little Boy Blue," or "Boy" for short, would probably stick to him
+throughout his naval career. The name had certainly followed him to his
+present appointment as "third hand" of a destroyer, where the other
+sub-lieutenants of the flotilla were not likely to allow him to forget
+it. He would have made a perfect model for a Burne-Jones angel. His
+mother would have worded that comparison differently, being under the
+impression that no angel could hope to equal him: on his part, he always
+took most filial care not to disillusion her on such a point. At the
+moment, in the first flush of glory induced by the fact that he had
+left gunroom life for ever, and that his midshipman's patches were
+things of the recent past, he was making the most of a week's leave, and
+making the most also of the opportunity of cultivating the society of a
+home Attraction whom the discerning eyes of his mother may or may not
+have yet noticed. The Attraction was aged sixteen, extremely pretty,
+and, as is usual in such cases, extremely self-possessed.
+
+The Boy, as he accompanied her along the garden path, was not feeling
+self-possessed at all. He had discovered from frequent experience that
+the only position he could retain with reference to the lady as she
+walked was, as he would put it, "half a cable on the starboard quarter."
+Knowing as he did that he was being kept thus distant by intention, he
+followed the broad lines of strategy which his naval training had taught
+him, and acted in a way which on such occasions is always right--that
+is, he aroused doubt and curiosity in the mind of his adversary.
+
+The lady, who--carrying a ball of string in one hand and a bowl of
+peas in the other--had walked in cool silence for at least fifty
+yards, turned suddenly and spoke.
+
+"I suppose this is the first time you've----What _are_ you staring at?"
+
+The Boy blushed at once. "I beg your pardon," he murmured; "I----"
+
+"Is my hair coming down?"
+
+The Boy looked fixedly again at a large black bow which, as he told me
+afterwards, "held the bight of it up." "No-o," he said slowly.
+
+"Then don't stare at it, and don't lag behind. What was I saying?"
+
+"You asked me how long leave I'd got."
+
+"I didn't--you've told me that, and anyhow I've forgotten. I was going
+to ask you if this is the first time you've done any war-work."
+
+"Yes, I was out in the Straits till last Thursday week, and----"
+
+"Don't be silly. I mean work like this, digging and doing without
+things, and helping, and so on."
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is. I haven't had time, really----"
+
+The lady turned on him in righteous scorn. "_Time_--oh, you're one of
+the worst I know. Won't you _ever_ take the war seriously? You just
+look on it all as a joke, and you won't make _any_ sacrifices. Now
+come here--take the other end of this string, and lay it out till I
+tell you to stop."
+
+The Boy meekly obeyed instructions. He pegged the end of the string
+firmly down and returned to the Attraction, who was engaged in hunting
+out a hoe from among a litter of horticultural implements that lay in
+a corner of the garden wall. He stood watching her for a moment, and
+with her eyes away from him, his attitude altered slightly and became
+almost proprietary, while his face seemed to harden a shade and give
+an inkling of the naval stamp that it would develop later on. She
+looked round suddenly and saw him again as a shy and awkward youth.
+
+"Have you done it?" she said. "All right, you can really start doing
+some work now. I'm going to make you dig a trench. _That's_ the best
+way to serve your country when you're ashore and have the chance. And
+to think you've never used a hoe before!"
+
+The Boy scraped the hoe reflectively with the toe of his boot. It did
+not seem to him politic to mention the fact that vegetable gardens do
+not usually grow either on the decks of battleships or on the
+shell-beaten slopes of Gallipoli. He made no attempt to follow the
+tortuous wanderings of a feminine mind, but held on his own course.
+"Are you going to help?" he said.
+
+"No. You'd only loaf at the work if I did, and I've got other things
+to do, too. Now, come along and start, or you'll never get it finished
+by to-night."
+
+"I'm leaving to-morrow," said the Boy.
+
+"So you've told me--heaps of times to-day. But you must finish that
+trench before you go."
+
+The Boy nodded and walked away towards the pegged-out end of the
+string. The lady, without turning her head, walked back up the path
+until she came to the grassy slope at its end. Selecting a spot from
+which a view could be obtained through the hedge of her oppressed
+admirer, she sat down and carefully laid the basin of peas on the bank
+beside her.
+
+"He's rather a dear," she observed cautiously to herself. "But he _is_
+such a child. 'Wonder why boys are always so awfully young compared to
+women?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The flotilla would have turned round for its run back in another
+half-hour if the last destroyer in the enemy's line had not shown a
+faint funnel-glare for the fractional part of a second. They were only
+a couple of miles from the end of the "beat" when it showed, and
+considering the poor visibility that accompanied the frequent
+snow-showers, it was a piece of happy luck that the glare was seen at
+all. Three people on the leader's bridge saw it together; two of them
+gave a kind of muffled yelp, as foxhound puppies would at sight of
+their first cub, while the third gave an order on the instant. The
+destroyer settled a little by the stern, her course altered slightly,
+and she began really to travel. For some hours she had been jogging
+along at seventeen knots, but her speed now began to rise in jumps of
+five knots at a time, till in a few minutes she had become a mad and
+quivering fabric of impatient steel. As she gained her speed the snow
+began to pour down again, blotting out the faint shadow that had meant
+the bow of her next astern. The Captain glanced aft once, and then
+continued his intent gazing forward. He had passed a rough bearing and
+the signal to chase to his subordinates astern, and could do no more
+till he could get touch again. He had no intention of easing his speed
+to wait for clearer visibility. He knew too much of flotilla war to
+let a chance of fighting go by in that way. If he once got to the
+enemy, the rest of his flotilla would steer to the sound of the guns;
+and anyhow, he decided, if he did have to fight single-handed, the
+worse the visibility was and the greater the confusion and doubt among
+the enemy, the better would be the chances for him. The snow ahead
+cleared for a minute to leave a long narrow lane between the showers,
+and he saw the loom of the last ship of the enemy's line. The German
+destroyer seemed to fall back to him, as if she was stopped, though in
+reality she was holding station on her next ahead at a fair sixteen
+knots. With a startling crash and a blaze of blinding light the guns
+opened from along the leader's side--the German guns waiting,
+surprised, for a full minute before they replied. When they did open
+fire, the duel had become too one-sided to be called a fight at all.
+Between the crashes of the guns, the clatter and ring of ejected
+cartridge-cases could be heard but faintly, yet as the big leader
+passed her battered opponent at barely half a cable distance, through
+the din and savage intensity of a yard-arm fight the quartermaster
+stooped over his tiny wheel, oblivious to all things but the clear
+quiet voice that conned the ship past and on to her next victim. The
+rear destroyer of the enemy swung away, stopped, and remained--a
+horrible illustration of the maxim of naval warfare, which says that
+he who is unready should never leave harbour.
+
+At the head of the German line a man of decision had acted swiftly. As
+the blaze of the gun-fire broke out astern of him, and before the
+first German gun had fired a round, he had swung the leading division
+four points off its course. As the British destroyer tore on up the
+line, he swung inwards again and closed on her to engage on her
+disengaged side. As a piece of tactics it was pretty and well
+performed, but nothing can be judged to perfection in war, and this
+evolution was no exception to the rule. As he closed in on the British
+leader, she started her broadside on her second quarry,--an opponent
+better prepared than her first,--and the snow-laden air quivered to
+the shock of furiously worked guns. The flashes lit the contending
+ships in rippling, blinding light, and across the foaming waters that
+the fighters left in their passage, the drifting snow showed up like
+flying gold. At short range the leading German division broke in with
+a burst of rapid fire, and in his swift glance towards this menace
+from his disengaged side the British leader saw the flaw in his
+enemy's harness. The last of the German division was too far astern
+for safety in view of the fact that the British ship was at the moment
+fighting-mad. The German leader had a glimpse of a high bow swinging
+round towards him in the midst of salvoes of bursting shell--then came
+an increased burst of firing from down the line astern, followed by a
+great crash and a dull booming explosion. The gun-fire died down and
+stopped as the guns' crews lost sight of their target, until the
+scattered flotilla was running on in the same darkness as had preceded
+the fight, though in far different condition. The German leader was
+not sure as to what had happened to the first of his command to be
+attacked, but he knew well what had come to the rear ship of his own
+division. She had been blown up in the shock of being rammed by the
+English madman, and although she had probably taken her slayer with
+her, she had left an impression on the minds of the rest of the
+flotilla on the subject of what odds an English ship considered to be
+equal, that would take some considerable drilling to eradicate. He
+flashed out a signal to tell his unseen ships to concentrate, and the
+signal, shaded as it was, drew down a salvo of shell from half a mile
+away on his quarter. At full speed he tore on for home, realising a
+fact that he had only suspected before--that the savage who had
+attacked him had been but the forerunner of a flotilla of unknown
+numbers and strength. The crackling sound of battle--a battle at a
+longer range now--passed on and died down as the unheeding snow
+smothered both light and sound. Both flotillas were occupied, and in
+their occupation had no time to think of what was left astern of
+them,--a shattered German destroyer stopped, helpless, and an easy
+prey for the returning British--a litter of lifebelts, corpses, and
+wreckage, that marked the grave of the rammed ship--and a
+barely-floating hulk, her stern and half her deck only above water,
+that lay rolling to the swell; a broken monument to a man who had
+fought a good fight and gone to his death with the sound of the
+trumpets of the Hall of all Brave Men calling in his ears.
+
+The Boy twisted the seaman's silk handkerchief more tightly round his
+left wrist, and drew another fold across his broken hand. He snapped his
+orders out furiously, and men hastened to obey them. He knew that his
+after-gun was the only one above water, and that the sloping island of
+the stern that formed its support was not likely to retain buoyancy
+long, but so long as there were survivors clustered aft and dry
+ammunition with which they might load, he was going to be ready for
+fighting. To the luck that caused one of his flotilla to lose touch in
+the chase and blunder across him, he owed the fact that he was ever able
+to fight again. She came tearing by down wind--threw the narrow beam of
+a searchlight full on to him--and recognising by that extraordinary
+nautical "eye for a ship," which can see all when a landsman could see
+nothing, that the sloping battered wreck was the remnant of a ship of
+her own class, turned on a wide sweep to investigate. The Boy knew
+nothing of her nationality, and cared less what her intentions were. In
+the midst of a litter of ammunition, wounded men, and half-drowned or
+frozen survivors, he slammed shell at her from his sightless and tilted
+gun till his store of dry cartridges dwindled and failed him. His
+shooting was execrable; he could hardly make out the dark blotch that
+was his target as, astonished and silent, she circled round him. Savage
+and berserk, he fired till his last round was gone, then drew his motley
+collection of ratings around him, and with pistol, knife, and spanner
+they waited for their chance to board.
+
+A long black hull slid cautiously into view and closed them, till up
+against the beating snow and rising wind a voice roared out through a
+megaphone a sentence which no German could ever attempt to copy--"You
+blank, blank, blank," it said, "are you all something mad?"
+
+The Boy stood up, and his wounded hand just then began to hurt him
+very much. "No sir," he called in reply. "I'm sorry, sir; I made a
+mistake. We've got a lot of wounded here."
+
+The night seemed to turn suddenly very cold, and he realised that at
+some moment since the collision he must have been in the water.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Boy did not see her till he had left the train and was half-way
+along the station platform. Then she came forward from the
+ticket-collector's barrier, and he discovered with a start that not
+only was the sun shining, but that the world was a very good place to
+be alive in. He dropped his suit-case to shake hands, and then hastily
+snatched it up to forestall her attempt to carry it for him. She
+turned and piloted him out of the station to where an ancient
+"growler" waited, its steed dozing in the sunshine. "I ordered this
+old thing, as I thought you mightn't be strong enough to walk, but
+you're not such an invalid as I expected. The carrier is bringing your
+luggage." The lady spoke, looking him carefully over from under the
+shade of her hat.
+
+"Walk! Yes, of course I can. I'm not an invalid. I--No, I mean--let's
+drive." He slung his suit-case hastily in through the open cab door.
+
+The lady seemed to see nothing inconsistent in his incoherencies. She
+may have possibly followed his train of thought. She merely nodded,
+and reached in for his suit-case, which she swung easily upwards, to
+be received by the driver and placed on the roof. She then stepped in,
+and watched as the Boy cautiously entered and took his station beside
+her. With what seemed almost a yawn, the old horse roused and began
+to work up to his travelling pace, a possible five miles to the hour.
+
+"Well, Boy," said the lady, "and what sort of a time did they give you
+in hospital?"
+
+"Oh--quite decent, you know; but mighty little to eat. I believe they
+put every one on low diet as soon as they get there just to keep them
+humble and quiet."
+
+"Well, your mother's just dying to feed you up, so you'll get awfully
+fat soon. How's the hand?"
+
+The Boy stretched out his left arm and showed a suspiciously
+inert-looking brown glove. "Only three fingers gone and some bits
+missing. It's stopped my golf all right, though."
+
+"But you'll still be able to hunt and shoot and you'll work up some
+sort of a golf handicap again when you're used to it. What was the
+battle like, Boy?"
+
+"Oh--just the usual sort of destroyer scrap. We saw them first in our
+packet, and so we got most of it. It was a good scrap, though."
+
+"Will you be able to go to sea again, or will they----?"
+
+The Boy flushed and leaned back. "Of course I will--I've got a hand
+and a half, and they can't stick me in a shore job when I've got that
+much." The lady put a hand swiftly out and rested it on the padded
+brown glove. "Of course they can't. Sorry, Boy. I never thought they
+would, you know." The Boy instantly brought his right hand across,
+and, catching the sympathetic hand that lay on his glove, kissed it
+with decision. He then leaned back again to the musty padding of the
+cab, rather shocked at his own temerity. The lady, however, showed no
+signs of confusion at all.
+
+"How long sick leave did they give you? Do you have to go back to the
+hospital, or do you just report at the Admiralty?"
+
+"I don't know,--look here, when are we going to be engaged?"
+
+"When we're old enough, Boy--if you're good. Are you going to be?"
+
+"That's a bet," said the Boy firmly. "So long as I know it's going to
+be all right, I'll be awfully good. What are you going to do with me
+on leave? I can't dig trenches for peas now--at least, not properly."
+
+"No; but if you took a little more interest in the subject, you'd know
+that at this time of year you can pick them. Now, here's your house,
+and you're going in to see your mother, and I'm going home; and you're
+not to laugh at her if she cries, and--pay attention, Boy--there's no
+need for you to wear that glove on your hand; she isn't a baby any
+more than I am."
+
+
+
+
+AN URGENT COURTSHIP.
+
+[Written with a lot of assistance from a partner.]
+
+
+The solitary figure in the R.N. Barracks smoking-room rose, stretched
+himself, and lounged across to a table to change his evening paper for
+a later edition.
+
+"Hullo! old sportsman. Where's everybody?"
+
+The "sportsman"--a precise-looking surgeon who wore a wound-stripe on
+his cuff--looked round from the litter of newspapers he had been
+turning over.
+
+"Why, lumme! if it ain't James the Giant-Killer. Here, waiter! Hi! Two
+sherry--quick! What the deuce brings you here, James?"
+
+"Just down from the North,--joining the _Great Harry_ to-morrow.
+Where's every one? Is there an air-raid on, and were the cellars too
+full for you, my hack-saw expert?"
+
+"They were not. They're damn near empty, worse luck. But the Depot
+Boxing is on to-night, and I'd be there too, only it's my turn for
+guard. It's no good your going now, you old pug; they'll finish in
+half an hour, and it's a mile away."
+
+"Oh! Well, I'm tired, anyway. I want dinner and then a bed. Of all
+filthy games, give me a war-time train journey. I've found a cabin
+here, and I found a bath, and I won't quarrel with any one for an hour
+or two."
+
+"Then, you may as well keep the cabin while you've got it, because the
+_Great Harry_ is having her mountings altered, and won't commission
+for a week yet."
+
+James Rainer swivelled round in his chair to take the sherry glass
+from the waiter. "Here's luck, Doc. I thought she commissioned
+to-morrow, though."
+
+"Gun trials to-day, and the experts didn't like her. Not much wrong, I
+believe, but she's delayed a week. Here's long life and a----" The
+surgeon paused and put his glass down. James Rainer stared at him
+somewhat truculently.
+
+"James, my boy, I was forgetting. Your little flapper's here. Ah! I
+see you know all about that."
+
+"Doc.--you're an ass; I wasn't thinking of that at all."
+
+The surgeon leaned back in his arm-chair and prepared to enjoy himself.
+
+"Ah! James, me old friend--pot companion of me youth! What a
+chicken-butcher you are! If only you hadn't been so young; two years
+ago, was it not? How the years do roll on, to be sure. And what a
+little romance it was--the blue-eyed flag-lieutenant and the admiral's
+daughter--_always_ the first two down to breakfast. And we used to
+hear, too, in the Yard, of the little expeditions when you were
+detailed to take her back to school and--_No!_ hands off! Would you
+touch me with a cheild in me arrms? Let me go and I'll tell you all
+about her--and look out for my drink, you great ruffian."
+
+"Never mind your drink." James released the surgeon's head from under
+his arm and sat down again. "Is she down here?"
+
+"She is, James--and she's a devilish pretty girl now, too. If it
+wasn't that we're most of us crocks here we'd----"
+
+A signalman entered and glanced inquiringly round the room.
+
+"Who is it for, signalman? Anybody hurt?"
+
+"No, sir." The man looked at his signal-pad again. "Send despatch
+officer to Admiralty House instantly."
+
+"Help!" The surgeon turned to Rainer. "There's only one available
+to-night, and he's at the Boxing. It's probably only stuff to be
+brought back here. What about----? But I forgot, you're tired, aren't
+you? They'd better telephone."
+
+Rainer picked up his cap. "I'm not supposed to join till to-morrow
+night, and I'm going even if it means another filthy railway journey.
+'Night, Doc!"
+
+The door banged decisively, and the surgeon chuckled at some deep jest
+of his own.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Woodcote grunted ferociously as a knock
+sounded at his study door.
+
+"Come in!" he barked. "Who is it?"
+
+He looked up to see a tall clean-shaven lieutenant enter--a
+broad-shouldered athletic figure with a heavy jaw and twinkling grey
+eyes.
+
+"Eh--Rainer, how are you, my boy? I was expecting the despatch
+officer."
+
+"Yes, sir; but as I was at a loose end at the barracks I came myself.
+I'm joining the----"
+
+"The _Great Harry_--yes, so you are. Well, it's a long time since I
+saw you. You must come and dine with us before you sail. Now, you'd
+better get off with these. I'm going to send you in the car." He
+pressed a bell and a seaman entered. "The big car at once, _and_ the
+headlights. Tell Thompson to hurry up."
+
+"Please, sir, Thompson's hurt his wrist, sir. Starting the----"
+
+"_Confound_ Thompson--he's always doing it. _Why_ does he do it? Eh?
+Eh? You can't tell me? Tell Miss Ruth to get the other car round at
+once, d'you hear?"
+
+"Now, Rainer," said the Admiral, "here's the despatch. Take it to
+Shortholme aerodrome, and bring a receipt back, d'you hear? and keep
+that girl of mine out of mischief. _Come_ in!"
+
+The door opened, and a slim leather-coated figure appeared. Rainer
+tried to keep his eyes on the Admiral, but failed dismally, his
+efforts resulting in a distressing squint. His flapper of two years
+ago was now a calm, self-possessed, and extremely pretty girl, who, in
+her role of amateur chauffeur, did not seem even to be aware of his
+presence in the room.
+
+"The car is ready, father," she said, and vanished, leaving the
+startled Rainer gaping at a vision of neat black gaiters beneath her
+short skirt.
+
+"Well, you'd better get on then," said the Admiral. "But, by the way,
+tell Forrest--Wing-Commander Forrest--to keep an eye on his machines.
+There are three German prisoners loose near here--two pilots and a
+mechanic from their Flying Corps. They may try and steal a machine to
+get away on. Tell him to lock up his hangars, or whatever he calls the
+things, and--all right--get on--get on. What are you waiting for?"
+
+Rainer, nothing loath, took his dismissal. He hurried across the hall,
+cramming the despatch, in its stiff parchment envelope, into the
+inside pocket of his overcoat as he went. The car was standing purring
+at the door, a leakage of light from the side-lamps shining on a
+demure little face behind the screen, and showing him also that the
+back near-side door was standing invitingly open.
+
+"You little darling," he thought, "as if you didn't _know_ what you are
+in for." He firmly closed the back door, sat down in the vacant front
+seat, and reached over to pull in a rug from behind him. As he did so
+the clutch was gently engaged and the car slid quietly down the drive.
+
+"It's jolly nice your driving me like this, Miss Woodcote," he said.
+"Do you drive many despatch officers?"
+
+"Why, yes, Mr Rainer; Thompson and I take turns at it."
+
+"Are you an official chauffeur, then?"
+
+"I have been for some time now."
+
+"Always here?"
+
+"No, I was at Portsmouth a bit."
+
+"Indeed? How far is it to Shortcombe?"
+
+"About twenty miles, by this road."
+
+"You didn't seem surprised to see me in your father's study."
+
+The car dodged round a tram and began a louder purr as it felt the
+open road ahead.
+
+"Well, Hickson told me you had come."
+
+"Oh! he did, did he? Did Hickson tell you anything else?"
+
+"Yes; and I don't think it's quite nice for an officer to bribe a
+butler to write and tell him things about his master's daughter."
+
+"Well, I'm damned. Hickson is a scoundrel. I told him he wasn't to."
+
+"Well, he did tell. I made him. And I think it was very wrong of you."
+
+"But I'd always looked after you before, and it's only natural I
+should like to hear you weren't getting into trouble after my eagle
+eye had left you."
+
+"Never mind about eagle eyes. It was very rude, and it mustn't go on."
+
+"It won't. I promise you."
+
+Miss Woodcote, a little piqued at such easy acquiescence, drove in
+silence for a few minutes, then, unable to restrain her curiosity,
+fell into the trap.
+
+"Well, I'm glad to hear you say so. It was a silly thing to do."
+
+"Yes, it was, perhaps. But the necessity for it has gone now, so I
+don't mind."
+
+"What do you mean by that?"
+
+"Well, I'm going to marry you now you're grown up, so----"
+
+"Will you please stop talking nonsense?"
+
+"Will you marry me?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, that's one proposal over. I think a girl can't be very distant
+with a man who's proposed to her, can she? It implies a certain
+intimacy, so to speak...?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It means, you see, a secret shared together, and that should...."
+
+A stony silence.
+
+"Of course--it's not the only secret we've had together. There was the
+matter of the fire in the kitchen, when we were making toffee and
+upset the paraffin...."
+
+Still silence.
+
+"You know two years ago I was going to marry you if I could, and I
+knew that you----"
+
+"What did you know?"
+
+"Well, you knew I'd never let you marry any one else."
+
+"Mr Rainer--will you please be quiet? I don't want to speak to you."
+
+"Damn," said Rainer, leaning back sulkily.
+
+"And don't swear, please."
+
+Rainer sat up again. "Haven't I got cause for swearing? We've come
+ten miles and I wanted to kiss you before we'd done twenty. You're
+wasting time, you know."
+
+"I don't want to kiss any one, and certainly not you."
+
+Rainer's confidence began to evaporate slightly. This was not quite
+the flapper he had known. He sighed heavily, and, leaning back again,
+turned slightly away from her, wishing that he had eyes in the back of
+his head.
+
+Miss Woodcote, secure in the knowledge that he was not so favoured by
+nature, had glanced three times in his direction before the trouble
+started. The car whirled round a corner, its speed regulated more by
+the state of the driver's temper than by good judgment, and the
+headlights shone full on a heavy farm cart which lay right across the
+road. There was a grinding of brakes, a lurch and skid, and Rainer had
+just time to throw a protecting arm across Ruth as the collision
+occurred. The screen went to pieces as the headlights went out, and
+the frightened Rainer and the extremely angry chauffeuse stared at
+each other in the dim glow of the side-lamps.
+
+"Are you hurt? Are you all right? _Ruth_...."
+
+"The _beasts_, the _beasts_. I've _never_ hit anything before. _Oh!_
+Just look at all the glass."
+
+The tone of her voice reassured the trembling lover beside her, and
+rising to his feet, he began to shed his overcoat.
+
+"Cheer up," he said. "There mayn't be as much damage as you think.
+We'll have a look at it. Hullo!"
+
+Two dark figures showed by the near side of the bonnet, and a harsh
+voice rasped out: "Out of the car and put your hands up. Quickly, now,
+or you'll get hurt."
+
+Rainer obeyed part of the order with startling alacrity. This was a
+straightforward and simple problem to deal with compared with the
+attempt to instil sense into an unreasonable, albeit delightful, girl.
+His overcoat dropped to the floor-boards and he landed on the road at
+the same moment. Two to one in a bad light was very fair odds, he
+felt, and he only regretted that he had not got his gloves on, as he
+foresaw broken knuckles for himself by the morning.
+
+He shuffled forward a few feet and went in for his left-hand
+adversary. The left feint was only a concession to orthodoxy, but the
+right hook which followed it was delivered with a grunt and twist that
+meant business. He sprang back at once behind the side-lamp, perfectly
+satisfied that the recipient of the blow was going to be a sleeping
+partner for some minutes at least. The second man came forward a
+little doubtfully, swearing in excellent German. Rainer heard a cry
+from Ruth and turned half round. A third opponent had appeared from
+behind the car, and a club or heavy stick was whirling over his head.
+For an instant Rainer hesitated, then tried to jump in under the
+weapon. He felt as he did so that it was too late, but he arrived
+safely on his man's chest, clutching for the upraised arm. The left
+hand seized something it had not expected to find--a girl's hand in a
+leather glove. The club-man roared with rage, swung round and struck
+savagely behind him. Rainer had a glimpse of a white face going down,
+and a little moan of pain from the ground sent him berserk. An arm
+came around his throat from behind, and he knew that what he had to do
+must be done quickly. He tripped the club-man and hurled himself
+sideways and back. The three figures, swaying and straining together,
+struck the car and came down. Rainer felt the arm round his neck slip
+and change to a hand. The owner of the hand instantly began to regret
+this, as Rainer's teeth were not only in good condition but had a grip
+like a bull-dog's. The club-man began to scream, and not without
+reason. To be held against a car-wheel by a twelve-stone
+rough-and-tumble expert who doesn't mind being killed if only he
+leaves his mark on you, is a bad position for any man to be in.
+Rainer's hands were on his throat, the knuckles working and straining
+upwards for the carotids, and Rainer's legs were quietly but surely
+engaged in breaking his left ankle.
+
+Then the man with the prisoned hand began to talk rapidly, and Rainer
+threw his reserve strength into his hands. He knew what was coming.
+His first opponent had awakened. He felt the man behind him wriggle
+his body clear, and then came a smashing concussion. With a feeling of
+regret that he had not been allowed another ten seconds' grip he sank
+into oblivion.
+
+Two men rose from beside him and leaned panting and gasping against
+the car. One of them subsided and sat on the running board, his breath
+rasping and tearing in his throat. The man who had felt Rainer's punch
+dropped the club, took off a side-lamp and made a hasty examination of
+the front of the car. Returning, he spoke in short abrupt sentences to
+the others, and assisted the seated man to his feet with a kick. The
+three stood and listened for a moment, then broke through the hedge
+and vanished into the night.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It seemed to Rainer in his dreams that his ship was coaling. He could
+hear the crash and rattle and roar of the winches, and there was a
+gritty taste in his mouth as if he was working in the collier's hold. He
+spat out a mouthful of dust and lifted his head. No--they weren't
+coaling. He was lying against a very hard and nobbly car, and he had a
+devil of a headache. He considered the situation a moment, and then woke
+up suddenly with a cold feeling of fear. He rose and steadied himself by
+a wing, then looked round. Yes, there she was, a few feet away, and at
+the sight of her his strength came back. He knelt down and lifted her
+shoulders. She moved a little and moaned. With trembling fingers he felt
+the top of her head and found that the cap was gone, and that there was
+a suspiciously sticky lump on her forehead. He felt for his
+handkerchief, but remembered that it was in his overcoat. Lifting the
+girl in his arms he tottered to the car and sat down in the front seat,
+while he searched the coat pockets. He found the handkerchief, and
+noted, as a side-issue, that the despatches were still there. Unscrewing
+the filling cap of the petrol tank he plunged the handkerchief in, but
+turned his head at a voice at his elbow.
+
+"Jim! What are you doing?"
+
+"Thank God! Ruth, lie still. I'm going to put some petrol on your
+head."
+
+"_Ooo!_" The lady had straightened up in her seat. "My poor head--it
+does hurt. Jim! if you put petrol on my head I'll _never_ marry you."
+
+"But, darling--I----"
+
+"Don't do it. Have you got the despatches?"
+
+"Yes. I don't think they were after them. Ruth, d'you know that chap
+would have brained me if you hadn't tackled him?"
+
+"Why did you kiss me just before I woke up?"
+
+"I didn't. I swear I didn't."
+
+"You did. I know you did."
+
+"I--I--Ruth, were you angry?"
+
+"Don't you think you might see if you can move the car, or do
+something useful?"
+
+"Ruth, were you? Ruth, I say----"
+
+"Jim, there's a car coming. All right, be quick. That will do.
+_There_, you old brute--now go and meet that car. Give me your hanky."
+
+Rainer reluctantly dodged round the farm cart, holding a side-lamp in
+his hand. The headache was forgotten, and the world seemed a
+remarkably pleasant place in spite of bruises and stiff joints. The
+car pulled up and a group of figures came towards him. "Hullo," said
+one, "what's all this?"
+
+Rainer recognised the speaker. "That you Deane?" he replied. "Three
+escaped Huns have attacked us. They've gone now. I was bringing
+despatches for the Wing-Commander, but they didn't get them. Miss
+Woodcote's in the car. She's smashed--the car, I mean--and she's had a
+blow on the head from a club."
+
+"Lord! Those are our men. They walked out to one of our machines at
+dusk just after it landed, but they ran when they were challenged.
+We're after them now."
+
+"Well, they can't get far. One's groggy and one's lame. What about
+Miss Woodcote? She'll have to be sent home. She's got a nasty crack on
+the head."
+
+"We'll send her to Admiralty House in this lorry. Give me the
+despatches and you go back with her. I'm going to spread my men out
+and hunt the fields. They must have been after your car."
+
+Rainer walked back as the air-mechanics began to move the farm cart
+out of the road. "Ruth," he said, "we're going back on this lorry.
+I've handed the despatches over, and I'm going to take you home."
+
+"Only ten miles, Jim, and you expected forty, didn't you?"
+
+"I did, but I hoped to have kissed you all the last twenty of them,
+you little angel."
+
+"Well, Jim, it looks a very dark lorry, doesn't it? But as for kissing
+me in the other car----Well, you may have decided on the last twenty
+miles, but I had arranged for the last hundred yards up the drive.
+Why? You silly old thing. I can't do two things properly at once, and
+I made up my mind when we started I was not going to be kissed when I
+was driving. Carry me across carefully, Jim, dear. I'm feeling rather
+fragile now...."
+
+
+
+
+LOOKING AFT.
+
+
+        I'm the donkey-man of a dingy tramp
+            They launched in 'Eighty-one,
+    Rickety, old, and leaky too--but some o' the rivets are shining new
+            Beneath our after-gun.
+
+        An' she an' meself are off to sea
+            From out o' the breaker's hands,
+    An' we laugh to find such an altered game, for devil a thing we
+                   found the same
+            When we came off the land.
+
+        We used to carry a freight of trash
+            That younger ships would scorn,
+    But now we're running a decent trade--howitzer-shell and
+                   hand-grenade,
+            Or best Alberta corn.
+
+        We used to sneak an' smouch along
+            Wi' rusty side an' rails,
+    Hoot an' bellow of liners proud--"Give us the room that we're
+                   allowed;
+            Get out o' the track--the Mails!"
+
+        We sometimes met--an' took their wash--
+            The 'aughty ships o' war,
+    An' we dips to them--an' they to us--an' on they went in a tearin'
+                   fuss,
+            But now they count us more.
+
+        For now we're "England's Hope and Pride"--
+            The Mercantile Marine,--
+    "Bring us the goods and food we lack, because we're hungry, Merchant
+                   Jack"
+            (As often I have been).
+
+        "You're the man to save us now,
+            We look to you to win;
+    Wot'd yer like? A rise o' pay? We'll give whatever you like to say,
+            But bring the cargoes in."
+
+        An' here we are in the danger zone,
+            Wi' escorts all around,
+    Destroyers a-racing to and fro--"We will show you the way to go,
+            An' guide you safe an' sound."
+
+        "An' did you cross in a comfy way,
+            Or did you have to run?
+    An' is the patch on your hull we see the mark of a bump in
+                   'Ninety-three,
+            Or the work of a German gun?"
+
+        "We'll lead you now, and keep beside,
+            An' call to all the Fleet,
+    Clear the road and sweep us in--he carries a freight we need to win,
+            A golden load of wheat."
+
+        Yes, we're the hope of England now,
+            And rank wi' the Navy too;
+    An' all the papers speak us fair--"Nothing he will not lightly dare,
+            Nothing he fears to do."
+
+        "Be polite to Merchant Jack,
+            Who brings you in the meat,
+    For if he went on a striking lay, you'd have to go on your knees and
+                   pray,
+            With never a bone to eat."
+
+        But you can lay your papers down
+            An' set your fears aside,
+    For we will keep the ocean free--we o' the clean an' open sea--
+            To break the German pride.
+
+        We won't go canny or strike for pay,
+            Or say we need a rest;
+    But you get on wi' the blinkin' War--an' not so much o' your strikes
+                   ashore,
+            Or givin' the German best.
+
+
+
+
+GRIT.
+
+
+The Captain of H.M. T.B.D. _Upavon_ was in a bad humour. He had
+decided when he left harbour that this patrol was going to be an
+uninteresting one, as the area allotted to him covered no traffic
+lane, and was therefore unlikely to hold an enemy within its
+boundaries. The dulness of a blank horizon had continued to confirm
+him in his opinion since the patrol began. He spoke from his arm-chair
+as the First Lieutenant struggled into his oilskins preparatory to
+going on deck for the First Watch.
+
+"I don't care what courses you steer so long as you work along to the
+west'ard and keep the alterations logged. Beat across in twelve-mile
+tacks, and tell your relief to do the same. I'll be keeping the
+morning, and I'll turn round and work east at six. Got it?"
+
+The First Lieutenant intimated that he had "got it," and, pulling his
+sou'wester well down over his ears, passed out: he was none too
+cheerful at the moment himself. The rain had been beating down in
+heavy streams since dusk, and the long oily swell that had been with
+them since leaving harbour had, although it had not wetted their
+rails, made the steady rolling rather monotonous.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The big tramp steamer might have had a fighting chance if it had not
+been for the torpedo. It hit fairly abreast her bridge, and two boats
+at the port-davits broke to splinters above the explosion, while the
+wireless instruments developed defects that would have taken a week to
+cure. The Chief Mate never saw the periscope. The explosion, and the
+sight of a hard white line stretching away to port at right angles to
+their course, were impressed on his brain simultaneously. It was a
+few seconds later when he rose shakily to his feet and mechanically
+set the engine-room telegraphs to "stop." As he did so, the Captain
+arrived with a rush on the bridge and released him from his post. He
+hurried below to examine the damage, and to fight, by every means
+possible to seamanship, the great Atlantic waters that he knew must by
+then be flooding nearly half the hold-space of the ship. Ships have
+reached harbour with worse damage than she had received, and she might
+have added another name to the list of tributes to good seamanship had
+not the enemy risen astern of them to complete his work. A shell
+hummed over them, skimming the tilted deck from two thousand yards
+away. The second shell arrived as the tramp's stern-gun fired, and the
+steamer quivered to a dull rumbling shock that told of a well-delayed
+fuse and a raking shot.
+
+The tramp's big propeller threshed along, half out of water, as her
+Captain rang down for speed with which to dodge and man[oe]uvre; but
+the vicious shells came steadily home into her, and it was a question
+only of whether the straining bulkheads forward would go before her
+stern was blown in. The stern-gun could hardly be depressed enough to
+get a clear view of its target, and Fritz knew it. The Chief Mate
+reckoned that it was about the twelfth shell that finished them.
+Following its explosion, he heard a noise that told him much,--a
+hissing, rushing sound of air from beneath his feet--the sigh of
+flooding holds.
+
+There was little time, but they did what they could. The gun's crew,
+wrestling with a refractory cartridge-box lid, hardly seemed to look
+up as the tramp sank, carrying them down as so many British seamen
+have gone down, intent only on the job in hand. In five minutes' time
+the ocean was clear again save for a half-dozen bobbing heads
+clustered round a small white upturned boat.
+
+The sea, that from the deck of the tramp had seemed to be only a long
+gentle swell, now appeared tremendous and threatening. With a cable's
+length between their smooth crests the big hills came majestically on,
+giving the numbed survivors glimpses of the empty spaces of the sea at
+intervals before lowering them back to the broad dark valleys between.
+For a few minutes the men simply paddled their feet in silence as they
+clung with unnecessary strength to the life-lines, stem, and
+stern-posts of the capsized boat; then the Chief Mate called to two of
+them by name. He gave the white-bearded, semi-conscious figure he
+supported into their charge and commenced diving, or rather ducking
+down, under the gunwale. He was blue with cold and weariness before he
+gained his object--a heavy eighteen-foot ash oar. The other two men
+came to his assistance, and between them they succeeded in passing the
+oar-loom across and under the boat, and in working it about until it
+caught and held at the far side. It took the Chief Mate a ghastly
+quarter of an hour before he could climb to the swaying keel, but
+once there he easily hauled the lighter of his assistants up beside
+him. With the other man steadying the loom in position, they swung
+their weight back on the painter clove-hitched to the bending blade.
+Time after time the oar slipped and had to be replaced, and on each
+failure the cramped workers panted and shivered a while before
+patiently setting to the task again. As they toiled, the send of the
+swell worked the boat broadside on, and suddenly as they threw back on
+the line she came sharply over, throwing them into the sea before they
+could clutch the rising gunwale with their hands. Followed an hour of
+heart-breaking baling with caps and hands, and then one by one the six
+came aboard--the old Captain, who in the face of active work was
+recovering consciousness, insisting on being at any rate one of the
+last three to leave the water.
+
+The Chief Mate collapsed at once across the after-thwart. He had been
+working with the strength of desperation, and the effort had been
+great. The others knelt or sat on the thwarts, staring around them as
+they swung periodically on the crests of the waves in hungry desire
+for the sight of help. One man faced aft and began swearing, cursing
+the cold, the Germans, the war, and, in a curious twist of
+recollection, the ship's cook, who had died twenty minutes before, but
+who had done so suffering under the accusation of having stolen the
+swearer's sugar ration. The Captain rose, steadying himself by a hand
+on the gunwale: "Stop that swearing, you," he said; "lay aft here and
+rummage these lockers. You other hands, muster the gear in the boat
+and clear away the raffle. Mr Johnson, you and I will bail for an
+hour; the boat is leaking, and we'll take the first spell. We want
+warming, I think."
+
+The Chief Mate raised his head from against the thwart--"I can't bale,
+sir; let the men do it. I'm done."
+
+"Mr Johnson, I'm sixty-five years old and I'm going to bale, and I'm
+captain of this ship."
+
+The Chief Mate clawed himself up to a kneeling position, and taking a
+sodden cap from the stern-sheets set feebly to work. As he went on he
+warmed a little, and the deadly feeling of despair began to leave him.
+The movements of men about him as they hunted for missing masts and
+oars roused him at length to an oath at a seaman who lurched against
+him.
+
+An hour later the dusk closed down, and with two men baling wearily
+the boat rose and fell to what was undoubtedly a threatening sea,
+tugging and jerking at her sea anchor. The other four crouched in the
+stern-sheets, huddled together to find warmth beneath the beating rain.
+
+"If the sail wasn't gone, sir, would you 'ave tried to make land?" A
+seaman spoke, his cheek against the Chief Mate's serge sleeve.
+
+"I would, Hanson; and if we had two sound oars, I'd use those too,"
+said the old Captain. "But even like this, I'm not going to give in or
+stop trying."
+
+One of the balers dropped his cap and leaned sideways across the
+stern-sheets. "Tell 'em the truth, sir," he said. "I know, and both
+you officers know. If we had sails and oars too and a fair wind, we
+couldn't make land under a week. We'll not live three days in this
+cold and on this ration, and there's no traffic here. For Gawd's sake
+stop shammin', an' let's take our medicine quiet."
+
+The Chief Mate swore and started to rise, but the Captain checked him.
+"One moment, Mr Johnson," he said, and turned to the ex-baler: "Listen
+now, my lad; it's not that you're afraid, it's just that you haven't
+got guts, that's your trouble. I'm an old man and I've got to die soon
+anyhow, so it oughtn't to matter to me. But I tell _you_ that I'm
+going to work till I freeze stiff on this job, and I'll never stop
+trying if every one of you does. It's true, there isn't much chance
+for us, but there _is_ a chance, and I won't let go of it. If we were
+told to come this route, it means some one else may be told to use
+it. There may be a ship just over the horizon now. I tell you, I
+don't want some one to pick me up drifting about and say, 'They
+haven't been dead an hour yet; if they'd used a bit more pluck they'd
+have pulled through. No, by God, the man that sank my ship thinks he's
+finished me, but as long as I can lift a hand I'll try to beat him.
+I'll sail ships yet in his dirty German teeth, and I'll take you with
+me in my fo'c'sle. Now get on and bale till your watch is up."
+
+The man reached forward to the floating cap and without a word continued
+to use it, ladling the icy water overside in pitifully small quantities.
+The white-bearded captain subsided again beside the Chief Mate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The _Upavon_ was still rolling heavily as her Captain came on the
+bridge for the morning watch. She rolled a little uneasily now, and
+there was a suspicion of a "top" to the seas as they lifted her. The
+Captain glowered at the crescent moon--having lost none of his
+ill-humour in the night,--while the Sub-Lieutenant nervously turned
+over the watch to him.
+
+"And we're to turn east at six, and the First Lieutenant said to be
+careful to log all alterations----"
+
+The Captain dismissed him abruptly and turned away. As if he didn't know
+his own orders! Nice thing to be told them by a young cub like that! He
+would alter round just when he liked, of course. Damn the rain! He'd
+alter course now and run down before the wind. If those young beggars
+thought he was going to spend the next two hours facing the rain, they
+were very much mistaken. Why, when he'd been their age he'd faced more
+rain than they were ever likely to meet, so--he spoke an order, and the
+ship came slowly round through ten points of the compass.
+
+"Steady, now. How's her head? South? All right; put that in the
+log--time, four-twenty...."
+
+It was six-thirty, and the dawn and two cups of cocoa had removed a
+good deal of the Captain's temper. He lit a cigarette and faced to
+windward to look at the coming weather.
+
+"M'm," he soliloquised; "and it's going to breeze up a bit too.
+There'll be some breaking seas by noon."
+
+As he was turning to continue his pacing of the bridge, he started and
+fumbled for his binoculars. He stared a while to windward, and then,
+without lowering the glasses, spoke--
+
+"Starboard fifteen, quartermaster.... Steady, now.... Steer for that
+white boat on the port bow,--see it?... _Messenger!_ go down and tell
+the First Lieutenant I want him; and call the surgeon, too."
+
+
+
+
+A MAXIM.
+
+
+    When the foe is pressing and the shells come down
+    In a stream like maxim fire,
+    When the long grey ranks seem to thicken all the while,
+    And they stamp on the last of the wire,
+    When all along the line comes a whisper on the wind
+    That you hear through the drumming of the guns:
+    "They are through over there and the right is in the air,"
+    "And there isn't any end to the Huns."
+    Then keep along a-shooting till you can't shoot more,
+    And hit 'em with a shovel on the head.
+    Don't forget a lot of folk have beaten them before,
+    And a Hun'll never hurt you if he's dead.
+    If you're in a hole and your hopes begin to fail,
+    If you're in a losing fight,
+    Think a bit of Jonah in the belly of the whale,
+    _'Cause-he-got-out-all-right_.
+
+
+
+
+FROM A FAR COUNTRY.
+
+
+Announced by the jangling of the curtain that he had almost brought
+down with his heavy suit-case, a cheerful curly-haired officer entered
+noisily and dropped into one of the Wardroom arm-chairs. He stretched
+his legs out and, lighting a cigarette, leaned back luxuriously.
+
+"Well?" said a chorus of voices, "_well_--how's London?"
+
+The curly-haired one smiled reminiscently. "Still standing, still
+standing," he replied. "No place for you though, I'm afraid. You're
+none of you good-looking enough to pass as Yanks or Colonials."
+
+"Oh, cut it out. Tell us what it's like. You know, you're the first
+one to go there from us for a year, and we want to know."
+
+"What? all about it? All right; chuck a cup of tea across and I'll
+give you the special correspondent's sob-stuff. _Aah!_ that's better;
+this train-travelling has given me a mouth like--I won't say what.
+Well, I'll try and tell you what I thought of it and the people that
+live there. I may say at once that they are civilised to the extent
+that they'll take English money without complaining about it,
+and--_all_ right, I'll get on.
+
+"Well, you know how I went off laden with meat and other cards till I
+was bulging, and how I reckoned to find people looking hungry at me as
+if they were reckoning what I'd boil down to in a stock-pot? Well, I've
+got all these cards still--didn't need 'em. I'd usually left them in my
+other coat when I got started on meals, and as they've got the trick of
+camouflaging fish and eggs till you don't know what you're eating, it
+wasn't worth hunting 'em out. All London seems to live on eggs, and
+where the deuce they all come from I don't know; they must be using up
+dumps of them. Oh, and another thing, I'd forgotten that in London they
+don't grow electric lighters on every bulkhead, and it was lucky I had a
+few matches with me. The first day I was stopped by fellers wanting a
+light off my cigarette just three times in a dog-watch, but the other
+days I didn't get asked at all--I'd lost the country-cousin look, I
+s'pose. Men? Yes, there's a fair sprinkling there still, but nothing
+under forty, I should say. Yes, there seem to be crowds of women.
+Perhaps there are actually more, or it may be that the shortage of men
+makes 'em look more; but there do seem to be heaps of them. It just made
+me marvel, too, at the extraordinary lack of imagination the women have.
+They still wear devilish short skirts, and yet there isn't one in forty
+of 'em that has a foot and ankle that one could call it decent to show.
+You'd think they'd see one another's defects and get wise, but they
+don't. I suppose that now the secret's out about their legs, they reckon
+it's too late to hide the truth and they face it out; but I'm surprised
+the young ones don't camouflage themselves a bit and get a fair start.
+Theatres? Yes; I went through the list, revues and all. I read Arnold
+Bennett's account of a music-hall--you know the book? Yes, I read it in
+the train going down. Well, I gathered from his description that things
+had flashed up a bit since the dear dead days of nineteen-sixteen, and
+that I would find myself in a hall of dazzling Eastern et-ceteras; but,
+my word! it was like tea at the Vicarage. I don't know what revue Arnold
+Bennett found, but I guess I missed it. It's true, I saw one perfectly
+_reckless_ lieutenant drop a programme out of a box into the orchestra;
+but as the orchestra didn't notice it, and I doubt if the lieutenant did
+either, it could hardly be put down to riotous conduct induced by drink
+and sensual music. Oh, I noticed one thing--all the theatre programmes
+had directions printed as to what to do in case of air-raids during the
+performance. They had it printed small and sandwiched in between the
+_hats by Suzanne_ and _dresses by Cox_ announcements. I liked that. It
+was British and dignified. I'd like to have sent some copies to
+Hindenburg. News? Yes, I heard a whole lot, but it was mostly denied in
+the papers next morning. It's a queer town for rumours. I think they all
+live too close together, and they get hysterical or something--like in
+that Frenchman's book, you know, the 'Psychology of Crowds,' or
+something like that. They weren't worrying much about the war, though. I
+stopped to look at the tape-messages in the club, and there was an
+eight-line chit on the board mentioning that the Hun was coming on like
+a gale o' wind towards Paris, while the rest of the board had eight
+full-length columns on the latest Old Bailey case, and there was another
+column coming through on the machine with a crowd waiting for more. No,
+I'm _not_ trying to be cynical. I read 'em all, but I hadn't quite got
+the London sense of proportion in two days, and it worried me that there
+was no more war news coming.
+
+"Cost? Yes, _rather_. I've spent whole heaps of bullion, and I'll have
+to ask the Pay for an advance now. It's quite easy; you just exist
+and the cash trickles off you. There's not so much of the old 'men in
+uniform free' or 'half-price to officers' going now. There aren't many
+civilians left, and I guess _they're_ just taking in one another's
+washing. Everything that isn't a necessity is double price at least,
+and I believe the shopkeepers would like to make breathing a luxury
+too. On the whole, I'm glad I only had a few days there. The air's so
+foul, you know. Mixture of scent and petrol, I think. Oh but, by the
+way, I saw a hansom--a real hansom--in Regent Street. Quite a neat
+well-kept one, too. No, nothing new in the way of dresses. Just the
+same as nineteen-sixteen, as far as I could see. There may have been
+some good-looking faces among the thousands in the West-end streets,
+but they were cancelled by the awful legs underneath. I wonder they
+ever manage to get married. Well, I saw thousands of that kind of
+female--more than one ever saw before; but I met some others who
+squared things up in my mind. Ten hours a day and clean the car
+herself for one, and oxyacetyline welding eight hours and overtime
+for another at two-five a week. Doing it to win the War, and not
+because they wanted to or liked it. Made me feel small to be on leave
+when I talked to 'em. And then, as I was leaving the hotel, a whole
+crowd of Swiss porters and servants, that had been fairly coming the
+Field-Marshal over me for three days, came oiling round me for tips,
+and pocketed the cash without a word when they got it; and--and--while
+they were doing it, a Scotch corporal walked past the taxi with three
+wound-stripes on his arm and four notches on his bayonet hilt. It's
+all a bit too puzzling for me. As soon as I got settled in one
+impression, I'd get jolted out of it by another. Heigho! I'm not sorry
+to have gone there to look, and I'm not sorry to be back." He rose,
+and moving across the Wardroom, flung open the door of his tiny cabin
+and passed in. His voice sounded hollow through the thin partition.
+"Hi! outside there--some shaving water _eck dum_," and then a
+contented murmur--"Lord! but it's good to be home again."
+
+
+
+
+THE CRISIS.
+
+
+    When the Spartan heroes tried
+      To hold the broken gate,
+    When--roaring like the rising tide--
+    The Persian horsemen charged and died
+      In foaming waves of hate.
+
+    When with armour hacked and torn
+      They gripped their shields of brass,
+    And hailed the gods that light the morn
+    With battle-cry of hope forlorn,
+      "We shall not let them pass."
+
+    While they combed their hair for death
+      Before the Persian line,
+    They spoke awhile with easy breath,
+    "What think ye the Athenian saith
+      In Athens as they dine?"
+
+    "Doth he repent that we alone
+      Are here to hold the way,
+    That he must reap what he hath sown--
+    That only valour may atone
+      The fault of yesterday?"
+
+    "Is he content that thou and I--
+      Three hundred men in line--
+    Should show him thus how man may try
+    To stay the foemen passing by
+      To Athens, where they dine?"
+
+    "Ah! now the clashing cymbal rings,
+      The mighty host is nigh;
+    Let Athens talk of passing things--
+    But here, three hundred Spartan kings
+    Shall greet the fame the Persian brings
+      To men about to die."
+
+
+
+
+A SEA CHANTY.
+
+
+    There's a whistle of the wind in the rigging overhead,
+            And the tune is as plain as can be.
+      "Hey! down below there. D'you know it's going to blow there,
+                All across the cold North Sea?"
+
+    And along comes the gale from the locker in the North
+            By the Storm-King's hand set free,
+      And the wind and the snow and the sleet come forth,
+                Let loose to the cold North Sea.
+
+    Tumble out the oilskins, the seas are running white,
+            There's a wet watch due for me,
+      For we're heading to the east, and a long wet night
+                As we drive at the cold North Sea.
+
+    See the water foaming as the waves go by
+            Like the tide on the sands of Dee;
+      Hear the gale a-piping in the halliards high
+                To the tune of the cold North Sea.
+
+    See how she's meeting them, plunging all the while,
+            Till I'm wet to the sea-boot knee;
+      See how she's beating them--twenty to the mile--
+                The waves of the cold North Sea.
+
+    Right across from Helgoland to meet the English coast,
+            Lie better than the likes of we,--
+      Men that lived in many ways, but went to join the host
+                That are buried by the cold North Sea.
+
+    Rig along the life-lines, double-stay the rails,
+            Lest the Storm-King call for a fee;
+      For if any man should slip, through the rolling of the ship,
+                He'd be lost in the cold North Sea.
+
+    We are heading to the gale, and the driving of the sleet,
+            And we're far to the east of Three.
+      Hey! you German sailormen, here's the British Fleet
+                Waiting in the cold North Sea.
+
+
+
+
+THE WAR OF ATTRITION.
+
+
+A wonderfully deep-blue sea stretched away to meet a light-blue sky,
+which was dotted with soft wool-like patches of cloud. There was a
+slight smooth swell from the south-west, and the air was cool and
+salt-laden. Looking from the conning-tower the hull of the boat could
+be clearly seen as she rose and fell to the waves, the sunlight
+flashing back steel-blue from her grey side six feet below the
+surface. It was a day that showed the sea at its best--a high Northern
+latitude in June, and a high barometer producing conditions under
+which it seemed to be a shame to be at war.
+
+There were two men on the submarine's conning-tower. The smaller of
+the two was her captain, a fair-haired man with a Prussian name which
+seemed hardly to fit in with his Norse features. The other man hailed
+from Bavaria--a tall, thin, large-headed individual, with wide-set
+eyes and a nose and lower lip that hinted of Semitic ancestry. The big
+U-boat jogged along at half speed, beating up and down in erratic
+courses--keeping always to a water area of perhaps ten miles square.
+
+The two officers leaned against a rail, their heads and shoulders
+twisting and turning continuously as they watched the distant horizon.
+Each carried heavy Zeiss glasses slung round the neck, and from time
+to time one of them would search carefully the western sea and sky,
+his doing so invariably infecting his companion into doing the same.
+The U-boat was running with a little less than half her normal
+cruising buoyancy--for speed of diving and not surface speed was the
+important qualification for her for that day. From the open
+conning-tower lid came the dull hum of the engines; while as the boat
+rolled, a shaft of sunlight, shining down the tower itself, sent a
+circle of yellow light swinging slowly from side to side across the
+deck beneath the eye-piece of the periscope.
+
+"Is it a big convoy this time, sir?" The First Lieutenant spoke
+without checking his continual twisting and turning as he glanced at
+every point of the skyline in turn.
+
+"Yes, it is a big convoy. But there is no doubt of their course or
+their speed. We shall be among them before the sunset."
+
+"You would not then dive now? That is, if you are sure----"
+
+"I do not dive till I am sure. And also we will want all the battery
+power we have before the dark. Did I not say it was a big convoy?"
+
+"You think there will be a big escort?"
+
+"We will see. I know it will be an escort I do not like to take a
+chance with."
+
+The Lieutenant fidgeted awhile, his glasses at his eyes. His Captain
+looked at his profile and at the glint of perspiration on the slightly
+shaking hands, and yawned. His face, as he swung round again to scan the
+horizon astern, looked bored and perhaps a little lonely. A submarine
+is a small ship in which to coop up incompatible natures, and the
+terrible losses of personnel in the Imperial submarine service had sadly
+reduced the standard of officers. He felt sometimes as if he were an
+anachronism, an officer of nineteen-fourteen who had miraculously lasted
+four years. He felt that it had been only the fact that a misdemeanour
+had caused him to be driven forth to the big ships for two years that
+had saved him from sharing the unknown fate of his contemporaries. Well,
+he reflected, it was only a matter of time before he would join them.
+The law of averages was stronger than his luck, wonderful though the
+latter had been. He extracted a cigar from his case and reached out a
+hand to take his subordinate's proffered matchbox. As he did so he
+glanced again at his companion's face, and a sudden feeling of
+understanding, and perhaps a touch of compassion, made him ask--
+
+"Well, Mueller? You have something that worries you. What is it, then?"
+
+The First Lieutenant turned and took a careful glance round the
+circle of empty ocean. Then his speech came with a rush--
+
+"I want to know what you think, sir. You don't seem to worry about it.
+I know you can do nothing more--that one can only do one's work as
+best one can and all that--but I still feel restless. How is it going
+to end? We are winning? Yes--oh yes, we are winning, but we have done
+that four years, and how far have we got? Before I came into
+submarines I believed all they told us, but now I know that we are not
+strangling England at sea, and that we never can now. What are we
+going to do next? Is it to go on and on until we have no boats left?
+Gott! I want to do something that will frighten them--something that
+will make them understand what we are--something that will make them
+scream for pity." He paused, gulped, and stared again out to the
+westward. The Captain straightened himself up against the rail and
+stretched his arms out in another prodigious yawn.
+
+"My good Mueller," he said, "you cannot carry the cares of Germany on
+your back. Leave that to the Chancellor. One can be sufficiently
+patriotic by doing one's work and not asking questions that others
+cannot answer. As to the submarine war--well, blame the men who would
+not let the Emperor have his way, that hindered him when he would have
+built an equal fleet to the English. I do not mean the Socialists--I
+mean others as well. I mean men who grudged money for the Navy because
+they wanted it for the Army. Curse the Army! If we had had a big fleet
+we would have won the war in a year, but now--ach! Look now,
+Mueller--you have read Lichnowsky's Memoirs? Yes, I know you are not
+allowed to, but I know you have. Now I say that what he says at the
+end is true,--that the Anglo-Saxon race is going to rule the West and
+the sea, that we shall only rule Middle Europe, and we were _fools_ to
+play for Middle Europe when we might have had the sea. We would now
+give all the Russias and Rumania and all our gains just for Gibraltar
+and Bermuda, for if we had those stations all the rest would come to
+us. We fight now for our honour, but if it were not for that--and that
+is everything--we would give our enemies good terms."
+
+"But if that is true--if we can gain no more--we have lost the war!"
+
+The Captain shrugged. "We will have won what we do not want, and lost
+all that we do; but we shall have won, I suppose. It depends on our
+diplomatists. If we can get but a few coaling-stations we shall have
+won, for it would all come to us when we were ready again. But you
+will not gain a victory by a great stroke as you say you wish, Mueller.
+The war is too big now for single strokes, and the English will not
+scream for mercy now because of frightfulness. They are angry, and
+they hate us now."
+
+"But you yourself have sunk a liner, and you showed them as she sank
+that the orders of Germany must be obeyed."
+
+The Captain's face did not alter at all. "I did do so, and I would do
+so again. My honour is clear, because I obeyed my orders. Would you
+have dared to question?"
+
+"No--by God! and I would do it gladly." The Lieutenant's face worked,
+and he scowled as he glanced astern. "I would wish that every ship of
+every convoy carried women."
+
+The Captain laughed almost genially. "It is easy to see you are not a
+Prussian," he said. "It does not matter whether you like or dislike a
+thing. All that counts is whether or not it is to the advantage of the
+State. So the Roman World-Empire was made. Myself, I doubt if killing
+women pays us; there is this talk now of the boycott of Germany after
+the war. They add time to the boycott for every time we fire on ships
+that are helpless, and the boycott is to be by sailors. I would laugh
+at such a threat if it was from any others, but sailors are not to be
+laughed at. They are likely to mean what they say. It is as I said: if
+we had fought to the West and to the sea, no man would have dared to
+threaten us with a sea-boycott now."
+
+"But even with our small Navy we have held the English checked. It is
+not our Navy that is lacking. What is it, then?"
+
+"It _is_ the Navy. It should have been as big as the English Fleet.
+And the men--Gott! Mueller. I tell you, if we had done the Zeebrugge
+attack ourselves, and I had been there, I would feel that my honour
+and the Navy's honour was safe, that we could stop and make peace. I
+would be proud to die on such a service, and I envy the Englishmen we
+buried when it was over."
+
+"But this is--Herr Capitan, you talk as if you were an Englander----"
+
+The Captain whirled on him, his eyes sparkling dangerously.
+"_Dummkopf!_" he said. "Report me if you like. I hate the English and
+I love my Fatherland, but report me if you like. Ach! You may report
+me in Hell, too; for I know--I know----"
+
+He stopped suddenly and tilted back his head to listen. The First
+Lieutenant shrank back from him, his mouth open and his hands feeling
+for the periscope support. A faint murmur of sound came down wind
+from the fleecy cloud-banks to the west. The Captain jumped to the
+opening of the conning-tower and stood, impatient and anxious by the
+lip, until his lieutenant had slipped and scrambled half-way down the
+ladder.
+
+Then he jumped down himself, pulling the lid to after him.
+Simultaneously there came a rush and roar of air from venting tanks, the
+stem of the boat rose very slightly as her bow-gun went under, and in
+twenty seconds the submarine was gone, and the bubbles and foam of her
+passage were fading into the level blue of the empty sea. A minute later
+she showed a foot of periscope a cable's length away, and a small
+airship topped the western horizon and came slowly along towards her.
+The periscope vanished again, and forty feet below the surface the
+captain watched a gauge needle beside the periscope creep round its dial
+inch by inch till it quivered and steadied at the forty-metre mark.
+
+"Diving hands only. Fall out the rest. Remain near your stations.
+Lower the periscope." The First Lieutenant barked out a repetition of
+each order as the Captain spoke. There was a shuffling of feet, some
+guttural conversation that spoke of a flicker of curiosity among the
+men of the crew, and then all was quiet but for the hum of motors and
+the occasional rattle of gearing as the hydroplane wheels were moved.
+The Captain moved forward to the wardroom, removing his scarf and
+heavy pilot-cloth coat as he walked. "Order some food, Mueller," he
+said. "I'm hungry--that airship was farther ahead of them than usual."
+He threw himself down in a long folding-chair and stretched out his
+sea-booted legs. "I won't come up to look now until I hear them.
+Relieve the listeners every half-hour, Mueller. I want to have good
+warning. We should hear a big convoy like this at twenty miles
+to-day." The curtain rings clashed and a seaman spoke excitedly as he
+entered. The Captain nodded and reached out to the table for his
+coffee-cup. "Just the bearing we expected," he said, "but if they
+sound as faint as he says there's time to get something to eat first."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a big new standard ship which drew the unlucky card in the game
+of "browning shots." The torpedo hit her well forward, its tell-tale
+track being unperceived in the slight running swell until too late. A
+big bubble of water rose abreast the break of the forecastle till it
+reached deck-level, then it broke and flung a column of spray, black
+smoke, and fragments skyward. As the ship cleared the smoke-haze, she
+was obviously down by the head and steering wildly. Two auxiliary
+patrol vessels closed on her at full speed, and the nearest freighter
+increased speed and cut in ahead of her in readiness either to tow or
+screen. The torpedoed ship, after yawing vaguely for a few minutes,
+steadied back to the convoy's course, slowing her engines till she
+only just retained steerage way. There was a rapid exchange of
+signals between her and the escort vessels, and then an R.N.
+Commander on an adjacent bridge gave a sigh of relief. "Good man
+that," he said. "We'll have him in dry dock to-morrow. It hasn't
+flurried him a bit, and I like his nerve."
+
+The explosion had caused more than the salvage vessels to leap into
+activity. The white track of the torpedo showed clearly after it had
+gone home, and the first to take action was a tramp, across whose bows
+the track passed. The tramp was a ship of the early 'nineties, and her
+full speed was at the most nine knots, but her skipper at once jammed
+her helm hard over to steer along the torpedo-wake with a somewhat
+optimistic hope of ramming. Two destroyers and an armed auxiliary did
+the same thing, with the result that the tramp skipper found himself
+suddenly in the cross-wash of the warships as they passed him at a few
+yards' distance at twenty knots. Somebody on the bridge of one of them
+screamed a profane warning at him through a megaphone, and the
+skipper, after a hurried glance at the quivering destroyers' sterns,
+jumped to the telegraph and stopped his engines. A couple of seconds
+later his ship shook to a great detonation, and a mighty column of
+water rose and broke close ahead of him. He starboarded his helm and
+swung round after the rest of the convoy, his ship shaking to
+successive explosions as more escorting vessels arrived at the spot
+where he had turned.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As his torpedoes left the tubes the U-boat captain barked out an
+order. The attack had been fairly simple, but his hardest problem was
+only beginning. The boat's bow dipped sharply in answer to the tilted
+hydroplanes, and she began her long slide down to the two-hundred-foot
+mark. She had got to fifty before a sound like a great hammer striking
+the hull told them of a successful torpedo-run. The Captain looked up
+from his watch and smiled. A moment later he was watching the gauges
+with a grave and impassive face. He knew that the fact of his torpedo
+hitting would mean greater difficulty for him in the next few hours
+than he would have known had he missed altogether. At a hundred feet
+the first depth-charge exploded, smashing gauge-glasses, electric
+lamps, and throwing a couple of men off their feet. The boat rocked
+and rolled under the shock, while orders were roared through
+voice-pipes for more emergency lights to be switched on. More charges
+exploded as the boat slid downwards, but each charge was farther away
+than the last. The half-light of the hand-lamps round the periscope
+showed the source of a sound of pouring waters--two rivets had been
+blown right out of the inner hull close before the conning-tower. The
+Captain shouted orders, and the submarine levelled off her angle and
+checked at the fifty-metre line, while two men began frantically to
+break away the woodwork which stretched overhead and prevented the
+rivet-holes being plugged. At that depth the water poured in through
+the holes in solid bars, hitting the deck, bouncing back and spreading
+everywhere in a heavy spray which drenched circuits and wires.
+
+"Mueller! where the devil are you? Start the pumps--I can't help it if
+they hear us. Start the pumps, fool!"
+
+"But you will come up? You will----"
+
+"_Schweinhund! Gehorsamkeit!_ Go!"
+
+The pumps began to stamp and clatter as they drove the entering water
+out again, but above the noise of the pumps the Captain could hear the
+roaring note of propellers rushing far overhead. If it had not been
+for those infernal rivets, he thought, he would have been at three
+hundred feet by now, but he could not risk the extra wetting which a
+pressure of a hundred and thirty pounds to the inch on the entering
+water would give to his circuits. The weight of extra water in the
+bilges was nothing--he could deal with that--though the thought of the
+six hundred odd fathoms of water between him and the bottom was a
+thing to remember anxiously in case of his getting negative buoyancy;
+but if this continual spray of salt water reached his motor circuits
+it would be fatal. He cursed the men who were vainly trying to block
+the rivet-holes with wood wedges, and jumping on the periscope table
+he tried to guide the end of a short plank--intended as a
+baffle-plate--across the stream. As he stood working, a terrific
+concussion shook the U-boat from stem to stern. The bows rose till men
+began to slip aft down the wet deck, and from aft came a succession of
+cries and shouted orders, "Close all doors! the after-hatch is falling
+in--Come up and surrender--Lass uns heraus!" The Captain rose from the
+deck beneath the eye-piece, shaky from his fall from the table. He
+hardly dared look at the gauge, but he kept his head and his wits as
+he gave his orders. With the motors roaring round at their utmost
+power and an angle up by the bow of some fifteen degrees, the U-boat
+held her own, and as tank after tank was blown empty, she slowly
+gained on the depth gauge and began to climb. As she rose, she was
+shaken again and again by the powerful depth-charges that were being
+dropped on the broken water left by the air-bubble from her after
+compartment--a surface-mark now a quarter of a mile astern.
+
+Beneath the conning-tower more and more men were gathering, some calm,
+some white, trembling, and voluble. The boat broke surface with her stem
+and half her conning-tower showing, then levelled a little and tore
+along with the waves foaming round her conning-tower and bridge. From
+inside they could clearly hear the shells that greeted her, and in a
+moment there was a rush of men up the ladder. Among the first few the
+Captain saw his First Lieutenant's legs vanish upwards, and at the sight
+a sneering smile showed on his sunburnt face. The first man to open the
+lid died as he did so, for a four-inch shell removed the top of the
+conning-tower before he was clear of it. The escort was taking no
+chances as to whether the boat's appearance on the surface was
+intentional or accidental, and they were making the water for a hundred
+yards around her fairly boil with bursting shell. As the boat tore
+ahead, holding herself up on her angle and her speed, a few men
+struggled out of her one by one past the torn body of the first man to
+get out. Two of them leaped instantly overboard, but the next clawed his
+way up to a rail, and while others scrambled and fought their way
+overside, and shells crashed and burst below and around him on water and
+conning-tower casing, he stood upright a moment with arms raised high
+above his head. At the signal the firing ceased as if a switch had been
+turned by a single hand, and he subsided in a huddled heap on the bridge
+as the riddled submarine ran under. Down below the Captain still smiled,
+leaning with his elbows on the periscope training-handles and watching
+the hurrying men at the ladder's foot, until the great rush of water and
+men, that showed that the end had come, swept him aft and away across
+the border-line of sleep.
+
+
+
+
+THROUGH AN ADMIRALTY WINDOW.
+
+
+The room was exactly the same as any room in any Government building,
+except that the Naval observer would have at once noticed one fact--that
+the furniture was of the unchanging Admiralty pattern. The roll-top
+desk, the chairs, and even the lamp-shades, would have been to him
+familiar friends. They were certainly familiar to the Post-Captain who
+sat at the desk. Captain Henry Ranson had been a noted Commander before
+his retirement--a man of whom many tales, both true and apocryphal,
+still circulated when Senior Officers of the Fleet forgathered at the
+lunch intervals of Courts-Martial and Inquiries. He had little
+opportunity in his present War appointment to display any of the
+characteristics on which his Sagas had been based, for neither
+seamanship, daring, or, well--Independent Initiative, were quite in
+keeping with the routine of an Admiralty Office.
+
+To-day he was feeling the claustrophobia of London more acutely than
+usual. The sun was shining through the big window across the room, and
+he wanted to rise and look out at the blue sky and white cloud-tufts
+that he knew to be showing over the buildings across the Horse Guards
+Parade. His desk gave him no view through the window--he knew the
+weakness of his powers of concentration on his eternal paper work too
+well to have allowed himself such a distraction; but as the door
+opened to admit his clerk--a firm and earnest civilian with the zeal
+of monastic officialdom shining through his spectacles--he rose
+abruptly and moved out into the sunlight glare.
+
+"Yes, Collins? What is it?"
+
+"A small matter, sir, which is not quite in order. If you will glance
+through this you will no doubt agree with me."
+
+The Captain took the sheets from the clerk's outstretched hand and
+moved a little away from the glaring light to read.
+
+     SIR,--I have the honour to bring to your notice the conduct of
+     Skipper A. P. Marsh, of the Admiralty tug _Annie Laurie_, on the
+     22nd-23rd November 1917, and I beg to recommend him for
+     decoration in view of the following facts:--
+
+         *       *       *       *       *
+
+     On November 21st, 1917, the steamer _Makalaka_, homeward bound
+     with corn, was shelled by a U-boat when near the Irish coast. The
+     enemy was dealt with by a patrol in the vicinity, but the
+     _Makalaka_, proceeding east at full speed in accordance with
+     instructions, was thrown out of her reckoning by a damaged
+     compass, and found herself at dusk on a lee shore off the Galway
+     coast, with her shaft broken (a result of shell damage which had
+     not been realised to be serious at the time it was incurred).
+     Skipper Marsh, seeing her flares from his patrol to seaward, most
+     gallantly closed her and took her in tow in a rising N.W. gale.
+     In view of the probability of the attempt to tow failing, the
+     crew of the _Makalaka_ were taken aboard the tug, but the towing
+     was continued through a full gale lasting twenty-four hours until
+     the ship was out of danger.--I have the honour to be, sir, &c.
+
+The Post-Captain folded the letter carefully and placed it on his
+desk. The clerk retrieved it, and moved towards the door. The Captain
+turned, "What are you going to do with that, Collins?"
+
+"I take it that it needs only the usual reply, sir--that this is not
+approved--with a reference to the regulation bearing on the case."
+
+"Why not approved, Collins?"
+
+The clerk was shocked, and his tone showed it. "Because that decoration
+is for gallant action in face of the enemy, and this case does not come
+within its scope. In any case the man will get salvage." [The Captain
+made an impatient gesture.] "If the Royal Humane Society care to----" he
+stopped, because the Captain had walked to the window, and, in obvious
+inattention to the speaker, was staring out across the wide Horse Guards
+and far beyond the fleecy clouds that drifted across the sky over the
+great sea of buildings that hemmed him in.
+
+Captain Ranson had gone on a journey--back through forty years of
+time, and across eighty-one degrees of longitude.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He ran up the gangway, straightened his helmet and dirk-belt, and
+approached the Commander, who, a tall dark-featured figure, was
+standing looking down on the boat as she rose and fell alongside to
+the gentle heave of the Indian Ocean--"Second cutter manned, sir."
+
+The Commander turned and looked the boy over beneath his heavy
+eyebrows. "When are you going to set up a new port shroud?" he asked.
+
+The Midshipman fingered the seam of his trousers, and looked carefully
+at the buttons on the Commander's tunic--"I thought, sir, that is,
+we've got a new shroud all fitted, but I thought--the coxswain said,
+sir--that the old one would do for to-day as the wind's nothing...."
+
+The barometric indications of the Commander's eyes showed threatening
+weather. He took the boy's arm in the grasp of a heavy hand and led
+him to the rail abreast the swinging mastheads of the boat.
+
+"Now listen, young gentleman," he said. "What the coxswain said isn't
+evidence. It's _you_ that command that boat, and _you_ that will
+handle and command her. Don't talk to me again as if you were a
+schoolboy." The Midshipman shivered and squinted cautiously up to see
+if the storm-signals were still in evidence. The dark stern eyes were
+looking down at him in a way that made him feel as if he was some
+luckless worm that had unhappily bored its way up into the publicity
+of an aviary. The Commander moved his hand and turned the boy to face
+him. "Now, you remember this, young gentleman, only seamen come
+through gales safely--it's the fools that go to sea with rusty shrouds
+and weak rigging. And if you're to be a seaman you must never go to
+sea, even in a flat calm, unless your ship is ready for a gale of
+wind. Do you understand me?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Then don't forget it, or I'll have you beaten till you grow corns. Now
+shove off, and pull away three cables on the port bow, drop your anchor
+on the shoal, and fit that new shroud. Remain there till the ship has
+got under way, done her night-firing, and signalled you to carry on. You
+will then close and weigh the target moorings, having the target ready
+for hoisting when the ship comes back to you. Do you understand?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"What have you got on your anchor?"
+
+"A hundred and twenty fathom, sir--of four-inch." "That is
+enough--there is thirty fathom on the shoal--Carry on!"
+
+The Midshipman ran down the gangway, and, jumping into the cutter,
+"Carried on." The Commander was an officer of whom the boat-midshipmen
+stood in awe, and they were always thankful when the ordeal of
+reporting a possibly unready boat to him as "ready" was over.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The last shot kicked up a yellow fountain of spray in the glare of the
+searchlight, and ricochetted, humming, over the target and on towards
+Malaya. A rocket sailed up from the distant ship--the searchlight
+flickered out a couple of Morse signs and went out, and in the velvety
+darkness of a tropic night the hands went forward in the cutter to
+weigh the anchor, the process of "shortening-in" having been
+accomplished a full hour ago. As the Midshipman stood up to
+superintend the operation, he saw a queer white line spreading and
+brightening along the horizon to the westward. A dash of rain struck
+his face, and a little gust of wind moaned past him. The crew looked
+up from their work to wonder, and in a matter of seconds the squall
+was on them. The wet hawser slipped and raced out, the hands jumping
+aft to get clear of the leaping turns as the cutter swung and drew
+hard on her anchor to the pressure of a tremendous wind. The white
+line rushed down on them, and showed as a turmoil of frothing sea,
+beaten flat by the wind into a sheet of phosphorescence veiled by
+low-flying spray. For a few minutes they crouched and endured the
+sudden cold and wet, then a yaw of the boat sent the bowmen forward
+with suspicion in their minds. "Up and down, sir--anchor's aweigh,"
+came the report, in a voice that started as a roar, but reached the
+Midshipman aft as a faint high wail. The Midshipman faced round to
+leeward, and thought hard. He had been anchored on the only possible
+shoal, and once driven off that there was no holding-ground till he
+should reach the edge of the surf off Trincomalee, twenty miles
+away--all between being chartered as "Five hundred and no bottom." He
+called to the coxswain and clawed his way forward, picking up men by
+name as he passed them. They hove up their anchor, secured mainsail,
+awning, and mainmast in a dreadful tangle of rope and canvas to the
+anchor-ring--hitched an outlying corner of the tangle to a bight far
+up the hawser, and threw all over the bows. The cutter steadied head
+to wind, and the hands moved aft to raise the bow and protect
+themselves against the steady driving of the spray.
+
+The Midshipman lay across the backboard, staring out to the
+port-quarter. Through the white haze he could see, at regular
+intervals, a quick-flashing gleam of yellow light. He knew what it
+was, and it did not comfort him. It was all he could see of the
+twenty-thousand candlepower of Foul Point Light, and although it was
+not getting much clearer it was certainly "drawing" from aft forward.
+He had the rough lie of the coast in his head, and he was just
+realising two things--first, that in spite of the sea anchor he was
+being blown to leeward and ashore at an incredible rate; and second,
+that if he could not round Foul Point across the wind, he was going to
+be food for the big surf-sharks before the morning.
+
+He roused the crew again, and set them to the oars. Before half the
+oars were out he had realised the futility of the effort, and was
+trying to get them back without further damage. He corrected his error
+with the loss of four oars and several feet of the cutter's
+gunwale--broken off when the wind tore the long ash oars away. As he
+remembered later, it was at this point that Foul Point Light began to
+show clearly through the spray, and that his coxswain began to sing an
+interminable hymn in the stern-sheets, and that the dark-faced Celtic
+stroke-oar, a man who had the reputation of being the worst character
+in all the ship, took over the helpless coxswain's duty. The
+Midshipman was staring fascinated at the swinging beam of light that
+was beating on them from the sand-spit broad on the quarter, when the
+stroke-oar's voice in his ear changed him from a boy to an
+officer--"What'll you do now, sir?"
+
+The question was answered on the instant--"All hands, up masts and
+sails. Close-reef both, and pass the hawser aft. Lash out now, lads,
+and get down to it."
+
+That twenty-minute evolution, by the light of a hurricane-lamp, was a
+nightmare. The mainsail and mainmast were all snarled up in
+miscellaneous turns of roping. The hawser was wet and cold, and seemed
+fifty times its original length, but the work was done. He had felt
+that no shroud, however new, would stand the strain he was going to
+put on the masts, and though the men cursed and swore at the delay and
+toil involved, he got what he wanted from them. One at a time the
+masts were hove up and clamped in position against the half-solid
+wind--the hawser, cut to length, clove-hitched round each masthead,
+and frapped clear round the cutter, with the whole hove taut with
+"Spanish Windlasses," till his clumsy hemp shrouds were braced to the
+strain. Then he braced himself by a glance at the light, swinging
+well over their heads now that they were close enough in to feel the
+first lift and heave of the outer surf, and yelled an order. The
+foresail rose, clattered furiously a moment against the mast, and then
+filled with a bang. "_Set mainsail!_" The cutter heeled over till her
+lee gunwale dipped--the masts bent and creaked, and the old boat went
+tearing into the wind on the best and last sail of her varied life.
+The Midshipman and the stroke-oar clung to the long tiller that was
+curved like a fishing-rod under the strain. There were no gusts or
+variations in the wind: it beat solidly against the canvas, heeling
+the cutter to the verge of capsizing, and driving her through the
+water at steamer speed. The leeway was extraordinarily great--the boat
+going sideways almost as fast as she went ahead; but that leeway saved
+her from going over. They cut through the outer surf off the point,
+the boat leaking from the sprung keel to the opened seams where the
+frapping hawser-turns bit into her thin sides--the crew baling
+furiously to keep their minds from the expectation of a great crash
+that would tell of a mast tearing its heel up and out through the
+weather side. It lasted for barely half an hour, but the arm-weary
+Midshipman felt as if it had been a four-hour watch. As the light drew
+aft, he eased his sheets and swung up the channel, still at racing
+speed, but safely bound for harbour. His memories in after years of
+the next few hours were vague and clouded by sleep. He remembered the
+sun rising as they drew in towards the silent white-walled dockyard;
+the _swish_ of sand under the keel as he ran her hard up the
+boat-camber beach, and nothing more, till he woke to see the dreaded
+Commander--a tall white-clad figure--standing over him, looking with
+keen appraising eyes at the mass of hawser-turns that swathed boat and
+masts, and at the bodies of the snoring crew that lay on the hot sand
+around her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Clerk fidgeted. He had been kept waiting for a matter of seconds,
+and he did not like it. The Captain turned to face him, and, to the
+surprised eyes of the Clerk, seemed to have changed suddenly into a
+young man--alert, quick, and decisive. "_No_, Collins," said a strange
+voice; "the man _did_ act in the face of the enemy, and I will endorse
+the recommendation." He turned his eyes again to the window, but saw
+only the yellow gravel, the houses, and the smoke; the fetters of
+Routine seemed to clank warningly in his ears. "Yes," he said, "I have
+no reason to suppose the U-boat had not followed the steamer, or that
+she was not present all the time."
+
+
+
+
+A MOST UNTRUE STORY.
+
+
+The War was only in its first childhood and patrol work was still
+amusing, having not yet become a monotonous and unexciting business. The
+submarine was due to start back from patrol that night, and was just
+loafing along at twenty odd feet depth waiting for dark. The Captain was
+on watch at the periscope, swinging the instrument round from time to
+time to take a general survey of the horizon, but for the most part
+confining his scrutiny to the island to leeward. The island showed up
+clearly--the light of the setting sun flashing back from the windows of
+the buildings that looked out over the Bight. As the Captain took one of
+his all-round glances, he checked suddenly and concentrated his gaze to
+one point of the compass. A man who leaned against a pump six feet
+away--a man who had seemed to all appearance to be on the verge of
+sleep--opened his eyes, straightened up, and stood alertly watching the
+brown hands that held the periscope training handles. The signal seemed
+to be telepathically passed on, as in a few seconds there were six or
+eight pairs of eyes watching the observer, who still peered at the
+unknown sight which no one else in the boat could see. Then the Captain
+moved his head back from the eye-piece, smiled (and at the smile six of
+the watchers reverted to their oil-stained reading matter), and called
+to the First-Lieutenant, who was at the moment engaged with an
+Engine-room Artificer in a mumbled inquest over a broken air-valve
+spindle. As the First-Lieutenant approached, the Captain stepped to one
+side and indicated the eye-piece by a nod. His subordinate took his
+place, and for a full half-minute remained slowly swivelling the great
+instrument through four points and back again. When he raised his head
+he was scowling and sullen.
+
+"Well?" said the Captain. "A good few there, eh?"
+
+"_Lord!_" The First-Lieutenant's voice indicated the deepest disgust.
+"Thousands and thousands--and we can't get a shot at 'em!"
+
+"Well, there's over a thousand, anyway. I've seen at least that lot of
+teal in the last couple of minutes."
+
+"_Teal!_ Why, sir, I can see mallard now for the next half mile, and I
+could swear there'll be geese among them too."
+
+"Here, let me look. Yes, by gum, and not one's getting up either."
+They let the periscope get to a few feet off before they paddle
+away.... He swivelled slowly round the circle, then looked up at the
+First-Lieutenant. "There's fog coming on. I can see the banks coming,"
+he said. He looked again through the periscope and intently studied
+the windows on the island some three miles away. The First-Lieutenant
+watched his face, and saw it slowly break into the smile of a
+schoolboy meditating mischief. The First-Lieutenant began to smile
+slightly also. The Captain looked up.
+
+"I can't help the island," he said. "War's hell, anyway. Give me a rifle
+and stand by for surface." There was a clatter and the sound of
+quick-passing orders; the boat's bow tilted up, and to the sound of
+roaring air she broke surface fairly in the middle of the great colony
+of swimming wildfowl. The hatch fell back with a clang, and a rush of
+cold air beat on the excited faces of the men below the conning-tower.
+Immediately there came the _Crack-crack-'rack_ of magazine-fire from the
+bridge above, and the descendants of bowmen who had risked mutilation
+and death to steal the Conqueror's deer forgot their discipline and
+began to mount the ladder that led to the sunlight and a clear view.
+
+The Captain turned to shout a helm order below and swore at the packed
+heads that filled the hatch-rim. "... and you come up, Number One, and
+lend a hand to pick up. I've got one--missed him on the water at a
+hundred and got him in the air as he rose! There he is--jump forr'd
+and grab him--dammit, he's off (_crack-crack_).... No, that's stopped
+him" (_bang_--the report came from the vicinity of the Captain's
+knee). "What the--confound you, man--what the deuce are you doing?
+Unload that pistol and take it away...."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seven thousand yards away on the island a watcher lowered his glasses
+and reached for the button of the alarm bell. In two seconds the
+island was awake, and down in the lower battery men rushed to their
+stations. With clatter and turmoil the big guns were cleared away and
+the observing officer roared the order to "Stand by" into the
+telephone mouthpiece.
+
+"What is it, Schultz? Can you see? Ach! she is going to bombard--the
+little swine of a boat. Give me the telescope. Ach, Gott! are they not
+reported ready, fool?" The Major was excited and bristling.
+
+"Ready now--all but number six."
+
+"At six thousand five hundred metres--all guns--Gott strafe der
+schmutzige ... he has dived!..."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The First-Lieutenant sprang up the outer ladder of the conning-tower,
+the bleeding spoil clutched in his hand. The Captain turned to look
+astern and became aware of the fact that the gallery, as represented
+by the bridge and rails, was tenanted by an enthusiastic and
+interested selection of his crew. "What the devil--is this a cinema or
+my ship? Don't you know your orders yet? Every man-jack of you...." He
+herded them below to the tune of a voluble hymn of hate, and followed
+the last of the grinning culprits down. As the boat levelled off at
+her previous diving depth, he swung the periscope round to search the
+horizon again to seaward. A moment later "Diving stations," and to the
+hydroplane men, "Take her on down."
+
+The First-Lieutenant left the luckless mallard on the table and
+elbowed his way aft again through the cluster of men closing up to
+their stations. Reaching the control position, he looked inquiringly
+at the Captain, who, having lowered the periscope, was leaning with
+folded arms against a group of valves abreast it.
+
+"Thick fog coming down. Going to bottom till dark now. Have a look at
+the soundings, will you--or tell Henley to let me know."
+
+The First-Lieutenant moved back to speak to another officer, who was
+already bending over the chart-table. The Captain turned his head to
+watch the gauge beside him, the needle of which was slowly creeping
+upwards and around the circle. As it moved the gentle rolling of the
+boat that had been noticeable before ceased, and she steadied until
+she gave the idea of being high and dry in some silent dock. The
+officer, generally known as "Pilot," or--to his intimates and
+contemporaries--as "Rasputin" (a name, it should be explained, which
+had no possible application to him, except for the fact that he wore a
+beard), appeared at the Captain's side with a folded chart in his hand.
+
+"We should touch at ninety by the gauge, sir," he said. "We must be
+about four miles from the land now."
+
+The Captain nodded. "Yes, it may be a little more, though. Have the
+crew got a sweep on this?"
+
+"No, sir. This is an extra dive, and they haven't had time to get one
+up. D'you want to bet on under or over ninety, sir?"
+
+"I do not. I won last night's sweep, and lost it to you in side-bets,
+and I'm not taking any more. Stop the motors!"
+
+The gauge had reached the eighty-foot mark, and the boat under the
+influence of her headway was still driving the needle slowly round. At
+ninety feet the Captain looked at the Pilot, smiled, and started the
+motors again. Hardly had he given the order when the needle checked,
+rose a little, and then crept back to ninety-five. "_Stop the motors!_
+I've lost a chance there, Pilot--'Wish I'd had a bet on that."
+
+He stood watching the gauge a moment longer, and then turned to walk
+to the Wardroom.
+
+"Pipe down--usual sentries only," he ordered. "Tell my servant to get
+me some washing water."
+
+He threw the curtain aside, and joined the two officers who stood
+looking solemnly at the mallard, which lay on a gory newspaper in the
+centre of the table. For a moment there was silence.
+
+"Well," said the Captain cheerfully, "it's not as smashed as it might
+be. It'll do for a pie to-morrow."
+
+"'Mm," said the First-Lieutenant, "'Keeper at home used to call
+rabbits that looked like that 'ferrets' food.'"
+
+"Not a bit of it," rejoined the Captain; "if we mash him in a pie
+he'll be all right."
+
+There was another pause while the First-Lieutenant tucked an extra fold
+of newspaper beneath the corpse--then, after a quick glance and nudge
+for the Pilot's benefit, he spoke in a detached and dispassionate voice.
+
+"Of course, it was poaching."
+
+The Captain's brown face began to slowly take on the colour of the
+gore on the table--then he exploded--
+
+"What d'you mean? ... _poaching_--it's below high-water mark, isn't it?"
+
+"Well, sir--we don't know the rules in this country, and we were
+pretty well in their waters."
+
+"But it's offshore. Why shouldn't I shoot their duck? It's not
+preserved, either. _Poaching!_ I never poached anything--not since I
+was at school anyway." He scowled at the duck and the officers
+impartially. The officers clutched each other by the arms, then the
+Pilot walked hastily to a low-set bunk and buried his head in the
+pillow. The Captain changed his frown for a smile as the situation
+dawned on him, then, snatching the parallel rulers from the
+chart-table he began to belabour the most accessible portion of his
+gurgling subordinate's anatomy.
+
+
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note
+
+
+    * Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired.
+
+    * "Compass card" and "compass-card" retained as printed.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of H.M.S. ----, by Klaxon
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK H.M.S. ---- ***
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