Apropos of signals—to go on where I left off—we were to have more
than enough of them after target-practice. We finished first of all
the cruisers, and went on to our rendezvous the Fastnet, but if we had
listened to the passenger—he wanted to lower a boat and investigate
the shattered rock—we should have been spared many sorrows. But we
were zealous, Mr. Simple, and we went to the Fastnet; and it was hazy,
and through the haze we heard a horrible elemental moaning that should
have warned us. The battleships which we had not found at Bantry were
scattered about those waters at their practice. Then I remembered that
a twelve-inch gun discharges a projectile weighing some 800lb. and
ranging about ten miles. And we went to the rendezvous encircled by these
deep mutterings of invisible monsters, and behold! we came slap on the
Flagship, who was running torpedoes. Any other of the big ones would not
have mattered, but our luck sent us to the Flag. There was a feeling of
calamity in the thick air, and I know one man who was not in the least
relieved when she signalled: ‘Where are you bound?’ We replied we
were waiting as ordered on that spot, for the rest of the cruisers, and
remained in a deferential attitude, while the Flagship maintained her
horrible composure.
OUR FATAL MISTAKE
Thinking no harm, we drifted some two miles to leeward, which was our
fatal mistake, though we kept a skinned eye on her. Presently we saw a
signal, but end on, as flags are apt to be when the signaller is dead
up wind and the signallee down. We hung our answering pennant at the
dip to show that we saw but could not understand, and scuttled up to the
Flagship as fast as might be. The first part of the signal was an order
to close, and the second expressed a desire to speak to us by semaphore.
(Our signalmen’s faces were studies in gloom about this crisis; and the
sad moaning of the guns went on afar.) We learned that the Flag had been
trying to attract our attention for some time, and did not appreciate
our _négligé déshabillé_, or words to that effect. There is no excuse
in the Navy, and we took what was served out to us by the gibbering
semaphore in silence, standing at attention. To tell the truth, we had
been rather pleased with our target-practice, and this sudden dash of
cold water chilled us. But there is a reason for all things. Now, we
must signal the name of the officer of the watch (frantic searchings
of heart among the officers) and the signalman (the signalmen had got
beyond even despair), on duty on Friday morning last. What the nature
of their crime was we knew not, and it was not ours to ask; but later we
heard it had something to do with somebody else’s error. We gave that
information (the Flag could have learned much more if she had asked for
it) and I effaced myself with a great effacement forward, where the wits
of the foc’sle were telling the signalman of Friday morning what sorts
of death and disrating awaited him.
‘WE’VE LOST THE GAME’
‘We’ve lost the game,’ said one man. ‘First come first served.
_That_ shows it,’ and with this dark saying I was forced to be content.
Then the Flag removed herself, her sixty signalmen, her four-deep strings
of signals, and her grim semaphore. Truly was it written:
_‘Every day brings a ship_,
_Every ship brings a word_,
_Well for him who has no fear_
_Looking seaward, well assured_
_That the word the vessel brings_
_Is the word that he would hear.’_
Anon the cruisers popped over the horizon, led by the _Powerful_—all
save one—and the _Powerful_ wished to know where that one had gone.
Now the rendezvous given us by the _Powerful_ could have been read in two
ways. We all knew how the mistake had arisen, and, with one exception,
had all repaired to the place which our leader had in her massive mind.
But there was no ship, of course, that could stand up to and gently
rebuke the _Powerful_ save her sister ship the _Terrible_, who signalled
politely: ‘I suppose the —— is waiting at rendezvous signalled by
you?’ To this the _Powerful_ stiffly, with many flags: ‘When ships
have any doubt about signal, officers should reply: Not understood!’
The _Terrible_, more politely than ever: ‘Your signal perfectly
understood,’ meaning thereby, ‘My friend, you made a mistake, and you
jolly well know it.’ We small craft stood back and sniggered while this
chaff flew between the two mammoths. The thing must have weighed on the
_Powerful’s_ mind, for late that evening, as we were going home, she
woke up and began talking about it in flashes from the mast-head, to the
effect that when signals were obviously wrong ships should do something
or other laid down in the Regulations.
ASTONISHING THE CROWDED CHANNEL TRAFFIC
But really it made no difference. The missing cruiser cast up presently
with one funnel blistered and a windsail rigged aft, which gave her a
false air of being hurried and hot; and home we cruisers all went to
Portland, past the Wolf and the toothed edges of the Scillies, astonishing
the crowded Channel traffic—sometimes a Jersey potato-ketch full of
curiosity; or a full-rigged trader of the deep sea, bound for one or
other of the Capes; a Norwegian, Dane, German, or Frenchman; and now and
again a white-sided, brass bejewelled yacht.
For a few minutes every funnel was in line. Then one saw the _Powerful_
pulling out for a sailing ship, and blotting half the horizon with her
hull. Then a second-class cruiser would flicker from the line to starboard,
all spangled with her mast-head, her speed, helm, and sailing-lights as
the pale glimmer of a fishing-smack’s lantern crawled out astern of
her: And now it was our turn to give way.
That was a Royal progress. No blind man’s bluff off the Lizard or
dreary game of hunt-the-Needles such as the liners play, but through the
heavenly clear night the leisurely, rolling slow-march of the overlords
of all the seas.
OURS BY RIGHT OF BIRTH
And the whole thing was my very own (that is to say yours); mine to me
by right of birth. Mine were the speed and power of the hulls, not here
only but the world over; the hearts and brains and lives of the trained
men; such strength and such power as we and the World dare hardly guess
at. And holding this power in the hollow of my hand; able at the word to
exploit the earth to my own advantage; to gather me treasure and honour,
as men reckon honour, I (and a few million friends of mine) forbore
because we were white men. Any other breed with this engine at their
disposal would have used it savagely long ago. In our hands it lay as
harmless as the levin-rods of the Vril-Ya. Thus I stood, astounded at my
own moderation, and counted up my possessions with most sinful pride.
The wind, and the smell of it off the coasts, was mine, and it was
telling me things it would never dream of confiding to a foreigner. The
short, hollow Channel sea was mine—bought for me drop by drop, every
salt drop of it, in the last eight hundred years—as short a time as
it takes to make a perfect lawn in a cathedral close. The speech on the
deck below was mine, for the men were free white men, same as me, only
considerably better. Their notions of things were my notions of things,
and the bulk of those notions we could convey one to the other without
opening our heads.
THINGS ONE TAKES FOR GRANTED
We had a common tradition, one thousand years old, of the things one
takes for granted. A warrant officer said something, and the groups
melted quietly about some job or other. That same caste of man—that
same type of voice—was speaking in the commissariat in Burma; in
barracks in Rangoon; under double awnings in the Persian Gulf; on the
Rock at Gibraltar—wherever else you please—and the same instant
obedience, I knew, would follow on that voice. And a foreigner would
never have understood—will never understand! But I understood, as you
would have understood, had you been there. I went round, to make sure
of my rights as a taxpayer under Schedule D; saw my men in my hammocks
sleeping, without shading their eyes, four inches from the white glare
of my electric; heard my stokers chaffing each other at my ash-shoot; and
fetched up by a petty officer who was murmuring fragments of the Riot Act
into my subordinate’s attentive ear. When he had entirely finished the
task in hand he was at liberty to attend to me. ‘Hope you’ve enjoyed
your trip, sir. You see’ (I knew what was coming) ‘we haven’t quite
shaken down yet. In another three months we shall be something like.’
No ship is ever at her best till you leave her. Then you hold her up as
a shining example to your present craft. For that is England.
My Marine—the skirmisher in South American Suburbs—stood under the
shadow of the poop looking like a stuffed man with an automatic arm
for saluting purposes; but I knew him on the human side. ‘Goin’ off
to-morrow, ain’t you, sir? Well, there are only twenty of us ’ere, but
_if_ you ever want to see the Marines, a lot of ’em, it might perhaps
be worth your while to’—and he gave me the address of a place where
I would find plenty of Marines. He spoke as though his nineteen friends
were no-class animals; and a foreigner would have taken him at his word.
A ‘COMMODIOUS COFFEE-GRINDER’
The entire Ward-room explained carefully that their commodious
coffee-grinder must not be taken as a sample of the Navy at its best.
Wasn’t she a good sea-boat? Oh, yes; remarkably so. Couldn’t she go
on occasion? Oh, yes. She could go, but, after all, she wasn’t a patch
on certain other craft, being only a third-class cruiser—practically
an enlarged destroyer—a tin-pot of the tinniest. ‘Now in my last
ship,’ the Captain began. That was an unlucky remark, for I remembered
that last ship and a certain first night aboard her in the long swell of
Simon’s Bay, when the Captain took Heaven and Earth and the Admiralty
to witness that of all cluttered-up boxes of machinery and bags of tricks
his new command was the worst. To hear him now she must have been a
trifle larger than the _Majestic_ with twice the _Powerful’s_ speed. We
are a deceptive people. ‘Come and see us next year when we’ve shaken
down a bit,’ said the Ward-room, ‘and you’ll like it better.’
That last was impossible, but I accepted the
offer.
Our cruiser was about to refit at some Dockyard or other in a few days,
and I gathered that it would be no fault of the Captain, the Ward-room
or the warrant officers if she did not arrive with a list of alterations
and improvements as long as her mainmast. So it is with every new ship.
The dear boys take her out to see what she can do, and in that process
discover what she cannot do. If by any arrangement or rearrangement of
stay, stanchion, davit, steam-pipe, bridge, boat-chocks, or hatchway
she can, in their judgment, be improved, rest assured that the dockyard
will know it by letter and voice. She never gets more than half what she
wants, and so is careful to apply for thrice her needs.
DISCONTENTED AND IMPENITENT THIEVES
To her just and picturesque demands the Yard opposes the suspicion of
Centuries, saying, unofficially: ‘You are all a set of discontented and
impenitent thieves. Go away.’ The ship, considering her own comfort and
well-being for the rest of the commission, replies, also unofficially:
‘Ah, you’re thinking of the So-and-so. She a nest of pirates if you
like: but we’re good. We’re the most upright ship you ever clapped
eyes on, and you’re the finest Yard in the Kingdom. You’re up to all
the ropes. There’s no getting round you, and you’ll pass our indents.
We won’t give you any trouble. Just a few minor repairs, and our own
people will carry them out. Don’t disturb yourself in the least. Send
the stuff alongside and we’ll attend to it.’
And when the stuff comes alongside in charge of a slow-minded
understrapper they do attend to it. They talk the man blind and dumb,
sack his cargoes, and turn him adrift to study vouchers at his leisure.
Then the First Lieutenant grins like a Cheshire cat; the carpenter,
so called because he very rarely deals with wood, the armourer and the
first-class artificers sweat with joy, and the workshop lathes buzz and
hum. But the understrapper gets particular beans because a great part of
his stuff was meant for another ship, and she is very angry about it.
STOLEN PAINT
Late in the afternoon the defrauded vessel sends over a boat to the
_Early_ and wants to know if she has seen or heard anything of some oak
baulks, a new gangway grating, some brass-work, and a few drums of white
paint.
‘Why, was that yours?’ says the First Lieutenant. ‘We thought it
was ours.’
‘Well, it isn’t. It’s ours. Where is it?’
‘I’m awfully sorry, but—I say, won’t you come and have a drink?’
They come—just in time to see the brass rods in position, the oak baulks
converted into some sort of boat-furniture; the gangway platform receives
their weary feet, and a fine flavour of paint from a flat forward tells
them all they will ever know of the missing drums.
Then they call the First Lieutenant a pirate, and he, poor lamb, says that
he was misled by the chuckle-headed understrapper who brought the stuff
alongside. Words cannot express the First Lieutenant’s contrition. It
is too bad, too bad, but you know what asses these Dockyard chaps can
be.’
With soft words and occasional gin and bitters he coaxes the visitors
into their boat again, for he has studied diplomacy under West African
Kings. They return to their own place, being young and guileless, and
their reception is not cordial. Their Captain says openly that he has
not one adequate thief in the ship, and that they had better go into the
Church. They should have captured the understrapper early in the day. He
will speak to the other Captain. And he does, like a brother, next time
he meets him, galley passing galley, going to call on the Admiral.
‘You infernal old pirate! What have you done with my paint?’ cries
the robbed one.
‘Me, sar? Not me, sar. My brother Manuel, sar? That paint _mafeesh_.
Done gone finish. _Kerritch hogya_.’ This from the other potentate.
The coxswains duck their heads to hide a grin. And that is one of the
ways they have in the Navy, (_see_ Note I.)
The _Early Bird_ departs with a reputation that would sink a slave-dhow,
to try the same trick on Hong Kong or Bombay Yard.
A BLISSFUL FORTNIGHT
This and more—oh! much more—did my friends fore and aft convey to me
in that blissful fortnight when I was privileged to watch their labours.
I heard, undilutedly, what a boy thinks of punishment and the man who
reported him for it; how a carpenter regards a Dockyard ‘matey,’
what are the sentiments of a signaller towards an Admiral and of a stoker
towards the Authorities who have designed his washing accommodation. I
overheard in the darkness of beautiful nights, fragments of Greek drama
from the forward flats which it is my life’s regret that I cannot
make public; lectures on all manner of curious things delivered by the
ship’s jester; and totally unveracious reports of conversations with
superiors retailed by a delinquent Marine.
Fire and collision-drill, general quarters and the like take on new
meaning when they are translated for you once, by the Head who orders
them and again by the tail who carry them out. When you have been shown
lovingly over a torpedo by an artificer skilled in the working of its
tricky bowels, torpedoes have a meaning and a reality for you to the end
of your days.
‘MEN LIVE THERE’
Next time you see the ‘blue’ ashore you do not stare unintelligently.
You have watched him on his native heath. You know what he eats, and
what he says, and where he sleeps, and how. He is no longer a unit; but
altogether such an one as yourself—only, as I have said, better. The
Naval Officer chance met, rather meek and self-effacing, in tweeds, at
a tennis party, is a priest of the mysteries. You have seen him by his
altars. With the Navigating Lieutenant ‘on the ’igh an’ lofty bridge
persecuting his vocation’ you have studied stars, mast-head angles,
range-finders, and such all; the First Lieutenant has enlightened you on
his duties as an Upper Housemaid, (_see_ Note Ia.) and the Juniors have
guided you through the giddy whirl of gunnery, small-arm drill, getting
up an anchor, and taking kinks out of a cable. So it comes that next time
you see, even far off, one of Her Majesty’s cruisers, all your heart
goes out to her. Men live there.