You are to imagine how Morty’s mother sobbed and kissed and blessed
him, over and over at parting; and how earnestly the poor woman begged
of her darling never to forget his prayers, or go out fasting in the
chill morning air, and always to wear flannel next to his skin--and you
are to learn that the big young man had left the poor soul shut up in
the biggest of her suite of gilded drawing-rooms, and was in the act
of clanking down the doorsteps to the brougham that was to convey him
with his father to the railway station, when he suddenly turned--and
galloped clattering back.
He strode through the hall--burst into the drawing-room--sending all
the crystal dillywangles on the vases and chandeliers into tinkling
fits of agitation--called with the old, old voice of the child to the
woman sitting there in stony, despairing silence:
“Mummy!”
--and fell down at her trembling knees; butted his bullet-head against
her thin, aching bosom, and hugged her again and again.... She thanked
her Maker all her life afterwards for that unexpected burst of love and
tenderness.... Her boy was to call her once more--out of the jaws of
Death--and she was to hear him--even though thousands of miles of dry
land and bitter water separated mother and son....
As for Thompson Jowell, that fond parent traveled down with his boy
to Southampton, and benefited him with parental advice and fatherly
counsel by the way. He repeated over and over again that Morty was to
be sure and win distinction; and trust to his old Governor to back him
up. And the young man, touched to melting by the evident solicitude and
affection--responded in his characteristic vein of clumsy raillery,
punctuated by heavy pats on the back, and filial pokes in the fleshy
ribs that were covered with a waistcoat of gorgeousness even more
pronounced than usual, made of an embroidered Turkish shawl. He told
Thompson Jowell that he was a regular Out-and-Outer, a capital Brick, a
Rare old File, and a stunning old Nailer, and Jowell never guessed that
Morty’s habitually-stated conviction that his parent was the devil--the
very devil!--was not forthcoming because Morty had once felt it to be
so nearly true.
Later on--in that new-born sensitiveness of his--Morty found himself
wishing that he were the son of a man several sizes smaller. As, for
instance, when Thompson Jowell stood with his short legs wide apart on
the hearthrug of the Officers’ Mess Cabin on the poop-deck, and rattled
the big tills in his trousers-pockets, and patronized the Colonel and
the half-dozen officers of Her Majesty’s Hundredth Lancers who were
going out with this draft.
It hideously irked Morty--not ordinarily thin skinned--to find
that, as in the case of the Admiralty Agent the Honorable Mr.
Skiffington--who was going out in the _British Queen_ to watch over
the maritime interests of Britannia at Constantinople, two of the
after-cabin staterooms had been, by the removal of the bulkhead between
them, knocked into one for his reception; and that in consequence, some
of the ladies--as several of the male cabin passengers--were grievously
incommoded and squeezed.
Nor was this the least objectionable of the many ways in which Jowell’s
paternal tenderness for his boy manifested itself. Consignments of
special luxuries had been provided for the after-cabin table. Nay,
every one of the rank-and-file upon the troop-deck was to be allowed
per day, throughout the voyage, and at the Good Fairy Jowell’s expense,
an extra half-pint of porter. In addition to this, Jowell explained to
the Colonel, he had taken the liberty of augmenting the Mess wine-list
with twelve dozen of the tawny port, from his own cellars. And he
caused shudders to course down the spine of his son, by calling the
steward, and ordering bottles of this precious vintage to be uncorked
there and then, that all might taste of his bounty. And, as his
oppressive patronage and condescending geniality extended to the ladies
present--as he counseled those who were parting from their husbands,
fathers, or brothers, to drink of his liquor that they might be nerved
to bear the ordeal; and pressed yet others who were going out with
the regiment to partake that they might face the trials of the voyage
with a better heart--he seemed to Morty to swell and grow so that his
upright hair appeared shooting through the cabin skylight, and the
shadow of his bloated body banished the bright spring sunshine from the
place.
One ought to love and honor one’s father, it was the duty of a
Christian as well as of a gentleman, but--Gaw!--when the Governor was
facetious with the Colonel’s wife--and when he tipped the company a
speech--and was alternately patriotic and pathetic--it made at least
one person present go hot and cold.
“By Gosh! ladies and gentlemen, if these Roosians think they can beat
us, let them try it!” he said, over and over. He became intolerable in
his looseness and prodigality of words. His son, whom he had so often
assured that he should never find cause to be ashamed of his father,
found it now; and was dyed in crimson blushes to the roots of his
hair, as Jowell addressed his fair hearers and his gallant friends.
He told them that this here War was a War of Right and Justice--a War
about to be fought by Old England shoulder to shoulder with her Natural
Allies. And that Heaven--Thompson Jowell confidently answered for
Heaven--would not fail to nerve the arms of those who were taking the
part of the weak against the strong. Talk of Uncle Tom--Cousin Turk
being a-many shades nearer the true British color, ought to be as many
degrees nearer the true-born Briton’s heart.... Thompson Jowell laid
a podgy paw upon his own, and dropped the “h” as he enunciated the
word. If anybody told him otherwise, he added--his name being Peter
Plain--he wouldn’t believe him, by Gosh! he wouldn’t. But all present
were Englishmen and also gentlemen. And--Britannia--Thompson Jowell
had answered for Heaven and now he answered for Britannia--Britannia
confidently looked to all his gallant friends--might the speaker call
them his dear and gallant friends?--somebody said “Oh Lord, yes!” to
this, and Thompson Jowell thanked him in a stately way, and lumbered
on to his peroration. Britannia looked to every one of his dear and
gallant friends here present to uphold the reputation of British Arms.
England, he added, was not absolutely ignorant of the name of Jowell.
He bowed his tier of chins, above their stiff frill of gray whiskers,
in the direction of the sarcastic voice that cried “Hear, hear!” And
ended, with overflowing eyes turned upon his boy, and real emotion
surging behind his magnificent Turkish-shawl waistcoat:
“May she hear more of it before this War is done!”
* * * * *
Jowell hugged and kissed his boy at parting, ignorant of the secret
shrinking with which Morty received these caresses--bade God bless
him and take care of him! and the tears rolled openly down his large
whiskered face as he thrust a bulky roll of banknotes into his hand.
And then he tore himself away, and Morty--conscience-stricken in the
realization of his own unfilial relief at the sight--saw the bulky
back of him--topped with a low-crowned curly-brimmed hat that was of
straw in deference to the hot May weather--waddle down the bouncing
gangway--saw the great red face slewed midway for a last glance, and a
clumsy farewell flourish of a big gross hand that gripped a gold-topped
stick. And then the Great Man was lost in the huge crowd surging
and roaring at the quay-edge as completely as though the grave had
swallowed him up.
And with much churning of oily-looking salt water and vomitings
of sooty-black coal-smoke and cindery flavored white steam by an
excited paddle-wheel tug-steamer; amidst waving of male hats and
feminine handkerchiefs, cheers and good-byes from the throngs upon
the quays--with a return of hurrahs from the troopers crowding at
her bulwarks and thrusting their faces through the ports of her main
troop-deck--with chorusing of “Auld Lang Syne” and “Cheer, Boys,
Cheer, Old Russia’s All Before Us!”--the second line having been
adapted by an anonymous genius to fit the case--_The British Queen_
dropped her moorings, and was towed away down the River on her watery
way to Gallipoli, _via_--why on earth _via_ Gibraltar?--receiving the
customary compliment of eighteen guns from the Platform, and leaving
the usual deposit of red-eyed, shabbily-clothed soldier’s wives and
children, crying on the sunshiny, cheerful quay.
Had Moggy Geogehagan been numbered among those disconsolate women
left weeping on the quayside, she would have had no tale to tell me
in Ballymullet Workhouse, where her days were ended. But, indeed, had
“the lots gone agin’ her,” she declared--and it was not possible to
doubt her, for there was fire in the glance of her eye, and energy in
the thump of her staff-end on the tiled floor, even at eighty-nine--she
would have made her way out to where Jems was fighting with the
Ridgimint--on her own four bones.
But here she was, on _The British Queen_--and near her Mrs. Joshua
Horrotian. When the Call was sounded for the drawing, and the folded
slips of official paper that had an inky scrawl of “Go” inside them, or
a blank more eloquent still, were tossed--as was the ancient custom in
this Regiment--upon the sheepskin of the kettledrums yet vibrating from
the Charge--Nelly had waited her turn in a mounting fever of anxiety
that had melted the last icicles away from her poor heart. Joshua
Horrotian had hardly known the bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked creature, who
had run to him, panting and trembling, and thrown glad arms about his
neck, and shed tears of bliss upon his bosom, crying, “I’m to go!--I’m
to go!” For until you are about to lose the last remaining joy, you
never realize how rich you are, or how poor you may yet live to be if
God takes that also.
After dinner that evening, while the light airs from the nor’-west were
pushing _The British Queen_--long since parted from her tug--towards
the Bay of Biscay, and glowing cigar-ends were patroling the
quarter-deck singly and in couples; and the tinkle of a piano-played
waltz came cheerfully from the Officers’ Mess Cabin, and the strains
of “Annie Laurie” and “A Life on the Ocean Wave” proceeded from the
troop-deck as the forecastle--where troopers and tars fraternized in
high accord--Morty heard one semi-visible stroller say, in answer to
some remark of a companion:
“By Jove no! But with me it’s like this!--I don’t object to a man who
smells of Money--but a man who stinks of it, I simply can’t stand!”
It was the male voice that had cynically cried “Oh Lord, yes!” and
“Hear, Hear!” when Jowell was speechifying. And a feminine voice
responded:
“He _meant_ well, dear, I’m _sure_! But _what_ a dreadful man!”
Morty knew whom the officer’s wife was discussing with her husband. And
whilst he burned and smarted, he admitted perforce the truth of their
utterances. His father did stink of Money. His father undoubtedly must
appear to persons of any breeding and refinement a really dreadful man.
Why, his own son--
Later, when Morty was in bed in the comfortable lower berth of the
state-room that had been expanded, to the compression of the young
man’s fellow-passengers--and _The British Queen_, having left the
glassy Solent far behind her, was beginning to roll amidst the restless
surges of the Atlantic so that cabin doors banged, cabin crockery
rattled, timbers groaned and creaked--and heavy rushes of footsteps
on the deck were followed by the flumping of tightened canvas and the
noisy coiling away of ropes--Jowell’s son--who, like his great parent,
was of queasy sea-stomach--found this question cropping up again.
The Governor stank of Money. That was why his son, who had learned
since he joined the Cut Red Feathers to refrain from quenching his
thirst with brandy-and-water early in the morning, and to eschew
cravats and waistcoats of violently contrasting hues--who had left
off sleeking the stiff brown hair upon his bullet-head with perfumed
bear’s grease and besprinkling his person with the combined essences of
Frangipani and Jockey Club--found respiration difficult in his father’s
company. But--was it only Money the Governor stank of?... The air of
the big dining-room at Hanover Square had been heavy with the odor of
roguery on that night when Thompson Jowell had laid his cards, as he
had said, upon the table, and owned up to playing--from first to last,
an infernal dirty game!...
“I’m a bit of a Cabbager myself!” Morty could hear him saying it.
And--“The bad with the good--the rotten with the sound--that’s the
secret of successful Contracting!”
It was jolly--confounded jolly to be a British Guardsman and know
yourself the son of a father who had become a millionaire--and meant
to become yet richer--by diddling the British Army. It was enough to
drive sleep from any honest, decent pillow, and this is a feeble pen
if it has not conveyed that Morty Jowell was an honest, decent young
man. Vulgar and dull and clumsy perhaps--but sound at the core, and
wholesome-natured, as his mother’s son could hardly fail to be.
The rolling of the vessel increased, and, from the adjoining cabin,
occupied by the Honorable Mr. Skiffington, the Admiralty Agent--whose
experience of the ocean had been gathered in the course of two or three
Naval Reviews at Spithead and half-a-dozen trips across the English
Channel--groans of the most piteous description now began to be heard.
So Morty sat up, hugging his knees and frowning at the pale eye of
the state-room port-light--which, sometimes hidden by its short green
velvet curtain, or revealed--as the drapery swung aside with the ship’s
rolling--seemed to wink in a derisive way.
“Gaw! how this dam’ ship rolls!--and, talkin’ of stinks--how smelly she
is!... Horses and soger-men and tar and bilge--piff!--and somethin’
else to top up.” He sniffed, becoming more and more sensible of having
inherited the queasy paternal stomach.... “Somethin’ I’ve smelt at
those kilns at Little Milding--where the Governor dries his sprouted
oats and mildewed hay.” He added, in an aggrieved tone:
“My forage ’ud taste a deal sweeter if it had been bought with cleaner
money. That’s what I say, and to that I shall stick. And I’m ready to
lay any fellow ten to one in tenners--and the Governor’s given me a
hundred of ’em!--I shall come across that core of cow-parsley in every
truss I get!”
Here Morty succumbed to the malady of the ocean, groaning just as
dismally as the Admiralty Agent. You may imagine corresponding sounds
breaking out in neighboring cabins--indeed, for some hours the stuffy,
crowded troop-deck had been littered with the bodies of those who had
fallen victims to this insidious complaint.
And as the weather worsened, and hatchways, companions, and even
scuttles were kept closed, that smell that Morty Jowell had said
“Piff!” at--and that was reminiscent of the kilns at Little Milding,
where fermenting hay was dried--mingled more potently in the
hotch-potch of weird smells that distinguishes a troopship full of
seasick soldiers.
* * * * *
It came in overpowering gusts from the fore-hold, that was close-packed
with the Government forage-trusses. It came in blasts more overpowering
still--being mingled with an appalling equine odor--through a square
black hole in the lower deck--a yawning hole that had not been padded
with sacks of straw like the corresponding aperture in the deck above
it--when by means of canvas slings and tackle from the mainyard, the
horses had been lowered into the after-hold.
Descending into the stifling blackness of this place, you presently
made out by the significantly-haloed light of a couple of wire-guarded
ship’s lanterns, rows of frightened hairy faces ranged along the sides
of the hold, and looking at you across the spars that kept their
owners--slung in canvas belts from hooks in the over-deck beams--in the
stalls that were padded with straw and bundles of tow.
The central space between the rows of frightened hairy faces was packed
to the upper-deck with more of Jowell’s forage-trusses. Dunnage was
beneath the hoofs of these unlucky four-legged passengers, and layers
of Cowell’s beef-barrels were underneath this. And when the ship
rolled in stress of heavy weather, and the barrels shifted, the legs
that got between them were frequently mashed to jelly, adding to the
deadly qualms of nauseau torments more cruel still.
Sire my Friend accommodated the horses of his Cavalry, Artillery and
Transport on the spar-decks of troop-ships--or at worst in the ’tween
decks; sheltering them in the first instance beneath canvas, or housing
them under temporary sheds of planks. But Britannia, at the instance
of her evil genius Jowell, stowed--in nine cases out of ten--these
luckless brutes upon the ballast.
Every day on board _The British Queen_--as on board those other
transports speeding in the cause of Humanity to the East with men and
horses--shots were heard far down in these submarine hells; and every
night hairy bodies--sometimes dreadfully disfigured and distorted--were
hauled up with rope-tackle and hove overboard. For your horse, whose
anatomical structure renders it next to impossible to vomit, is capable
of going mad; and does it under given circumstances, with conspicuous
thoroughness. Therefore the faces of the men who went down into these
places, looking pale or red as the case might be, came up again livid
or purple; and the oaths they swore grew more sulphurous every day. For
between good men and good horses there is love.
What time _The British Queen_ was staggering, close-hauled, through
the shattering yellow-green seas of the Bay of Biscay O! two hundred
miles from England--and it blew a great gale through heavy squalls
of rain--and the hatches were battened down, and every soul on the
troop-decks, and every military officer in the poop cabin and several
of the ship’s officers and crew, were dog-sick and helpless; even stout
Blueberry nearly gave up hope of seeing the light of day again, and
breathing something sweeter than the atmosphere of the after-hold.
For the comrade on his off-side was screaming in the convulsions of
tetanus; and the mare on his near-side was dead like many another,
with her long neck and helpless head banging him, flail-fashion,
whenever the smelly, stifling stable you were pent up in stood on its
front end--or swinging the other way and banging Corporal Geogehagan’s
horse--and even the sailors who had come down at intervals to pump the
tainted water from the tanks and serve out the musty hay had left off
coming.
* * * * *
Then, in the middle of one unforgettable, fateful night, was heard
aboard _The British Queen_, and heard in every conceivable tone of
human and animal terror, fear, and anguish--the dreadful cry of Fire!