_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
NAVAL OCCASIONS
A TALL SHIP
THE LONG TRICK
THE NAVY ETERNAL
WHICH IS
THE NAVY-THAT-FLOATS
THE NAVY-THAT-FLIES
AND THE NAVY-UNDER-THE-SEA
BY
“BARTIMEUS”
DRAWINGS BY DOUGLAS SWALE
[Illustration]
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
_Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,
London and Aylesbury._
DEDICATED TO
CAPTAIN
GORDON CAMPBELL, V.C., D.S.O.,
ROYAL NAVY.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE 17
CHAPTER I
“USQUE AB OVO” 23
CHAPTER II
IN THE TWILIGHT 48
CHAPTER III
THE NAVY-THAT-FLIES 89
CHAPTER IV
“LEST WE FORGET” 118
CHAPTER V
THE FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN 156
CHAPTER VI
GIPSIES OF THE SEA 164
CHAPTER VII
THE DAY--AND THE MORNING AFTER 180
CHAPTER VIII
THE NAVY-UNDER-THE-SEA 190
CHAPTER IX
THE PORT LOOK-OUT 213
CHAPTER X
THE SURVIVOR 220
CHAPTER XI
THE Nth BATTLE SQUADRON 237
CHAPTER XII
MYSTERY 257
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRIT OF THE FLEET 273
CHAPTER XIV
THE EPIC OF ST. GEORGE’S DAY, 1918 289
EPILOGUE 308
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“USQUE AB OVO” 23
HEAVY METAL 48
A STRIKING FORCE 55
THE LEFT FLANK 63
THE HUNT 69
OVERDUE 76
“TUPPENCE APIECE” 83
THE NAVY-THAT-FLIES 89
THE DOVER PATROL 143
THE FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN 163
GIPSIES OF THE SEA 164
THE PORT LOOK-OUT 213
THE SURVIVOR 220
THE Nᵀᴴ BATTLE SQUADRON 237
THE SPIRIT OF THE FLEET--“GATE, THERE!
GATE!” 273
THE EPIC OF ST. GEORGE’S DAY, 1918 289
EPILOGUE 308
FINIS 331
PROLOGUE
Anyone familiar with the River Dart knows the Mill Creek. The hills on
either side slope steeply down to the edge of the water, oak and beech
and elm clustering thick on the one hand, red plough, green shoots, and
golden corn-fields alternating on the other through all the changing
seasons.
The creek is tidal, transformed at half-flood into a fair expanse of
shimmering water; at low tide, however, it dwindles to a score of meagre
channels winding tortuously through whale-backed mudbanks, the haunt of
scurrying crabs and meditative heron.
Here, one afternoon in midsummer some dozen years ago, came a gig (or,
in local parlance, a “blue-boat”) manned by seven flannel-clad cadets
from the Naval College. Six sat on the thwarts pulling lazily against
the last of the ebb. The seventh sat in the stern, with the yoke-lines
over his shoulders, refreshing himself with cherries out of a bag.
As they approached the shelving mudbanks, purple in the afternoon
sunlight, the figure in the bows boated his oar and began to sound
cautiously with his boathook. The remaining five oarsmen glanced back
over their shoulders and continued paddling. The helmsman smiled
tolerantly, as a man might smile at the conceits of childhood, but
refrained from speech. They all knew the weakness of the bowman for
dabbling in mud.
“Half a point to port!” said the slim form wielding the dripping
boathook. “I can see the channel now.... Steady as you go!” A minute
later the boat slid into the main channel and the crew drew in their
oars, punting their narrow craft between the banks of ooze. None of them
spoke, save the bowman, and he only at rare intervals, flinging back a
curt direction to the helmsman over his shoulder.
For half an hour they navigated the channels winding up the valley, and
came at length to a crumbling stone quay beside the ruin of a mill.
Ferns grew in the interstices of the old brickwork, and a great peace
brooded over the silent wood that towered behind. They made the boat
fast there; and because boats and the sea were things as yet
half-unknown and wholly attractive, none of them attempted to land.
Instead, with coats rolled up as pillows and their straw hats tilted
over their eyes, the seven made themselves comfortable as only naval
cadets could in such cramped surroundings, and from under the thwarts
each one drew a paper bag and a bottle of lemonade.
“Dead low water,” said Number 1 (the bow oar) presently. “We shall have
a young flood against us going back; but then there’s no chance of
getting stuck on the mud.” He drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and
proceeded to take careful soundings round the boat, using the keys as a
sinker and the lanyard as a lead-line.
“Oh, shut up about your everlasting tides,” said Number 2, “and keep
quiet; I want to sleep.”
“They interest me,” replied Number 1 simply. “I shall be a navigator, I
think.”
“You’d better go in for submarines,” said Number 4, applying himself to
his bottle of fizzing beverage. “Plenty of poking about mudbanks in them
if it interests you. One of the first we ever had stuck in the mud one
day and never came up again.”
“P’raps I shall,” admitted the bow. “In fact I shouldn’t be surprised if
I _did_ go in for submarining.”
Number 3 was lying on his back on the thwart, his head resting on the
gunwale. “They’ll never come to anything,” he said. “The submarine’s a
failure.” His eyes followed the flight of a white-winged gull that
circled with outstretched wings far above their heads. “No. It’s going
to be in the air, when we have a war. I’m all for flying machines....”
He was silent awhile meditating, then turned his head quickly. “Bombs!”
he said. “Fancy being able to drop bombs all over an enemy’s country.”
“You couldn’t do it,” said Number 2. “You’d go killing women and
civilians. They’d never let you.”
“Who?” demanded the prospective aviator, his enthusiasm rather damped.
“Who’d stop me?”
“International Law,” cut in the coxswain quickly. “Conventions and all
that.... Why, there’d be no limit to anything if it weren’t for
international law. An enemy could go off in his beastly submarine and
paralyse the trade routes.”
“Paralyse ’em--how?” inquired the bow man.
“Just torpedoing ’em, of course, you ass.”
“What, merchant ships?”
The jurist nodded.
“But no one could do that. I mean you’d never get a naval officer to do
that, international law or no international law. That ’ud be
piracy--like those fellows at Algiers. ’Member the lecture last week?”
“I don’t mean _we’d_ do it,” conceded the coxswain. “But some nations
might.”
The idealist shook his head. “No naval officer would,” he repeated
stoutly, “whatever his nationality.”
“The surface of the sea’s good enough for me,” chipped in No. 2. “I
don’t want to bomb women or torpedo merchant ships. I’m going to be
captain of a destroyer.” He raised his head. “Thirty knots at night, my
boy!... Upper-deck torpedo tubes and all that....”
“I’d blow you out of the water with a 12-inch gun,” said Number 5,
speaking for the first time, and laying aside a magazine. “Gunnery is
going to save this country if ever we have a war. That’s why gunnery
lieutenants get promoted quickly--my governor told me so.”
“Did he?” said the stroke oar. “He’s wrong. You can only fire big guns
from big ships, and you know what happened to big ships in the
Russo-Japanese war.”
“What?” inquired the visionary coldly.
“Mines. Big ships can’t move when there are mines about.”
“We don’t use mines any longer,” said the coxswain, crumpling up his
empty bag and throwing it over the side. It floated slowly past the boat
towards the head of the valley. “They’re not considered sporting.
’Sides, even if you could, you can always countermine, and sweep ’em up.
My brother went through a course in the Mediterranean once--place called
Platea. I remember him telling me about it.”
The stroke oar sat upright and glanced the length of the boat. “Wouldn’t
it be a rum thing,” he said, “if there was a war some day and we were
all in it.” He ticked off their names on his fingers: “Submarine,
aeroplane, destroyer, minelayer, minesweeper, battleship----” He paused.
“I’d like to be in a cruiser,” he said. “A big cruiser scouting ahead of
the Fleet. You’d get more excitement there than anywhere.” His voice
deepened to a sudden note of triumph. “It ’ud be the forefront of the
battle.”
“Then we’d all meet afterwards,” said Number 2, “and have a blow-out
somewhere ashore and talk about our experiences. Wouldn’t that be
topping?”
The bow oar sat with his eyes on the crumpled paper bag that floated
up-stream, shading them against the glow of the sun turning all the
creeks into molten gold. “Those of us that were left,” he said dreamily.
“Tide’s turned.... We’d better think about getting back.”
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I
“USQUE AB OVO”
Reminiscences of those days “in the distance enchanted” never come in an
orderly procession according to the original sequence of events. Some,
for reasons quite inexplicable, jostle their way to the fore readily
enough. Others, dim and elusive, hover in the background, and only
respond to the lure of firelight and tobacco smoke ascending
incense-wise from the depths of the arm-chair.
Sooner or later, though, they can all be caught and held for the moment
needed to record them. The difficulty is to know where to start....
Harker is foremost among the “thrusters” in the surging crowd of
memories of the old _Britannia_ days. Harker, with his piercing, rather
melancholy eyes, his black beard and tattooed wrists, and his air of
implacable ferocity that for months succeeded in concealing from his
term a heart as tender as a woman’s.
His name was not actually Harker, of course; but he is probably still
alive, and even retired chief petty officers of the Royal Navy have
their susceptibilities. He was a term C.P.O.--mentor, wet-nurse,
“sea-daddy,” the outward and visible embodiment of Naval Discipline to
sixty-odd naval cadets who yesterday were raw schoolboys and to-day wear
the King’s uniform and eke brass buttons--a transition unhinging enough
to more matured souls than those of his charges.
How he succeeded in conveying within the space of the first evening the
exceedingly unfamiliar routine of training-ship life, the art of turning
into a hammock, the necessity for keeping their chests locked, the
majesty of the term lieutenant and the omnipotence of the chief cadet
captains, to sixty bewildered fifteen-year-olds, only he knows.
Yet he harried none; they were conscious of him as a flock of
disconcerted sheep are aware of a wise collie. His voice was never
still: it was to be presumed that he slept at some mysterious time
during the twenty-four hours, and yet his square, compact form seemed to
be always drifting about at all hours of the day and night. Even when a
hapless wight (in the throes of nightmare) tipped bodily out of his
hammock on to the deck the first night, it was Harker who appeared
noiselessly out of the shadows to tuck him in again.
Their names he had pat within twenty-four hours; this tightened his grip
of the term instantly, but it also caused him to be regarded as scarcely
canny. Indeed, it was disconcerting enough to regard yourself one moment
as an insignificant and unknown unit among 250 others, and in this
comfortable reflection to lean in a _dégagé_ attitude against the white
paintwork (one of the seven deadly sins): then to hear admonition and
your name, coupled together like chain-shot, ring out along the crowded
main-deck. Harker had seen you.
There were other C.P.O.’s on board: each term owned one. But they were,
by comparison with Harker, sorry fellows. One was reputed to be given to
beating the big drum at Salvation Army meetings ashore, garbed,
moreover, in a scarlet jersey. Hotly his term denied it, but the story
was stamped with the unimpeachable authority of the boatswain’s mate of
the lower-deck: a godless seaman, conversation with whom, being of a
spicy and anecdotal nature, was forbidden.
Another was admittedly of a good enough heart, but a sentimentalist, and
consequently to be despised. On the occasion of the chastisement of an
evil-doer, his was the arm chosen to administer the strokes with all the
pomp and circumstance of an official execution. He laid the strokes on
well and truly--that much the victim himself admitted. But when he
turned from his duty his eyes were observed to have tears in them. His
term had in consequence to adopt an apologetic manner for a considerable
time afterwards.
It was a similar scene, but one in which Harker played the Lord High
Executioner, that must here be recorded. The setting alone was
sufficient to strike awe and even terror into the spectator’s hearts.
And now, after the lapse of years, recalling the circumstances of that
harrowing quarter of an hour, it is doubtful whether there was not just
some such motive behind the grim circumstance that led up to the
painful consummation.
The scene was the orlop-deck. What light there was came in through the
open gunports, slanting upwards off the water. Not cheering sunlight,
you understand, but a greenish sickly gleam that struggled ineffectually
with the shadows clinging like vampires among the low oak beams
overhead.
The victim’s term were fallen-in in a hollow square about the horse--a
block of wood supported on short legs, with ring-bolts and canvas straps
hanging from each corner. Then there came a pause. Possibly the captain
had not finished his breakfast; or perhaps Harker had for once made a
mistake and got his term there too early. But for the space of several
minutes (or weeks, or years) the term stood in shuddering contemplation
of this engine.
Then one of the spectators, the victim of either an over-rich
imagination or an acutely sensitive conscience, dramatically fainted and
was borne forth. After that things began to happen. The malefactor
appeared, accompanied by Harker. The captain, the term lieutenant, and
(a thrill ran through the on-lookers) the surgeon followed. It was
half-expected that the chaplain would also join the group and administer
ghostly consolation to the culprit, who, it must be reluctantly
admitted, looked rather pleased with himself.
His offence was not one to alienate him from the hearts of his fellows.
If memory serves aright, he had been overheard to refer to his late
crammer in terms that may or may not have been just, but were certainly
not the way a little gentleman should talk. But his term--or most of
them--were still smarting under the recollections of crammers’ methods
and were disposed to regard the delinquent’s lapse rather more as a
pardonable ebullition of feeling than a breach of morality. In short he
was a bit of a hero.
“Chief Petty Officer Harker,” said the stern voice of the term
lieutenant, “do your duty.” The harrowing preliminaries completed, Chief
Petty Officer Harker did it, as was to be expected of him, uncommonly
well.
The victim took it, as was also to be expected of him, uncommonly well.
It was not long before these lines were written that he was called upon
to meet a sterner and his last ordeal. The pity is that no spectator can
bear testimony to the worthier courage with which he must have met it.
Harker it was who smelt out, like a Zulu witch-doctor, the grass snake
and dormouse that lived a life of communistic ease and reflection in the
washing till of someone’s sea-chest. Harker’s the suspicious mind that
led to official “ruxes” of private tills, and the confiscation of
meerschaum pipes, Turkish cigarettes, and other contraband. Yet all this
without any effect of espionage.
The nearest approach to active espionage that Harker permitted himself
was hovering in the vicinity of the gangway when the terms were landed
for daily recreation. The law of the Medes and Persians had it that
during cold weather all cadets not playing games must land wearing a
particularly despicable form of under-garment: a woolly and
tucked-into-the-socks abomination that the soul of every right-minded
cadet revolted from. As the procession passed under the low gangway on
its way to the launches alongside, Harker, lurking in the vicinity,
would suddenly pounce upon a suspect.
“’Ave we got our DRAWERS on, Mr. So-and-so?” came the merciless query.
The progress of the procession was arrested while Mr. So-and-so racked
his brains for some suitable parry to this very leading question. A
damning negative having eventually been extorted, the underclad one was
hauled from the ranks and given three minutes in which to get to his
chest, extract from his wardrobe the garment that found such high favour
in Olympian eyes, put it on, and rejoin the tail of the procession.
Thus a first offender; a second offence resulted in “no landing.” There
was no appeal.
The muddy, tired, ever-hungry throng that returned some three hours
later again passed on board under this lynx-eyed surveillance. This time
illicit “stodge” was the subject of Harker’s unquenchable suspicions.
Smuggling stodge on board (another of the seven deadly sins) required
considerable ingenuity, owing to the ban the authorities thought
necessary to impose on pockets. Regular outfitters pandered to this
Olympian whim, and constructed trousers with an embryonic fob just large
enough to hold a few coins. The unorthodox, who arrived with garments
bearing the stamp of provincialism and pockets, were bidden to surrender
them forthwith, and stout fingers ruthlessly sewed the pockets up.
The jacket had only one, a breast pocket already congested by keys,
handkerchief, letters from home, pet bits of indiarubber, and the like.
Remained therefore the despised garment already alluded to. This, being
tucked--by official decree--into the wearer’s socks, formed an admirable
hold-all for a packet of butterscotch--worked flat--a snack of Turkish
Delight, or a peculiar and highly favoured form of delicacy known as “My
Queen.”
With a not too saintly expression, an unflinching eye, and a
sufficiently baggy pair of trousers, the contrabandist might count on a
reasonable amount of success. But Harker’s X-ray glance rarely failed
him.
That stern, incisive voice would rivet all eyes upon the culprit just
when the muster by the officer of the day had been completed, and the
long ranks awaited the stentorian dismissal of the chief cadet captain.
“Mr. Z! You’ll step along to the sick-bay when we falls out.”
The blanched smuggler clutched at his momentarily abandoned halo of
rectitude.
“Sick-bay!” he echoed indignantly. “Why the sick-bay? There’s nothing
wrong with me--I swear there isn’t. I never felt better in my life.”
“That there nasty swelling on your shin,” was the pitiless reply, “did
ought to be seen to at once.” A draught, that had fluttered the
carefully selected baggy trousers against their wearer’s legs, had been
his undoing. The game was up.
Like all truly great men, Harker could unbend without discipline
suffering an iota. As the months passed and his term of fledgling “News”
acquired the modest dignity of “Threes” (second term cadets), Marker’s
methods changed. He was no longer the detective, inquisitor,
encyclopædia of a thousand unfamiliar phrases, events, and objects. His
term were on their feet now, treading in their turn paths fiercely
illumined by the new first term’s gaping admiration and curiosity. They
were an example.
“’Ow long ’ave we been in the _Britannia_?” he would demand
reproachfully when some breach of the laws called for reproof. “’Ere we
are in our second term, an’ talkin’ about HUP-STAIRS!”
The scorn in his voice was like a whiplash.
“When you young gentlemen goes to sea you won’t find no STAIRS!”
When they went to sea! That was the gradually increasing burden of his
song. For a while it presented a picture too remote almost for serious
contemplation. It was practically a figure of speech, meaningless. But
as time went on, and the successive dignities of “Sixer” and “Niner”
(third and fourth--the last--terms) loomed up and passed into reality,
and at last the Great Wall of the final examination alone stood between
them and the sea-going gunrooms of the Fleet, the words took on their
real significance.
Harker abandoned even sarcasm. He became guide, philosopher, and
friend, a patient mentor always accessible--generally somewhere on the
chest-deck--in leisure hours to thirsters after knowledge. Was one shaky
in that branch of nautical lore known as “Bends and Hitches”? Harker’s
blunt fingers tirelessly manipulated the end of a hammock-lashing until
the pupil could make even a “sheep-shank” with his eyes shut.
Another would bring him, in a welter of grease and ravelled strands, a
tortured mass of hemp-rope.
“It’s meant to be a Long Splice,” was the explanation, “but I don’t seem
to get it right--ever,” and with a despondent sigh it would be thrust
into Harker’s hands.
Harker would examine the interwoven strands, twisting it to and fro with
jerks of his powerful wrists, pulling taut here, tucking something in
there, and lo! the thing took shape.
“This is where you goes wrong, Mr. P., every time!” (Recollect there
were sixty-odd in his term.) “Don’t forget what I’m always telling you.
You splits the middle strands, and then an over-’and knot in the
opposite ’alves....” It always looked so easy when Harker did it.
It was during the last night on board that Harker rose to heights truly
magnanimous. The fourth term regarded it as its right and privilege, on
the last night of the term, to hold high carnival until sleep overtook
them. Cadet captains even cast their responsibilities to the winds that
night and scampered about, slim, pyjama-clad figures, in the dim light
of the lanterns, ruthlessly cutting down the prig who yearned for
slumber, lashing-up a victim in his hammock and leaving him upside-down
to reflect on certain deeds of the past year that earned him this
retribution, floating about on gratings on the surface of the plunge
baths, and generally celebrating in a fitting manner the eve of the day
that was to herald in new responsibilities and cares.
Harker, who for fifteen months had haunted the shadows on the look-out
for just such a “rux,” whose ear caught every illicit sound--even the
crunch of the nocturnal butterscotch--Harker was for once unseeing and
unseen. It needed but this crowning act of grace to endear him for ever
to his departing flock.
Yet he had one more card to play, and played it as he passed in farewell
from carriage to carriage of the departing train. Further, he dealt it
with accentuated emphasis for the benefit of those he thought needed the
reminder most.
“Gosh!” ejaculated such a one when Harker passed to the next carriage:
he flopped back on to his seat. “Did you hear? He said ‘sir!’ to each
one of us when he said good-bye!”
So much for Harker. But he brought with him a number of other memories
entangled somehow about his personality, and on these it may be as well
to enlarge a little ere they slip back into the limbo of the forgotten
past.
It says much for the vividness of Harker’s personality that he outran in
these reminiscences the memory of “Stodge.” Certainly few interests
loomed larger on the horizon of these days than the contents of the two
canteens ashore.
There was one adjacent to the landing-place: a wise forethought of the
authorities, enabling a fellow to stay his stomach during the long climb
from the river to the playing fields, where the principal canteen stood.
“Stodge” was of a surpassing cheapness. That much was essential when the
extent of the weekly pocket-money was limited (if memory is to be
trusted) to one shilling. Further it was of a pleasing variety, certain
peculiar combinations, hallowed by tradition, being alone unchanging.
Of these the most popular was the “Garry Sandwich.” Components: a
half-stick of chocolate cream sandwiched between two “squashed-fly”
biscuits; the whole beaten thin with a cricket-bat, gymnasium shoe, or
other implement handy. The peculiarity of this particular form of dainty
was that it sufficed as an unfailing bribe wherewith to open
negotiations with one Dunn, the septuagenarian keeper of the pleasure
boats. The moral atmosphere of the boat-house, in consequence of its
custodian’s sweetness of tooth, came in time to resemble that of a
Chinese yamen.
Another delicacy about which legend clustered was the “Ship’s Bun,”
split in half, with a liberal cementing of Devonshire cream and
strawberry jam oozing out at the sides. Concerning the bun itself, the
maternal solicitude of the authorities extended one gratis to each cadet
ashore on half-holidays lest the impecunious should hunger unnecessarily
between lunch and tea. The buns were obtainable on application at the
counter, whence the daughter of the proprietor--whom we will call
Maunder--was charged with the duty of issuing them.
How she pretended to remember the two and a half hundred faces that
presented themselves in surging crowds round the counter at 4 p.m. is
more than her present recorder can say. But even as she extended a bun
to the outstretched grubby hand of a suppliant, an expression of
vixen-like indignation and cunning would transform her features.
“You’ve ’ad a bun afore!” she would snap shrilly, withdrawing the bounty
in the nick of time. The hungry petitioner, cheerfully acknowledging
defeat in a game of bluff, would then withdraw, pursued by Miss
Maunder’s invective.
All the same she was not infallible, and on occasions hot protestations
and even mutual recrimination rang to and fro across the counter.
Appeal, ultimately carried to Mr. Maunder, was treated in much the same
way as it is by croupiers at Monte Carlo. A gentleman’s word is his
word. But it is as well not to be the victim of too many mistakes.
Maunder, who was occupied with the stern responsibility of catering for
the whim of the rich, had a way of recapitulating the orders from the
beginning, adding up aloud as the count went on, thus:
_Cadet_: A strawberry ice, please, Maunder.
_Maunder_: One strawberry ice tuppence.
_Cadet_: Oh, and a doughnut, while you’re about it.
_Maunder_: One strawberry ice one doughnut thruppence.
_Cadet_: That’s just to go on with. Then in a bag I want a stick of
cream chocolate----
_Maunder_: One strawberry ice one doughnut one stick cream chocolate
fourpence.
_Cadet_: (breathlessly) And a bottle of barley sugar and a “My Queen”
and four Garry biscuits and half a pound of cherries and a bottle of
lemonade and one of ginger beer and--that’s all, I think.
_Maunder_: (coming in a little behind, chanting, the general effect
being that of a duet in canon). One strawberry ice one doughnut one
stick cream chocolate one bottle barley sugar one “My Queen,” etc.,
etc., etc.... _And_ a bag one an thruppence ’a’-penny.... Thank you,
sir. Next, please.
* * * * *
On occasion demigods walked among the children of men. The visits of the
Channel Fleet to Torbay usually brought over one or two of a lately
departed term, now midshipmen by the grace of God and magnificent beyond
conception.
It was their pleasure, these immaculately clad visitors, to enter the
canteen, greet Maunder with easy familiarity and Miss Maunder with
something approaching gallantry, slap down a sovereign on the counter
and cry free stodge all round. They would even unbend further, dallying
with a strawberry ice in token of their willingness to be as other men,
and finally depart in a cloud of cigarette smoke and hero-worship.
This record is not concerned with the fact that on their return on board
their ship, some hours later, one suffered stripes for having forgotten
to lock his chest before he went ashore, and the other, being the most
junior of all the junior midshipmen, was bidden swiftly to unlace the
sub’s boots and fetch his slippers.
To every dog his day.
* * * * *
Random memories such as these necessarily present individuals and
incidents, not in the sequence of their importance in the cosmos as one
sees it now, but as they appeared to the vision of the Naval Cadet,
whose world was an amiable Chaos.
Thus the Captain flickers through this kaleidoscope an awesome bearded
figure, infinitely remote from the small affairs of that teeming
rabbit-warren of youth. More readily comes to mind the picture of his
lady wife, white-haired, with clear eyes and gentle voice, a memory
somehow entangled with geraniums in red pots about the moulded
stern-gallery and tea on Sunday afternoons in the spacious chintz-draped
after-cabin: with irksome football sprains, and brief puerile illnesses
made more endurable by her visits to the cotside.
The Commander, though less awesome than the Captain, approached the
mortal in that he stooped at times to wrath. His was the cold eye before
which the more hardened malefactors quailed; his the rasping voice that
jerked the four terms to attention at Divisions each morning:
“Young Gentlemen, ’shun!”
The English public schoolboy is conscious of youth, and takes the fact
of being a gentleman for granted. But to hear himself addressed by a
designation that combined both qualities was a never-staling subject for
inward mirth and a weird self-congratulation difficult of analysis. It
conveyed a hint of coming manhood and responsibilities: it was the voice
of the Navy, bending on the leading strings, heard for the first time.
But on a plane far nearer earth stood the Term Lieutenants, each one the
god and hero, the Big Brother of his term. That they, their Boxer or
South African medal ribbons, their tattoo-marks, County or International
caps, biceps, and all the things that were theirs, were the objects of
their respective Terms’ slavish adulation, goes without saying. Bloody
encounters between their self-appointed champions over an adverse
criticism or doubt cast upon a forgotten word were not unknown. Two
entire terms once joined battle and bled each other’s noses the length
and breadth of the echoing “Skipper Woods” to clinch some far-flung
argument as to the merits of their respective “Loots.”
There were but four Term Lieutenants, and they were picked from the
wardrooms of the whole Navy. Small wonder some three hundred grubby
urchins fresh from school found in them admirable qualities.
Their example and teaching were the moulds into which, year by year, the
molten metal of the Navy’s officer-personnel was poured, thence to be
scattered about the seven seas, tempered by winds and stress, and, in
God’s good time, tested to the uttermost.
Ashore, on the playing fields or across the red ploughland at the tails
of the beagles, they laboured in close intimate fellowship with these
atoms of clay thrust by providence beneath their thumbs. But on board it
seemed they faded from ken, being rarely seen save at classes and
musters, or when in pairs the Term percolated through the wardroom for
dessert, plastered as to the hair, patent leather shod, to sip and cough
over a glass of ambrosial port at either elbow of their Lieutenant.
Seeing and unseen, knowing their Terms as only men who spend their
lives among men can know and understand the embryo, they were the
guiding invisible wisdom behind the Cadet Captains, who outwardly ruled
the decks.
The Cadet Captains were chosen from the three senior Terms, set apart
from their fellows by the fact that they wore “standup” collars and a
triangular gold badge on the left cuff.
Minor Authority in other guises was greeted much the same as it is in
all communities of boyhood. The platitudes of notice boards no fellow
with his heart in the right place could be expected to remember over
well. The acknowledged sway of instructors and masters was largely a
matter of knowing to a nicety how far an adventurous spirit could go (in
the realms of Science and Freehand Drawing it was a long way) before the
badgered pedagogue turned and bit. Terms paid strict allegiance to their
own Chief Petty Officers. But, as has already been shown, this was an
affair of the heart and the sentiments. He was theirs, and they were
his: thus it had been from the beginning.
There was, however, one voice that rarely repeated an order, one court
from which appeal, if possible, was undreamed of--that of the Cadet
Captain. Their rule was without vexatious tyranny, but it was an iron
rule. The selection of these Cadet Captains was done carefully, and
mistakes were few. The standard of the whole was no mean one, and for
three months the Lieutenant of the First Term had been studying the raw
material, working with it, playing with it, talking to it--or rather
listening while it talked to him.... Thus Cadet Captains were chosen,
and the queer eager loyalty with which the rest paid them allegiance was
the first stirring of the quickened Naval Spirit, foreshadowing that
strange fellowship to be, brotherhood of discipline and control, of
austerity and a half-mocking affectionate tolerance.
To the Cadet Captains perhaps can be attributed the passage, almost
untarnished through the years, of the _Britannia_ traditions. They were
concerned, these youthful Justices of the Peace, with more than the
written law. It they enforced right enough, but with a tolerance one
might expect of fifteen summers administering the foibles and rules of
fifty. On the other hand, did a “new” unbutton a single button of his
monkey jacket, a “Three” deign to swing his keys, a “Sixer” to turn up
his trousers or tilt his cap on the back of his head (the prerogative of
the “Niner” or Fourth Term), and Nemesis descended upon him ere he slept
that night. Nemesis, by virtue of its unblemished character and the
favour its triangular badge found in the eyes of the gods, was allowed
to turn in half an hour after the remainder. It occupied itself during
this time in guzzling cocoa and biscuits smeared with strawberry jam,
provided for its delectation by the authorities--though the cost was
said to be defrayed by the parents of the common herd relegated to
hammocks and the contemplation of this orgy out of one drowsy though
envious eye.
Biscuits finished, Nemesis would draw from his pocket a knotted “togie”
of hemp, and, having removed traces of jam from his features, proceed to
administer summary justice in the gloom where the hammocks swung.
It was of course grossly illegal and stigmatised by the authorities as
“a pernicious system of private and unauthorised punishments.” But the
alternative was open to any who cared to appeal to Cæsar. Appealing to
Cæsar meant spending subsequent golden afternoons on the parade ground,
swinging a heavy bar bell to the time of “Sweet Dreamland Faces” blared
out on a cornet by a bored bandsman.
So summary justice ruled, and it ruled in this wise:
“Shove your knuckles outside that blanket--you needn’t pretend to be
asleep----”
Chorus of snores deafening in their realism and self-conscious rectitude
from the wrong-doer’s neighbours.
“You were slack attending belly-muster for the third time running----[1]”
“I swear----”
“You’d better not. You’ll get six more for swearing----”
“Ow!”
“_Don’t_ make such a rux....”
“Ow!”
“If you yell you’ll get double.”
“Ow!”
“That’s for being slack. Now the other hand.... That’s for ’nerving’”
(modernised = swanking) “with your thumbs in your beckets----”
“Ow!”
“_Shut_ up! Stick your knuckles out properly.”
“I swear I didn’t--ow!... Good night.”
Memories, ah, memories! Haphazard but happy as only the far-off things
can seem, half revealed through the mists of years. Grim old cradle of
the Eternal Navy, there lies on my desk a blotting-pad hewed from your
salt timbers; it may be that some whimsical ghost strayed out of it to
provoke these random recollections. Does it, I wonder, ever unite with
other ghosts from chiselled garden-seat or carved candle-stick, and
there on the moonlit waters of the Dart refashion, rib by rib, keel and
strake and stempost, a Shadow Ship?
And what of the Longshoremen Billies that plied for hire between the
shore and the after-gangway--Johnnie Farr (whom the Good Lawd durstn’t
love), Hannaford of the wooden leg, and all the rest of that
shell-backed fraternity? Gone to the haven of all good ships and
sailormen: and only the night wind, abroad beneath the stars, whispers
to the quiet hills the tales of sharks and pirates and the Chiny seas
that once were yours and ours.
But what familiar faces throng once more the old decks and cluster round
the empty ports! Is it only to fond memory that you seemed the cheeriest
and noblest, or did some beam of the glory to be yours stray out of the
Hereafter and paint your boyish faces thus, O best-remembered from those
far-off days?
You crowd too quickly now, you whose fair names are legion, so that the
splendour of your sacrifices blur and intermingle. The North Sea knows
you and the hidden Belgian minefields; the Aurora Borealis was the
candle that lit some to bed, and the surf on the beaches of Gallipoli
murmurs to others a never-ending lullaby. Ostend and Zeebrugge will not
forget you, and the countless tales of your passing shall be the sword
hilt on which our children’s children shall cut their teeth.
From out of that Shadow Ship lying at her moorings off the old Mill
Creek comes the faint echoes of your boyish voices floating out across
the placid tide. Could we but listen hard enough we might catch some
message of good hope and encouragement from you who have had your Day:
“_We are the Dead...._
* * * * *
_To you from failing hands we throw_
_The torch; be yours to hold it high:_
_If ye break faith with us who die,_
_We shall not sleep...._”
There shall be no faith broken. God rest you, merry Gentlemen.
[Illustration]