THE FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN
He was nearer seventy than sixty: that is to say, he was an old man as
they reckon age afloat. There was a stoop about his shoulders that
hinted at the burden of his years, but his eyes, blue and direct beneath
ragged white eyebrows, were young enough; and a man’s eyes are the
mirrors of his spirit.
He stood on the quarter-deck of the armed yacht under his command,
pacing slowly to and fro, with those craggy brows almost meeting above
his great beak of a nose. There had been a day when a fleet would have
trembled at the portent, and walked delicately, like Agag. That was when
he was an admiral though, and the flag-lieutenant would have popped his
head into the secretary’s cabin and murmured, “Blowing up for a
storm--stand by!” Now, as he stalked with that unforgettable jerky
stride of his up and down the narrow confine of the yacht’s poop, he was
only a commander of the Royal Naval Reserve--a “dug-out” from the
Retired List--with three curly rings of lace on the cuffs of a
monkey-jacket cut in a style unfamiliar to the present generation.
Aft by the ensign-staff he halted, and pulled a letter out of the
breast-pocket of the quaintly-cut monkey-jacket. It had come by the
morning mail, a typewritten letter, on paper bearing the crest of
Admiralty, and it was worded as tactfully as circumstances and the
nature of the contents would allow. It referred to the strain of war
under modern conditions. It reminded the Admiral that a critical stage
of the world conflict had now been reached; and the two postulates,
taken in conjunction, pointed to the necessity for young men being
employed in all commands afloat. Their Lordships had therefore decided,
with regret ... etc. etc.
That letter did what the strain of modern war had not yet done--it made
the Admiral’s hand tremble: he tore it into small pieces and dropped
them over the side. The stoop of his old shoulders seemed to have become
suddenly accentuated. His firm mouth slackened: he looked what they said
he was, an old man.
“Youth will be served,” said he, and watched the last scrap of paper
float away on the tide. “I daresay they know best.... They think they do
... anyway, that’s something, nowadays.” Then he drew forth an enormous
bandana handkerchief, trumpeted a blast of defiance from his historic
nose, and stumped forward to the bridge to take his last command to sea
for the last time.
* * * * *
It was late the following afternoon, when the yacht was upon the port
bow of a convoy of merchantmen, that the look-out at the crosstrees gave
tongue. The Admiral was in the chart-house, sprawling affectionately
over the chart with notebook and pencil. He enjoyed having the
chart-house to himself these days. The flag-captains and navigators of
bygone flagships had always bored him, fussing at either elbow whenever
he looked at a chart....
“Periscope port bow!” bawled the look-out, and simultaneously the alarm
gongs jarred at every gun position and action station. The Admiral was
beside the quarter-master in two bounds.
“There she goes, sir,” cried the officer of the watch, and indicated
with outstretched finger the wicked streak of bubbles that flickered in
the wake of a torpedo: it passed ahead, but through his glasses the
Admiral was watching the sparkling water for the periscope’s feather.
He sighted it almost on the instant, half a mile abeam, an object no
bigger than a broom-handle above the wave-tops.
Once, thirty years before, in a moment of crisis, he had acted as he did
then. It was a wholly unconstitutional proceeding, but on the former
occasion it had averted a collision between two battleships of the line.
On both occasions it saved a few precious seconds. He grasped the spokes
of the wheel with his own hands and wrenched the helm hard-a-starboard
before the quartermaster realised he was at his elbow.
The officer of the watch had sprung to the telegraph, and down below the
gongs were ringing madly for full speed.
The yacht’s owner had built her for speed. He was a rich man, and could
afford to gratify a whim. In this case he gratified it to the utmost
designer and engineers were capable of; but never till this moment had a
rich man’s craze been so completely justified. Her knive-edge swan bows
clove the dancing waves in twin sickles of spray as she heeled over to
her helm and then steadied on the mark that was already swiftly dipping
before the unexpected onslaught.
The periscope vanished thirty seconds before the yacht passed over the
wash of the unseen scourge: but as it passed the Admiral jerked a lever
twice, and turned, staring aft down the broken wake that had obliterated
all traces of the submarine. By means of the lever he had released a
couple of explosive charges, and as he stood shading his eyes from the
sun, two great columns of foam leaped into the air.
“Hard-a-starboard!” he croaked, and over went the helm again. He stepped
to the gun control voice-pipe: “Stand by the port guns!” and as he gave
the order a greenish-brown cylindrical shape, streaked with rust and
spouting oil from gaping seams, appeared in the centre of the boiling
scum and foam left by the explosion. Slowly it righted itself, and the
hull and conning-tower of a submarine lay on the surface with a heavy
list. As the yacht swung round, the port guns opened fire: a shell burst
on the armoured conning-tower, shattering the periscope and blowing
great fragments of steel high into the air. Another penetrated the hull
and exploded internally, clouds of vapour pouring from the rents in the
shell. The coxswain steadied the wheel, heading the bows straight for
the great whale-like object.
Now the cunning of an old seaman is the cunning of a grey fox. The
Admiral held up his hand, and the officer of the watch jerked the
telegraphs to “stop.” The stern of a vessel driven at high speed is
drawn down by the thrust of the propellers. The moment the engines stop,
the stern rises again and the bows dip. In this case they dipped as they
struck the submarine squarely just abaft the conning-tower, and clove
through the rounded hull like a hatchet through a fungus.
They had a glimpse on either bow of the halves of a submarine, still
kept afloat by the buoyancy of her tanks and closed compartments. It was
only a momentary glimpse--of glistening, shattered machinery and mangled
bodies, of hands raised in prayer or anguish.... Then both broadsides
broke out, pouring a salvo at point-blank range into those smoking
segments that vanished amid the flames of bursting shell and leaping
water.
They rescued one prisoner--as is not infrequently the case, the captain.
Him the Admiral caused to be warmed and dried and restored with hot
drinks while the yacht, assisted by two destroyers, rounded up the
scattered convoy. Then the Admiral interrogated his prisoner. “You are
very young,” he said at the conclusion of the interview.
The Prussian clicked his heels. “It is a young man’s war,” he said.
“So they tell me,” replied the Admiral dryly.
* * * * *
His relief was waiting on the quay beside his baggage when the
yacht--her dainty bows looking like the features of a professional
pugilist--tripped back to harbour. He was a young lieutenant-commander,
fresh from the Grand Fleet--a contemporary, in fact, of the Admiral’s
son. And early the following morning the Admiral went over the side--not
as he might have done ten years earlier, with guard and band, to the
shrill twitter of a pipe. He paused at the gangway, and laid his left
hand on the younger man’s shoulder.
“The race is to the swift,” he said, “the battle to the strong. Good
luck to you, my lad. You want a bigger gun forward, if you can get ’em
to give it to you, and remember she turns quicker on port helm.... She’s
a good little ship.”
“Thank you awfully, sir,” said the lieutenant-commander. “She’s a
ripping little ship, and I’m only sorry I’m----”
The Admiral doffed his cap after the manner in which a forgotten naval
generation saluted.
“Be damned to your sorrow, sir,” he said. “It’s a young man’s war,” and
turned to descend the ladder to the dinghy that waited alongside.
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