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.