"Is my hair coming down?"
The Boy looked fixedly again at a large black bow which, as he told me
afterwards, "held the bight of it up." "No-o," he said slowly.
"Then don't stare at it, and don't lag behind. What was I saying?"
"You asked me how long leave I'd got."
"I didn't--you've told me that, and anyhow I've forgotten. I was going
to ask you if this is the first time you've done any war-work."
"Yes, I was out in the Straits till last Thursday week, and----"
"Don't be silly. I mean work like this, digging and doing without
things, and helping, and so on."
"Yes, I suppose it is. I haven't had time, really----"
The lady turned on him in righteous scorn. "_Time_--oh, you're one of
the worst I know. Won't you _ever_ take the war seriously? You just
look on it all as a joke, and you won't make _any_ sacrifices. Now
come here--take the other end of this string, and lay it out till I
tell you to stop."
The Boy meekly obeyed instructions. He pegged the end of the string
firmly down and returned to the Attraction, who was engaged in hunting
out a hoe from among a litter of horticultural implements that lay in
a corner of the garden wall. He stood watching her for a moment, and
with her eyes away from him, his attitude altered slightly and became
almost proprietary, while his face seemed to harden a shade and give
an inkling of the naval stamp that it would develop later on. She
looked round suddenly and saw him again as a shy and awkward youth.
"Have you done it?" she said. "All right, you can really start doing
some work now. I'm going to make you dig a trench. _That's_ the best
way to serve your country when you're ashore and have the chance. And
to think you've never used a hoe before!"
The Boy scraped the hoe reflectively with the toe of his boot. It did
not seem to him politic to mention the fact that vegetable gardens do
not usually grow either on the decks of battleships or on the
shell-beaten slopes of Gallipoli. He made no attempt to follow the
tortuous wanderings of a feminine mind, but held on his own course.
"Are you going to help?" he said.
"No. You'd only loaf at the work if I did, and I've got other things
to do, too. Now, come along and start, or you'll never get it finished
by to-night."
"I'm leaving to-morrow," said the Boy.
"So you've told me--heaps of times to-day. But you must finish that
trench before you go."
The Boy nodded and walked away towards the pegged-out end of the
string. The lady, without turning her head, walked back up the path
until she came to the grassy slope at its end. Selecting a spot from
which a view could be obtained through the hedge of her oppressed
admirer, she sat down and carefully laid the basin of peas on the bank
beside her.
"He's rather a dear," she observed cautiously to herself. "But he _is_
such a child. 'Wonder why boys are always so awfully young compared to
women?"
* * * * *
The flotilla would have turned round for its run back in another
half-hour if the last destroyer in the enemy's line had not shown a
faint funnel-glare for the fractional part of a second. They were only
a couple of miles from the end of the "beat" when it showed, and
considering the poor visibility that accompanied the frequent
snow-showers, it was a piece of happy luck that the glare was seen at
all. Three people on the leader's bridge saw it together; two of them
gave a kind of muffled yelp, as foxhound puppies would at sight of
their first cub, while the third gave an order on the instant. The
destroyer settled a little by the stern, her course altered slightly,
and she began really to travel. For some hours she had been jogging
along at seventeen knots, but her speed now began to rise in jumps of
five knots at a time, till in a few minutes she had become a mad and
quivering fabric of impatient steel. As she gained her speed the snow
began to pour down again, blotting out the faint shadow that had meant
the bow of her next astern. The Captain glanced aft once, and then
continued his intent gazing forward. He had passed a rough bearing and
the signal to chase to his subordinates astern, and could do no more
till he could get touch again. He had no intention of easing his speed
to wait for clearer visibility. He knew too much of flotilla war to
let a chance of fighting go by in that way. If he once got to the
enemy, the rest of his flotilla would steer to the sound of the guns;
and anyhow, he decided, if he did have to fight single-handed, the
worse the visibility was and the greater the confusion and doubt among
the enemy, the better would be the chances for him. The snow ahead
cleared for a minute to leave a long narrow lane between the showers,
and he saw the loom of the last ship of the enemy's line. The German
destroyer seemed to fall back to him, as if she was stopped, though in
reality she was holding station on her next ahead at a fair sixteen
knots. With a startling crash and a blaze of blinding light the guns
opened from along the leader's side--the German guns waiting,
surprised, for a full minute before they replied. When they did open
fire, the duel had become too one-sided to be called a fight at all.
Between the crashes of the guns, the clatter and ring of ejected
cartridge-cases could be heard but faintly, yet as the big leader
passed her battered opponent at barely half a cable distance, through
the din and savage intensity of a yard-arm fight the quartermaster
stooped over his tiny wheel, oblivious to all things but the clear
quiet voice that conned the ship past and on to her next victim. The
rear destroyer of the enemy swung away, stopped, and remained--a
horrible illustration of the maxim of naval warfare, which says that
he who is unready should never leave harbour.
At the head of the German line a man of decision had acted swiftly. As
the blaze of the gun-fire broke out astern of him, and before the
first German gun had fired a round, he had swung the leading division
four points off its course. As the British destroyer tore on up the
line, he swung inwards again and closed on her to engage on her
disengaged side. As a piece of tactics it was pretty and well
performed, but nothing can be judged to perfection in war, and this
evolution was no exception to the rule. As he closed in on the British
leader, she started her broadside on her second quarry,--an opponent
better prepared than her first,--and the snow-laden air quivered to
the shock of furiously worked guns. The flashes lit the contending
ships in rippling, blinding light, and across the foaming waters that
the fighters left in their passage, the drifting snow showed up like
flying gold. At short range the leading German division broke in with
a burst of rapid fire, and in his swift glance towards this menace
from his disengaged side the British leader saw the flaw in his
enemy's harness. The last of the German division was too far astern
for safety in view of the fact that the British ship was at the moment
fighting-mad. The German leader had a glimpse of a high bow swinging
round towards him in the midst of salvoes of bursting shell--then came
an increased burst of firing from down the line astern, followed by a
great crash and a dull booming explosion. The gun-fire died down and
stopped as the guns' crews lost sight of their target, until the
scattered flotilla was running on in the same darkness as had preceded
the fight, though in far different condition. The German leader was
not sure as to what had happened to the first of his command to be
attacked, but he knew well what had come to the rear ship of his own
division. She had been blown up in the shock of being rammed by the
English madman, and although she had probably taken her slayer with
her, she had left an impression on the minds of the rest of the
flotilla on the subject of what odds an English ship considered to be
equal, that would take some considerable drilling to eradicate. He
flashed out a signal to tell his unseen ships to concentrate, and the
signal, shaded as it was, drew down a salvo of shell from half a mile
away on his quarter. At full speed he tore on for home, realising a
fact that he had only suspected before--that the savage who had
attacked him had been but the forerunner of a flotilla of unknown
numbers and strength. The crackling sound of battle--a battle at a
longer range now--passed on and died down as the unheeding snow
smothered both light and sound. Both flotillas were occupied, and in
their occupation had no time to think of what was left astern of
them,--a shattered German destroyer stopped, helpless, and an easy
prey for the returning British--a litter of lifebelts, corpses, and
wreckage, that marked the grave of the rammed ship--and a
barely-floating hulk, her stern and half her deck only above water,
that lay rolling to the swell; a broken monument to a man who had
fought a good fight and gone to his death with the sound of the
trumpets of the Hall of all Brave Men calling in his ears.
The Boy twisted the seaman's silk handkerchief more tightly round his
left wrist, and drew another fold across his broken hand. He snapped his
orders out furiously, and men hastened to obey them. He knew that his
after-gun was the only one above water, and that the sloping island of
the stern that formed its support was not likely to retain buoyancy
long, but so long as there were survivors clustered aft and dry
ammunition with which they might load, he was going to be ready for
fighting. To the luck that caused one of his flotilla to lose touch in
the chase and blunder across him, he owed the fact that he was ever able
to fight again. She came tearing by down wind--threw the narrow beam of
a searchlight full on to him--and recognising by that extraordinary
nautical "eye for a ship," which can see all when a landsman could see
nothing, that the sloping battered wreck was the remnant of a ship of
her own class, turned on a wide sweep to investigate. The Boy knew
nothing of her nationality, and cared less what her intentions were. In
the midst of a litter of ammunition, wounded men, and half-drowned or
frozen survivors, he slammed shell at her from his sightless and tilted
gun till his store of dry cartridges dwindled and failed him. His
shooting was execrable; he could hardly make out the dark blotch that
was his target as, astonished and silent, she circled round him. Savage
and berserk, he fired till his last round was gone, then drew his motley
collection of ratings around him, and with pistol, knife, and spanner
they waited for their chance to board.
A long black hull slid cautiously into view and closed them, till up
against the beating snow and rising wind a voice roared out through a
megaphone a sentence which no German could ever attempt to copy--"You
blank, blank, blank," it said, "are you all something mad?"
The Boy stood up, and his wounded hand just then began to hurt him
very much. "No sir," he called in reply. "I'm sorry, sir; I made a
mistake. We've got a lot of wounded here."
The night seemed to turn suddenly very cold, and he realised that at
some moment since the collision he must have been in the water.
* * * * *
The Boy did not see her till he had left the train and was half-way
along the station platform. Then she came forward from the
ticket-collector's barrier, and he discovered with a start that not
only was the sun shining, but that the world was a very good place to
be alive in. He dropped his suit-case to shake hands, and then hastily
snatched it up to forestall her attempt to carry it for him. She
turned and piloted him out of the station to where an ancient
"growler" waited, its steed dozing in the sunshine. "I ordered this
old thing, as I thought you mightn't be strong enough to walk, but
you're not such an invalid as I expected. The carrier is bringing your
luggage." The lady spoke, looking him carefully over from under the
shade of her hat.
"Walk! Yes, of course I can. I'm not an invalid. I--No, I mean--let's
drive." He slung his suit-case hastily in through the open cab door.
The lady seemed to see nothing inconsistent in his incoherencies. She
may have possibly followed his train of thought. She merely nodded,
and reached in for his suit-case, which she swung easily upwards, to
be received by the driver and placed on the roof. She then stepped in,
and watched as the Boy cautiously entered and took his station beside
her. With what seemed almost a yawn, the old horse roused and began
to work up to his travelling pace, a possible five miles to the hour.
"Well, Boy," said the lady, "and what sort of a time did they give you
in hospital?"
"Oh--quite decent, you know; but mighty little to eat. I believe they
put every one on low diet as soon as they get there just to keep them
humble and quiet."
"Well, your mother's just dying to feed you up, so you'll get awfully
fat soon. How's the hand?"
The Boy stretched out his left arm and showed a suspiciously
inert-looking brown glove. "Only three fingers gone and some bits
missing. It's stopped my golf all right, though."
"But you'll still be able to hunt and shoot and you'll work up some
sort of a golf handicap again when you're used to it. What was the
battle like, Boy?"
"Oh--just the usual sort of destroyer scrap. We saw them first in our
packet, and so we got most of it. It was a good scrap, though."
"Will you be able to go to sea again, or will they----?"
The Boy flushed and leaned back. "Of course I will--I've got a hand
and a half, and they can't stick me in a shore job when I've got that
much." The lady put a hand swiftly out and rested it on the padded
brown glove. "Of course they can't. Sorry, Boy. I never thought they
would, you know." The Boy instantly brought his right hand across,
and, catching the sympathetic hand that lay on his glove, kissed it
with decision. He then leaned back again to the musty padding of the
cab, rather shocked at his own temerity. The lady, however, showed no
signs of confusion at all.
"How long sick leave did they give you? Do you have to go back to the
hospital, or do you just report at the Admiralty?"
"I don't know,--look here, when are we going to be engaged?"
"When we're old enough, Boy--if you're good. Are you going to be?"
"That's a bet," said the Boy firmly. "So long as I know it's going to
be all right, I'll be awfully good. What are you going to do with me
on leave? I can't dig trenches for peas now--at least, not properly."
"No; but if you took a little more interest in the subject, you'd know
that at this time of year you can pick them. Now, here's your house,
and you're going in to see your mother, and I'm going home; and you're
not to laugh at her if she cries, and--pay attention, Boy--there's no
need for you to wear that glove on your hand; she isn't a baby any
more than I am."