The room was exactly the same as any room in any Government building,
except that the Naval observer would have at once noticed one fact--that
the furniture was of the unchanging Admiralty pattern. The roll-top
desk, the chairs, and even the lamp-shades, would have been to him
familiar friends. They were certainly familiar to the Post-Captain who
sat at the desk. Captain Henry Ranson had been a noted Commander before
his retirement--a man of whom many tales, both true and apocryphal,
still circulated when Senior Officers of the Fleet forgathered at the
lunch intervals of Courts-Martial and Inquiries. He had little
opportunity in his present War appointment to display any of the
characteristics on which his Sagas had been based, for neither
seamanship, daring, or, well--Independent Initiative, were quite in
keeping with the routine of an Admiralty Office.
To-day he was feeling the claustrophobia of London more acutely than
usual. The sun was shining through the big window across the room, and
he wanted to rise and look out at the blue sky and white cloud-tufts
that he knew to be showing over the buildings across the Horse Guards
Parade. His desk gave him no view through the window--he knew the
weakness of his powers of concentration on his eternal paper work too
well to have allowed himself such a distraction; but as the door
opened to admit his clerk--a firm and earnest civilian with the zeal
of monastic officialdom shining through his spectacles--he rose
abruptly and moved out into the sunlight glare.
"Yes, Collins? What is it?"
"A small matter, sir, which is not quite in order. If you will glance
through this you will no doubt agree with me."
The Captain took the sheets from the clerk's outstretched hand and
moved a little away from the glaring light to read.
SIR,--I have the honour to bring to your notice the conduct of
Skipper A. P. Marsh, of the Admiralty tug _Annie Laurie_, on the
22nd-23rd November 1917, and I beg to recommend him for
decoration in view of the following facts:--
* * * * *
On November 21st, 1917, the steamer _Makalaka_, homeward bound
with corn, was shelled by a U-boat when near the Irish coast. The
enemy was dealt with by a patrol in the vicinity, but the
_Makalaka_, proceeding east at full speed in accordance with
instructions, was thrown out of her reckoning by a damaged
compass, and found herself at dusk on a lee shore off the Galway
coast, with her shaft broken (a result of shell damage which had
not been realised to be serious at the time it was incurred).
Skipper Marsh, seeing her flares from his patrol to seaward, most
gallantly closed her and took her in tow in a rising N.W. gale.
In view of the probability of the attempt to tow failing, the
crew of the _Makalaka_ were taken aboard the tug, but the towing
was continued through a full gale lasting twenty-four hours until
the ship was out of danger.--I have the honour to be, sir, &c.
The Post-Captain folded the letter carefully and placed it on his
desk. The clerk retrieved it, and moved towards the door. The Captain
turned, "What are you going to do with that, Collins?"
"I take it that it needs only the usual reply, sir--that this is not
approved--with a reference to the regulation bearing on the case."
"Why not approved, Collins?"
The clerk was shocked, and his tone showed it. "Because that decoration
is for gallant action in face of the enemy, and this case does not come
within its scope. In any case the man will get salvage." [The Captain
made an impatient gesture.] "If the Royal Humane Society care to----" he
stopped, because the Captain had walked to the window, and, in obvious
inattention to the speaker, was staring out across the wide Horse Guards
and far beyond the fleecy clouds that drifted across the sky over the
great sea of buildings that hemmed him in.
Captain Ranson had gone on a journey--back through forty years of
time, and across eighty-one degrees of longitude.
* * * * *
He ran up the gangway, straightened his helmet and dirk-belt, and
approached the Commander, who, a tall dark-featured figure, was
standing looking down on the boat as she rose and fell alongside to
the gentle heave of the Indian Ocean--"Second cutter manned, sir."
The Commander turned and looked the boy over beneath his heavy
eyebrows. "When are you going to set up a new port shroud?" he asked.
The Midshipman fingered the seam of his trousers, and looked carefully
at the buttons on the Commander's tunic--"I thought, sir, that is,
we've got a new shroud all fitted, but I thought--the coxswain said,
sir--that the old one would do for to-day as the wind's nothing...."
The barometric indications of the Commander's eyes showed threatening
weather. He took the boy's arm in the grasp of a heavy hand and led
him to the rail abreast the swinging mastheads of the boat.
"Now listen, young gentleman," he said. "What the coxswain said isn't
evidence. It's _you_ that command that boat, and _you_ that will
handle and command her. Don't talk to me again as if you were a
schoolboy." The Midshipman shivered and squinted cautiously up to see
if the storm-signals were still in evidence. The dark stern eyes were
looking down at him in a way that made him feel as if he was some
luckless worm that had unhappily bored its way up into the publicity
of an aviary. The Commander moved his hand and turned the boy to face
him. "Now, you remember this, young gentleman, only seamen come
through gales safely--it's the fools that go to sea with rusty shrouds
and weak rigging. And if you're to be a seaman you must never go to
sea, even in a flat calm, unless your ship is ready for a gale of
wind. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then don't forget it, or I'll have you beaten till you grow corns. Now
shove off, and pull away three cables on the port bow, drop your anchor
on the shoal, and fit that new shroud. Remain there till the ship has
got under way, done her night-firing, and signalled you to carry on. You
will then close and weigh the target moorings, having the target ready
for hoisting when the ship comes back to you. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"What have you got on your anchor?"
"A hundred and twenty fathom, sir--of four-inch." "That is
enough--there is thirty fathom on the shoal--Carry on!"
The Midshipman ran down the gangway, and, jumping into the cutter,
"Carried on." The Commander was an officer of whom the boat-midshipmen
stood in awe, and they were always thankful when the ordeal of
reporting a possibly unready boat to him as "ready" was over.
* * * * *
The last shot kicked up a yellow fountain of spray in the glare of the
searchlight, and ricochetted, humming, over the target and on towards
Malaya. A rocket sailed up from the distant ship--the searchlight
flickered out a couple of Morse signs and went out, and in the velvety
darkness of a tropic night the hands went forward in the cutter to
weigh the anchor, the process of "shortening-in" having been
accomplished a full hour ago. As the Midshipman stood up to
superintend the operation, he saw a queer white line spreading and
brightening along the horizon to the westward. A dash of rain struck
his face, and a little gust of wind moaned past him. The crew looked
up from their work to wonder, and in a matter of seconds the squall
was on them. The wet hawser slipped and raced out, the hands jumping
aft to get clear of the leaping turns as the cutter swung and drew
hard on her anchor to the pressure of a tremendous wind. The white
line rushed down on them, and showed as a turmoil of frothing sea,
beaten flat by the wind into a sheet of phosphorescence veiled by
low-flying spray. For a few minutes they crouched and endured the
sudden cold and wet, then a yaw of the boat sent the bowmen forward
with suspicion in their minds. "Up and down, sir--anchor's aweigh,"
came the report, in a voice that started as a roar, but reached the
Midshipman aft as a faint high wail. The Midshipman faced round to
leeward, and thought hard. He had been anchored on the only possible
shoal, and once driven off that there was no holding-ground till he
should reach the edge of the surf off Trincomalee, twenty miles
away--all between being chartered as "Five hundred and no bottom." He
called to the coxswain and clawed his way forward, picking up men by
name as he passed them. They hove up their anchor, secured mainsail,
awning, and mainmast in a dreadful tangle of rope and canvas to the
anchor-ring--hitched an outlying corner of the tangle to a bight far
up the hawser, and threw all over the bows. The cutter steadied head
to wind, and the hands moved aft to raise the bow and protect
themselves against the steady driving of the spray.
The Midshipman lay across the backboard, staring out to the
port-quarter. Through the white haze he could see, at regular
intervals, a quick-flashing gleam of yellow light. He knew what it
was, and it did not comfort him. It was all he could see of the
twenty-thousand candlepower of Foul Point Light, and although it was
not getting much clearer it was certainly "drawing" from aft forward.
He had the rough lie of the coast in his head, and he was just
realising two things--first, that in spite of the sea anchor he was
being blown to leeward and ashore at an incredible rate; and second,
that if he could not round Foul Point across the wind, he was going to
be food for the big surf-sharks before the morning.
He roused the crew again, and set them to the oars. Before half the
oars were out he had realised the futility of the effort, and was
trying to get them back without further damage. He corrected his error
with the loss of four oars and several feet of the cutter's
gunwale--broken off when the wind tore the long ash oars away. As he
remembered later, it was at this point that Foul Point Light began to
show clearly through the spray, and that his coxswain began to sing an
interminable hymn in the stern-sheets, and that the dark-faced Celtic
stroke-oar, a man who had the reputation of being the worst character
in all the ship, took over the helpless coxswain's duty. The
Midshipman was staring fascinated at the swinging beam of light that
was beating on them from the sand-spit broad on the quarter, when the
stroke-oar's voice in his ear changed him from a boy to an
officer--"What'll you do now, sir?"
The question was answered on the instant--"All hands, up masts and
sails. Close-reef both, and pass the hawser aft. Lash out now, lads,
and get down to it."
That twenty-minute evolution, by the light of a hurricane-lamp, was a
nightmare. The mainsail and mainmast were all snarled up in
miscellaneous turns of roping. The hawser was wet and cold, and seemed
fifty times its original length, but the work was done. He had felt
that no shroud, however new, would stand the strain he was going to
put on the masts, and though the men cursed and swore at the delay and
toil involved, he got what he wanted from them. One at a time the
masts were hove up and clamped in position against the half-solid
wind--the hawser, cut to length, clove-hitched round each masthead,
and frapped clear round the cutter, with the whole hove taut with
"Spanish Windlasses," till his clumsy hemp shrouds were braced to the
strain. Then he braced himself by a glance at the light, swinging
well over their heads now that they were close enough in to feel the
first lift and heave of the outer surf, and yelled an order. The
foresail rose, clattered furiously a moment against the mast, and then
filled with a bang. "_Set mainsail!_" The cutter heeled over till her
lee gunwale dipped--the masts bent and creaked, and the old boat went
tearing into the wind on the best and last sail of her varied life.
The Midshipman and the stroke-oar clung to the long tiller that was
curved like a fishing-rod under the strain. There were no gusts or
variations in the wind: it beat solidly against the canvas, heeling
the cutter to the verge of capsizing, and driving her through the
water at steamer speed. The leeway was extraordinarily great--the boat
going sideways almost as fast as she went ahead; but that leeway saved
her from going over. They cut through the outer surf off the point,
the boat leaking from the sprung keel to the opened seams where the
frapping hawser-turns bit into her thin sides--the crew baling
furiously to keep their minds from the expectation of a great crash
that would tell of a mast tearing its heel up and out through the
weather side. It lasted for barely half an hour, but the arm-weary
Midshipman felt as if it had been a four-hour watch. As the light drew
aft, he eased his sheets and swung up the channel, still at racing
speed, but safely bound for harbour. His memories in after years of
the next few hours were vague and clouded by sleep. He remembered the
sun rising as they drew in towards the silent white-walled dockyard;
the _swish_ of sand under the keel as he ran her hard up the
boat-camber beach, and nothing more, till he woke to see the dreaded
Commander--a tall white-clad figure--standing over him, looking with
keen appraising eyes at the mass of hawser-turns that swathed boat and
masts, and at the bodies of the snoring crew that lay on the hot sand
around her.
* * * * *
The Clerk fidgeted. He had been kept waiting for a matter of seconds,
and he did not like it. The Captain turned to face him, and, to the
surprised eyes of the Clerk, seemed to have changed suddenly into a
young man--alert, quick, and decisive. "_No_, Collins," said a strange
voice; "the man _did_ act in the face of the enemy, and I will endorse
the recommendation." He turned his eyes again to the window, but saw
only the yellow gravel, the houses, and the smoke; the fetters of
Routine seemed to clank warningly in his ears. "Yes," he said, "I have
no reason to suppose the U-boat had not followed the steamer, or that
she was not present all the time."