leisure to look over his companions. The _Sebastopol_ carried a crew
from Liverpool, and was officered by three Englishmen and a little
Welsh third mate. The Captain, a first mate of many years'
experience, to whom the war had given the chance of a ship, was in
the forties; tall and with a thin, stern mouth under a heavy brown
moustache; the first mate was a mere youngster: the second, a
middle-aged volunteer, the third, an undersized, excitable Celt with
grey eyes and coal black hair touched with snow white above the ears.
The Welshman took a liking for Idaho; used to question him in regard
to the West, being especially keen to know about "opportunities there
after the war." He had a brother in Wales whom he thought might
share in a farming venture. Of the captain the lad saw very little;
and the first mate was somewhat on his dignity. Practically every
man of the crew had been torpedoed at least once, many had been
injured, and had scars to exhibit. All had picturesque tales to
tell, the gruesomest ones being the favourites. The best narrator
was a fireman from London, a man of thirty with a lean chest and
grotesquely strong arms; he would sit on the edge of a bunk or a
chair and tell of sudden thundering crashes, of the roaring of steam,
of bodies lying on the deck over which one tripped as one ran, of
water pouring into engine rooms, and of boilers suddenly vomiting
masses of white hot coal upon dazed and scalded stokers. It was the
melodrama of below the water line. Then for days the narrator would
keep silent, troubled by a pain in one of his fragmentary teeth. All
the men kept their few belongings tied in a bundle, ready to seize
the instant trouble was at hand. The cook complained to Idaho that
he had lost a gold watch when the _Lady Esther_ was torpedoed off the
coast of France, and advised him paternally to keep his things handy.
One of the oilers, a good-natured fellow of twenty-eight or nine, had
been a soldier, having been invalided out of the service because of
wounds received late in the summer on the Somme. An interesting lot
of men for an American boy to be tossed with, particularly for a lad
as intelligent and observing as our Idaho. The boy was pleased with
his job and worked well. He did not have very much to do.
Signalling aboard a convoyed ship, though a frequent business, is not
an incessant one. He knew that his work would come at the entrance
to the zone. Sometimes he picked up messages intended for others.
"_Mt. Ida_, you are out of line," "_Vulcanian_, keep strictly to the
prescribed zigzag plan." Now he would see the _Sicilian_ asking for
advice; now there would be a kind of telegraphic tiff between two of
the vessels of the "Keep further away, hang you" order. Twenty ships
running without lights through the ambush of the sea, twenty ships,
twenty pledges of life, satisfied hunger ... victory. In other days,
one's world at sea was one's ship; a convoy is a kind of solar system
of solitary worlds. Hour after hour, the assembled ships straggled
across the great loneliness of the sea.
The crew had a grievance. It was not against their officers, but
against his majesty's government, against "a bloody lot of top hats."
A recent regulation had forbidden sailors to import food into the
United Kingdom, and all the dreams of stocking up "the missus'"
larder with American abundance had come to naught. Idaho says that
there was an engineer who was particularly fierce. "Don't we risk
our lives, I arsk yer," he would say, "bringing stuff to fill their
ruddy guts, and now they won't even let us bring in a bit of sugar
for ourselves." The rest of the crew would take up the angry
refrain; a mention of the food regulations was enough to set the
entire crew "grousing" for hours.
And then came trouble, real trouble.
On the fifth day out Idaho, called for his early watch, found the
boat wallowing in a heavy sea. The wind was not particularly heavy,
but it blew steadily from one point of the compass, and the seas were
running dark, wind-flecked, and high. The _Sebastopol_, accustomed
to the calm of eastern seas, was pitching and rolling heavily.
Presently the cargo began to shift. Now, to have the cargo shift is
about the most dangerous thing that can happen to a vessel. One
never can tell just when the centre of gravity of the mass will be
displaced, and when that contingency occurs, the big iron ship will
roll over as casually and as easily as a dog before the fire. It
takes courage, plenty of courage, to keep such a ship running,
especially if you are down by the boilers or in the engine room. You
have to be prepared to find yourself lying in a corner somewhere
looking up at a ceiling which, strange to say, has a door in it. The
_Sebastopol_ leaned away from the wind like a stricken man crouching
before a pitiless enemy; the angle of her smokestack more than
anything else betraying the alarming list. In her stricken
condition, the ship seemed to become more than ever personal and
human. Presently her old plates bulged somewhere and she began to
leak.
The vessel carried a cargo of grain, in these days more than ever a
cargo epical and symbolic; a holdful of rich grain, grain engendered
out of fields vast as the sea, bred by the fruitful fire of the sun,
rippled by the passing of winds from the mysterious hills, grain,
symbolic of satisfied hunger, ... victory. A cargo of grain, life to
those on land, to those on board, danger and the possibility of a
violent if romantic death. The crew, too occupied with the emergency
to curse the stevedores, ran hither and thither on swift, obscure
errands. And the weather grew steadily worse, the leak increasing
with the advance of the storm. Down below, meanwhile, a force of men
hardly able to keep their balance, buffeted here and there by the
motion of the ship, and working in an atmosphere of choking dust,
transferred a number of bags from one side to another. Unhappily,
the real mischief was due to grain in bins, and with this store
little could be done. And always the water in the hold increased in
depth.
The pumps, orders had been given to start them directly the leak was
noticed. Three minutes later, the machinery and the pipes, fouled
with grain, refused to work. They saw bubbles, steam, a trickle of
water that presently stopped, and lumps of wet grain that some one
might have chewed together, and spat forth again. Idaho did a lot of
signalling in code to the guide ship of the convoy. The _Sebastopol_
began to drop behind. An order being given to sleep up on the boat
deck so as to be ready to leave at any instant, the men dragged their
bedding to whatever shelter they could find. The captain appeared
never to take any time off for sleep. Day after day, through heavy
seas, under a sky torn and dirty as a rag, the old _Sebastopol_
listing badly and sodden as cold porridge, carried her precious cargo
to the waiting and hungry east. Giving up all hope of keeping up
with her sisters, she fell behind, now straggling ten, now fifteen
miles astern. At length the weather changed; the sea became smooth,
blue and sparkling, the sky radiant and clear.
Then the destroyers came. There was a parley, and the other vessels
of the convoy zigzagged wildly for a while in order to allow the
_Sebastopol_ to catch up. But in spite of all attempts, the old ship
fell behind again and was suffered to do so, lest the others,
compelled to adopt her slow speed, be seriously handicapped in their
race down the gauntlet. Then it was discovered that the leak had
gained alarmingly; there was even talk of abandoning the vessel and
taking to the boats. A try was made to pump out the boat with an
ancient hand engine. The contrivance clogged almost at once.
According to Idaho, it was much like trying to pump out a thick bran
mash such as they give sick calves. And they were only two days from
land. Barely afloat, just crawling, and with the submarine zone
ahead of them.... But the gods were kind, and the old boat and the
solitary destroyer went down the Channel and across the Irish Sea as
safely as clockwork toys across a garden pool. Yet they passed quite
a tidy lot of wreckage. Nearer ... nearer all the time, till late
one afternoon two big tugs raced to meet them at the mouth of a giant
estuary. The _Sebastopol_ was at the end of her tether. Another
day, and it would have been a case of taking to the boats.
The tugs hurried her into a waiting dry dock.
Idaho, his papers signed, his bag upon his shoulder, got into a
little tender which was to take him over to the harbour landing.
Looking up, he saw some of the crew leaning over the rail.... They
grinned with friendly, soot-streaked faces, waved their arms.... The
_Sebastopol_ was safe, the rich cargo of grain, the life-giving
yellow grain was safe.... The tug slid off into the busy, noisy
riverway.
And thus came Idaho of the Armed Guard to the Beleaguered Isles.
XXXII
COLLISION
"......Regret to report collision in latitude x and longitude y
between tank steamships _Tampico_ and _Peruvian_......"--_Extract
from an Admiralty paper_.
When supper was over, the two sailors of the Armed Guard attached to
the ship went out on deck for a breath of evening air. It was just
after sundown, a clean calm rested upon the monstrous plain of the
sea; one golden star shone tranquil and lonely in the west. The
convoy was almost at the border of the zone. To the left the lads
could see the twin funnels of the big grain ship; the tattered,
befouled horse boat, the little, rolling tramp said to be full of
T.N.T., and the long low bulks and squat houses of the two tanks.
"Whoever's on that tramp is some bird at signals," said the bigger of
the boys, my friend "Pop." "Generally starts to answer my signal
before I'm through. Know who's aboard her, Robbie?"
"I think it's that big new guy from the Pennsylvania" answered
Robbie, meditatively.
"Dalton's on the horse boat, isn't he?"
"Sure, either he or Ricci. Pete Johnson's on the first tank, and
that fresh little Rogers guy's on the other."
There was a pause. Pop spat with unction over the side.
Suddenly their vessel entered a fog bank, passing through a detached
island or two of it before plunging on into the central mass. The
convoy instantly faded from sight. Every now and then, out of the
wall of grey ahead, a little swirl of fog detached itself, and
floating down the darkening deck, melted into the opaque obscurity
behind. Drops of moisture began to gather on the lower surface of
the brass rails of the companion ways; wires grew slippery to the
touch; little worm-like trails of over-laden drops slid mechanically
down sloping surfaces. The fog, thickening, flowed alongside like a
vaporous current. Overhead, however, the sky was fairly clear,
though the greater stars shone aureoled and pale. There was very
little sound, merely the steady hissing of the calm water alongside,
occasional voices heard in a tone of consultation,--the heavy slam of
a door. An hour passed. The fog showed no sign of lifting, seeming
rather to become of denser substance with the dark. Pop was glad
that there was no ship following directly behind, and wondered if the
others were dragging fog buoys. The ship's bell rang muffled and
morne in the fog. Suddenly, out of the clinging darkness, out of the
oppressive obscurity, there came, momentary, brazen, and incredibly
distant a dull and muffled sound. So far away and mysterious was its
source that the sound might have been imagined as coming from the
dark beyond the stars. An instant later, as if the only purpose of
its mysterious existence had been to sink a tanker, the fog melted
into the night, and a little wind, a little, timid, trembling breath
brushed the great plume of smoke from the funnel lightly aside. A
bright starlit night came into being as if by enchantment, as if
created out of the fog by the intervention of divine will.
The motionless black shapes of the colliding tankers could be seen
far, far astern. After the crash, they had drifted apart. The
wireless was crackling, blinker lights flashed their dots and dashes
of violet white, a whistle blew. "Am standing by," came a message.
The chief of the convoy sent out a peremptory command. Presently a
light appeared on one of the vessels, a little rosy glow like a
Chinese lantern. The glow sank, disappeared, and rose again, having
gathered strength. One of the tankers was on fire. Soon a second
glow appeared close by its stern. A glow of warm, rosy orange. In a
few minutes they could see tongues of fire, and two boats rowing away
from the vessel. They did not know that the men in the boats were
rowing for their lives through a pool of oil which might take fire at
any instant. A few minutes passed; the light grew brighter.
Suddenly, there was a kind of flaming burst: a great victory of fire.
The tanker, well down by the head, floated flaming in an ocean that
was itself a flame, floated black, silent, and doomed to find an
ironic grave in the waters under the fire. Great masses of smoke
rose from the burning pool into the serene sky, and hid the vessel
when she sank. Half an hour later, a little, rosy light lay at the
horizon's rim. Suddenly, like a lamp blown out, it died.
XXXIII
THE RAID BY THE RIVER
The convoy of merchantmen, after a calm, quite uneventful voyage
across the ambushed sea, put into a port on the Channel for the
night, and the following morning dispersed to their various harbours.
Some sort of coast patrol boat "not much bigger than an Admiral's
launch," the words are those of my friend Steve Holzer of the Armed
Guard, took the S.S. _Snowdon_ under her metaphorical wing, and
brought her up the Thames. This _Snowdon_ was one of a fleet of
twelve spry little tramps named for the principal mountains of the
kingdom, a smart, well-equipped, well-ordered product of the Tyne.
Steve, quick, clever, and alert, had got along capitally with the
"limeys." His particular pals were a pair of twin lads about his own
age, young, English, blond, and grey-eyed; young, slow to understand
a joke, honest, good-tempered, and sincere. I have seen the postcard
photograph of themselves which they gave Steve as a parting gift.
Steve himself is a Yankee from the word go, a genuine Yankee from
somewhere along the coast of Maine. He stands somewhat below medium
height, is lean-faced and lean-bodied; his eyes twinkle with a shrewd
good humour. A great lad. He tells me that his people have been
seafaring folk for generations.
The _Snowdon_, escorted by her tiny guard, ran down the coast,
entered the Thames estuary, passed the barriers, and finally resigned
herself to the charge of a tug. Late in the afternoon, the mass of
London began to enclose them, they became conscious of strange,
somewhat foul, land smells; the soot in the air irritated their
nostrils. The ship was docked close after dusk. The feeling of
satisfaction which seizes on the hearts of seamen who have
successfully brought a ship into port entered into their bosoms;
everybody was happy, happy in the retrospect of achievement, in the
prospect of peace, security, good pay, and good times.
Their vessel lay in a basin just off a great bend in the river, in a
kind of gigantic concrete swimming pool bordered with steel arc-light
poles planted in rows like impossibly perfect trees. To starboard,
through another row of arc poles and over a wall of concrete, they
could see the dirty majesty of the great brown river and the square
silhouetted bulks of the tenements and warehouses on the other side.
To port, lay a landing stage some two hundred feet wide, backed by a
huge warehouse over whose dingy roof two immense chimneys towered
like guardians. The space stank of horse; the river had lost the
clean smell of the sea, and breathed a reek of humanity and inland
mire. A mean cobbled-stone street led from a corner of the landing
space past wretched tenements, fried fish shops, and pawnbrokers'
windows exhibiting second rate nautical instruments, concertinas, and
fraternal emblems. It was all surprisingly quiet.
Steve, hospitably invited to remain aboard, went to the starboard
rail and stood studying the river. The last smoky light had ebbed
from the sky; night, rich and strewn with autumnal stars, hung over
the gigantic city, and a moon just passing the first quarter hung
close by the meridian, and shone reflected in the pool-like basin and
the river's moving tide. One of the huge chimneys suddenly assumed a
great, creamy-curling plume of smoke which dissolved mysteriously
into the exhalations of the city. From down in the crew's quarters
came the musical squeals of a concertina, and occasional voices whose
words could but rarely be distinguished. The arc lights by the basin
edge suddenly flowered into a dismal glow of whitish yellow light
strangled by the opaque hoods and under cups affixed by the
anti-aircraft regulations. Another concertina sounded further down
the street. The moonlight, like a kind of supernal benediction, fell
on smokestack and funnel, on shining grey wire and solemn, rusted
anchor, on burnished capstan and finger smoutched door. Heat haze,
flowing in a swift and glassy river, shone above the smokestack in
the moon.
Suddenly, Steve heard down the street a sustained note from something
on the order of a penny whistle, and an instant later, a window was
flung up, and a figure leaned out. It was too dark to see whether it
was a man or a woman. Then the same whistle was blown again several
times as if by a conscientious boy, and a factory siren with a
sobbing human cry rose over the warehouses. At the same moment, the
lights about the dock flickered, clicked, and died. There was a
confused noise of steps behind, there were voices--"Hey, listen!"
"Wot's that?" the last in pure cockney, and a questioning, doubting
Thomas voice said: "A raid?" The figure of the captain was seen on
the bridge. One of the ships' boys went hurrying round, doing
something or other, probably closing doors. The twins strolled over
to Steve, and informed him in the most casual manner that they were
in for a raid. It was Steve's first introduction to British
unemotionalism, and I imagine that it rather let him down. He says
that he himself was "right up on his tiptoes." He also had a notion
that bombs would begin to rain from the sky directly after the
warning. The twins soon made it clear, however, that the warning was
given when the raiders were picked up on the east coast, and that
there was generally some twenty minutes or half an hour to wait
before "the show" began. Every once in a while, somebody in the
group would steal a look at the pale worlds beyond the serried
chimney pots and at the moon, guiltless accomplice of the violence
and imbecilities of men.
Presently, a number of star shells burst in fountains of coppery
bronze. Every hatch covered, every port and window sealed, the
_Snowdon_ awaited the coming of the raiders. Whistles continued to
be heard, faint and far away. From no word, tone, or gesture of that
English crew could one have gathered that they were in the most
dangerous quarter of the city. For the one indispensable element of
a London raid is the attack on the waterfront, the attack on the
ships, the ships of wood, the ships of steel, the hollow ships
through which imperial Britain lives.
There is little to be seen in a London raid unless you happen to be
close by something struck by a bomb. The affair is almost entirely a
strange and terrible movement of sound, a rising, catastrophic tide
of sound, a flood of thundering tumult, a slow and sullen ebb.
"There! 'Ear that?" said some one.
Far away, on the edge of the Essex marshes and the moon-lit sea, a
number of anti-aircraft guns had picked up the raiders. The air was
full of a faint, sullen murmur, continuous as the roar of ocean on a
distant beach. Searchlight beams, sweeping swift and mechanical,
appeared over London, the pale rays searching the black islands
between the dimmed constellations like figures of the blind. They
descended, rose, glared, met, melted together. The sullen roaring
grew louder and nearer, no longer a blend, but a sustained crescendo
of pounding sounds and muffled crashes. A belated star shell broke,
and was reflected in the river. A police boat passed swiftly and
noiselessly, a solitary red spark floating from her funnel as she
sped. The roaring gathered strength, the guns on the coast were
still; now, one heard the guns on the inland moors, the guns in the
fields beyond quiet little villages, the guns lower down the
river--they were following the river--now the guns in the outer
suburbs, now the guns in the very London spaces, ring, crash, tinkle,
roar, pound! The great city flung her defiance at her enemies.
Steve became so absorbed in the tumult that he obeyed the order to
take shelter below quite mechanically. A new sound came screaming
into their retreat, a horrible kind of whistling zoom, followed by a
heavy pound. Steve was told that he had heard a bomb fall.
"Somewhere down the river." Nearer, instant by instant, crept the
swift, deadly menace. A lonely fragment of an anti-aircraft shell
dropped clanging on the steel deck.
"You see," explained one of the twins in the careful passionless tone
that he would have used in giving street directions to a stranger,
"the Huns are on their way up the river, dropping a kettle on any
boat that looks like a good mark, and trying to set the docks afire.
The docks always get it. Listen!"
There was a second "zoom," and a third close on its heels.
"Those are probably on the _Ætna_ basins," said the other twin.
"Their aim's beastly rotten as a rule. If this light were out, we
might be able to see something from a hatchway. Mr. Millen (the
first mate) makes an awful fuss if he finds any one on deck." "I
know what's what, let's go to the galley, there's a window that can't
be shut." ... The three lads stole off. Beneath a lamp turned down
to a bluish-yellow flame, the older seaman waited placidly for the
end of the raid, and discussed, sailor fashion, a hundred irrelevant
subjects. The darkened space grew chokingly thick with tobacco
smoke. And the truth of it was that every single sailor in there
knew that the last two bombs had fallen on the _Ætna_ basins, and
that the _Snowdon_ would be sure to catch it next. By a trick of the
gods of chance, the vessel happened to be alone in the basin, and
presented a shining mark. The lads reached the galley window.
By crowding in, shoulder to shoulder, they could all see. The pool
and its concrete wall were hidden; the window opened directly on the
river. Presently came a lull in the tumult, and during it, Steve
heard a low, monotonous hum, the song of the raiding planes. More
fragments of shrapnel fell upon the deck. The moon had travelled
westward, and lay, large and golden, well clear of the town. The
winter stars, bright and inexorable, had advanced ... the city was
fighting on. Suddenly, the three boys heard the ominous aerial
whistle, one of the twins slammed the window to, and an instant later
there was a sound within the dark little galley as if somebody had
touched off an enormous invisible rocket, ... a frightful "zoom," and
impact ... silence. They guessed what had happened. A bomb intended
for the _Snowdon_ had fallen in the river. Later somewhere on land
was heard a thundering crash which shook the vessel violently. A pan
or something of the kind hanging on the galley wall fell with a
startling crash. "Get out of there, you boys," called the cook.
Ship's galleys are sacred places, and are to be respected even in air
raids. And then even more slowly and gradually than it had gathered
to a flood, the uproar ebbed. The firing grew spasmodic, ceased
within the city limits, lingered as a distant rumble from the
outlying fields, and finally died away altogether. The sailors,
released by a curt order, came on deck. The top of the concrete wall
was splashed and mottled with dark puddles and spatters of water.
All agreed that the bomb had fallen "bloody close." The peace of the
abyss rules above. Far down the river, there was an unimportant fire.
Said Steve--"I certainly was sore when I didn't have any excitement
on the way over in the convoy, but after that night in the _Snowdon_,
I decided that being with the Armed Guard let you in for some real
stuff. It's a great service."
With which opinion all who know the Guard will agree.
XXXIV
ON HAVING BEEN BOTH A SOLDIER AND A SAILOR
When this cruel war is over, and the mad rounds of parades, banquets
and reunions begin, I shall immediately set to work to organize the
most exclusive of clubs. A mocking and envious friend suggests that
our uniform consist of a white sailor hat, a soldier's tunic,
British, French, or American according to the flags under which we
served, and a pair of sailor trousers with an extra wide flare. For
the club is to be composed of those fortunate souls who like myself
have seen "the show" on land and on sea. To my mind, however,
instead of mixing the uniforms, it would be better to dress in khaki
when we feel military; in blue when our temperament is nautical.
Think of belonging to a club whose members can dissect a trench
mortar with ease and at the same time say: "Three points off the port
bow" without turning a hair. I should admit marines only after a
special consideration of each case. Not that I don't admire the
marines. I do. I yield to no one in my admiration of our gallant
"devil dogs." But the applicant for admission to our club must have
first served as a bona fide soldier and then as a bona fide sailor or
vice versa. Not that I am a sailor or ever was a sailor in Uncle
Sam's Navy. All that I can claim to have been is a correspondent
attached to the Navy "over there." But four months' service, most of
it spent at sea on the destroyers, subs, and battleships entitles me,
I think, to membership, consequently, being president, I have
admitted myself.
"Well, you've seen the war both on land and on sea; which service do
you prefer ... the army or the Navy?" This question is hurled at me
everywhere I go. I answer it with deliberation, enjoying the while
to the full the consciousness of being an extraordinary person, a
sort of literary Æneas, _multum jactatus et terris et alto_. And I
answer briefly:
"The Navy."