choice," he said dryly. "That fellow has been sitting opposite us
for the last half-hour. Ever since Markham vacated that chair!"
It occurred to me that perhaps Milsom had had all the liqueur brandy
to drink that was good for him.
3
It may or may not have been the effect of the old brandy, but in all
the years Milsom and I were shipmates I never remember him in a mood
of such sheer light-hearted reckless gaiety as that into which he
seemed to slip on the threshold of the antechamber.
A sing-song was in progress round the piano, but on his arrival the
group turned and bellowed for "The Tuppeny Tube." "The Tuppeny
Tube," it must be explained, was a song of his own invention,
accompanied by a great deal of patter and not a little horseplay. In
pantomime he herded the Public (the newly joined subalterns filled
the rôle) into an imaginary overcrowded tube lift, and with clashing
fire-irons imitated the closing and opening of the gates. His
stentorian bellow of "'Urry up there, step smartly! Plenty of room
in front!" was the gag that presently involved the Mess and its
guests in a furious mêlée amid overturned card-tables and chairs.
Little did we guess as we sprawled gasping, breathless with laughter
and exertion, on the leather upholstered chesterfields, in what grim
surroundings many of us were to hear again and thrill at that slogan.
The snooker players, wearied of the decorum of the billiard room,
presently rejoined the remainder, and in five minutes Milsom, like
the Pied Piper of Hamelin, had them dancing to his music. I don't
dance: but I leaned over the back of the piano, sucking my pipe and
watching his smiling, half-mocking face as he swayed dreamily to the
music that tinkled out from underneath his fingers. His eyes were
puckered up in the smoke of the cigar he kept screwed into the corner
of his mouth, and as he played I saw him watching with a queer
inscrutable smile the dancers revolving round him, Majors, Captains
and Subalterns, aye and a couple of Colonels, for Havelock and
Markham were footing it with the best of them.
"This room has seen some good jamborees in its time, Hornby," he said
after a while, speaking with the butt end of the cigar between his
teeth. "I dare say men have carried worse memories across the Line
than their last night in the old Mess before they sailed." He
changed into another air, an old-fashioned valse with a slow haunting
melody; the Bostoners and bunnyhuggers checked and picked up the
altered step. "I envy you going back to sea," he went on. "It's a
good life, afloat. A clean life.... Better'n mucking about ashore
with women.... But our turn'll come."
"You aren't due for sea yet, are you, Soj?" I asked.
"I ain't _due_," he said slowly, nodding his head to the melody.
"The others ain't due, but they're going ... some day...."
"When are you going?"
He shrugged his shoulders, and again the tune changed:
"With me bundle on me shoulder
Sure there's no man could be bolder" ...
He raised his voice in song, and the dancers took up the words till
the great hall rang with men's voices:
"For I'm off to Philadelphia in the morning."
The player brought down his hands in a crash of bass chords and rose
laughing, amid a storm of protest.
"No more. Fineesh.... Phew! It's a long ship, this."
Havelock approached us, glass in hand. "Milsom," he said, "I take
that last song as an augury."
"Why?" asked Milsom, smiling.
"Well, my old governor--he was a Marine, you know--told me that they
sang that on the last guest night before the _Birkenhead_ sailed.
The Marines didn't exactly disgrace themselves in the _Birkenhead_,
and we'll hope your playing it to-night means the Corps are going to
get another chance to show the sort of stuff they're made of."
It was the first time I'd heard the loss of the _Birkenhead_
mentioned as other than a disaster: but that was Havelock's way of
looking at things.
"They're doing that all day long," said Milsom, "but I'll add 'Amen!'"
4
We sailed two days later, and I did not see Milsom again before we
left. He had walked part of the way back with me when, somewhere in
the sma' hours, that hectic guest night drew to a close. We parted
at the head of a dry dock, where a Light Cruiser was lying shored up
in the midst of an abyss of shadows, and for a moment Milsom leaned
over the guard rail and stared down the tiers of smooth masonry into
the darkness beneath us.
"Hornby," he said, "I wish I had my mother's clearness of vision. I
feel somehow that you and I are on the eve of something--an awfully
big adventure of sorts."
"I feel it now," went on Milsom, staring down into the dock with its
flights of giant steps of granite, and speaking in a low voice.
"It's a sort of--sort of pricking of the thumbs!" The beam of an
inquisitive searchlight on one of the harbour defences swung round
and for an instant dazzled us, painted the objects round us ebon and
silver, and passed. Milsom straightened up. "Stonework and
searchlights..." he said, as if repeating a half-forgotten lesson.
"Stonework and searchlights and darkness beneath.... Oh, I wish I
knew! I wish I knew!"
Then abruptly his mood changed. He broke into one of his delightful
laughs, fetched his right hand out of his pocket and slapped me on
the shoulderblade. "Sleep well!" he cried. "Sleep tight--and don't
let the bogies bite!"
That was the last I saw of him.
5
We had been back at the Grand Fleet Base nearly a fortnight, and
leave had slipped into the limbo of the past. The usual
after-effects of a spell at a dockyard were beginning to be apparent:
the married men were cheering up and the bachelors were showing
feverish interest in the mails. We had a racing cutter in training
and a gunnery programme under way that Guns vowed was going to bring
him in grey hairs and sorrow to the grave. Then one busy morning
when I had mapped out a nice little programme for myself, the
Boatswain and the Captain of the Side going round the ship in a
skiff, the Skipper sent for me in the after-cabin.
"Hornby," he said, "what are your plans for the future?" I stared at
him a bit. I'd only been promoted three years, and I wasn't worrying
about a Command. I felt I was doing pretty good work where I was,
and the ship, though perhaps I say it what shouldn't, didn't figure
badly in the Squadron Returns. However, I decided he was
contemplating a change of Commanders and was sorry, because he was a
White Man.
"Plans, sir," I said. "I don't know that I have worried much about
making plans. I believe in going where I'm sent and leaving it at
that."
He nodded with his dry smile and picked up a telescope off his desk.
"I know you won't think I'm butting into your private affairs,
Hornby, or being inquisitive"--he focused the glass through a port on
a distant cutter under sail--"but are you by any chance thinking of
getting married again?"
"No," I said.
He closed the glass with a snap and faced me squarely. "Got any one
dependent on you?"
I shook my head, wondering what on earth he was driving at.
"Well then, I won't beat about the bush any more. There's a certain
operation in contemplation over the other side; a pretty desperate
business as far as I can make out, and the odds against coming out of
it alive are considerable. A Captain is wanted to command a certain
unit of the force; are you on for it?"
"I'm on for it all right," I replied, "but I'm not a Captain."
"That's all right," said the Skipper. He looked at me a bit queerly.
"I was dining with the Admiral last night and he hinted the nature of
the business and asked me if I thought you'd do. I told him you
would, but the thing is uncommonly like signing a very old friend's
death warrant. However, if you pull through you'll not exactly lose
by it."
I suddenly felt a most extraordinary elation, like a schoolboy
promised an unexpected holiday.
"Can you give me any details, sir?" I asked. "Something to go on and
make arrangements?"
The Owner shook his head, and sitting down at his desk pulled a
signal pad towards him. "No," he said, "but I'll make a signal to
the Admiral that you accept and he'll probably send for you in the
course of the day." He rang the bell as he spoke and handed the
signal to a messenger.
"Give that to the Yeoman of the Watch and tell him to make it to
'Flag.'" Then he nodded to me. "That's all then, Commander. We'll
leave it at that for the present."
"Aye, aye, sir," I replied, and so left him, feeling younger than I
had felt for many a long day.
I hadn't long to wait for the summons from the Flagship. Barely an
hour had elapsed before the Chief Yeoman stood in the doorway of my
cabin. I was going through the Defaulters' List with the
Master-at-Arms, I remember.
"Signal from Flag, sir," said the Chief Yeoman. "Admiral wishes to
see Commander Hornby at once." He had evidently shown it to the
Officer of the Watch _en route_, because as he spoke I heard the pipe
of the Boatswain's Mate shrill along the upper deck, calling away the
picket boat. I've noticed that when the gods elect to disturb the
course of human destinies they don't dally long upon the road.
I had a surprise on the threshold of the Great Man's after cabin.
The Flag Lieutenant ushered me in and left me on the mat with a
murmured "Commander Hornby, sir."
The Admiral was standing with his back to the empty stove. Sitting
on the arm of a chintz upholstered sofa, swinging his leg and smoking
a cigarette through a foot-long amber holder, was no less a person
than the Director of Naval Offensives, whom I, in common with the
rest of the Navy, imagined at that moment to be seated at his desk in
a Whitehall office.
"Morning, Hornby," said the Admiral. "I've got your Captain's
signal. Very glad to get it. Just cast your eye over that chart on
the table."
From where I was standing I could see it was a big scale chart of the
German coast. I crossed the cabin, and the Admiral, who was standing
by the table, bent and placed his forefinger on a spot half way up
the coast. "See that place, Hornby?"
"Yes," I said, "Angerbad. The new German destroyer and submarine
base."
"That's it," said the man who spent his life watching it as a cat
watches a mouse-hole. "We want you to block it...."
I confess that caught me in the wind a bit.
The Director of Offensives chuckled and blew a cloud of smoke.
"We'll help you, Hornby," he said. I think I flushed a bit. It was
the cold insolence, the calculated madness of the thing that took
away my breath.
"Aye, aye, sir," I said, and as I spoke I noted the red markings
scattered about that section of the coast and clustering thick round
the port of Angerbad till there was not an inch thus unadorned.
Every mark was a German battery, and the guns ranged from 15 in. to
3-pounders or thereabouts.
"Just give him the outline of the thing," said the Admiral, and the
Director of Offensives got down from his perch and joined us at the
table. With the mouthpiece of his cigarette holder he traced the
course of the canal to where it debouches into the harbour.
Our conversation for the ensuing half-hour need not be recorded here.
It was concerned with ways and means and a good deal of detail that
was subsequently found impracticable or to require modification. But
it wasn't very long before I realised the magnitude of the task ahead
of us, and while he talked the Director of Offensives sat twisted on
the side of the table, enveloped in cigarette smoke, talking in curt
sentences that gave one insight enough into the icy, almost terrible,
intelligence that lay behind his smooth forehead. The other occupant
of the cabin spoke but little, pacing slowly to and fro with bent
head, pausing every now and again to caress the great wolfhound that
lay sprawled across the hearth and never took his eyes off his master.
At length, however, when the broad outlines of the plan had been
unfolded, the Admiral halted in his walk.
"We'll give you an obsolete Cruiser to fit out for the job, and
you'll run her alongside, disembark the assaulting parties, and bring
them off again when the work's finished. It's a seaman's job, and
we've picked you to do it."
"Thank you, sir," I said, and meant it.
"What about the officers and men?" he said. "My pack want blooding
again. Got any suggestions?"
"Yes, sir," I said. "I know of two I'd like to see there, and I'd
like to take a Lieutenant called Thorogood as my First Lieutenant; I
think I can answer for his willingness to come."
"Well, that can wait for the present," said the Director of
Offensives. "We've got to get you South first of all and choose the
ships. Then we'll find some men to put into 'em. We want a real
Prince Rupert of a Marine to lead the storming party on the Mole, and
some good subalterns----" He climbed stiffly off the table and threw
away the stump of his cigarette. "Eh!" he said, "why ain't I twenty
years younger! They didn't do these things when I was a boy!"
I heard the words, but my mind was far away in the corner of a
southern dockyard at night, and as in a dream I heard Milsom's voice:
"Stonework and searchlights.... I wish I knew.... I _wish_ I knew."
Ye Gods! Was this what the bogie in him was driving at?
"I'll wire to the Admiralty for your relief at once," said the
Admiral, as I withdrew to return to my ship. "He'll be North in
three days, and you can start in on this business."
And so I went out, past the motionless figure of the Marine sentry in
the lobby, to begin an awfully big adventure.
6
I was sitting in my cabin after dinner writing up my night order book
when Jakes pushed back the curtain and stepped inside. I believe in
being accessible, and don't let people knock at my door.
"Hullo, Mouldy," I said, "what can I do for you?"
He was our Assistant Gunnery Lieutenant, and he was called Mouldy in
the Wardroom on account of a silent sardonic manner he usually
affected. Popularity is a mysterious thing; no man ever sought
harder to avoid it or achieved it more readily than our silent
"fathom of misery," as the First Lieutenant affectionately termed
him. I think fellows in a Mess read character rather well and ignore
externals. Anyhow, for all his dry cynicism, I knew Mouldy to have
an absurdly tender heart, and to be as sensitive of soul as a
soft-shelled egg. He stood with his cap under his arm and his hands
joined in front of him, the fingers twisting.
"'Speak to you for a minute, sir?" he mumbled. As a matter of fact,
before he introduced the formula that signifies private affairs, I
guessed at the first glance that Mouldy was in trouble of some sort.
I nodded at the armchair.
"Take a sit-down, old lad," I said, "and have a cigarette; I shan't
be a minute finishing this."
I had been too busy since we returned from leave to pay much
attention to affairs in the Mess. But I had observed that Mouldy
never seemed to be about, and when he came to meals appeared even
more taciturn and self-contained than his wont. I left him alone for
a few minutes and then turned round. He was still standing before
the door slowly twisting his fingers. I got a pipe and began
scraping it out.
"Cough it up, Mouldy," I said.
He cleared his throat. "It's nothing much, sir," he replied, in a
rather husky tone of forced detachment. "I--I just wanted to say
that I thought I'd--er--rather like to leave the ship."
I said nothing, but went on scraping out my pipe.
"I don't feel I'm doing much good, sir, an' I thought I'd like to
volunteer for a 'mystery ship,' or something with a bit of risk
attached to it. I'd take on anything as long as there was some
danger mixed up with it. I feel I'm growing moss and barnacles up
here."
I didn't altogether like that. Mouldy was as brave as anyone I knew,
but he was no adventurer by nature.
"Well," I said, "of course the Skipper'll send your name in if you
want me to ask him, but I'd think it over for a bit if I were you."
"I've thought it over," was the reply. "I've done nothing else since
I came back from sick leave." He made a little movement with his
damaged hand. "And I--the fact is, sir, I can't stick it any longer."
There was a note in the old thing's voice that somehow wrung my
heart. There was trouble here, and my imagination coursed wildly
over fields of improbability. For an instant I thought of a woman,
but dismissed the idea. The sort of women that Mouldy usually
bestowed a fleeting affection upon were not the type to send a man
looking for glory.
"Look here," I said, "we've known each other some years now. I'm not
the man, as you've probably discovered, to butt into a fellow's
private affairs or worm confidences out of anyone, but if you're in
trouble of any sort, and it would help to get it off your chest----"
He hesitated for an instant, and in that moment he looked somehow
pathetic; awfully young and boyish and in need of advice. "I'm a
good deal older than you are, Mouldy," I went on, "and I've been
through my own Valley of the Shadow in my time."
He took a long breath, and for a second I thought the floodgates were
going to be loosed. Then the painful reserve and shyness of his
nature closed on the impulse like a vice. "No, sir," he said, "no
... thanks awfully.... I just wanted to get away ... just that."
Whatever fox was gnawing under his shirt, he preferred to hold on to
it rather than another eye should see his hurt. Well, I think I
liked him all the better for it. I never found talking about my
trouble lightened it. It's a matter of temperament, I suppose.
"Right-o!" I said instantly. "I'll see what can be done. In fact
I'll go further. I'll promise you all the change and danger and
excitement you could possibly want." And with that I sent him to
turn in.
7
My relief turned up three days later, and that night they gave me a
farewell dinner in the Wardroom. It was like all shows of the
kind--a mixture of wild joviality and moments of sentiment, real or
stimulated by the cup. I had to make a speech, of course, and
altogether was not sorry when it was at last possible to escape to
the Quarter Deck. I had given no reason for my abrupt departure from
the ship, and I was conscious that I had succeeded in surrounding
myself with a sort of glamour of mystery. Bunje (he was our First
Lieutenant then) would have it that I was about to contract a
matrimonial alliance with an exiled princess, and made a moving
speech after dinner that was not in all its features fit for
reproduction in these pages.
The Young Doctor stoutly maintained that I had decided to embrace
Holy Orders, and insisted on borrowing the Padre's cassock to wear
while he outlined my probable career as a missionary in the valley of
the Yangtse-Kiang.
It was Thorogood who joined me on the Quarter Deck where I was
finishing a final pipe before turning in, and he fell into step
beside me, linking His arm in mine in the boyish, spontaneous manner
in which his affectionate nature revealed itself.
"We'll miss you awfully, Commander," he said.
"You haven't seen the last of me yet, James," I replied.
"No," he answered, "but you're off to-morrow, aren't you? And God
knows when I'll see you again."
"Hang it, why shouldn't I drop him a hint," I thought. If the flower
of the Service was needed for this bloody business, then I'd choose
Jimmy Thorogood amongst the bunch.
"James," I said, "would you care to come with me to my next job?"
He stopped short and stared at me through the darkness. "D'you mean
it?" he cried. "By Jove! If I thought----"
"Listen," I said. "Its a business that wants thinking over. It's a
pretty risky affair, and you are liable to get scuppered. The odds
are a hundred to one on your being killed. I can't tell you any
details at present, but think it over. You're not to tell a soul,
and I'll write to you later and renew my offer. I shan't think you a
coward if you refuse." Upon my soul, at that moment I half hoped he
would refuse. I was awfully fond of Jimmy Thorogood.
"My aunt!" he gasped, just as I had gasped in the Admiral's cabin in
fact. "How perfectly _topping_! ... I say, thanks awfully, sir!"
I left it at that.
8
For the next couple of months I was a busy man. I made my
headquarters ashore, but they gave me a roving commission, and I
spent a good deal of the time at the Admiralty and paid a lot of
flying visits to Dockyard Ports. It would take too long to go into
all that part of the business and describe our hunt round the scrap
heaps of the Navy for just the craft we needed. I fixed on the old
_Intolerant_ for my share of the business, and I shan't forget the
thrill with which I first saw her, black against the sunset one
evening, lying at her rusty moorings on the Motherbank. For the
three blockships we selected the three obsolete Cruisers of the "D"
class: _Daring_, _Dauntless_, and _Determination_, and presently
their Captains arrived down from the North in obedience to a telegram
from the Director of Offensives. They invaded my diggings at the
Base one forenoon, tumbling out of a rickety four-wheeler, burdened
with rugs and suitcases, all jabbering at once; James Thorogood, a
contemporary of his called Glegg, and another Lieutenant-Commander I
didn't know, named Brakespear. They were in the highest spirits and
loudly demanded food. I fed them and gave them drink, and finally,
when they had their pipes alight and were sprawling at their ease, I
unfolded what lay ahead. Of course, they had an inkling--in fact,
they had to be told a certain amount when they were asked to
volunteer. But they wanted details now, and what I told them ought
to have sobered a circus. Instead of which, Glegg danced a war
dance, and Thorogood solemnly stood on his head in a corner of the
sofa, while Brakespear flung cushions at him and scared the
landlady's cat to the verge of delirium.
It was the next day that I learned for the first time who was to lead
the Marines' storming party on to the Mole from the deck of the old
_Intolerant_. I received a telephone message from the Director of
Offensives that he wanted to see me, and accordingly I went to town
and reached his office about noon. There, studying a roll of aerial
photographs through a magnifying glass at the Admiral's side, was
Milsom. I somehow felt no surprise, but he raised his eyebrows and
smiled in his half-mocking whimsical way.
"You know each other?" said the Admiral. "That's all right. Now
what about the demolition party. We want a Lieutenant-Commander for
that; a Gunnery man for preference. Any suggestions, Hornby?"
"Yes," I said. "Lieutenant-Commander Jakes." I named my old ship.
He nodded. "Send for him and let me see him. In the meanwhile you
two had better go and have a Council of War. It wouldn't be a bad
plan if you went down and looked at the _Intolerant_ together.
They've started work on her, and as soon as the living quarters are
ready, you, Hornby, can take up your quarters on board. Milsom won't
need to for some time yet." He turned to the Marine. "You can pick
your men and start in a preliminary training ashore. No need to be
uncomfortable till you've got to! By the way, if you are going down
to see the _Intolerant_ you can take a letter for me to the
Commander-in-Chief. Just wait while I dictate a few lines."