What mystery is there like the mystery of the other man's job--or what
world so cut off as that which he enters when he goes to it? The
eminent surgeon is altogether such an one as ourselves, even till his
hand falls on the knob of the theatre door. After that, in the
silence, among the ether fumes, no man except his acolytes, and they
won't tell, has ever seen his face. So with the unconsidered curate.
Yet, before the war, he had more experience of the business and detail
of death than any of the people who contemned him. His face also, as
he stands his bedside-watches--that countenance with which he shall
justify himself to his Maker--none have ever looked upon. Even the
ditcher is a priest of mysteries at the high moment when he lays out
in his mind his levels and the fall of the water that he alone can
draw off clearly. But catch any of these men five minutes after they
have left their altars, and you will find the doors are shut.
Chance sent me almost immediately after the Jutland fight a Lieutenant
of one of the destroyers engaged. Among other matters, I asked him if
there was any particular noise.
"Well, I haven't been in the trenches, of course," he replied, "but I
don't think there could have been much more noise than there was."
This bears out a report of a destroyer who could not be certain
whether an enemy battleship had blown up or not, saying that, in that
particular corner, it would have been impossible to identify anything
less than the explosion of a whole magazine.
"It wasn't exactly noise," he reflected. "Noise is what you take in
from outside. This was _inside_ you. It seemed to lift you right out
of everything."
"And how did the light affect one?" I asked, trying to work out a
theory that noise and light produced beyond known endurance form an
unknown anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to, but infinitely more
potent than, the soothing effect of the smoke-pall of ancient battles.
"The lights were rather curious," was the answer. "I don't know that
one noticed searchlights particularly, unless they meant business; but
when a lot of big guns loosed off together, the whole sea was lit up
and you could see our destroyers running about like cockroaches on a
tin soup-plate."
"Then is black the best colour for our destroyers? Some commanders
seem to think we ought to use grey."
"Blessed if _I_ know," said young Dante. "Everything shows black in
that light. Then it all goes out again with a bang. Trying for the
eyes if you are spotting."