We were going on an expedition long before the morning light
came. Our ship was an armed steamer a converted cargo boat. We
had reinforced our naval guns' crews and our Indian ship's guard
by taking officers and native soldiers (askaris) aboard at a
certain bay. We had reinforced our artillery by borrowing a Maxim
from the shore. I had a guest on board that night, a cheerful
padre. How he seemed to relish his craft, and how able I esteemed
him. I was very raw at the work, and he helped me to understand
what my defects were both in nature and grace. He had the
sort of smile, I thought the real, right sort to warm a naval
parishioner's heart. He was very keen on the new sort of thrills
and experiences that he had sought for himself by coming aboard.
We reclined on camp beds high up on the bridge-deck, but we did
not drop asleep when the electric light failed and faded. We
asked each other's ages, and discussed parts of England as we had
known them in more peaceful days; then we assured one another
that we wanted to rise early. We were to steam off on our sudden
raid in the dark. Coffee had been ordered about 5:30; action
might be expected to begin not much later than 6 a.m. We speculated
as to whether it were true that our ship would have to face an
old field gun's fire on the morrow, as well as a Maxim's. I was
eloquent as I told how our four-inch gun might be expected to
shake the ship. After that, in the dimness we talked shop; we had
neither of us possibly had many easy openings for that ravishing
employment lately.
Was it right to pray for our own side's success? I was steadfast
in my scruples as to praying thus, my new-found friend was
inclined to be a little scornful of them. 'Is there a God of the
Germans fighting the English tribal God?' I asked rather
irreverently, and my friend showed that he was shocked. I
apologized. 'Let's leave the Supreme Power out,' I said. 'Let's
consider the action of the saints in this war. Are they supposed
to be scrapping like the gods in Homer English Saint George
against German Saint Michael and so on?' But my friend did not
seem very keen about either Homer or hagiology. He explained that
he was a C.M.S. man, and not a medievalist. The discussion
languished, ere he murmured 'Good night.'
I slept rather fitfully. I was awake long before the ship moved
away on her fierce errand. At last, when she had been steaming
some while, I stole down in the dark to the bathroom. When I came
out of it the grey twilight was beginning. I crept aft and looked
over the bulwark, wondering how far we were away now. The shore
Maxim was in place there with plenty of sand bags about it, but
the officer in charge of it was still stretched abed. His friend
the Intelligence Officer, who had messed with us last night, was
snoring on another bed beside him. I stood looking at a dusky
island in the moonlight, and began praying a favorite prayer of
mine for those times, asking God to let Saint Michael cover our
heads in the day of battle. I muttered the prayer very low, but
it appeared that somebody heard. A slim figure, seemingly in
khaki, that I had not noticed, rose up from a seal; on the sand
bags.
'Are you praying something about battles?' it asked. I started,
and assented clumsily.
'How does one pray about battles nowadays?' the investigator
proceeded. He spoke in the friendliest way, and managed to set
even me at ease. So I told him what I had prayed for.
'It sounds a fair sort of prayer; better than some I've heard,'
he allowed, as he sat down again. 'Some people seem to forget the
last lot of the Books in the Bible when they pray nowadays.' I
heartily agreed.
'I don't believe for one,' he went on, 'that Saint Michael is
passionately interested in wiping out either English or askaris
or Germans. It's surely better to pray about him like you prayed.
I should think the negative work appeals to him more than the
positive, the salvage more than the blotting.'
His voice was clear, and evidently carried. The Maxim's warden
grumbled, and began to sit up in bed.
'Possibly,' this disturber of slumber went on quite
unconcernedly, 'Saint Michael has a clearer notion as to the real
enemy than some clients who invoke him.'
Then the officer in pyjamas accosted me, and the thread of the
other's talk was lost. When I moved off to dress he had already
left his perch among the sand bags. I climbed the ladder, and had
my coffee. Soon after came the scurry to stations. We were coming
into the bay in the glory of that morning under hangings of amber
and rose and feathery grey. The four-inch gun's crew were in
their places. I stood trying to read the Prayer before Action in
its very small print. I murmured what I was doing to my cheery
colleague, so much more enthusiastic than I was about what seemed
to be coming. Then someone came up and spoke to me. It was surely
my friend from the sand bags. I could see him properly now. He
was surely an officer. He stood up slender and shapely in his
khaki, but he was not wearing a single star or a regimental badge
of any kind. Had he forgotten these in the hurry of this eager
morning? With but a few words, he passed on towards the guns'
crews. Soon our four-inch gun was shaking the ship horribly. We
were shelling a trench that ran up a hillside, they said. I sat
under cover of the bulwark near some kneeling riflemen, far from
enjoying myself. Yet no gun roared back in answer to our own. It
seemed to be one-sided enough, this operation of war.
'It's a fearful weapon,' remarked my colleague rather
complacently, as he paced towards the gun platform. One prayed
for those who were naked to its fearsomeness up on the hill
there, and prayed about Saint Michael's intervention to Saint
Michael's Commander-in-Chief. The long-drawn moments slurred by
us. A bell rang as the ship wound her way in slowly. The mournful
cry of him who took the soundings came again and again. Then we
stopped dead anew, and our gun's mouth roared and flamed.
'Such a crowd of askaris; the hill's black with them!' So the
signalman cried to the doctor, as he sped by on a message. I was
interested in watching the gun-layer as he readjusted the dragon
mouth. But what had my friend of the sand-bags to do with the
matter? He moved among the gun's crew, and none said him nay; his
hands were on the gun after the accredited gunlayer's. We shelled
another position, and then another. Afterwards came a lull, and
some of us hurried up to breakfast.
There was much talk there of the possible or probable slaughter
we had effected. Doubtless the store ship that had followed us
and hung behind us had served us well. Those on shore Had surely
been more disposed to hold to their positions, fearing that she
carried troops, and meant to land them. Now she was steaming
slowly away. How many did our bag amount to? The Intelligence
Officer was sanguine, so was my colleague, but the gunnery
officer was rather pessimistic. 'Two or three of those rounds
went just wrong,' he grunted. 'We've struck a bad day.' After
that the porridge and the bacon and the eggs were done with; we
were soon back at our stations. Once more our gun bombarded. Once
more no answer came. Now occurred the cruise of the motor boat;
the best adventure of the day so far, as it seemed to me.
The boat was lowered, and the shore Maxim mounted in it. Sand
bags were piled up in plenty. A Naval Reserve officer, fair-haired
and young faced, sprang in to join the gun's officer. There was
also a British bluejacket ready to go, and there were African
soldiers and sailors, as well as the two engine-men, English and
Goanese. They were to beat up the river, and hunt down canoes,
should any appear.
My heart thrilled as I uttered God-speed to the Maxim warden. I
think he was unmarried, but his fellow officer was both husband
and father; they might have a fiery time in front. Last my
graceful friend, with no stars or badges on his khaki, slipped
into the boat. He seemed to come and go as he liked, and none
refused his services. The boat hummed away from us, past some
rocks, and round a headland into the unseen. Then our ship
traveled on slowly, before she stopped and fired again. She shot
away many rounds that time. I was sick and weary of the firing as
I sat on the deck by the doctor's cabin. My colleague was much
more alert and cheerful. He had secured a shell-case by the naval
commander's bounty. 'They make such splendid trophies,' he told
me. But I did not covet one much. I thought of how such war
trophies were in demand for Christmas decoration vases in a
church by the lakeside. I also thought of the quite possible
horror and havoc of shattered askaris' bodies that those splendid
trophies might be supposed to have wrought. How one thought
besides of the adventurers in that whizzing motor-boat during
that next half-hour. But as it turned out, according to their
disappointed report, not a shot was fired at them.
'We let fly with the Maxim at some natives and one European on
shore,' the gun-worker shouted, as they drew up at the ship's
side. 'We saw some canoes, three of them. Askaris were in them,
and urging the paddlers on. Then, of all times, the Maxim took it
into its head to jam badly. So we didn't get them.' I happened to
catch my friend in khaki's eye as the other lamented. He looked
quite cheerful about things, while the other went on, 'We'd have
sunk the lot, if it hadn't jammed just then.'
The thought flickered into my mind as to whether anybody was
responsible for that singular coincidence. I looked in my
friend's face with some sort of an uneasy question. But he only
smiled. His face was strangely prepossessing, so entirely
fearless, yet not the least truculent. His brown eyes and boy's
lips answered my question with the most engaging of smiles. Those
brown eyes assorted piquantly with his very fair hair. He had
pushed his white helmet far back on his yellow head. Half an hour
later we were in our action stations once more. Our riflemen were
firing at individual askaris (were they all askaris, and not
unhappy villagers?) who could be descried upon the shore. The
signalman, passing by again, snatched a rifle and fired just
beside me. One of the Maxims meanwhile was working away grimly,
the officer's face was set firm as he steadied his coughing
machine. Then it was that I saw my unattached friend step towards
him, and take up his stand behind him. Ping! A bullet came just
over the gun-director's head. 'That was a near shave,' the
warrant officer told me afterwards. 'Someone aimed too high, or
he'd have got him that worked the gun.'
Yet it was a mystery to me why the bullet did not get that
handsome head behind and above him, the head that I reflected had
doubtless helped to draw the fire so high. He who had exposed
himself came to me untouched. 'It looked near,' he allowed to me
smiling. He stayed by us for the rest of that fell morning. He
smiled, and bade me cheer up, when the naval commander went by;
had he not twitted me for sitting safe under the bulwark and
wincing when the four-inch gun roared? He smiled also a little
ironically when my colleague came up, still fondling his trophy
and dilating on its splendor. Then he smiled again and again as
he moved behind him to and fro on the deck, watching him in the
pitiless firing. He smiled moreover when he moved up to the gun;
he was revising the gunlayer's work now and then, so far as I
could make out his movements. He smiled afterwards when the
Intelligence Officer made such sanguine estimates of the
slaughter we had dealt out to forts and trenches. They were
talking together, he and his comrade of the Maxim gun, discussing
whether the bag was really a big one, the former as glib with the
pros as the latter was with the cons. The tall listener smiled
rather wistfully as he heard them. After the last round from the
six-pounder had been fired, before we went to lunch, he came up
and said farewell to me. 'But I shall see you again on board,
shan't I?' I asked. 'We shan't put you off at the Bay till nearly
sunset, shall we?' 'I may be getting off long before then,' he
said, but he did not explain how. My prayer book had fallen on
the deck, and he picked it up and gave it to me. 'Mind you keep
to your own line,' he said. 'I like that prayer in your prayer
book about Saint Michael. Doubtless he's covered not a few
people's heads in this day of battle, not all of them on the one
side. It's likely enough he has unearthly notions about war, as
he's an unearthly being. Perhaps the dragon he makes war on, war
to the death, is neither England nor Germany, but just the
scrapping between them.'
'What do you mean?' I asked, rather puzzled. Yet he only smiled,
he was not very explicit.
'Oh, by the way,' he said. 'They tell me you've promised to build
a mission church to Saint Michael if you get back to the south
safe and sound.' I wondered afterwards who they were that had
told him.
'Yes, I said, 'and if I don't, the building of it's endowed in my
will.'
'Why not take the shell-cases,' he said, 'if they offer you some?
You needn't use them in your church as altar-vases. They'd
make a splendid trophy under Saint Michael's feet, a gleaming,
sleek-barreled serpent of slaughter, just the sort of dragon for
him to tread, and delight in treading. Good-bye.'
He was gone amongst the sailors, just as the steward called me up
to the cold soup. I saw no more of him on the voyage, nor have I
seen him since that September day. The one or two I asked about
him seemed not to know whom I meant. I have often wondered who he
was since then, and have framed a theory. Perhaps you can guess
what it is without my needing to write it down.