WET BOBS
A flurry of sleet came out of the east where a broad band of light was
slowly widening into day.
The tarpaulin cover to the after hatchway was drawn aside as if by a
cautious hand, and the rather sleepy countenance of the Young Doctor
peered out into the dawning. An expression of profound distaste spread
over it, and its owner emerged to the quarterdeck. There he stood
shivering, looking about him as if he found the universe at this hour a
grossly over-rated place. After a few minutes' contemplation of it
thus, he turned up the collar of his great coat, pulled his cap down
until it gave him the appearance of a sort of Naval "Artful Dodger,"
and walked gloomily to the port gangway. The Officer of the Watch, who
was partaking of hot cocoa in the shelter of the after superstructure,
sighted this forlorn object.
"Morning, Pills!" he shouted. "She's called away: won't be long now."
He wiped his mouth and came across the deck to where the other was
standing. "Fine morning for a pull," he observed, throwing his nose
into the air and sniffing like a pointer. "Smell the heather? Lor'!
it does me good to see all you young fellow-me-lads turning up here
bright and early with the roses in your cheeks."
The Young Doctor turned a gamboge-tinted eye on the speaker.
"Dry up," he said acidly.
The Officer of the Watch was moved to unseemly mirth. "Where's your
crew, Pills? I don't like to see this hanging-on-to-the-slack the
first morning of the training season. You're too easy going for a cox,
by a long chalk, my lad. You ought to be going round their cabins now
with a wet sponge, shouting 'Wet Bobs!' and 'Tally Ho!' and the rest of
it."
"Dry up!" was the reply.
"An even temper, boundless tact, a firm manner and an extensive
vocabulary--those were the essentials of the cox of a racing boat when
_I_ was a lad at College. Why did they make you cox, Pills?"
"'Cos I'm light," retorted the Doctor. "'Cos I'm a damn fool," he
added with a sudden access of bitterness. "Look here, Tweedledee, what
about this bloomin' boat? Here I've been standing for the last five
minutes--ah, there she is."
He gazed distastefully at the lower boom, where two members of the
galley's crew were casting off the painter that secured the boat to the
Jacob's ladder.
"Now, then," said a loud and cheerful voice at their elbows, "where's
this boat we've been hearing such a lot about?" A tall, athletic
figure in football shorts and swathed about with many sweaters, with a
bright red cushion under his arm, stood gazing in the direction of the
lower boom. "Well, I'm blowed," he said, "not alongside _yet_? You're
a nice person, Pills, to leave the organisation of a racing boat's crew
to." He looked round the quarterdeck. "Where're all the others? Lazy
hogs! Here we are with the sun half over the foreyard and the boat not
even manned."
The Surgeon eyed him severely. "You're none too smart on it yourself,
Bunje. Where's Thorogood? Where's Number One? Where's Gerrard?
Where's--ah, now they're coming."
A sleepy-eyed procession, athletically clad, but not otherwise
conveying an impression of vast enthusiasm in the venture, trooped up
the hatchway and congregated in a shivering group at the gangway.
"When I go away pulling," said the First Lieutenant, apparently
addressing a watchful-eyed gull volplaning past with outstretched
wings, "when I go away pulling, I like to get straight into the boat,
shove off and start right in. It's this hanging about----"
"It's Tweedledee's fault," protested the coxswain bitterly. "I wrote
it down last night on the slate. He's too busy guzzling cocoa to
attend to his job, that's the truth of the matter. Are we all here
now, anyway...?" He scanned the faces of his little band of heroes.
"Derreck!" he said suddenly. "Now, where's Derreck? Really, this is
just about the pink limit. How could anyone----"
"Hullo, hullo, hullo!" The form of the Engineer Lieutenant emerged
from the superstructure and came skipping towards them. "Sorry,
everybody! Am I late? My perishing servant forgot to call me. And
then I couldn't find my little short pants. Tweedledee, I've just been
having a lap at your cocoa: the Quartermaster said it was getting cold."
"Not mine," replied the Officer of the Watch. "I've finished mine.
You've probably drunk the Commander's. He put it down for a minute----"
The face of the Engineer Lieutenant grew suddenly anxious. "Well, what
about getting into the boat and shoving off? What are we all standing
about getting cold for? I vote we have a jolly good pull, too. Stay
away for half-an-hour or so--eh?"
The long, slim galley came at length alongside under the manipulation
of the two rather apathetic members of the galley's crew, and the
officers' racing crew descended the gangway and took possession of her.
"Now then," said the Young Doctor, "sort yourselves out: Number One
stroke, Gerrard bow, Bunje----"
"I'm going bow," said the Engineer Lieutenant. "I pulled bow at Keyham
for two years, and in China----"
"If you stand there kagging[1] we'll never get away," interposed the
coxswain, "and the Commander will want to know who drank his cocoa.
Bunje second stroke, James third stroke. Derreck, you're second bow,
and Tweedledum third bow, and for heaven's sake sit down and stop
gassing, all of you."
Thorogood leaned forward and extended a stretcher for inspection.
"How the devil am I to pull with a stretcher like this, Pills?" he
demanded. "It'll smash before we've gone a yard."
"When I was at Keyham," said the Engineer Lieutenant, slopping water
over the canvas parcelling on his oar in a professional manner, "we
used to have stretchers made with----"
"We don't want to hear about Keyham," said the First Lieutenant, "we
want to get to work. Shove the perishing thing away, James, and stop
chawing your fat. If it's good for Nelson it's good enough for you."
"Do we start training in earnest to-day?" demanded the India-rubber
Man, gloomily rubbing his calves. "Because I don't mind admitting that
I like to start gradually. 'Another-Little-Drink-Won't-Do-Us-Any-Harm'
sort of spirit."
"We shan't start at all if Double-O Gerrard doesn't find that blessed
boat-hook an' shove her off soon," retorted the long, lean third bow,
speaking for the first time.
"I can't see without my glasses," complained the bow, fumbling among
the blades of the oars. "Where is the bloomin' thing? Ah, here we
are!"
"Shove off forward!" bellowed the voice of the coxswain for the third
time.
The bow leaned his weight behind the boathook against the ship's side,
and the bows of the galley sheered off slowly.
"We're awa'," said the India-rubber Man, "we're awa'! Lord, 'ow
lovely!"
They paddled desultorily for a few strokes. Then the bow "bucketed"
and sent a shower of icy spray over the backs of the two after oarsmen.
Their loud expostulations were followed by protests from Tweedledum.
"My oar's got a kink!" he announced lugubriously.
"Oars!" said the coxswain. "Now," he said grimly, with the air of a
man who had reached the limit of human patience, "I'll give you all a
minute. Ease up your belts, tie your feet down, have a wash and brush
up, say your prayers, spit on your hands, and get comfortable once and
for all. It's the last stand-easy you'll get. We're going to pull
round the head of the line if it breaks blood-vessels."
The minute passed in invective directed chiefly against the oars, the
stretchers, the crutches, the boat generally and the helmsman in
particular. At the expiration of that time, however, they all sat up
facing aft, with their hands expectantly gripping the looms of their
oars and profound gloom on every countenance.
The coxswain contemplated them dispassionately.
"You're a cheerful-looking lot to start out with to win the cup back!"
was his comment. "Oars ready! 'Way together!"
The crew, like a child that suddenly tires of being naughty, bent to
their oars, and the boat slid through the water under long, swinging
strokes....
* * * * *
Regatta-day broke calm and clear. The hands were piped to breakfast,
and the Quartermaster of the Morning Watch, as the latest authority on
the vagaries of the barometer, entered the Petty Officers' mess with
the air of one in the intimate confidence of the High Gods.
"Glass 'igh an' steady," he announced, helping himself to sausage and
mashed potatoes. "We'll 'ave it calm till mebbe five o'clock, then
it'll blow from the south'ard. That's down the course. But we won't
'ave no rain to-day."
The Captain of the Forecastle, who read his "Old Moore's Almanac," and
was susceptible to signs and portents, confirmed the optimism of the
Quartermaster.
"I 'ad a dream last night," he said. "I was a-walkin' with my missus
alongside the Serpentine--in London, that is. There was swans sailin'
on it, an' we was 'eavin' bits of bread to 'em. 'Fred,' she says,
'you'll 'ave it beautiful for your regatta. You'll win,' she says,
'the Stokers' Cutters, the Vet'rans' Skiff's, the Orficers' Gigs, an'
the All-comers.'"
"That's along of you eatin' lobster for supper last night," said the
Ship's Painter, a sceptic who had a sovereign on a race not mentioned
by the Captain of the Forecastle's wife. "Wot about the perishin'
Boys' Cutters? Didn't your old Dutch say nothin' about them?"
The seer shook his head and performed intricate evolutions with a pin
in the cavernous recesses of his mouth.
"Mebbe she would 'ave if she'd 'ad the chanst," was the reply. "But
she didn't 'ave time to say no more afore the Reveille interrupted 'er,
an' I 'ad to turn out."
The Quartermaster of the Morning Watch concluded his repast. "Well,"
he said, "Mebbe she'll tell you the rest to-night. Then we'll know
'oo's 'oo, as the sayin' is. But there's one crew as I'll put my shirt
on, an' that's the Orficers' Gigs."
"'Ow about the Boys' Cutters?" demanded the Ship's Painter whose
sovereign was in jeopardy.
"_An'_ the Vet'rans' Skiffs," echoed the Captain of the Forecastle,
"what my wife mentioned? 'Fred,' she says----"
"An' the All-comers," interrupted the Captain of the Side, "wiv the
Chief Buffer[2] coxin' the launch?"
The Quartermaster of the Morning Watch made a motion with an enormous
freckled paw as if stroking an invisible kitten. "I ain't sayin'
nothin' against 'em. Nothin' at all. What I says is, 'Wait an' see.'
I ain't a bettin' man, not meself. But if anyone was to fancy an even
'arf quid----"
The shrill whistle of the call-boy's pipe clove the babel of the
crowded mess-deck.
"A-a-away Racing Whaler's Crew!"
shouted the cracked high tenor. "Man your boat!"
"There you are!" said the Blacksmith, a silent, bearded man. "What are
we all 'angin' on to the slack for? Come on deck. That's the first
race."
Regatta-day, even in War-time, was a day of high carnival. The dozen
or so of Battleships concerned, each with its crew of over a thousand
men, looked forward to the event much in the same spirit as a Derby
crowd that gathers overnight on Epsom Downs. The other Squadrons of
the vast Battle-fleet were disposed to ignore the affair; they had
their own regattas to think about, either in retrospection or as an
event to come. But in the Squadron immediately concerned it was, next
to the annihilation of the German Fleet, the chief consideration of
their lives, and had been for some weeks past.
For weeks, and in some cases months, the racing crews of launches,
cutters, gigs, and whalers, officers and men alike, had carried through
an arduous training interrupted only by attentions to the King's
enemies and the inclemencies of the Northern spring. And now that the
day had come, both spectators and crews moved in an atmosphere of
holiday and genial excitement heated by intership rivalry to
fever-point.
A regatta is one of the safety valves through which the ships'
companies of the silent Fleet in the North can rid themselves of a
little superfluous steam. Only those who have shared the repressed
monotony of their unceasing vigil can appreciate what such a day means.
To be spared for a few brief hours the irksome round of routine, to
smoke Woodbines the livelong day; to share, in the grateful sunlight,
some vantage point with a "Raggie," and join in the full-throated,
rapturous roars of excitement that sweep down the mile-long lane of
ships abreast the sweating crews. This is to taste something of the
fierce exhilaration of the Day that the Fleet is waiting for, and has
awaited throughout the weary years.
A Dockyard tug, capable of accommodating several hundred men, lay
alongside. The ship had swung on the tide at an angle to the course
that obscured full view of the start. Those of the ship's company who
desired a full complete spectacle from start to finish were to go away
and anchor at some convenient point in the line, from which an
uninterrupted panorama could be obtained. The device had other
advantages: by anchoring midway down the course a flagging crew could
be spurred on to mightier efforts by shouts and execrations, the
beating of gongs, hooting syren and fog-horns, whistles and impassioned
entreaties.
Accordingly the more ardent supporters of the various crews, armed with
all the implements of noise and encouragement that their ingenuity
could devise, embarked. They swarmed like bees over the deck and
bridge-house, they clung to the rigging and funnel stays, and perched
like monkeys on the mast and derrick. Thus freighted the craft moved
off amid deafening cheers, and took up a position midway between two
Battleships moored in the centre of the line. The anchor was dropped,
and the closely packed spectators, producing mouth-organs and
cigarettes, prepared to while away the time until the commencement of
the first race.
They belonged to a West-country ship--that is to say, one manned from
the Dockyard Port of Plymouth. The master of the tug, whose interest
in such matters was, to say the least of it, cosmopolitan, had anchored
between two Portsmouth-manned Battleships. The position he had
selected commanded a full view of the course, and there his
responsibilities in the affair ended. On the other hand, the crews of
the two Battleships in question, assembled in full strength on their
respective forecastles in anticipation of the forthcoming race,
regarded the arrival of the tug in the light of a diversion sent
straight from Heaven.
The tug's cable had scarcely ceased to rattle through the hawse-pipe
when the opening shots, delivered through a megaphone, rang out across
the water.
"_'Ullo! Web-feet!_" bellowed a raucous voice. "_Yeer! Where be
tu?_" A roar of laughter followed this sally.
The occupants of the tug were taken by surprise. Their interests had
hitherto been concentrated in the string of whalers being towed down to
the distant starting-point by a picket boat. Before they could rally
their forces a cross-fire of rude chaff, winged by uproarious laughter,
had opened on either side. Catch-word and jest, counter and repartee
utterly unintelligible to anyone outside Lower-deck circles were hurled
to and fro like snowballs. Every discreditable incident of their joint
careers as units of that vast fighting force, personalities that would
have brought blushes to the cheeks of a Smithfield porter, the whole
couched in the obscure jargon of Catwater and Landport taverns, rang
backwards and forwards across the water, and withal the utmost good
humour and enjoyment wreathing their faces with smiles.
The distant report of a gun sounded and a far-off roar of voices
announced that the first race had started; straight-way the tumult
subsided, and an expectant hush awaited the approach of the line of
boats moving towards them like a row of furious water-beetles.
The race drew nearer, and ship after ship of the line took up the
deep-toned roar. The names of the ships, invoked by their respective
ship's companies as might the ancients have called upon their Gods,
blended in one great volume of sound. The more passionately interested
supporters of the crews followed the strung-out competitors in
steam-boats, and added their invocations to the rest.
A rifle cracked on board the end ship of the line, and the crew of the
leading boat collapsed in crumpled heaps above their oars. The race
was over. On board a ship half-way down the line a frantic outburst of
cheering suddenly predominated above all other sounds, and continued
unabated as the rifle cracked twice more in quick succession,
announcing that the second and third boats had ended the race.
A hoist of flags at the masthead of the Flagship proclaimed the names
of the first three crews, dipped, and was succeeded by the number of
the next race. Again the gun in the bows of the Umpire's steam-boat
sped the next race upon its way, and once more the tumult of men's
voices rose and swelled to a gale of sound that swept along the line,
and died to the tumultuous cheering of a single ship.
A couple of hours passed thus, and there remained one race before
dinner, the Officers' Gigs. The events of the forenoon had
considerably enhanced the reputation of the Captain of the Forecastle
as a prophet. Furthermore, the result of the Boys' Race had enriched
the Ship's Painter to the extent of a sovereign. It needed but the
victory of the Officers' Gigs to place the ship well in sight of the
Silver Cock, which was the Squadron Trophy for the largest number of
points obtained by any individual ship.
The starting-point was the rallying-place for every available steam-
and motor-boat in the Squadron, crowded with enthusiastic supporters of
the different crews. The Dockyard tug, with its freight of hoarse yet
still vociferous sailor-men, had weighed her anchor, and moved down to
the end of the line preparatory to steaming in the wake of the last
race.
The Umpire, in the stern of an officious picket-boat, was apparently
the only dispassionate participator in the animated scene. The long,
graceful-looking boats, each with its crew of six, their anxious-faced
coxswains crouched in the sterns, and tin flags bearing the numbers of
their ships in the bows, were being shepherded into position. A tense
silence was closing down on the spectators. It deepened as the line
straightened out, and the motionless boats awaited the signal with
their oars poised in readiness for the first stroke.
"Up a little, number seven!" shouted the starter wearily through his
megaphone. Two hours of this sort of thing robs even the Officers'
Gigs of much outstanding interest to the starter.
"Goo-o-o!" whispered one of the watching men. "'E don't 'arf know 'is
job, the coxswain of that boat."
The boat in question with a single slow stroke moved up obediently.
"Stand by!" sang the metallic voice again. Then--
_Bang!_ They were off.
As if released by the concussion, a wild pandemonium burst from the
waiting spectators' throats. The light boats sprang forward like
things alive, and in their churning wakes came the crowded steam-boats.
For perhaps two minutes the racing boats travelled as if drawn by
invisible threads of equal length. Then first one and then another
dropped a little. The bow of one of the outside boats broke an oar,
and before the oarsman could get the spare one into the crutch the boat
slipped to the tail of the race. The spare oar shipped, however, she
maintained her position, and her crew continued pulling against
hopeless odds with pretty gallantry.
Half-way down the mile course there were only four boats in it. The
Flagship's boat led by perhaps a yard, with a rival on either side of
her pulling stroke for stroke. Away to the right and well clear, the
Young Doctor urged his crew on with sidelong glances out of the corner
of his eye at the other boats.
"You've got 'em!" he said. "You've got 'em cold. Steady does it!
Quicken a fraction, Number One. Stick it, Bow, stick it, lad!"
The Flagship's boat had increased her lead to half a length ahead of
her two consorts: the Young Doctor's crew held her neck and neck. Then
the Young Doctor cleared his dry throat and spoke with the tongues of
men and fallen angels. He coaxed and encouraged, he adjured and abused
them stroke by stroke towards their goal. The crew, with set, white
faces and staring eyes fixed on each other's backs, responded like
heroes, but Double-O Gerrard was obviously tiring and the First
Lieutenant's breath was coming in sobs. They were pulling themselves
out.
The roar of voices on either side of the course surged in their ears
like the sound of a waterfall. Astern of them was the picket-boat, a
graceful feather of spray falling away on either side of the
stem-piece. A concourse of Wardroom and Gunroom officers had crowded
into her bows, and the Commander, purple with emotion, bellowed
incoherencies through a megaphone.
Then, with one keen glance at the Flagship's crew and one at the
rapidly approaching finishing line, the Young Doctor chose the
psychological moment.
"Stand by!" he croaked. "Now, all together--_spurt!_"
His crew responded with the last ounce of energy in their exhausted
frames. They were blind, deaf and dumb, straining, gasping, forcing
"heart and nerve and sinew" to drive the leaden boat through those last
few yards. Suddenly, far above their heads, rang out the crack of a
rifle, and the next instant another. The crew collapsed as if shot.
For a moment none was capable of speech. Then the First Lieutenant
raised his head from his hands.
"Which is it," he asked, "us or them?"
The Young Doctor was staring up at the masthead of the Flagship. A
tangle of flags appeared above the bridge-screen.
"I can't read 'em," he said. "Which is it? Translate, someone, for
pity's sake."
The crew of the Flagship's boat, lying abreast of them a few yards
away, answered the question. They turned towards their late
adversaries and began clapping. The next moment the Dockyard tug burst
into a triumphant frenzy, and the picket-boat, full of cheering,
clapping mess-mates, slid alongside to take the painter.
The First Lieutenant stretched out a large, blistered hand. "Shake,
Pills," he said.
* * * * *
One race is, after all, very much like another. Yet the afternoon wore
on without any appreciable abatement in the popular enthusiasm. And it
was not without its memorable features. The Bandsmen's Race crowned
one of the participators in undying fame. This popular hero broke an
oar half-way through the race, and rising to his feet promptly sprang
overboard.
His spectacular action plunged the remainder of the crew in hopeless
confusion, and he himself was rescued with difficulty in a half-drowned
state of collapse by the Umpire's boat. Yet for some occult reason no
feat of gallantry in action would have won him such universal
commendation on the Lower-deck. "Nobby Clark--'im as jumped overboard
in the Bandsmen's Race" was thereafter his designation among his
fellows.
The last race--the All-comers--did not justify universal expectation.
The treble-banked launch was indeed coxed by the Chief Boatswain's
Mate. A "Funny-party" in the stern, composed of a clown, a nigger and
a stout seaman in female attire, added their exhortations to the "Chief
Buffer's" impassioned utterances. But the Flagship's galley, pulling
eight oars, with the coxswain perched hazardously out over the stern,
won the three-mile tussle, and won it well.
As the Quartermaster of the Morning Watch had foretold, a breeze sprang
up towards the close of the day. It blew from the southward and
carried down the lines a medley of hilarious sounds.
A drifter hove in sight, shaping course for the Fleet Flagship. She
was crowded to suffocation with singing, cheering sailor-men, and
secured to her stumpy bowsprit was a silver cock. As she approached
the stern of the Flagship, however, the uproar subsided, and the
densely thronged drifter was white with upturned, expectant faces.
A solitary figure was walking up and down the quarterdeck of the
Battleship. He paused a moment, suddenly stepped right aft to the
rail, and smilingly clapped his hands, applauding the trophy in the
bows of the drifter. The last rays of the setting sun caught on the
broad gold bands that ringed his sleeve almost from cuff to elbow.
A wild tumult of frantic cheering burst out almost like an explosion
from every throat still capable of emitting sound. There was gratitude
and passionate loyalty in the demonstration, and it continued long
after the figure on the quarterdeck had turned away and the drifter had
resumed her noisy, triumphant tour of the Fleet.
"That's what I likes about '_im_," whispered a bearded seaman hoarsely,
as they swung off on their new course. "'E's that '_Uman_!" He jerked
his head astern in the direction of the mighty Battleship on whose vast
quarterdeck the man who bore a share of the Destiny of Europe on his
shoulders was still pacing thoughtfully up and down.
[1] Arguing.
[2] Chief Boatswain's Mate.