TIP, OF THE “SANS SOUCI”
The next day Nelson went sight-seeing. He started out with a liberty
party that filled several boats, but lost them somewhere ashore and
presently found himself wandering along the river street alone. There
was so much to see, however, that he failed to notice the absence of
his companions for some time. It was a revelation to find that his
country had built docks and ways, coal yards and cranes and great
storehouses in which to pile the tons and tons of supplies that
were landed almost every day from the big cargo boats. He found the
transports which they had accompanied through the submarine zone empty
of troops, lying along the river and preparing to speed back for a new
load. Many were coaling, others were awaiting their turns. He learned
that the boys in khaki had debarked the day before and had marched
out of town to the big camp which had been built for them. In fact,
at times yesterday he had heard the bugles and the strains of the
regimental bands as the men had formed on the docks and gone marching
away across the bridge and over the hill.
A United States uniform, army or navy, was sufficient voucher to carry
its wearer almost anywhere, he found. The French folk smiled and
murmured “_Bon jour!_” and every face seemed to hold a welcome. Nelson
wished he knew more French; wished, too, that he was more courageous
with the little he did know! The coalyards and dockyards were guarded
by United States Marines, and with several of these Nelson conversed.
They weren’t exactly enthusiastic about their work, for they all wanted
something more exciting, or, at least, more diversified, than standing
guard over piers. But they spoke hopefully of better times. “We aren’t
worrying,” said one chap, a tow-headed youth who showed more curiosity
about the standing of the Chicago American baseball team than anything
else. “Pershing’ll have us out of here pretty quick. Anyone can do
this job. We’re fighters and we’ll be needed at the front before long.
Meanwhile we’re doing pretty well for ourselves. This is a nice old
burg and the folks are mighty decent to us.”
Further along beyond the big locks a huge transport that had been a
German liner a few months ago was taking on coal. Nelson’s uniform
gained him admittance at the gate and he looked on for some time.
Coaling ship by machinery was, he decided, a pretty easy proposition
compared to doing it by hand. Presently his attention was attracted by
a squad of workers in gray uniforms who appeared on the scene. There
were about forty of them in all and a half-dozen picturesque French
soldiers, carrying guns with extremely long bayonets, were in charge.
For an instant Nelson was puzzled. Then it dawned on him that he was
looking on his first batch of German prisoners, and he moved nearer. A
great pile of coal-blackened planks which had been used on some ship
to form temporary bunkers was to be moved away from the front of the
dock to a storage place beyond, and at this the prisoners were set. As
they passed Nelson, two men to a plank, they looked dirty but cheerful.
Evidently they preferred such a task to holding down a muddy trench
somewhere on the Front. And, doubtless, they were getting enough to
eat, which, if the tales one heard were true, would not have been the
case had they been back in their own country. Nelson couldn’t manage
to work up much enmity against them: they looked too commonplace and
dull. Many of them viewed him with mild curiosity as they passed,
and one or two grinned. The guards leaned on their rifles and merely
watched. Escape would probably have been impossible, since a marine
was stationed at every outlet, and, for that matter, it was extremely
doubtful, Nelson thought, whether they wanted to escape!
Presently he moved across to where the new pile was forming. The
prisoners worked methodically but slowly. When out of ear-shot of the
guards they conversed in low tones. One of their number, a round-faced
youth of twenty-two or thereabouts, was working by himself, carrying
long iron bolts. Nelson observed that he wasn’t overburdening himself
and that he looked quite satisfied with conditions. The second time
he passed he looked across at Nelson, smiled and said: “Hello, kid!”
Nelson said “Hello” in reply before he was struck with the oddity of
the phrase from the lips of a German prisoner of war. Coming back again
the youth stopped.
“How’s everything in America?” he asked. He spoke with very little
accent.
“All right,” answered Nelson.
“I used to live there,” went on the other. “St. Louis. Great town, St.
Louis. I lived there eight years. Say, were those American soldiers on
those ships?”
“Yes.”
“Honest?”
Nelson replied in the affirmative again and the German looked
thoughtful. “If that’s true they lied to us,” he said. “In Berlin they
told us the Yankees wouldn’t come. They say that yet, I think. Are you
telling the truth?”
“Of course! If you’ve lived in St. Louis you ought to know an American
soldier when you see one.”
The other shook his head. “I never saw any when I was there. Well, I
guess this war won’t last much longer, eh?”
“I hope not.”
“So do I. I’ve had three years of it.”
“How long have you been a prisoner?” asked Nelson.
“Four months. It’s better than fighting.” He grinned and winked. “There
was an American in the prison camp where I was guard last Winter who
used to say the United States would be in the war this Summer, but I
didn’t believe him. He was a sailor, like you, but not in the Navy. Now
I know that he was right.”
“What sort of a looking man was he?” asked Nelson.
“Oh, he was a tall, oldish man. I must go on or Frenchie will stick me
with his bayonet.”
“Wait! What was his name, this man you speak of?”
“I don’t know. I never knew his name. He had a number, but I forget it.
He was all right. Nice man. Ship’s captain, I think. Tall, big fellow,
with――――”
There was a shout from the direction of the water and one of the guards
came running toward them, bayonet lowered. The German laughed and moved
on to receive a scolding. Having finished with the prisoner, the guard
hurried toward Nelson. He was polite but stern and talked so fast
that, even had Nelson understood French, he would not have been able
to follow him. But the meaning was apparent. It was forbidden to speak
with the prisoners. Nelson tried haltingly to explain that the prisoner
in question had information of interest to him, but he couldn’t begin
to find enough words, and the guard evidently knew no English save
“No”; and afterwards Nelson decided that he hadn’t even been saying
“No,” but “Non”!
Nelson lingered about a few minutes longer, but on his next trip
the German sedulously avoided his vicinity, and, as the guards were
watching him closely every moment, he finally gave up the attempt and
made his way forth again. Of course, he reflected, it was probably
only a coincidence. There were doubtless many Americans at German
prison camps who had been ship’s captains and who were tall and
“oldish.” Still, he couldn’t get it out of his head that the man who
had predicted the entry of America into the war was his father. He
determined to get further speech with the prisoner and tried to think
how to arrange for it. In the end he decided to secure the intercession
of the _Gyandotte’s_ commander, and with that thought in mind returned
to the ship at the first opportunity. But Fate was against him, for the
captain was on shore and remained there until late that evening. Nelson
took his gun captain, Garey, into his confidence meanwhile, and Garey
was sympathetic but not overly impressed.
“It’s one chance in a hundred, Troy,” he said. “Take the average Yankee
skipper and it’s dollars to doughnuts that he’s thin and tall and
middle-aged. You see, about all the American prisoners the Germans have
got so far are men they’ve taken off ships. It wouldn’t do any harm
to hear what that Fritz has to say, but I wouldn’t hope for much. What
camp was it?”
“He didn’t tell me. I was going to ask, but the guard butted in just
then.”
“Well, you get speech with the Old Man and maybe he can fix it for you.
He will if he can, anyway.”
But it wasn’t to be, and Nelson never saw the round-faced German from
St. Louis again. The next morning, soon after daybreak, the _Gyandotte_
pulled her anchors up from the bottom of the Gironde and picked her
way down-stream and through the mine fields and headed back toward
Queenstown.
Nevertheless, after his first disappointment, Nelson was happier for
that chance meeting. Sometimes he told himself that it was silly to
think that the German had really had speech with his father, but, as
drowning persons clutch at straws, so Nelson clutched at that little
bit of encouragement. It made life far happier, in any case, and now
that Martin was gone life wasn’t terribly joyous.
For a month longer the _Gyandotte_ had her base at Queenstown and
spent more than half her time at sea convoying transports and great
cargo ships back and forth through the danger zone. Six days outside
followed by three days in port was the usual rule. Excitement was
always just over the horizon, but seldom appeared to cheer the
monotony. Only once was the _Gyandotte_ engaged with a U-boat, and that
was a long-distance affair that netted nothing save disappointment.
The German submarine was not anxious for battle and, after firing
four shells wide of the mark, quickly submerged. The _Gyandotte’s_
fire was no more deadly than the U-boat’s, nor did the depth bombs
which were later dropped from the cruiser succeed any better than the
shells. All the comfort the _Gyandotte_ could gain from that brief and
unsatisfactory encounter lay in the fact that the tramp steamer which
had been the U-boat’s intended prey was rescued.
On every trip there were alarms, and sometimes a periscope or conning
tower was actually sighted. But always the sub dived before she was in
range. Nelson found himself sympathizing with the destroyer men who
chanted a ditty to the effect that:
“We joined the Limie ‘gobs,’ also,
To battle with the Hun,
And now we’re waiting patiently
A Fritz who will not run!”
But if actual battles were few in the American patrol flotilla
that Summer and Fall, there was plenty of incident. Storms became
numerous as Autumn appeared, and the _Gyandotte_ gave the lie to
those pessimists who doubted her seaworthiness. There were occasions
when Nelson concluded that if he ever reached land again it would be
either in a small boat or atop a deck hatch, but the little cruiser
always came through somehow, even if she almost stood on her beam
ends doing it! Meanwhile Nelson found promotion of a sort. A vacancy
in the crew of Number Four gun placed him as trainer, a position for
which his study and Garey’s instructions had well fitted him, and he
blossomed forth with a seaman gunner’s distinguishing mark, a bursting
bomb worked in white silk on his sleeve. He was rather proud of that
insignia and fairly ached for a chance to make good at his job.
He received one letter from Martin about the first of October, mailed
at some town on the East coast of Scotland whose name Nelson could
not decipher, and which, he decided, he wouldn’t have been able to
pronounce in any case. Martin reported that the _Q-4_ was lying up
undergoing battery replacements. “We’ve had a busy time of it since
I saw you last,” he continued. “We’re helping the Limie subs patrol
this beastly coast around here. There’s a big base about twelve miles
away where the British fleet is tucked up, and it’s our stunt to see
that no one slips in and ‘strafes’ them when they’re having tea. It
isn’t bad fun, but nothing ever happens. They talk about going up and
shelling the German fleet out of its base, but I guess it’s only talk.
It’s none of my business, but if I was Jellicoe I’d want more action.
The Englishers are a fine lot and we get along with them top-hole.
(I’m getting to talk like one fast!) But this is a bleak old corner
of the world and we nearly freeze to death when we go out. I wish
they’d change us to the Mediterranean this Winter. Send me a letter
to the address below and tell me what you’re doing these days. Did
you see that New York had copped the pennant? Some team, old scout,
some team! You remember Jimmy Sanford, on my crew? He’s the one with
a bald spot in the middle of his head. Well, Jimmy’s from Chicago and
he won’t speak to anyone since he’s learned that Chicago has lost the
World’s Championship. I’ll be mighty glad when this shindy is over, old
settler. Me for home the first chance I get. I’m sort of fed up on this
‘submarinery.’ ‘I know now that dad was right!’”
Nelson answered the first time he went ashore, but there came no
further response from the distant Martin. Nelson had made other friends
by now, both aboard the cruiser and ashore, but with none of them was
he very intimate and none took the place of Martin in his affections.
There was a young English midshipman named Tipper――more generally
known as Tip――with whom Nelson chummed ashore. Tip was nineteen, a
freckle-faced, tilt-nosed youngster full of fun and enthusiasm. Tip was
aboard the British patrol boat _Sans Souci_, the flippant name having,
through inadvertency, been allowed to remain, although most craft of
the kind were distinguished by a mere number. Tip was second in command
of the _Sans Souci_ and had for superior officer a grave and reverend
Reserve lieutenant of fifty-seven or -eight years who, if one believed
Tip, left such trifles as navigation in the hands of the junior. There
was a further complement of twelve petty officers and men, mostly young
and enthusiastic, who apparently begrudged every day that the little
converted yacht spent inside the booms. It was the _Sans Souci’s_
mission to ride a certain square section of the sea south of St.
George’s Channel, fair weather or foul, and watch for U-boats, mines
and suspicious characters generally.
Nelson made young Mr. Tipper’s acquaintance quite by accident in the
Y. M. C. A. hut, Tip having come across a joke in an English weekly
which he felt compelled to share with someone else. As Nelson happened
to be the nearest, Nelson was chucklingly invited to read the humorous
paragraph. He did so, found it funny, laughed and was instantly――and
metaphorically――clasped to the breast of the smart, good-looking young
midshipman. The fact that Nelson was not even a petty officer appeared
to have no weight with Tip, who was surprisingly democratic for a
British naval officer. Later Nelson discovered a kind of explanation,
which was that in Tip’s eyes an American was quite different from other
beings and that with him the ordinary rules didn’t hold good. Tip had
queer ideas on the subject of American life and customs, largely due to
his reading. He firmly believed that New York and San Francisco were,
if not adjacent, at least within a day’s journey of each other, and
that anywhere between the two cities one plunged into trackless forests
and crossed limitless plains inhabited by Indians, cowboys, “bad men,”
panthers, rattlers, alligators and a variety of less ferocious animals
such as elk, bison and antelope. Somewhere north of the plains and
forests lay a wild pile of mountains, filled with glaciers and mountain
sheep, and beyond those again was a country called Canada, inhabited
by Younger Sons. He surprised Nelson one day by asking him if he had
Indian blood in him, and was palpably disappointed when Nelson said no.
At first Nelson dubbed his new acquaintance “a cheerful idiot,” but it
didn’t take long to find that while Tip was undoubtedly cheerful he was
far from being an idiot. Tip had plenty of money and was happiest when
spending it. A “jolly good feed” was his favorite extravagance, and
Nelson was frequently his guest. Had Tip had his way Nelson would have
been entertained in the little hotel he had discovered, at every meal
ashore, but Nelson had to refuse many times when he wanted very much
to accept simply because he didn’t care to be in the other’s debt too
greatly. On thirty-six dollars a month, which was his present pay as a
seaman gunner, he couldn’t play host very frequently. One day he went
out in a very smart little gig to the _Sans Souci_ and was shown that
diminutive “warship.”
The _Sans Souci_ had once been a rather luxurious cruising yacht,
but luxuries had been shorn away with a stern hand until now she was
little more than a hull accommodating engine and bunks, with a small
rapid-fire gun mounted on the bow. In length she was just over the
dimension of the _Wanderer_. In seaworthiness, however, she appeared
to have the better of that boat. She burned gasoline――or petrol, as
they called it in those waters――and storage tanks were scattered
all over her, above deck and below. The officers lived in Spartan
simplicity, commander and junior sharing a tiny stateroom abaft the
engine and eating forward in the galley.
“We have our chunk first, you know,” explained Tip. “But it’s very
seldom we sit down to it, for when this little lady gets into a sea you
simply can’t keep anything on the table.”
Nelson secretly thought that careening about the channel in the _Sans
Souci_ might be exciting enough, but he was sort of thankful he didn’t
have to do it. Sailing the waters of Nantucket Sound in the old
_Wanderer_ had been fairly safe work, but tossing about a hundred miles
from land in this shallop was another thing entirely! He admired Tip’s
pluck but didn’t envy him.
The _Sans Souci_ had been black at one time, and then the vogue of
decorating ship’s hulls with lines and ripples and spots had come in,
and the little craft was a strange and fearsome thing above the water
line. Tip was very proud of the camouflaging, though. He had even
taken a hand at it himself, borrowing a brush from the painter and
adding some gruesome streaks of pea green to the black, gray, white
and blue already there. Tip claimed that you couldn’t tell the _Sans
Souci_ from a mermaid half a mile distant, and Nelson was prepared
to believe it, even though he had never seen a mermaid. Lieutenant
Putnam-Earle greeted Nelson politely but failed to accept the hand
that Nelson unthinkingly extended. (“You mustn’t mind Put,” said his
junior afterwards. “He’s like that. Awf’ly fussy, you know, about rank
and all that rot. Comes of one of our oldest families. So old it’s
fairly putrid. He’s not a half bad old chap.”) Nelson didn’t allow the
incident to worry him. Of course the lieutenant had been quite right. A
commanding officer doesn’t shake hands with an ordinary seaman on being
introduced; at least, not on duty. The lieutenant struck Nelson as
being a far from cheerful companion for a fellow like Tip, and wondered
what it was like to have to live with him for three days at a stretch
at sea. The crew seemed a fine lot of young Britons, and he could
understand a portion of Tip’s enthusiasm for his command.
As the _Sans Souci_ spent three days on duty and three days in port
alternately, Nelson usually had a good deal of Tip’s society when the
_Gyandotte_ was in Queenstown. Liberty was freely granted when the
cruiser was in port and Nelson and Tip made several excursions to
nearby points of interest, once getting as far afield as Dublin and
once to Limerick. Cork was a favorite jaunt until the men of the fleets
were forbidden to visit that city because of Sinn Fein demonstrations.
Ireland was as much _terra incognita_ to Tip as it was to Nelson, and
they had a good deal of fun in exploring it.
The Limerick trip was made at Tip’s suggestion. He declared that all
his life he had wanted to go and see where the poetry was made. Once
there, and perched on an outside car, he had inquired affably of the
jarvey where they made the limericks. “I’d like to see the factory,
you know. We might take home a couple.” This was beyond the driver,
however. He, it appeared, had never heard of a limerick verse, and
didn’t seem to think very much of those that Tip recited for his
benefit. On the return journey Nelson suggested that Limerick was not
likely to win fame, as Cork had done, through the medium of one of the
verses named for it, since there was nothing to rhyme with Limerick.
Whereupon Tip had gazed fixedly out the carriage window for a space and
had then recited triumphantly:
“There was an old man of Limerick
Who said: ‘I’m the boy as can trim a rick.’
They gave him a fork,
But he ran off to Cork.
I forget if his name it was Jim or Mick.”
“I guess,” said Nelson, “the supper is on me.”
All the rest of the way back to Queenstown Tip invented limericks,
until Nelson said despairingly that he wished he had never mentioned
the things!