Waist-held in the chains and soused in the fifty-foot-high spray, Joe
Byng eyed his sounding lead that swung like a pendulum below him, and
named it sacrilege.
“This 'ere navy ain't a navy no more,” he muttered. “This 'ere's a
school-gal promenade, 'and-in-'and, an' mind not to get your little
trotters wet, that's what this is, so 'elp me two able seamen an' a red
marine!”
From the moment that the lookout, lashed to the windlass drum up
forward, had spied the little craft away to leeward and had bellowed his
report of it through hollowed hands between the thunder of the waves,
Joe Byng had had premonitory symptoms of uneasiness. He had felt in his
bones that the navy was about to be nose-led into shame.
At the wheel, both eyes on the compass, as the sea law bids, but both
ears on the more-even-than-usual-alert, Curley Crothers felt the same
sensations but expressed them otherwise.
“Admiral's orders!” he muttered. “Maybe the admiral was drunk?”
The brass gongs clanged down in the bowels of H.M.S. Puncher and she
gradually lost what little weigh she had, rolling her bridge ends under
in the heave and hollow of a beam-on monsoon sea.
“How much does he say he wants?” asked her commander.
Joe Byng in the chains and Curley Crothers at the wheel both recognized
the quarter tone instantly, and diagnosed it with deadly accuracy;
every vibration of his voice and every fiber of his being expressed
exasperation, though a landsman might have noticed no more than contempt
for what he had seen fit to log as “half a gale.”
“He says he'll take us in for fifty pounds, sir.”
“Oh! Tell him to make it shillings, or else to get out of my course!”
It is not much in the way of Persian Gulf Arabic that a man picks
up from textbooks but at garnering the business end of beach-born
dialects--the end that gets results at least expense of time
or energy--the Navy goes even the Army half a dozen better. The
sublieutenant's argument, bawled from the bridge rail to the reeling
little boat below, was a marvel in its own sweet way; it combined abuse
and scorn with a cataclysmic blast of threat in six explosive sentences.
“He says he'll take us in for ten pounds, sir,” he reported, without the
vestige of a smile.
“Oh! Ask Mr. Hartley to step up on the bridge, will you?”
Two minutes later, during which the nasal howls from the boat were
utterly ignored, the acting chief engineer hauled himself along the rail
hand over hand to windward, ducking below the canvas guard as a more
than usually big comber split against the Puncher's side and hove itself
to heaven.
“It beats me how any man can keep a coat on him this weather,” he
remarked, and the sublieutenant noticed that the streams that ran down
both his temples were not sea water. “Send for me?”
His temper, judging by his voice, would seem to be a lot worse than
could be due to the pitching of the ship.
“Yes. There's a pilot overside, and our orders are to take a pilot
aboard when running in, if available. There are three men bailing that
boat below there, and the sea's gaining on them. They'll need rescuing
within two hours. Then we'd have a pilot aboard and would have saved the
government ten pounds. Point is, can you manage in the engine-room for
two or three hours longer? Three more waves like that last one and the
man's ours anyway!”
“He might not wait two hours,” suggested Mr. Hartley. “He might get
tired of looking at us, and beat back into port. Then where would be
your strategy?”
“Then there wouldn't be a pilot available. I'd be justified in going in
without one. Point is, can you hold out below?”
“Man,” said Mr. Hartley, “you're a genius.” He peered through the spray
down to leeward, where the pilot's boat danced a death dance alongside,
heel and toe to the Puncher's statelier swing. “Yes; there are three men
bailing, and you're a genius. But no! The answer's no! The engines'll
keep on turning, maybe and perhaps, until we make the shelter o' yon
reef. There's no knowing what a cherry-red bearing will do. I can give
ye maybe fifteen knots; maybe a leetle more for just five minutes, for
steerage way and luck, and after that--”
Even crouched as he was against the canvas guard he contrived to shrug
his shoulders.
“But if we go in there are you sure you can contrive to patch her up? It
looks like a rotten passage, and not much of a berth beyond it.”
“I could cool her down.”
“Oh, if that's all you want, I can anchor outside in thirty fathoms.”
Curley Crothers heard that and his whole frame stiffened; there seemed
a chance yet that the Navy might not be disgraced. But it faded on the
instant.
“Man, we've got to go inside and we've got to hurry! Better in there
than at the bottom of the Gulf! Put her where she'll hold still for a
day, or maybe two days--”
“Say a month!” suggested the commander caustically.
“Say three days for the sake of argument. Then I can put her to rights.
I daren't take down a thing while she's rolling twenty-five and more,
and I've got to take things down! Why, man, the engine-room is all
pollution from gratings to bilge; if I loosened one more bolt than is
loose a'ready her whole insides 'ud take charge and dance quadrilles
until we drowned!”
“You won't try to make Bombay?”
“I'll try to give ye steam as far as the far side o' yon reef. After
that I wash my hands of a' responsibility!”
“Oh, very well. Mr. White!”
The sublieutenant hauled himself in turn to windward. Curley Crothers
gave the wheel a half-spoke and looked as if he had no interest in
anything. Joe Byng in the chains bowed his head and groaned inwardly;
his sticky, spray-washed lead seemed all-absorbing.
“Tell that black robber to hurry aboard, unless he wants me to come in
without him.”
The little boat had drifted fast before the wind, and the sublieutenant
had to bellow through a megaphone to where the three men bailed and the
ragged oarsmen swung their weight against the storm. The man of ebony,
who would be pilot and disgrace the Navy, balanced on a thwart with
wide-spread naked toes and yelled an ululating answer. With his rags
out-blown in the monsoon he looked like a sea wraith come to life. The
big gongs clanged again, and the Puncher drifted rather than drove down
on the smaller craft. A hand line caught the pilot precisely in the
face. He grabbed it frantically, fell headlong in the sea, and was
hauled aboard.
“He says he wants a tow for that boat of his,” reported the
sublieutenant. “Said it in English, too--seems he knows more than he
pretends.”
“Missed it, by gad, by just about five minutes!” said the commander
aloud but to himself. “Well--the bargain's made, so it can't be helped.
That boat's sinking! Throw 'em a line, quick!”
The pilot's crew displayed no overdone affection for their craft, and
there was no struggle to the last to leave it. One by one--whichever
could grab the line first was the first to come--they were hauled
through the thundering waves and their boat was left to sink. Then,
before they could adjust their unaccustomed feet to the different
balance of the Puncher's heaving deck, the gongs clanged and the
destroyer leaped ahead like a dripping sea-soused water beetle, into her
utmost speed that instant.
All conscious of his new-won dignity, and utterly regardless of his
boat, the pilot had found the bridge at once. He clung to the rail there
and braced one naked foot against a stanchion. To him the ship's speed
seemed the all-absorbing thing, for either Mr. Hartley had forgotten
just how many revolutions would make fifteen knots or else he had
underestimated his engine-room's capacity. The Puncher split the waves
and spewed them twenty feet above her, racing head-on for the reef,
and Curley Crothers was too busy at his wheel to pass the pilot the
surreptitious insult he intended.
The gongs clanged presently, and the Puncher swallowed half her speed at
once, giving the pilot courage.
“This exceedingly damn dangerous place, sah!” he remarked.
“No bottom at eight!” sang Joe Byng in the chains.
Three words passed between the commander and Crothers, and the Puncher
hove a weed-draped underside high over the crest of a beam-on roller as
she veered a dozen points, ducked her starboard rail into the trough
of it, and sliced her long thin nose, sizzling and swirling, into the
welter ahead. It was growing weedier and dirtier each minute.
“No bottom at eight!” chanted Joe Byng.
And at the sound of his voice the pilot hauled himself up by his
leverage on the rail and found his voice again.
“This most exceedingly damn dangerous place, sah!”
But the commander was too busy acting all three L's--Log, Lead and
Lookout--his shrouded figure swaying to the heave and fall and his eyes
fixed straight ahead of him on the double line of boiling foam. He had
conned his course and had it charted in his head. There was no time to
argue with a pilot.
“Port you-ah hel-um, sah! Port you-ah hel-um!”
“By the mark--seven!” sang Joe Byng from the chains.
“Port you-ah hel-um, sah!” yelled the pilot in an ecstasy of fright.
“Starboard a little,” came the quiet command.
Curley Crothers moved his wheel and the Puncher's bow yawed twenty feet,
as if Providence had pushed her.
“Gawd A'mighty!” murmured Joe Byng, gazing open-mouthed at fifty feet of
jagged rock that grinned up suddenly three waves away.
The pilot braced both feet against a stanchion and tried to take the
weigh off her by pulling.
“Half speed, sah! Go slow, sah! Go dead slow, sah! You'll pile up you-ah
damn ship, sah! Ah tell you, sah, you'll pile her up as suah as hell,
sah! 'Bout a million sharks round he-ah, sah! For the love o' God,
sah--Captain, sah--”
“Oh, muzzle him, some one!” ordered the commander, and the jiggling,
complaining engines danced ahead, the horrid gray beneath the pilot's
ebony notwithstanding.
“By the deep--four!” warned Joe Byng in a level sing-song. The two gongs
clanged like an echo to him, and the Puncher's speed was reduced at
once to her point, of minimum stability. She rolled and quivered like
a living thing in fear, falling on and off, nosing out a passage on her
own account apparently, and seeming to be gathering all her strength for
one tremendous effort.
“That's bettah, sah! That's bettah, Captain, sah! Go astern! This
he-ah's the bar, sah--damn bad place, the bar, sah! Go astern, sah.
Captain, sah, d'you he-ah me--go astern! Try again, 'nother place
further up, sah. Captain, sah! Over that way; that way thar--that way,
sah!”
He pointed through the sky-flung spray with a trembling finger and his
voice was rich with doleful emphasis, but the commander held his course
and carried on. There seemed neither sympathy nor understanding on
that unsteadiest of ships. Curley Crothers, solemn-faced as Nemesis and
looking half as compassionate, moved his wheel a trifle. Joe Byng in
the chains kept up his even sing-song, expressionless, as if he were an
automatic clock that did not care, but must record the truth each time
his dripping pendulum touched bottom.
“And a half--three!”
White foam was boiling in among the dirty welter, and the Puncher's bow
pitched suddenly as the first big bar wave lifted her; a second later
her propellers chug-chug-chugged in surface spume as she kicked upward
like a porpoise diving.
“Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy!” groaned the pilot. “This he-ah watah's full
of sharks, an' that's the bar! You're on the bar now, Captain, sah!”
“By the mark--three!” Byng chanted steadily.
“Starboard a little more,” said the commander leaning forward and
shoving the pilot away to leeward at the same time. Then he shouted to
the fo'castle head, where a bosun's mate and his crew had climbed and
were awaiting orders in evident and most unreasonable unconcern.
“Get both anchors ready!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” came the answer, and efficiency controlled by experts
proceeded at kaleidoscopic angles to defy the elements. The big steel
hooks were ready in an instant.
“Stop her!” ordered the commander.
The gongs clanged out an alarm and the throbbing ceased.
“Hard astern, both engines!”
Again there was a clangor under hatches, and the suffering bearings
shrieked. The Puncher dropped her stern two feet or so, and the foam
boiled brown round her propellers. The shock of the reversal pitched the
pilot up against the forward rail, where he clung like a drowning man.
“For the love o' God, sah! Captain; sah, we've struck! Ah told you so;
Ah said--”
“And a half-three!” chanted Joe Byng.
“Stop her! Starboard engine ahead! Port engine ahead! Ease your helm!
Meet her! Half speed ahead!”
The Puncher pitched and rolled, kicking at the following monsoon that
thundered at her counter and tossing up the foam that seethed about her
bow. She trembled from end to end, as if the pounding of the water hurt
her.
“Helm amidships!” ordered the commander suddenly.
“'Midships, sir!”
“Full speed ahead, both engines!”
The Puncher leaped, as all destroyers do the second day they are loosed.
She sliced through the storm straight for the coral beach beyond the
bar, shaking her graceful shoulders free of the sticky spray--reeling,
rolling, thugging, kicking, bucking through the welter to where
quiet water waited and the ever-lasting, utterly unrighteous stink of
sun-baked Arab beaches. As each tremendous breaker thundered on her
stern each time she lifted to the underswell, the pilot vowed that
she had struck, rolling his eyes and calling two different deities to
witness that none of it was any fault of his.
“Thar's no water, sah--no water, Captain, sah--not one drop! You've
piled up you-ah ship! Ah told you so; Ah said--”
“By the deep--four!”
“And a half-four!”
“By the mark--five!”
The Puncher was across the bar, gliding through muddy water on an even
keel and giving the lie direct to him whose fee was ten pounds English.
The pilot drew a talisman of some kind from underneath the least torn
portion of his shirt, and to the commander's amazement kissed it. It is
not often that a woolly headed, or any other, native of the East kisses
either folk or things. But the commander was too busy at the moment to
ask questions.
“Have your starboard anchor ready!” he commanded, making mental notes.
“Ready, sir!”
The glittering, wet, wind-blown beach and the little estuary slid by
like a painted panorama smelling of all the evil in the world as the
Puncher eased her helm a time or two seeking a comfortable berth with
Joe Byng's chanted aid.
“Let go twenty fathoms!”
The pilot sighed relief as the starboard anchor splashed into the water
and the cable roared after it through the hawse pipe.
“What nationality are you?” asked the commander, watching the Puncher
swing and gaging distances, but sparing one eye now for his unwelcome
but official guest.
“Me, sah?”
“Yes, you.”
The pilot looked anywhere but at his questioner, and a picture passed
before the commander's eyes--a memory, perhaps, of something he had
read about at school--of Christians in Nero's day being asked what their
religion was.
“Are you afraid to tell me?” he asked, softening his voice to a kinder
tone as he remembered that God did not make all men Englishmen, and
turning just in time to cause Crothers to withdraw his right leg.
The pilot's toes were, after all, not destined to be trodden on just
then.
“No, sah, Ah'm not afraid.”
“What are you, then?”
“Ah'm--”
“Well? What?”
“Ah'm English!”
“What?”
“Captain, sah, Ah'm English!”
“Oh! Are you? Um-m-m! Mr. White, give this man his ten pounds, will you?
And get his receipt for it.”
That appeared to end matters, so far as the commander was concerned;
official dignity forbade any further interest. But it was not so very
long since Mr. White was senior midshipman, and it takes a man until
he is admiral of the fleet to unlearn all he knew then and forget the
curiosity of those days.
“Now, I should have thought you were a Scotchman,” he suggested without
smiling, studying the salt-encrusted wrinkles on the ebony face. “You
like whisky?”
“Yes, sah--positively, sah! Yes, Captain, sah--Ah do!”
Mr. White sent for whisky and poured out a stiff four fingers, to the
awful disgust of Curley Crothers, who saw the whole transaction. The
pilot consumed it so instantly that there seemed never to have been any
in the glass.
“I suppose your name's Macnab--or Macphairson--which? Sign here,
please.”
The pilot took the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a
crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke
under the strain, and he handed it back with an air of confidential
remonstrance.
“That thing's no mo-ah good,” he volunteered.
“So I see. Now tell me your name in full, so that I can write it next to
the mark. It's a wonder of a mark! Mac--what's the rest of it?”
“Hassan Ah.”
“Machassan?”
“No, sah. Hassan Ah.”
“And you're English?”
“Yes, sah.”
“With that name?”
“Mah name makes no diffunts, sah. Ah'm English.”
“Well--here's your money. Cutter away, there! Put the pilot and his crew
ashore! Sorry about your boat, pilot, but it couldn't be helped.”
“Makes me believe that I'm a nigger!” muttered Curley Crothers, not yet
released from duty on the bridge.
“First time I ever wished I was a Dutchman!” swore Joe Byng, coiling up
his sounding line.
Ten minutes later the cutter's captain swung the boat's stern in shore
when he judged that he was reasonably near enough and too far in for
sharks. He had his orders to put the pilot and his crew ashore, but the
means had not been too exactly specified.
“Get out and swim for it, you bally Englishman!” he ordered, using a
boat-hook on the nearest one to make his meaning clear.
One by one they jumped for it, the pilot going last. He plainly did not
understand the point of view.
“Ah'm English!” he expostulated. “Lissen he-ah, Ah'm English! Damwell
English!”
“All right; let's see you swim, English!” jeered the cutter's captain,
and the pilot took the water with a splash.
“Ah su-ah am English!” he vowed, as he swam for the shore, and he stood
by the sea's edge repeating his assertion with a leathery pair of lungs
until the cutter had rowed out of ear-shot.
“English, is he?” said Joe Byng to Curley Crothers in the fo'castle,
not twenty minutes later. “I'd show him, if I had him in here for twenty
minutes!”
“That fellow's interested me,” said Crothers. “He's got me thinking. I
vote we investigate him.”
“How?”
“Ashore, fathead.”
“There'll be no shore leave.”
“No? You left off being wet nurse to the dawg?” “I brush him, mornin's;
if that's what you mean.”
“Is he fit?”
“Fit to fight a bumboat full o' pilots!”
“Could he be sick for an hour?”
“Might be did.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Morning?”
“At about two bells?”
“It could be done.”
“Then do it!”
“Why?”
“Because, Joe Byng my boy, you and I want shore leave; and the pup--and
he's a decent pup--must suffer for to make a 'tween-deck holiday. Get my
meaning? I've a propagandrum that'll work this tide. You go and set the
fuse in the pup's inside; and mind you, time it right, my son--for two
bells when the old man's in the chair!”
So Joe Byng, who was something of an expert in the way and ways of
dogs, departed in search of an oiler with whom he was on terms of
condescension; and he returned to the fo'castle a little later with
the nastiest, most awful-smelling mess that ever emanated even from the
engine-room of a destroyer in the Persian Gulf (where grease and things
run rancid.)