MINOR INCIDENTS.
I.
'Signal just come through, sir,' said Rosser, the signal-man, thumping
on the door of Wooten's cabin at half-past one in the morning.
The skipper grunted, sat up, switched on the light, and blinked. He was
used to sudden calls and excursions in the middle of the night, and
knew instinctively from the tone of the man's voice that the message
was urgent.
'Read it out,' he sighed, throwing one leg out of the bunk.
_'Menelaus_, _Monsoon_, _Manner_, and _Minx_ raise steam, and report
when ready to proceed.'
'I thought so. What's the weather?'
'Very dark, and blowing a bit, sir,' said Rosser cheerfully, the
moisture from his dripping oilskins forming a nice little puddle on the
skipper's carpet. 'It's been raining hard this last half-hour.'
Wooten groaned. 'Right! Tell all the officers, and ask Mr Thompson to
let me know how soon he'll be ready. And on your way forward tell Spry
I want him.'
Spry, able seaman, was the captain's body-servant and general factotum.
Wooten threw open the small scuttle over his bunk and looked out. It
was as black as pitch, the wind whistled and moaned mournfully, and a
wave of moisture smote him in the face. It would be a wild and wet
night at sea. Altogether a depressing night, there was not the least
doubt about that. 'Ugh!' he grunted, slamming the scuttle to and
drawing the bedclothes up to his chin.
Enter Spry.
'Usual sea-gear,' his master murmured.
The man nodded. He knew exactly what was wanted.
'We're in for a dusting, Spry.'
'We are that, sir. Will you 'ave your blue muffler or the white one?'
'The blue one, and the clean sweater.'
'You can't 'ave 'im, sir,' said the bluejacket, busy opening drawers
and cupboards and pulling out clothes like a juggler. ''E's at the
wash.'
'At the wash?'
'Yessir, and so's most of our flannel shirts and stiff collars. If we
're to be away long I'll 'ave to wash some shirts out, and you'll 'ave
to wear them soft collars of yours.' Spry was always a pessimist in the
small hours of the morning. 'Is there anything else you'll be wanting,
sir?'
'No, thanks. Nothing bar the cocoa.'
Spry took a vacuum flask from a cupboard, and left the cabin to fill
it. This also was a matter of routine; for cocoa, a cushion, and a rug
were always put in the charthouse every night for Wooten's use when the
ship was at sea.
The skipper clambered out of his bunk, lit a pipe, and dressed. This
operation took him quite ten minutes. First came his ordinary garments,
and a heavy woollen sweater and blue muffler; then a pair of thick
socks; next a pair of fisherman's white woollen stockings worn over his
trousers and reaching well above his knees; over them, a pair of rubber
sea-boots. Next a uniform jacket, a lammy coat, another muffler, and an
oilskin on top of everything. It was wet, and the weather was cold, and
Wooten did not intend to be chilled through to the marrow if he could
help it. His apparel was completed by a sou'-wester and a pair of
glasses slung round his neck; and, thus arrayed, he clambered slowly up
the ladder and waddled forward along the deck to the charthouse. It was
too dark, and he was too bloated, to proceed briskly.
Hargreaves, the sub., yawning his head off, was already up there
sorting out his charts.
'Morning, sir. D'you know where we're going?'
'Haven't the vaguest notion. The _Menelaus_ is the boss, and will
get the orders. She may tell us when we get outside.'
'How long are we likely to be away?'
'Don't know. Last time we left in a hurry we didn't come back for a
fortnight. The time before, we were away for six weeks.'
'What'----
'If you ask me any more questions I shall be peevish,' Wooten
interrupted. 'It's high time you knew that I'm not fit for polite
conversation at this unholy hour of the morning.'
'Sorry, sir. I forgot.'
Half-an-hour afterwards, by which time steam had been raised, and the
fact had been reported, Wooten climbed the ladder on to the bridge.
'Signal for destroyers to slip, sir,' came from Rosser a minute or two
later, as a lamp winked frenziedly in and out in the darkness about a
mile away. 'Form single line a'ead; speed ten knots.'
'Let go forward!' went the order to the first lieutenant on the
forecastle.
There came the splash of the end of the wire as it fell into the water,
and a moment later a hail from MacDonald. 'All gone, sir!'
'Half ahead port. Half astern starboard. Helm hard aport.'
The engine-room reply-gongs clanged, and the _Mariner_ began to
turn on her heel.
'Slow astern starboard--Stop starboard--Half ahead both--one-eighty
revolutions,' in succession. 'Helm amidships. Steady!'
The four destroyers, falling into line astern of each other, groped
their way down the congested harbour like wraiths in the night. Wooten
glanced at the dark shapes of the other ships as they slid by. 'Lucky
dogs!' he murmured. 'You've got a lie in. I envy you. This is not a
night for poor old Peter to be at sea.'
He was right. By the time they reached the entrance the rain was coming
down in sheets, and the wind had increased. Then the bows lifted to the
first swell, and a dollop of spray flew over them, and rattled against
the bridge-screens.
'It's going to be wet,' Hargreaves observed glumly, securing the top
button of his oilskin.
'It is,' the skipper agreed; 'damned wet!'
In ten minutes, by which time they were clear of the harbour, and speed
had been increased to eighteen knots, the ship was prancing and
curveting like a frisky pony, and the spray was flying over in sheets.
Five minutes later the seas were coming in green over the upper deck.
'Oh hell!' the captain groused, stowing away his useless pipe after
vainly endeavouring to relight its sodden contents; 'this is the
limit!--Look out, sub.,' he added, glancing at the next ship ahead,
whose dim shadow danced through a welter of spray a cable and a half in
front. 'Shove her on a bit. You're astern of station, and dropping
fast. Lord!' he added, 'I wish I knew where we're off to.'
His prayer was not answered until daylight, by which time they were
far to the southward, and the _Menelaus_ informed them of their
destination. They were going to the warmest spot most of them had ever
known, though they were not aware of it at the time. Warmth can come
from the Huns as well as from the sun.
II.
The intermittent rumble of heavy guns had sounded continuously all
through the night, and with the approach of dawn and the commencement
of the usual 'early morning hate,' the intensity of the dull
reverberations increased. The _Mariner_ and her consorts were
within about twelve miles of the spot where the long line of opposing
trenches debouched into the North Sea; but even at this distance they
could see the brilliant illumination caused by the star-shell as they
burst. The dark-blue sky above the horizon to the south-east was never
free of them.
'Lor'!' said Billings in an awed whisper, watching the blue-white
flashes as they burst suddenly out in the air, hung for a moment, and
then waned slowly away, to be replaced by others; 'some poor blokes
ain't arf gittin' it in the neck!'
There was a romance and an interest about the spectacle which it is
rather difficult to define. For one thing, it was the closest they had
ever been to the front; but here, on board the ship, everything was
going on in the same old way, and the men went about their business as
usual. But there, a bare twelve miles off, the deep-throated murmur of
the guns showed that men were striving to kill each other, while the
star-shell must have been flooding the closely packed trenches with
unwelcome light. It seemed a little difficult to realise it, somehow.
The morning was cloudless and calm. The light increased, and as the sun
neared the horizon a band of pale rose-madder and dull orange slowly
began to encroach on the dark blue of the upper sky to the eastward.
Before long they could see the hostile coast itself as a thin,
blue-gray streak punctuated here and there by the spires and houses of
the coast towns, magnified out of all proportion by the deceptive
light. Hanging in the air, and all but invisible to the naked eye, was
the bloated, caterpillar-shape of a German observation balloon. It
looked ominous and menacing, and the Hun in the basket suspended
beneath it was evidently going aloft to see whom his guns might devour
for breakfast. The coast was reputed to bristle with weapons, some of
them of prodigious range, and the men in the destroyer hoped fervently
that they might not be victims of his wrath.
Then, quite suddenly, the dull blue above the broadening band of colour
began to twinkle and sparkle with little spurts and splashes of bright
yellow flame. They did not appear in ones, twos, or threes, but in
batches of twenty or thirty at a time. The rumbling of the guns started
afresh, for the flashes were the bursts of the enemy's anti-aircraft
shell, fired at a swarm of allied aeroplanes making an early morning
bombing attack; and, from the look of things, somebody was getting a
tolerably hot time. More killing! It was rather like watching a
gladiatorial combat in the arena; but it was a fine sight, and the
'Mariners' would not have missed it for worlds.
Presently, when the rosy light of the dawn had mounted up into space,
the thudding of the distant guns ceased. The attack was over, and the
bombs had evidently been dropped; but the clear sky over the shore was
still flecked and stained with hundreds of smoke-puffs slowly
dissolving on the gentle breeze. They showed blue and purple against
the vivid contrasting colour beyond.
Air raids, and their subsequent reprisals, were a speciality of this
locality. They took place nearly every morning and evening the
_Mariner_ was there; and as the visiting machines had a comparatively
short distance to travel before reaching their objective, they were
carried out by too many aeroplanes, and with too great a frequency, to
be pleasant.
In the French town within reach of the aerial Hun business went on as
usual; but at the first wailing of the warning hooter the inhabitants
bolted to earth like rabbits to their burrow. Every house which
possessed a cellar showed a small red flag over the doorway, and any
one who cared to claim admittance was given shelter. Trams stopped and
disgorged their living freights. Adipose tram conductors, elderly women
dragging frightened children, ancient male civilians, _poilus_ in
their slate-blue uniforms, any one and every one, made a bee-line for
the nearest symbol of a cellar and safety. It was a wise precaution
which must have saved many lives; for, though the Hun may be given the
credit of only wishing to damage places of 'military importance,' and
to kill members of 'the armed forces of the enemy,' his bombs, as often
as not, were liberally sprinkled upon the residential and commercial
portions of the town. Added to this, every anti-aircraft gun in the
neighbourhood--and there were many of them--sent its shell hurtling
skywards to drive the invaders away. The bits had to fall somewhere;
and if a jagged morsel of steel weighing one ounce falls on the head of
a human being from a height, say, of ten thousand feet, there is
nothing for it but a funeral and mourners. So it is wise to keep
indoors in any case, wiser still to repair to somebody else's cellar if
you do not possess one of your own.
But after the raids, when the inhabitants emerged from their burrows,
the small boys and girls collected splinters and sold them as
mementoes. The trade was very brisk, and prices sometimes ran high.
Bomb fragments--and one could not help suspecting that many of these
were manufactured at home in the quiet intervals--commanded fabulous
sums. I still treasure a fleeting vision of a British army captain in
khaki, flourishing five-franc notes, pursuing a sky-blue _poilu_
down the street in the midst of an air raid. The Frenchman hugged to
his bosom the dangerous remains of an aeroplane bomb, a wicked-looking
affair painted bright yellow, and filled with some devilish compound
guaranteed to kill or to cure. The Englishman wanted it badly, and,
being the faster of the two, eventually overtook his quarry, and
obtained the relic for fifteen francs. What he did with it I cannot
say. One can hardly think that it was received with gratitude by his
loving parents, or that it occupied the niche of honour in the hall of
his rich but nervous aunt.
But whatever we may have said about bombing attacks at sea, air raids
on a town are not the least bit amusing until afterwards. The whistle
of a descending bomb is the most uncanny and unpleasant sound it is
possible to imagine, far and away nastier than the howling and
screeching of a passing shell. Moreover, in an air raid on a town the
visitors can hardly fail to hit some one or something, and it may
possibly be us.
III.
'The Secretary of the Admiralty announces that an action took place
yesterday afternoon between British and German destroyers. The enemy
suffered considerable damage, and were forced to retire. Our casualties
were insignificant.'--_Daily Press._
It is rather galling to find one of the most eventful and crowded hours
of one's existence disposed of in four lines of cold print, not even
the name of a ship mentioned!
It made the ship's company of the _Mariner_ feel very small and
insignificant, and the puffed-up, proud sort of feeling they had when
they came out of their first real action oozed from them like gas from
a punctured Zeppelin.
Sailors are peculiar animals. They long to frustrate and confound the
Hun--that goes without saying; but, having done their best in this
direction, they are equally desirous that their friends and relations
shall be aware of the fact. Most of the men expected at least to see
the _Mariner's_ name in the newspapers. A good many of them,
though they would not have admitted it, would have been highly
flattered had their likenesses appeared in the _Morning Mirror_.
'A naval hero who has been doing his bit' would have sounded well as a
superscription, though perhaps a trifle fulsome; while further
photographs of the 'naval hero's' wife and family, his father and
mother, the schoolmaster who had taught him, and the public-house which
he sometimes patronised, would also have been suitable to the occasion.
But unfortunately the newspapers took no notice of the affair; and,
since the censorship of naval news was strict, they probably never even
realised that such a ship as the _Mariner_ existed. It was a pity, for,
from the point of view of the men and their friends, anything and
everything which appeared in the Press must, of necessity, be a fact.
If a man went home and said he had been in an action which had never
publicly been announced, it was possible that his immediate neighbours
might believe what he said. It was more than probable, however, that 50
per cent. of outsiders would treat his story _cum grano salis_, and
think that he had exaggerated. Corroborative evidence is always useful.
To Pincher Martin the recollection of his first action at sea is still
a vague and shadowy impression of mingled fact and fancy. He had kept
the forenoon watch, and on going below at noon had consumed his usual
midday meal with great relish. Then, with a satisfied feeling of
repletion, he stretched himself at full length on a hard and very
uncomfortable mess-stool, and went off to sleep. He was not the only
one; but he had kept the middle watch, so there was some excuse for
him.
Towards three o'clock he was suddenly brought back to his senses by the
prolonged and irritating jangle of an electric alarm-bell. 'Gawd!' he
murmured, sitting up with a start, and rubbing his sleepy eyes; 'wot's
the buzz now?'
He was not long in finding out, for at that same moment Petty Officer
Casey put his head down the hatch. 'Below there!' he howled cheerfully.
'Tumble up! Enemy in sight! General Quarters!'
His words were punctuated by the sound of men running along the upper
deck and the rumble of a gun. The report was faint but unmistakable,
and it did not come from the _Mariner_.
Followed by various of his messmates, Pincher darted for the hatch,
clambered up the steep ladder, and ten seconds later appeared at his
gun on the forecastle breathless and inquisitive.
''Ere,' he queried, more by instinctive curiosity than because he
really wanted the opinion of any one else, 'wot's up?'
'You stan' by to 'ump them projectiles!' grunted an A.B. 'This 'ere
ain't the time to git askin' stoopid questions!'
Pincher obediently placed a lyddite shell in the loading-tray and
waited.
Three British destroyers were in single line ahead, the fourth being
away on some business best known to herself. The _Mariner_ was the
centre ship, and she quivered and shook to the thrust of her turbines;
while, from the sensation of speed, and the great mass of white water
heaped up under the stern of the next ahead, Pincher guessed they must
be travelling at about thirty knots. Three or four miles away to port,
rather difficult to see against the gray background of shore beyond,
were the lean shapes of three other torpedo-craft. They also were
steaming at high speed, and left a long white trail in the water astern
of them, and seemed to be steering an approximately parallel course.
They were German, of course, and as he watched a ripple of bright flame
and a cloud of brown smoke leapt out from their leading vessel. They
were firing, and at him. He felt rather frightened, and suddenly became
possessed of a bitter resentment against the enemy who were striving to
kill him and his shipmates. He had done them no personal wrong, so why
should they try to take his life?
He held his breath and waited for the shell to drop, but the pause
seemed interminable. Then he heard the sound of the reports, and saw
three or four whity-gray splashes in the water between him and the
enemy. The shell were fully six hundred yards short, and harmless. He
breathed again.
Some order came through a voice-pipe to the gun; whereupon the
sight-setter twiddled a small wheel and peered anxiously at a graduated
dial, while the gunlayer, breathing heavily, applied his eye to the
telescope. The muzzle of the gun began to move up and down in the air
as the sights were kept on the enemy.
'Train right a bit, Bill!' came a smothered remark. 'Train right, damn
yer eyes! That'll do! Keep her like that!'
A bell rang somewhere. A moment's pause, and then, with a sheet of
flame and a crash, the weapon went off.
When once the business really started Pincher felt better. The
anticipation, that awful period of suspense between the time of the
enemy being sighted and the first shot being fired, was far and away
worse than the actual fight itself. The noise and excitement acted as a
sort of anæsthetic. They had a deadening effect which dulled the finer
workings of his mind, and did away with most of his previous and
poignant mental agony. He realised in a vague sort of a way that he
might be killed; but the process of being under fire, when once it had
started and the enemy was being fired at in return, was not nearly so
bad as he had imagined it would be.
He had the task of placing a projectile in the loading-tray every time
after the gun had fired, recoiled, ejected the spent cylinder neatly to
the rear, and then had run out again and had been reloaded. He did it
almost automatically, and without having to think about it. Time became
an unknown quantity. Seconds sometimes seemed like hours, and hours may
have dwindled to minutes for all he knew. All the sensations he was
really conscious of at the time were a supreme desire to keep up the
supply of shell, an overwhelming hatred for the enemy who dared to fire
upon him, a most unpleasant feeling of heat, and an intolerable and
raging thirst. The acrid taste and smell of the burning cordite may
have produced the thirst; but, after five minutes of firing, Martin
would have bartered everything he possessed for a mug of really cold
water.
Incident succeeded incident with such rapidity that he could not
concentrate his attention on any one particular thing. He saw great
white splashes in the water, some of them perilously close. The noise
of the _Mariner's_ own guns overpowered every other sound, but
between their reports he heard the fainter thudding of the enemy's
weapons, the peculiar whining drone of hostile shell as they hurtled
through the air, and the fiendish whirring and whizzing of their
fragments as they burst. There came a jar and a metallic crash which
told him that the ship had been hit somewhere close. He had no time to
look round, but waited anxiously for the missile to pulverise; waited
for what seemed minutes for the flame and roar of an appalling
detonation and a shower of splinters which would sweep him to eternity.
They never came. The shell had passed through the forecastle, and out
again through the side of the ship, without exploding.
His own gun was firing very fast, and he could not see much, but in the
rifts between the sheets of flame and clouds of smoke caused by its
discharge he caught occasional glimpses of the enemy. They were still
steaming fast, and seemed rather closer than before, and from the sea
round about them spout after spout of spray leapt into the air as the
British shell pitched. The brilliant gun-flashes still twinkled up and
down their sides as they fired; but he was glad they were having a hot
time.
The next time he saw them they seemed to have turned shorewards, while
the British, still firing heavily, steamed in pursuit. Then, in the
after-part of the middle German destroyer, the one the _Mariner_ was
firing at, he suddenly noticed a wicked red flash and a cloud of oily
black smoke. A shell had gone home. He could have shouted in glee had
he not been so breathless.
The long-range action lasted for a full fifty-five minutes, with both
sides blazing away merrily the whole time. What damage was done to the
enemy it was impossible to say, but it was clear that they suffered
considerably, and that they were forced back to their own coast. As
regards their numbers, guns, size, and speed the opposing craft were
pretty evenly matched; and if the action had taken place in the open
sea it would have been fought to a finish at close range, or until one
or other of the combatants retired post-haste from the contest. In this
eventuality, given average luck, it would not have been the British;
not because the German is any less brave than his antagonist, but
because he has fewer ships to risk, and is supposed to have orders not
to give battle unless he has a good chance of winning. But man proposes
and God disposes, and the fight was more or less a drawn one.
At length there came the time when the enemy could be pursued no
longer, on account of the proximity of the shore. So close in had they
steamed that some one in the _Mariner_ even declared that he was
able to count the windows in the buildings and the tiles on the red
roofs; and though the tile part may have been an exaggeration, the
window-counting certainly was not. The yellow, wave-lapped beach, with
the turf-covered sand-dunes beyond it, looked strangely calm and
peaceful; but concealed in those dunes were guns of almost every
imaginable size from fourteen-inch downwards, some of which were
reputed to be able to pitch their shell on a sixpence at a range of
fifteen miles. The _Mariner_ and her consorts were a long, long
way inside this distance, and there was nothing for it but to
discontinue the action, and to beat a hasty retreat.
Brother Boche, with his guns in among the dunes, was no fool. He was
merely waiting for a good opportunity to open fire, and his chance came
at the precise moment when the British helms went over and the
destroyers started to steam seawards. Then the whole line of coast
suddenly began to sparkle from end to end, and before one had time to
think the shell were pitching. The fire of the destroyers, both as
regards its volume and its accuracy, had been as nothing to this. Great
white-water fountains seemed to spout up everywhere at the same moment,
ahead, astern, and on either side. How many projectiles fell within a
few feet of the ship during the next ten minutes it is impossible to
say. The shooting was very accurate indeed--far too accurate to be
pleasant. It was extremely unpleasant.
Words can convey no conception of the breathless sort of sensation
caused by those falling shell. They howled like wolves and screeched
like express trains passing through wayside stations. They fell into
the water with heavy liquid plops, detonated in gigantic upheavals of
water and with roaring concussions compared with which the reports of
heavy guns faded into insignificance, and sent their jagged-edged
fragments whirring off into space with the humming and buzzing of angry
hornets. It was a sickening, uncanny feeling to see a fifty-foot
geyser-like spout spring into the air a bare fathom off the stem, to
notice the black patch at the spot in the water where the shell had
burst as if one had emptied a bucket of ashes, and then to steam
through the descending spray, and to smell the horrible, reeking stench
of the explosive. It was more alarming still to see a bouquet of four
or five such splashes jump into the air within a few feet of the stern
or on either side of the ship. If a single one of these projectiles
drove home the _Mariner_ would probably be brought to a standstill, in
which case her subsequent demolition and the slaughter of her crew
would only be a matter of time. If three or four shells struck at once
she would probably founder immediately.
It is one thing to be fired at by a similar vessel, and to be able to
fire at her in reply; but it is something quite different to be
subjected to the individual attention in broad daylight of a heavy
ship, or many shore batteries, when there is no possible chance of
retaliation. It leaves one breathless and cold; and though, perhaps,
one may not actually show one's fear, one would give much to be
elsewhere. It is only natural.
[Illustration: The shooting was very accurate, far too accurate to
be pleasant.
PAGE 310.]
Shell from modern heavy guns can drive their way through the armoured
sides of a battleship, but they will pulverise a destroyer into mere
powder. There are no bombproofs, no funk-holes, no armour, not even a
conning-tower--not that it would be used if there were. The officers
and the men at the guns and torpedo-tubes are all on deck and in the
open, while those below in the engine and boiler rooms have nothing
between them and the deep sea but a steel skin barely thicker than a
substantial biscuit-tin. Moreover, the greater portion of the hull is
crammed with machinery, ammunition, and explosives; and, however much
of a safeguard a destroyer's speed and small size may be, she must
always seem very vulnerable to those who serve in her. I say 'seem'
advisedly, for it is surprising how much hammering the tough little
craft can withstand without being knocked out; while, as any gunner who
is used to the game will tell you, she is not a very easy target to
hit. But, for all that, one lucky shell may do the trick, in which case
every man-jack of her crew may be killed or drowned. There is never
much chance of escape if once the ship goes, and any man who says he
relishes being under heavy fire in a T.B.D. is either a born hero or an
Ananias. It is easy to make light of things after they have happened,
but no words can adequately portray the inner feelings of the ordinary
mortal while the ordeal is still in progress. They are indescribable.
But by some miraculous intervention of Providence the _Mariner_ and her
sister-ships escaped practically scot-free. According to people who
witnessed the withdrawal from a distance, people who well knew the
range and accuracy of the coast guns, the odds were a thousand to one
that they would never escape, for at times they were hardly visible in
the spray fountains leaping up all around them. They were literally
buried in the splashes, but still they came on--and escaped.
It was not until afterwards that the men thoroughly realised how lucky
they were. At the time, whatever they may have felt in their hearts or
minds, there were no suggestions of fear in their faces, no trace of
nervousness in their demeanour. They behaved just the same as
usual--jeered uproariously when a shell fell a few feet short and
deluged them with spray, and made facetious remarks when projectiles
from 'Fractious Fanny,' as some one adroitly christened a particularly
obnoxious 11·2, lumbered gracefully over their heads and exploded
merrily in the sea a hundred feet or so beyond them. Perhaps they were
a little more talkative than usual; perhaps their laughter was
sometimes a little forced; but, for all that, they behaved as British
bluejackets always do.
'I wouldn't 'a missed that there show fur a lot,' said Pincher Martin
after supper the same evening.
'I reckons we kin think ourselves lucky ter git outa it,' Billings
murmured with his mouth full. 'It's orl right lookin' back on it w'en
once it's orl over; but it takes a bloomin' 'ero not ter 'ave a cold
feelin' in 'is stummick wi' them there guns a-pluggin' at 'im.'
'Did you 'ave a cold feelin' in yer inside, Josh?' M'Sweeny queried
anxiously.
'Course I 'ad. I wus cold orl over. I ain't no bloomin' 'ero. But, orl
the same, Tubby boy, I reckons it's done us orl good ter 'ave a bit of
a shake up like this 'ere. Makes us a sort of understan' 'ow every
bloke aboard 'as 'is own job ter do; don't it?'
Joshua's way of expressing himself may have been crude, but M'Sweeny
quite understood what he meant.
The engagement, short as it had been, had given the men confidence in
themselves, each other, their officers, and their ship. It had banded
them together in some extraordinary and quite inexplicable manner which
no years of peace training could have done. Together they had been
tried and had not been found wanting; and now, more than ever, they had
become 'we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.' They felt
themselves inspired with a new patriotism and a new ardour, and it was
that very feeling which, on 21st October 1805, had helped their
forebears to win the battle of Trafalgar.