there's evidently nothing doing. And we're told in the text-books to
look up to the business methods of these Germans. Got your wind back
yet, madam?"
"You look after the boat, and never mind me. Why are you going stern
first?"
"Because I can see better front ways than through the back of my
head. The ebb's taking us five knots, and that's quite fast enough
for a clumsy tub like this. We shall be coming across shipping hung
up to moorings soon, if they haven't removed the buoys. I want to
try my soft eloquence on the packet that's nearest the sea."
The fairway was full enough of life. Big steamers were coming up for
sanctuary against British raiders; coasting craft whose business was
ended, were hunting for mud berths; and a tug in charge of the last
four-masted sailing ship that was to win home for many disastrous
months, hooted dismally to show her importance. And moving amongst
these were the launches and picket boats of an anxious Navy. The
small rowing boat with its two occupants was far too insignificant an
object for notice amongst hurrying interests such as these. At last
they drifted down to the line of the outer moorings, and found there
one steamer, where in normal times there would have been twenty.
"A hulking 2000-ton collier, with the coal still in her," announced
Plough. "Kind of ship they build on Tyneside by the mile, and cut
off in lengths as ordered, and stick a bulkhead across the ends for
bow and stern. She's no accommodation ladder, madam. Can you climb
a Jacob's stair-case?"
The lady bit her lips. "I'll have to. I must get home."
"Mind your eye, then," said Plough, and ran his boat alongside. He
made fast his painter to a dangling davit fall, and helped madam up
the uneasy ladder. A fat man appeared from above and handed her over
the rail. Plough followed, and addressed him.
"You the master?"
"Captain's ashore, if that's what you mean."
"Ah, yes, of course, he would be."
"He was fetched by the police."
"Like them, the busy brutes. I see you've steam. Well, we'll get
under way at once."
"Look here, mister man, I'm mate of this packet, and in charge, and
I'm the one that gives the orders. Who the hell are you?"
"I am Lieutenant J.B. Plough, of the Navy, and I've come here to take
you home, because you don't seem able to do it yourself. Call up the
chief engineer to let me know the instant he can give me full steam,
and then you can unshackle from the buoy and we'll be off."
The fat mate scratched his nose with a dirty finger nail. "And
you--as representing the Navy--assume all responsibility?"
"Any God's quantity of it. Now get a move on, Mr. Mate, or we shall
have the German Fleet round here presently wanting us to sign a stack
more of official forms in triplicate."
"The Lord preserve us from any more documents," said the mate
piously, and jumped for the engine-room.
Steam was ready for full speed--which was nine knots--and the chief
himself brought word that in half an hour's time he "could whack her
up to nine-point-five."
"Been in the Navy myself, sir," he added, "as a tiffy, and glad
enough to rejoin again if you can get us home out of this. If I may
suggest, sir, the lady had better have my room. The old man's cabin
is hardly decent. He's papered it with portraits of his lost loves
till there isn't space left for so much as a shaving-glass."
"Make it so," said Plough. "And, Mr. Mate, when I take the strain
off her with the engines, just unshackle from the buoy with as little
noise as you can manage. If you started playing a tune with your
windlass, we'd have some one coming to inquire why. They're a
desperate lot of busybodies up there at the Port."
The unwieldy collier was, of course, lying head up stream. Lieut.
Plough jockeyed her round between the narrow limits of the fairway,
and then rammed down the handles of his engine-room telegraph to full
speed ahead, and set a course for home. Then he began to equip ship
and crew for war.
He tackled the crew first. Could any of them speak German fluently?
Two of them did--for the very sound reason that they were Germans.
They were a couple of deckhands who had run to sea to escape the
conscription, and they were both very frightened men at the idea of
being caught by their compatriots.
Lieutenant Plough examined them with a thoughtful eye. "There is not
much to choose between you as regards physiogs. You both look German
enough to play in a band. Now let's see how you can give a word of
command. Suppose you're a full-fledged skipper. Say, 'Lower away
those boats.' Say it in German, and say it as if you meant it. You,
first."
The man let off a sudden bawl.
"Now you."
Number two man yapped the order in true officer's style.
"Yes, you're the better of the two. Now, which of you is about the
build of your late skipper?"
The second man grinned, and believed he was.
"Right. Go you to the master's room and rootle out a full kit of
uniform--coat and cap, and the more brass binding it has on it the
better. Then come back to this bridge. I may want you to appear as
captain here, and the more trigged out you are in uniform, the more
you'll appeal to the German official mind. Mr. Mate?"
The mate waddled to the upper bridge.
"Well?"
"Say 'sir' when you speak to me. Got that?"
"Yes--sir."
"Good. Then I want two big heavy weights, up to a ton, or a ton and
a half, on the foredeck there."
"There's a young locomotive boiler down under number two hatch on the
top of the coals, if that will do--sir."
"Derrick carry it?"
"Not without preventer stays--sir."
"Then rig them, and get off your hatch, and heave it up on deck at
once. What about number two weight?"
"I can't think of another--sir."
"I can. There's that forrard winch. Unbolt it from the deck, cast
off the steam pipes, and tell me when you have it adrift. And, just
one other thing. Work silently. There's a fog coming on, and it
will carry sounds like a telephone. Hullo, there's madam." He
jumped down the upper bridge ladder, and stood before her. "Now I
thought I'd got you comfortably stowed away in a clean, warm room,
out of harm's way. You really mustn't come out on deck here."
"I don't want to be a burden to you. The room was clean, certainly.
But warm! It was like a greenhouse. And the smell of oil! Perhaps
you didn't know, but the cabin I was given opened right on to the
engine-room. I should have been sick if I'd stayed there another
minute."
"My good woman, if necessary, be sick. Other people have tried it
and survived. If you're spotted out on deck here by the chap I'm
expecting, it's all up with us--and, by gad! there he is, away on the
port bow. Here, this is the skipper's drawing-room. In you go."
He bustled her into the chart-house, slammed the door behind her, and
ran up to the bridge. "Quartermaster, see that cruiser broad on the
port bow?"
"Yessir."
"Bear down to her, and if she moves, follow her."
"Yessir. Beg pardon, sir, but she's a Dutchman. We passed her
coming in this morning. She's their _Hula_."
"Quite right," said Plough dryly. "I happened to be having a drink
in her wardroom myself at Kiel not two months since. Now, you there,
in the skipper's togs and the German tongue, come up on topside here,
and listen. I'm heading for that German cruiser over yonder, because
if I didn't she'd head for me, and overhaul me in about ten minutes.
(Confound her beastly searchlight.) You're to pose as skipper here,
and pretend this old tub's under a German charter. Stop your engines
when you come within hailing distance, and sing out and ask her if
she is the ship you were sent to bunker. She'll say (or I hope she
will) that she isn't. Then waggle your hands, and ask them if they
can tell you where the henkers the boat you are after, is to be
found. Say you got your instructions by telephone, and the line was
bad. Say you thought the name of the ship that wanted coaling was
the Lieben--there's about a five to one chance she may be here--and
you were to stand on and off across the harbour mouth here till you
found her. You must use your wits, my lad, because, I take it,
you'll be hanged if you're caught, and, anyway, I shall be squatted
down under the lee of the weather-cloth here to attend to you if you
make a hash of it. Grasp all that?"
"Yes, saire."
"Then carry on."
The ruse, to John B. Plough's glee, succeeded faultlessly. No; the
cruiser was fully bunkered. Yes, the Lieben was cruising in company
with her, and was stationed to s'uthward, and was very likely
expecting a collier. Sorry for troubling? Not at all. These
mistakes will happen, and shore telephones are the devil, anyway.
"In German, now," Lieutenant Plough hissed from under cover of the
weather cloth, "tell your quartermaster to starboard his helm, you
owl, and telegraph the engine-room for full speed ahead."
The man did this with full Teutonic formalities, and the war steamer
and the collier parted with speed. Once more J.B. Plough turned to
face his lady passenger.
"Yes," he said testily; "what is it now?"
"That room you put me in is disgraceful. I lit a match and saw the
photographs on the walls. I never felt so insulted in my life."
"Well, you're ahead of me, my good woman. I haven't been into the
room, and I haven't seen any photographs; and, if you'll take the tip
from me, you'll go back and not light any more matches, and then you
won't see them either. You can't stay out here on deck, anyway."
"I won't go back--that's flat. There's another kind of smell in
there--of clothes, and people, and herrings--and it makes me feel
deathly sick. Couldn't I come out if I put on that long oilskin coat
that's hanging in the corner, and the sou'wester? I should look like
a man then."
"If you tuck up your petticoats as well, and put on a pair of
sea-boots. Madam, this isn't a comic opera. It's war. And colliers
don't bring their women to sea. A hair out of place may easily mean
death for the whole crowd of us. So, if you still insist on butting
in to where you aren't wanted, you know how to dress the part. But I
wish to heaven you'd keep under cover and be sick in private."
Plough ran the collier on the southerly course in search of _Lieben_
(which he especially did not wish to find) till he was sure _Hula_
was not following him, and then turned back on his course for home.
"And that," said he, "puts us through their light cruiser screen.
Another four miles, and we ought to get to where their destroyers are
strung out in front. If only this infernal fog would come down good
and thick in regular North Sea fashion, instead of letting itself get
thin in patches, it's ten to one we'd slip through without being
sighted."
The chief engineer came to the upper bridge, and saluted Navy
fashion. "Beg pardon, sir, but any time you're going to slow down
and want fog, if you can only give me sixty seconds' warning on ahead
through the voice-tube, I can arrange it."
"How's that?"
"We've as cargo good, hard steam coal. For our own bunkers we have
some of the dirtiest sludge ever shot out of a Tyneside coal-drop.
If the firemen are artists, they can make steam with it--if they've
me to look after them. But if it's fired into the furnaces in the
ordinary way, it simply blows straight out of the stack. I can
always have it shovelled in that way if you want a smoke, sir."
"Good!" said John B. Plough. "That may just save our bacon. Just
you hop below one-time and stand by to do it if I call down a
warning. We may want that smoke inside ten minutes from now."
They did. The fog on which Plough had been relying, instead of
becoming more solid, grew whispy and thin. Clean alleys of pure air
cut through it here and there, and the coal-boat dodged in and out of
the solid masses of vapour.
"If only the moon would pop out now," said Lieutenant Plough, "we'd
be lit up like a theatre. According to their own textbooks, they
ought to have six destroyers--or, at any rate, big
torpedo-boats--strung out across here, and, as they're so brand-new
to war, they're hardly likely to make an exception of to-night.
Confound them! I wish they'd let me get home peaceably. I feel
uncommonly out of it as admiral of a collier."
"_Wir-r-r-umph!_" said a shell hurrying past the coal-boat's bows.
"Cheer-o!" said Plough. "There she spouts!" and rang off his
engines, "Below there! That the chief? Good! Let's have your worst
class of smoke in the smallest possible time. There's a Dutchman
somewhere slap on top of us, and I want to try a game on him."
The smoke lingered--hours it seemed to Lieutenant Plough, though in
point of fact it was only fifteen seconds--and the enemy switched on
a searchlight and made the fog opalescent. He could hear the
destroyer nosing this way and that through the thickness, going at a
big pace ahead, then at the full of her speed astern, and on every
slant edging nearer.
Then, providentially, the fog thickened, and evil-smelling smoke also
began to billow forth from the stack, thick, and glutinous, and
black. "Fore-deck there--Mr. Mate!" Plough hissed out.
"Aye-aye--sir."
"Heave up that loco boiler chock-a-block, to your starboard derrick,
sway outboard, and make fast with a hemp stopping on the wire as I
told you. When you hear me whistle, cut."
A winch clacked and grunted, and a sheave screamed. Plough swore at
the noise, and pulled the string of his syren to drown it. The fog
might clear, or the smoke thin--it was now or never. The destroyer
raced briskly up to where the great steam whistle boomed.
It was not the smallest use trying the German skipper dodge here.
Destroyers in the outside line do not coal at sea. Lieutenant Plough
sung out to have a Jacob's ladder put over the rail abreast of the
foremast, and waited, leaden whistle in mouth.
The German destroyer swung up through the murk in a bustle of hurry
and importance. She sheered round with one reversed propeller when
she caught the collier's loom, and ran smartly up alongside. Her men
stood on her deck, armed like pirates, and all ready to board.
"Surrender, you beastly Britisher!" sung out a bearded officer on her
bridge, as the sides of the two ships rasped together.
Plough blew his whistle; knives cut the stopping of the winch wire,
and the huge steel boiler, weighted to the brim with water, dropped
like a stone on to the flimsy decking of the vessel alongside. It
hit her between her two foremost funnels, and shore through thin
steel plate and angle iron as though they had been so much pie-crust.
One of her own boilers shot up with a whisk of steam and white-hot
coal. Another boiler followed. Then a magazine created a volcano of
its own, and then the war heads of the deck torpedoes added their
quota to the inferno.
On the moment of impact Plough had rung for "Full speed" from his own
engines, but the series of explosions had begun and ended before the
ex-naval artificer below had got speed on her. The collier winced
and reeled to the shocks, but the damage she received was practically
nil. All her plates, all her frames were backed with buttresses of
coal. She was packed with coal from floors to deckbeams, and was
about as impervious to shock as a granite pier-head. The exploding
destroyer spurned her away, but did not damage her.
"If I could own up to sinking that joker," said John B. Plough when
at last the collier drew clear, and was plunging away at her normal
nine knots through the friendly darkness, "the Admiralty would give
me a tin medal. As it is, I guess my pigeon is to sing low. I'm an
awful duffer at writing reports and giving explanations of anything
outside routine----"
An oilskinned figure tapped him sharply on the arm. "Do you call
that fair?" asked his passenger.
"I call it jolly smart, if you ask me. There are no Queensberry
rules in this game. It's war--plain, naked war--and war's hell. If
I didn't sink, burn, and destroy an enemy's ship when I got the
chance, the taxpayer who stumps up my wages would grumble. And you
wouldn't like him to do that, would you, madam?"
The lady shivered. "If it wasn't that I'm absolutely bound to get
home, I wish I'd never come. You must have killed twenty of them."
"Sixty, I hope," said Plough.
* * * * *
They ran into Harwich without further interference, and Lieutenant
John B. Plough went ashore in the boat he had stolen from a stranger
in a German port, without saying good-bye, or asking anybody's leave.
He judged quite rightly that the fat mate would acquire merit for
bringing a valuable steamboat and cargo home out of the jaws of Total
Loss, and did not concern himself about that officer's feelings any
further.
He was apologetic only to his lady passenger as he handed her out on
to a beach and kicked adrift the rowing-boat that had carried them.
"Sorry I've had to 'come the quarter-deck' over you once or twice,
madam, but we've been in some tightish places, and they didn't bear
monkeying with." He grinned at her affably all over his red,
clean-shaven face. Women always said he had a most ingratiating
smile. "Come, now, we'll go up to the Railway Hotel and have a good
dinner and a bottle of pop, and I bet we part good friends after all."
"I am obliged to you," said the lady stiffly, "but I do not dine
alone with young men in the Navy. I have my reputation to think
about just as much as other people. I thank you most heartily for
bringing me home, and you must excuse my getting familiar and
offering you advice when you killed all those poor fellows on that
destroyer. I was rather upset at the time. I wonder if I might ask
one more favour?"
"Certainly, my----certainly, madam. Ten, if you like."
She opened her hand-bag, and from it gave him a small pack of cards.
They read:
┌────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ MADAME ARTHUR. │
│ MODES ET ROBES. │
│ │
│ Manningham, Millinery │
│ Bradford. a Specialité. │
│ │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
"If you would distribute those amongst your lady friends, it would be
a great help to me. You may assure anyone you introduce that prices
will be made most reasonable to her throughout the War, if she says
she comes from you."
VII
THE LADY KILLER
The bullet entered the peat wall of the butt with a luscious _plop_.
Captain Kettle continued to keep his eye on the particular bird he
had singled from the advancing pack of grouse, swung his gun
judiciously ahead of it, and fired. The bird dropped neatly. He got
another behind with his second barrel, marked their position with
empty cartridge cases on the wall of the butt, and congratulated
himself pleasantly on the neat right and left as he reloaded. Then
he turned about and inquired tartly from the spaces of the moor as to
who the devil had the impudence to shoot at him.
There was no doubt about it being a bullet. In the lamentable event
of being peppered by a neighbour in the next butt, the grouse shooter
generally registers the marks on his person, never on his butt. Also
grouse-butts are more or less in line, and shotgun attacks (however
much they can be explained away) are always on the flank. This was
from some sector of the rear, as the ugly hole in the wet peat
abundantly proved. Further--lady novelists notwithstanding--rifles
are not in common use for the purpose of grouse shooting.
"Now I wonder," the little mariner mused, "if that was meant for me?"
The answer came promptly. Another bullet plopped into the butt, and
Captain Kettle felt that he would have to miss the rest of that
drive. He walked round to the rear of the butt, lit himself a fresh
cigar, placed this with its burning end up-wind so that it would emit
a noticeable smoke, and crawled away, gun in hand, on a tour of
reconnaissance. Further _plops_ announced that the stranger was
aiming at the smoke and trying to shoot him through the butt.
The sound of the shots had not come to him, so he knew the sniper
must be at a good distance. He crawled first to the next butt, which
happened to shelter his host, and made announcement:--
"Mr. Carnforth, sir, don't look up, and please go on shooting. Some
blighter in the rear has had the impudence to bombard me with a
rifle, and I'm going back to take down his name and address."
"Gee!" said Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., "that'll be our friend the
spy. He didn't seem to put you off your shooting. That was an
uncommon neat right and left. Bit above your average form with
grouse."
"I was never able to take up game shooting till I'd left the sea,
sir, and on the farm in Wharfedale we have mostly rabbits. I hope
I'll be back again for lunch, sir, but if I'm not, please don't wait."
"Can't I come too? The pair of us would have more chance of catching
your pal than you will alone. And after all, it is my moor, and so I
ought to have a say on what's shot on it."
"Better not, sir. You must keep on remembering that you are a Member
of Parliament and your job is to talk, not to do things. I shall be
back for that luncheon if it can be managed. I saw a steak and
kidney pie put aside for the shooting hut this morning that I want to
see more of."
Captain Kettle, however, did not turn up for that pleasant shooting
lunch, and his butt was empty for the rest of the day. Carnforth
parried inquiries from the other guns about his "naval friend," by
suggesting that he had "been called away O.H.M.S. The chap does a
good deal in that line on the quiet, I believe, but for the Lord's
sake don't say I told you so, or he'll bite my head off. You know
what these special service fellows are."
The sailor by means best known to himself, got back to the house in
time for dinner that night, dressed in five minutes--for a man who
never had much practice, the way he could tie a dress tie bordered on
the miraculous--and came down looking as if he had stepped out of a
bandbox. He played an extremely good knife and fork at dinner, got
outside three-quarters of a bottle '70 port after it, and then
settled down in the billiard room (which is really part of the hall)
within easy range of a box of Carnforth's five-inch Coronas
Colorados. He was smoking the seventh of these when the last of the
other guests thought "bed was the best idea that occurred to him just
then," and Carnforth mentioned that he "thought the beggars would
never go. I'll mix you another whisky and soda. And now kindly tell
me what you've been playing at all the afternoon. I bar a man that
you've asked to shoot who goes and bags all the sport to himself."
"Well, sir, those peat hags at the back of Cow Ghyll butts weren't
intended for a gentleman of your generous figure to scramble through."
"You leave my figure alone, you one-legged ruffian. I'll walk you
level from here to Pateley Bridge for a tenner--no, I won't. Go on."
"There's nothing much to tell. I had a general notion of my sniper's
direction, and set out to work up to l'ooard of him. There was a bit
of a breeze and I thought he would never hear me, and he didn't. He
kept on pegging away at that spot below my cigar smoke, in the hopes
of hitting me in the back through the butt. When I'd got level with
him--and I tell you sir it's cruel hard work on a hot August day
making a passage through those hags----"
"Even for a man who hasn't a pot belly."
"For any one, sir. Well, I just worked up to l'ooard, and he spotted
me just as I was within gunshot, and started to lift his rifle."
"Go on, man. Go on."
"Oh, I just gave him two barrels of number five. My gun makes a nice
large pattern at seventy yards, and I guess I didn't leave much of
him without a pellet to remind him he'd been taking liberties. He
wore a shooting hat just like yours sir, and a well used burberry."
"Get on, Captain. You're a rotten hand at telling a yarn. Did you
gather him?"
"I did not. I just turned tail, and ran away here."
"You what?"
"Ran as near like a hare, sir, as an artificial leg would let me.
You see, I gathered from remarks when that hail of shot got home that
he was a 'she.' It's one of the many disabilities of the other sex,
sir, that when they want to swear, and really have cause, they don't
know how to do it efficiently. I'm a modest man, Mr. Carnforth, and
I felt too ashamed of listening to stay there any longer. And, of
course, the lady wouldn't have been hurt really, only stung at
seventy yards, though I once did drop a woodcock with the choke of
that gun at seventy-five."
"Hum," said Carnforth, "I don't call this business. You discover
that our spy is a woman--which I will grant is a good step in
advance. But you have had her in your hands, and let the creature
go. Theoretically, in both the Services, men have been hanged for
less."