makes me hot, Mr. Carnforth, to think of the damage I've done to that
lady already."
"Anyway, she's out of our range at the moment. By God, though, if
that woman's had the cleverness to send French ships into the trap as
well as British, she's got some energy, and some tackle to use it
with. She----"
"Here they are, sir, at last! Slip you forrard to the galley and
rouse up the other two. Keep out of sight going. You must crawl
behind those deals. And keep out of sight when you are there till
you hear me whang off the first shot. It's all in with these
Dutchmen now, and I'm not going to let the swine hit first, if it can
be avoided. But when you hear the bang, run aft to here, all three
of you, for all you're worth. Got that?"
"Aye, aye, sir," said Martin Carnforth, M.P., and crawled away on the
errand as briskly as his portliness would permit.
The German submarine came on with her decks just clear of the water,
and her bows nodding over or nosing through the seas. She had a gun
on her foredeck and another aft, and high-booted men stood alertly
beside each, with the water swirling between-whiles up to their
knees. A conning-tower like a wedding-cake decorated her amidships,
with a periscope, and a wireless mast that emitted a pennon of
stinking smoke. Three bearded dirty men occupied the top of the
conning-tower. Captain Kettle, clapped snugly into the
shoulder-piece of his gun, slipped down his sights to point-blank,
and took steady aim at the centre of where that wedding-cake joined
the hull.
"If they weren't these fancy new kind of Dutchmen," said Captain
Kettle as he pressed home his trigger, "it wouldn't be fair to shoot
them sitting like this. By James, that joker's got it where the
chicken got the axe--right in the neck."
The 3-inch shell, discharged at some forty yards, distance, tore
through the plating of the conning-tower as though it had been
biscuit-tin, and exploded inside. The conning-tower opened like an
expanding lily. The men on the top of it disappeared into mist. The
men below were involved in what appeared to be a secondary explosion.
The men on the fore and after decks stuck grimly to their guns, and
fired them in the face of death--and fired them without result.
They had no time to reload; their ship was sinking bodily beneath
them; and into a sea, iridescent with escaping fuel oil, they were
presently swept, together with scalded survivors escaping from below.
Carnforth and his two friends, racing along from the galley to join
Kettle in the gunpit, stopped in their stride, and commenced throwing
deals overboard, with the Englishman's ordinary instinct for saving
life. Then out of the rain-mist whiz-crash came a shell, and
whiz-crash came another, and the wet air was full of hissing
splinters as these exploded amongst the deals.
"By James, Mr. Carnforth," Kettle called out, "if you don't carry out
my orders, I'll attend to you later. Here's submarine number two
arriving, and I've got to load this gun for myself like a common
deckhand. By James, sir, I'm captain of this packet, and you've got
to remember it. Come away aft here, one-time."
Carnforth and the barrister obeyed the call. The plump stockbroker
stayed behind, spread out in a limp heap on the derelict's deckload.
The amateurs loaded briskly and shot well. The professionals
(despite an austere drill) loaded better and shot more accurately.
Moreover, they had two guns to the barquentine's one, and they were
firing at a background that splintered at a touch and spread a
torrent of horror, whilst Kettle was aiming at chilled steel plates.
The Germans did not miss; the derelict sang with splinters that were
potent for death; but they could not sink her. Captain Kettle, on
his part, did not miss either; but he could not hit a vital part. He
punctured an oil locker on the submarine's ribs, and the sullen North
Sea swell was covered with more iridescence. He cut away the
wireless mast, and the fumes of burnt lubricating oil stank from the
conning-tower level. He swept one of the after-gun crew into space.
But he could not give the submarine a mortal hit. And in the
meanwhile the unsinkable barquentine was disintegrating into planks,
the barrister had collapsed badly hit, and Carnforth was white and
wounded. Captain Kettle cursed his aim, re-lit his cigar whilst a
3-inch shell burst noisily alongside of him, and shot doggedly on.
Then the unexpected happened.
All this time the submarine had been fighting him under way, circling
the derelict at some 18 knots, and offering a difficult target. Her
friends in submarine number one, that Carnforth and the others had
tried to succour, were still squattering in the water, but they did
not strike submarine number two as valuable. They were out of action
for the time being, and submarine number two ignored them as though
they had been so many swimming gulls. There was more joy for
submarine number two in killing three Britons in a water-logged
derelict timber ship than in saving fifteen compatriots. And then
with a hiccough her Diesel engines struck work (from some cause
unknown), and she lost way.
The commanding officer of submarine number two was a man of resource.
He had saved his torpedoes up to now for worthier game, but when the
engine trouble showed itself, and while he had still got steerage
way, he put down his helm. If he could not sink this nuisance of the
seas by shell fire, at least he could blow her into matchwood with a
15-inch torpedo.
But then by a beautiful shot--Carnforth, who knew Kettle's shooting,
always declared it was a fluke--the little sailor got in first.
Submarine number two was end on, and presented her smallest possible
target, but he hit her just as one of the stern torpedo-tubes was
being fired, and the torpedo exploded--inboard.
There were no swimmers from submarine number two, and by this time
those from number one had all disappeared under the slimy oil.
Captain Kettle knocked the ash from his cigar, and went to look at
his friends. The stockbroker was dead. He wore on his face the
pleased grin of a man who was satisfied with the end of life as he
had seen it.
The barrister had a carotid artery slit through by a splinter. He,
also, could not last long. Captain Kettle took off his hat. "Any
message, sir?" he asked softly.
"_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori._"
"I beg your pardon, sir. I didn't quite catch?"
The barrister gave the ghost of a superior smile. "I'm afraid it's
above your head, my man," said he, and dropped back into
unconsciousness.
Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., in the shocking remains of what was once
evening dress, was a more profitable patient. He had been merely
stunned by one of the all-pervading splinters, and North Sea water,
strenuously applied, brought him round.
A British destroyer storming up at 30 knots some hours later found a
small man in farmery-looking clothes and a red torpedo beard, a
wounded man who looked like a rag-picker, and two dead on a shattered
derelict barquentine. The farmer was playing "As pants the hart for
cooling streams," on a patched-up accordion with three dumb notes, to
an audience of three kittiwakes and a lesser black-backed gull.
The destroyer bustled up alongside with much business-like confusion,
took off the humans and continued her way. The Lieutenant-Commander,
who wore a woollen comforter of a startling pink, and a black smudge
on his nose, stared hard at Captain Kettle, and asked his name.
"I know your face," said the Lieutenant-Commander. "It's like some
one I've seen in a magazine illustration."
"He is generally known as the Lady killer," said Carnforth.
The little sailor turned on him with a sudden ferocity. "I'm more
ashamed of what I did to that poor stout woman than I can say, sir,
and if you make a song about it, I'll attend to you in a way you'll
remember for the rest of your natural life."
"What-ho!" said the Lieutenant-Commander. "Don't let me butt into
anybody's private divorce case. Got enough of my own on hand,
thanks. Come below and have some hot cocoa. You look as cold and
wet as a brace of snipe. Step down into the parlour and hear all the
news. Perhaps you can help to solve the latest problem they've got
ashore: 'Who hanged Sir Hermann Vogelheimer?'"
VIII
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
Captain Kettle stepped out from the little knoll that sheltered him,
and ran rapidly across the open. The German bullets hummed near his
ears, sang by his ribs, hissed past his legs, and spat up fountains
of dust from the ground below, but he went steadfastly on to where
the man was writhing and squirming in the barbed wire, and with
brisk, capable fingers disentangled him.
The man said, "Go away, you damned fool. I'm done for."
"If you speak to me like that, you son of a brick," returned the
little sailor, "I will stamp the tripes out of you. Say 'Sir' when
you address me. And lift up your starboard elbow. I've got all the
rest clear now. Will it hurt you if I lift you by your left arm?"
"I'd rather you left me alone. I'm done in. I'm shot through the
backbone. Thanks all the same."
"H'up you go now," said Kettle, "and mind don't knock off my hat,
because it's the only one I've got out here, and I have them built at
Scott's, and can't buy another nearer. Anyway, I can't in decency
leave you out there hung up in that fencing wire for those Dutch
swine to plug at. It gives them ideas above their station."
"It's jolly decent of you," said the soldier faintly as Kettle
lowered him gently down on the short turf behind the knoll, "but
you've wasted your wind. I'm a goner."
"If I'd a bottle of Horner's Perfect Cure with me, I'd make you as
fit as French. Horner's has cured worse cases than yours. As it is,
I'm afraid, my lad, you'll have to wait till I can get one of those
regulation doctors to come and patch you up."
"If you could fix me a drink I'd remember you later on. It's the
very devil this thirst."
"I know the feeling," said Kettle. "I've been hit myself. You shall
have something wet if it can be got. I'll just put this other
fellow's coat under your head--so. He's got no further use for it.
Now take a grip on your nerves and expect me back here in
twenty-eight minutes. I've got another man to see. But when I get
back you can build on my having some liquor of sorts in my pocket, if
it's only cold tea. Apologize in advance, my lad, if I can't bring
you anything better than cold tea."
"You're a good sort," said the soldier faintly, "I won't forget,
now--or later. So long. Keep away from these pellets."
Captain Kettle rose up from the man's side, brushed the mud from his
knees, made himself as spruce as the occasion would allow, and worked
his way rearwards to the ruined brewery where Monsieur Joseph Mumm
had arranged to meet him with the cinematograph camera.
There was, however, no Monsieur Joseph, and in his place lolled an
extremely dirty British officer in khaki, with red tabs on his
collar. The officer was smoking a pipe that gurgled, and was adding
artistic touches to a map of his own production.
"Hullo," said the officer, "who the devil are you? How's the pig
trade?"
The sailor introduced himself formally and produced papers.
"Come to take photographs of Belgium to annoy William with, have you?
Well, so far as I am concerned, and especially if you can give me a
box of matches, you may go along and prosper. I'm only a gilded
subaltern of the staff and I am too busy with my own job here to find
time to run you in. But if you go on long enough you'll come across
some officer who'll either hang you out of hand or pack you off home
again, papers or no papers. You look too much the British farmer to
be quite unnoticeable in this dear country. Isn't there a grand
smell of beer in this ruin? There's not a drop left though. I've
looked."
"I came to meet a party here, sir, a Belgian named Mumm. Have you
seen him by any chance?"
"If he was a littlish fellow with a pale face, and hump shoulders,
and a club foot, who carried an infernal machine with a handle to it,
I did. Lord, I do itch. Haven't got any insect powder by any
chance, have you?"
"I'm sorry, sir, but I'm travelling light at present. It was Mumm
you saw. Did he leave any message?"
"Well, as you seem to be the nobleman he expected, you may as well
have it. He returns anon. I'm not much good at Chochtaw, but as far
as I could gather from his rapid conversation, he's gone to fetch his
wife and bring her back here."
"James!" said Kettle nervously. "His wife! I didn't know he had
one. I don't like this."
"Cheer up," said the subaltern, cocking his head and admiring his map
work, "and don't fear the worst. You haven't seen the lady yet. She
may even be good-looking. You can never tell what will marry which.
During your recent stroll through that barbed wire in front, did you
happen to notice what gauge it was, or must I go out and see?"
"I'm afraid I don't carry an accurate wire gauge in my eye, sir. But
I've got an errand out there as soon as I've found something to
drink, and I'll bring you back a sample."
"If you don't look out," said the staff officer thoughtfully, "your
promising young career will be cut short if you go gadding about in
this health resort. Have you been hit already by any chance? I
noticed you limped when you came in."
"That was on account of my wooden leg, sir."
"Oh, sorry. Didn't know I was dipping into domestic secrets. If you
want a drink, there's my flask. It's filthy, but it's wet. It's
made of some patent tabloids that my favourite aunt sends me, and is
guaranteed, I believe, to keep off malarial fever, ingrowing
toe-nails, and that tired feeling. Here, I say, I offered you a
swig. I didn't ask you to walk off with the bally flask."
Captain Kettle worked his way back to the wounded man with so much
care that he was only shot at once. Night was closing down, lurid
with afterglow, icy with wind from the North and East.
Guns growled in a distant ring. Bullets from nowhere spat and
whinnied, and occasionally one which had achieved a ricochet went
past with a _whoop, whoop, whishy_! Into the No-man's-land where the
morning's action had taken place, two armies shot with indiscriminate
hate.
The sailor found his man, and handed the flask. He had to put his
arm behind the man's shoulder and lift him before he could drink.
"I say, squire, that's awfully good of you. Rum tipple, too, but I
suppose my taste's out of order. I've had a pretty thick day ... and
now I'm going to see the chap who does sentry-go ... in the Place
Beyond. And that isn't a joke, because ... there ... He is."
He pulled himself half erect with a grinding jerk, and brought his
hand up to the salute, and answered an unseen inquisitor.
"One of the English, Sir.... A bad record perhaps.... But--I tried
to do my job."
Then he dropped back and slowly stiffened, and Captain Kettle took
off his hat.
In the meanwhile Monsieur Joseph Mumm of Louvain was having trouble
with his wife. Madame Joseph, who always prided herself on being
_bien chaussée_, flatly declined to run. Indeed in her absurd
high-heeled shoes running was an impossibility, but she had not the
honesty to admit this. She said running was undignified, and Joseph
should have told her earlier that the unspeakable Bosches were so
near, and that he had mismanaged things as usual, and how she could
have brought herself to marry such a man was more than she could then
imagine.
Joseph, however, loved her, and refused to be ruffled.
They came at last to the battered brewery, and were welcomed by the
war-worn subaltern.
"Hullo, Joseph," said the subaltern in his best English, "so here you
are again as bright and bonny as ever, and no holes in you? And this
is Madame? I told our friend, the agriculturist, she'd turn out to
be a beauty."
"No spik Englisch."
"I know you don't, my tulip, or I wouldn't be so free with my
compliments. Curse this pipe! Now I wish you'd either skin out of
here or get to cover. Savvy? _Lyo doggo_! Or else some energetic
Bosch gunner will spot us, and turn on the frightfulness, and that
always makes me nervous. Madame, I'm sure you have your reasons for
strafering Joseph, and giving me the glad eye. But I've a girl of my
own at home, and another out here, and I can't be true to a third.
It's beginning to look as if our friend the nobleman who stole my
flask isn't coming back. You never can bet on your life insurance in
these stirring times. But if he does, you turn your eyes on to him.
He's the little man for the ladies, I bet a pot of jam. And by the
Lord, here he is, and none the worse."
Captain Kettle took off his hat with stiffness and looked annoyed.
"Cheer up, Sir Owen," said the subaltern pleasantly. "Belgium
mourns, but Madame's got a smile left, and I told her not to waste
them on me. She was to save all up for you."
"I'd wring your neck for twopence," Kettle snapped.
"I don't think you could," said the subaltern with a sigh. "Many
heroes have tried--and alas, failed. It was owing to their failures
that the Cambridge Rugger Captain, a man I disliked, was compelled to
give me my blue as a forward. Here! Get to ground quick. Shell
coming."
Thereafter for the space of forty-five minutes high explosive shells
sang through the night and smashed the remains of the brewery to
dust, and exploding shrapnel spat over it spitefully. Captain Kettle
coughed when lyddite vapour mixed itself with his cigar smoke, and
talked rabbit shooting with the subaltern. Madame Joseph ogled
Kettle. And poor Joseph winced at each shock of the exploding
shells, and screamed at the louder ones. He was not cast in a heroic
mould. And he loathed himself for appearing as a poltroon under the
eyes of his wife, whom he loved.
"I suppose by the way," said the subaltern, "you didn't come out here
for the mere sport of the thing and to take photographs?"
"No, sir," said the little sailor. "I've a contract on to find
Belgian mechanics, and ship them out of the country, to make shells
in a works at home. The men I was after lived in that little town
where you were scrapping this morning and I couldn't find any of them
left. Mr. Mumm's cinematographing scheme was, so to say, a
by-product. I've always had my knife into the German Emperor ever
since that telegram he sent about Dr. Jameson, the interfering swine.
And I'd a notion Mr. Mumm could find me mechanics, though I had only
his word for it. Hullo the shelling's stopped."
"Then I'll give up whistling, 'Wait till the clouds roll by, mother,'
and toddle off home. I'd ask you to our mess, Sir Owen, but if our
Old Man spotted you it would be home, sweet home, for yours by the
next train. However, I dare say we shall meet in England sometime.
So long."
"A pleasant young man that," mused the sailor. "I wonder what his
name was." And then he turned to disentangle the hands of Madame
Joseph, which had clasped themselves affectionately on his shoulder.
"It makes dark, now," she whispered, "and Joseph does not count. You
will protect me? You are a man."
"A married man, Madame, and don't you ever forget it. Take Joseph's
arm, please, and we will go to the village over to the sou' west
there, and see if we can't find a _café_ that serves dinner. Joseph,
I want you to remember that I give you twenty-five francs a head for
all Belgian fitters and turners you introduce me to that will come
over to England and earn big wages making shells."
"I know twenty," said Joseph eagerly. "Give me twenty francs each,
and they are yours."
"Twenty-five I said, and I pay when the goods are delivered--and
shipped--and not before. But if a twenty-franc note on account will
ease the situation, it is yours."
"Monsieur," said Joseph Mumm ecstatically, and Captain Kettle, very
much to his disgust, found himself kissed. "Monsieur, till now I
have never met you. I salute you as the saviour of Madame."
"Better take two twenties whilst you are about it," said Kettle,
edging away. "No, Madame, Madame, I say no. You need not thank me
in the least. It is an entirely business proposition, as you will
understand when I tell you there is an English M.P. at the back of
it."
Madame replied with a gesture. "You give money to that? _Pzzt!_ He
will merely spend it on drugs, and me, I shall trudge as usual. For
me is there now ever a taxi-automobile? _Pas!_"
Later in the evening, in a dishevelled town just outside the German
lines, Kettle saw the truth of this charge. Joseph bought drugs,
small white tabloids of unknown composition, made solution, inhaled
this into a tarnished syringe, and made injection into a lean and
spotted forearm. Till then he had been a worm, though always (be it
understood) the devout lover of Madame. But with the drug in his
veins he was the hero of chivalric times, Madame's adorer, and her
very sure guard. And the odd thing (to Kettle's mind) was that
Madame seemed to prefer him in this exalted state.
But all this, as Captain Kettle kept on reminding himself, was not
business. He had come out to Belgium for skilled mechanics, having
promised Mr. Martin Carnforth, M.P., that if such still remained
alive he would bring them back with him to England, if necessary by
the hair of their heads, and in spite of the Kaiser William's teeth.
And so far he had shipped but three, and doubted if they would arrive.
"Munitions," Carnforth, M.P., had said, "munitions, chiefly in the
way of shells, are what we want, and when you hear my
fellow-politicians bellowing that we have plenty, don't you believe
them. They are merely trying to hide their own inefficiency and keep
their own salaries going. I've got an empty bay at my Works, and a
lot of lathes, but the British mechanic is either not to be got or
too big for his boots when you've found him. The decent ones are all
gone to the war, and I've no use for the wasters who might offer.
But if you can find me Belgians who both can work and will work, I
will put them in the way of earning five pounds a week per head."
Captain Kettle carried with him as personal luggage a parcel of
circulars setting forth in two foreign tongues the more attractive of
these points, and had distributed them lavishly under the muzzles of
German rifles, but so far mainly with poor results. The Belgian
mechanic was not at the moment receptive of new ideas, as was perhaps
natural. Conceive the British mechanic, with Germans in Britain,
asked by some alien whom he understood imperfectly, to go overseas to
a land where the working man eats horse for preference. One can
understand the Belgian reluctance.
But with a brain brightened by his drug, Monsieur Joseph Mumm
developed unexpected powers. He teemed with suggestions, and as they
sat at dinner hissed them out in true conspirator's style. Most of
them were unpractical, many were fantastic, but some had glimmerings
of sense.
"Do not heed him," said Madame. "He does not know about these
mechanics. He is a professional man, my husband, though for the
moment he has a pretty wit. _Pas?_"
"Don't run him down, ma'am. He's some remarkable sound ideas, but I
wish he'd speak French or English or one of God's languages instead
of switching off into Walloon, or Flemish, or German, or whatever it
is. Look here, Joseph, you say these engineers have their Lodge.
What do you mean? Masonic?"
Again came the whirl of words.
"Well, call it Guild, or Trades Union, or something like that. Where
is it, and have you the pass-word? Be quick. By the sound of the
firing the Germans will be here by morning."
Joseph at that moment of exaltation had everything--certainly such a
trifle as entrance to a guild of base mechanics. When could they go?
This moment or sooner. He leaped up and fled into the night, and
Kettle, after bows to Madame, limped after him.
In due time they came to the secret place of assembly, which, after
all, had little of secrecy about it. The mechanics of the little
business town met in a cellar amongst wine casks. They stood about
on a blue floor, and gesticulated in an atmosphere rich with tannins
and ethers. It was rather a jarring change from the mingled smell of
wood-smoke and garlic Captain Kettle had left at the restaurant, and
he lit a damp, black Canary cigar to counter-balance it, whilst
Joseph Mumm with much florid phrase explained him.
And then came interruptions. From the street above and without there
came the clattering of iron-shod hoofs, the crackle of shots, the
shrill screams of hurt men, and now and again the more dreadful
shriek from a woman or child.