"Right: give me the sextant and go and brew some cocoa in the
chart-house. There's a spirit-lamp there."
The Midshipman vanished and reappeared a few minutes later with two cups
of steaming beverage. They drank together, gulping it hastily to warm
themselves.
"A-ah!" sighed the Lieutenant gratefully. "That's better. Now put the
cups back, and come and show me Arcturus--if you have shaken off your
fat head!"
* * * * *
A couple of hours passed. The Midshipman of the Watch, accompanied by
the Corporal with a lantern, had gone his rounds of the mess-decks and
cell-flat. The seaboat's crew had gone through an undress rehearsal of
"Man overboard!" and were huddled yarning in the lee of the forecastle
screen. Twice the ship had crept a shade out of her appointed station
in the line, and, when the telegraph had rung the trouble to the
Engine-room below, stolen back to her appointed bearing. Once the Fleet
altered course majestically to avoid a fishing-fleet as it lay spread
over the waters, a confusion of flares and bobbing lights.
The bridge was in darkness, save for the faint glow of the binnacle that
threw into relief the rugged features of the Quartermaster at the wheel.
The face might have been that of a bronze statue, but for a slight
movement of the jaws as he thoughtfully chewed his quid. Suddenly a
light at the masthead of the Flagship began to blink hurriedly. A
signalman stepped out of the lee of the chart-house and rattled the key
of the masthead flashing lamp. On all sides the other ships began
blinking in answer to the Admiral's call. Presently the Yeoman spoke: a
rocket soared up into the night ahead of them. The Lieutenant put his
mouth to the voice-pipe and gave a clear spoken order, which the
telegraph-man repeated: somewhere overhead a bell rang in answer from
the engine-room.
The Fleet had increased speed.
The breeze freshened, and the men on the bridge ducked their heads as
from time to time a shower of spray drifted over the weather-screens.
The Midshipman of the Watch lowered his sextant and sniffed longingly,
his nose in the air; the off-shore wind had brought with it a hint of
heather and moist earth. Then, with a little sigh, he steadied his
sextant again on the lights of the next ahead.
* * * * *
The sky was turning pale in the East, and the chilly dawn crept over a
grey sea. The faces of the men on the bridge slowly became
distinguishable. They were the faces of the Morning Watch, wan in the
growing light.
The Lieutenant rubbed the stubble on his chin and turned his glasses on
a school of porpoises chasing each other through the waves. The sky
astern changed gradually from grey to lilac. Low down on the horizon a
little belt of cloud became slowly tinged with pink. Out of a hen-coop
on the booms the shrill crow of a newly-awakened cockerel greeted
another day. Then from the mess-deck, drifting up hatchway and
ventilating cowl, came the hoarse bellow--
"'Eave out, 'eave out, 'eave out! Show a leg there, show a leg! 'Sun's
a-scorching your eyes out!..."
The look-out in the foretop watched the antics of a small land-bird
balancing itself on the forestay.
"Poor little bloke," he muttered, blowing on his benumbed fingers,
"'spect's you wants yer breakfus'--same's me!"
*XXI.*
*A ONE-GUN SALUTE.*
"Every person subject to this Act who shall strike ... or lift up any
weapon against his superior officer in the execution of his office,
shall be punished with Death or such other punishment as is hereinafter
mentioned."--Sec. 16, _Naval Discipline Act_.
In Official eyes--even in eyes anxious to condone--illicit rum and the
unreasoning passion of a Celtic temperament were the sole causes of the
trouble. Yet a man may fight Destiny in the shape of these evils and
still make a very fair show of it. It was the addition of the third
factor that in this case overtipped the scales.
Her red, untidy hair was usually screwed into wisps of last night's
'Football Herald.' She had green, provocative eyes that slanted upwards
ever so slightly at the corners, and coarse, chapped hands--useful
hands, as many an overbold Ordinary Seaman had discovered to his fuddled
amazement, but in no wise ornamental. Her speech was partly Lower-deck,
partly Barrack-room, softened withal by the broad West Country burr; her
home was an alehouse in an obscure back street near Devonport Dockyard.
She was in no sense of the word a "nice" girl; but she was tall,
deep-bosomed, and broad of hip, and appealed inordinately to Ivor
Jenkins, Stoker 1st Class of His Majesty's Navy, who was dark and
undersized, and had lately developed a troublesome cough.
The recreations of a man who, on a daily rate of pay of 2s. 1d.,
contrives to support a bed-ridden mother and a consumptive sister,
cannot perforce partake of the elaborate. Ivor, denied a wider choice,
was therefore content to spend as much of his watch ashore as a
jealously eked-out pint would allow, at the "Crossed Killicks." For
many weeks past, alternate nights had found the little man perched on a
three-legged stool in a corner of the bar, raging inwardly at an
unnumbered host of rivals, dumbly grateful for such crumbs of
recognition as Arabella, from behind the beer handles, was pleased to
fling him.
The sailor-man a-wooing usually conducts his financial affairs with an
open-handed generosity calculated to make a ministering angel pensive.
In consequence, Ivor, who could not afford to back his protestations by
invitations to the Hippodrome, whelk-suppers, and the like, dropped by
degrees more and more out of the running. At first the girl gave him
encouragement--not the vague, nebulous coquetry Mayfair recognises as
such, but an intimate familiarity extended to slaps on the nose (boko),
and once a dash of swipes down the back of his neck as Ivor stooped to
recover a broken pipe. But nothing came of it--not even a penn'orth of
fish-and-chips. Accustomed to tribute tendered with a lavish hand,
Arabella decided that this must be a "proper stinge,"--one, moreover,
niggardly in his consumption of beer, and (since there was the good of
the house to be considered) to be dealt a lesson in due season.
"Bella! ... Give us a kiss!"
Save for Ivor and the girl, the squalid bar was deserted. She paused in
the act of replacing a bottle on the shelf behind her, and looked over
her shoulder, half-surprised, half-contemptuous. A beam of afternoon
sunlight slanted through the dusty panes and caught the greenish feline
eyes and ruddy hair, innocent for once of curl-papers.
"Wot? ... Me--kiss--yu!" She spoke slowly, and flung each word like a
whip-lash at the soul of Ivor Jenkins.
"Ah, yus, Bella--jest one. There ain't----"
"Mai dear laife! Yu ain't 'arf got no neck!" She turned with her hands
on her hips and regarded him with a smile on her thin lips, measuring
his undersized stature with her eyes. "I only kisses men--yu don' even
drink laike no man, yu don'. 'Sides, wot've 'ee done for us tu kiss
'ee? Us laikes men wot does things, yu know."
Ivor winced, but never took his smouldering eyes from the girl. "I'd do
anything for you," he said tensely, "so I would," and coughed abruptly.
She laughed and fell to wiping the sloppy counter. "Them as wants mai
kisses earns un. Same's Pete Worley: broke out of uns ship, un did, tu
take I tu theatre. An' w'en th' escort commed tu fetch un back, Pete un
laid un out laike nine-pins! Proper man, un was!" She surveyed Ivor,
perched smoking on his stool, and a sudden gleam came into her eyes.
"Yeer!--us knows of a kiss goin' beggin' tu-morrow afternoon." She
leaned across the counter with a dangerous tenderness in her rather
hoarse voice, "If so be as a man (she laid a slight intonation on the
word) as't leave tu go tu Dockyard Bank for'n hour, an' slipped out,
laike...."
It was his watch on board, as she knew; but she had also noted the red
Good Conduct Badge on his arm, and chose it instead of the accustomed
tribute he had denied her. Then her eyes hardened like agates. "Simly
yu ain't got no money tu bank, though?"
"Aye," said Ivor slowly; "aye, indeed I have. Three poun'." It was his
sheet-anchor, saved (how Heaven and he alone knew) that his mother might
eventually be buried with that circumstance which is dearer to the
hearts of the Welsh than life itself.
The girl nodded, and laid her hand caressingly on his sleeve. "Tha's
right, mai dear. Yu get leave tu go tu bank, an' slip along 'ere.
Tu-morrow afternoon 'bout five--will 'ee now?" She looked at him from
beneath tawny lashes.
Ivor finished his beer and wiped his mouth musingly on the back of his
hand. The girl thought he was considering the Good Conduct Badge: as a
matter of fact Ivor was wondering how the Police at the Dockyard Gate
might be circumvented.
"'Course," she said indifferently, turning away, "ef yu'm 'feered----"
The man flushed darkly and stood up. "You'll see," he replied, and went
out through the swing-doors in a gust of coughing. It had been worrying
him a good deal lately, that cough.
*II.*
The short November afternoon was drawing to a close as Ivor left the
Dockyard Bank with a shining sovereign gripped tightly in his trousers
pocket. Dusk was settling down on the lines of store-houses, and from
the Hamoaze below came the hoot of syrens that told of a fog sweeping in
from the Channel. Ivor strolled across the cobbles to where the
figurehead of a bygone frigate lifted an impassive countenance, and from
the shelter of its plinth he surveyed the gateway. The main entrance
was closed, and the narrow door, that only admitted the passage of one
person at a time, was guarded by a watchful policeman. It seemed as if
nothing short of a miracle would get a man in uniform through without a
pass.
Presently a bell in some neighbouring tower struck the hour, and the
waiting man turned in the direction of the sound. The ships in the
lower yard were invisible, only their top-masts appeared out of a fog
that came slowly swirling in from the sea. Higher and higher it crept;
then suddenly the policeman at the gate was blotted out, and the wall
became a towering blackness that loomed up through the vapour. Still
Ivor waited, holding his sovereign tightly, and wrestling with a cough
that threatened every minute to betray him. Some parties of liberty-men
going on leave tramped past: he heard the gates open and saw for a
moment the glare of the streets beyond. A couple of officers in plain
clothes appeared suddenly into the blurred circle of his vision and were
swallowed again by the blackness. "What a fog!" he heard one say. The
other laughed, and grumbled something about being glad he was not
Channel groping. Their voices died away, and Ivor emerged to
reconnoitre, only to scurry back into shelter as a telegraph boy on a
bicycle steered a devious course past him across the cobbles. The
little disc of light from his lamp zigzagged to and fro for a minute and
was gone. Then Ivor heard the rumble of wheels and the clatter of a
horse's hoofs: the lights of a four-wheeler passed him and stopped. The
policeman was unbolting the gates.
It was Ivor's chance, and, realising it, he slipped up beside the cab.
Inside was a figure muffled in a greatcoat, above which he caught a
glimpse of a clean-shaven, impatient face. Presently the inmate lowered
the further window and leant out, effectually interposing his body as a
screen between Ivor and the guardian of the gate.
"Hurry up," he called; "I've got a train to catch."
The gates swung slowly back, the cab rumbled through, and with it passed
Ivor Jenkins. Then for the first time he relinquished his grip on his
sovereign, and permitted himself the luxury of a fit of unchecked
coughing.
"Bilked 'im," he gasped when he got his breath again, half-awed at the
ease with which he found himself in the strangely unfamiliar streets.
At the corner of the side-street he turned and looked back at the grim
wall. In the signal-tower that loomed above it into the murky sky the
yeoman on watch had just tapped the key of the flashing lamp to test the
circuit. To Ivor it seemed as if Fate had winked at him, solemnly and
portentously.
* * * * *
Ivor pushed through the swing-doors of the "Crossed Killicks" and looked
hastily round the bar.
"'Ullo!...." he ejaculated blankly. "W'ere's Bella?"
The girl behind the counter, a short, stout woman in a purple plush
bodice, tossed her head. "'Er a'ternoon orf," she explained tartly.
"Aye, but--w'ere's she gorn?"
"Walkin' out with a Blue Marine. 'Ippodrome, I think, they was goin'."
Ivor sat down and fumbled blindly in the lining of his cap for his pipe.
Save for a spot of colour on either cheek-bone, his face was an ugly
grey.
"Fine upstanding feller, 'e was too," added the barmaid, weighing Ivor
in the balance of comparison, and finding him somewhat wanting. Ivor
nodded dully, and for a while examined with apparently absorbed interest
an advertisement on the wall opposite. Passion surged through him in
waves that made the skin of his forehead tingle. So she'd bilked him
after all: given him the go-by for a Blue Marine! Ivor knew him too,
... had once even stood him a drink.... The Adam's-apple in his throat
worked like a piston.
Presently the girl behind the bar looked up from her occupation of
drying glasses and eyed him curiously; but all she saw was a small dark
man, who sucked hard at an empty pipe, one fist clenched tightly in his
trousers pocket, staring hard at an advertisement for somebody's whisky.
At length, out of the chaos of his thoughts, two courses of action took
shape and presented themselves for consideration. One was to bash the
Blue Marine into irrecognition; the other was to get mercifully drunk as
soon as possible. The Blue Marine, Ivor remembered, scaled a matter of
fourteen stone, so he chose the latter alternative, and for thirty-six
hours Oblivion, as understood by men of His Majesty's Forces, received
him into her arms.
*III.*
"Did remain absen' over leave thirty-six tours, under haggravated
circumstances," declaimed the Master-at-Arms.
It was the first time Ivor had broken his leave for three years. His
head ached intolerably: he felt sick, too, and heard as from an infinite
distance the cool, crisp tones of the Commander, who spoke sternly of
the penalties attached to "not playing the game." Ivor listened
sullenly. It was another and an older game he had tried to play,--a
game in which Fate seemed to hold most of the trumps. There was a good
deal more in the same strain about the abuse of privileges, and it all
ended in his being placed in the Captain's Report, to stand over till
next day.
At dinner his resentment against the Universe in general swelled into an
excited flood of lower-deck jargon. In particular, he poured out
invective on the perfidy of Woman, and 43 Mess, with the peculiar
understanding vouched in the matter to men who go down to the sea in
ships, sucked its teeth in sympathetic encouragement.
"I'd serve 'er to rights," said a youthful Second-Class Stoker darkly.
He removed the point of his clasp-knife from his mouth, whither it had
conveyed a potato, and illustrated with a gesture an argument certain of
his feminine acquaintances in the Mile End Road were supposed to have
found conclusive.
"Don't you take on, Taff," said another, pushing over his pannikin of
rum. "'Ave a rub at this lot." Ivor finished his sympathiser's tot,
and several others that were furtively offered him--for he was a popular
little man among his messmates. But spirit--even "three-water" rum--is
not the soundest remedy for an alcoholic head. It set him coughing, and
deepened the sense of injury that rankled within him.
"Wot you wants," said a Leading Stoker, "is to run about an' bite
things, like. You go on deck an' 'ave a smoke." He knew the
danger-signals of a mess-deck with the intimacy of seventeen years'
experience, and Ivor went sullenly. But it was a dangerous man that
stopped at the break of the forecastle to light his pipe.
"Well," he said presently, "what d'you reckon I'll get whateffer?" His
"Raggie" considered the situation. "Couldn't rightly say; there's the
Jauntie[#] over by the 'atchway--go 'long an' ask 'im." Ivor smoked in
silence for a moment, then nodded, and stepping through the wreaths of
tobacco smoke, touched the Master-at-Arms on the shoulder. The latter,
who was listening to a story related by the Ship's Steward, was a small
man, with a grim vinegary face. He turned sharply--
[#] Master-at-Arms.
"Well?" he said curtly.
Now Ivor had stepped across the deck, honestly intending to ask the
probable extent of the punishment the Captain would award him for
breaking his leave. The suddenness with which the Master-at-Arms turned
jarred his jangled nerves; the sour face opposite him was the face of
the man who, on the Lower Deck, represented Law, Order, and Justice,
things Ivor knew to be perverse and monstrous mockeries. His brain swam
with the fumes of the thirty-six hours' debauch, reawakened by his
messmate's rum. A sudden insane rage closed down on him like a mist,
leaving him conscious only of the Master-at-Arms' face, as in the centre
of a partly fogged negative, very distinct, and for an instant
imperturbable and maddening.... Yet, as Ivor struck, fair and true
between the eyes, he somehow realised that not even now had he got level
with Fate.
*IV.*
A man seated in the foremost cell raised an unshaven face from his hands
as the sullen report of a gun reached him through the open scuttle. For
a while he speculated dully what it was for; then with curious
disinterestedness remembered that it was the court-martial gun, and that
he, Ivor Jenkins, was that day to be tried for an offence the extreme
penalty for which is Death.
They said he'd slogged the Jauntie. For a while he had been, dazed and
incredulous, but as the testimony of innumerable witnesses seemed to
leave no doubt about the matter, Ivor accepted the intelligence with
stoical unconcern. Personally he had no recollection of anything save a
great uproar and a sea of excited faces appearing suddenly on all sides
out of a red mist.... However, there were the witnesses, and, moreover,
there was still an unexplained tenderness about his knuckles.
"I pleads guilty," was all the prisoner's friend (a puzzled and
genuinely sympathetic Engineer Lieutenant) could get out of him.
"Well, I should have thought you were the last man to have done such a
thing in the whole of the ship's company."
"Same 'ere, sir," said Ivor, and fell a-coughing.
Subsequent proceedings bewildered and finally bored him. They thrust
documents upon him, wherein he found his name coupled to the
incomprehensible prefix "For that he," and his misdemeanour described in
a style worthy of the 'Police Budget.' The Chaplain visited him and
spoke words of reproof in a kindly and mechanical tone. For the rest,
he was left to himself throughout the long days; to cough and cough
again, to watch the light grow and fade, to count the stars in the
barred circle of the scuttle, and to the recollection of green, slanting
eyes vexed by dusty sunlight in their depths....
* * * * *
"Have you any objection to any members of this Court?"
Ivor started at the question and looked round the cabin. Till then he
had not noticed his surroundings much. A Captain and several Commanders
in frock-coats and epaulettes were seated round a baize-covered table;
they were enclosed by a rope covered with green cloth, secured
breast-high to wooden pillars, also covered with green cloth. It was the
Captain's fore-cabin, and the bulkheads were covered with paintings of
ships. One of these in particular--a corvette close-hauled--arrested
Ivor's attention. The Deputy Judge-Advocate, a Paymaster with a
preternaturally grave face and slightly nervous manner, repeated his
question.
"Do you object to being tried by any of the Officers present on the
Court?" Ivor moistened his lips; why on earth should they expect him to
object to them? An unknown Master-at-Arms standing beside him with a
drawn sword nudged him in the ribs.
"No, sir."
The Captains and Commanders then rose with a clank of swords, and swore
to administer justice without partiality, favour, or affection, in tones
that for a moment brought Ivor visions of a stuffy chapel (Ebenezer,
they called it) in far away Glamorganshire. Then the Judge-Advocate
turned to him again.
"You need not plead either 'Guilty' or 'Not Guilty.' But if you wish to
plead 'Guilty' you may do so now."
At last: "Guilty," said Ivor Jenkins.
For an instant there was utter silence. The junior Commander stirred
slightly and glanced at the clock: he would have time for that round of
golf after all.
The Prisoner's Friend then gave evidence, and Ivor experienced his first
sensation of interest at hearing himself described as an excellent
working hand, who had never given anything but satisfaction to his
superiors. A perspiring and obviously embarrassed Chief Stoker
followed.
"The last man in the ship I'd 'a' thought 'ud do such a thing," he
maintained. Ivor glanced at him indulgently, as one who hears an
oft-repeated platitude, and resumed his study of the corvette
close-hauled.
"Clear the Court," said the President briskly. Ivor found himself once
more in the lobby, sitting between his escort. One, a kindly man,
pressed a small, hard object into his hand. Ivor nodded imperceptible
thanks, and under cover of a cough, conveyed it to his mouth. It was a
plug of Navy tobacco.
A bell rang overhead, and the prisoner was marched back into Court.
"... to be imprisoned with hard labour for the term of twelve calendar
months." It was over.
* * * * *
"Now say 'Ah!' ... Again! ... Raise your arms ... H'm." The Surgeon
disentangled himself from his stethoscope and looked Ivor in the eyes.
"My lad," he said bluntly, "it's Hospital for you--and too late at
that."
In the Wardroom later on he met the Engineer Lieutenant. "I'd make a
better Prisoner's Friend than ever you will," he remarked. Pressed for
an explanation, he tapped the stethoscope-case in his pocket.
"Consumption--galloping," he said.
Perhaps Ivor had held the Ace of Trumps after all.
*XXII.*
*CONCERNING THE SAILOR-MAN.*
"Able Seaman, Seaman Gunner, one Good Conduct Badge." Thus, with a
click of unaccustomed boot-heels, he might describe himself at the
monthly "Muster by open-list." In less formal surroundings, however, he
is wont to refer to himself as a "matlow," a designation not
infrequently accompanied by fervid embellishments.
Occasionally he serves to adorn the moral of a temperance tract: a
reporter, hard pressed for police court news, may record one of his
momentary lapses from the paths of convention ashore. Otherwise
Literature knows him not.
Generally speaking, his appearance is familiar enough, though it is to
be feared that the world--the unfamiliar world of streets and a shod
people, of garish "pubs" and pitfalls innumerable--does not invariably
see him at his best. The influence of the Naval Discipline Act relaxes
ashore, and not unnatural reaction inspires him with a desire to tilt
his cap on the back of his head and a fine indiscrimination in the
matter of liquid refreshment.
But to be appreciated he must be seen in his proper sphere. On board
ship he is not required to play up to any romantic _role_: no one
regards him with curiosity or even interest, and he is in consequence
normal. Ashore, aware of observation, he becomes as unnatural as a
self-conscious child. A very genuine pride in his appearance is partly
the outcome of tradition and partly fostered by a jealous supervision of
his Divisional Lieutenant. A score of subtleties go to make up his rig,
and never was tide bound by more unswerving laws than those that set a
span to the width of his bell-bottomed trousers or the depth of his
collar. This collar was instituted by his forebears to protect their
jackets from the grease on their queues. The queue has passed away, but
the collar remains, and its width is 16 inches, no more, no less. The
triple row of tape that adorns its edge commemorates (so runs the
legend) the three victories that won for him his heritage; in perpetual
mourning for the hero of Trafalgar, the tar of to-day knots a black silk
handkerchief beneath it. It is doubtful whether he is aware of the
portent of these emblems, for he is not commonly of an inquiring turn of
mind, but they are as they were in the beginning, they must be "just
so," and that for him suffices.
A number of factors go to make his speech the obscure jargon it has been
represented. Recruited from the North, South, East, and West, he brings
with him the dialect he spoke in childhood. And it were easier to
change the colour of a man's eyes than to take out of his mouth the
brogue he lisped in his cradle. A succession of commissions abroad
enriches his vocabulary with a smattering of half the tongues of
Earth--Arabic, Chinese, Malay, Hindustanee, and Japanese: smatterings
truly, and rightly untranslatable, but Pentecostal in their variety.
Lastly, and proclaiming his vocation most surely of all, are the undying
sea phrases and terms without which no sailor can express himself. Even
the objects of everyday life need translation. The floor becomes a deck,
stairs a hatchway, the window a scuttle or gun-port. There are others,
smacking of masts and yards, and the "Tar-and-Spunyarn" of a bygone
Navy; they are obsolete to-day, yet current speech among men who at
heart remain unchanged, in spite of Higher Education and the
introduction of marmalade and pickles into their scale of rations. The
tendency to emphasis that all vigorous forms of life demand, finds
outlet in the meaningless oaths that mar the sailor's speech. Lack of
culture denies him a wider choice of adjectives: the absence of privacy
or refinements in his mode of life, and a great familiarity from
earliest youth, would seem an explanation of, if not an excuse for, a
habit which remains irradicable in spite of well-meaning efforts to
counteract it.
The conditions of Naval Service sever his home ties very soon in life.
The isolation from feminine and gentler influences that it demands is
responsible for the curiously intimate friendships and loyalty that
exist on the mess-deck of a man-of-war. With a friend the blue-jacket
is willing to share all his worldly possessions--even to the contents of
the mysterious little bag that holds his cleaning-rags, brick, and emery
paper. Since the work of polishing a piece of brass make no great
demand on his mental activity, the sailor chooses this time to "spin a
yarn," and, from the fact that the recipient of these low-voiced
quaintly-worded confidences usually shares his cleaning-rags, the tar
describes his friend as his "Raggie." To the uninitiated the word
signifies little, but to the sailor it represents all in his hard life
that "suffereth long and is kind." His love for animals, which is
proverbial, affords but another outlet for the springs of affection that
exist in all hearts, and, in his case, being barred wider scope, are
intensified.
Outside events have for him but little interest. So long as he is not
called upon to bear a hand by his divinely appointed superior, while his
ration of rum and stand-easy time are not interfered with, the rise and
fall of dynasties, battle, murder, and sudden death, leave him
imperturbable and unmoved. Only when these are accompanied by
sufficiently gruesome pictorial representations in the section of the
press he patronises can they be said to be of much import to him. But he
dearly loves a funeral.
His attitude towards his officers is commonly that demanded by an
austere discipline, and accompanied more often than not by real
affection and loyalty. He accepts punishment at the hands of his
Superior in the spirit that he accepts rain or toothache. Its justice
may be beyond his reasoning, but administered by the Power that rules
his paths, it is the Law, as irrevocable as Fate.
Morally he has been portrayed in two lights. Idealists claim for him a
guilelessness of soul that would insult an Arcadian shepherd. To his
detractors he is merely a godless scoffer, rudely antagonistic to
Religion, a brand not even worth snatching from the burning. Somewhere
midway between these two extremes is to be found the man as he really
is, to whom Religion presents itself (when he considers the matter at
all) a form of celestial Naval Discipline tempered by sentimentality.
But these are generalities, and may not apply to even a fraction of the
men in the Fleet to-day. Conditions of life and modes of thought on the
Lower Deck are even now changing as the desert sand, and those who live
among sailor-men would hesitate the most to unite their traits in one
comprehensive summary. It is only by glimpses here and there of
individuals who represent types that one may glean knowledge of the
whole.
In the Ship's Office of a man-of-war are rows of neat brass-bound boxes,
and here are stowed the certificates of the Ship's Company, those of
each Class--seamen, engine-room ratings, marines, &c., being kept
separately. At the first sight there is little enough about these
prosaic documents to suggest romance or even human interest to the
ordinary individual. Yet if you read between the lines a little,
picking out an entry here and there among the hundreds of different
handwritings, you can weave with the aid of a little imagination all
manner of whimsical fancies. And if, at the end, the study of them
leaves you little wiser, it will be with a quickened interest in the
inner life of the barefooted, incomprehensible being on whose shoulders
will some day perchance fall the burden of your destiny and mine.
The King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions, with a flourish of
unwonted metaphor, refer to the document as "a man's passport through
life." The sailor himself, ever prone to generalities, describes his
Certificate as his "Discharge." In Accountant circles in which the
thing circulates it is known as a "Parchment."
A Service Certificate--to give its official title--is a double sheet of
parchment with printed headings, foolscap size, which is prepared for
every man on first entry into the Service. At the outset it is
inscribed with his name, previous occupation and description, his
religion, the name and address of his next of kin, and the period of
service for which he engages.
In due course, when he completes his training and is drafted to sea, his
Certificate accompanies him. As he goes from ship to ship, on pages 2
and 3 are entered the records of his service, his rating, the names of
his ships, and the period he served in each.
On 31st December in each year his Captain assesses in his own
handwriting, on page 4, the character and ability of each man in the
ship. These fluctuate between various stages from "Very Good" to
"Indifferent" in the former case; "Exceptional" to "Inferior" in the
latter. Here, too, appear the history of award and deprivation of Good
Conduct Badges; the more severe penalties of wrong-doing, such as cells
and imprisonment. Here, too, they must remain (for parchment cannot be
tampered with, and an alteration must be sanctioned by the Admiralty) in
perpetual appraisement or reproach until the man completes his
Engagement and his Certificate becomes his own property.
The heading PREVIOUS OCCUPATION shows plainly enough the trades and
classes from which the Navy is recruited, and is interesting, if only
for the incongruity of the entries. They are most varied among the
Stokers' Certificates, as these men entered the Service later in life
than the Seamen.
_Labourer_ suggests little save perhaps a vision of the Thames
Embankment at night, and the evidence that some one at least found a
solution of the Unemployment problem. But we may be wronging him.
Doubtless he had employment enough. Yet I still connect him with the
Embankment. At the bidding of the L.C.C. it was here he wielded pick
and crowbar until the sudden distant hoot of a syren stirred something
dormant within him: the barges sliding down-stream out of a smoky sunset
into the Unknown suggested a wider world. So he laid down his tools,
and his pay is now 2s. 1d. per diem: from his NEXT OF KIN notation he
apparently supports a wife on it.
_Farm Hand_. Can you say what led him from kine-scented surroundings
and the swishing milk-pails to the stokehold of a man-of-war? Did the
clatter of the threshing-machine wake an echo of
"... the bucket and clang of the brasses
Working together by perfect degree"?
Perhaps it was the ruddy glow of the hop-ovens by night that he
exchanged for the hell-glare of a battleship's furnaces. Or, as a final
solution, was it the later product of these same ovens, in liquid form,
that helped the Recruiting Officer?
_Newspaper Vendor_. A pretty conceit, that Vendor! He has changed
vastly since he dodged about the Strand, hawking the world's news and
exchanging shrill obscenities with the rebuke of policemen and
cab-drivers. But the gutter-patois clings to him yet: and of nights you
may see him forward, seated on an upturned bucket, wringing discords of
unutterable melancholy from a mouth-organ.
_Merchant Seaman--Golf Caddie_. He spat in the sand-box before making
your tee, and looked the other way when you miss your drive, if he was
as loyal as caddie as he is a sailor. _Errand Boy--Circus Artiste_. Of
a surety he was the clown, this last. His inability to forget his early
training has on more than one occasion introduced him to a cell and the
bitter waters of affliction. But he is much in demand at sing-songs and
during stand-easy time.
Now here is one with a heavy black line ruled across his record on page
2, and in the margin appears the single letter "K" He is a recovered
deserter. He "ran," after eight years' service and stainless record.
Was it some red-lipped, tousle-haired siren who lured him from the paths
of rectitude? Did the galling monotony and austere discipline suddenly
prove too much for him? Was it a meeting with a Yankee tar in some
foreign grog-shop that tempted him with tales of a higher pay and
greater independence? Hardly the latter, I think, because they caught
him, and on page 4 of the tell-tale parchment appears the penalty--90
days' Detention.
Lastly: _Porter_. Where on earth did he shoulder trunks and bawl "By
y'r leave"? Was it amid the echoing vastness of a London terminus, with
its smoke and gloom? Or--and this I think the more probable--was it on
some sleepy branch-line that he rang a bell or waved a flag, collected
tickets, and clattered to and fro with fine effect in enormous hobnail
boots? Then one fine day ... but imagination falters here, leaving us
no nearer the reason why he exchanged his green corduroys for the jumper
and collar. And if we asked him (which we cannot very well), I doubt if
he could tell himself.
They make a motley collection, these tinkers and tailors and
candlestick-makers, but in time they filter through the same mould, and
emerge, as a rule, vastly improved. You may sometimes encounter them,
in railway stations or tram-cars, returning on leave to visit a home
that has become no more than an amiable memory.
And some day, maybe, you will advertise for a caretaker, or one to do
odd jobs about the house and garden, whose wife can do plain cooking.
Look out then for the man with tattooed wrists, and eyes that meet yours
unflinching from a weather-beaten face. He will come to apply in person
for the job--being no great scribe or believer in the power of the pen.
He will arrange his visit so as to arrive towards evening,--this being,
he concludes, your "stand-easy time." He wastes few words, but from the
breast-pocket of an obviously ready-made jacket he will produce a
creased and soiled sheet of parchment.
It is the record of his life: and after two-and-twenty years through
which the frayed passport has brought him, at forty years of age, he
turns to you for employment and a life wherein (it is his one
stipulation) "there shall be no more sea."
*XXIII.*
*THE GREATER LOVE.*
The sun was setting behind a lurid bank of cloud above the hills of
Spain, and, as is usual at Gibraltar about that hour, a light breeze
sprang up. It eddied round the Rock and scurried across the harbour,
leaving dark cat's-paws in its trail: finally it reached the inner mole,
alongside which a cruiser was lying.
A long pendant of white bunting, that all day had hung listlessly from
the main top-mast, stirred, wavered, and finally bellied out astern, the
gilded bladder at the tail bobbing uneasily over the surface of the
water.
The Officer of the Watch leaned over the rail and watched the antics of
the bladder, round which a flock of querulous gulls circled and
screeched. "The paying-off pendant[#] looks as if it were impatient,"
he said laughingly to an Engineer Lieutenant standing at his side.
[#] A pendant, one-and-a-quarter times the length of the ship, flown by
ships homeward bound under orders to pay off.
The other smiled in his slow way and turned seaward, nodding across the
bay towards Algeciras. "Not much longer to wait--there's the steamer
with the mail coming across now." He took a couple of steps across the
deck and turned. "Only another 1200 miles. Isn't it ripping to think
of, after three years...?" He rubbed his hands with boyish
satisfaction. "All the coal in and stowed--boats turned in, funnels
smoking--that's what I like to see! Only the mail to wait for now: and
the gauges down below"--he waggled his forefinger in the air,
laughing,--"like that...!"
The Lieutenant nodded and hitched his glass under his arm. "Your middle
watch, Shortie? Mine too: we start working up for our passage trial
then, don't we? Whack her up, lad--for England, Home, and Beauty!"
The Engineer Lieutenant walked towards the hatchway. "What do you
think!" and went below humming--
"From Ushant to Scilly...
The Lieutenant on watch turned and looked up at the Rock, towering over
the harbour. Above the green-shuttered, pink and yellow houses, and
dusty, sun-dried vegetation, the grim pile was flushing rose-colour
against the pure sky. How familiar it was, he thought, this great
milestone on the road to the East, and mused awhile, wondering how many
dawns he had lain under its shadow: how many more sunsets he would watch
and marvel at across the purple Bay.
"British as Brixton!" He had read the phrase in a book once, describing
Gibraltar. So it was, when you were homeward bound. He resumed his
measured pacing to and fro. The ferry steamer had finished her short
voyage and had gone alongside the wharf, out of sight behind an arm of
the mole. Not much longer to wait now. He glanced at his wrist-watch.
"Postie" wouldn't waste much time getting back. Not all the beer in
Waterport Street nor all the glamour of the "Ramps" would lure him
astray to-night. The Lieutenant paused in his measured stride and
beckoned a side-boy. "Tell the signalman to let me know directly the
postman is sighted coming along the mole."
He resumed his leisurely promenade, wondering how many letters there
would be for him, and who would write. His mother, of course, ... and
Ted at Charterhouse. His speculations roamed afield. Any one else?
Then he suddenly remembered the Engineer Lieutenant imitating the
twitching gauge-needle with his forefinger. Lucky beggar he was. There
was some one waiting for him who mattered more than all the Teds in the
world. More even than a Mother--at least, he supposed.... His thoughts
became abruptly sentimental and tender.
A signalman, coming helter-skelter down the ladder, interrupted them, as
the Commander stepped out of his cabin on to the quarter-deck.
"Postman comin' with the mail, sir."
A few minutes later a hoist of flags, whirled hurriedly to the masthead,
asking permission to proceed "in execution of previous orders." What
those orders were, even the paying-off pendant knew, trailing aft over
the stern-walk in the light wind.
* * * * *
The Rock lay far astern like a tinted shadow, an opal set in a blue-grey
sea. Once beyond the Straits the wind freshened, and the cruiser began
to lift her lean bows to the swell, flinging the spray aft along the
forecastle in silver rain. The Marine bugler steered an unsteady course
to the quarterdeck hatchway and sounded the Officers' Dinner Call.
"Officers' wives eat puddings and pies,
But sailors' wives eat skilly..."
chanted the Lieutenant of the impending first watch, swaying to the roll
of the ship as he adjusted his tie before the mirror. He thumped the
bulkhead between his cabin and the adjoining one.
"Buck up, Shortie!" he shouted; "it's Saturday Night at Sea! Your night
for a glass of port."
"Sweethearts and wives!" called another voice across the flat. "You'll
get drunk to-night, Snatcher, if you try to drink to all----" the voice
died away and rose again in expostulation with a Marine servant. "...
Well, does it _look_ like a clean shirt...!"
"Give it a shake, Pay, and put it on like a man!" Some one else had
joined in from across the flat. The Engineer Lieutenant pushed his head
inside his neighbour's cabin: "Come along--come along! You'll be late
for dinner. Fresh grub to-night: no more 'Russian Kromeskis' and 'Fanny
Adams'!"
"One second.... Right!" They linked arms and entered the Wardroom as
the President tapped the table for grace. The Surgeon scanned the menu
with interest. "Jasus! Phwat diet!" he ejaculated, quoting from an old
Service story. "Listen!" and read out--
"Soup: Clear."
"That's boiled swabs," interposed the Junior Watch-keeper.
"Mr President, sir, I object--this Officer's unladylike conversation."
"Round of port--fine him!" interrupted several laughing voices.
"Go on, Doc.; what next?"
"Fish: 'Mullets.'"
"Main drain loungers," from the Junior Watch-keeper. "Isn't he a little
Lord Fauntleroy--two rounds of port!"
"_Entree_: Russian Kromeskis----" A roar of protest.
"And----?"
"Mutton cutlets."
"Goat, he means. What an orgie! Go on; fain would we hear the worst,
fair chirurgeon," blathered the Paymaster. "Joint?"
"Joint; mutton or----"
"Princely munificence," murmured the First Lieutenant. "He's not a
messman: he's a--a--what's the word?"
"Philanthropist. What's the awful alternative?"
"There isn't any; it's scratched out." The A.P. and the Junior
Watch-keeper clung to each other. "The originality of the creature! And
the duff?"
"Rice-pudding."
"Ah me! alack-a-day! alas!" The Paymaster tore his hair. "I must
prophesy ... _must_ prophesy,--shut up, every one! Shut up!" He closed
his eyes and pawed the air feebly. "I'm a medium. I'm going to
prophesy. I feel it coming.... The savoury is ... the savoury
is"--there was a moment's tense silence--"sardines on toast." He opened
his eyes. "Am I right, sir? Thank you."
The Surgeon leaned forward, and picking up the massive silver shooting
trophy that occupied the centre of the table, handed it to a waiter.
"Take that to the Paymaster, please. First prize for divination and
second sight. And you, Snatcher--you'll go down for another round of
port if you keep on laughing with your mouth full."
So the meal progressed. The "mullets" were disentangled from their
paper jackets amid a rustling silence of interrogation. The Worcester
sauce aided and abetted the disappearance of the Russian Kromeskis, as
it had so often done before. The mutton was voted the limit, and the
rice-pudding held evidences that the cook's hair wanted cutting. The
Junior Watch-keeper--proud officer of that functionary's division--vowed
he'd have it cut in a manner which calls for no description in these
pages. There weren't any sardines on toast. The Philanthropist
appeared in person, with dusky, upturned palms, to deplore the omission.
"Ow! signor--olla fineesh! I maka mistake! No have got sardines,
signor...!"
"Dear old Ah Ying!" sighed the Engineer Lieutenant, "I never really
loved him till this minute. Why did we leave him at Hong-Kong and
embark this snake-in-the-grass.... No sardines...!"
But for all that every one seemed to have made an admirable meal, and
the Chaplain's "For what we have received, thank God!" brought it to a
close. The table was cleared, the wine decanters passed round, and once
again the President tapped with his ivory mallet. There was a little
silence--
"Mr Vice--the King!"