said, throwing an empty sack over his shoulder and replacing his
beribboned cap with a crumpled velour of the Hombourg type. "Found
it in me pickin's; spose it kum from one o' the orficers," he added
parenthetically, giving the queer headpiece a proprietary pat with his
free hand. "Now 'ere's wot I sing tu 'em. Made it up mysel', too."
With a quick double-shuffle he began footing it up and down the
junk-cluttered deck of the "bonatorium," singing in a voice which cut
the air like the whine of the wind through the radio aerials.
"'Eave out all yer dead an' dyin',
'Eave out all yer bones an' fat,
'Eave out the stiff o' 'Littl' Willie,'
An' I'll give yu my 'at."
"Course I don't reely give 'em the 'at, sir," explained the singer,
stopping for a moment in his march. "Th' 'at's only bait. But, jest
th' same, they 'eaves out the bones an' fat all right. Last night they
'eaved a bone jest back o' me ear. Safest way's fer four o' us tu form a
holler square an' so pertect the flanks, so tu speak. Nother thing. Yu
'eard me sing ''Eave out "Littl' Willie"' jest now? Wull, most times I
sings it ''Eave out th' Kaisur's dotter,' meanin' Queen Sophy o' Greece,
cose she's a rum un fer fair. But knowin' that in th' wardroom it warn't
th' custim tu menshun a lydy's nyme in publick like, I brings in Willie
insted."
"But why celebrate the young Hohenzollern in song at all?" I asked in
perplexity. "I don't quite trace the connexion between the 'dead and
dying,' and 'bones and fat' and the--the earthly remains of 'Little
Willie.'"
"I ain't celebratin' 'em," explained "Joe"; "I'm abominatin' 'em, so tu
speak. My refrunce is tu the dead an' dyin' sojers th' Kaisur cooks up
tu make glysreen frum. I brings in Sophy an' Willie jest tu make 'em
feel how they'd like it if 'twas their turn next."
Having cleared up this point, "Joe" began to shuffle again. "Nother
thing I sing 'em is th' follerin'," he said.
"'Eave out all yure bones, bottles, tins, fats, boots and shoes,
If yu don't 'eave out you'll be sure to lose--
Cose then I'll pinch th' 'ull blinkin' lot mesel'!"
"An' tyke it frum me, I does pinch 'em too," he added, stopping in front
of me again. "Likewise, any other reefoose--like ov'ralls an' such
left lyin' roun' wher' it 'adn't ought tu be. Sum times they gets 'em
back, an' sum times they duzen't. Serves 'em jolly well rite for bein'
keerless."
At this juncture I began to search my pockets for a piece of paper upon
which to jot down the burden of "Joe's" cries.
"Never mind, sir," he said cheerily as my hands came up empty, "ther's
allus whatev'r yure needin' in th' stayshunary line in my wastepaper
dupartment."
He threw back the cover of a huge box, and at almost the first grab
brought up a scented sheet of pink note paper which--except where some
one had written "Dear Kitty--Just a line to tell you I am in the pink
and hoping----" followed by a blot, and a grease-spot in the middle--was
just as good as new.
"This dupartment is both my joy an' my sorrer," said "Joe" pensively,
digging his arm deep into the soft depths. "I salves the story o'
'Arseen Lupin' an' a Gieves joolry catalog--both compleet--this mornin',
an' I've laid by some 'Merican papers (Pittsburg, I b'leeve) fer yu,
sir. But th' tantylysin thing about it is what's allus missin'. Jest
look at this, fer instance, sir," and he fished a greasy fragment of
paper from a pocket of his overall and handed it to me. In a highly
appropriate "atmosphere"--with the scent of fat to starboard, the
fragrance of bones to port, and the ineffable odours of the "crumbs"
grudgingly allotted to the "X. Y. Z.'s" piggery rising from the depths
of the tub on the rim of which I sat--I read the following, just this
and no word more:--
A SWEET SMELLING SAVOUR
I
Some rave about the subtle scents of Araby and Ind,
Of camphor and of ambergris, of sandal-wood and musk,
The poet chants the praises of the violet and the rose,
And stately lilies standing by the dew-drenched lawn at dusk.
II
My lady loves the lavender with, slender ...
The lover loves whatever perfume ...
The cow-slips simple fragrance ...
The pine-wood's spicy ...
III
But, far beyond all ...
The smell of ...
* * * * *
"It fair to druv me crazy huntin' fer that missin' peece," said "Joe"
with a hurt sort of "'twas-ever-thus" expression in his eyes; "an' I
felt it espeshul, sir, becus I writes po'try and songs a bit mysel'.
'E was jest workin' up tu a climacks, an' I'm wonderin' all th' time
what it wuz that smelt better'n 'ambygris' an' musk an' roses an' lilies
an' all the rest. D'yu spose, sir, it cud a bin that stuff they put in
brilyantin?" and he ran stubby fingers through his hair in an apparent
endeavour to waft me a whiff of the odour which had been there the
Sunday before the last coaling.
A frivolous impulse prompted me to bid him ask the "X. Y. Z.'s" pigs,
but the look in his eyes sobered me, and I said I felt sure it must have
been "Attar of Roses," as that was said to be the most expensive of all
perfumes.
"Joe" returned the fragment to his pocket, a brooding shadow sitting on
his brow. "Ther' wuz only one thing ever fussed me more'n not locatin'
th' end o' that pome, sir," he said sadly, beginning to fumble anew,
"and that wuz this."
The greasy fragment which he unfolded and handed to me barely hung
together at the blackened creases, but--well, no one who has ever
watched wardroom firelight throw its rosy glow over the pinky pages of
_La Vie Parisienne_ will ever fail to recognise the flimsiest wisp of it
blowing before a winter gale.
"That's th' wrong side, sir," said "Joe," as I took the sheet tenderly
and began to puzzle my way through a chart which was averred to be some
sort of barometer of the emotions. "Scuse me, sir, but this is th' way.
No, not like that. You've got 'er upside down. Ther', _that's_ 'er, or
ruther wot's left o' 'er. Now wot d'yu think o' that fer tough luck?"
It had been just the usual _La Vie_ picture, nothing more or nothing
less. A frou-frou of _lingerie_, a flash or two of pink cuticle,
and--the rest was torn away.
"Wot makes it 'arder tu bear," said "Joe" mournfully, "is th' fack that
it ain't offen that th' orficers let th' pictur' pages drift this far
forrard th' wardroom. I 'ad picked up th' 'parly-voo' pages offen enuf,
but a pictur', nary a one. An' now w'en this one comes, it's ripped
off jest when it 'gins tu get good. Spose sum orficer, tryin' tu save
matches, used th' best o' 'er tu lite 'is pipe wi."
I think that I did quite the kindest thing possible under the
circumstances when I patted "Joe" sympathetically on the shoulder and
assured him that, so far as my not inconsiderable experience with _La
Vie_ pictures went, there was nothing to indicate that this one "got any
better" on the missing fragment, and that I felt quite confident that
"th' best o' 'er" had _not_ gone to light an "orficer's pipe."
Apparently a good deal cheered, "Joe" returned lightsomely to "shop,"
and told me with much gusto of a great find he had had that morning in
the shape of an "'arf pound o' solid beef" hidden away in the angle of a
bone. His first impulse, he said, had been to report the careless cook
to the Fleet Paymaster, but on second thought he had decided to say
nothing and contribute the morsel as "extra ration" to his mess.
"That way," he said philosophically, "I'll stop th' waste jest the
same, an' yet won't start a ructshun wi' one o' me colleegs that mite
throw me collectin' macheenry out o' order. Nuthin' like cuttin' down
fricshun in this 'ere econ'my game."
There is a "Boney Joe" on every ship of the British Navy to-day. Could
we not do with a few more of him in civil life as the time draws near
when the hope of victory rests more and more on personal economy and
universal saving?
CHRISTMAS IN A "HAPPY" SHIP
There was a hint of Christmas in the long stacks of parcels mail on the
station platform and the motley array of packages in the hands of the
waiting sailors, but for the rest there was nothing to differentiate the
"Fleetward"-bound train from the same train as one might have seen it
on any other day of the year. There is only a certain small irreducible
minimum of men which can be spared from a fighting ship which at any
time is liable to be sent into action, and the season sacred to the
Prince of Peace is no exception.
To the average land-lubber nothing could appear nearer to the height
of misfortune than the lot of the sailor who has to leave a nice,
warm, comfortable hearthside in the south of England and return to his
unceasing vigil in the storm-tossed northern seas at the one time of
year set apart above all others for the family and the home, and I did
my best to introduce a note of sympathy into my voice when I tried to
condole with the ruddy-faced man-o'-war's man who had kindly volunteered
to help me find my compartment.
"'Ard to be goin' back abord on Crismus Day, you think, sir?" he asked
with a grin. "P'haps it is jest a bit 'ard to leave the missus jest now,
but--ther' ain't no qu'ues in Scarpa Flow, and I've got a jolly good lot
o' mates waitin' fer me in the ol' ----. She's a happy ship if ther'
ever wuz un, an' Crismus at sea ain't 'arf so bad as you mite think,
sir."
That there were several hundred similar-minded philosophers travelling
by that train became evident at a point where they met and mingled for a
space with some of the "lucky" ones who were gathering there to go home
on a leave which had providentially coincided with the holiday season.
Scan as closely as I would the men in the long blue lines, there was
nothing to distinguish the "returning from" to the "going on" save the
fact that the former were bulging with Christmas parcels.
Nor was there about any of the officers I met in the course of my
northward journey any suggestion of an air of martyrdom on account of
the fact that it was their lot to spend Christmas afloat instead of
ashore. One of them was going to join a Destroyer Flotilla leader,
and was too busy congratulating himself on the fact that he was to be
second to a commander who had the reputation of having a "nose for
trouble," and the faculty of always being "among those present" when
anything of interest occurred in the North Sea to have time to lament
the fact that he was missing--this time by only a couple of days--his
eighth consecutive Christmas with his family. Another had equally high
hopes of the life of adventure which awaited him in the light cruiser
he had been appointed to, and a third entertained me for an hour with
yarns of wardroom pranks on a battleship to which he was returning after
a special course in gunnery at a south-coast port. It was the latter
who used the identical expression in describing his ship as had been
employed by the sailor I have quoted above.
"She's a happy ship, is the old ----," he said with an affectionate
smile, "and it's glad I am to be getting back to her again."
The only man I met on the whole journey who seemed in the least sorry
for himself was a King's Messenger--he was carrying a turkey under one
arm and a dispatch box under the other--who complained that his schedule
would not take him back to London until Christmas afternoon.
In the battleship to which I reported about the only evidence of
Yule-tide observable on my arrival was the huge accumulation of
"homebound" letters which the wardroom officers were engaged in
censoring. The day before Christmas was distinctly "routine," with just
a suggestion of festivity beginning to become manifest towards evening.
The loungers by the wardroom fire smoked, chatted, and read the paper
for an hour after dinner was over, but showed no disposition to melt
away to bed as in the usual order of things. About ten o'clock a violin,
banjo, and a one-stringed fiddle with a brass horn attached made their
appearance, and upon these never entirely harmonising instruments their
owners began inconsequentially to strum and scrape. As fragments of
familiar airs became faintly recognisable, the loungers began to lay
aside papers and cigars and to join in the choruses in that half-furtive
manner so characteristic of the Briton in his first fore-running essays
at "close harmony." Until he is assured of the vocal support of his
neighbour, there is no sound in the world--from the roar of the lion to
the roar of the cannon--which the average Englishman dreads so much as
that of his own voice raised in song.
Volume increased with confidence, and it was not many minutes before the
choruses were booming at full blast. For a while it was the more popular
numbers from the late London revues which had the call, but these soon
gave way to ragtime, and that in turn to those old familiar songs which
have warmed the hearts and bound closer the ties of comradeship of the
good fellows of the Anglo-Saxon world since ships first began to set
sail from the shores of England to people the ends of the earth. From
"Clementine" and "Who Killed Cock Robin?" to "Swanee River," and "My
Old Kentucky Home," there was not a song that I had not heard--and
even boomed raucously away in the choruses of myself--a hundred times
in all parts of America. Every one of them is in the old "College Song
Book," not a one of them, but which every man of the millions America is
training for the Great Fight could have joined in without faking a word
or a note.
A slight shifting of the gilt braid on the blue sleeves, a reshuffling
of the papers and magazines on the table, and the wardroom of the ----
might have passed for that of any American battleship. The interposing
of four poster and pennant peppered walls, the placing of the lounging
figures in proper mufti, and you would have had a room in an American
college "frat house" or club. The men, the songs, the vibrant spirit of
good fellowship would have done for either of the settings.
Poignantly suggestive of the things of bygone college days was the
change which came over the spirit of the scene when an exuberant young
sub-lieutenant began doing stunts by trying to climb round a service
chair without touching the deck. His inevitable fall upset the tilted
chair of a visiting "snotty," who was playing his mandolin, and an
instant later the two were rolling in a close embrace. Suddenly some
one shouted "scrum!" and with an impetuous rush the singers ranged
themselves into two rival "Rugger" teams, each trying to push the other
against the wall.
Twitching at the stir of long dormant impulses, I restrained myself with
an effort from mixing in the joyous mêlée, and maintained my dignity as
a newly arrived visitor by backing into a corner and erecting a sofa
barricade against the swirling human tide.
"Shades of Stanford and old Encina Hall" (I found myself gasping),
"it's a 'rough-house,' a real college 'rough-house.'"
While it lasted that "scrum" had all the fierce abandon of a
Freshman-Sophomore "cane rush," but even at its very climax (when it had
upset the electric heater and was threatening to engulf the coal stove)
there was a differentiation. One sensed rather than saw the thread of
control restraining it, and knew that every pushing, laughing player
of the game was subconsciously alert for a signal that would send him,
tense and ready, to the performance of those complexly simple duties
training for which he had given the best part of his life.
"Rugger" gave place to "chair polo," and that highly diverting sport in
turn to comparatively "formal" bouts of wrestling and feats of strength
and agility. It was while a row of shirt-sleeved figures were at the
height of a "bat" competition (which consisted of seeing which one could
hang the longest by his toes from a steel beam of the ceiling) that the
Fleet Surgeon edged gingerly in behind my barrier and remarked that
it was "funny to think how that up-ended line of young fighting cocks
might be tumbling from their roost to go to action stations at the next
tick of the clock. And they'd fight just like they play," he went on,
fingering a sprained wrist that was proffered for diagnosis. "We've not
a single case of any kind in the hospital to-day, and the men are just
as healthy in mind as they are in body. It's half the battle, let me
tell you, to live in a happy ship."
Christmas morning broke cold and clear, with a roystering wind from the
north furrowing the Flow with translucent ridges of white-capped jade
and chrysoprase. All but the imperative routine duties of the ship were
suspended, and the men spent many hours decorating the mess deck for
their midday feast. When all was ready the band, its various members
masquerading as everything from Red Cross nurses and ballet girls to
German naval prisoners and American cowboys, came to lead the Captain
and wardroom officers on their ceremonial Christmas visiting round.
From mess to mess we marched, the capering band leading the way and a
policeman with a "sausage" club shepherding the stragglers at the rear.
Every table was loaded not only with its Christmas dinner, but also
with all the gifts received by those who sat there, as well as with
any trinkets or souvenirs they had picked up in the course of their
foreign cruises. Especially and intentionally conspicuous were numerous
home photographs, stuck up in or propped against the cakes and boxes
of sweets. Most of the tables had "Merry Christmas" and various other
seasonal mottoes printed with letters ingeniously built from cigarettes.
A running fire of greeting met us at every turn, and at each table
cigarettes, sweets, or chunks of succulent plum pudding were pressed
upon us. Acceptance for the most part was on the ancient "touch and
remit" system. I noticed that the officers spoke to most of the men
directly under them by name, and that the exchange of greetings was
invariably of unfeigned cordiality on both sides. The tour completed,
the band escorted us aft, where, with a hearty three cheers and a
"tiger" for the Captain and Commander severally, and the wardroom
officers jointly, it left us and rollicked back to serenade the feasters
forward.
Christmas chapel was a simple Church of England service without a
sermon, followed by Holy Communion for those who desired to celebrate
it. Luncheon, in order that the wardroom servants could be free for
feasting with their mates, was on the buffet plan, each officer serving
himself from a side table.
Two or three of the men with whom I had spoken in the course of the
morning round, had used that now familiar expression about the good
fortune of being in a "happy" ship, but the climax was capped that
evening at dinner (at which the wardroom entertained the Warrant
Officers) when the Captain employed it in explaining the easy _bonne
camaraderie_ characterising that interesting occasion. I had told him
how many times I had heard the words in question since my arrival, and
asked him point blank if I was to assume by implication that the other
ships of the Fleet were only dismal prisons of steel in comparison.
"Perhaps the men would try to make you believe something to that
effect," he laughed, "but so also would those of the '----,' and the
'----,' and the '----' regarding each other, the rest of the squadron
and the whole of the Grand Fleet. As a matter of fact, if you had been
on any one of them during the last twenty-four hours, you would probably
have seen and heard and experienced just about what you have seen and
heard and experienced here. You will not go far wrong if you say we
are all 'Happy Ships' up here. The 'Happy Ship' is a tradition of the
British Navy, and it's the one type of craft which does not become out
of date with the march of science and the passage of the years."
IN A BALLOON SHIP
I had crossed in the old _Xerxes_ in those ancient days when, as the
latest launched greyhound of the Cunarder fleet, she held for a few
precarious months the constantly shifting blue-ribbon for the swiftest
transatlantic passage; but in that angular "cubistic" lump of lead-grey
looming over the bow of my spray-smothered launch to blot out the
undulant skyline of the nearest Orkney, there was not one familiar
feature. Her forward funnel had been "kippered" down the middle to
somewhere about on the level of the lower deck, and carried up in two
smaller stacks which rose abreast to port and starboard. This had
been done (as I learned later) to make room for a platform leading
forward from the waist over which seaplanes could be wheeled to the
launching-stage, which ran out over the bow from beneath the bridge. The
break in the forecastle had been closed in connexion with a sweeping
alteration which had converted the whole forward end of the main deck
into a roomy seaplane "repository" and repair shop.
The changes aft were no less startling. The old poop seemed to have
been razed to extend the last two hundred feet of the main deck, and
over the ten or fifteen-feet-high railing, which surrounded this, the
top of a partly inflated observation balloon showed like the back of a
half-submerged turtle. The whole effect was weird and "impossible" in
the extreme, and I felt like exclaiming with the yokel who saw a giraffe
for the first time: "Aw, there ain't no such animal."
I had been asked aboard the _Xerxes_ for an afternoon of seaplane
and balloon practice. I had already seen a good deal of the former
at various points in the Mediterranean and Adriatic, but the towed
observation balloon--the "kite," as they call it--was an entirely new
thing. I "put in" at once for an ascent in a kite, for I was anxious not
only to get some sort of a firsthand idea of how it was being employed
against submarines--of which I had already heard not a little--and also
to compare the work with that of handling the ordinary observation
balloons, of which I had seen so much in France, Italy, and the Balkans.
The captain--whom I found just getting the ship under weigh from the
bridge--after some hesitation, promised to "see what he could do," if
there was not too much wind, when he was ready for "balloon work."
To one who has had experience only of hangars on land, perhaps the most
impressive thing about an "aeroship" is the amount of gear and equipment
which can be stowed and handled in restricted spaces. Wings and rudders
which fold and refold upon each other until they form compact bundles
that can be trundled about by a man or two, collapsible fuselages
and pontoons, wheels which detach at a touch of a lever, "knock-down"
transmissions--these things were everywhere the rule. One "baby" scout I
saw almost completely assembled on the launching-stage, and the "tail,"
which a couple of men wired to the main body in a little more than
a minute, I would have sworn I could have knocked off with a single
well-placed kick. Yet, five minutes later, I saw that same machine
"loop," "side-flop," "double-bank," and (quite at the will of its young
pilot, who is rated the most expert seaplane man in the British Naval
Air Service) recover at the end of a five-hundred-feet rolling fall,
all without apparently starting a strut or rivet. "Collapsibility" and
portability are evidently secured without sacrificing any essential
strength.
The science of working the seaplane from the deck of a ship is still in
process of development. Even up to quite recently it was the practice
to put a machine overboard on a sling, and allow it to start from the
water. The use of detachable wheels--which fall off into the sea after
they have served their purpose in giving the preliminary run--has
made launching from the deck practicable and comparatively safe, but
the problem of landing even a wheeled machine on deck has not yet
been satisfactorily solved. On account of lack of room, most of the
experiments in this direction have ended disastrously, even tragically.