AT AULDHAIG ONCE MORE
"BY Jove, Doris!" he exclaimed. "You here? I say, am I not in a
horrible mess?"
"It might have been worse," replied the girl admiringly. "I saw you
go, and--and--I thought--oh, I never expected to see you again."
"You never know your luck," said Tressidar. He could think of nothing
else to say. The girl's concern on his behalf was more than
sufficient compensation for the horrors of that five minutes facing
death.
Someone handed him a glass of water. He drank the liquid with avidity
and felt the better for it.
"I thought you were on leave, Doris," he remarked. "And you, too, are
in a pretty pickle. You weren't hurt?"
The girl's face was grimed with smoke, her uniform soiled with fire
and water. On the back of her left hand a rapidly rising white weal
was visible.
"No," she replied, "I was on duty. I'm glad I was, although I felt
horribly frightened when the shells began to drop. My hand? That is
nothing; only a little burn. But I must go. Over there, there are
others badly injured."
Left to himself, Tressidar began to realise that he had not come off
lightly. Numerous burns, of which in the struggle for existence he
had been ignorant, began to assert themselves in a very forcible
manner. He stood up and promptly sat down again. The movement racked
every limb. His muscles worked like badly oiled machinery. His head
was throbbing painfully.
An alert sick-bay man who had been discreetly keeping an eye upon the
young officer hurried up.
"Allow me, sir," he said. "I'll get you to bed. They're preparing
temporary quarters over yonder," and he pointed in the direction of
the rear-admiral's house.
Tressidar submitted without protest. He knew that for the time being
he was helpless. Unless he were to miss his ship on the following
Thursday, prompt treatment and absolute rest were essential.
Supported by the hospital man, the sub. walked slowly up the hill in
the wake of a long procession of cots and stretchers, each bearing a
scorched and badly injured patient.
His burns attended to, Tressidar was placed in a bed and given a
draught. After that he slept soundly until the following morning,
when he awoke to find himself in a temporary ward with four other
officers as fellow-patients.
"Thursday?" repeated the fleet surgeon in answer to Tressidar's
anxious question. "We'll see. Can't commit myself on that point, you
know. A lot depends upon yourself. No, nothing serious. Slight shock
to the system, you know. Rest and plenty of food essential."
The whole of that day the sub. saw nothing of Doris. At first he
feared that the girl's injuries were more serious than she believed,
until enquiries of one of the nurses elicited the information that
"Sister Greenwood" was well and was on day duty in another ward.
Meanwhile, news was coming in fast of the progress of the German
naval movements. The cruiser that had bombarded Auldhaig, fortunately
without so very serious results, had been intercepted in its flight
towards the Norwegian coast by a strong squadron of British armoured
cruisers. In the burning fight which ensued, the "Heracles" with
two consorts had succeeded in heading off two German vessels, and for
the time being the two latter were fugitives in the North Atlantic.
For the present they had eluded pursuit but a cordon was being drawn
round the isolated hostile ships. On both sides of the Atlantic
British warships were lying in wait. Retreat both to Germany and to
neutral ports was cut off. Capture or destruction seemed inevitable.
Better still, the attempted raid upon the east coast of England ended
in a fiasco. Warned by wireless, the British battle-cruisers issued
forth from their bases--not in pursuit of the Auldhaig raiders, as
the Germans fondly hoped, but across the North Sea to meet the main
hostile warships.
Greatly to the disappointment and disgust of the British tars, the
Germans declined battle, and, turning, made off at full speed for the
shelter of the guns and minefields of Heligoland.
Early on the second morning of Tressidar's enforced detention in the
temporary sick-quarters the sub. was taken into the grounds for an
airing. Lying comfortably in a wheeled chair, he was deep in the
contents of a newspaper when a bandaged man in hospital clothes and
accompanied by a nursing sister and an orderly was wheeled in his
direction.
The sister was Doris Greenwood, but the sub. had not the faintest
idea of the identity of the patient.
"This man wishes to speak to you, Mr. Tressidar," said Doris
demurely.
"You don't remember me, sir?" began the invalid.
"No, I can't say that I do," replied the sub. To tell the truth, he
wished both the man and the orderly to Jericho, until he realised
that it was solely in an official capacity that Doris was present.
"You pulled me out of that hole the night before last, sir," said the
patient, indicating the ruins of the hospital buildings, of which the
crumpled masonry and fragments of shattered walls were visible from
the grounds. "I'm no hand at a speech, sir, but I want to thank you."
"That's nothing so far as I was concerned," replied Tressidar
modestly. He hated a fuss being made merely for doing a plucky
action. "You're getting along all right?"
"Middling, sir. By gum!" he exclaimed with intense fervour, "it was
touch and go with me."
After a few minutes' conversation Doris gave the word for the orderly
to remove the patient, and greatly to the sub.'s disappointment she
did not linger.
Doris, however, made amends during the afternoon by spending an hour
with him. They talked of many things. Amongst other questions,
Tressidar enquired after Mr. Greenwood.
"The pater's simply as skittish as a foal," replied the girl,
laughing. "Since his adventure in the cave he's as keen as anything
for duty. He's joined the National Guard, and is doing duty at a
large reservoir near Plymouth. I wish, for some reasons, I were in
Devonshire now," she added wistfully. "Just fancy, it's mid-April and
there are hardly any signs of spring in the north. I'm longing for
another sight of the red earth and bright green foliage of home
There's no place like Devonshire."
"Unless it's Cornwall," rejoined Tressidar, loyal to the county of
his birth.
"Practically the same," agreed Doris. "It's all the West Country.
Next month, I hope, I'll be able to have a few days there--unless
there's a big action out yonder--somewhere in the North Sea, you
know."
"I hope there will be," remarked the sub. "Of course it will be a
terribly costly affair when it does come off, for the Huns will fight
like wild cats rather than let their ships be scuttled in Kiel
Harbour. But it will be the climax--an end to months and months of
tedious waiting and watching."
He, too, wished for a sight of home--home in the strictest sense.
Away from Great Britain, the traveller broadly regards the whole of
the United Kingdom as "home"; within its limits he will speak of his
own county as "home;" narrowed down, "home" resolves itself, perhaps,
into a small house with or without a patch of ground attached.
And now, after nearly two years of war, Britons the wide world over
were beginning to realise that home in the broadest and the narrowest
sense was in danger. Until Prussian militarism was crushed once and
for all time, the freehold of the humblest cottage in Great Britain
would not be worth twelve months' purchase.
"You've heard the news of Falkenheim's escape?" asked the girl.
Tressidar had not. The latest he had heard of the German officer who
had got clear of the internment camp and had eventually been run to
earth in the petrol-depôt, was that he had been sentenced by a
General Court-martial to six months' imprisonment.
"He was serving his sentence in Saltport Gaol," explained Doris. "A
fortnight ago a portion of the outside wall of the prison was blown
in by a charge of gun-cotton. Falkenheim's friends evidently knew
exactly in which part of the building he was placed, for in the
confusion he was liberated from his cell. Since then all traces of
him have vanished. There was a bit of a stir in the papers, but it
has quieted down now. I heard Captain Garboard say that the German
was a particularly daring submarine officer, and that if he got back
to Germany there would be considerable trouble in store for us.
People seem to deprecate the spy business, but it shows how active
these German agents are."
"It does," agreed Tressidar wholeheartedly, but he was thinking of
one spy in particular--the author of the "Pompey" tragedy, Otto
Oberfurst.
As a side issue he was wondering whether, by a slice of luck, he
might manage to get a few days' leave at the same time as Doris went
south. Duty, naturally, came first, but when the West Country
beckons, its call cannot lightly be set aside.
Tressidar made rapid progress from his injuries. His indomitable
spirit, coupled with a clean, hard-living condition, worked wonders,
and by the Thursday morning the fleet surgeon declared him fit for
duty.
At noon the "Heracles" entered the harbour and moored in mid-stream.
Her smoke-blackened aftermast, blistered and salt-rimmed funnels bore
tokens of hard steaming, while several temporarily patched holes in
her lofty sides and superstructure showed that German gunnery had
taken a toll.
Her orders were brief and hinted at more serious work: she was to
land hospital cases, ship ammunition and victualling stores, fill
bunkers and replenish oil-fuel, and proceed to Rendezvous K-- with
the utmost dispatch.
Tressidar's reappearance on board was the subject of considerable
surprise, for his messmates were under the erroneous impression that
he was still a prisoner of war They had heard that the cutter had
been picked up, and that the sub. and the boat's crew had been
forcibly removed from the Norwegian tramp in the Kattegat and taken
to a German port. Beyond that they were totally unaware of what had
befallen the sub. until he turned up, like the proverbial bad
halfpenny, upon the quarter-deck of H.M.S. "Heracles."
Assistant Paymaster Greenwood, with his right hand swathed in
surgical bandages and his arm in a sling, was one of the first to
greet his friend warmly.
"Oh, I've had a great time," he replied in answer to the sub.'s
enquiry as to how he sustained his injuries. "In the fire-control
platform, you know. Tried to stop a bit of strafed shell. It was
luck. I'm off duty in the ship's office for a week at least, and this
won't prevent me going aloft when the next scrap takes place."
Eric Greenwood was too modest to relate full details. Tressidar
afterwards learnt that the assistant paymaster was assisting a
wounded seaman from the fire-control platform to the shrouds when a
flying fragment of metal inflicted a nasty gash on the index finger
and thumb of the right hand. In spite of the pain, he saw the man
safely on deck and returned to his lofty perch. It was not until he
was on the point of collapse through loss of blood that the
lieutenant noticed his plight and ordered him below.
Night and day the ship's company toiled in order to get the cruiser
ready for sea. Eagerly officers and crew awaited the wireless news,
hoping for their country's sake that the fugitive German vessels had
been captured or destroyed, and for their own that they were still
afloat, so that the "Heracles" might have a hand in settling up
business. In thirty-six hours the cruiser was ready to proceed, and
with the first blush of dawn she slipped quietly out of harbour bound
for Rendezvous K-- the exact position of which was a jealously
guarded secret, known only to the captain and senior navigating
officers.