To travel hopefully, said Robert Louis Stevenson, is better than to arrive; and therein he summed up the whole attitude of the Anglo-Saxon race towards human endeavour. It is our custom to honour the achievement less than the spirit, in the wistful hope, perhaps, that thus may we, too, be judged in our turn at the last. This is a record of failure, if the venture is to be judged by its material result. Yet the lesson it will carry to succeeding generations is concerned with neither success nor failure, but with those shining heights of the Spirit (attainable by every mother's son) where no fear is.
The King's ship to which this story relates was a steamer of some 3,000 tons, to outward appearances an armed merchantman with a light gun mounted on her poop. To make plain what happened on board it is necessary, however, that the uninitiated should be admitted into certain secrets of her construction. A wooden structure on the poop, common to merchantmen of her type, concealed a gun of effective calibre behind collapsible covers. Beneath this gun position, and occupying much of the space below the poop, were the magazine and shell rooms. Four depth-charges were fitted at her stern; any one of these dropped over the position of a submerged submarine was calculated on detonating to do all that was necessary. In addition, a smaller gun was mounted on the forecastle on a disappearing mounting, while hen-coops and deck fittings concealed similar armament at other points of vantage. To complete her offensive capabilities, she carried a masked torpedo tube on either beam.
This, then, was the true character of the ship which a German submarine sighted on the horizon at eleven o'clock one morning. She noted the small gun displayed defensively aft, and started in pursuit, firing as she went. The submarine was sighted directly she rose to the surface, whereupon the Captain of the man-of-war ordered the after gun to be manned and the remainder of the crew to take shell cover, tactics which differed in no respect from those customary to merchantmen under the circumstances. On the other hand, speed was imperceptibly decreased, and the crew of the light gun at the stern directed to shoot short in order to encourage the adversary to draw closer. It says much for the discipline on board that men thus prominently exposed to the fire of the pursuing enemy could deliberately continue to reply to it in the consciousness that their shots were not required to hit. German submarine commanders at this phase of the war were growing notoriously "nervy"; hysterical appeals for help were therefore sent out by wireless, in the hope that the enemy would intercept them and gain confidence.
The heavy sea gradually rendered it impossible for the submarine to maintain the pursuit and man her gun. She therefore abandoned the bombardment and came on at full speed, until after a chase of about an hour she turned broadside on and again opened fire. Shots were then falling close, and at 12.40 the steamer stopped, as great clouds of steam emerging from the engine-room showed she was disabled, and the "panic party" proceeded to abandon ship. To lend colour to the general atmosphere of demoralisation and confusion, one of the boats was purposely dropped by a single fall, and remained hanging from the davit in a vertical position. In the meantime the enemy had closed nearer and continued methodically shelling the ship. A shell struck the poop, exploding one of the depth-charges and blowing the officer in charge of the after concealed gun out of his control position; on recovering consciousness, however, he crawled inside the gun hatch, where his crew of seven men were hidden. The seaman superintending the depth-charges was badly wounded by this explosion and lay motionless. Seeing his condition, the hidden crew of the after gun attempted to drag him within their place of concealment, but the injured man stubbornly refused to be moved. "I was put here in charge of these things," he replied, indicating the remaining depth-charges, "and here I stop." And stop he did until subsequent events proved stronger than even his indomitable spirit. Two more shells burst inside the poop in quick succession, and a few moments later dense clouds of smoke and flames disclosed the disquieting fact that the after part of the ship was heavily on fire.
From his customary place at the end of the bridge, peering through slits in his armoured coign of observation, the Captain watched the submarine turn and come slowly past the ship 400 yards away. The next moment, as he was about to open fire on an easy target, the wind caught the smoke from the conflagration aft and blew it like a curtain across his vision. The Captain was confronted with two alternatives. One was to open fire there and then on a partially obscured target, or wait until the submarine should round the stern and come past the weather side, where the smoke did not interfere with the accuracy of the shooting. At the same time he was conscious that the fire raging aft must very soon engulf the magazine. It could only be a matter of moments before the magazine blew up, and with it the masked gun and its crew.
Nothing but utter confidence in the devotion of that gun's crew, the conviction that even in the direst extremity they would remain concealed and motionless, enabled the Captain to choose the second of these alternatives. Yet he chose it, determined at all costs to make sure of his quarry, and waited; and while he waited the deck on which this gun's crew were crouched grew slowly red-hot, so that they were compelled to cling to the mounting of the gun and to hold the cartridges in their arms. Their ordeal ended as the submarine was rounding the stern. The magazine and two more depth-charges blew up with a deafening roar, hurling gun, gun's crew, fragments of wreckage, and unexploded shells high in the air. One member of the crew fell into the water, where he was picked up by the "panic party"; the remainder, including the depth-charge keeper, landed in the well-deck, with the gun.
The concussion of the explosion had, however, started the electrically controlled fire-gongs at the remaining gun positions. Thereupon the White Ensign fluttered automatically up to the masthead, and one gun—the only one that would bear—opened an unavailing fire on the enemy, who had begun to dive immediately the explosion had taken place. The ruse had failed, and every man on board realised on the instant that what must follow was to be the supreme test. The wounded were removed out of sight with all speed, hoses were turned on to the burning part of the ship, and wireless signals sent out warning all men-of-war to divert traffic for a radius of 30 miles, that nothing should interrupt the last phase of this savage duel a entrance.
To borrow a phrase from sporting parlance, they ensured that the ring was kept, but in so doing they deprived themselves of any hope of succour from the savagery of the enemy, should the ship sink and leave them at the submarine's mercy. In this comfortable reflection, therefore, they settled down and awaited the inevitable torpedo.
It must be remembered that the ship was now openly a man-of-war, flying the White Ensign, with guns unmasked. At 1.20 P.M., two hours and twenty minutes after first sighting the submarine, a torpedo struck the ship abreast the engine-room, hurling blazing wreckage and water in all directions. With far-seeing thoroughness of organisation this moment had been anticipated sooner or later for months past. Accordingly, at the order of "Abandon ship," the men previously detailed launched the remaining boat and a raft, and paddled clear of the doomed vessel. The Captain and crews of two guns and both torpedo tubes, the Navigator, Assistant Paymaster, and Quartermaster remained on board. For the ensuing eighty minutes, while the fire in the poop continued to blaze furiously, and the ammunition in the vicinity detonated like a succession of gigantic Chinese crackers, the periscope circled suspiciously round the ship and boats. At 2.30 the submarine rose to the surface in a position on which none of the guns on board would bear, and began once more shelling the ship and boats with vindictive fury.
For twenty minutes the remnant on board endured this ordeal, lying face downwards and motionless on the splintered planking. It is recorded that during the hottest of the fire one of the foremost gun's crew requested, in a hoarse whisper, to be allowed to take his boots off. The officer in his vicinity inquired the reason for this strange request, to which the man replied that he didn't think he had much longer to live, and, on the whole, thought he'd prefer not to die with his boots on. He subsequently explained that he came of a respectable family.
By means of the voice-pipe connecting him with the guns' control, the Captain cheered and encouraged his men through that long agony. Small wonder they loved an officer who exhorted them in such a pass to "keep merry and bright"; who quoted Bairnsfather to the boyish officer in the control when shells were bursting all about his head ("If you know of a better 'ole, go to it!"); who, when the wounded Navigator, blinded with blood at the opposite end of the bridge, called that he was done, replied: "You're all right! Hang on, 'cos we've got him cold!" and found time to steady the guns' crews with, "Remember the V.C. The King has given the ship, lads."
At 2.50 P.M. the submarine abruptly ceased shelling and submerged. Then, with only a periscope showing, he steamed once more past the ship. As he came abeam under-water, the British Captain played one of his few remaining trump cards, and discharged a torpedo; it missed by inches, and passed unnoticed. Going very slowly, the enemy then crossed the bow and came down the starboard side. One last desperate chance remained, and the second torpedo was fired. In an agony of suspense they watched the trail of bubbles flicker towards the periscope, held their breath for the explosion, and saw the tell-tale wake pass a foot astern of the periscope. They had shot their bolt, and the game was up. A wireless signal was immediately sent out for urgent assistance, as the wary enemy had sighted the last torpedo and promptly dived. The ship was sinking fast, and to wait for another torpedo or further shelling would have meant the useless sacrifice of life. A United States destroyer, an armed yacht, and two British destroyers that had been hovering below the horizon, rushed up at full speed and took charge of the wounded. The ship sank thirty-four hours later, with her colours flying, after strenuous endeavours had been made to save her.
Despite the almost incredible gruelling the crew had undergone, all survived the action. The officer in charge of the after-gun received the Victoria Cross, and one of the gun's crew was selected by ballot for a similar honour. The remainder, including the hand told off for the depth-charges, who has since succumbed to his wounds, were awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Medal.
Much of the tale remains untold, but it is best brought to an all too brief conclusion in the words of the official report written by the officer, who, as his head and shoulders appeared above the bridge screen at the conclusion of the action, brought forth the following ecstatic shout from one of the "panic party": "Blimey! there's the Skipper still alive! Gawd, wouldn't them perishin' 'Uns give ninepence an inch for 'im!" This officer's report concludes as follows:
It is hardly necessary for me again to refer to the behaviour of my crew—the tactics I carried out were only possible through the utmost confidence I had in my ship and my crew. I would especially bring to your notice the extreme bravery of Lieutenant Bonner, R.N.R., the officer in charge, and the 4-in. gun's crew. Lieutenant Bonner, having been blown out of his control by the first explosion, crawled into the gun hatch with the crew. They there remained at their posts with a fire raging in the poop below and the deck getting red hot. One man tore up his shirt to give pieces to the gun's crew to stop the fumes getting into their throats, others lifted the boxes of cordite off the deck to keep them from exploding, and all the time they knew they must be blown up, as the secondary supply and magazine were immediately below. They told me afterwards that communication with the bridge was cut off, and although they would be blown up, they also knew they would spoil the show if they moved, so they remained until actually blown up with their gun.
Then, when, as wounded men, they were ordered to remain quiet in various places during the second action, they had to lie there unattended and bleeding, with explosions continually going on aboard and splinters from the enemy's shell-fire penetrating their quarters. Lieutenant Bonner, himself wounded, did what he could for two who were with him in the wardroom. When I visited them after the action they thought little of their wounds, but only expressed their disgust that the enemy had not been sunk. Surely such bravery is hard to equal. The strain for the men who remained on board after the ship had been torpedoed, poop set on fire, cordite and shells exploding, and then the enemy shell-fire can easily be imagined. I much regret that two officers and seven men were wounded, and am very grateful to U.S.S.Nomafor taking charge of the two most dangerous cases. I—we—deeply regret the loss of one of H.M. ships, and still more the escape of the enemy. We did our best, not only to destroy the enemy and save the ship, but also to show ourselves worthy of the Victoria Cross the King recently bestowed on the ship.
I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
(Signed) GORDON CAMPBELL,Captain, R.N.
(1918)
The motor-launch chugged to the limit of her beat and wheeled with her bows to a rusty sunset. The wind had been freshening steadily since noon and the steep grey seas were edged with spray, streaked like the flanks of an over-spurred horse. The motor-launch, from a monotonous corkscrew roll, changed to a jerky see-saw that enveloped her in a bitterly cold cascade at every downward plunge.
The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant in command leaned with one broad shoulder against the side of the wheel-shelter, his legs braced far apart and his oilskin flapping wetly against his leather sea-boots. As each successive welter of spray drove past his head he raised a pair of glasses and searched the horizon to the westward where the sombre November sunset was fast fading.
Somewhere below that horizon the homeward-bound convoy was approaching, and his orders were to patrol a given length of the swept channel up the coast on the look-out for floating mines that might have drifted by chance currents from distant mine-fields. Twice since dawn the sweepers had passed over that water and reported the fair-way clear; but with a dozen shiploads of wheat to pass up it in the morning, no one was taking any chances. "Patrol till dark; floating mines to be sunk by gun or rifle fire," said his orders. The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant had been reckoned a good shot with a rifle in the days when he was an Admiralty clerk, and spent his Saturday afternoons on a rifle range at Wormwood Scrubs; he glanced from the bucking deck of his command to the rifle hanging in slings over the Coxswain's head, and smiled rather doubtfully to himself. As if in challenge to that smile, the Signalman on the other side of the Coxswain suddenly extended his telescope and arm in a straight line to seaward.
"Mine awash, sir," he shouted. "Two points on the port bow." The Coxswain raised his eye from the binnacle and moved the wheel through half a turn.
The Lieutenant stared through his glasses. "Umph," he said. The crew of the muffled six-pounder in the bows emerged from the fore hatchway and began to cast off the clips securing the lid of the ammunition box.
In silence they stared at the dull green globular object that bobbed past them in the trough of a sea, the soft lead horns projecting ominously as the waves washed over the rounded surface.
"One of ours," said the Lieutenant, with a swift expert glance. He stepped inboard a pace and studied a chart. "Hell! It's come a long way—must ha' been Tuesday's gale."
The launch held on her course till she had reached the limit of the safety zone of a bursting mine; stopped, and brought the gun to the ready. The gun-layer adjusted his sight, and the tiny gun platform rolled in sickening lurches.
"She may steady for a moment," said the Lieutenant, without conviction. "Choose your time." The gunlayer chose it.
"Bang! A puff of smoke dissolved about the muzzle and the shell sent up a column of foam a yard beyond the preposterous target.
"Try again," said the Lieutenant, and unslung the rifle. "Fire on the downward roll."
The gunlayer fired on the downward and then on the upward roll, and each time the shell went sobbing away into the Channel haze, and the dark, smooth object still bobbed in the fast-fading light amid the waves. The Lieutenant kicked aside his seventeenth empty brass cylinder and snapped the rifle bolt angrily. "There's the smoke of the convoy," he shouted to his second in command, who was firing from aft and swearing in a monotonous undertone that sounded like a litany. "It's right in their track." For the ensuing half-hour they kept up the fruitless fusillade until dusk blotted out the target.
The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant rang down for half-speed. "Secure the gun," he said, curtly, and to the Coxswain: "Close the blighter; we've got to make a rope's end fast and tow it inshore out of the fairway." The Coxswain gave his Commanding Officer a searching, incredulous glance, as if he doubted his sanity, and spun the wheel round, but the Lieutenant was lurching aft on his way to the cabin hatch. He paused en route and thrust a head and shoulders into the engine-room. "Bring a can of lubricating oil aft an' a handful of waste," he shouted to the unseen occupant, and dived into his cabin.
Under direction of the First Lieutenant, a grass line was uncoiled and one end made fast to a cleat; there was no time to be lost, for the dusk was falling fast and the convoy with its attendant escorts was a bare five miles away. The motor-launch circled round the floating mine, visible only by reason of the intermittent whiteness of the broken water about it. The Sub-Lieutenant stared at it half-fascinated, the coils of the line in his hands. For a moment he felt an angry resentment against the minesweepers; this, assuredly, was their business. Then he remembered that they had garnered their grim harvest and returned to port. The motor-launch was only a gleaner.
"Now then!" He turned to see his Captain at his elbow, stark naked as the moment he was born, glistening with oil like a wrestler of old. "Give us the rope's end. Drop down to leeward when I shout—an' stand by with a hot grog."
The speaker knotted the rope loosely over one muscular shoulder and measured the distance to the mine with a dispassionate eye. "If I bungle it and foul one of the horns," he said, "it'll blow the boat to smithereens. You'd better stand by with life-belts for yourselves."
"What about you?" asked the Sub. His Captain gave a little grim laugh. "If that egg breaks, there won't be much of me to put a belt round," and without further ado he slid over the stern into the water.
The crew of the launch watched the receding head and shoulders as their Commanding Officer was carried to leeward on the crest of a wave, and the Sub-Lieutenant, paying out loose coils of rope into the dark water, murmured: "That's a man for you! They had a glimpse of white gleaming body, as the swimmer circled cautiously round the floating mine and the waves lifted or dropped him into their hollows. Then for a moment he vanished and the watching group aft held their breath.
"If he grabs for the ring bolt and catches hold of a horn——" said the Coxswain, and left the sentence unfinished. The seconds passed. Then out of the darkness came a thin hail. The Coxswain jumped to the wheel; the second in command flung the slack line over the stern, and the launch dropped down to leeward.
The numb, exhausted figure hauled over the side a minute later, to be wrapped in blankets and massaged back to speech, resumed his clothes and clumped forward to the wheel-house as the launch turned inshore with the mine in tow.
He stared into the darkness astern as the line tautened. "God knows if there are any more farther up the coast... But our beat's clear. Full speed, Coxswain!"
Three hundred feet above mother earth sat an able seaman of the Royal Navy, reflecting on the strangeness of his profession. For the first eighteen months of the War he had been a loading number of one of a Battleship's six-inch guns; as such he spent most of his waking hours punching a dummy projectile into the breech of a "loader," or, when not at meals or asleep, following critically the fortunes of cinema artistes as portrayed on the Grand Fleet films. There came a day after that when the vagaries of fortune transplanted him to a Dover Monitor, where he grew accustomed to the roar of fifteen-inch shells from the Belgian coast batteries passing overhead, or pitching short of his floating home in a thunderous upheaval of white water. Finally he returned to his depot suffering from gun-deafness, to find himself in due course one of a working party attached to a high-power Naval Wireless Station, and still a little hard of hearing.
No one had consulted him as to his personal inclinations in the matter of these changes; indeed, he never asked himself if it was merely blind chance that ruled his comings and goings, or Fate, far-seeing, omniscient, working to an appointed end. Destiny, as he knew it, always appeared in the guise of a ship's corporal with a Muster List and a stump of pencil. He paid his debts, tucked his "papers" into the lining of his cap, shouldered his bag and hammock, and passed without concern to such future as awaited him.
Whatever the effect of heavy gunfire on his hearing, his nervous system remained unimpaired; so much so that, as he sat swaying in a "boatswain's stool," three-quarters of the way up one of the four hundred and thirty feet wireless masts, slapping creosote on to the wooden lattice work with a brush, he hummed a little tune to himself:
"Laugh while you may,There's still to-day—You may be dead ter-morrer!"
He crooned contentedly, and desisted from his labours to survey, like Moses of old, the landscape o'er.
Below him, seen through a thin veil of shifting mist, stretched smooth grey downs and a network of roads. Directly beneath, tiny figures moved among the buildings of the wireless station; on the slope of a far hillside rows of conical tents showed white in a passing gleam of sunshine. Something moving along one of the roads held his interest for a moment and the song came to an end; a field-gun battery going out to exercise; horses the size of mice. He wondered what it must be like to be an airman and pepper an enemy battery with a machine-gun. Wouldn't they scatter! Horses all mixed up with the traces, plunging. Pap! pap! pap! would go the machine-gun with the goggled face behind it, laughing triumphant... Fine, it 'ud be.
He bent his head back and stared up into the low-lying clouds that seemed to hover just overhead. Was it because he had been thinking of aeroplanes, or did he really hear the hum of an engine coming down out of the mist? The slender lattice-work above him rose towering for another hundred feet, taking the eye criss-cross along its diminishing perspective until it made you giddy. The sailor knotted his brows and cursed his deafness as he strained to listen. Surely it was an aeroplane. He could feel the vibration of its engine rather than hear it. Or was it the wind droning in the taut wire stays that spread earthward on every side.
Then, swift as a falling stone, flashing dark through the mist, he saw the machine, apparently coming straight for him.
"Look out!" he shouted, and as he spoke the whirring thing crashed fairly into the mast fifty feet above him with a splintering concussion that shook the framework like a whip. The bluejacket ducked his head as a shower of fragments descended, and sat waiting for the thing to fall. Nothing happened. The last piece of shattered propeller dropped clattering down the lattice for a little distance, rebounded and vanished into space. Only the humming of the wind broke a silence that had somehow become dreadful; dreading he knew not what, the man looked up.
There was the plane, with her nose jammed securely between the bars of the crossed lattice, embedded as far as the wings. The fuselage stuck out into the air at right angles to the mast like a dragonfly that had flown blindly against a sticky window... The sight was extraordinary.
The A.B. craned his head downwards. The small figures on the earth were running to and fro like ants. But where was the pilot? He peered up at the motionless wreck and shouted. No reply came. Odd! He'd better go and see about the pilot, who evidently hadn't seen the mast in the fog, and, by the millionth chance, hit it.
Taking with him the rope that secured the boatswain's-stool he commenced to climb. P'raps the bloke was stunned—dead, more likely. Anyhow, he couldn't leave him there in his seat with the likelihood of the machine breaking off from its nose and falling to the earth any moment. Just as well he'd been there at the moment when it happened; that was chance, too, in a way... Rum turn, altogether.
Foot by foot, from cross-bar to girder and girder to cross-bar he climbed, and finally reached the point of impact. The lattice was smashed to matchwood here, and the mast swayed dizzily above the damaged place. Another pull and a heave enabled the rescuer to look down on the unconscious figure who had been the puppet of so incredible a whim of fate. He lay face upwards across one of the wings where he had been flung by the force of the collision. His arms were outstretched, and both legs, from his knees down, hung over the edge of the wing into three hundred and fifty feet of space. The machine had but to sag a couple of feet, or the unconscious figure stir ever so little....
The able seaman took a deep breath. Far below him—perhaps half an hour's climb—men with ropes were toiling upwards to the rescue. Overhead the damaged mast shivered and creaked in the wind; a yard away on the curved surface of the wing lay the pilot, spread-eagled and motionless. "Thatain't no place for you!" said the bluejacket. He knotted the rope round his body, made the other end fast to the mast, and gingerly tested the frail platform. Would it stand the weight of both?
Inch by inch he crawled out along the wing, stretched forth a hand, and grabbed the pilot's gauntleted wrist. Then unfastening the rope from his own body he tied it round the insensible figure, and slowly, breathlessly, with many a pause and muttered oath at the tumultuous thumping of his heart—which seemed as if it must bring down the mast—he drew the body off the wing and regained the mast. Sitting in the V-shaped angle of the cross-girders he lashed the boy's shoulders securely to the nearest upright, and with the limp legs across his lap, produced and with difficulty lit the stump of a clay pipe. His hand shook and the perspiration trickled cold behind his ears; but presently his lips parted, and in a not too certain voice he began again his interrupted song:
"Laugh while you may,There's still to-day—You may be dead ter-morrer!"
"The Hohangho," read the First Lieutenant, turning the pages of a three-day-old paper, "has shifted its course. It is estimated that upwards of three-quarters of a million souls perished in the inundation of villages." He puffed at his pipe and eyed the inmates of the Destroyer's Wardroom with solemnity. "They give it a four-line paragraph.... Three-quarters of a million——"
"Shortage of paper," said the Lieutenant in Command. "'Sides, they were only Chinks. What's a million Chinese more or less? Don't suppose anybody worried about it. When I was on the China Station——"
"But," interrupted the First Lieutenant, "when you come to think of it, that's about half the total British casualties so far in the War. Wiped out—phut! In one act! Men, women, and children!
"You don't think of 'em quite like that," replied the Captain of the Destroyer, stirring his cup of coffee. He braced his back against a stanchion to steady himself to the roll of the ship. "There are four hundred millions of the blighters, remember. They all look alike; they've no religion, no ambition, no aim in life except to scratch together enough for the next meal——"
A Signalman came tumbling down the ladder, water streaming from his oilskins.
"Please, sir, Officer of the Watch says there's a glare ahead looks like a ship a-fire. Shall he increase speed?"
The Captain, who had descended for a cup of coffee, and still wore his sea-boots and duffle coat, snatched up his cap and was on the bridge with his glasses to his eyes in fewer seconds than it takes to write these lines.
The Destroyer was slashing her way past a head sea and the sound of the wind and waves made speech difficult. The Gunner was on watch, peering ahead into the darkness through binoculars.
"Oil ship, sir, by the looks of it," he shouted.
The Captain studied the far-off glare in silence for a moment, and gave an order to the telegraph-man.
"Yes," he said presently. "Oil ship. Must have been torpedoed. She's leaving a trail of blazing oil on the water astern of her." For half an hour they watched the conflagration grow brighter as the Destroyer rapidly overhauled the burning derelict. Finally the Gunner ranged alongside his Commanding Officer. "She's making way through the water, sir—yawing too. Best give her a wide berth."
The Lieutenant nodded. "Keep to windward. There can't be anybody below. I expect the heat of the fire is keeping the steam pressure up.... My ghost! What a blaze!"
The ship was now plainly discernible, blazing furiously from forecastle to poop. The wind whipped pennons of flame hundreds of feet to leeward, and from started rivets and gaping seams streams of liquid fire poured blazing into the sea. The ship was blundering along at a good seven knots, swerving blindly from side to side like a wounded bull, and leaving on the troubled surface of the water a fiery, serpentine trail of burning oil. The hissing crackle of the flames and roar of the wind, the constant eruption of vast columns of sparks that belched hundreds of feet into the air and floated to leeward, made the doomed ship a terrifying and almost demoniac spectacle.
"Can't be a soul alive on board," said the First Lieutenant. "Just as well—ugly customer to tackle."
They ranged abeam, giving the blazing derelict a wide berth, and even at that distance felt their cheeks scorch. Men lined the Destroyer's lee rail, watching in shocked silence. To the seaman the fairest of all sights is a ship upon the sea; a ship wrecked upon a lee shore or even plunging beneath the surface with racing propellers is a sad, though not unnatural sight, prompting the heart of every sailor to the rescue, whatever the risk. But a ship on fire, even though abandoned, is repellent, horrible beyond the power of description.
The Gunner suddenly emitted an oath and extended an arm and pointing forefinger:
"Look, sir! Fore-peak! There's some men there!"
The Captain stared through his binoculars.
"Yes," he said calmly; "you're right. They'll be grilled alive if her head falls away from the wind. Starboard ten, Quartermaster."
Obedient to her helm, the Destroyer closed that blinding hell-glare, and presently to the naked eye a score of human figures were visible, huddled into the eyes of the ship. The Lieutenant on the Destroyer's bridge picked up a megaphone and bawled through it.
"Why don't they jump, the damned fools?" he demanded angrily. "They must have seen us. They know we'll pick them up." The Destroyer came closer, plunging and rolling in the seaway. The figures on the bridge shielded their faces from the scorching heat as every eye watched the hungry flames licking their way forward along the oiler's forecastle. Her foremast fell with a crash, sending up a great column of fire into the outraged sky. By its glare the faces of the huddled figures were plainly visible: beardless, with high cheek-bones, distorted with terror like the masks of trapped animals.
"God!" ejaculated the First Lieutenant. "Chinks! They're all Chinese! No wonder they wouldn't jump! Can't swim!"
The Captain thrust him towards the ladder. "Stand by with fenders the port side. Get the hand-pumps going. I'll run her alongside."
"Gawd 'elp us!" muttered the Gunner, and as he spoke the burning ship yawed suddenly and came bearing down on them.
From first to last it was less than five minutes' work. With paint blistered and scorched clothing, rails and davits bent, with cold fear in their hearts and a sense of duty that mastered all, that prodigy of seamanship was accomplished. Twenty-four jabbering Chinese firemen and a dazed Scotch mate flopped down pell-mell on to the Destroyer's upper deck, and received the gift of life at the hands of a young man in a singed duffle coat, who said nothing, whose breath came and went rather fast through dilated nostrils.
"Twenty-five," reported the First Lieutenant when he had mustered the rescued and the Destroyer was racing landward, "and twenty-four of 'em Chinks. You risked your ship for a couple of dozen yellow-bellies!"
"Maybe I did," replied his Captain. Dawn was paling the Eastern sky, and he loosened the duffle coat about his throat. "Maybe I did. I ain't the Hohangho."
The tramp that had done the damage lay rolling lazily in the long, smooth swell, blowing off steam. Her escort of two Destroyers—or more properly a Destroyer and a half—was some distance away, exchanging a highly-seasoned and technical dialogue through megaphones. In the course of an unpremeditated zigzag a quarter of an hour earlier the tramp had rammed one of her escort and cut her in two.
The combination of misunderstandings which culminated in this mishap was at the moment in process of review on the bridge of the tramp. Her master, who was a Portuguese, and the mate, who hailed from Pernambuco, in the apportioning of blame were for once in agreement; the Chinese Quartermaster called, weeping, upon his ancestors' gods to witness they lied. Each spake his own tongue, and the babel of their strife mingled with the thin hiss of escaping steam, to be engulfed by the vast blue loneliness of the sky.
The Captain of the rammed Destroyer (his age was twenty-five and his vocabulary one Methuselah need not have been ashamed of) transferred his ship's company to the other escort and made a cursory survey of the damage.
The bulkhead forward of the gaping cavity was holding—precariously, it is true, but still holding. Therefore the fore part of the crippled Destroyer continued to float; the after portion, since the sea was smooth and the swell slight, although sagged below the surface, continued attached to the remainder by a few twisted longitudinals of steel and some mangled plates. The unhurt Destroyer having embarked the shipwrecked crew, ranged alongside her damaged sister, and proclaimed her intention of passing a towing hawser.
The Captain of the cripple filled and lit a pipe while he considered the problem from the vantage of the midship funnel of his command, which lolled drunkenly in a horizontal posture athwart the upper deck.
"Not yet," he shouted, and turned to the Gunner, who stood knee-deep in water where once a torpedo-tube had been. "It's that cursed depth-charge I'm worrying about. It's still in the chute at the stern, and set to explode at a depth of forty feet."
The Gunner nodded, and bent forward to peer through the translucent depths at what had been, a quarter of a hour before, the dwelling-place of both. Somewhere beneath the surface, still affixed to the submerged stern, was the Destroyer's main anti-submarine armament—her depth-charges. One had been in the tray, ready set for instant release by the jerk of a lever, when the collision occurred.
"If the stern breaks off, that depth-charge'll sink with it, and explode when it gets down to forty feet."
"That's right, sir," said the Gunner, with melancholy calm.
"And the explosion'll rip this bulkhead out of her, and down the fore part will go. Half a ship's better'n none, Mr. Hasthorpe."
Mr. Hasthorpe agreed, but inclined to the view that he'd rather have kept the other half, given a choice in the matter.
"There was a nice li'l drum o' paint aft there we had give us at Taranto, sir, an' some ostridge feathers under my bunk, what I'd promised my old woman."
A long, sleek swell passed beneath them on its unhurried path from Africa to the Adriatic. The dark wreckage beneath the surface stirred like weed in a current, and the deck plating under their feet trembled ominously as the hulk rolled.
"A few more of those," said the youthful Captain, "and down goes the after part. I shall lose my ship." The speaker had rather less than half a ship to lose, but he scrambled down on to the buckled plating of the upper deck, hastily unbuttoning his drill tunic.
"That depth-charge must be set to 'safe,' then it can't explode, however far it sinks."
"It's a couple of fathoms below the surface. I ain't no Annette Kellerman meself," said the Gunner.
His Captain waved the dinghy alongside. "That's nothing. I'll have a shot for it—if I can only find the beastly thing in all that tangle."
"An' if another swell passes when you're in the water, sir, likely as not the stern'll drop off an'——" The sentence remained unfinished, for his Captain had slipped over the side into the waiting dinghy and was busily divesting himself of his clothes.
"You'd better get clear," he shouted to his confrère in the other Destroyer, "till I've finished. No I'm not going to bathe!" He explained the situation while the dinghy man rested on his oars and musingly contemplated the big toe of his left foot round which a shred of spun yarn was twisted. The Captain of the other Destroyer raised his arm to show he understood; the telegraph gongs clanged, and the Destroyer moved away from the side of the derelict. The dinghy paddled a few strokes, and the nude pink figure in the stern bent down and stared into the water.
"Right," he said presently. "Keep the boat there, Simmonds." He took a few deep breaths, standing on the after thwart, and then dived.
The oarsman leaned over the gunwale and held his breath, gazing under the boat like a man in a trance.
After all the tumult of the collision the moment was one of deathly stillness. The tramp lay black against the sunlight half a mile away. The Destroyer was turning in a wide circle, with a flick of white under her stern, and close at hand, amid the wreckage of the still floating unfortunate, the Gunner stood motionless, staring.
The dinghy man suddenly sat upright and took a stroke with one paddle. The head and shoulders of the Lieutenant-in-Command broke the oily surface with an abrupt splash. He gripped the stern of the dinghy and heaved himself out of the water. Then, stark and dripping, he stood upright, transfigured by the Mediterranean sunshine into a figure of shining gold, and, raising his arms above his head, semaphored two letters to the watching Destroyer—"OK," finishing with a triumphant wave of the hand.
A thin cheer broke out along the crowded rail, the syren sounded a toot of congratulation, and as the resultant wisp of steam dissolved in the air the dinghy suddenly rose, rocked on the slope of a passing swell, and dropped down its smooth flank. The portion of the Destroyer that remained afloat rolled twice; there was a succession of big swirls in the water, an ugly grinding sound, and a snap. The Lieutenant-in-Command gave a short, hard laugh.
"There go your peacock feathers," he said to the Gunner, as he climbed on board the wrecked remnant of his command.
"Ostridge," amended Mr. Hasthorpe, and clambered forward to the towing bollard and the preliminaries of a piece of seamanship that brought half a Destroyer safely to the dock a hundred and seventy miles away.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The foregoing are based on actual occurrences in the War, and, as far as the author is aware, conform to fact. The characters are imaginary; their words and thoughts those of the writer's imagination.
(1917)
The German submarine U93 sailed from Emden on Friday, April 13, 1917, on her maiden trip to the Atlantic. She carried eighteen torpedoes and 500 rounds of ammunition for her two 3.9 mm. guns; her complement consisted of thirty-seven officers and men, under the command of Captain Lieutenant F. Freiherr Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim.
A tendency on the part of the crew to regard the date as ill-omened was met by the Commander with the assurance that the combination of Friday and the figure thirteen would cancel any bad luck usually associated with either.
About 8.30 P.M. (Greenwich time) on April 30 U93 was in approximately Latitude 49° 40N, Longitude 11° 40W., making her way back to Germany with the sinking of eleven merchant ships to her discredit.
The Commander of U93 was more than satisfied with the result of his cruise: moreover, he had two horses running in the Berlin races during the second week in May, and was anxious to be back in time for the event. But on sighting the sails of a small top-sail schooner coming over the horizon, he decided to delay his return a few hours and complete the round dozen of ships sunk; also the size of the schooner would, he judged, round off his tonnage figures evenly.
He opened fire on the schooner at three miles range, and, as this was the last ship to be sunk during the trip, gave orders that all men who could be spared from their duties below might come on deck and witness the sinking.
The schooner in question was His Majesty's ShipPrizeof 200 tons, commanded by Lieutenant William Edward Saunders, Royal Naval Reserve, with two 12-pounders concealed in collapsible deck-houses, and one aft on a disappearing mounting under the hatchway covers of the after hold. She also carried two Lewis guns, and was incidentally the first German prize (then called theElse) captured by Great Britain on the outbreak of war.
In complete ignorance of these details, however, the Commander of U93 turned his submarine in a wide circle in order to close his victim cautiously from astern, firing in a leisurely manner from his foremost gun as he approached.
Immediately the submarine opened fire the alarm gongs sounded on board thePrize. With the exception of the Commanding Officer and Skipper Meade, R.N.R. (Trawler Section), who were concealed inside the steel companion-cover amidships, and six hands in charge of Skipper Brewer, R.N.R. (Trawler Section), every man threw himself flat on the deck under cover of the bulwarks and crawled to his action-station, where he lay awaiting orders. The two foremost guns were in charge of the second-in-command, Lieutenant William D. Beaton, Royal Naval Reserve, who lay at the foot of the foremast with his ears to the voice-pipe from the Captain's observation position.
The ship's head was put up into the wind, and the six hands in charge of Mr. Brewer, who formed what was technically known as a "panic party," launched the small boat and abandoned the ship with every outward symptom of haste and disorder. The time was then 8.45 P.M.
The ship's head fell away to eastward, and the enemy slowly followed her round, still firing at her in a deliberate manner. Of two shots that hit the water-line and burst inside the ship, one put the auxiliary motor-engine out of action, wounding the Stoker Petty Officer in charge; and the other shattered the wireless-room, wounding the operator inside it. The cabins and mess-room were wrecked, the mainmast shot through in two places, and the ship began to make water fast.
In spite of this heavy punishment and the intensity of the strain, the guns' crews remained motionless on the deck while the submarine drew closer. She was invisible to all on board the schooner except the two figures inside the companion, who through slits in the plating were able to watch her movements and communicate the closing range to the guns.
With unrelaxed caution, however, the submarine continued to approach slowly from astern, and it was on this precise bearing that none of the schooner's guns would bear. The leaden minutes dragged by like an eternity. The Commanding Officer of thePrizeseveral times left his place of observation and crawled on hands and knees from man to man, steadying them and impressing on them the necessity for keeping out of sight. One of the port foremost gun's crew, a lad of eighteen, twitched uncontrollably with excitement like a galvanised frog as he sprawled face-downwards.
"What are you tremblin' about?" demanded the gun-layer in a hoarse, contemptuous whisper. "You can only die onest."
Twenty minutes passed thus in almost intolerable suspense. Then the crew of the after gun, straining their ears for the slightest sound, heard the fitting to which the patent-log line was attached splinter as it was wrenched away from its screws. The submarine had closed until she fouled the schooner's log-line and carried it away.
The next moment U93 put her helm to starboard and glided out on to the port quarter of the schooner at seventy yards' clear range.
It was then 9.5 P.M., and Lieutenant Saunders, satisfied at last that his guns would bear, shouted, "Down screens! Open fire!" At the same moment the White Ensign was hoisted.
The Shipwright, whose duty it was to release the after-gun screen, knocked the catch and the hatchway cover slid back like the front of an American roll-top desk. With the jerk of a lever the gun rose into position and opened fire two seconds later.
The foremost gun's crew leaped to their feet, and the deck-houses collapsed simultaneously, unmasking the foremost twelve-pounders.
The enemy was not easily taken by surprise, however. As the White Ensign appeared above the bulwarks of thePrize, the submarine fired two rounds from her guns. One hit the schooner's superstructure, and the other the water-line. This shell burst in the interior of the ship, severely wounding the Shipwright, who had rushed below to fetch one of the Lewis guns which were kept at the bottom of the ladder.
The Commander of the submarine put his helm hard over with the intention of ramming the schooner, but realising that she was inside his turning circle, reversed his helm and tried to escape. The next moment a shell from the schooner's after gun struck the foremost gun of the submarine, blowing it to atoms and annihilating the crew.
The Commanding Officer of thePrize, on realising that the submarine was heading away from him, rang down the order for full speed to the engine-room. Unknown to him, however, one engine was completely disabled, and the other, after driving the ship for about one hundred yards, also stopped. There was practically no wind, and the ship lay motionless on the water.
In the meanwhile, however, the gunlayer of the after gun had hit the conning tower of the submarine with his second shot, and demolished it; a deckhand at the same time raked the remainder of the survivors off her deck with the Lewis gun. A third shot from the after twelve-pounder struck the submarine in the vicinity of the engine-room and disabled her, but she continued to carry her way until about 500 yards from thePrize, when she came to a standstill, slewing broadside on to her vanquisher. There were no survivors visible, and a dull red glare from internal fires showed through the rents in her hull. At the thirty-sixth round she sank stern first, four minutes after the commencement of the action.
The "panic party" in the boat were then ordered to pull over the scene of the action and search for survivors. Darkness was falling fast, but they succeeded in picking up the Commander of the submarine, who had been knocked overboard by one of the bodies blown from the foremost gun, the Navigating Warrant Officer, and a Stoker Petty Officer. No other survivors could be found, and the boat returned with the prisoners, conscientiously "covered" by a Browning pistol in the fist of the Trawler Skipper at the helm.
While the search for survivors was being carried out by the ship's boat a survey of the damage on board the schooner revealed a serious state of affairs. The water was pouring through the shot-holes and stood a foot deep between decks. It continued to gain in spite of the employment of every available man on pumping and bailing, and the temporary plugging of the holes with hammocks and blankets.
Fortunately the sea was calm, with very little or no wind. The ship was put on the port tack and every possible device employed to list her to starboard, all the damage she had received being on the port side. The boat was swung out at the starboard davits and filled with water, coal and water shifted to the starboard side, and both cables ranged along the starboard scuppers. By these means sufficient list was obtained to lift the shot-holes clear of the water and to enable them to be temporarily patched.
Immediately after boarding thePrizethe German submarine Commander offered his word of honour to make no attempt to escape, and promised that he and his men would do all in their power to assist. His parole was accepted, and both he and his men set to with a will, prisoners and captors working side by side to save the ship. The Navigating Warrant Officer voluntarily attended to the wounded and dressed their wounds.
As soon as it was realised that the water was no longer gaining on them, the attention of the Commanding Officer of thePrizewas devoted to an attempt to restarting the motors. In the course of this work a fire broke out in the engine-room, due to sparks from the motor igniting the oil which had leaked from the damaged tank. This was successfully extinguished, and the wounded Stoker Petty Officer, assisted by the German Stoker Petty Officer, succeeded in getting one motor started. By 11.45 P.M. on April 30 all sail was set, and with one engine working thePrizeshaped a course for the Irish Coast, 120 miles to the north-eastward.
Land was not sighted until the afternoon of May 2, during which time the crew, assisted by the prisoners, laboured at the pumps day and night. They were finally picked up 5 miles to the westward of the Old Head of Kinsale by one of H.M. Motor Launches and towed into Kinsale Harbour. Here two of the wounded were disembarked, and improvised leak-stoppers, made out of the pieces of plank with blankets stretched over them, were bolted over the shot-holes.
On May 4 thePrize, with her three prisoners still on board, left Kinsale Harbour in tow of one of H.M. Drifters, and arrived at Milford Haven, where she was based, at 8 A.M. on May 4.
During the passage an enemy minelaying-submarine was sighted on the surface to the southward about two miles away. The crew of thePrizeimmediately went to "Action Stations" in the hope that the enemy would close to within effective range, and for an hour they waited in tense excitement, while the submarine steered a parallel course to theirs. Apparently, however, her caution got the better of her curiosity, for she finally drew ahead and was not seen again. The remainder of the voyage passed uneventfully.
His Majesty the King, in recognition of the conspicuous gallantry displayed by the Officers and men of thePrize, was pleased to award the Victoria Cross to Lieutenant W. E. Saunders, who was also promoted to the rank of Temporary Lieutenant Commander, Royal Naval Reserve.
Lieutenant W. D. Beaton, R.N.R., the Second-in-Command, was made a Companion of the Distinguished Service Order, the two Skippers, R.N.R. (T), were decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross, and the remainder of the ship's company received the Distinguished Service Medal.
A few months later H.M.S.Prize, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Saunders, V.C., R.N.R., was lost with all hands, presumably as the result of an engagement with one or more enemy submarines. The death of this most gallant officer and his efficient and highly trained crew was a disaster the Navy and the nation could ill afford.
(1916)
1
The sun was sinking low behind the peach-trees when workers from the rice-fields came straggling back to the village. By twos and threes they came, toil-stained women and boys, with here and there an old, gnarled man, their shadows long on the road before them.
Tani, maker of sandals, looked up from his work as each one came abreast his shop, responding gravely to the low-voiced, musical greetings. But after the last worker had passed, his eyes, shaded beneath the palm of his hand, still sought the road beyond the village in patient expectancy.
Presently he heard the distant click of clogs, and a little figure came in sight. Her cotton kimono was looped to the knees, the mud of the paddy-fields still clung to her slender brown limbs. She drew near.
"Greeting, Su Su O!"
"Greeting, Tani!" The girl paused before the shop, with quaint genuflection and the gentle hiss of indrawn breath that in Japan is a courtesy. The sandal-maker sat back on his heels.
"Tired, Su Su O?"
"Very," replied the girl. She moved the heavy, mud-caked hoe from her shoulder and leaned on the haft, looking down at him with a little smile. Her mouth, with its geranium-scarlet lips, drooped wearily at the corners when in repose: her whole attitude betrayed fatigue.
The man frowned. "It is not well, Su Su O, that you should do coolie work. You are not of coolie stock, nor yet of coolie strength. Su Su O, hearken yet again! Be my wife! Come and live with me here, and let me labour for us both! I need you so, little Flower. I want you for my wife ... not to see you only at sunrise and dusk, passing my dwelling by."
The sun set swiftly; swiftly the purple night swept up over rice-field and cherry-orchard. Here and there along the village street a coloured lantern glowed suddenly out of the darkness; through the frail oiled-paper walls of the cottages drifted the voices of children and the tinkle of a samisen. The sandal-maker stood up and took the girl's hand in his.
"I am lonely without you, Su Su O," he pleaded.
Her lip quivered. "I too am lonely, Tani; but I am a beggar—a coolie girl without father or mother. I cannot marry you: I have no dowry. I can bring nothing to the wedding—save myself, in rags. It would bring disgrace upon us."
In vain he pleaded, all the poetic imagery of the Asiatic upon his tongue. In vain he scoffed at convention—that terrible, inexorable convention of the East; still the dainty head shook in plaintive negation. Some unknown strain in her blood set honour before love, bowed to the decrees that had ruled her unknown forbears. At length, as if fearing that her resolution might weaken from sheer physical weariness—and she loved very dearly too—she turned towards the village.
"I must go, Tani. It is of no avail.... Nay, entreat me not further.... Nay, Tani, I am so tired...."
The sandal-maker stepped back among his wares. Punctiliously they went through the little ceremony of genuflection and gesture. Click-click went the clogs up the narrow street, and among the shadows the sandal-maker stood with head bent, as if listening, long after the sound had died away.
That evening a traveller came to the village, a little wizened man, clad somewhat incongruously in a grey silk kimono, a bowler hat, and elastic-sided boots. Rumour whispered that he was the owner of a fashionablecha-ya(tea-shop) in Tokyo, renowned for the beauty of its Geishas. Gossip spreading quickly from door to door supplemented this as the night wore on. The honourable stranger was touring the country on the look-out for pretty girls. He paid well, they said, and his establishment was much frequented by Europeans, who, as all the world knows, part freely with the sen. Here was a chance for a girl with looks!
The old gentleman was sipping saki in the guest-room of the village inn when Su Su O was announced. His keen old eyes noted with appreciation the lines of the childish figure as she bowed her forehead to the matting. But when she raised herself to her knees, and faced him with downcast eyes, he pursed up his mouth as if contemplating a whistle. Had he been a European he probably would have whistled, but this is not an art practised among owners ofcha-ya. Otherwise his face was expressionless.
"Who is your mother?" he inquired, breaking the silence.
"She is dead, most honourable one. A peasant woman. I reside at the house of Matsu the charcoal-burner and his wife."
"And your father?"
"I do not know, O honourable one."
"Ah!" said her interlocutor, as if something had been explained that he did not understand. Peasants do not beget daughters with hair like Su Su O's, nor with ears like tiny pink shells, nor yet slender wrists and fingers. "And you wish to be a Geisha?"
Su Su O prostrated herself in silent acquiescence.
"I will take you on condition that you remain with me three years." The heart of Su Su O sank. Would Tani wait three years? "And I will pay you"—he named what was to the girl a considerable sum. That clinched it: with a dowry like this she could marry Tani over and over again. Yet her fingers trembled as she painted her signature to the indentures, and her heart was sick at the thought of the parting. Even "passing his dwelling by" was better than never seeing it at all. But she left for Tokyo the next day, and a few moments were all that she had for saying good-bye.
"Oh, but you will wait?" she pleaded. "It will soon pass, the three years, and I will come back rich, and—marry you, Tani."
Tani's reply, in flowery Japanese, was to the effect that he would wait a hundred million years if necessary.
* * * * *
Her life in the Tokyo tea-house was no worse than that led by the thousands of other Geishas in the great straggling city. In some respects it was better, because European tourists of many nationalities frequented the establishment, and her beauty was such as to appeal not only to Japanese ideas, but Western as well. For one thing, her cheek-bones were not accentuated; and her mouth, scarlet-lipped and tremulous at times with laughter, you would have thought adorable whatever part of the world you hailed from. Also there was something very bewitching about her plaintive love-ditties (even if you couldn't understand them), which she sang in a minor key to guitar accompaniment through her inconsiderable nose.
One day there came to the house a German officer on leave from Tsingtau. He was a big, bearded youth with blue eyes, and—this was a ceaseless wonder and delight to the Geishas—the centre of his front upper row of teeth was crowned with a diamond.
Attracted by the glitter in his mouth, and inured to the oafish attentions of European customers, she suffered him to put his arm round her. Without further warning, he lowered his bearded face and kissed her publicly on the lips.
To the Japanese mind the act was an indignity—worse, indecent. With a deft wriggle she twisted an arm free and struck him in the face, her eyes blazing. The big man laughed uproariously, imprisoned her arm, and kissed her again and again, while she quivered helplessly. Released at length, she faced him like a tiger-cat.
"Swine!" she cried. "Son of a foreign swine!"—and struck the piece of gold that he extended towards her out of his hand.
2
The railway terminus at Tokyo was gay with bunting and thronged by a great crowd of people. A brass band somewhere out of sight broke into crashing martial music. "Banzai!" roared the khaki-clad figures in the closely packed carriages, and in response the women and children waved little hand-flags that bore the national emblem on a white ground.
Japan had declared war on Germany, and the occasion was the departure of a Reserve Division which was shortly to operate against the German fortress of Tsingtau. The windows of the carriages were blocked by grim, fighting faces: men from the North. Among them was Tani, sometime maker of sandals; and on the platform beneath his window, like a painted butterfly hovering round the cannon's mouth, stood Su Su O, eyes suspiciously bright.
"Return if the gods will it!" she whispered, echoing the murmured farewells of mothers, wives, and lovers. The grim memories of ten years ago still lingered. The vaulted roof of the terminus had echoed so many farewells; so few who parted amid the roars of "Banzai!" had greeted one another again. "If the gods will," said the women now, and the younger men still shouted "Banzai!" in reply. But at the last, as the long train steamed slowly out of the station, the finite human heart held sway. The oft-repeated "Banzai!" changed to "Sai-onara! Sai-i-onara!"—the saddest, most plaintive-sounding farewell yet fashioned by the human tongue.
A month later found Tani leading a moist and somewhat precarious existence in a trench before Tsingtau. His recollection of the siege since he took part in it had been a series of blurred impressions, mud being predominant throughout. It had seemed an eternity of mud, of ceaseless rifle and artillery fire, of being soaked to the skin, of cold, hunger, and fatigue. Once or twice there had been moments of ferocious hand-to-hand fighting. They were good moments, those; and as he sat in the bottom of a trench cleaning the bolt of his rifle with a piece of oily rag, his thoughts recurred to them with a certain grim enjoyment.
By clearing away the earth at the top of the trench he was able to catch an occasional glimpse of his surroundings. An amphitheatre of barren hills, with the gleam of the sea in the far distance; a small, slow-moving speck upon it that was a Japanese or Allied warship shelling the fortress. Elsewhere, as far as he could see, the ground was scarred by bursting shell, and herring-boned by wire entanglements. Ahead, where the picric shells were pitching, a yellow cloud hung low, as the mists sometimes cling to the slopes of Fujiyama. There were intermittent points of jagged fire beneath the cloud; shrapnel bursting about the German redoubts.
It all represented to Tani a certain amount of uphill ground to be covered under fire: how soon he did not know, but the rest was familiar enough. The inferno of shell-fire that was bursting ahead would redouble till the mere contemplation of it almost stunned the senses. Then the order rippled along to advance: you leaped out of your trench and ran as well as you could across the debris of the last attack and the chaos of barbed wire till the next trench was reached. Sometimes you just dropped into it and panted; sometimes you met other men there, fierce, blue-eyed men who had to be bayoneted. Bullets would shriek and whimper overhead, or hit something with a sullen "Zip!" Men grunted and seemed to fall asleep, or rolled over and lay twitching in a novel and rather ludicrous fashion. And there was the ceaseless rain, the smell of cordite smoke, the bewildering roar of the howitzers.
That was War, as understood by Tani, sometime maker of sandals.
Early one morning a flask of raw saki was passed along the advanced trench. Tani drank deep and tightened his belt, for he was hungry; the spirit ran through his veins like fire. "It is the end," said the man next to him, a battle-scarred veteran of Nogi's Army, with a queer note of exultation in his voice. There, was a sudden lull in the firing. Whistles sounded shrilly.
An officer near Tani who had been divesting himself of his overcoat leapt to his feet with a shout. With an answering roar the trenches seemed to vomit wave upon wave of steel, and yellow-faced, khaki-clad figures. They swept forward, stabbing and cheering, hewing their way through the wire entanglement in the face of a tempest of bullets, leaving their dead dangling as they fell.
Tani reached a line of sandbags at the crest of a rise unhurt, and drove his bayonet into the chest of a German who was clubbing his rifle. He heard the breast-bone crunch as the steel went home to the muzzle of the rifle. The German fell sideways, twisting the weapon out of Tani's grip with his weight. Then Tani saw a bearded officer, the haft of a broken sword dangling from a leather thong at his wrist, struggling to reload his revolver.
As a mongoose jumps for a snake the Japanese leapt at the German's throat. They fell together in the bottom of the trench, and for a moment they fought with their hands, in the welter of mud and water, trampled on by other combatants, breathing in short, savage gasps. Then Tani got the "neck-lock" he had been struggling for. Something snapped with a sound like a dry twig breaking, and the German's head dropped back. Tani sat up, spitting and wiping the mud out of his eyes. His adversary was dead, and lay staring up at the grey sky as if amazed. The bearded lips were drawn back, showing his teeth; one of these sparkled curiously. Save for the dead and wounded, the trench was deserted: the assault had swept forward. Above them was a sound of great cheering. Someone was wedging a colour-staff between the sandbags; the emblem of the Rising Sun, tattered and stained, stirred in the morning breeze. Tsingtau had fallen.
Tani leaned over to examine more closely the phenomenon in the dead man's mouth. Then he emitted an interested grunt. The centre tooth of the German's upper jaw was crowned with a diamond.
3
Tani, maker of sandals, leaned over the parapet of the little cedar-wood bridge that spanned an artificial hike in the temple grounds. Every now and again the moon's placid reflection on the water broke into widening ripples as a carp rose. In the stillness the sound of its feeding was audible—a tiny "gluck!" as if a greedy child were smacking its lips. It was late spring, the season of the cherry-blossom, and the light airs of evening came in puffs across the water, laden with faint fragrance. The doors of the temple stood open: inside, a lamp burned dully before the altar.
After a while the man took from his pocket a little pouch of oiled silk and emptied the contents into his palm. There was some dusty tobacco, two or three matches, and a small object that caught the light as he moved his hand. This he retained, and put the pouch and the rest of its contents back into his pocket.
"Click-click, click-click!" Light, metal-shod sandals were approaching from the direction of the village. A form fluttered towards him out of the darkness like a soft grey moth.
"Have you waited long, Tani?"
"So long, Su Su O, that the night had grown into Eternity, and the sound of my sighing checked the very lamentation of the frogs!"
She laughed in her delicious gurgling way, and pressed her face against his sleeve. He slipped one hand beneath her chin, raising the flawless oval face to the full light of the moon.
"Thou art very beautiful," he said, half below his breath. "A thousand men assuredly have loved thee since we bade farewell."
Su Su O sighed. "But none have laid a finger on me in love, Tani—save one, and him I struck."
The man smiled a little, and then his face grew grave. He fretted with the sling which supported his left arm. "What manner of man was he, this love-besotted fool?"
"A German, Tani; a man of great stature, bearded, with a jewel set in the centre tooth of his upper jaw."
Tani released her chin. "A diamond, belike, Little Flower?"
She nodded assent. "And by force he kissed me—upon the mouth."
"Ah!" For a moment the sandal-maker stared across the water, his eyes narrowed into slits, his face inscrutable. Then, with a sudden jerk of the wrist, he sent something spinning through the air—something that glittered like a point of flame in the moonlight. It fell with a splash, scaring the lazy carp that lay just beneath the surface.
"He has paid his forfeit," said Tani grimly.
All uncomprehending, Su Su O nestled against him and slipped her slender hand into his. Together they turned towards the temple.