III.A P. & O. liner, a few months later, carried Jerry and Jubbs to China. During the voyage they came in contact with a hitherto unrecognised factor in life, and found themselves faced with unforeseen perplexities. One evening, as they leaned over the rail experimenting gingerly with two cigars, Jubbs unburdened himself. "... Besides, they jaw such awful rot," was his final summary of feminine allurements. Jerry nodded, tranquil-eyed. "I know. I told Mrs What's-her-name—that woman with the ear-rings—that I'd got one mother already; and as I'm going to China, and she's going to India, I didn't see the use of being tremendous friends. 'Sides, she's as old as the hills."Jerry! Jerry! The lady in question was barely thirty, even if she had an unaccountable partiality for taking him into the bows to watch the moon rise over the Indian Ocean.They joined their ship at Hong-Kong, and found themselves members of a crowded, cockroach-haunted gunroom, where every one was on the best of terms with every one else, and there reigned a communism undreamed of in their philosophy. It is said that in those days of stress and novelty, among unknown faces and unfamiliar surroundings, their friendship bound them in ever-closer ties. The Sub-Lieutenant, when occasion arose for the chastisement of one, thrashed the other out of sheer pity. They kept watch, took in signal exercise, went ashore, shot snipe, picnicked and went through their multifarious duties generally within hail of one another. Till at length Jerry's call of "Jubbs!" and Jubbs' unfailing "Coming!" brought half-wistful smiles to older eyes.The Boxer rising broke out like a sudden flame, and their letters home, those voluminous and ill-spelt missives that meant so much to the recipients, announced the momentous tidings. Jerry was landing in charge of a maxim gun; Jubbs was to be aide-de-camp to the Commander. Their whites were being dyed a warlike tint of khaki, and they were being sent up to take part in the defence of Tientsin. For a while silence, then at last a letter scrawled in pencil on some provision wrappers. Jerry boasted a three-weeks' growth of stubble, and had killed several peculiarly ferocious Boxer bravos. They were looking forward to being moved up to Peking for the relief of the Legations, and there was practically no danger as long as a fellow took reasonable precautions. He had not seen Jubbs for some time, but expected to meet him before long.As a matter of fact, they came together the next afternoon, and their meeting-place was a Joss-house that had been converted into a temporary field-hospital. Jerry was the first to arrive, "in the bight of a canvas trough"—Jerry, very white and quiet, a purple-brown stain spreading over his dusty tunic and a bullet lodged somewhere near the base of the spine. Towards sunset he became conscious, and the Red Cross nursing sister supported his head while he drank tepid water from a tin mug. "'Sparkling Cider,'" he whispered weakly, "for luck, ... thank you, mummie darling."The firing outside was becoming intermittent and gradually growing more distant, when the patch of dusty sunlight in the doorway was darkened by a fresh arrival. The stretcher party laid him on the bed next to Jerry and departed. The Surgeon made a brief examination, and as he straightened up, met the pitying eyes of the Red Cross sister. He shook his head."The poor children," she whispered. Outside there came a sudden renewal of firing and the spiteful stammer of a maxim. It died away, and there was silence, broken by the buzzing of flies in the doorway and the sound of some one fighting for his breath. In the heavy air the sickly smell of iodoform mingled with the odours of departed joss-sticks and sun-baked earth.Suddenly, from a bed in the shadows, a weak voice spoke—"Jubbs!" said Jerry.A moment's pause, while the motionless figure in the next bed gathered energy for a last effort of speech. Then—"Coming!" said Jubbs.X.THE CHOSEN FOUR.The Admiral, it was rumoured, had said, "Let there be Signal Midshipmen." Wherefore the Flag-Lieutenant communed with the Commander, who sent for the Senior Midshipman.The Senior Midshipman responded to the summons with an alacrity that hinted at a conscience not wholly void of offence."Let there be Signal Midshipmen," said the Commander, or words to that effect, "in four watches.""Aye, aye, sir," said the Senior Midshipman. He emerged from the Commander's cabin and breathed deeply, as one who had passed unscathed through a grave crisis. Apparently that small matter of the picket-boat's damaged stem-piece had been overlooked.Ere he was out of earshot, however, the Commander spoke again. "By the way," added the Arbiter of his little destinies, "I don't want to see your name in the leave-book again until the picket-boat is repaired.""Aye, aye, sir," repeated the Senior Midshipman. He descended to the Gunroom, where, it being "make-and-mend" afternoon, his brethren were wrapped in guileless slumber. An 'Inman's Nautical Tables,' lying handy on the table, described a parabola through the air, and, striking a prominent portion of the nearest sleeper's anatomy, ricochetted into his neighbour's face. The two sat up, glowered suspiciously at each other for an instant, and joined battle. The shock of their conflict overturned a form, and two more recumbent figures awoke wrathfully to "life and power and thought.""You four," announced the Senior Midshipman calmly, when the uproar had subsided, "will take on signal duty from to-morrow morning." Then, having satisfactorily discharged the duty imposed upon him, he settled himself to slumber on the settee.Three of the four, to whom this announcement was made gasped and were silent.Signals! Under the very eye of the Admiral! Each one saw himself an embryo Flag-Lieutenant.... One even made a little prophetic motion with his left arm, as though irked by the aiguilette that in fancy already encircled it. The fourth alone spoke—-"Crikey!" he muttered, "an' my only decent pair of breeches are in the scran-bag"[#][#] The "scran-bag" is the receptacle for articles of clothing, &c., left lying about at First Lieutenant's rounds in the morning. Gear thus impounded can be redeemed once a week by payment of a bar of soap.* * * * *Men say that with the passing of "Masts and Yards" the romance of the Naval Service died. This is for those to judge who have seen a fleet of modern battleships flung plunging from one complex formation to another at the dip of a "wisp of coloured bunting," and have watched the stutter of a speck of light, as unseen ships talk across leagues of darkness.The fascination of a game only partly understood, yet ever hinting vast possibilities, seized upon the minds of the Chosen Four. Morse and semaphore of course they knew, and the crude translations of the flags were also familiar enough. But the inner mysteries of the science (and in these days it is a very science) had not as yet unfolded themselves.At intervals the Flag-Lieutenant would summon them to his cabin, where, with the aid of the Signal Books and little oblong pieces of brass, he demonstrated the working of a Fleet from the signal point of view, and how a mistake in the position of a flag in the hoist might result in chaos—and worse.The Chosen Four sat wide-eyed at his feet amid cigarette ash and the shattered fragments of the Third Commandment.Harbour watch-keeping perfected their semaphore and Morse, till by ceaseless practice they could read general signals flashed at a speed that to the untrained eye is merely a bewildering flicker. As time wore on they began to acquire the almost uncanny powers of observation common to the lynx-eyed men around them on the bridge.Each ship in a Fleet is addressed by hoisting that ship's numeral pendants. The ship thus addressed hoists an answering pendant in reply. At intervals all through the day the Signal Yeoman of the Watch would suddenly snap his glass to his eye, pause an instant as the wind unfurled a distant flutter of bunting at some ship's yard-arm, and then jump for the halyard that hoisted the answering pendant. The smartness of a ship's signal-bridge is the smartness of that ship, and in consequence this is a game into which the stimulus of competition enters, Signal Boatswain, Midshipmen, and Yeomen vying with each other to be the first to give the shout, "Up Answer!"One night at the Junior Officers' Club one of the Chosen Four encountered another of his ilk from a different ship: and, since at eighteen (if you are ever to become anything) shop is a right and necessary topic of conversation, they fell to discussing their respective bridges.Presently said he of the other ship, waxing pot-valiant by reason of Marsala, "I'll bet you a dinner ashore we'll show your pendants before the week's up."Now should a ship fail to see a signal made to her, other ships present can be very offensive by hoisting the pendants of the ship addressed at mast-head and yard-arms. This is to hold the delinquent up as an object of scorn and derision to the Fleet, and is a fate more dreaded by right-minded signalmen than the Plagues of Egypt."An' I'll give you fifteen seconds' grace," added the speaker.The challenge was accepted, and for five sweltering days—it was summer at Malta—the two ships watched each other from sunrise till dark, the pendants "bent" to the halyards in readiness. On the evening of the sixth day a thunderstorm that had been brewing all the afternoon burst in a torrential downpour over the harbour. At that instant a signal crept to the flagship's yard-arm.On board the ship addressed the Midshipman had dashed for the shelter of the bridge-house, the Yeoman was struggling into an oilskin, and the Second Hand had stepped into the lee of a search-light."Stand by—thirteen, fourteen..." counted the small figure standing in the driving rain on the flagship's bridge, watch in hand: "fifteen, Hoist!" Then for the first time in his short career he deserted his post. Clattering pell-mell down the ladders to the Gunroom, where the remainder of the Chosen Four were playing cut-throat whist, he flung back the drab-coloured curtain."Got him!" he shouted triumphantly. "By the aching stomach, I had himcold!"* * * * *I have said that of the Chosen Four—three saw visions, while the other bewailed the inaccessibility till the end of the week of his best trousers. Now of the four he alone came to wear the aiguilettes of a Flag-Lieutenant, and to-day the mysteries of Tactics, Fleet Organisation and Formation, are to him as an open book. A Baker Street photographer once had the temerity to display his photograph in the window, in uniform, tinted. Passing by, I heard a woman gush foolishly to her companion, "Oh, isn't he a darling!"The relevancy of this anon.Another forsook the bunting-draped path of Signals to climb to fame through the smoke of many battle practices. He now adds after his rank the cryptic initial (G). The third married an heiress and her relations, and retired. He has several children and is reported to have lost interest in the Service.The remaining one, when I saw him last, had also lost interest in the Service. He was lying in a curiously crumpled heap across the stakes of a jungle stockade, his empty revolver dangling by the lanyard round his neck. A handful of his men fought like demons to recover possession of the mutilated body."Sure," said a bearded Petty Officer, half apologetically, wiping his cutlass with a tussock of grass, "we couldn't lave him there—an' himself somewan's darlin', likely..."Sailors are inveterate sentimentalists.XI.A COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY.The Junior Watch-keeper entered the Wardroom and rang the bell with an air of gloomy mystery."The Russians are coming," he announced. "Cocktail, please, waiter."The Young Doctor looked up from the year-old 'Bradshaw' with which he was wont to enliven moments of depression by arranging mythical week-ends at friends' houses in various parts of England. It was a dreary amusement, and, conducted off the coast of Russian Tartary, stamped him as the possessor of no small imaginative powers."Who said so?""Skipper: three Russian Destroyers, an' we're to invite them to dinner, an' there's nothing to eat." The Junior Watch-keeper managed the affairs of the Mess for that quarter."Those chaps feed like fighting-cocks," observed the Assistant Paymaster. "Let's send for the Messman."The Junior Watch-keeper applied himself to his cocktail in silence, and the Celestial bandit who, in consideration of a monthly levy of thirty dollars per head, starved or poisoned them according to his whim, appeared in the doorway. The Mess broached the subject with quailing hearts; it was proposed to dine the representatives of a foreign Power. Could he for once rise to the occasion and produce a suitable repast?The Oriental summed up the situation with impassive brevity—"No can do.""Oh, rot!" said the Junior Watch-keeper, who up to this juncture had been gracefully pursuing the olive at the bottom of his glass with the tip of his tongue. "Pull your socks up, Ah Chee, an' think of something."The Messman brooded darkly. "S'pose you go shore-side, catchee salmon, catchee snipe, pl'aps can do.""By Jove, yes," said the A.P., rising and walking to the scuttle. "We never thought of that. But it's a God-forsaken place—look at it."The ship was anchored in a little bay off the mouth of a shallow river. On one side the ground rose abruptly to a bleak promontory, and on the other stretched a waste of sand-dunes. Inland not a tree or vestige of human habitation broke the dreary expanse of plain, which was covered with stunted bushes and rolled away to a range of low hills in the distance."All very fine to talk about salmon," said the Young Doctor, "but there isn't a rod in the ship, and no one could use it if there was.""Make one," suggested the Junior Watchkeeper, with cheerful resource begotten of cocktails."But flies—? A rod's no good without flies and things.""I'll make a spinner. They won't take a fly in these parts, a fellow told me at Shanghai. 'Sides, we can't chuck a fly."The Carpenter was summoned to the conclave, and the result of his labours was a formidable spar, resembling more closely a hop-pole than a salmon-rod, some fourteen feet in length."Why not take the lower boom and have done with it?" inquired the Young Doctor, who had abandoned 'Bradshaw' in favour of his gun-case, and was dabbling with awful joy in oil and cotton-waste.The Junior Watch-keeper vouched no reply. His was the spirit of the "Compleat Angler," and armed with a nippers and clasp-knife he wrestled grimly with the lid of a tobacco-tin. Half an hour's toil, conducted in profane silence, resulted in a triangular object which, embellished with red bunting and bristling with hooks, he passed round for the startled consideration of the Mess."Well," admitted the Young Doctor, with the air of one generously conceding a debatable point, "youmightcatch the bottom, with a certain amount of luck, but—" a well-flung cushion cut short further criticism, and the Committee of Supplies adjourned.The rising sun next morning beheld three depressed-looking figures disembarking on the sandy beach. The Junior Watch-keeper had fashioned a wondrous reel out of pieces of a cigar-box, and the Boatswain had provided about thirty fathoms of mackrel-line and some thin wire. The A.P. essayed a joke about using the rod as a flagstaff to commemorate their landing, but it lacked savour—as indeed jests do in the pale light of dawn. Wreaths of mist hung over the river, swirling between sandy banks, leaden-grey and noiseless. A few gulls wheeled overhead, protesting at the invasion with dismal cries, and the waves broke whispering along the beach in an arc of foam.The three adventurers gazed despondently at the sand-dunes, the receding stern of the boat, and finally each other's sleepy, unshaven faces. The Young Doctor broke suddenly into a feeble cackle of laughter. An unfamiliar chord of memory vibrated, and with it came a vision of a certain coffee-stall outside Charing Cross Station and the Junior Watch-keeper's wan face surmounted by a battered opera-hat. "Jove!" he murmured. "... Reminds me ... Covent Garden Ball...!"The A.P. had toiled to the top of an adjacent mound, from which, like Moses of old, he "surveyed the landscape o'er." "Come on," he shouted valiantly."Well," said the Junior Watch-keeper, "Vive le sport! If there were no fools there'd be no fun." He shouldered his strange impedimenta and joined the A.P.Away to their left a glint of water showed intermittently as the river wound between clumps of low bushes and hillocks. Patches of level ground covered with reeds and coarse grass fought with the sand-dunes, and stretched away in dreary perspective to the hills. Briefly they arranged their plan of campaign: the Junior Watch-keeper was to fish up-stream, the other two meeting him about five miles inland in a couple of hours' time. They separated, and the Junior Watchkeeper dipped behind a rise and was lost to view.It is not recorded what exactly the snipe were doing that day. The Young Doctor had it that they were "taking a day off," the A.P. that they had struck the wrong part of the country. But the melancholy fact remains that two hours later they sat down to share their sandwiches with empty bags and clean barrels. A faint shout from out of the distance started them again into activity."He's fallen in," suggested the Young Doctor with cheerful promptitude."Sat on the hook, more likely." There was grim relish in the A.P.'s tone. Neither was prepared for the spectacle that met their astonished eyes when they reached the river.Standing on a partly submerged sand-bank, in the middle of the stream, dripping wet and "full of strange oaths," was the Junior Watchkeeper. The point of his rod was agitated like the staff of a Morse signaller's flag, while a smother of foam and occasional glimpses of a silver belly twenty yards up-stream testified that the age of miracles had not yet passed."Play him, you fool!" yelled the A.P."Can't," wailed the Junior Watch-keeper, battling with the rod. "The reel's jammed!""Look out, then!" shouted the Young Doctor, and the safety-catch of his gun snapped. "Let me have a shot——"But the Junior Watch-keeper had abandoned his rod. Seizing the stout line in his fingers, his feet braced in the yielding sand, shamelessly he hauled the lordly fish, fighting, to his feet. "Come on," he spluttered, "bear a hand, you blokes!" The "blokes" rushed into the shallows, and together they floundered amid a tangle of line and showers of spray, grabbing for its gills. Eventually it was flung ashore, and thecoup de grâceadministered with the butt-end of the A.P.'s gun."Thirty pounds, if it's an ounce," gasped the Junior Watch-keeper, wringing the water out of his trousers. They stood and surveyed it in amazed silence, struck dumb with the wonder of the thing. Contrasted with the salmon as they knew it—decorated with sprigs of fennel on a fishmonger's slab—it looked an uncouth creature, with an underhung jaw and a curiously arched back. The A.P. prodded it suspiciously with the toe of his boot."'S'pose it's all right—eh? Clean run, an' all the rest of it?""Course it is," replied the Junior Watchkeeper indignantly. He knew no more about its condition than the other two, but his was all the pride of capture. He relieved the tedium of the return journey with tales of wondrous salmon that lurked in pools beneath the bank; unmoved they listened to outrageous yarns of still larger salmon that swam in open-mouthed pursuit of the home-made spinner, jostling each other by reason of their numbers. The Junior Watch-keeper had set out that morning an honourable man, who had never angled for anything larger than a stickleback in his life. He returned at noon hugging a thirty-pound salmon, his mouth speaking vanity and lies."An' I nearly shot the damn thing," sighed the Young Doctor at the close of the recital."Whatdidyou shoot, by the way?" asked the Junior Watch-keeper loftily."Nothing," was the curt reply, and his cup of happiness ran over.* * * * *The principal guest of the evening eyed a generous helping of salmon that was placed in front of him, and turned to his neighbour. "Pardon me," he said courteously, "but does this fish happen to have been caught in any of the local rivers?"All eyes turned to the Junior Watchkeeper, who, prevented by a mouthful from replying, sat breathing heavily through his nose. "Because if it was," went on the Russian, "I think I ought to warn you—at the risk of giving you offence—that local salmon are poisonous. That is, unfit for human consumption."Followed an awful silence. The Young Doctor broke it. "How interesting," he observed feebly; "but why?"The Russian shook his head. "I don't really know. And I hope you will forgive me for assuring you that they are dangerous to the health.""Oh," said the captor faintly, "I've eaten my whack!"The remainder of the dinner was not, gastronomically speaking, a success. The Mess and their guests eyed one another at intervals with furtive apprehension, much as Cleopatra's poisoned slaves must have awaited the appearance of each other's symptoms. But it was not until some hours later that the Young Doctor was awakened by some one calling his name aloud. He sat up in his bunk and listened, and presently it was borne upon him that somewhere, in the stillness of the night, watches, the Junior Watch-keeper was dreeing his weird.XII.THAT WHICH REMAINED.Oddly enough, no record exists of the origin of his nickname. "Periwinkle" he had been all through crammer andBritanniadays. As senior Signal Midshipman of the Mediterranean Flagship, he was still "The Periwinkle," small for his years, skinny as a weasel, with straight black hair, and grey eyes set wide apart in a brown face; the eyelashes, black and short, grew very close together, which gave him the perpetual appearance of having recently coaled ship and neglected to clean the dust from his eyes.The Signal Midshipmen of a fleet, especially the Mediterranean Fleet of those days, were essentially keen on their "job." The nature of the work and inter-ship rivalry provided for that. But with the Periwinkle, Signals were more than a mere "job." They formed his creed and recreation: the flag-lockers were tarpaulin-covered shrines; the semaphores spoke oracles by day as did the flashing lamps by night. And the high priest of these mysteries was the Flag-Lieutenant, a Rugby International and right good fellow withal, but, to the Periwinkle, a very god who walked among men.To understand something of his hero-worship you would need to have been on the bridge when the Fleet put out to sea for tactics. It was sufficient for the Periwinkle to watch this immaculate, imperturbable being snap out a string of signals apparently from memory, as he so often did, while hoist after hoist of flags leaped from the lockers and sped skywards, and the bridge was a whirl of bunting. Even the Admiral, who spoke so little and saw so much, was in danger of becoming a mere puppet in the boy's sight.But there was more than this to encourage his ardour. The Flag-Lieutenant, recognising the material of a signalman of unusual promise, would invite the Periwinkle to his cabin after dinner and unfold, with the aid of printed diagrams and little brass oblongs representing ships, the tactical and strategical mysteries of his craft. There was one unforgettable evening, too, when the Periwinkle was bidden to dinner ashore at the Malta Club. The dinner was followed by a dance, whereat, in further token of esteem, the Flag-Lieutenant introduced him to a lady of surpassing loveliness—The Fairest (the Periwinkle was given to understand) of All the Pippins.The spring gave place to summer, and the island became a glaring wilderness of sun-baked rock. For obscure reasons of policy the Fleet remained at Malta instead of departing on its usual cruise, and week after week the sun blazed pitilessly down on the awnings of the anchored ships. Week by week the Periwinkle grew more brown and angular, and lost a little more of his wiry activity. The frequent stampedes up and down ladders with signals for the Admiral sent him into a lather like a nervous horse; at the end of a watch his hair was wet with perspiration and his whites hung clammily on his meagre limbs. After a while, too, he began to find the glare tell, and to ease the aching of his eyes, had sometimes to shift the telescope from one eye to the other in the middle of a signal. As a matter of fact, there was no necessity for him to read signals at all: that was part of the signalman's duty. And if he had chosen to be more leisurely in his ascent and descent of ladders, no one would have called him to account. But his zeal was a flame within him, and terror lest he earned a rebuke from the Flag-Lieutenant for lack of smartness, lent wings to his tired heels.It was August when the Flag-Lieutenant sought out the Fleet Surgeon in the Wardroom after dinner, and broached the subject of the Periwinkle."P.M.O., I wish you'd have a look at that shrimp; he's knocking himself up in this heat. He swears he's all right, but he looks fit for nothing but hospital."So the Periwinkle was summoned to the Fleet Surgeon's cabin. Vehemently he asserted that he had never felt better in his life, and the most the fatherly old Irishman could extort from him was the admission that he had not been sleeping particularly well. As a matter of fact he had not slept for three nights past; but fear lest he should be "put on the list" forbade his admitting either this or the shooting pain behind his eyes, which by now was almost continual. The outcome of the interview, however, was an order to turn in forthwith. Next morning the Periwinkle was ignominiously hoisted over the side in a cot—loudly protesting at the indignity of not even being allowed to walk—en route for Bighi Hospital as a fever patient.II.The news of the world is transmitted to Naval Stations abroad by cable, and promulgated by means of Wireless Telegraphy to ships cruising or out of reach of visual signalling. At Malta the news is distributed to ships present in harbour by semaphore from the Castile, an eminence above the town of Valletta, commanding the Grand Harbour and nearly opposite the Naval Hospital.One morning a group of convalescents were sunning themselves on the balcony of the hospital, and one, watching the life of the harbour through a telescope, suddenly exclaimed, "Stand by! They're going to make the Reuter Telegram. I wonder how the Navy got on at Lords.""It's hopeless trying to read it," said another, "they make it at such a beastly rate."The Periwinkle, fuming in bed in an adjacent ward, overheard the speaker. In a second he was on his feet and at the open window, a tousled-haired object in striped pyjamas, crinkling his eyes in the glare. "I can read it, sir; lend me the glass.""You ought to be in bed, my son. Haven't you got Malta Fever?""It's very slight," replied the Periwinkle—as indeed it was,—"and I'm quite as warm out here as in bed. May I borrow your glass?"He took the telescope and steadied it against a pillar. The distant semaphore began waving, and the group of convalescents settled down to listen. But no sound came from the boy. He was standing with the eye-piece held to his right eye, motionless as a statue. A light wind fluttered the gaudy pyjamas, and their owner lowered the glass with a little frown, half-puzzled, half-irritated."I—it's—there's something wrong—" he began, and abruptly put the glass to his left eye. "Ah, that's better...." He commenced reading, but in a minute or two his voice faltered and trailed off into silence. He changed the glass to his right, and back to his left eye. Then, lowering it, turned a white scared face to the seated group. "I'm afraid I can't read any more," he said in a curiously dry voice; "I—it hurts my eyes."He returned the glass to its owner and hopped back into bed, where he sat with the clothes drawn up under his chin, sweating lightly.After a while he closed his left eye and looked cautiously round the room. The tops of objects appeared indistinctly out of a grey mist. It was like looking at a partly fogged negative. He closed his right eye and repeated the process with the other. His field of vision was clear then, except for a speck of grey fog that hung threateningly in the upper left-hand corner.By dinner-time he could see nothing with the right eye, and the fog had closed on half the left eye's vision.At tea-time he called the Sister on duty—"My eyes—hurt ... frightfully." Thus the Periwinkle, striving to hedge with Destiny."Do they?" sympathised the Sister. "I'll tell the Surgeon when he comes round to-night, and he'll give you something for them. I shouldn't read for the present if I were you."The Periwinkle smiled grimly, as if she had made a joke, and lay back, every nerve in his body strung to breaking-point."Can't see, eh?" The visiting Surgeon who leaned over his bed a few hours later looked at him from under puzzled brows. "Can't see—d'you mean...." He picked up an illustrated paper, holding it about a yard away, and pointed to a word in block type: "What's this word?"The Periwinkle stared past him with a face like a flint. "I can't see the paper. I can't see you ... or the room, or—or—anything.... I'm blind." His voice trembled.To the terror by night that followed was added physical pain past anything he had experienced or imagined in his short life. It almost amazed him that anything could hurt so much and not rob him of consciousness. The next room held a sufferer who raved in delirium: cursing, praying, and shrieking alternately. The tortured voice rose in the stillness of the night to a howl, and the Periwinkle set his teeth grimly. He was not alone in torment, but his was still the power to meet it like a man.By the end of a week the pain had left him. At intervals during this period he was guided to a dark room—for the matter of that, all rooms were dark to him—and unseen beings bandied strange technicalities about his ears. "Optic neuritis ... retrobulbar ... atrophy." The words meant nothing to the boy, and their meaning mattered less. For nothing, they told him, could give him back his sight. After that they left him alone, to wait with what patience he might until the next P. & O. steamer passed through.His first visitor was the Chaplain, the most well-meaning of men, whose voice quavered with pity as he spoke at some length of resignation and the beauty of cheerfulness in affliction. On his departure, the Periwinkle caught the rustle of the Sister's dress."Sister," said the boy, "will you please go away for a few minutes. I'm afraid I have to swear—out loud.""But you mustn't," she expostulated, slightly taken aback. "It's—it's very wicked.""Can't help that," replied the Periwinkle austerely. "Please go at once; I'm going to begin."Scandalised and offended—as well she might be—she left the Periwinkle to his godless self, and he swore aloud—satisfying, unintelligible, senseless lower-deckese. But when she brought him his tea an hour later she found he had the grace to look ashamed of himself, and forgave him. They subsequently became great friends, and at the Periwinkle's dictation she wrote long cheerful letters that began: "My dear Mother," and generally ended in suspicious-looking smudges.Every one visited the Periwinkle. His brethren from the Fleet arrived, bearing as gifts strange and awful delicacies that usually had to be confiscated, sympathising with the queer, clumsy tenderness of boyhood. The Flag-Lieutenant came often, always cheerful and optimistic, forbearing to voice a word of pity: for this the Periwinkle was inexpressibly grateful. He even brought the Fairest of All the Pippins, but the boy shrank a little from the tell-tale tremor she could never quite keep out of her voice. Her parting gift was an armful of roses, and on leaving she bent over till he could smell the faint scent of her hair. "Good-bye," she whispered; "go on being brave," and, to his wrathful astonishment, kissed him lightly on the mouth.There was the Admiral's wife too—childless herself—who, from long dealings with men, had acquired a brusque, almost masculine manner. As soon as he had satisfied himself that she evinced no outward desire to "slobber," the Periwinkle admitted her to his friendship. He subsequently confessed to the Sister that, for a woman, she read aloud extremely well. "Well, I must be goin'," she said one day at parting. "I'll bring John up to see you to-morrow." When she had gone, the Periwinkle smote his pillow. "John!" he gasped."John" was the Admiral.Even the crew of his cutter—just the ordinary rapscallion duty-crew of the boat he had commanded—trudged up one sweltering Sunday afternoon, and were ushered with creaking boots and moist, shiny faces into his ward."Bein' as we 'ad an arfternoon orf, sir," began the spokesman, who was also the Coxswain of the boat. But at the sight of the wavering, sightless eyes, although prompted by nudges and husky whispers, he forgot his carefully-prepared sentences."We reckoned we'd come an' give you a chuck-up, like, sir," concluded another, and instead of the elaborate speech they had deemed the occasion demanded, they told him of their victory in a three-mile race over a rival cutter. How afterwards they had generously fraternised with the vanquished crew,—so generously that the port stroke—"'im as we calls 'Nobby' Clark, sir, if you remembers"—was at that moment languishing in a cell, as a result of the lavish hospitality that had prevailed. Finally, the Periwinkle extended a thin hand to the darkness, to be gripped in turn by fourteen leathery fists, ere their owners tiptoed out of the room and out of his life.III.The Periwinkle found blindness an easier matter to bear in the ward of a hospital than on board the P. & O. Liner by which he was invalided home. A Naval Sick-berth Steward attended to his wants, helped him to dress, and looked after him generally. But every familiar smell and sound of ship-life awoke poignant memories of the ship-life of former days, and filled him with bitter woe. He was morbidly sensitive of his blindness, too, and for days moped in his cabin alone, fiercely repelling any attempt at sympathy or companionship. Then, by degrees, the ship's doctor coaxed him up into a deck-chair, and sat beside him, warding off intruders and telling stories with the inimitable drollery that is the heritage of the surgeons of P. & O. Liners. And at night, when the decks were clear, and every throb of the propellers was a reminder of the home they were drawing near to, he would link his arm loosely within the boy's and together they would walk to and fro. During these promenades he invariably treated the Periwinkle as a man of advanced years and experience, whereby was no little balm in Gilead.Many people tried to make a fuss of the boy with the sullen mouth, whose cheek-bones looked as if they were coming through the skin, and who had such a sad story. Wealthy globe-trotters, Anglo-Indians, missionaries, and ladies of singular charm and beauty, all strove according to their lights to comfort him. But by degrees they realised he never wanted to play cat's-cradle or even discuss his mother, and so left him in peace.But the boy had a friend beside the doctor, a grizzled major from an Indian Frontier regiment, returning home on furlough with a V.C. tacked on to his unpretentious name. At first the Periwinkle rather shrank from a fresh acquaintance—it is a terrible thing to have to shake hands with an unknown voice. But he was an incorrigible little hero-worshipper, and this man with the deep steady voice had done and seen wonderful things. Further, he didn't mind talking about them—to the Periwinkle; so that the boy, as he sat clasping his ankles and staring out to sea with sightless eyes, was told stories which, a week later, the newspaper reporters of the Kingdom desired to hear in vain.He was a philosopher too, this bronzed, grey-haired, warrior with the sun-puckered eyes: teaching how, if you only take the trouble to look for it, a golden thread of humour runs through all the sombre warp and woof of life; and of "Hope which ... outwears the accidents of life and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death."This is the nicest sort of philosophy.But for all that it was a weary voyage, and the Periwinkle was a brown-faced ghost, all knees and elbows and angularities by the time Tilbury was reached. The first to board the ship was a lady, pale and sweetly dignified, whom the doctor met at the gangway and piloted to the Periwinkle's cabin. He opened the door before he turned and fled, and so heard, in her greeting of the Periwinkle, the infinite love and compassion that can thrill a woman's voice.* * * * *In a corner of the railway carriage that carried them home, the Periwinkle—that maimed and battered knight—still clung to the haft of his broken sword. "I meant to do so jolly well. Oh, mother, I meant you to be so jolly proud of me. The Flag-Lieutenant said I might have been ... if only it had been an arm or a leg—deaf or dumb ... but there's nothing left in all the world ... it's empty—nothing remains."She waited till the storms of self-pity and rebellion passed, leaving him biting his fingers and breathing hard. Then little by little, with mysterious tenderness, she drew out the iron that had entered the boyish soul. And, at the last, he turned to her with a little fluttering sigh, as a very tired child abandons a puzzle. She bent her head low—"This remains," she whispered.
III.
A P. & O. liner, a few months later, carried Jerry and Jubbs to China. During the voyage they came in contact with a hitherto unrecognised factor in life, and found themselves faced with unforeseen perplexities. One evening, as they leaned over the rail experimenting gingerly with two cigars, Jubbs unburdened himself. "... Besides, they jaw such awful rot," was his final summary of feminine allurements. Jerry nodded, tranquil-eyed. "I know. I told Mrs What's-her-name—that woman with the ear-rings—that I'd got one mother already; and as I'm going to China, and she's going to India, I didn't see the use of being tremendous friends. 'Sides, she's as old as the hills."
Jerry! Jerry! The lady in question was barely thirty, even if she had an unaccountable partiality for taking him into the bows to watch the moon rise over the Indian Ocean.
They joined their ship at Hong-Kong, and found themselves members of a crowded, cockroach-haunted gunroom, where every one was on the best of terms with every one else, and there reigned a communism undreamed of in their philosophy. It is said that in those days of stress and novelty, among unknown faces and unfamiliar surroundings, their friendship bound them in ever-closer ties. The Sub-Lieutenant, when occasion arose for the chastisement of one, thrashed the other out of sheer pity. They kept watch, took in signal exercise, went ashore, shot snipe, picnicked and went through their multifarious duties generally within hail of one another. Till at length Jerry's call of "Jubbs!" and Jubbs' unfailing "Coming!" brought half-wistful smiles to older eyes.
The Boxer rising broke out like a sudden flame, and their letters home, those voluminous and ill-spelt missives that meant so much to the recipients, announced the momentous tidings. Jerry was landing in charge of a maxim gun; Jubbs was to be aide-de-camp to the Commander. Their whites were being dyed a warlike tint of khaki, and they were being sent up to take part in the defence of Tientsin. For a while silence, then at last a letter scrawled in pencil on some provision wrappers. Jerry boasted a three-weeks' growth of stubble, and had killed several peculiarly ferocious Boxer bravos. They were looking forward to being moved up to Peking for the relief of the Legations, and there was practically no danger as long as a fellow took reasonable precautions. He had not seen Jubbs for some time, but expected to meet him before long.
As a matter of fact, they came together the next afternoon, and their meeting-place was a Joss-house that had been converted into a temporary field-hospital. Jerry was the first to arrive, "in the bight of a canvas trough"—Jerry, very white and quiet, a purple-brown stain spreading over his dusty tunic and a bullet lodged somewhere near the base of the spine. Towards sunset he became conscious, and the Red Cross nursing sister supported his head while he drank tepid water from a tin mug. "'Sparkling Cider,'" he whispered weakly, "for luck, ... thank you, mummie darling."
The firing outside was becoming intermittent and gradually growing more distant, when the patch of dusty sunlight in the doorway was darkened by a fresh arrival. The stretcher party laid him on the bed next to Jerry and departed. The Surgeon made a brief examination, and as he straightened up, met the pitying eyes of the Red Cross sister. He shook his head.
"The poor children," she whispered. Outside there came a sudden renewal of firing and the spiteful stammer of a maxim. It died away, and there was silence, broken by the buzzing of flies in the doorway and the sound of some one fighting for his breath. In the heavy air the sickly smell of iodoform mingled with the odours of departed joss-sticks and sun-baked earth.
Suddenly, from a bed in the shadows, a weak voice spoke—
"Jubbs!" said Jerry.
A moment's pause, while the motionless figure in the next bed gathered energy for a last effort of speech. Then—
"Coming!" said Jubbs.
X.
THE CHOSEN FOUR.
The Admiral, it was rumoured, had said, "Let there be Signal Midshipmen." Wherefore the Flag-Lieutenant communed with the Commander, who sent for the Senior Midshipman.
The Senior Midshipman responded to the summons with an alacrity that hinted at a conscience not wholly void of offence.
"Let there be Signal Midshipmen," said the Commander, or words to that effect, "in four watches."
"Aye, aye, sir," said the Senior Midshipman. He emerged from the Commander's cabin and breathed deeply, as one who had passed unscathed through a grave crisis. Apparently that small matter of the picket-boat's damaged stem-piece had been overlooked.
Ere he was out of earshot, however, the Commander spoke again. "By the way," added the Arbiter of his little destinies, "I don't want to see your name in the leave-book again until the picket-boat is repaired."
"Aye, aye, sir," repeated the Senior Midshipman. He descended to the Gunroom, where, it being "make-and-mend" afternoon, his brethren were wrapped in guileless slumber. An 'Inman's Nautical Tables,' lying handy on the table, described a parabola through the air, and, striking a prominent portion of the nearest sleeper's anatomy, ricochetted into his neighbour's face. The two sat up, glowered suspiciously at each other for an instant, and joined battle. The shock of their conflict overturned a form, and two more recumbent figures awoke wrathfully to "life and power and thought."
"You four," announced the Senior Midshipman calmly, when the uproar had subsided, "will take on signal duty from to-morrow morning." Then, having satisfactorily discharged the duty imposed upon him, he settled himself to slumber on the settee.
Three of the four, to whom this announcement was made gasped and were silent.Signals! Under the very eye of the Admiral! Each one saw himself an embryo Flag-Lieutenant.... One even made a little prophetic motion with his left arm, as though irked by the aiguilette that in fancy already encircled it. The fourth alone spoke—-
"Crikey!" he muttered, "an' my only decent pair of breeches are in the scran-bag"[#]
[#] The "scran-bag" is the receptacle for articles of clothing, &c., left lying about at First Lieutenant's rounds in the morning. Gear thus impounded can be redeemed once a week by payment of a bar of soap.
* * * * *
Men say that with the passing of "Masts and Yards" the romance of the Naval Service died. This is for those to judge who have seen a fleet of modern battleships flung plunging from one complex formation to another at the dip of a "wisp of coloured bunting," and have watched the stutter of a speck of light, as unseen ships talk across leagues of darkness.
The fascination of a game only partly understood, yet ever hinting vast possibilities, seized upon the minds of the Chosen Four. Morse and semaphore of course they knew, and the crude translations of the flags were also familiar enough. But the inner mysteries of the science (and in these days it is a very science) had not as yet unfolded themselves.
At intervals the Flag-Lieutenant would summon them to his cabin, where, with the aid of the Signal Books and little oblong pieces of brass, he demonstrated the working of a Fleet from the signal point of view, and how a mistake in the position of a flag in the hoist might result in chaos—and worse.
The Chosen Four sat wide-eyed at his feet amid cigarette ash and the shattered fragments of the Third Commandment.
Harbour watch-keeping perfected their semaphore and Morse, till by ceaseless practice they could read general signals flashed at a speed that to the untrained eye is merely a bewildering flicker. As time wore on they began to acquire the almost uncanny powers of observation common to the lynx-eyed men around them on the bridge.
Each ship in a Fleet is addressed by hoisting that ship's numeral pendants. The ship thus addressed hoists an answering pendant in reply. At intervals all through the day the Signal Yeoman of the Watch would suddenly snap his glass to his eye, pause an instant as the wind unfurled a distant flutter of bunting at some ship's yard-arm, and then jump for the halyard that hoisted the answering pendant. The smartness of a ship's signal-bridge is the smartness of that ship, and in consequence this is a game into which the stimulus of competition enters, Signal Boatswain, Midshipmen, and Yeomen vying with each other to be the first to give the shout, "Up Answer!"
One night at the Junior Officers' Club one of the Chosen Four encountered another of his ilk from a different ship: and, since at eighteen (if you are ever to become anything) shop is a right and necessary topic of conversation, they fell to discussing their respective bridges.
Presently said he of the other ship, waxing pot-valiant by reason of Marsala, "I'll bet you a dinner ashore we'll show your pendants before the week's up."
Now should a ship fail to see a signal made to her, other ships present can be very offensive by hoisting the pendants of the ship addressed at mast-head and yard-arms. This is to hold the delinquent up as an object of scorn and derision to the Fleet, and is a fate more dreaded by right-minded signalmen than the Plagues of Egypt.
"An' I'll give you fifteen seconds' grace," added the speaker.
The challenge was accepted, and for five sweltering days—it was summer at Malta—the two ships watched each other from sunrise till dark, the pendants "bent" to the halyards in readiness. On the evening of the sixth day a thunderstorm that had been brewing all the afternoon burst in a torrential downpour over the harbour. At that instant a signal crept to the flagship's yard-arm.
On board the ship addressed the Midshipman had dashed for the shelter of the bridge-house, the Yeoman was struggling into an oilskin, and the Second Hand had stepped into the lee of a search-light.
"Stand by—thirteen, fourteen..." counted the small figure standing in the driving rain on the flagship's bridge, watch in hand: "fifteen, Hoist!" Then for the first time in his short career he deserted his post. Clattering pell-mell down the ladders to the Gunroom, where the remainder of the Chosen Four were playing cut-throat whist, he flung back the drab-coloured curtain.
"Got him!" he shouted triumphantly. "By the aching stomach, I had himcold!"
* * * * *
I have said that of the Chosen Four—three saw visions, while the other bewailed the inaccessibility till the end of the week of his best trousers. Now of the four he alone came to wear the aiguilettes of a Flag-Lieutenant, and to-day the mysteries of Tactics, Fleet Organisation and Formation, are to him as an open book. A Baker Street photographer once had the temerity to display his photograph in the window, in uniform, tinted. Passing by, I heard a woman gush foolishly to her companion, "Oh, isn't he a darling!"
The relevancy of this anon.
Another forsook the bunting-draped path of Signals to climb to fame through the smoke of many battle practices. He now adds after his rank the cryptic initial (G). The third married an heiress and her relations, and retired. He has several children and is reported to have lost interest in the Service.
The remaining one, when I saw him last, had also lost interest in the Service. He was lying in a curiously crumpled heap across the stakes of a jungle stockade, his empty revolver dangling by the lanyard round his neck. A handful of his men fought like demons to recover possession of the mutilated body.
"Sure," said a bearded Petty Officer, half apologetically, wiping his cutlass with a tussock of grass, "we couldn't lave him there—an' himself somewan's darlin', likely..."
Sailors are inveterate sentimentalists.
XI.
A COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY.
The Junior Watch-keeper entered the Wardroom and rang the bell with an air of gloomy mystery.
"The Russians are coming," he announced. "Cocktail, please, waiter."
The Young Doctor looked up from the year-old 'Bradshaw' with which he was wont to enliven moments of depression by arranging mythical week-ends at friends' houses in various parts of England. It was a dreary amusement, and, conducted off the coast of Russian Tartary, stamped him as the possessor of no small imaginative powers.
"Who said so?"
"Skipper: three Russian Destroyers, an' we're to invite them to dinner, an' there's nothing to eat." The Junior Watch-keeper managed the affairs of the Mess for that quarter.
"Those chaps feed like fighting-cocks," observed the Assistant Paymaster. "Let's send for the Messman."
The Junior Watch-keeper applied himself to his cocktail in silence, and the Celestial bandit who, in consideration of a monthly levy of thirty dollars per head, starved or poisoned them according to his whim, appeared in the doorway. The Mess broached the subject with quailing hearts; it was proposed to dine the representatives of a foreign Power. Could he for once rise to the occasion and produce a suitable repast?
The Oriental summed up the situation with impassive brevity—
"No can do."
"Oh, rot!" said the Junior Watch-keeper, who up to this juncture had been gracefully pursuing the olive at the bottom of his glass with the tip of his tongue. "Pull your socks up, Ah Chee, an' think of something."
The Messman brooded darkly. "S'pose you go shore-side, catchee salmon, catchee snipe, pl'aps can do."
"By Jove, yes," said the A.P., rising and walking to the scuttle. "We never thought of that. But it's a God-forsaken place—look at it."
The ship was anchored in a little bay off the mouth of a shallow river. On one side the ground rose abruptly to a bleak promontory, and on the other stretched a waste of sand-dunes. Inland not a tree or vestige of human habitation broke the dreary expanse of plain, which was covered with stunted bushes and rolled away to a range of low hills in the distance.
"All very fine to talk about salmon," said the Young Doctor, "but there isn't a rod in the ship, and no one could use it if there was."
"Make one," suggested the Junior Watchkeeper, with cheerful resource begotten of cocktails.
"But flies—? A rod's no good without flies and things."
"I'll make a spinner. They won't take a fly in these parts, a fellow told me at Shanghai. 'Sides, we can't chuck a fly."
The Carpenter was summoned to the conclave, and the result of his labours was a formidable spar, resembling more closely a hop-pole than a salmon-rod, some fourteen feet in length.
"Why not take the lower boom and have done with it?" inquired the Young Doctor, who had abandoned 'Bradshaw' in favour of his gun-case, and was dabbling with awful joy in oil and cotton-waste.
The Junior Watch-keeper vouched no reply. His was the spirit of the "Compleat Angler," and armed with a nippers and clasp-knife he wrestled grimly with the lid of a tobacco-tin. Half an hour's toil, conducted in profane silence, resulted in a triangular object which, embellished with red bunting and bristling with hooks, he passed round for the startled consideration of the Mess.
"Well," admitted the Young Doctor, with the air of one generously conceding a debatable point, "youmightcatch the bottom, with a certain amount of luck, but—" a well-flung cushion cut short further criticism, and the Committee of Supplies adjourned.
The rising sun next morning beheld three depressed-looking figures disembarking on the sandy beach. The Junior Watch-keeper had fashioned a wondrous reel out of pieces of a cigar-box, and the Boatswain had provided about thirty fathoms of mackrel-line and some thin wire. The A.P. essayed a joke about using the rod as a flagstaff to commemorate their landing, but it lacked savour—as indeed jests do in the pale light of dawn. Wreaths of mist hung over the river, swirling between sandy banks, leaden-grey and noiseless. A few gulls wheeled overhead, protesting at the invasion with dismal cries, and the waves broke whispering along the beach in an arc of foam.
The three adventurers gazed despondently at the sand-dunes, the receding stern of the boat, and finally each other's sleepy, unshaven faces. The Young Doctor broke suddenly into a feeble cackle of laughter. An unfamiliar chord of memory vibrated, and with it came a vision of a certain coffee-stall outside Charing Cross Station and the Junior Watch-keeper's wan face surmounted by a battered opera-hat. "Jove!" he murmured. "... Reminds me ... Covent Garden Ball...!"
The A.P. had toiled to the top of an adjacent mound, from which, like Moses of old, he "surveyed the landscape o'er." "Come on," he shouted valiantly.
"Well," said the Junior Watch-keeper, "Vive le sport! If there were no fools there'd be no fun." He shouldered his strange impedimenta and joined the A.P.
Away to their left a glint of water showed intermittently as the river wound between clumps of low bushes and hillocks. Patches of level ground covered with reeds and coarse grass fought with the sand-dunes, and stretched away in dreary perspective to the hills. Briefly they arranged their plan of campaign: the Junior Watch-keeper was to fish up-stream, the other two meeting him about five miles inland in a couple of hours' time. They separated, and the Junior Watchkeeper dipped behind a rise and was lost to view.
It is not recorded what exactly the snipe were doing that day. The Young Doctor had it that they were "taking a day off," the A.P. that they had struck the wrong part of the country. But the melancholy fact remains that two hours later they sat down to share their sandwiches with empty bags and clean barrels. A faint shout from out of the distance started them again into activity.
"He's fallen in," suggested the Young Doctor with cheerful promptitude.
"Sat on the hook, more likely." There was grim relish in the A.P.'s tone. Neither was prepared for the spectacle that met their astonished eyes when they reached the river.
Standing on a partly submerged sand-bank, in the middle of the stream, dripping wet and "full of strange oaths," was the Junior Watchkeeper. The point of his rod was agitated like the staff of a Morse signaller's flag, while a smother of foam and occasional glimpses of a silver belly twenty yards up-stream testified that the age of miracles had not yet passed.
"Play him, you fool!" yelled the A.P.
"Can't," wailed the Junior Watch-keeper, battling with the rod. "The reel's jammed!"
"Look out, then!" shouted the Young Doctor, and the safety-catch of his gun snapped. "Let me have a shot——"
But the Junior Watch-keeper had abandoned his rod. Seizing the stout line in his fingers, his feet braced in the yielding sand, shamelessly he hauled the lordly fish, fighting, to his feet. "Come on," he spluttered, "bear a hand, you blokes!" The "blokes" rushed into the shallows, and together they floundered amid a tangle of line and showers of spray, grabbing for its gills. Eventually it was flung ashore, and thecoup de grâceadministered with the butt-end of the A.P.'s gun.
"Thirty pounds, if it's an ounce," gasped the Junior Watch-keeper, wringing the water out of his trousers. They stood and surveyed it in amazed silence, struck dumb with the wonder of the thing. Contrasted with the salmon as they knew it—decorated with sprigs of fennel on a fishmonger's slab—it looked an uncouth creature, with an underhung jaw and a curiously arched back. The A.P. prodded it suspiciously with the toe of his boot.
"'S'pose it's all right—eh? Clean run, an' all the rest of it?"
"Course it is," replied the Junior Watchkeeper indignantly. He knew no more about its condition than the other two, but his was all the pride of capture. He relieved the tedium of the return journey with tales of wondrous salmon that lurked in pools beneath the bank; unmoved they listened to outrageous yarns of still larger salmon that swam in open-mouthed pursuit of the home-made spinner, jostling each other by reason of their numbers. The Junior Watch-keeper had set out that morning an honourable man, who had never angled for anything larger than a stickleback in his life. He returned at noon hugging a thirty-pound salmon, his mouth speaking vanity and lies.
"An' I nearly shot the damn thing," sighed the Young Doctor at the close of the recital.
"Whatdidyou shoot, by the way?" asked the Junior Watch-keeper loftily.
"Nothing," was the curt reply, and his cup of happiness ran over.
* * * * *
The principal guest of the evening eyed a generous helping of salmon that was placed in front of him, and turned to his neighbour. "Pardon me," he said courteously, "but does this fish happen to have been caught in any of the local rivers?"
All eyes turned to the Junior Watchkeeper, who, prevented by a mouthful from replying, sat breathing heavily through his nose. "Because if it was," went on the Russian, "I think I ought to warn you—at the risk of giving you offence—that local salmon are poisonous. That is, unfit for human consumption."
Followed an awful silence. The Young Doctor broke it. "How interesting," he observed feebly; "but why?"
The Russian shook his head. "I don't really know. And I hope you will forgive me for assuring you that they are dangerous to the health."
"Oh," said the captor faintly, "I've eaten my whack!"
The remainder of the dinner was not, gastronomically speaking, a success. The Mess and their guests eyed one another at intervals with furtive apprehension, much as Cleopatra's poisoned slaves must have awaited the appearance of each other's symptoms. But it was not until some hours later that the Young Doctor was awakened by some one calling his name aloud. He sat up in his bunk and listened, and presently it was borne upon him that somewhere, in the stillness of the night, watches, the Junior Watch-keeper was dreeing his weird.
XII.
THAT WHICH REMAINED.
Oddly enough, no record exists of the origin of his nickname. "Periwinkle" he had been all through crammer andBritanniadays. As senior Signal Midshipman of the Mediterranean Flagship, he was still "The Periwinkle," small for his years, skinny as a weasel, with straight black hair, and grey eyes set wide apart in a brown face; the eyelashes, black and short, grew very close together, which gave him the perpetual appearance of having recently coaled ship and neglected to clean the dust from his eyes.
The Signal Midshipmen of a fleet, especially the Mediterranean Fleet of those days, were essentially keen on their "job." The nature of the work and inter-ship rivalry provided for that. But with the Periwinkle, Signals were more than a mere "job." They formed his creed and recreation: the flag-lockers were tarpaulin-covered shrines; the semaphores spoke oracles by day as did the flashing lamps by night. And the high priest of these mysteries was the Flag-Lieutenant, a Rugby International and right good fellow withal, but, to the Periwinkle, a very god who walked among men.
To understand something of his hero-worship you would need to have been on the bridge when the Fleet put out to sea for tactics. It was sufficient for the Periwinkle to watch this immaculate, imperturbable being snap out a string of signals apparently from memory, as he so often did, while hoist after hoist of flags leaped from the lockers and sped skywards, and the bridge was a whirl of bunting. Even the Admiral, who spoke so little and saw so much, was in danger of becoming a mere puppet in the boy's sight.
But there was more than this to encourage his ardour. The Flag-Lieutenant, recognising the material of a signalman of unusual promise, would invite the Periwinkle to his cabin after dinner and unfold, with the aid of printed diagrams and little brass oblongs representing ships, the tactical and strategical mysteries of his craft. There was one unforgettable evening, too, when the Periwinkle was bidden to dinner ashore at the Malta Club. The dinner was followed by a dance, whereat, in further token of esteem, the Flag-Lieutenant introduced him to a lady of surpassing loveliness—The Fairest (the Periwinkle was given to understand) of All the Pippins.
The spring gave place to summer, and the island became a glaring wilderness of sun-baked rock. For obscure reasons of policy the Fleet remained at Malta instead of departing on its usual cruise, and week after week the sun blazed pitilessly down on the awnings of the anchored ships. Week by week the Periwinkle grew more brown and angular, and lost a little more of his wiry activity. The frequent stampedes up and down ladders with signals for the Admiral sent him into a lather like a nervous horse; at the end of a watch his hair was wet with perspiration and his whites hung clammily on his meagre limbs. After a while, too, he began to find the glare tell, and to ease the aching of his eyes, had sometimes to shift the telescope from one eye to the other in the middle of a signal. As a matter of fact, there was no necessity for him to read signals at all: that was part of the signalman's duty. And if he had chosen to be more leisurely in his ascent and descent of ladders, no one would have called him to account. But his zeal was a flame within him, and terror lest he earned a rebuke from the Flag-Lieutenant for lack of smartness, lent wings to his tired heels.
It was August when the Flag-Lieutenant sought out the Fleet Surgeon in the Wardroom after dinner, and broached the subject of the Periwinkle.
"P.M.O., I wish you'd have a look at that shrimp; he's knocking himself up in this heat. He swears he's all right, but he looks fit for nothing but hospital."
So the Periwinkle was summoned to the Fleet Surgeon's cabin. Vehemently he asserted that he had never felt better in his life, and the most the fatherly old Irishman could extort from him was the admission that he had not been sleeping particularly well. As a matter of fact he had not slept for three nights past; but fear lest he should be "put on the list" forbade his admitting either this or the shooting pain behind his eyes, which by now was almost continual. The outcome of the interview, however, was an order to turn in forthwith. Next morning the Periwinkle was ignominiously hoisted over the side in a cot—loudly protesting at the indignity of not even being allowed to walk—en route for Bighi Hospital as a fever patient.
II.
The news of the world is transmitted to Naval Stations abroad by cable, and promulgated by means of Wireless Telegraphy to ships cruising or out of reach of visual signalling. At Malta the news is distributed to ships present in harbour by semaphore from the Castile, an eminence above the town of Valletta, commanding the Grand Harbour and nearly opposite the Naval Hospital.
One morning a group of convalescents were sunning themselves on the balcony of the hospital, and one, watching the life of the harbour through a telescope, suddenly exclaimed, "Stand by! They're going to make the Reuter Telegram. I wonder how the Navy got on at Lords."
"It's hopeless trying to read it," said another, "they make it at such a beastly rate."
The Periwinkle, fuming in bed in an adjacent ward, overheard the speaker. In a second he was on his feet and at the open window, a tousled-haired object in striped pyjamas, crinkling his eyes in the glare. "I can read it, sir; lend me the glass."
"You ought to be in bed, my son. Haven't you got Malta Fever?"
"It's very slight," replied the Periwinkle—as indeed it was,—"and I'm quite as warm out here as in bed. May I borrow your glass?"
He took the telescope and steadied it against a pillar. The distant semaphore began waving, and the group of convalescents settled down to listen. But no sound came from the boy. He was standing with the eye-piece held to his right eye, motionless as a statue. A light wind fluttered the gaudy pyjamas, and their owner lowered the glass with a little frown, half-puzzled, half-irritated.
"I—it's—there's something wrong—" he began, and abruptly put the glass to his left eye. "Ah, that's better...." He commenced reading, but in a minute or two his voice faltered and trailed off into silence. He changed the glass to his right, and back to his left eye. Then, lowering it, turned a white scared face to the seated group. "I'm afraid I can't read any more," he said in a curiously dry voice; "I—it hurts my eyes."
He returned the glass to its owner and hopped back into bed, where he sat with the clothes drawn up under his chin, sweating lightly.
After a while he closed his left eye and looked cautiously round the room. The tops of objects appeared indistinctly out of a grey mist. It was like looking at a partly fogged negative. He closed his right eye and repeated the process with the other. His field of vision was clear then, except for a speck of grey fog that hung threateningly in the upper left-hand corner.
By dinner-time he could see nothing with the right eye, and the fog had closed on half the left eye's vision.
At tea-time he called the Sister on duty—
"My eyes—hurt ... frightfully." Thus the Periwinkle, striving to hedge with Destiny.
"Do they?" sympathised the Sister. "I'll tell the Surgeon when he comes round to-night, and he'll give you something for them. I shouldn't read for the present if I were you."
The Periwinkle smiled grimly, as if she had made a joke, and lay back, every nerve in his body strung to breaking-point.
"Can't see, eh?" The visiting Surgeon who leaned over his bed a few hours later looked at him from under puzzled brows. "Can't see—d'you mean...." He picked up an illustrated paper, holding it about a yard away, and pointed to a word in block type: "What's this word?"
The Periwinkle stared past him with a face like a flint. "I can't see the paper. I can't see you ... or the room, or—or—anything.... I'm blind." His voice trembled.
To the terror by night that followed was added physical pain past anything he had experienced or imagined in his short life. It almost amazed him that anything could hurt so much and not rob him of consciousness. The next room held a sufferer who raved in delirium: cursing, praying, and shrieking alternately. The tortured voice rose in the stillness of the night to a howl, and the Periwinkle set his teeth grimly. He was not alone in torment, but his was still the power to meet it like a man.
By the end of a week the pain had left him. At intervals during this period he was guided to a dark room—for the matter of that, all rooms were dark to him—and unseen beings bandied strange technicalities about his ears. "Optic neuritis ... retrobulbar ... atrophy." The words meant nothing to the boy, and their meaning mattered less. For nothing, they told him, could give him back his sight. After that they left him alone, to wait with what patience he might until the next P. & O. steamer passed through.
His first visitor was the Chaplain, the most well-meaning of men, whose voice quavered with pity as he spoke at some length of resignation and the beauty of cheerfulness in affliction. On his departure, the Periwinkle caught the rustle of the Sister's dress.
"Sister," said the boy, "will you please go away for a few minutes. I'm afraid I have to swear—out loud."
"But you mustn't," she expostulated, slightly taken aback. "It's—it's very wicked."
"Can't help that," replied the Periwinkle austerely. "Please go at once; I'm going to begin."
Scandalised and offended—as well she might be—she left the Periwinkle to his godless self, and he swore aloud—satisfying, unintelligible, senseless lower-deckese. But when she brought him his tea an hour later she found he had the grace to look ashamed of himself, and forgave him. They subsequently became great friends, and at the Periwinkle's dictation she wrote long cheerful letters that began: "My dear Mother," and generally ended in suspicious-looking smudges.
Every one visited the Periwinkle. His brethren from the Fleet arrived, bearing as gifts strange and awful delicacies that usually had to be confiscated, sympathising with the queer, clumsy tenderness of boyhood. The Flag-Lieutenant came often, always cheerful and optimistic, forbearing to voice a word of pity: for this the Periwinkle was inexpressibly grateful. He even brought the Fairest of All the Pippins, but the boy shrank a little from the tell-tale tremor she could never quite keep out of her voice. Her parting gift was an armful of roses, and on leaving she bent over till he could smell the faint scent of her hair. "Good-bye," she whispered; "go on being brave," and, to his wrathful astonishment, kissed him lightly on the mouth.
There was the Admiral's wife too—childless herself—who, from long dealings with men, had acquired a brusque, almost masculine manner. As soon as he had satisfied himself that she evinced no outward desire to "slobber," the Periwinkle admitted her to his friendship. He subsequently confessed to the Sister that, for a woman, she read aloud extremely well. "Well, I must be goin'," she said one day at parting. "I'll bring John up to see you to-morrow." When she had gone, the Periwinkle smote his pillow. "John!" he gasped.
"John" was the Admiral.
Even the crew of his cutter—just the ordinary rapscallion duty-crew of the boat he had commanded—trudged up one sweltering Sunday afternoon, and were ushered with creaking boots and moist, shiny faces into his ward.
"Bein' as we 'ad an arfternoon orf, sir," began the spokesman, who was also the Coxswain of the boat. But at the sight of the wavering, sightless eyes, although prompted by nudges and husky whispers, he forgot his carefully-prepared sentences.
"We reckoned we'd come an' give you a chuck-up, like, sir," concluded another, and instead of the elaborate speech they had deemed the occasion demanded, they told him of their victory in a three-mile race over a rival cutter. How afterwards they had generously fraternised with the vanquished crew,—so generously that the port stroke—"'im as we calls 'Nobby' Clark, sir, if you remembers"—was at that moment languishing in a cell, as a result of the lavish hospitality that had prevailed. Finally, the Periwinkle extended a thin hand to the darkness, to be gripped in turn by fourteen leathery fists, ere their owners tiptoed out of the room and out of his life.
III.
The Periwinkle found blindness an easier matter to bear in the ward of a hospital than on board the P. & O. Liner by which he was invalided home. A Naval Sick-berth Steward attended to his wants, helped him to dress, and looked after him generally. But every familiar smell and sound of ship-life awoke poignant memories of the ship-life of former days, and filled him with bitter woe. He was morbidly sensitive of his blindness, too, and for days moped in his cabin alone, fiercely repelling any attempt at sympathy or companionship. Then, by degrees, the ship's doctor coaxed him up into a deck-chair, and sat beside him, warding off intruders and telling stories with the inimitable drollery that is the heritage of the surgeons of P. & O. Liners. And at night, when the decks were clear, and every throb of the propellers was a reminder of the home they were drawing near to, he would link his arm loosely within the boy's and together they would walk to and fro. During these promenades he invariably treated the Periwinkle as a man of advanced years and experience, whereby was no little balm in Gilead.
Many people tried to make a fuss of the boy with the sullen mouth, whose cheek-bones looked as if they were coming through the skin, and who had such a sad story. Wealthy globe-trotters, Anglo-Indians, missionaries, and ladies of singular charm and beauty, all strove according to their lights to comfort him. But by degrees they realised he never wanted to play cat's-cradle or even discuss his mother, and so left him in peace.
But the boy had a friend beside the doctor, a grizzled major from an Indian Frontier regiment, returning home on furlough with a V.C. tacked on to his unpretentious name. At first the Periwinkle rather shrank from a fresh acquaintance—it is a terrible thing to have to shake hands with an unknown voice. But he was an incorrigible little hero-worshipper, and this man with the deep steady voice had done and seen wonderful things. Further, he didn't mind talking about them—to the Periwinkle; so that the boy, as he sat clasping his ankles and staring out to sea with sightless eyes, was told stories which, a week later, the newspaper reporters of the Kingdom desired to hear in vain.
He was a philosopher too, this bronzed, grey-haired, warrior with the sun-puckered eyes: teaching how, if you only take the trouble to look for it, a golden thread of humour runs through all the sombre warp and woof of life; and of "Hope which ... outwears the accidents of life and reaches with tremulous hand beyond the grave and death."
This is the nicest sort of philosophy.
But for all that it was a weary voyage, and the Periwinkle was a brown-faced ghost, all knees and elbows and angularities by the time Tilbury was reached. The first to board the ship was a lady, pale and sweetly dignified, whom the doctor met at the gangway and piloted to the Periwinkle's cabin. He opened the door before he turned and fled, and so heard, in her greeting of the Periwinkle, the infinite love and compassion that can thrill a woman's voice.
* * * * *
In a corner of the railway carriage that carried them home, the Periwinkle—that maimed and battered knight—still clung to the haft of his broken sword. "I meant to do so jolly well. Oh, mother, I meant you to be so jolly proud of me. The Flag-Lieutenant said I might have been ... if only it had been an arm or a leg—deaf or dumb ... but there's nothing left in all the world ... it's empty—nothing remains."
She waited till the storms of self-pity and rebellion passed, leaving him biting his fingers and breathing hard. Then little by little, with mysterious tenderness, she drew out the iron that had entered the boyish soul. And, at the last, he turned to her with a little fluttering sigh, as a very tired child abandons a puzzle. She bent her head low—
"This remains," she whispered.