"'Eave out all yer dead an' dyin','Eave out all yer bones an' fat,'Eave out the stiff o' 'Littl' Willie,'An' I'll give yu my 'at."
"'Eave out all yer dead an' dyin','Eave out all yer bones an' fat,'Eave out the stiff o' 'Littl' Willie,'An' I'll give yu my 'at."
"'Eave out all yer dead an' dyin','Eave out all yer bones an' fat,'Eave out the stiff o' 'Littl' Willie,'An' I'll give yu my 'at."
"Course I don't reely give 'em the 'at, sir," explained the singer, stopping for a moment in his march. "Th' 'at's only bait. But, jest th' same, they 'eaves out the bones an' fat all right. Last night they 'eaved a bone jest back o' me ear. Safest way's fer four o' us tu form a holler square an' so pertect the flanks, so tu speak. Nother thing. Yu 'eard me sing ''Eave out "Littl' Willie"' jest now? Wull, most times I sings it ''Eave out th' Kaisur's dotter,' meanin' Queen Sophy o' Greece, cose she's a rum un fer fair. But knowin' that in th' wardroom it warn't th' custim tu menshun a lydy's nyme in publick like, I brings in Willie insted."
"But why celebrate the young Hohenzollern in song at all?" I asked in perplexity. "I don't quite trace the connexion between the 'dead and dying,' and 'bones and fat' and the—the earthly remains of 'Little Willie.'"
"I ain't celebratin' 'em," explained "Joe"; "I'm abominatin' 'em, so tu speak. My refrunce is tu the dead an' dyin' sojers th' Kaisur cooks up tu make glysreen frum. I brings in Sophy an' Willie jest tu make 'em feel how they'd like it if 'twas their turn next."
Having cleared up this point, "Joe" beganto shuffle again. "Nother thing I sing 'em is th' follerin'," he said.
"'Eave out all yure bones, bottles, tins, fats, boots and shoes,If yu don't 'eave out you'll be sure to lose—Cose then I'll pinch th' 'ull blinkin' lot mesel'!"
"'Eave out all yure bones, bottles, tins, fats, boots and shoes,If yu don't 'eave out you'll be sure to lose—Cose then I'll pinch th' 'ull blinkin' lot mesel'!"
"'Eave out all yure bones, bottles, tins, fats, boots and shoes,If yu don't 'eave out you'll be sure to lose—Cose then I'll pinch th' 'ull blinkin' lot mesel'!"
"An' tyke it frum me, I does pinch 'em too," he added, stopping in front of me again. "Likewise, any other reefoose—like ov'ralls an' such left lyin' roun' wher' it 'adn't ought tu be. Sum times they gets 'em back, an' sum times they duzen't. Serves 'em jolly well rite for bein' keerless."
At this juncture I began to search my pockets for a piece of paper upon which to jot down the burden of "Joe's" cries.
"Never mind, sir," he said cheerily as my hands came up empty, "ther's allus whatev'r yure needin' in th' stayshunary line in my wastepaper dupartment."
He threw back the cover of a huge box, and at almost the first grab brought up a scented sheet of pink note paper which—except where some one had written "Dear Kitty—Just a line to tell you I am in the pink and hoping——" followed by a blot, and a grease-spot in the middle—was just as good as new.
"This dupartment is both my joy an' my sorrer," said "Joe" pensively, digging his arm deep into the soft depths. "I salves the story o' 'Arseen Lupin' an' a Gieves joolry catalog—both compleet—this mornin', an' I've laid by some 'Merican papers (Pittsburg, I b'leeve) feryu, sir. But th' tantylysin thing about it is what's allus missin'. Jest look at this, fer instance, sir," and he fished a greasy fragment of paper from a pocket of his overall and handed it to me. In a highly appropriate "atmosphere"—with the scent of fat to starboard, the fragrance of bones to port, and the ineffable odours of the "crumbs" grudgingly allotted to the "X. Y. Z.'s" piggery rising from the depths of the tub on the rim of which I sat—I read the following, just this and no word more:—
ISome rave about the subtle scents of Araby and Ind,Of camphor and of ambergris, of sandal-wood and musk,The poet chants the praises of the violet and the rose,And stately lilies standing by the dew-drenched lawn at dusk.IIMy lady loves the lavender with, slender ...The lover loves whatever perfume ...The cow-slips simple fragrance ...The pine-wood's spicy ...IIIBut, far beyond all ...The smell of ...
ISome rave about the subtle scents of Araby and Ind,Of camphor and of ambergris, of sandal-wood and musk,The poet chants the praises of the violet and the rose,And stately lilies standing by the dew-drenched lawn at dusk.IIMy lady loves the lavender with, slender ...The lover loves whatever perfume ...The cow-slips simple fragrance ...The pine-wood's spicy ...IIIBut, far beyond all ...The smell of ...
Some rave about the subtle scents of Araby and Ind,Of camphor and of ambergris, of sandal-wood and musk,The poet chants the praises of the violet and the rose,And stately lilies standing by the dew-drenched lawn at dusk.
My lady loves the lavender with, slender ...The lover loves whatever perfume ...The cow-slips simple fragrance ...The pine-wood's spicy ...
But, far beyond all ...The smell of ...
"It fair to druv me crazy huntin' fer that missin' peece," said "Joe" with a hurt sort of "'twas-ever-thus" expression in his eyes; "an' I felt it espeshul, sir, becus I writes po'try and songs a bit mysel'. 'E was jest workin'up tu a climacks, an' I'm wonderin' all th' time what it wuz that smelt better'n 'ambygris' an' musk an' roses an' lilies an' all the rest. D'yu spose, sir, it cud a bin that stuff they put in brilyantin?" and he ran stubby fingers through his hair in an apparent endeavour to waft me a whiff of the odour which had been there the Sunday before the last coaling.
A frivolous impulse prompted me to bid him ask the "X. Y. Z.'s" pigs, but the look in his eyes sobered me, and I said I felt sure it must have been "Attar of Roses," as that was said to be the most expensive of all perfumes.
"Joe" returned the fragment to his pocket, a brooding shadow sitting on his brow. "Ther' wuz only one thing ever fussed me more'n not locatin' th' end o' that pome, sir," he said sadly, beginning to fumble anew, "and that wuz this."
The greasy fragment which he unfolded and handed to me barely hung together at the blackened creases, but—well, no one who has ever watched wardroom firelight throw its rosy glow over the pinky pages ofLa Vie Parisiennewill ever fail to recognise the flimsiest wisp of it blowing before a winter gale.
"That's th' wrong side, sir," said "Joe," as I took the sheet tenderly and began to puzzle my way through a chart which was averred to be some sort of barometer of the emotions. "Scuse me, sir, but this is th' way. No, not like that. You've got 'er upside down. Ther',that's'er, or ruther wot's left o' 'er. Now wot d'yu think o' that fer tough luck?"
It had been just the usualLa Viepicture, nothing more or nothing less. A frou-frou oflingerie, a flash or two of pink cuticle, and—the rest was torn away.
"Wot makes it 'arder tu bear," said "Joe" mournfully, "is th' fack that it ain't offen that th' orficers let th' pictur' pages drift this far forrard th' wardroom. I 'ad picked up th' 'parly-voo' pages offen enuf, but a pictur', nary a one. An' now w'en this one comes, it's ripped off jest when it 'gins tu get good. Spose sum orficer, tryin' tu save matches, used th' best o' 'er tu lite 'is pipe wi."
I think that I did quite the kindest thing possible under the circumstances when I patted "Joe" sympathetically on the shoulder and assured him that, so far as my not inconsiderable experience withLa Viepictures went, there was nothing to indicate that this one "got any better" on the missing fragment, and that I felt quite confident that "th' best o' 'er" hadnotgone to light an "orficer's pipe."
Apparently a good deal cheered, "Joe" returned lightsomely to "shop," and told me with much gusto of a great find he had had that morning in the shape of an "'arf pound o' solid beef" hidden away in the angle of a bone. His first impulse, he said, had been to report the careless cook to the Fleet Paymaster, but on second thought he had decided to say nothing and contribute the morsel as "extra ration" to his mess.
"That way," he said philosophically, "I'llstop th' waste jest the same, an' yet won't start a ructshun wi' one o' me colleegs that mite throw me collectin' macheenry out o' order. Nuthin' like cuttin' down fricshun in this 'ere econ'my game."
There is a "Boney Joe" on every ship of the British Navy to-day. Could we not do with a few more of him in civil life as the time draws near when the hope of victory rests more and more on personal economy and universal saving?
There was a hint of Christmas in the long stacks of parcels mail on the station platform and the motley array of packages in the hands of the waiting sailors, but for the rest there was nothing to differentiate the "Fleetward"-bound train from the same train as one might have seen it on any other day of the year. There is only a certain small irreducible minimum of men which can be spared from a fighting ship which at any time is liable to be sent into action, and the season sacred to the Prince of Peace is no exception.
To the average land-lubber nothing could appear nearer to the height of misfortune than the lot of the sailor who has to leave a nice, warm, comfortable hearthside in the south of England and return to his unceasing vigil in the storm-tossed northern seas at the one time of year set apart above all others for the family and the home, and I did my best to introduce a note of sympathy into my voice when I tried to condole with the ruddy-faced man-o'-war's man who had kindly volunteered to help me find my compartment.
"'Ard to be goin' back abord on Crismus Day,you think, sir?" he asked with a grin. "P'haps it is jest a bit 'ard to leave the missus jest now, but—ther' ain't no qu'ues in Scarpa Flow, and I've got a jolly good lot o' mates waitin' fer me in the ol' ——. She's a happy ship if ther' ever wuz un, an' Crismus at sea ain't 'arf so bad as you mite think, sir."
That there were several hundred similar-minded philosophers travelling by that train became evident at a point where they met and mingled for a space with some of the "lucky" ones who were gathering there to go home on a leave which had providentially coincided with the holiday season. Scan as closely as I would the men in the long blue lines, there was nothing to distinguish the "returning from" to the "going on" save the fact that the former were bulging with Christmas parcels.
Nor was there about any of the officers I met in the course of my northward journey any suggestion of an air of martyrdom on account of the fact that it was their lot to spend Christmas afloat instead of ashore. One of them was going to join a Destroyer Flotilla leader, and was too busy congratulating himself on the fact that he was to be second to a commander who had the reputation of having a "nose for trouble," and the faculty of always being "among those present" when anything of interest occurred in the North Sea to have time to lament the fact that he was missing—this time by only a couple of days—his eighth consecutive Christmas with his family. Another had equally high hopes of the life ofadventure which awaited him in the light cruiser he had been appointed to, and a third entertained me for an hour with yarns of wardroom pranks on a battleship to which he was returning after a special course in gunnery at a south-coast port. It was the latter who used the identical expression in describing his ship as had been employed by the sailor I have quoted above.
"She's a happy ship, is the old ——," he said with an affectionate smile, "and it's glad I am to be getting back to her again."
The only man I met on the whole journey who seemed in the least sorry for himself was a King's Messenger—he was carrying a turkey under one arm and a dispatch box under the other—who complained that his schedule would not take him back to London until Christmas afternoon.
In the battleship to which I reported about the only evidence of Yule-tide observable on my arrival was the huge accumulation of "homebound" letters which the wardroom officers were engaged in censoring. The day before Christmas was distinctly "routine," with just a suggestion of festivity beginning to become manifest towards evening. The loungers by the wardroom fire smoked, chatted, and read the paper for an hour after dinner was over, but showed no disposition to melt away to bed as in the usual order of things. About ten o'clock a violin, banjo, and a one-stringed fiddle with a brass horn attached made their appearance, andupon these never entirely harmonising instruments their owners began inconsequentially to strum and scrape. As fragments of familiar airs became faintly recognisable, the loungers began to lay aside papers and cigars and to join in the choruses in that half-furtive manner so characteristic of the Briton in his first fore-running essays at "close harmony." Until he is assured of the vocal support of his neighbour, there is no sound in the world—from the roar of the lion to the roar of the cannon—which the average Englishman dreads so much as that of his own voice raised in song.
Volume increased with confidence, and it was not many minutes before the choruses were booming at full blast. For a while it was the more popular numbers from the late London revues which had the call, but these soon gave way to ragtime, and that in turn to those old familiar songs which have warmed the hearts and bound closer the ties of comradeship of the good fellows of the Anglo-Saxon world since ships first began to set sail from the shores of England to people the ends of the earth. From "Clementine" and "Who Killed Cock Robin?" to "Swanee River," and "My Old Kentucky Home," there was not a song that I had not heard—and even boomed raucously away in the choruses of myself—a hundred times in all parts of America. Every one of them is in the old "College Song Book," not a one of them, but which every man of the millions America is training for the Great Fight couldhave joined in without faking a word or a note.
A slight shifting of the gilt braid on the blue sleeves, a reshuffling of the papers and magazines on the table, and the wardroom of the —— might have passed for that of any American battleship. The interposing of four poster and pennant peppered walls, the placing of the lounging figures in proper mufti, and you would have had a room in an American college "frat house" or club. The men, the songs, the vibrant spirit of good fellowship would have done for either of the settings.
Poignantly suggestive of the things of bygone college days was the change which came over the spirit of the scene when an exuberant young sub-lieutenant began doing stunts by trying to climb round a service chair without touching the deck. His inevitable fall upset the tilted chair of a visiting "snotty," who was playing his mandolin, and an instant later the two were rolling in a close embrace. Suddenly some one shouted "scrum!" and with an impetuous rush the singers ranged themselves into two rival "Rugger" teams, each trying to push the other against the wall.
Twitching at the stir of long dormant impulses, I restrained myself with an effort from mixing in the joyous mêlée, and maintained my dignity as a newly arrived visitor by backing into a corner and erecting a sofa barricade against the swirling human tide.
"Shades of Stanford and old Encina Hall"(I found myself gasping), "it's a 'rough-house,' a real college 'rough-house.'"
While it lasted that "scrum" had all the fierce abandon of a Freshman-Sophomore "cane rush," but even at its very climax (when it had upset the electric heater and was threatening to engulf the coal stove) there was a differentiation. One sensed rather than saw the thread of control restraining it, and knew that every pushing, laughing player of the game was subconsciously alert for a signal that would send him, tense and ready, to the performance of those complexly simple duties training for which he had given the best part of his life.
"Rugger" gave place to "chair polo," and that highly diverting sport in turn to comparatively "formal" bouts of wrestling and feats of strength and agility. It was while a row of shirt-sleeved figures were at the height of a "bat" competition (which consisted of seeing which one could hang the longest by his toes from a steel beam of the ceiling) that the Fleet Surgeon edged gingerly in behind my barrier and remarked that it was "funny to think how that up-ended line of young fighting cocks might be tumbling from their roost to go to action stations at the next tick of the clock. And they'd fight just like they play," he went on, fingering a sprained wrist that was proffered for diagnosis. "We've not a single case of any kind in the hospital to-day, and the men are just as healthy in mind as they are in body. It's half the battle, let me tell you, to live in a happy ship."
Christmas morning broke cold and clear, with a roystering wind from the north furrowing the Flow with translucent ridges of white-capped jade and chrysoprase. All but the imperative routine duties of the ship were suspended, and the men spent many hours decorating the mess deck for their midday feast. When all was ready the band, its various members masquerading as everything from Red Cross nurses and ballet girls to German naval prisoners and American cowboys, came to lead the Captain and wardroom officers on their ceremonial Christmas visiting round. From mess to mess we marched, the capering band leading the way and a policeman with a "sausage" club shepherding the stragglers at the rear. Every table was loaded not only with its Christmas dinner, but also with all the gifts received by those who sat there, as well as with any trinkets or souvenirs they had picked up in the course of their foreign cruises. Especially and intentionally conspicuous were numerous home photographs, stuck up in or propped against the cakes and boxes of sweets. Most of the tables had "Merry Christmas" and various other seasonal mottoes printed with letters ingeniously built from cigarettes.
A running fire of greeting met us at every turn, and at each table cigarettes, sweets, or chunks of succulent plum pudding were pressed upon us. Acceptance for the most part was on the ancient "touch and remit" system. I noticed that the officers spoke to most of the men directly under them by name, and that the exchange ofgreetings was invariably of unfeigned cordiality on both sides. The tour completed, the band escorted us aft, where, with a hearty three cheers and a "tiger" for the Captain and Commander severally, and the wardroom officers jointly, it left us and rollicked back to serenade the feasters forward.
Christmas chapel was a simple Church of England service without a sermon, followed by Holy Communion for those who desired to celebrate it. Luncheon, in order that the wardroom servants could be free for feasting with their mates, was on the buffet plan, each officer serving himself from a side table.
Two or three of the men with whom I had spoken in the course of the morning round, had used that now familiar expression about the good fortune of being in a "happy" ship, but the climax was capped that evening at dinner (at which the wardroom entertained the Warrant Officers) when the Captain employed it in explaining the easybonne camaraderiecharacterising that interesting occasion. I had told him how many times I had heard the words in question since my arrival, and asked him point blank if I was to assume by implication that the other ships of the Fleet were only dismal prisons of steel in comparison.
"Perhaps the men would try to make you believe something to that effect," he laughed, "but so also would those of the '——,' and the '——,' and the '——' regarding each other, the rest of the squadron and the whole of the GrandFleet. As a matter of fact, if you had been on any one of them during the last twenty-four hours, you would probably have seen and heard and experienced just about what you have seen and heard and experienced here. You will not go far wrong if you say we are all 'Happy Ships' up here. The 'Happy Ship' is a tradition of the British Navy, and it's the one type of craft which does not become out of date with the march of science and the passage of the years."
I had crossed in the oldXerxesin those ancient days when, as the latest launched greyhound of the Cunarder fleet, she held for a few precarious months the constantly shifting blue-ribbon for the swiftest transatlantic passage; but in that angular "cubistic" lump of lead-grey looming over the bow of my spray-smothered launch to blot out the undulant skyline of the nearest Orkney, there was not one familiar feature. Her forward funnel had been "kippered" down the middle to somewhere about on the level of the lower deck, and carried up in two smaller stacks which rose abreast to port and starboard. This had been done (as I learned later) to make room for a platform leading forward from the waist over which seaplanes could be wheeled to the launching-stage, which ran out over the bow from beneath the bridge. The break in the forecastle had been closed in connexion with a sweeping alteration which had converted the whole forward end of the main deck into a roomy seaplane "repository" and repair shop.
The changes aft were no less startling. The old poop seemed to have been razed to extend the last two hundred feet of the main deck, andover the ten or fifteen-feet-high railing, which surrounded this, the top of a partly inflated observation balloon showed like the back of a half-submerged turtle. The whole effect was weird and "impossible" in the extreme, and I felt like exclaiming with the yokel who saw a giraffe for the first time: "Aw, there ain't no such animal."
I had been asked aboard theXerxesfor an afternoon of seaplane and balloon practice. I had already seen a good deal of the former at various points in the Mediterranean and Adriatic, but the towed observation balloon—the "kite," as they call it—was an entirely new thing. I "put in" at once for an ascent in a kite, for I was anxious not only to get some sort of a firsthand idea of how it was being employed against submarines—of which I had already heard not a little—and also to compare the work with that of handling the ordinary observation balloons, of which I had seen so much in France, Italy, and the Balkans. The captain—whom I found just getting the ship under weigh from the bridge—after some hesitation, promised to "see what he could do," if there was not too much wind, when he was ready for "balloon work."
To one who has had experience only of hangars on land, perhaps the most impressive thing about an "aeroship" is the amount of gear and equipment which can be stowed and handled in restricted spaces. Wings and rudders which fold and refold upon each other until they form compact bundles that can be trundled about bya man or two, collapsible fuselages and pontoons, wheels which detach at a touch of a lever, "knock-down" transmissions—these things were everywhere the rule. One "baby" scout I saw almost completely assembled on the launching-stage, and the "tail," which a couple of men wired to the main body in a little more than a minute, I would have sworn I could have knocked off with a single well-placed kick. Yet, five minutes later, I saw that same machine "loop," "side-flop," "double-bank," and (quite at the will of its young pilot, who is rated the most expert seaplane man in the British Naval Air Service) recover at the end of a five-hundred-feet rolling fall, all without apparently starting a strut or rivet. "Collapsibility" and portability are evidently secured without sacrificing any essential strength.
The science of working the seaplane from the deck of a ship is still in process of development. Even up to quite recently it was the practice to put a machine overboard on a sling, and allow it to start from the water. The use of detachable wheels—which fall off into the sea after they have served their purpose in giving the preliminary run—has made launching from the deck practicable and comparatively safe, but the problem of landing even a wheeled machine on deck has not yet been satisfactorily solved. On account of lack of room, most of the experiments in this direction have ended disastrously, even tragically.
When a seaplane is about to be launched, after the usual preliminary "tuning" up on thelaunching-stage, the ship is swung dead into the teeth of the wind and put at full speed. This matter of wind direction is very important, for its variation by a fraction of a point from "head-on" may easily make a crooked run and a fluky launching. As the latter would almost inevitably mean that both plane and pilot must be churned under the swiftly advancing fore-foot of the ship, no precautions calculated to avoid it are omitted. Besides a wind-pennant at one end of the bridge, assurance is made doubly sure by the turning on of a jet of steam in the mathematical centre of the extreme tip of the launching-stage. When the back-blown steam streams straight along the middle plank of the stage, the wind is "right."
The captain, from the bridge, lifts a small white flag as a signal to the wing-commander that all is ready. The latter nods to the pilot, who starts his engine at full speed, while two mechanicians, braced against cleats on the deck, hold back the tugging seaplane. If the "tone" of the engine is right, the wing-commander (standing in front of the plane, and a little to one side) brings down his red-and-yellow flag, with a sharp jerk, falls on his face to avoid a collision, and the machine, freed from the grip of the men holding it, jumps away. The next two seconds tell the tale, for if a seaplane "gets off the deck" properly, the rest of its flight is not likely to be "eventful."
At practice, a seaplane sails over and drops its detachable wheels near a waiting drifter, which picks them up and returns them to theship. The machine swoops low, and "kicks" loose the "spares" at a hundred feet or less above the surface of the water, and a pilot who let his wheels go from a considerably greater altitude drew a growl from the bridge, as a long fall is likely to injure them. Its flight over, a seaplane returns to the ship by alighting on the water several hundred yards astern, and floundering up alongside as best it can. With a high wind and a choppy sea, it is rough work. The machine is so "balanced" that its tractor propeller should revolve in the air and clear the water by several inches, even in a rough sea. It will occasionally strike into "green water," however, which is always likely to shatter the ends of the blades, if nothing else. The sheathing of the blades with metal affords considerable protection, though a certain risk is always present. The operation of picking a seaplane up and hoisting it inboard is a nice piece of seamanship at best, but in bad weather is a practicable impossibility. With a wind much above thirty miles an hour, indeed, only a very real need is likely to induce a "mother ship" to loose her birds from the home nest. With a sea too rough to make it possible for a seaplane to live in it, it is sometimes possible to carry on imperative reconnaisance by sending up an ordinary aeroplane (some of which are always carried); though the latter must, of course, make its landing onterra firmawhen its work is over.
The wind had been freshening considerably all afternoon, but with no more than thirty milesan hour showing on the indicator, there was no reason for not letting me have my "balloon ride."
As the time approached for its ascent, the balloon was allowed to rise far enough from the deck to permit its car to be pushed underneath the centre of it, in order that the latter might not be dragged in the "getaway." I could now see that the monster had rather the form of the "bag" of an airship than the "silkworm-with-stomach-cramps" shape of the regulation modern observation balloon. Its nose was less blunt than that of the "sausage," and the ropes were attached so that it would be pulled with that nose boring straight into the wind, instead of tilted upwards like that of its army prototype. The three "stabilisers" at its stern were located, and appeared to function, similarly with those of the "sausage."
The basket was mid-waist deep, and just big enough to hold comfortably two men sitting on the strips of canvas which served as seats. Supplementing our jackets, two small life-preservers of the ordinary type were lashed to the inside of the basket. When I asked about parachutes, I was told that, while it was customary to carry them, on this occasion—as they were worse than useless to a man who had not practised with them—it was best not to bother myself with one. "Stick to the basket if anything happens," some one said; "it will float for a month, even if full of water." Some one else admonished not to blow up my jacket until we had stopped rising, lest it (from the expanding air, I suppose) shouldin turn blow me up. Then we were off. The last thing I noticed on the deck was the ship's cat, which I had observed a few moments previously rubbing his arched back ecstatically against a sagging "stabiliser," making a wild leap to catch one of the trailing guide-ropes.
"He always does that," I heard my companion saying behind me. "Some day perhaps he will catch it, and then—if it happens at a time when there isn't an opportunity to wind in and let him down easy—I'm afraid there won't be a one of his nine lives left in the little furry pancake it will make of him when he hits the water. It's surprising how the water will flatten out a—anything striking it at the end of a thousand feet fall. Only the week before last——"
To deflect the conversation to more cheering channels, I began to exclaim about the view. And what a view it was! The oldXerxeswas lying well down towards one end of the mighty bay, so that without turning the head one could sweep the eyes over the single greatest unit of far-reaching might in the whole world war, the Grand Fleet of the British Navy. And in no other way than in ascending in a balloon or a flying machine could one attain a vantage from which the whole of the fleet could be seen. Looking from the loftiest fore-top, from the highest hill of the islands, there was always a point in the distance beyond which there was simply an amorphous slaty blur of ships melting into the loom of the encircling land. But now those mysterious blurs were crystallising into definitelines of cleavage, and soon—save where some especially fantastic trick of camouflage made one ship look like two in collision, or played some other equally scurvy trick on the vision—I could pick out not only battleships, but cruisers, destroyers, submarines, ranged class by class and row on row. Even the method in the apparent madness with which the swarms of supply ships, colliers, oilers, trawlers, and drifters were scattered about was discernible.
Save for the visibility, which was diamond-clear in the slanting light of the low-hanging winter sun, it was just an ordinary, average Grand Fleet day. A squadron of battleships was at target practice, and—even better than their own gunnery officers—we could tally the foam-jets of the "wides" and "shorts" and the narrowing "straddles." A squadron of visiting battle-cruisers had just come to anchor and were swinging lazily round to the tide. Two of them bore names which had echoed to the ends of the world; the names of two of the others—from their distinctive lines and great size, I recognised them as twin giants I had seen still in the slips on the Clyde scarcely a year previously—the world has never heard. A lean, swift scout-cruiser, with an absence of effort almost uncanny, was cleaving its way out toward the entrance just as a line of destroyers came scurrying in after the rolling smoke-pall the following wind was driving on ahead of them. Out over the open seas to the east, across the hill-tops of the islands, dim bituminous dabs on the horizonheralded the return of a battleship squadron, the unceremonious departure of which two days previously had deprived me of the last two courses of my luncheon. In the air was another "kite"—floating indolently above a battleship at anchor—and a half-dozen circling aeroplanes and seaplanes. Countless drifters and launches shuttled in and out through the evenly lined warships.
We were now towing with the cable forming an angle of about sixty degrees with the surface of the water, and running up to us straight over the port quarter. The ship had thinned down to an astonishingly slender sliver, not unsuggestive of a speeding arrow whose feathered shaft was represented by the foaming wake.
"She's three or four points off the wind," commented my companion, "and yet—once we've steadied down—you see it doesn't make much difference in the weather we make of it. A head wind is desirable in getting up to keep from fouling the upper works amidships, but we hardly need to figure it down to the last degree as in launching a seaplane. When we're really trying to find something, of course, we have to work in any slant of wind that happens to be blowing. The worst condition is a wind from anywhere abaft the beam, blowing at a faster rate than the towing ship is moving through the water. In that case, the balloon simply drifts ahead to the end of its tether, swings around, and gives the ship a tow. If the wind is strong enough—say, forty miles an hour, with the ship doingtwenty—to make her give a good steady pull on the cable, it is not so bad; but when it is touch-and-go between ship and wind the poor old 'kite' is all over the shop, and about as difficult to work in as to ride in—which is saying a good deal."
"What do you mean by work?" I asked.
"Looking out for things and reporting them to the ship over the telephone," was the reply. "Perhaps even trying to run them down and destroy them."
"Can't we play at a bit of work now?" I suggested. "Supposing we were at sea, and you saw what you thought to be the wake of the periscope of a U-boat a few miles away. What would you do?"
My companion laughed. "Well," he said, "if I had the oldXerxesdown there on the other end of the string, I should simply report the bearing and approximate distance of the periscope over the telephone, and let her do the rest."
"And what would 'the rest' consist of?" I asked.
"Principally of turning tail and running at top speed for the nearest protected waters," was the reply, "and incidentally 'broad-casting' a wireless giving position of the U-boat and the direction it was moving in."
"But supposing it was a destroyer we had 'on the string'?" I persisted; "and that you had no other present interest in the world beyond the finding of one of these little V-shaped ripples.Themodus operandiwould vary a bit in that case, wouldn't it?"
"Radically," he admitted. "I would give the destroyer what I figured was the shortest possible course to bring her into the vicinity of the U-boat. As long as the wake of the periscope was visible, I would correct that course from time to time by ordering so many degrees to port or to starboard, as the case might be. As soon as the periscope disappeared—which it would do, of course, just as soon as the eye at the bottom of it saw the 'kite'—I would merely make a guess at the submarine's most likely course, and steer the destroyer to converge with that. Our success or failure would then hinge upon whether or not I could get my eye on the submarine where it lurked or was making off under water. In that event—provided only there was enough light left to work with—it would be long odds against that U-boat ever seeing Wilhelmshaven again. Just as you guide a horse by turning it to left or right at the tug of a rein, so, by giving the destroyer a course, now to one side, now to the other, until it was headed straight over its prey, I would guide the craft at the other end of the telephone-wire to a point from which a depth-charge could be dropped with telling effect. If the conditions were favourable, I might even be able to form a rough estimate of the distance of the U-boat beneath the surface, to help in setting the hydrostat of the charge to explode at the proper depth. If the first shot fails to do the business, wehave only to double back and let off another. Nothing but the coming of night or of a storm is likely to save that U-boat once we've spotted it."
"Is it difficult to pick up a submarine under water?" I asked.
"That depends largely upon the light and the amount of sea running," was the reply. "Conditions are by no means so favourable as in the Mediterranean, but, at the same time, they are much better than in some other parts of the North Sea and the Atlantic. The condition of the surface of the water also has a lot to do with it. You can see a lot deeper when the sea is glassy smooth than when it is even slightly rippled. Waves tossed up enough to break into white-caps make it still harder to see far below the surface, while enough wind (as to-day) to throw a film of foam all over the water cuts off the view completely. On a smooth day, for instance, a drifter which lies on the bottom over there—deeper down than a U-boat is likely to go of its own free will—is fairly clearly defined from this height. To-day you couldn't find a sunk battleship there."
I remarked on the fact that, in spite of the heavy wind, our basket was riding more steadily than that of any stationary observation balloon I had ever been up in at the front. "It 'yaws' a bit," I observed, "but I have never been up in a balloon with less of that 'jig-a-jig' movement which makes it so hard to fix an object with your glasses."
"The latest 'stabilisers' have just about eliminated the troublesome 'jig-a-jig,'" replied my companion.
He turned to me with a grin. "You're in luck," he said. "Ship's heading up into the wind to let a seaplane go just as they're ready to wind us in. You'll learn, now, why they call one of these balloons a 'kite.' There they go! Hold fast!"
There was a sudden side-winding jerk, and then that perfectly good seascape—Grand Fleet, Orkneys, the north end of Scotland, and all—was hashed up into something full of zigzag lines like a Futuristic masterpiece or the latest thing in "scientific camouflaging." My friends on the deck told me, afterwards, that the basket didnot"loop-the-loop," that it didnot"jump through," "lie down," and "roll over" like a "clown" terrier in a circus; but how could they, who were a thousand feet away, know better than I, who was on the spot? When I put that poser to them, however, one of them replied that it was becausetheyhad their eyes open. The only sympathetic witness I found was one who admitted that, while the "kite" itself behaved with a good deal of dignity, the basketdidperform some evolutions not unremotely suggestive of a canvas water-bucket swung on the end of a rope by a sailor in a hurry for his morning "souse."
A signal came one morning, ordering the Grand Fleet to prepare to proceed to sea, and, almost as though the sparks of the wireless that caught the winged word had themselves lighted the laid and waiting fires, wreaths and coils of smoke began crowning some scores of towering funnels which a few moments before had loomed only in gaunt silhouette against the round snow-clad hillsides which ring the Northern Base.
Presently a dust-begrimed collier shook herself free from the moorings which held her to one of the battleships, and, floundering nervously as though anxious to get out of the way as quickly as possible, nosed off into the sooty wakes of three of her untidy sisters who had been coaling the other ships of the division.
Shortly the Engineer-Commander, his immediate duties at an end for the moment, came up for a breath of fresh air, and fell into step with me on the quarter-deck.
"There you have (so far as the Navy is concerned) the Alpha and the Omega of the coal," he said, motioning with his mittened hand, first toward the retiring colliers, and then, with asweeping gesture, to where the thickening smoke-columns were beginning to blend in a murky stratum of streaky black above the even lines of the anchored ships.
"All the energy (save only human force, and that stored in food and explosives) of the Fleet comes aboard from its colliers or oilers," he continued; "all that is left of it—after making steam to run the turbines and dynamos, and for working the condensers, cooking, and heating—goes up through the funnels or down through the clinker hoppers."
Then he told me of an incident which had occurred a day or two previously. "Some one came into the wardroom," he said, "and remarked casually that the wireless had just picked up a signal from a ship about to go ashore in the heavy storm then driving outside. 'What is she?' several officers asked with quick concern. 'Only a collier,' was the reply, and everybody, reassured, resumed the reading of their newly arrived papers. 'I was afraid it was a destroyer,' was the only comment any one made.
"That is just to show," said the Engineer-Commander, "how few in a warship (save those of us whose work is the conversion of it into energy) stop to think how vitally important coal really is to us. As a matter of fact, one can easily imagine circumstances in which the loss of a collier would be far more serious than that of a destroyer, cruiser, or even of a battleship."
It will doubtless surprise one not alreadyinformed in the matter to know that the average modern battleship lying at anchor and waiting to be ordered to sea may easily consume twenty-five tons of coal a day, which figure will be raised from 50 to 100 per cent. by one or two harbour spins at half or quarter-speed for target practice. The condensers make the greatest demand for coal in a battleship not under steam, with the running of dynamos for the numerous and constantly increasing electrical devices next in order. The galleys where the cooking and baking is done, are third on the list of consumers, with the cheery open grates—which are installed wherever practicable—accounting for the remainder.
The course of the coal from the hold of the collier to where, on the fire-bars, its potential energy is transformed into kinetic power to furnish power for a battleship is an interesting one, though I should not care to follow it quite so closely as did the ring of an officer I met not long ago. Emerging from the hold of a collier after a couple of hours spent there directing sack-filling, he missed a large signet-ring which he had been wearing when he descended into the dusty hole. Search was, of course, out of the question; but, by a lucky chance, he happened to mention his loss to one of the men who had been working in the hold. He, in turn, spoke of it in the mess-decks, which was the only reason that led the stoker, who, three days later at sea, found a shining lump of metal among the clinkers he was raking out to dump,to bring it to the officer in question. The gnarled, ash-pitted lump bore no resemblance to a ring; but a distorted, but still recognisable, section of the seal identified it beyond a doubt. It had been shovelled into a sack of coal, hoisted in the latter to the deck, dumped into a chute, finally to work out of the bottom of a bunker into the stokehold and be thrown under the boilers. A man can make the descent from the deck through an empty bunker to the stokehold without great discomfort, but would hardly survive being shut up in the former for long with the coal.
The speedy coaling of even an eight-knot tramp is almost always desirable; with a warship it may often mean the difference between success and failure. All of the principal navies of the world have given the matter much study and experiment, but down to this day no practicable contrivance has been evolved which will go far toward eliminating the variable human element in coaling. Something can be done with mechanical carriers where a ship can berth alongside high bunkers, but nothing of the kind appears to have been devised that is not too bulky to carry about in either a warship or a collier. The construction of a warship makes it impracticable to have large openings into which coal might be hoisted in bulk from a collier. The American Navy coals its battleships by hoisting that fuel to the decks with huge mechanical "grabs," but, according to such information as is available to me at this moment, thismethod (while effecting a saving in labour), does not approach for speed records the British have put up by man-handling the coal at every stage of its transit, except the hoisting.
Since a few minutes' time lost in the putting to sea of the million tons or so of warships which the British hold in leash against any sally in force of the German Fleet might easily be enough to spoil the chance of a decisive engagement, quick coaling has perhaps been given more attention in the Grand Fleet since the war than at any other time in the history of the British Navy. The time in which the various classes of ships can put to sea after receiving orders varies in different emergencies, and is hardly a proper topic of discussion in any detail. The coal in the bunkers of no ship is allowed to fall below a very high fixed minimum at any time, and even ships on special missions at sea always have enough in hand to allow them to reach and play a vigorous if tardy part in any conceivable kind of a general engagement that may ensue. The pursuance of this policy is responsible for the frequent and speedy coalings which are so much a feature of the regular "grind" at the Northern Base.
A ship may coal at any hour of the day or night—especially if she is just in from the sea and there appears to be a chance of her being called upon to put out again on short notice—but the usual time is the morning. Barrows and sacks are brought out, and such other preparations as practicable are made the night before.Breakfast is served at an early hour, every one—officers and men—coming down to it in their "coaling togs." The latter may be any old kind of a rig-out calculated to keep the coal-dust from penetrating to a minimum section of the hide of the wearer. A one-piece overall is a favourite garment with both men and officers, and a white summer cap-cover—worn like a cook's head-dress—serves a useful purpose in keeping the dust out of the hair. A layer of vaseline about the eyes makes it easier to remove the dust with soap and water after coaling, and a failure to take this precaution leaves one with the make-up of a moving-picture villain for two or three days. Practically all of the officers, with the exception of the paymasters and medical staff, have duties in connexion with coaling. Ordinarily, these are confined to directing various stages of the operation, but occasionally—perhaps to stimulate action when speedy work is desirable, or for the sheer exhilaration of exercise—one will take a spell with a shovel or barrow. On several ships of the Grand Fleet thePadreis one of the most useful "coalers."
The decks are black with waiting men as the collier comes alongside, and the instant the mooring-lines are made fast several hundred of them—each with a broad short-handled scoop—clamber over her rail and leap down into the open holds. Others toss down bundles of the sacks in which the coal is hoisted aboard. These sacks are a highly important and distinctive factor in British naval coaling, the ingeniousway in which they are used being largely responsible for the remarkable speed-records which have been put up. They are made of extremely heavy jute, bound with light manilla rope, and of a size sufficient to hold two hundredweight of coal. At the mouth are two beckets or iron rings, through which the strop is rove. Each sack weighs in the neighbourhood of 16 lb., even when new; water-soaked and smeared with a paste of coal-dust, its weight may be increased by from 20 to 50 per cent. Before the war, the cost of a sack was about 11s.6d., but the rise in jute must have made it much greater at the present time.
The sacks are filled by scoop in the holds of the collier, and dragged together in bunches of about a dozen each. The wire cable from the hoisting-boom is run through the rings at the mouth of each sack and made fast. As the winch winds in, it tightens and takes up the slack, thus drawing the mouths of the sacks together and preventing the spilling of coal in hoisting. The instant the sacks are hoisted to the deck of the warship a man casts loose one end of the wire cable, and on the swinging back of the whip it is pulled out of the rings, and the coal left ready for the barrowmen.
The barrow employed appears to differ in no essential detail from the truck used by railway porters in handling trunks. It is perhaps a little smaller than the average of the latter, and somewhat more "squattily" built. After the "technique" of picking up and dumping one'ssack is mastered, it is by no means difficult to handle, the main point being to trundle it as nearly as possible on the "balance," so that a minimum of strength is wasted in keeping the barrow from "sitting up" and "sitting down." Once these details are understood, any fairly strong man or boy should be equal to the physical exertion of coaling for two or three hours at a stretch without rest. A short, sturdily built man is at something of an advantage over a tall one, as the latter has to stoop considerably to bring his "centre of effort" behind his load.
The wheeling of the sacks, from the point where they are left in a tottering pile on the deck to the opening of the chutes down which their contents are dumped to the bunkers, is the most important stage of the operation, for the way it is carried out makes all the difference between a fast and a slow coaling. Obviously, then, it is to the organisation of this "traffic" that the greatest attention is given.
Since a battleship is primarily made for fighting, the facility with which coal may be taken aboard is necessarily a secondary consideration. Between turrets, hatches, and various other obstructions on the decks, the route by which a coal-sack is wheeled to a chute is always a devious one. Part of it usually runs across open deck, where "double-track traffic" is possible; at other points the way may be so narrow that only a single barrow can be wheeled through at a time, and even that only whencarefully steered. To avoid the latter "necks," the returning "empties" must, if possible, find an alternative route, or, if this is not practicable, going and returning barrows must be "flagged" through by turn, as on a congested stretch of city street when half of it is torn up for repairs. The same sort of thing occurs where the track of the loaded barrows crosses that of the returning empties. In both instances it is customary to give "loads" the right-of-way over "empties," the latter watching their chances to push through in the frequent "gaps" in the traffic of the former. It is in the "control" of the traffic at these points, and on the quick-wittedness of the men in keeping out of each other's way and avoiding a jam, that a great part of the secret of speedy coaling lies.
But perhaps we can learn more about it by taking our barrow and falling into line. The frost-silvered metal handles strike a chill to the fingers straight through your woolly mittens; but don't worry on that score—your own animal heat will more than even-up the balance by the time you have kept your place in line for ten minutes. The last of a pile of sacks has just been trundled away, and, to the scream of the winch, another "cluster" is rising slowly out of the hold to take its place. The scoopmen are falling into their stride by this time, and from now on you can expect them to be sending up a fresh "boquet" every forty or fifty seconds. That your barrow wheels may have a fair run, a man with a scoop pushes aside the lumps ofcoal which have fallen out of the last sacks, and another man shovels them up and throws them into a half-filled sack hanging to the rail. There is a warning cry of "Stand clear!" and the cluster of sacks plumps down upon the deck with a heavy thud.
Even while it is still in the air two men have seized corners of the swaying mass and pushed it along so that it lands in the centre of the rather restricted working space in this particular corner of the fo'c'sle deck. At the same time, one of them frees an end of the wire cable, and, as the boom retreats, the two help to make it run smoothly out through the beckets at the mouths of the sacks. At the release of the encircling grip of the cable some of the sacks begin to topple over, but before one of them has fallen to its side (which would, of course, result in the spilling of a good part of its contents), quick-footed barrowmen have pushed their trucks under them, and they are held sufficiently upright to retain their loads. A tug or two from one of the "loading" men sets a sack straight on a barrow, and the man behind the latter—watching from the corner of an eye to keep from fouling another load—backs quickly but carefully out, executes a dexterous right-about, and trundles off on a trot along the track to the nearest chute.
After three or four barrows have been pushed impatiently past you (the wheel of one of them over the toe of your sea-boot), you suddenly realise that the dump is no place for"Alphonse and Gaston" tactics, and decide to shove in on your own. Your timid advance, however, proves too slow to head off a more pushful mate in a "sou'wester," and he gets the "lip" of his barrow under the sack you had marked for your own. You edge back politely to make an exit for him and his load, and lo!—two other "vultures" pounce in upon the pair of remaining sacks and roll away with them. You jump back towards safety at the "Dump Bosses'" shout of "Stand clear!" step in the scoop of the man who is brushing up the "crumbs," stumble against the man who has charge of the sack on the rail, and in sitting down manage to thrust your barrow between the legs of one of the men who is humouring the fresh "boquet" of coal-sacks into place. So perfect is yourcamouflageof overall, sou'-wester, and sea-boots, that none of these hasty individuals whose activities you have inadvertently interfered with recognises you as an officer and gentleman in disguise, and each of them (without arresting a single motion) curses you fluently in the picturesque persiflage of the sea.
You salve your barrow as best you can, and stand by for the withdrawal of the "strop," which is your signal for action. In your eagerness you fail to give the "lip" of your barrow that "finessive" safety-razor sweep along the deck which experience subsequently teaches you is the proper way to get under your "White Man's Burden," and give the tottering sack youare nose-diving for a vigorous dig—just the same kind of a dig that the keen-edged "lip" of the barrow you have stepped in front of gives you on your Achillean tendon. The sack totters drunkenly and sludders down upon the deck; you reach the same—less directly, but with greater impact—by caroming off the barrow which has slashed your heel.
A spilled sack—in clogging the nicely adjusted coaling machine—always has the germ of a jam lurking in it, and only the two or three stout fellows who buck their laden barrows straight through the mess you have made—by clearing the last of the sacks away a hair's breadth before the next "boquet" descends upon them—avert disaster now. Luckily, they are able to swear and work at the same time, and, by plying their hands no less vigorously than their tongues, save the situation.
The man who throws the "crumbs" into the sack on the rail is less busy than the other dump hands, and he it is who finds leisure to insinuate that you ought to go to some place where they have no coaling to do. You have no time to consider whether he means—the place you would mean if you were in his place; for your honour is at stake now, and, scowling with grim, coldly calculative determination, you stand for the third trial. Neither too coy nor yet too impulsive this time, but by the exercise of such common sense as is still at your command, you press quietly but firmly toward the cluster of sacks and—by lifting your barrow bodily andjerking it sidewise for a few inches—manage to align it fairly evenly in front of a bulging bag of coal dust. It appears to require about as much effort on the part of one of the "load" hands to wriggle it aboard as it does on your part to tip back your barrow to something like a balance. But the fact remains that youdohave it stowed, and are ready to get under weigh.
It is the "coldly calculative, set-jaw" spirit which carries you through the next stage with fair success. It is no easy task to do your "right-about" on the slithery deck, but now that you are a "load" instead of an "empty" a tendency to help you on your way is at once in evidence. A couple of "empties" are edged back an inch or two to give you clearance, and a "load" accelerates to avoid giving you a "sideswipe." Where the deck slopes up under the elevated midship guns the petty officer who stands there to wave the traffic down the proper passage gives your sack a friendly kick to keep your barrow from losing weigh and checking the pushers crowding close on your heels.
You debouch to open deck on the port side and are about to push on in the wake of the man just ahead, when the corner of your eye catches the motion of the left-hand of the "traffic officer," and—with the going easy on the down slope—you execute a neat eight-point alteration of course and bring up smartly in front of an open "man-hole" just in time to replace a man who has dumped his sack and ducked out of your way. Unluckily, you have had no chance tostudy the "technique" of this operation, and it is not surprising that you run too close and dump your sack so that it falls with its mouth a foot beyond the hole and disgorges a part of its contents on the deck. As a consequence, the two men working here have to drag the sack back before emptying it, where (if you had dumped it properly) they would only have had to lift it by its corners and allow the coal to run out down the chute. Of course, they tell you what they think of you, and while you are answering that you are sorry for your mistake and will know how to avoid it next time, a sharp dig from an only half-checked barrow "lip" on your already wounded "Achilles tendon" helps to drive home the rule that—while there is no ban on talking, swearing and singing to your heart's content—the action of the tongue should not be allowed to paralyse the action of the feet.
The man ahead of you has disappeared at a trot, and in your eagerness to overtake him you lift the handles of your barrow too high, with the consequence that the first lump of coal that gets under the wheels brings it up standing, and you "telescope" against it. The lesson this drives home to you, together with the one that sinks in following the jam you create by your slowness in plunging through the procession of "loads" which must be passed in getting back to the dump, just about rounds out the basic essentials of your barrow-pushing education. You have learned how to keep out of the way; the rest is largely a matter of handling yourbarrow in a fashion to make the work easier, not only for yourself, but for the others whose operations "dovetail" with yours.
The work in the holds of the collier and the bunkers of the battleship, while perhaps a shade less strenuous physically than barrow-pushing, is a deal more dusty and unpleasant. Four holds are worked in the average collier, and in each of these are about thirty men. These work in six groups, each of which fills and stacks one "cluster" of sacks. The men alternate in holding sacks and shovelling. Special instructions are given that the sacks shall be completely filled, and that no pieces of coal too large to go down the chutes to the bunkers should be put in them. A maul is kept handy in each hold for smashing such lumps. A minimum of a dozen sacks are hoisted at one time, and occasionally this number is increased by two or three.
The coal dust is the unpleasant feature of working in the holds of the colliers, but even there it is nothing to the bunkers, where one actually feels it grinding between his teeth from the moment he enters. The coal falls in a steady stream from the chutes, the dust flying from it like the spray from a waterfall. There is no electric wiring, and the lights are open flares, good ventilation making the danger of an explosion from coal "damp" negligible. The men who work here shovelling the coal away from the chutes and passing it on toward the lower bunkers—would make the average chimney-sweep look like a white-winged angel. There isno way to avoid inhaling the settling dust with every breath, and I could well believe a red-eyed imp o' darkness (whom I found blinking like a bat in the sunshine after the collier had cast off) when he told me that he would be tasting the "bloomin' stuff for the next week."
The more one sees of coaling the more he marvels at the extent to which the human element enters into its success. A crew that is not both quick of foot and quick of wit will never have more than a mediocre coaling record. If a man has not both, when he is not getting in the way of his mates, he will be losing a few seconds here, and a few seconds there, until these run into minutes in the course of two or three hours. Multiplied by five or six hundred—the number of the men at work—it may well make the difference in a coaling rate of many score of tons per hour.
A keen interest and pride in the work is also asine qua nonof fast coaling. No ship in which there is not the best of feeling between the men and officers will ever maintain a high coaling average. Under the stimulus of imminent action, or when preparing to weigh anchor for some favourite port, things will move quickly, but the rate will not be maintained when the regular grind resumes. Indeed, slow coaling is, perhaps, the commonest form of "silent protest" on the part of a dissatisfied crew, and a ship which maintains a steadily depressed "curve of coaling" is generally credited with being due for a general shake-up of personnel.