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Nopropaganda poster artist with an eye to lurid backgrounds could have secured such an effect. Great buttresses of cloud, inky black with their burden of unshed snow, were banked about the sunset. The snow that had fallen during the past week rested like a shroud upon peak and headland, promontory and cliff-top, encircling the sombre waters of Ultima Thule with a dazzling white girdle. Against this background lay the Grand Fleet, an agglomeration of tripod masts and superimposed structures, as familiar a feature of the scene as the surf that broke endlessly about the cliffs, or the unappeased calling of the gulls. A little to the westward, however, where the cloud-masonry was split and reft by crimson shafts of light, an outstretched wing of the vast battle fleet struck an oddly unfamiliar note. Instead of the tripod masts and hooded control-tops, slender towers of latticed steel rose in pairs from eachhull. Against the black clouds, every ensign in the fleet was clearly discernible; but it was not the White Ensign that showed up so vividly above the strangers. It was the “Stars and Stripes” painted with the glory of a northern winter sunset.
Only a few weeks had elapsed since they arrived, rust-streaked and travel-stained, as ships might well be that had battled through one winter gale after another from Chesapeake Bay to Ultima Thule; and at the sight of them the grey, war-weary battle fleet of Britain burst into a roar of welcome such as had never before greeted a stranger within its gates in either peace or war. For—and herein lies the magic of the thing—these were not merely allies swinging up on to the flank of a common battle-line, but kinsmen joining kinsmen as an integral part of one fleet. The rattle of their cables through the hawse pipes was drowned by the tumult of cheering, and forthwith the American Admiral dispatched a telegram to Washington, whose laconic business-like brevity alone did justice to what may prove the most significant message of history: “Arrived as per schedule,” it said.
This linking of the two navies may need an explanation. It may be asked (it will be asked if I know anything of the talkers inthis war): Could not the American Fleet co-operate in the war without merging its identity in that of the British? The answer is this: Victory in modern naval warfare demands more than mere co-operation between allied squadrons. Navies fight otherwise than armies, whose generals can meet and confer even during the crisis of a battle. Squadrons working in unity afloat require one controlling intellect, one source of orders and information; one pair of shoulders, and one only, to take the burden of final responsibility.
Hence, to the sure shield of civilisation and the allied cause has been added a formidable buckler. The Grand Fleet has had grafted into its side a new rib and a stout one.
It must be realised, however, that a common speech between two nations does not necessarily mean that their respective navies talk in the same tongue. The system of signalling in the American Fleet, the significance of flags, the arrangement of codes and ciphers, are peculiarly and completely theirs. The meanings of the flags had nothing in common with the British. Their system has been evolved through generations; is, so to speak, their navy’s mother tongue. The signalmen of the Nth Battle Squadron, blowing on their numbed fingers amid the snowsof Ultima Thule, had to forget in twenty-four hours what had been laboriously taught them for years. They had to master a different-coloured alphabet as it is sighted two miles away tangled up in halliards or half obscured by funnel and (mayhap) battle smoke. Manœuvres on a scale they had hitherto regarded as exceptional: Fleet exercises and squadron competition, intership signalese (whereby the movement of a semaphore arm through fifteen degrees of the arc meant things undreamed of in their philosophy), tricks which northern visibility plays with daylight signalling—these things were their daily and nightly portion.
In the words of one of them, “it was a tough proposition,” and they tackled it like tigers. In a fortnight they were through with it. In a month the British signal boatswains rubbed their telescope lenses and said they were damned.
But the communication problem didn’t end there. Wireless plays an even more important part than visual signalling in naval warfare. It is important enough in peace, and the American Fleet had by no means neglected the subject. But aerial conditions in the region of Manilla differ considerably from those in the North Sea. Speaking radiographically, the North Sea is the mostcrowded thoroughfare in the world. All through the twenty-four hours ships and submarines and shore wireless stations are talking, talking, talking. British warnings to shipping on its lawful occasions, streams of lies from Berlin (branded at the outset “German Press Message”), cipher cryptograms from three Admiralties, destroyers bleating in a fog, appeals from a hunted merchantman—all these interspersed with the gibbering Telefunken of the German submarine.
Now the American wireless experts have been concerned principally with covering long distances. The development of “spark” and power in a comparatively undisturbed ether was the main preoccupation of their operators. From this serene condition, ships and silent cabinets passed into the windy parrot-house of the North Sea. Here, power, as they understood the term, was negligible. The greatest distance required of their Hertzian waves was a preposterous 400 miles or so. But not only had they to thread a way unbroken through this aerial Babel, but, what was even more difficult, the operator was required to detect and read messages on one tune in a vast discord of diverse and unfamiliar notes. It is even said that an Englishman’s touch on a sending key differs from that of an American asradically as the spoken accent differs. Yet, after a month of assiduous practice, the former are in a fair way to presenting as few difficulties to communication as the latter.
So much for the technical aspect of the affair. But there is another to consider: each nation having evolved, perfected, and adopted a system, considers it,ipso facto, the best system in the world. To ask a segment of that nation to dump the cherished thing overboard and adopt the theory and practice of another nation “likely not so good” is demanding much. That the order was obeyed instantly goes without saying. But let it be noted that it was obeyed in a spirit of uncritical loyalty and whole-souled enthusiasm by every man concerned from Admiral to Signal Boy. To this the British Commander-in-Chief has testified.
But after all, these matters are merely externals. In adopting British methods of communications and staff work for the smooth working of the whole, the American ships have not lost a jot of their identity. Their customs remain, with their traditions, American—indeed, they are but thrown into stronger relief; and the British Fleet around them is noting, drawing comparisons with intent interest, as two scions of the same family might meet and studygesture or physiognomy, searching eagerly for kindred traits. And daily the bonds are tightening.
. . . . .
The Admiral commanding the force of American battleships which constitutes the Nth Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet stood and thawed before the burnished radiator in his cabin.
“Now,” he said, “you’ve spent a day on board this ship. What struck you most? what remains your most vivid impression?”
I had been waiting for the question, and wondering what the deuce I was going to say. A man who spends ten crowded hours in unfamiliar surroundings, trying to draw comparisons between them and his accustomed environment, finds his impressions at the end of it like a jigsaw puzzle that has been upset.
I looked at him as he stood taking me in, and in the quizzical, humorous smile hovering about his eyes, in the set of his very imperturbable mouth, in his wholly comfortable attitude before the radiator, I read my answer. It was something that had been struggling for expression at the back of my brain all day.
“Well, sir,” I said (and then wished Icould have embarked on my explanation as our sailors do with “It’s like this ’ere, sir”), “to all intents and purposes you’ve dropped out of the skies plop into the middle of the Grand Fleet. It’s a fleet that has been 3-1/2 years at war. It belongs to the oldest and most conservative—if not the proudest—navy in the world. It’s got the Armada and the Nile and Copenhagen and Trafalgar and Jutland to its credit, and, I fancy, it takes a largish size in hats on the strength of it. It certainly has a standard by which to judge strangers.”
“Sure,” said the Admiral softly, with his eyes on the far-off snowy hills.
I took a long breath. I’m not used to making stump speeches to admirals. “Well, from the moment your ships rounded that headland the British Fleet has been sizing you up. Every boat that is manned and leaves your ship, every officer or man who moves about your decks, is being watched and criticised and studied by several thousand pairs of eyes. You live in the limelight.”
“Sure,” said the Admiral, so softly that it was hardly more than a gentle expiration between his teeth. He may have been wondering when I was coming to the point.
“Well, sir,” I continued, “all that is apt to make a very good man indeed self-conscious. I came over on the look-out for self-consciousness, like a lady visitor looks out for wet paint on board. I’ve been ten hours in your flagship, and I’ve talked to samples of every rank and rating. I’ve only seen one person self-conscious under friendly scrutiny.”
“Ah?” said the Admiral. His eyebrows lifted a shade.
“I caught sight of myself in a looking-glass,” I explained....
Not that this absence of self-consciousness is the outcome of indifference. The American Squadron is keenly alive to the intent observation it is undergoing. Its method of showing how aware was perhaps the most graceful imaginable. For a few days it visited one of the fleet’s more southerly bases, and the ships’ companies were given leave to visit a great town. Six thousand five hundred men availed themselves of this permission. They were greeted by the inhabitants with an enthusiasm that might well have thrown a staider and older set of men off their balance. The traditional British methods of extending hospitality were thrust upon these youngsters fresh from a long and arduous voyage. It might have resulted in atamashathat would have made the memory of Mafeking night seem like a temperance revival by comparison.Yet when those six thousand five hundred mortal men returned to their ships and the bonds of discipline—nine only were slightly under the influence of liquor. Nine all told.
Apropos of this visit, it may be added that it occurred at Christmas-time. Now, the flagship of the American Squadron is, I believe, known in the United States as the “Christmas-ship.” Americans are all probably familiar with the origin of this name; but for the benefit of my own countrymen, I must relate their pretty tradition. Every Christmas Day this particular ship lies in New York harbour; on Christmas Eve the crew goes ashore into the slums and Bowery, and every man invites a child to a dinner on board the following day. The little guests are carefully chosen. They are the type of child that would not otherwise eat a Christmas dinner, would not probably eat a dinner at all. The poorest of the poor, from gutter and dive and archway. And not only do these pathetic little guests get dinner, but also a suit of clothes, a toy, and a present of money.
For the first time the Christmas just passed found the “Christmas-ship’s” moorings in New York harbour empty. She was lying at the base I have referred to within reach of a great British city. But the traditionremained the same. They had forty-eight hours in which to arrange the whole thing, but they did it. They added one stipulation that has not been laid down in New York. Preference was to be given in the matter of selection to those waifs whose fathers had laid down their lives in battle.
Britannia, noting this story, may remember and echo the words of the greatest of all child lovers:
“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these....”
To the naval officer a ship’s personnel is necessarily an absorbing study. The human element is one in which he works and lives, and whatever the development of the machine, man and his ways afloat must ever remain the primary factor in a navy’s efficiency. It goes without saying that when the personnel belongs to the ship of another nation the interest is largely charged with curiosity.
I attempted to convey something of this interest to the captain of an American battleship, who was my host for the day. We were sitting in his cabin; and the talk had ranged from the Yukon to Brooklyn Yard, and was what a certain weekly paper would call “Mainly About People.”
I hinted at my interest in the men notwithout diffidence, because to ask the captain of a man-of-war if you can go and look at his ship’s company as a matter of curiosity is tantamount to demanding leave of a stranger to go and smoke a pipe in his nursery while his children are being bathed. A mess deck is an intimate place.
“Want to see the men?” he echoed, and thrust on his cap. “I’ll show ’em to you.” He was a mighty man possessing volcanic energy and a voice designed to carry orders through a gale. “Come right along.”
We plunged straightway into the seething life of the mess-deck and living spaces of the great ship, the captain leading; and as we threaded a path forward, men stepped aside, stood quietly to attention until we passed, and resumed their tasks or leisure. Workshops, kitchens, laundry, bakeries, dental surgery, sick bay, mess-rooms, round we went in a swift, slightly bewildering rush, while the “owner” jerked explanations over his shoulder. He displayed a familiarity with the details of it all that was to say the least of it interesting to one of another navy, whose captains claim to be not indifferent “ships’ husbands.”
Our whirlwind tour carried us into a speckless electric bakery piled high with fragrant loaves. The captain had flung open andclosed the door of an oven secured by an ingenious but rather complicated latch. As we emerged I commented on his evident familiarity with the internal fitting of his ship’s bakery. “Built her,” he explained, and plunged, doffing his cap, into the sick bay. There were over a thousand men on board, and about half a dozen of them had found their way here.
“Well, T——,” said the captain, addressing by name an able seaman of a stature well-nigh equalling his own, “how’s that hand getting on?”
The man stood up and met his captain’s eyes without embarrassment; just, in fact, as one citizen regards another.
“Nicely, thank you, sir,” he replied.
“Hit your man in a softer place next time,” said the captain, and the seaman laughed, nursing his bandaged hand.
“I will, surely,” he said. A chuckle ran round the sick bay. I had the sensation of a stranger left trying to fathom a family joke.
“Want to talk to ’em?” asked the captain a minute later, as we stopped to watch a veteran superintending the splicing of a five-inch wire by two ordinary seamen. “Here, B——,” he called one of the youngsters, again by name. The boy dropped his marling-spike and responded smartly.“Where were you raised?” asked the captain.
“Kentucky, sir,” came the reply in the soft Southern drawl. The lad stood before us without a trace of sheepishness or apparently aware of any distinction in being thus singled out by his captain by name from amongst a thousand other men. The captain nodded. “Trade?” “Farm-hand, sir.”
It was my turn, and I asked him the question no sailor has ever been able to answer. “Why did you come to sea?” He grinned, showing two rows of perfect teeth. “Him,” he said, and jerked his head over his shoulder at the other ordinary seaman wincing beneath the whispered exhortations of his instructor. “Him an’ me ...” adding, “He’s my chum....” Strong men have tried to write books on all that was contained in these two sentences; most have died with the task unfinished.
We had concluded lunch—a meal that commenced with iced grape-fruit (grape-fruit in Ultima Thule, harkee!)—when the captain beckoned me to accompany him on another tour. It was of a more official nature this time, and included a routine inspection of the storerooms and magazines, and I joined the little group of officers who hurried in the wake of that tall, striding figure with gold laceround the peak of his cap, who knew his ship as I know the inside of my pocket. We were a band of strenuous adventurers in search of the unfindable. Never did red-shirted miners ply pick and shovel in the first days of the Klondyke rush as that captain laboured through the long afternoon in search of Dust. Up and down the shafts leading to speckless storerooms, hand over hand by burnished steel rungs into the uttermost bowels of the ship we went; and as we passed, the captain’s hand was for ever going out to run along a transverse frame or search the interior of a cofferdam in the same fruitless quest. Perspiration ran down our faces, but the break-neck pace never slackened. “Light!” barked the captain, and the breathless first lieutenant obediently flashed an electric torch into some crannyhole.... The hunt checked while the captain craned and peered, and then moved on. The first lieutenant’s sigh of relief was always audible above the ring of our footsteps. Once as the procession sped along some labyrinth among the shell-rooms the captain’s finger shot out accusingly to indicate a junction-box on the white enamelled bulkhead (an infinitesimal detail in the vast complexity of a battleship). It was an affair of brass secured by small screws, but one of the screws was missing.
“Spoke about that last week,” rapped out the captain, already a dozen yards ahead. The first lieutenant looked at the junction-box as we hurried on, and wiped his face.
“Gee!” he said. Then he eyed me with mingled desperation and pride.
“Somecaptain,” he said.
I dropped out of the running about four o’clock because we were in the neighbourhood of the gunroom (steerage, they called it) where I had been invited to tea. I took with me an uneasy recollection of the first lieutenant’s reproachful eyes as I sheered out of the procession, but it was speedily obliterated by the interest and charm of the ensuing hour. The American midshipman is the senior of his British “opposite number” by perhaps a couple of years—but there the difference begins and ends. The half-shy warmth of my welcome; the rather oppressive decorum of the assembly as we took our places round the tea-table, were not otherwise than it would have been in a British gunroom under similar conditions; the quick thaw that synchronised with the rapid disappearance of buttered toast and jam was Youth asserting itself over International Courtesies.
The meal (they explained that they had picked up the habit of “seven-bell tea” from us, and the lesson had not been ill-learned) was nearing its close when a sudden shout of laughter obliterated the hum of chaff and conversation. Every eye turned on a midshipman at the end of the table, whose face was slowly turning carmine to the roots of his curly hair. The President extended his closed fist, thumb pointing downwards. One after another the remainder followed suit until every member sat thus with the exception of the blushing victim. He looked the length of the long table twice, gathered his cup and plate together, and without further ado vanished beneath the table to the accompaniment of unbridled mirth.
If nothing else had been needed to emphasise the fact, I realised in that moment that I was in a gunroom of the Eternal Navy.
There was no question of “showing off” before a stranger—indeed they had forgotten my existence; it was not even ragging. It was just that I had accidentally witnessed the workings of some great Law, immutable and inexplicable as Fate, in full swing about my uncomprehending head.
The meal progressed as if nothing had occurred to break its serenity. I pleaded for light.
“It’s just our mail, you see,” explainedthe President. “Something has happened to our mails. All the rest of the ships get theirs regularly and ours hasn’t fetched up once since we’ve been here.”
“It’s the fault of the ship’s name,” chipped in another (the ship bore the name of a great American State); “d’rectly the bags reach Liverpool, someone looks at the labels an’ says, ‘Here, ain’t that somewhere in America?’ an’ back they go. They’ve been goin’ backwards an’ forwards for months.” “With Fritz takin’ pot-shots at them as they come and go,” added a voice.
Muffled requests for reinforcements of buttered toast drifted up from underneath the table. “Well?” I queried, still hopelessly in the dark. “Oh, well, you see, anyone who mentions the word ‘mail’ at meals just has to quit an’ go underneath the table; we’ve made it a rule.”
A British midshipman who draws a dirk in the gunroom stands a round of port after dinner. To each navy its own etiquette—and penalties.
It was when we had lit our pipes (the exile had been suffered to return to our midst) and sprawled in comfort, elbows on table, that the real inner meaning of this great Alliance dawned fully upon me. Together we refought Jutland as it has been refoughtin scores and scores of gunrooms amid tobacco smoke and the shifting of spoons and matches across a tablecloth; after that, it was baseball instead of rugger; Annapolis instead of Dartmouth training college; but it all amounted to a common ideal, voiced, not by politicians or diplomats, but by a nation’s youth in common speech with ours.
I visited the compact double cabins—only they called them staterooms—each with its intimate links with home suggested by the backs of familiar books on a shelf and photographs pinned to the heads of bunks. In fancy I made obeisance to the smiling American girlhood that has good cause to be proud of its knights: and so back to the gunroom, where one of the gay company had just sat down to the piano.
We perched round on the table and the backs of chairs, and sang. They were the latest patriotic songs from the United States, tuneful, emotional jingles whereby every nation going to the wars shamelessly strives to voice its inner feelings. And when the player’s repertoire was ended we started afresh; while the more energetic fox-trotted to and fro across the narrow deck space.
Tune and words have since escaped me; but the refrain of the last song lingers still by reason of its significance in these sombredays. “We’re coming over, we’re coming over!” roared the young voices; and I stole a glance at the lean faces, at the laughing, confident eyes all about me—“AND WE WON’T COME BACK TILL IT’S OVER, OVER THERE!”
I came nearer to feeling sorry for the Hun than I had since the war started.
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Duskand a fine driving rain were sweeping up harbour from the sea. The shadows that had gathered in the folds of the hills ashore swiftly overflowed and settled down over the muddy town and wharves, engulfing the straggling dockyard. As night fell, lights glimmered here and there on the hill-side and were obliterated; across the swift-running ebb-tide the irritable chatter of pneumatic riveters drifted in gusts; and in the direction from which the sound came a few shaded arc-lights shone upon the half-discerned ribs of craft on the building slips.
Something beside the night was coming in from the sea: a ship with a heavy list, labouring in with a tug on either side of her and another fretting at the end of the tow. They passed, a mere smear of uncertain outlines, through the outer defences, and a couple of long black shadows that were the escorting destroyers wheeled again to seaward and were blotted from view.
A number of small craft were afloat in the lower reaches of the harbour. A hospital launch, with the Geneva cross visible through the dusk against her white upper-works, lay rolling gently by the berth towards which the tow was heading. Another steam launch circled impatiently round, and in her stern-sheets a group of armed marines stood watching the approaching vessels above the upturned collars of their greatcoats. The steaming-light of the hospital boat glimmered momentarily on the barrels of their rifles.
“’Ullo?” said a sick-berth attendant in the hospital boat, “guard o’ marines—eh?”
The sternsheets-man nodded towards the approaching tow-lights. “Prisoners,” he said sententiously, and was silent, watching the shadowy ship looming towards them out of the murk. The tug on the tow slipped the hawser with a blast on her syren and turned shoreward; the splash of an anchor let goand the rattle of cable followed. The coxswain of the hospital boat, as if awaiting a signal, put out his hand toward the telegraph and rang slow speed ahead. A light appeared at the gangway of the shadowy ship.
One of the tugs alongside had cast off and was backing astern into the darkness: as she cleared the ship’s side a steam-boat, with her bow lights gleaming through the drizzle like red and green jewels, crossed the bows, swept round in a graceful circle, and ran alongside. A rope ladder dropped from the upper deck of the ship, and a figure in oil-skins, which had been standing in the stern-sheets of the steam-boat, caught it as it swayed.
“Lay off,” he said curtly to the coxswain, and climbed inboard.
A seaman stood at the gangway holding a lantern above his head, and as the new-comer stepped inboard another figure came forward into the light to greet him. He was a loose-limbed, youngish man, wearing the cap and monkey jacket of a commander. Leather sea-boots reached to his knees, and he dragged his feet as he walked, as if oppressed with a great weariness. He peered at the new-comer through the drizzle for an instant, and then saluted. A grave smile flitted across his face, lit for a moment by the lantern-light.
“Congratulate you!” said the visitor in quick incisive tones. “Are you all right—wounded?”
“No, sir, not a scratch. Ship’s badly knocked about, but she’ll float. Dynamo’s gone, and we’ve only got lanterns, but you can see....” He nodded forward.
The visitor came a pace or two inboard and stood looking about the upper-deck in silence. Figures were moving to and fro with lanterns, and the uncertain light flickered on splintered planking and upper-works shattered and distorted by shell-fire. The air was pungent with the sour odour of wet charred woodwork.
“Yes....” said the new-comer, in a low voice, as if speaking to himself. “Yes....” He stared at the riven funnel overhead and thence to the rents in the bulwarks. “Where are your dead?”
“Aft, sir.” The Commander led the way past piles of crumpled wreckage, down a ladder, and across an open space. A sentry leaning on his rifle at a doorway jerked to attention. “Here are the dead, sir,” said the Commander. He stepped through the door and indicated in the flickering lantern-light a row of motionless figures resting beneath a White Ensign.
The other halted and stood in silent contemplation of the shrouded forms outlined dimly amongst the shadows. His chin had sunk on his breast, and for a minute he remained thus, motionless. Then slowly he turned away.
“The men were absolutely splendid, sir,” said the Commander, as he led the way forward again. “I—I don’t know how to express what I feel about them. This was out and away the worst show we’ve had, and they were”—the speaker broke off and seemed to swallow something—“magnificent.” The inadequacy of the English language appeared to embarrass him. He made a little gesture: “Surgeon was killed, an’ I did what I could, but I’m afraid I hurt some of them shockingly. They never winced. It’s so hard to find words——”
“There are no words,” said the other, “that meet the case.” He paused to measure a shell-hole in the engine-room casing; the clang of metal on metal and the throb of pumps came up from the silent depths of the ship. “What about your prisoners?’
“The captain’s in my harbour cabin—what’s left of it. Pretty sulky customer. The rest are forward under guard. They’re more communicative than the last lot and jolly glad to get out of submarines for the rest of the war.”
A gust of laughter floated aft from the forecastle and the sound of men’s voices singing. A door opened somewhere, and the words of the song came plain through the night:
“When you come to the end of a perfect day!”
“When you come to the end of a perfect day!”
“When you come to the end of a perfect day!”
The Commander smiled as a father smiles on the threshold of his children’s nursery. “That’s the wounded, sir. First lieutenant’s got the rest forward, working cables.” A figure came towards them out of the darkness with bandages glimmering white about his head. He was humming the refrain of the forecastle song, and broke off abruptly as he recognised the two figures by the casing.
“The hospital boat is coming alongside now,” said the stranger. “I’d like to speak to the wounded before they leave the ship.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The other led the way forward, and as they stepped into the dimly-lighted forecastle the singing wavered and died away to a sudden silence. The narrow space was partly blocked by hammocks slung from the beams overhead, and illumined by a few swinging lanterns and candles guttering on the broken mess tables. Evidences of the ordeal the ship had undergone were apparent on all sides in blackened paint-work and ragged shell-holes in the deck and ship’s side. Men sat about smoking and nursingbandaged limbs, or lay motionless with their eyes full of suffering turned towards the new-comers; a few rose unsteadily to their feet, and the stranger motioned them with a gesture to sit down again.
“If England knew,” he said, in his clear, deliberate tones, “England could tell you men what she thinks of you. Unfortunately, I am the only person at present that knows”—he paused and surveyed them in the uncertain light, which, nevertheless, served to illumine the consciousness of victory in each drawn face. “And I’m—proud of you.” They cheered the spare, upright figure as he stood amid the wreckage and pools of water as only men can cheer who have fought a good fight to a clean finish; as the last gust died away feet shuffled on the iron plating behind the speaker, and the stretcher-bearers entered. From farther aft along the upper deck came a hoarse word of command, and the clatter of steel as the unseen prisoners’ escort fixed bayonets. The visitor turned to the Commander and walked slowly aft.
“Now,” he said, “I’ll have your report.”
. . . . .
Half an hour later the visitor departed. At the gangway he paused. “I’ll send my barge back for you,” he said. “You’ll want to get ashore. I sent to tell your wife youwere coming in.” He smiled his dour smile. “When did you get your last sleep?”
The younger man thought gravely for a moment. “I don’t remember, sir. What’s to-day?... Thursday?” He smiled. “Monday, sir, I think it was.... Thanks awfully for the barge, sir. I’ll go ashore when I’ve seen the ship all right for the night.”
The tiny cottage parlour was flooded with sunshine: through the open window the throaty bubbling song of a thrush poured like a cascade from among the blossoms of an apple-tree that came near to thrusting inquisitive lower branches into the room. The Commander sat at the breakfast-table chipping the top off an egg; opposite him stood a girl, her brows knitted in the preoccupation of coffee-making. At his left hand, perched in a high chair, sat a smaller edition of himself with a bib under his chin, watching the decapitation of the egg with intent solemnity.
“What did the White Queen say?” asked the Commander.
“Off wiv his ’ead,” came the reply promptly, in rich tones of anticipation.
“’Head,’ darling,” protested the coffeemaker without raising her eyes from her task.
“Never mind, John Willie,” said his father. “Let’s cut the cackle and get to the ’osses.” He extended the top of the brown egg to his son and heir, who gravely accepted it, and delved into its white and gold with an unwieldy egg-spoon.
“Well?” said his father.
“Fank you,” said John Willie absent-mindedly. He finished the egg’s head and passed on to the more serious business of porridge in a blue-and-white bowl. “Can I go to see daddy’s ship ’smorning?” he queried presently. A tiny shadow passed across his mother’s eyes and was gone again. For nearly a week she had been able to forget that ship.
She looked at her first-born across the table and smiled. “What d’you want to see?” she asked.
“Blug,” said John Willie calmly.
His father raised his eyebrows. “The deuce you do. How d’you know there’s blood there?”
“Cook told Nannie,” said the child. “She said ve scuppers must have been full wiv it. What’s scuppers?”
“Eat your porridge,” retorted his father.“Once upon a time there was a little boy who played with his breakfast——”
“I’ll speak to cook,” said the mother in a low voice.
“An’ cook said——”
“Never mind what cook said. Just you listen to my story. The little boy’s mummie took him to see the White Queen—know whatshesaid?”
“Off wiv——”
A shadow darkened the sunlight and the head and shoulders of the post-girl passed the open window.
“Hi! Here you are, Janet!” shouted the Commander. He leaned back in his chair, thrusting a long arm out of the window, and took the orange-hued envelope from the girl’s hand. Slowly and deliberately he selected a knife and slit the envelope; there was silence in the little room, and the clock on the mantelpiece punctuated it with even, unhurried ticks. “No answer,” he called over his shoulder, refolded the message and put it in his pocket; then he held out his cup to be replenished.
His wife filled the cup and looked at him across the flowers and china. But her husband had slipped into one of his musing silences and sat with knitted brows, drumming his fingers on the white cloth. Sheknew only too well those imperturbable abstractions, and the futility of asking questions. She was one of those women who have learned to wait as men rarely learn any lesson.
The meal finished and the Commander rose, filling a pipe. “Lemme strike your match,” said his son.
“He’ll burn his fingers,” said his mother.
“Yes,” said the man. “That’s the only way he’ll ever learn to respect matches.” He held out the box: the match was duly struck and the pipe lit without catastrophe. When the pipe was drawing properly he turned and watched his wife’s profile as she moved about the homely disorder of the breakfast-table. His eyes were full of a great tenderness.
“Like to run up to town to-morrow?” he said casually.
She turned swiftly. “London!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Bill! Rather extravagant, isn’t it?”
“Um.... No. I don’t think so. I’ve got to go—on duty. You’d better come too. It’s only for the day. We might lunch somewhere where there’s a band ... buy a hat, p’r’aps....”
“Me too!” said John Willie.
“Once upon a time,” said his father, “I was in a ship where there was a man whosaid ‘Me too’ every time any one ordered a drink.”
“Was he a firsty man?”
“Very. There were twenty-three people in the mess, consequently he drank twenty-three times more than he ought to.”
“Venwhat happened?”
“He was attacked by pink rats and blue spiders and piebald snakes.”
“Did vey bite him?”
“Something frightful. He never said ‘Me too’ again.”
The girl turned from contemplation of the sunlit garden, the tip of her slim forefinger between her teeth as was her habit when deep in thought.
“Bill! Don’t be awful.... Do you think that grey dress looks nice enough ...? We needn’t go anywherereallysmart, need we ...?”
The man put his pipe down on the mantelpiece, and crossing the little room took her face between his hard hands. Three times he kissed her: once on the forehead, once on the mouth, and once on the tip of her pretty nose. “Anything’s good enough,” he said, and his voice vibrated on a note she rarely heard. Then abruptly he released her and turned to his son.
“Now then, John Willie, come on outside!I’m going to bowl to you, and if you don’t keep a straight bat you shall never come on board daddy’s ship again.”
. . . . .
The taxi jolted up the cobbled gradient that led out of the gloom of the great terminus, and slipped into the traffic that flowed east and west along the sunlit thoroughfare.
“Oh, look at it all,” said the Commander’s wife. “What fun, what fun! Why does everybody look as if they were having a holiday too? Look at the rosettes on the horses’ blinkers ...andthe flowers—Bill, look at the flowers....” she sighed luxuriously. “Oh, how nice all these commonplace things are!” Her hand stole inside her husband’s. “Can they see us, d’you think ...?”
“They never used to,” replied the man. He watched her animated smiling face as she glanced delightedly about her at the familiar shops and women’s frocks and all the gay tide of London setting to and fro. Her eyes softened.
“It’s like old times, isn’t it?” she said. “The pair of us philandering in a taxi.... And the tuppences ticking up.... Are we really going to buy a hat?”
“Not yet.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “No time now, I’ve got an appointment at twelve.”
She gave his hand a little squeeze. “Tell me where we’re going.”
“I told you. My outfitter.”
“I know: but after that?”
“Then I’ve got to—to pay a call. You’ll have to wait. Then——”
“Who are you going to call on?”
“A man.”
“Any one I know?”
“Well”—her husband threw back his head and chuckled delightedly—“not to speak to.”
She shook him by the sleeve. “Don’t be silly and mysterious. Is he a naval officer?”
“Er, yes.”
“At the Admiralty?”
“Down in that direction.” The cab slowed and pulled up. “Wait,” he said, and jumping out vanished between the swinging glass doors of the outfitter. A couple of minutes later he returned, carrying a sword and belt, resplendent in gilt and tassle. He stopped on the kerb, gave a low-voiced direction to the driver, and resumed his seat beside her.
“You haven’t bought another sword!” she gasped. “You’ve got one already.”
“Olo-piecee—too shabby. I’ve only borrowed this for the forenoon. You have to wear a sword to pay certain duty calls.”
Her ignorance of Service matters was profound, and he had always been content that it should be so. She gave a little sigh, like a child abandoning a puzzle. The car turned into the Mall, and the Commander leaned back in his seat adjusting the belt about his lean middle. The girl glanced over her shoulder.
“Why,” she exclaimed, “he’s going away from the Admiralty! Tell him, Bill, he’s going wrong——”
“No, he isn’t,” said the man. He glanced again at his watch. “Pam,” he said, and for the second time in her life she thought she detected a note of nervousness in his voice—“Pam, you’ll have to sit in the taxi and wait. I shall only be about twenty minutes——”
“Twenty minutes!” she echoed in dismay, and glanced at the taximeter. “But can’t I——?” Then the truth suddenly dawned upon her. The broad façade of Buckingham Palace loomed up before them and the car slowed.
“Oh!” she gasped. “Youmighthave told me.... And one of your cuffs is frayed.... That policeman is saluting you,Bill! Oh, my dear, my dear, I think I want to cry....”
“You mustn’t cry here,” said her husband fiercely. They had passed into the vast courtyard and had a glimpse of scarlet-coated footmen behind the glass panels of a door. The Commander’s wife gulped. “No,” she said, “of course not. But I wish I could come with you.” He gave her hand a quick squeeze and jumped out: as he turned to close the door their eyes met.
“Wait,” he said and passed from her ken.
Outside the railings, drawn up in an inconspicuous spot by the curb, oblivious to the inexorable ticking of the tuppences, she waited. Nearly half an hour had elapsed before she saw him coming towards her, walking very quickly, holding his head high, rather pale under his sunburn. He gave the driver directions and jumped in beside her. She took a deep breath.
“Oh, my dear—what?”
Her husband made no reply, but laid a little morocco leather case on her trembling knees. For a moment she fumbled at if blindly, her head bent low. Then she turned to him, smiling tremulously through a mist of tears, the little bronze Symbol lying in the palm of her hand.
“My Man!” she whispered. “MyMan!”