The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Navy eternalThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Navy eternalwhich is the Navy-that-Floats, the Navy-that-Flies and the Navy-under-the-SeaAuthor: BartimeusIllustrator: Douglas SwaleRelease date: September 2, 2023 [eBook #71548]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NAVY ETERNAL ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Navy eternalwhich is the Navy-that-Floats, the Navy-that-Flies and the Navy-under-the-SeaAuthor: BartimeusIllustrator: Douglas SwaleRelease date: September 2, 2023 [eBook #71548]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
Title: The Navy eternal
which is the Navy-that-Floats, the Navy-that-Flies and the Navy-under-the-Sea
Author: BartimeusIllustrator: Douglas Swale
Author: Bartimeus
Illustrator: Douglas Swale
Release date: September 2, 2023 [eBook #71548]
Language: English
Original publication: London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918
Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NAVY ETERNAL ***
THE NAVY ETERNAL
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHORNAVAL OCCASIONSA TALL SHIPTHE LONG TRICK
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
WHICH ISTHE NAVY-THAT-FLOATSTHE NAVY-THAT-FLIESAND THE NAVY-UNDER-THE-SEABY“BARTIMEUS”Drawings byDOUGLAS SWALE[The image of the colophon is unavailable.]HODDER AND STOUGHTONLONDON NEW YORK TORONTOPrinted in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,London and Aylesbury.DEDICATED TOCaptainGORDON CAMPBELL, V.C., D.S.O.,Royal Navy.
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Anyonefamiliar with the River Dart knows the Mill Creek. The hills on either side slope steeply down to the edge of the water, oak and beech and elm clustering thick on the one hand, red plough, green shoots, and golden corn-fields alternating on the other through all the changing seasons.
The creek is tidal, transformed at half-flood into a fair expanse of shimmering water; at low tide, however, it dwindles to a score of meagre channels winding tortuously through whale-backed mudbanks, the haunt of scurrying crabs and meditative heron.
Here, one afternoon in midsummer some dozen years ago, came a gig (or, in local parlance, a “blue-boat”) manned by seven flannel-clad cadets from the Naval College. Six sat on the thwarts pulling lazily against the last of the ebb. The seventh sat in the stern, with the yoke-lines over his shoulders, refreshing himself with cherries out of a bag.
As they approached the shelving mudbanks, purple in the afternoon sunlight, thefigure in the bows boated his oar and began to sound cautiously with his boathook. The remaining five oarsmen glanced back over their shoulders and continued paddling. The helmsman smiled tolerantly, as a man might smile at the conceits of childhood, but refrained from speech. They all knew the weakness of the bowman for dabbling in mud.
“Half a point to port!” said the slim form wielding the dripping boathook. “I can see the channel now.... Steady as you go!” A minute later the boat slid into the main channel and the crew drew in their oars, punting their narrow craft between the banks of ooze. None of them spoke, save the bowman, and he only at rare intervals, flinging back a curt direction to the helmsman over his shoulder.
For half an hour they navigated the channels winding up the valley, and came at length to a crumbling stone quay beside the ruin of a mill. Ferns grew in the interstices of the old brickwork, and a great peace brooded over the silent wood that towered behind. They made the boat fast there; and because boats and the sea were things as yet half-unknown and wholly attractive, none of them attempted to land. Instead, with coats rolled up as pillows and their straw hats tilted over their eyes, the sevenmade themselves comfortable as only naval cadets could in such cramped surroundings, and from under the thwarts each one drew a paper bag and a bottle of lemonade.
“Dead low water,” said Number 1 (the bow oar) presently. “We shall have a young flood against us going back; but then there’s no chance of getting stuck on the mud.” He drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and proceeded to take careful soundings round the boat, using the keys as a sinker and the lanyard as a lead-line.
“Oh, shut up about your everlasting tides,” said Number 2, “and keep quiet; I want to sleep.”
“They interest me,” replied Number 1 simply. “I shall be a navigator, I think.”
“You’d better go in for submarines,” said Number 4, applying himself to his bottle of fizzing beverage. “Plenty of poking about mudbanks in them if it interests you. One of the first we ever had stuck in the mud one day and never came up again.”
“P’raps I shall,” admitted the bow. “In fact I shouldn’t be surprised if Ididgo in for submarining.”
Number 3 was lying on his back on the thwart, his head resting on the gunwale. “They’ll never come to anything,” he said. “The submarine’s a failure.” His eyesfollowed the flight of a white-winged gull that circled with outstretched wings far above their heads. “No. It’s going to be in the air, when we have a war. I’m all for flying machines....” He was silent awhile meditating, then turned his head quickly. “Bombs!” he said. “Fancy being able to drop bombs all over an enemy’s country.”
“You couldn’t do it,” said Number 2. “You’d go killing women and civilians. They’d never let you.”
“Who?” demanded the prospective aviator, his enthusiasm rather damped. “Who’d stop me?”
“International Law,” cut in the coxswain quickly. “Conventions and all that.... Why, there’d be no limit to anything if it weren’t for international law. An enemy could go off in his beastly submarine and paralyse the trade routes.”
“Paralyse ’em—how?” inquired the bow man.
“Just torpedoing ’em, of course, you ass.”
“What, merchant ships?”
The jurist nodded.
“But no one could do that. I mean you’d never get a naval officer to do that, international law or no international law. That ’ud be piracy—like those fellows at Algiers. ’Member the lecture last week?”
“I don’t meanwe’ddo it,” conceded the coxswain. “But some nations might.”
The idealist shook his head. “No naval officer would,” he repeated stoutly, “whatever his nationality.”
“The surface of the sea’s good enough for me,” chipped in No. 2. “I don’t want to bomb women or torpedo merchant ships. I’m going to be captain of a destroyer.” He raised his head. “Thirty knots at night, my boy!... Upper-deck torpedo tubes and all that....”
“I’d blow you out of the water with a 12-inch gun,” said Number 5, speaking for the first time, and laying aside a magazine. “Gunnery is going to save this country if ever we have a war. That’s why gunnery lieutenants get promoted quickly—my governor told me so.”
“Did he?” said the stroke oar. “He’s wrong. You can only fire big guns from big ships, and you know what happened to big ships in the Russo-Japanese war.”
“What?” inquired the visionary coldly.
“Mines. Big ships can’t move when there are mines about.”
“We don’t use mines any longer,” said the coxswain, crumpling up his empty bag and throwing it over the side. It floated slowly past the boat towards the head of the valley.“They’re not considered sporting. ’Sides, even if you could, you can always countermine, and sweep ’em up. My brother went through a course in the Mediterranean once—place called Platea. I remember him telling me about it.”
The stroke oar sat upright and glanced the length of the boat. “Wouldn’t it be a rum thing,” he said, “if there was a war some day and we were all in it.” He ticked off their names on his fingers: “Submarine, aeroplane, destroyer, minelayer, minesweeper, battleship——” He paused. “I’d like to be in a cruiser,” he said. “A big cruiser scouting ahead of the Fleet. You’d get more excitement there than anywhere.” His voice deepened to a sudden note of triumph. “It ’ud be the forefront of the battle.”
“Then we’d all meet afterwards,” said Number 2, “and have a blow-out somewhere ashore and talk about our experiences. Wouldn’t that be topping?”
The bow oar sat with his eyes on the crumpled paper bag that floated up-stream, shading them against the glow of the sun turning all the creeks into molten gold. “Those of us that were left,” he said dreamily. “Tide’s turned.... We’d better think about getting back.”
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Reminiscencesof those days “in the distance enchanted” never come in an orderly procession according to the original sequence of events. Some, for reasons quite inexplicable, jostle their way to the fore readily enough. Others, dim and elusive, hover in the background, and only respond to the lure of firelight and tobacco smoke ascending incense-wise from the depths of the arm-chair.
Sooner or later, though, they can all be caught and held for the moment needed torecord them. The difficulty is to know where to start....
Harker is foremost among the “thrusters” in the surging crowd of memories of the oldBritanniadays. Harker, with his piercing, rather melancholy eyes, his black beard and tattooed wrists, and his air of implacable ferocity that for months succeeded in concealing from his term a heart as tender as a woman’s.
His name was not actually Harker, of course; but he is probably still alive, and even retired chief petty officers of the Royal Navy have their susceptibilities. He was a term C.P.O.—mentor, wet-nurse, “sea-daddy,” the outward and visible embodiment of Naval Discipline to sixty-odd naval cadets who yesterday were raw schoolboys and to-day wear the King’s uniform and eke brass buttons—a transition unhinging enough to more matured souls than those of his charges.
How he succeeded in conveying within the space of the first evening the exceedingly unfamiliar routine of training-ship life, the art of turning into a hammock, the necessity for keeping their chests locked, the majesty of the term lieutenant and the omnipotence of the chief cadet captains, to sixty bewildered fifteen-year-olds, only he knows.
Yet he harried none; they were conscious of him as a flock of disconcerted sheep are aware of a wise collie. His voice was never still: it was to be presumed that he slept at some mysterious time during the twenty-four hours, and yet his square, compact form seemed to be always drifting about at all hours of the day and night. Even when a hapless wight (in the throes of nightmare) tipped bodily out of his hammock on to the deck the first night, it was Harker who appeared noiselessly out of the shadows to tuck him in again.
Their names he had pat within twenty-four hours; this tightened his grip of the term instantly, but it also caused him to be regarded as scarcely canny. Indeed, it was disconcerting enough to regard yourself one moment as an insignificant and unknown unit among 250 others, and in this comfortable reflection to lean in adégagéattitude against the white paintwork (one of the seven deadly sins): then to hear admonition and your name, coupled together like chain-shot, ring out along the crowded main-deck. Harker had seen you.
There were other C.P.O.’s on board: each term owned one. But they were, by comparison with Harker, sorry fellows. One was reputed to be given to beating the bigdrum at Salvation Army meetings ashore, garbed, moreover, in a scarlet jersey. Hotly his term denied it, but the story was stamped with the unimpeachable authority of the boatswain’s mate of the lower-deck: a godless seaman, conversation with whom, being of a spicy and anecdotal nature, was forbidden.
Another was admittedly of a good enough heart, but a sentimentalist, and consequently to be despised. On the occasion of the chastisement of an evil-doer, his was the arm chosen to administer the strokes with all the pomp and circumstance of an official execution. He laid the strokes on well and truly—that much the victim himself admitted. But when he turned from his duty his eyes were observed to have tears in them. His term had in consequence to adopt an apologetic manner for a considerable time afterwards.
It was a similar scene, but one in which Harker played the Lord High Executioner, that must here be recorded. The setting alone was sufficient to strike awe and even terror into the spectator’s hearts. And now, after the lapse of years, recalling the circumstances of that harrowing quarter of an hour, it is doubtful whether there was not just some such motive behind the grimcircumstance that led up to the painful consummation.
The scene was the orlop-deck. What light there was came in through the open gunports, slanting upwards off the water. Not cheering sunlight, you understand, but a greenish sickly gleam that struggled ineffectually with the shadows clinging like vampires among the low oak beams overhead.
The victim’s term were fallen-in in a hollow square about the horse—a block of wood supported on short legs, with ring-bolts and canvas straps hanging from each corner. Then there came a pause. Possibly the captain had not finished his breakfast; or perhaps Harker had for once made a mistake and got his term there too early. But for the space of several minutes (or weeks, or years) the term stood in shuddering contemplation of this engine.
Then one of the spectators, the victim of either an over-rich imagination or an acutely sensitive conscience, dramatically fainted and was borne forth. After that things began to happen. The malefactor appeared, accompanied by Harker. The captain, the term lieutenant, and (a thrill ran through the on-lookers) the surgeon followed. It was half-expected that the chaplain would also join the group and administer ghostly consolationto the culprit, who, it must be reluctantly admitted, looked rather pleased with himself.
His offence was not one to alienate him from the hearts of his fellows. If memory serves aright, he had been overheard to refer to his late crammer in terms that may or may not have been just, but were certainly not the way a little gentleman should talk. But his term—or most of them—were still smarting under the recollections of crammers’ methods and were disposed to regard the delinquent’s lapse rather more as a pardonable ebullition of feeling than a breach of morality. In short he was a bit of a hero.
“Chief Petty Officer Harker,” said the stern voice of the term lieutenant, “do your duty.” The harrowing preliminaries completed, Chief Petty Officer Harker did it, as was to be expected of him, uncommonly well.
The victim took it, as was also to be expected of him, uncommonly well. It was not long before these lines were written that he was called upon to meet a sterner and his last ordeal. The pity is that no spectator can bear testimony to the worthier courage with which he must have met it.
Harker it was who smelt out, like a Zulu witch-doctor, the grass snake and dormouse that lived a life of communistic ease and reflection in the washing till of someone’s sea-chest. Harker’s the suspicious mind that led to official “ruxes” of private tills, and the confiscation of meerschaum pipes, Turkish cigarettes, and other contraband. Yet all this without any effect of espionage.
The nearest approach to active espionage that Harker permitted himself was hovering in the vicinity of the gangway when the terms were landed for daily recreation. The law of the Medes and Persians had it that during cold weather all cadets not playing games must land wearing a particularly despicable form of under-garment: a woolly and tucked-into-the-socks abomination that the soul of every right-minded cadet revolted from. As the procession passed under the low gangway on its way to the launches alongside, Harker, lurking in the vicinity, would suddenly pounce upon a suspect.
“’Ave we got ourDRAWERSon, Mr. So-and-so?” came the merciless query. The progress of the procession was arrested while Mr. So-and-so racked his brains for some suitable parry to this very leading question. A damning negative having eventually been extorted, the underclad one was hauled from the ranks and given three minutes in which to get to his chest, extract from his wardrobe the garment that found such high favour in Olympian eyes, put it on, and rejoin the tail of the procession.Thus a first offender; a second offence resulted in “no landing.” There was no appeal.
The muddy, tired, ever-hungry throng that returned some three hours later again passed on board under this lynx-eyed surveillance. This time illicit “stodge” was the subject of Harker’s unquenchable suspicions.
Smuggling stodge on board (another of the seven deadly sins) required considerable ingenuity, owing to the ban the authorities thought necessary to impose on pockets. Regular outfitters pandered to this Olympian whim, and constructed trousers with an embryonic fob just large enough to hold a few coins. The unorthodox, who arrived with garments bearing the stamp of provincialism and pockets, were bidden to surrender them forthwith, and stout fingers ruthlessly sewed the pockets up.
The jacket had only one, a breast pocket already congested by keys, handkerchief, letters from home, pet bits of indiarubber, and the like. Remained therefore the despised garment already alluded to. This, being tucked—by official decree—into the wearer’s socks, formed an admirable hold-all for a packet of butterscotch—worked flat—a snack of Turkish Delight, or a peculiar and highly favoured form of delicacy known as “My Queen.”
With a not too saintly expression, an unflinching eye, and a sufficiently baggy pair of trousers, the contrabandist might count on a reasonable amount of success. But Harker’s X-ray glance rarely failed him.
That stern, incisive voice would rivet all eyes upon the culprit just when the muster by the officer of the day had been completed, and the long ranks awaited the stentorian dismissal of the chief cadet captain.
“Mr. Z! You’ll step along to the sick-bay when we falls out.”
The blanched smuggler clutched at his momentarily abandoned halo of rectitude.
“Sick-bay!” he echoed indignantly. “Why the sick-bay? There’s nothing wrong with me—I swear there isn’t. I never felt better in my life.”
“That there nasty swelling on your shin,” was the pitiless reply, “did ought to be seen to at once.” A draught, that had fluttered the carefully selected baggy trousers against their wearer’s legs, had been his undoing. The game was up.
Like all truly great men, Harker could unbend without discipline suffering an iota. As the months passed and his term of fledgling “News” acquired the modest dignity of “Threes” (second term cadets), Marker’s methods changed. He was no longer thedetective, inquisitor, encyclopædia of a thousand unfamiliar phrases, events, and objects. His term were on their feet now, treading in their turn paths fiercely illumined by the new first term’s gaping admiration and curiosity. They were an example.
“’Ow long ’ave we been in theBritannia?” he would demand reproachfully when some breach of the laws called for reproof. “’Ere we are in our second term, an’ talkin’ aboutHUP-STAIRS!”
The scorn in his voice was like a whiplash.
“When you young gentlemen goes to sea you won’t find noSTAIRS!”
When they went to sea! That was the gradually increasing burden of his song. For a while it presented a picture too remote almost for serious contemplation. It was practically a figure of speech, meaningless. But as time went on, and the successive dignities of “Sixer” and “Niner” (third and fourth—the last—terms) loomed up and passed into reality, and at last the Great Wall of the final examination alone stood between them and the sea-going gunrooms of the Fleet, the words took on their real significance.
Harker abandoned even sarcasm. Hebecame guide, philosopher, and friend, a patient mentor always accessible—generally somewhere on the chest-deck—in leisure hours to thirsters after knowledge. Was one shaky in that branch of nautical lore known as “Bends and Hitches”? Harker’s blunt fingers tirelessly manipulated the end of a hammock-lashing until the pupil could make even a “sheep-shank” with his eyes shut.
Another would bring him, in a welter of grease and ravelled strands, a tortured mass of hemp-rope.
“It’s meant to be a Long Splice,” was the explanation, “but I don’t seem to get it right—ever,” and with a despondent sigh it would be thrust into Harker’s hands.
Harker would examine the interwoven strands, twisting it to and fro with jerks of his powerful wrists, pulling taut here, tucking something in there, and lo! the thing took shape.
“This is where you goes wrong, Mr. P., every time!” (Recollect there were sixty-odd in his term.) “Don’t forget what I’m always telling you. You splits the middle strands, and then an over-’and knot in the opposite ’alves....” It always looked so easy when Harker did it.
It was during the last night on board thatHarker rose to heights truly magnanimous. The fourth term regarded it as its right and privilege, on the last night of the term, to hold high carnival until sleep overtook them. Cadet captains even cast their responsibilities to the winds that night and scampered about, slim, pyjama-clad figures, in the dim light of the lanterns, ruthlessly cutting down the prig who yearned for slumber, lashing-up a victim in his hammock and leaving him upside-down to reflect on certain deeds of the past year that earned him this retribution, floating about on gratings on the surface of the plunge baths, and generally celebrating in a fitting manner the eve of the day that was to herald in new responsibilities and cares.
Harker, who for fifteen months had haunted the shadows on the look-out for just such a “rux,” whose ear caught every illicit sound—even the crunch of the nocturnal butterscotch—Harker was for once unseeing and unseen. It needed but this crowning act of grace to endear him for ever to his departing flock.
Yet he had one more card to play, and played it as he passed in farewell from carriage to carriage of the departing train. Further, he dealt it with accentuated emphasis for the benefit of those he thought needed the reminder most.
“Gosh!” ejaculated such a one when Harker passed to the next carriage: he flopped back on to his seat. “Did you hear? He said ‘sir!’ to each one of us when he said good-bye!”
So much for Harker. But he brought with him a number of other memories entangled somehow about his personality, and on these it may be as well to enlarge a little ere they slip back into the limbo of the forgotten past.
It says much for the vividness of Harker’s personality that he outran in these reminiscences the memory of “Stodge.” Certainly few interests loomed larger on the horizon of these days than the contents of the two canteens ashore.
There was one adjacent to the landing-place: a wise forethought of the authorities, enabling a fellow to stay his stomach during the long climb from the river to the playing fields, where the principal canteen stood.
“Stodge” was of a surpassing cheapness. That much was essential when the extent of the weekly pocket-money was limited (if memory is to be trusted) to one shilling. Further it was of a pleasing variety, certain peculiar combinations, hallowed by tradition, being alone unchanging.
Of these the most popular was the “Garry Sandwich.” Components: a half-stick ofchocolate cream sandwiched between two “squashed-fly” biscuits; the whole beaten thin with a cricket-bat, gymnasium shoe, or other implement handy. The peculiarity of this particular form of dainty was that it sufficed as an unfailing bribe wherewith to open negotiations with one Dunn, the septuagenarian keeper of the pleasure boats. The moral atmosphere of the boat-house, in consequence of its custodian’s sweetness of tooth, came in time to resemble that of a Chinese yamen.
Another delicacy about which legend clustered was the “Ship’s Bun,” split in half, with a liberal cementing of Devonshire cream and strawberry jam oozing out at the sides. Concerning the bun itself, the maternal solicitude of the authorities extended one gratis to each cadet ashore on half-holidays lest the impecunious should hunger unnecessarily between lunch and tea. The buns were obtainable on application at the counter, whence the daughter of the proprietor—whom we will call Maunder—was charged with the duty of issuing them.
How she pretended to remember the two and a half hundred faces that presented themselves in surging crowds round the counter at 4 p.m. is more than her present recorder can say. But even as she extended a bunto the outstretched grubby hand of a suppliant, an expression of vixen-like indignation and cunning would transform her features.
“You’ve ’ad a bun afore!” she would snap shrilly, withdrawing the bounty in the nick of time. The hungry petitioner, cheerfully acknowledging defeat in a game of bluff, would then withdraw, pursued by Miss Maunder’s invective.
All the same she was not infallible, and on occasions hot protestations and even mutual recrimination rang to and fro across the counter. Appeal, ultimately carried to Mr. Maunder, was treated in much the same way as it is by croupiers at Monte Carlo. A gentleman’s word is his word. But it is as well not to be the victim of too many mistakes.
Maunder, who was occupied with the stern responsibility of catering for the whim of the rich, had a way of recapitulating the orders from the beginning, adding up aloud as the count went on, thus:
Cadet: A strawberry ice, please, Maunder.
Maunder: One strawberry ice tuppence.
Cadet: Oh, and a doughnut, while you’re about it.
Maunder: One strawberry ice one doughnut thruppence.
Cadet: That’s just to go on with. Then in a bag I want a stick of cream chocolate——
Maunder: One strawberry ice one doughnut one stick cream chocolate fourpence.
Cadet: (breathlessly) And a bottle of barley sugar and a “My Queen” and four Garry biscuits and half a pound of cherries and a bottle of lemonade and one of ginger beer and—that’s all, I think.
Maunder: (coming in a little behind, chanting, the general effect being that of a duet in canon). One strawberry ice one doughnut one stick cream chocolate one bottle barley sugar one “My Queen,” etc., etc., etc....Anda bag one an thruppence ’a’-penny.... Thank you, sir. Next, please.
On occasion demigods walked among the children of men. The visits of the Channel Fleet to Torbay usually brought over one or two of a lately departed term, now midshipmen by the grace of God and magnificent beyond conception.
It was their pleasure, these immaculately clad visitors, to enter the canteen, greet Maunder with easy familiarity and Miss Maunder with something approaching gallantry, slap down a sovereign on the counter and cry free stodge all round. They would even unbend further, dallying with astrawberry ice in token of their willingness to be as other men, and finally depart in a cloud of cigarette smoke and hero-worship.
This record is not concerned with the fact that on their return on board their ship, some hours later, one suffered stripes for having forgotten to lock his chest before he went ashore, and the other, being the most junior of all the junior midshipmen, was bidden swiftly to unlace the sub’s boots and fetch his slippers.
To every dog his day.
Random memories such as these necessarily present individuals and incidents, not in the sequence of their importance in the cosmos as one sees it now, but as they appeared to the vision of the Naval Cadet, whose world was an amiable Chaos.
Thus the Captain flickers through this kaleidoscope an awesome bearded figure, infinitely remote from the small affairs of that teeming rabbit-warren of youth. More readily comes to mind the picture of his lady wife, white-haired, with clear eyes and gentle voice, a memory somehow entangled with geraniums in red pots about the moulded stern-gallery and tea on Sunday afternoons in the spacious chintz-draped after-cabin: with irksome football sprains, and briefpuerile illnesses made more endurable by her visits to the cotside.
The Commander, though less awesome than the Captain, approached the mortal in that he stooped at times to wrath. His was the cold eye before which the more hardened malefactors quailed; his the rasping voice that jerked the four terms to attention at Divisions each morning:
“Young Gentlemen, ’shun!”
The English public schoolboy is conscious of youth, and takes the fact of being a gentleman for granted. But to hear himself addressed by a designation that combined both qualities was a never-staling subject for inward mirth and a weird self-congratulation difficult of analysis. It conveyed a hint of coming manhood and responsibilities: it was the voice of the Navy, bending on the leading strings, heard for the first time.
But on a plane far nearer earth stood the Term Lieutenants, each one the god and hero, the Big Brother of his term. That they, their Boxer or South African medal ribbons, their tattoo-marks, County or International caps, biceps, and all the things that were theirs, were the objects of their respective Terms’ slavish adulation, goes without saying. Bloody encounters between their self-appointed champions over an adverse criticism or doubtcast upon a forgotten word were not unknown. Two entire terms once joined battle and bled each other’s noses the length and breadth of the echoing “Skipper Woods” to clinch some far-flung argument as to the merits of their respective “Loots.”
There were but four Term Lieutenants, and they were picked from the wardrooms of the whole Navy. Small wonder some three hundred grubby urchins fresh from school found in them admirable qualities.
Their example and teaching were the moulds into which, year by year, the molten metal of the Navy’s officer-personnel was poured, thence to be scattered about the seven seas, tempered by winds and stress, and, in God’s good time, tested to the uttermost.
Ashore, on the playing fields or across the red ploughland at the tails of the beagles, they laboured in close intimate fellowship with these atoms of clay thrust by providence beneath their thumbs. But on board it seemed they faded from ken, being rarely seen save at classes and musters, or when in pairs the Term percolated through the wardroom for dessert, plastered as to the hair, patent leather shod, to sip and cough over a glass of ambrosial port at either elbow of their Lieutenant.
Seeing and unseen, knowing their Termsas only men who spend their lives among men can know and understand the embryo, they were the guiding invisible wisdom behind the Cadet Captains, who outwardly ruled the decks.
The Cadet Captains were chosen from the three senior Terms, set apart from their fellows by the fact that they wore “standup” collars and a triangular gold badge on the left cuff.
Minor Authority in other guises was greeted much the same as it is in all communities of boyhood. The platitudes of notice boards no fellow with his heart in the right place could be expected to remember over well. The acknowledged sway of instructors and masters was largely a matter of knowing to a nicety how far an adventurous spirit could go (in the realms of Science and Freehand Drawing it was a long way) before the badgered pedagogue turned and bit. Terms paid strict allegiance to their own Chief Petty Officers. But, as has already been shown, this was an affair of the heart and the sentiments. He was theirs, and they were his: thus it had been from the beginning.
There was, however, one voice that rarely repeated an order, one court from which appeal, if possible, was undreamed of—that of the Cadet Captain. Their rule was without vexatious tyranny, but it was an iron rule. The selection of these Cadet Captains was done carefully, and mistakes were few. The standard of the whole was no mean one, and for three months the Lieutenant of the First Term had been studying the raw material, working with it, playing with it, talking to it—or rather listening while it talked to him.... Thus Cadet Captains were chosen, and the queer eager loyalty with which the rest paid them allegiance was the first stirring of the quickened Naval Spirit, foreshadowing that strange fellowship to be, brotherhood of discipline and control, of austerity and a half-mocking affectionate tolerance.
To the Cadet Captains perhaps can be attributed the passage, almost untarnished through the years, of theBritanniatraditions. They were concerned, these youthful Justices of the Peace, with more than the written law. It they enforced right enough, but with a tolerance one might expect of fifteen summers administering the foibles and rules of fifty. On the other hand, did a “new” unbutton a single button of his monkey jacket, a “Three” deign to swing his keys, a “Sixer” to turn up his trousers or tilt his cap on the back of his head (the prerogative of the “Niner” or Fourth Term), and Nemesis descended upon him ere he slept that night.Nemesis, by virtue of its unblemished character and the favour its triangular badge found in the eyes of the gods, was allowed to turn in half an hour after the remainder. It occupied itself during this time in guzzling cocoa and biscuits smeared with strawberry jam, provided for its delectation by the authorities—though the cost was said to be defrayed by the parents of the common herd relegated to hammocks and the contemplation of this orgy out of one drowsy though envious eye.
Biscuits finished, Nemesis would draw from his pocket a knotted “togie” of hemp, and, having removed traces of jam from his features, proceed to administer summary justice in the gloom where the hammocks swung.
It was of course grossly illegal and stigmatised by the authorities as “a pernicious system of private and unauthorised punishments.” But the alternative was open to any who cared to appeal to Cæsar. Appealing to Cæsar meant spending subsequent golden afternoons on the parade ground, swinging a heavy bar bell to the time of “Sweet Dreamland Faces” blared out on a cornet by a bored bandsman.
So summary justice ruled, and it ruled in this wise:
“Shove your knuckles outside that blanket—you needn’t pretend to be asleep——”
Chorus of snores deafening in their realism and self-conscious rectitude from the wrong-doer’s neighbours.
“You were slack attending belly-muster for the third time running——”[1]
“I swear——”
“You’d better not. You’ll get six more for swearing——”
“Ow!”
“Don’tmake such a rux....”
“Ow!”
“If you yell you’ll get double.”
“Ow!”
“That’s for being slack. Now the other hand.... That’s for ’nerving’”(modernised = swanking) “with your thumbs in your beckets——”
“Ow!”
“Shutup! Stick your knuckles out properly.”
“I swear I didn’t—ow!... Good night.”
. . . . .
Memories, ah, memories! Haphazard but happy as only the far-off things can seem,half revealed through the mists of years. Grim old cradle of the Eternal Navy, there lies on my desk a blotting-pad hewed from your salt timbers; it may be that some whimsical ghost strayed out of it to provoke these random recollections. Does it, I wonder, ever unite with other ghosts from chiselled garden-seat or carved candle-stick, and there on the moonlit waters of the Dart refashion, rib by rib, keel and strake and stempost, a Shadow Ship?
And what of the Longshoremen Billies that plied for hire between the shore and the after-gangway—Johnnie Farr (whom the Good Lawd durstn’t love), Hannaford of the wooden leg, and all the rest of that shell-backed fraternity? Gone to the haven of all good ships and sailormen: and only the night wind, abroad beneath the stars, whispers to the quiet hills the tales of sharks and pirates and the Chiny seas that once were yours and ours.
But what familiar faces throng once more the old decks and cluster round the empty ports! Is it only to fond memory that you seemed the cheeriest and noblest, or did some beam of the glory to be yours stray out of the Hereafter and paint your boyish faces thus, O best-remembered from those far-off days?
You crowd too quickly now, you whose fair names are legion, so that the splendour of your sacrifices blur and intermingle. The North Sea knows you and the hidden Belgian minefields; the Aurora Borealis was the candle that lit some to bed, and the surf on the beaches of Gallipoli murmurs to others a never-ending lullaby. Ostend and Zeebrugge will not forget you, and the countless tales of your passing shall be the sword hilt on which our children’s children shall cut their teeth.
From out of that Shadow Ship lying at her moorings off the old Mill Creek comes the faint echoes of your boyish voices floating out across the placid tide. Could we but listen hard enough we might catch some message of good hope and encouragement from you who have had your Day: