Part 17

The Sub, Uncle Podger, and the Lamp-post lay and smoked, and watched the others carrying all the paraphernalia of tea from the two boats to a little place under a shady tree, cutting slices of bread, and opening the tins of milk, butter, and jam.

"Isn't this an extraordinary change from ten days ago?" said Uncle Podger presently, with a great sigh of enjoyment. "The whole place looks as if it had never even heard of such a thing as war."

"It may look like it, Uncle, but you'd be nearer the mark if you said that it had never really known peace," the Lamp-post said. "Why, Mytilene, and the other islands round about here, have seen fighting all through history--history was made in these parts--right away from the year one--five hundred years before it, too, and they haven't known peace--not for any length of time--ever since. The Phoenicians, Athenians, Carthaginians, Romans, Persians, Syrians, Turks, and Greeks--they've all had a "go" at it--landed and killed the men, garrisoned the place for a few years, till they were "booted" out or killed by the next little lot to come along.

"I was only asking the Interpreter[#] this morning, and he told me that there are villages up there" (and the Lamp-post pointed across the harbour to the slopes of the hills) "which are full of Turks, and they daren't come down to the Greek villages except in numbers and in the daylight--nor dare the Greeks go up to them--for fear of being killed. He told me that the Greeks and Turks are always fighting on these islands, and on the mainland right along the coast to Smyrna. The Greek chaps get on their nerves; they work hard, are smarter business men, lend money, which makes them very unpopular; and there are so many of them in the coast towns that the Turks are really frightened of them, so they kill them whenever they get a comfortable opportunity and can raise the energy. Hereditary enemies they are, and vendettas go on just as they have done for centuries; but the Turk has generally got an old rifle, of sorts, so it's the Greek who gets killed in the long run.

[#] The _Achates_ had a Syrian interpreter on board.

"You see," went on the Lamp-post, "all the Turkish soldiers who used to keep the peace--sometimes--in the villages and small towns have been withdrawn to Smyrna or the Dardanelles, and now they are away the Turks and Greeks are at each other's throats hammer and tongs. The Interpreter told me that there are more than thirty thousand refugees from the coast in Mytilene alone, and thousands more are trying to escape before they are killed."

"That's why the Greeks here are giving the Turks in the hills such a rotten time, I suppose?" the Sub asked.

"It rather spoils the picture," Uncle Podger said; "I wish you hadn't told us."

"Let us go, some day, and see the castle at Mytilene," the Lamp-post suggested. "The Interpreter says that it was started five hundred years B.C.--by the Phoenicians or someone like them, and has been added on to by everybody else ever since. He says you can see some parts which are Roman and some which the Persians built. I'm frightfully keen on things like that," he added apologetically:

"Come along, you chaps! Everything's ready!" the others shouted, carrying up the kettle of boiling water.

A grand tea they had, although the Orphan upset a good deal of the only tin of milk over himself. That did not matter much, for they managed to save most of it with spoons.

"Pass the Orphan, please," one or other would say, "I want some more milk;" and whoever was sitting next to him, Bubbles or Rawlins, would sing "He's too heavy," and pretend to scrape more milk off his bathing-suit.

The China Doll and the Pimple, however, felt that there were two things lacking to make the picnic a complete success--sardines and some tinned sausages to cook over the fire; but, of course--and they sighed heavily--the gun-room store was empty.

The China Doll, presently, blinked and blushed, and suggested that they should ask the War Baby to the next picnic. There was a shout of "He's all right, but he doesn't belong to the gun-room--this is a gun-room picnic."

"But, if he came, he might bring some sardines and 'bangers'. I know they have some in the ward-room--I asked their messman."

"You're a perfect marvel, China Doll; fancy thinking all that out in your noddle!" the Pimple said admiringly. "I votes we do ask him."

Then the Orphan, catching sight of the wet remains of that "Virginian" cigarette lying in the grass, pretended to faint; and when he'd been revived by a convenient twig twirled round inside his nose, groaned: "I'm awfully sorry, you chaps, but didn't you notice that awful smell again," and pointed to that unhappy cigarette end.

"Don't be silly," the China Doll kept on saying, blushing and trying to hide it; but they sent him twenty yards along the beach, made him scrape with his hands a hole, a foot deep, in the muddy sand, and bury it there. "You've eaten all the oranges," he almost "blubbed" when he returned. "My back's all sunburnt, and my feet are tingling. I've been treading on something which hurts."

They threw some oranges at him and made him happy, but he kept on looking at the soles of his feet.

"Well, if you will tread on sea-urchins' eggs you can't expect anything else," the Lamp-post said, having a look at them himself.

"Lend us a knife, somebody; he's got thirty or forty of the spikes in his feet." But the pain of having them extracted with a pocket-knife was too much for the Assistant Clerk; he said he'd get Dr. Gordon to take them out when they went back to the ship. He ate his oranges, and looked rather miserable whilst he dressed, slowly.

The others played the newly invented "submarine game", standing in a ring with the water up to their chins, their legs wide apart, and stones in their hands; whilst the Orphan, who took the part of a submarine, started in the middle, dived, and had not to come to the surface before he had torpedoed somebody by swimming between his legs. If any part of him showed up above the surface, or he came up to breathe, the others threw stones at him; and if he was hit he had lost, and started again. The torpedoed one had to change places with the "submarine"; and when the fat Bubbles was at last torpedoed and had to take this leading part, you can imagine that parts of him showed very often, and he laughed so much that he couldn't keep his head under for ten seconds at a time.

"Very pretty to watch," remarked Uncle Podger. Then they all scrambled out, dried themselves in the sun, dressed; stowed away all the tea "gear" in the boats--the kettle, teacups, knives, spoons, and plates; carried the China Doll down to the boat to the tune of "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave"; had a search for a missing spoon; found it; shoved off, and raced back to the ship, the losing boat's crew to pay for the oranges.

"Off you go to Dr. Gordon," the Sub told the China Doll, "and just pretend those feet of yours don't hurt you. If you go limping about looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm, you won't get the kind of sympathy you want--not from me!"

"That youth behaves like a little girl. He always wants people to take notice of him and pet him. Whatever will he be like when he grows up?" the Sub said afterwards to Uncle Podger.

"A good beating twice a week would make a man of him," advised the Clerk. "He is a good enough little chap, but he does want beating."

"I'll see what can be done," answered the Sub thoughtfully.

At that time the Greek population was extremely polite, and glad to see British Naval uniforms. Everyone who passed took off his hat, the girls were all smiles, and the children flocked round, holding out flowers, though their homage was slightly diminished by insistent demands for "one pen-ny". In fact, they became a beastly nuisance after a while.

Now you must understand that the _Achates_ had not been sent to Ieros for the purpose of providing entertainment for the gun-room officers, but to superintend the blockade of Smyrna. To make this blockade effective, she had under her orders two mine-layers, some destroyers, and some submarines. These were always going out or coming in through the picturesque entrance, and the submarine off duty used to make fast alongside the _Achates_. Naturally she proved a great attraction to the gun-room officers, who used to bother the lives out of the sub-lieutenants--seconds in command--to show them round.

One of these, a cheery sportsman, burst out with: "Oh, hang it all! Come along, every one of you; four at a time, and I'll work through the whole blooming Mess and get it over and done with."

He did get it 'over', though the last four, the China Doll among them, were rather a trial.

"But if," bleated the Assistant Clerk, standing on the plates below the open conning-tower, "if you did happen to dive when the lid was open, wouldn't the water come in?"

There was a roar of laughter from the others (which he wanted); but the second in command, whose patience had not yet quite vanished, said: "Oh, that's nothing! that often happens. We just stand down here, puff out our cheeks, and blow up through the conning-tower--blow very hard until someone climbs up and puts the lid on again."

"Is that really true?" gasped the China Doll, not quite certain whether he was being made a fool.

Much as the officers appreciated the change of scene at Ieros, the men appreciated it still more. All except the beach party and the boats' crews (a very small proportion) had been cooped up in the noisy, crowded mess-decks ever since leaving Port Said. They to could now go ashore occasionally; twice a day they could jump overboard and swim in the glorious, buoyant water alongside, and once a week route marches took place early in the morning, before the sun became too hot. These route marches, however, were not very popular.

You may be certain that the first time Fletcher the stoker went ashore, he took "Kaiser Bill" with him.

"You should have seen him nipping off the bits of grass," he told the Orphan later on; "he did enjoy himself, sir!"

Whilst here, the wireless press news came each morning, and was not reassuring, for the Germans had commenced their advance through Galicia and into Poland, and nothing seemed able to stop them. News, too, from the Peninsula was bad--nearly a thousand men had been lost when the transport _Royal Edward_ was sunk by a submarine, and another desperate attempt to capture Krithia had failed with heavy losses.

As a set-off against all these dismal tales there were rumours of mysterious monitors on their way out with heavy guns, of reinforcements pouring eastwards, and of the brilliant exploits of our own submarines above the Dardanelles, in the Sea of Marmora.

*CHAPTER XVI*

*A Glorious Picnic*

Among the many queer characters they met at Ieros, none was more quaint than a Mr. M'Andrew, who appeared on the scene in a very smart, rakish little motor yacht with two masts and a gay awning, very reminiscent of the River Thames. Sometimes he appeared flying the Greek flag, and bringing the rubicund military governor of Mytilene to "protest" against the British having done "this" or "that"; with a cheery "Au revoir, Messieurs; a Constantinople!" when he left the ship. At other times he flew the red ensign, and took Captain Macfarlane and the Commander for--as far as the gun-room knew--pleasant little sea trips. Generally he flew no flag at all, and had a most motley crew of picturesque brigands with him.

Occasionally the yacht used to lie alongside the _Achates_, and once or twice the Sub tempted Mr. M'Andrew down into the gun-room to take a glass of iced soda-water, of which he seemed excessively fond. He never touched alcohol.

He looked like a retired bank-manager who possibly devoted his leisure to teaching in a Sunday or "ragged" school; he was broad and plump, and perhaps fifty years of age--a most placid-looking individual who always wore an old, but not shabby, blue suit, across the ample waistcoat of which stretched a very thick gold watch and chain. He talked very simply--as if talking was mere waste of breath--and his conversation was chiefly about soda-water and the places he remembered where you could buy it cheapest. He always carried a bunch of raisins in one of his side-pockets, and ate them deliberately, one at a time, whenever he was not smoking a very old briar pipe. The Sub used to ask him to dinner or lunch, but he would refuse. "No, thank you; I never have meals; I just go on munching raisins, and have some bread occasionally."

Rumour had told the Honourable Mess that he was really a daring pirate, and led forays against the Turks in the little bays on the mainland--over against Mytilene--though never a word could they get from him about his adventures--about anything, in fact, except soda-water, the merits of dried raisins, and the unfortunate family troubles of his crew.

There was one old man who used to sit on the top of the deck-house all day long without saying a word to a soul--a shrunken old Greek with very sharp features and black eyes which seemed to blaze from their deep sockets in the most startling way. When you first saw him he looked a poor, withered, feeble old "dodderer", in spite of the Winchester rifle he always gripped across his knees, and the two filled bandoliers of cartridges round his waist and shoulders; but when he turned to look at you the fierceness of his eyes gave him a most extraordinary appearance. Mr. M'Andrew used to take him down a loaf of bread--provided by the gun-room--pat him on the shoulder, and say a few words to him. "Poor old man!" Mr. M'Andrew told them, "poor old man; he's rather miserable. You see, he and his three sons kept a flock of sheep on some little island near the coast, and the Turks came along, killed his sons and the sheep, and tried to kill him, but he managed to escape. He knew of a crack in a rock, where he hid by day--for three days--crawling out at night to suck the grass and eat berries and leaves, until the Turks gave up looking for him and went away--thought he must be dead. I just happened to be going past there yesterday, saw him wave, and brought him along. He won't be really happy again until he's killed a Turk for each of his sons; he thinks I'll give him the chance soon, so won't leave me."

"But shall you?" the Honourable Mess cried with one accord.

"This really is not at all bad soda-water," Mr. M'Andrew went on in his slow, deliberate way. "I remember when I was in Mexico--no, it reminds me of some I got at Haiti during the revolution, the one of 1901. As I was saying, most of my crew have had a good deal of family trouble one way or the other. There's that little lad who cleans the brasswork. He's the only one left of a family of twelve--father, mother, brothers, and sisters. He hid in the roof when the Turks cut the throats of the others one night. He came along here--no, I don't know how--and wants me to let him have a rifle. Oh, those other chaps; nice, gentle-looking fellows, aren't they? They can't bear the Turks--more or less for the same reason! Some of their relatives have been killed by them, or they've been driven away from the mainland and have nothing left of farms, or shops, or flocks, wives or children. They just come along to me, and I lend them some old rifles I just happen to have."

"Have they had a chance of using them?" the snotties asked. "Most of them say they have killed a Turk or two; tell me so when they come first. And I expect they have," went on Mr. M'Andrew in his placid voice, feeling in his pocket for another raisin, and fumbling with the fob of his gold watch-chain.

The China Doll, in fact all the gun-room officers, spent a good deal of time watching him moving about among the fierce, black-eyed ruffians, who sat about the deck of the smart little motor-yacht with their bandoliers across their shoulders, their rifles (which Mr. M'Andrew just happened to have lent them) gripped firmly in their hands. They cleaned these interminably, and Mr. M'Andrew walked about and spoke a few words to each, just as you could picture him walking about the boys in his Ragged School in Glasgow, distributing raisins and bread to them just as he might have done to his boys.

One day the motor-yacht towed in a clumsy, old, local trading schooner, and anchored her abreast the _Achates_. She turned out to be a Turkish trading ship which had been becalmed off some Greek village. The Greeks captured her, and had killed at least one of her crew, for his body still lay on the deck, just at the break of the poop.

"Oh, no!" said Mr. M'Andrew, in genuine surprise, "I had nothing to do with it. I simply found her a derelict and towed her in here. The rest of the crew were probably killed as well, but thrown overboard. Oh, no! that's nothing unusual."

The dead Turk was handed over to the authorities, and this lumbering old derelict--she looked at least fifty years old, and was probably a hundred--swung at anchor, close to the _Achates_, for some days.

The Sub had a brilliant "brain wave", and suggested that the gun-room should commission her, one day, for a picnic. Captain Macfarlane gave permission, and then came the question of asking the War Baby. Finally it was unanimously decided to do so; and--"Well", as Bubbles said when he gave the invitation, "if you can bring some sardines and sausages along with you, so much the better." They asked Mr. Meredith, the R.N.R. Lieutenant, and Dr. Gordon, the R.N.V.R. Surgeon, and they asked the Padre too; and, wonderful to relate, that pale-faced little man jumped at the offer--"so long as he could smoke his pipe all the time". The other two of course accepted.

After dinner, and after considerable deliberation and more noise, the following notice appeared on the board in the gun-room, under the alarum-clock and the five broken-down wrist-watches:--

NOTICE

To-morrow, Thursday, 17th June, H.M. Schooner *What's Her Name* will be commissioned, at 1.30 p.m.

The following appointments have been made to her:--

Captain ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... The Sub. First-class Passenger ... ... ... ... Mr. Meredith. First Lieutenant and Boatswain ... ... The Pink Rat. Officer of Marines and Master-at-Arms The War Baby. Surgeon and Captain of the Main-top ... Dr. Gordon. Chaplain and Official Photographer ... The Rev. Horace Gibbons. Paymaster and Man-of-all-Work ... ... Uncle Podger. Captain of the Fore-top ... ... ... ... The Lamp-post. Foretopmen ... ... ... ... ... ... ... The Hun, The Orphan, Rawlins Maintopmen ... ... ... ... ... ... ... Bubbles, The Pimple. Cabin Boy ... ... ... ... ... ... ... The China Doll. Second Cabin Boy ... ... ... ... ... Barnes. The Ancient Mariner ... ... ... ... ... Fletcher the Stoker. The Albatross ... ... ... ... ... ... "Kaiser Bill".

*Uniform of the day--Pirate Rig.*

Coloured shirt, vest, or jersey. Trousers or shorts. Head-dress--any old thing, as long as it's hideous.

Fletcher they asked because they thought the old man would enjoy "a bit of an outing", and "Kaiser Bill" was asked because Fletcher wouldn't enjoy it without him.

Barnes, on reading the notice and seeing his own appointment, growled to the messman: "What did them young gen'l'men a-think they was a-doin' of; no, 'e wasn't a-goin' a-sailorisin' in that 'ere craft what murder 'ad been done in, an' the blood-stain on 'er deck an' all--not 'e;" but he changed his mind and went aboard with the Pirate Crew, grinning like a huge schoolboy, with his big basket of food (including the War Baby's sardines and sausages), a bucket of coal and wood to make a fire, a kettle, frying-pan, and a barricoe of water. They climbed aboard, handed up all the "gear" and their towels, and the Sub ran a boat's ensign, which he had borrowed, up to the main masthead.

"Hello, Doc! brought your Harley Street bag with you, I see." Dr. Gordon laughed. "Yes," he twinkled, "it might be useful." The little Padre, beaming, passed aboard his camera, and climbed up after it.

To give you an idea of what this piratical crew looked like, the Orphan wore a red tam-o'-shanter, a yellow-and-black sweater, running "shorts", and gymnasium shoes; and Bubbles had an old kicked-in bowler hat on the back of his head, a green football shirt stuffed into striped bathing drawers, and a pair of sea-boots. He made a picturesque villain, especially when he gripped a captured Turkish bayonet between his teeth and gurgled at the China Doll. Most of them started with naked Turkish bayonets tucked into their belts; but, on Uncle Podger's advice, the Sub sent these back in the boat which had taken them all to the _What's Her Name_. What a funny old-fashioned tub she was, and what stories she could have told of all the years she had been toiling round the coast, among the islands! Her high poop had rails round it, some of the wooden posts beautifully carved, but most of them of rough wood, which showed that she had "come down in the world" in her old age. Between the poop and the still higher fo'c'sle was a "well" deck, with its dark blood-stain, the foremast right amidships, and two big open hatchways, one for'ard and one abaft the mast. Round her fo'c'sle were more rails, some handsomely carved, and on it was an antediluvian windlass for hoisting the anchor. The cable was so rusted and worn that it seemed hardly possible that she could trust to it to ride out even the lightest of gales.

Her masts--the lower masts at any rate--and the wide-spreading foreyard were good, sound bits of timber, but the top-masts and fore-tops'l yards looked anything but sound, and her "standing" rigging was so chafed and so badly "set up" that her murdered crew must have been "past masters" in the art of sailing her gently to prevent her masts carrying away.

"Well, what about it?" the Sub asked Mr. Meredith, with a note of anxiety in his voice. "The breeze is blowing straight out of the harbour; if we run to lee'ard, 'twill be too narrow there to beat back, won't it? We'd best start beating to wind'ard, hadn't we? Look here," he said, "this is rather out of my line; you'd best run the show. You'd better start a mutiny right away."

As Mr. Meredith had been in sailing-ships for years, and had been Captain of a full-rigged ship before he was thirty, what he didn't know about sailing wasn't worth knowing. "All right," he smiled, "I'm game;" and seizing the unresisting Sub by the neck of his coloured jersey, hurled him to the deck with fierce yells, and planting one foot on his chest, roared: "Clear lower deck! I'm now the Captain of the _What's Her Name_. Now, you dog," he hissed, as the pirate crew "fell in", "get up and 'fall in' among those rascals; another word and you'll walk the plank, and your bones shall bleach on the coral islands of the Spanish Main. Ha! ha!"

The crew, overawed by his daring, and the ferocity of his appearance in a Turkish fez, a red shirt, Sam Browne belt, and khaki riding-breeches, gave three cheers for the new Captain; old Fletcher, who had put "Kaiser Bill" in a safe place where he could not fall down the hatchways, smiled indulgently; and Barnes, trying to enter into the spirit of the game, grumbled in an undertone: "This 'ere 'clear lower deck' and 'fall in' sounds too much like the real thing," and "'e didn't see quite where the fun came in."