Part 5

On every vessel in the Navy there is a phonograph, and on some destroyers there are two phonographs, one for the officers, and one for the men. The motion of the destroyer rarely permits the use of the machine at sea, but when the vessel lies quietly at her mooring buoy, you are likely to hear a battered old opera record sounding through the port holes of the ward room, and "When the midnight choo choo leaves for Alabam'" rising raucously out of the crew's quarters. When music fails, there are always plenty of magazines, thanks to good souls who read Mr. Burleson's offer and affix the harmless, necessary two cent stamps. Each batch is full of splendid novelettes. We gloat over the esoteric mysteries of the "American Buddhist," and wonder who sent it, we read the "Osteopath's Quarterly," the "Western Hog Breeder," and "Needlework." Petty officers with agricultural ambitions, and there are always a few on every boat, descend on the agricultural journals like wolves on the fold.

No notice of Queenstown, no history of the Navy would be complete without a word about golf. It is _the_ Navy game. Golf clubs are to be found in every cabin; in the tiny libraries Harry Vardon rubs shoulders with naval historians and professors of thermodynamics. If you take the train, you are sure to find a carriage full of golfers bound for a course on the home side of the river. I remember seeing the captain of an American submarine just about to start upon the most dangerous kind of an errand one could possibly imagine. It was midnight; it was raining, the great Atlantic surges were sweeping into the bay in a manner which told of rough weather outside. Just as he was about to disappear into the clamorous bowels of his craft, the captain paused for an instant on the ladder, and shouted back to us, "Tell Sanderson to put that mashie in my room when he's through with it."

Were it not for the great "United States Naval Men's Club," I fear that Jack ashore would have had but a dull time, for our amusements were limited to a dingy cinema exploiting American "serials" several years old, and a shed in which a company of odd people played pretentious melodramas of the "Worst Woman in London" type on a tiny Sunday school stage. Alas, there were not enough people in the company to complete the cast of characters, so the poor leading lady was forever disappearing into the wings as the wronged daughter of a ducal house, only to appear again in a few minutes as the dark female poisoner, whilst the little leading man with a Kerry Brogue was forever rushing back and forth between the old white-haired servitor and the Earl of Darnleycourt. Once in a while Jack came to these performances, bought the best seat, and left the theatre before the performance was ended. The British Tars, however, sat through it respectably and solemnly to the end.

The Men's Club was to be found at one end of the town close by the water's edge. It was quite the most successful and attractive thing of its kind I have ever visited. The largest building was a factory-like affair of brick which once housed some swimming baths, then became a theatre, and finally failed and lay down to die; the smaller buildings were substantial huts of the Y.M.C.A. kind which had been attached to the original structure. This institution provided some several thousand sailors with a canteen, an excellent restaurant, a theatre, a library, a recreation room, and, if necessary, a lodging. Best of all, one could go to the Club and actually be warm and comfortable in the American style, a boon not to be lightly regarded in these islands where people all winter long huddle in freezing rooms round lilliputian grates. Enlisted men controlled the club, maintained it, and selected their stewards, cooks and attendants from their own ranks. Upon everybody concerned, the Club reflects the highest credit.

There were "movies" every night, and on Saturday night a special concert by the "talent" in the flotilla. The opening number was always a selection by the Club Orchestra, perhaps a march of Sousa's, for the Navy is true to its own, or perhaps Meacham's "American Patrol." Then came a long four-reel movie, "Jim the Penman," "The Ring of the Borgias," "Gladiola" or "Davy Crockett." The last terrifying flickers die away, the footlights become rosy; the curtain rises on "The Musical Gobs." We behold a pleasant room in which two people in civilian clothes sit playing a soft, crooning air on violins. Suddenly a knock is heard at the door. One of the performers rises, goes to the door, then returns and says to his partner:

"There's some sailors out there (great laughter in the audience); they say they can play too. Want to know if they can't come in and play with us."

"Sure, tell 'em to come in."

"Come in, boys."

From behind the back drop, a subdued humming suddenly bursts and blossoms into "Strike up the band; here comes a sailor." Enter now three pleasant looking, amiably grinning lads playing the tune. Chairs are brought out for the newcomers and the "Musical Gobs," genuine artists all, play several airs. Another knock is heard and a singer, a petty officer with a good tenor, also begs to join them. The curtain goes down in a perfect tempest of applause. The screen descends once more, and all present sing together the popular songs whose text is shown, "Gimme a kiss, Mirandy," and "It's a long way to Berlin, but we'll get there." This feature was always a favourite. We then have a clog dancer, two more comic films and the National anthems. When the show is over, almost everybody wandered to the canteen to get "a bite to eat." To o'erleap the bars of the ration system with a real plate of ham and eggs, served club style, was an experience.

So if you were aboard a destroyer that night, you would have heard Jack whistling the new tunes, and his officers discussing golf scores.

XIII

STORM

Sooner or later, destroyer folk are sure to say something about _the_ storm. It happened in December and raged for a full three days. Readers will have to imagine what it meant to destroyer sailors; the boat dancing, tipping and rolling crazily without a second's respite; no warm food to eat because a saucepan could not be kept on the stove or liquids in a saucepan; no rest to be had. Imagine being in the lookout's station in such a storm, wondering when the tops of the masts were going to crash down on one's head. It was a hard time. Yet two-thirds of the American flotilla were out in it, and _not a single vessel lost an hour from her patrol_. Indeed the American vessels were about the only patrol boats to stay out during the tempest.

One day in the wardroom of the good old Z, some of the officers began to tell of it. The first narrator was the radio officer, a tall blond Westerner with big grey eyes, and a little sandy moustache.

"I knew we were in for something when I saw the clouds racing over _against_ the wind. Didn't you notice that, Duke? It kept up for quite a while, and kept getting colder and colder. It wasn't one of these squally storms, but one of these storms that starts with a repressed grouch, nurses it along, and finally decides to have it out. Whoopee! Some night, that first one. Everybody stayed on their feet. Couldn't have slept if you'd had the chance to. To get about, you grabbed the nearest thing handy, hung on for dear life, took a step, grabbed the next thing handy and so on. The old hooker did the darndest stunts I ever saw or felt. I came in to get my coat hanging in that corner, and the first thing I knew I was lying on the floor over in the other corner trying to fight my way to my feet again. One of the men in the boiler room got burned by being thrown against a hot surface. Did I tell you how I tried to lie down? Well, just as I had actually succeeded in getting over to this transom and stretching out preparatory to strapping myself in (you have to strap yourself tight in these destroyer bunks same as in an aeroplane) the old craft sank or swooped or did something more than usually funny, and left me hanging in the air about a foot and a half above the bunk. I must have looked like the subject of an experiment in levitation. A minute later either the bunk came up and caught me a wallop in the back, or I fell down like a ton of brick or we met in mid air, anyway, I thought my spine had been carried away. Then all of a sudden the library door opened and dumped about a hundred pounds of books on me.

"It was really dangerous to go on deck, for the waves could easily have torn one from the life line. One of the boats did, I think, lose a man overboard, but by wonderful luck managed to fish him out again." It is the engineer officer speaking. He is somewhat older than the average destroyer officer; somewhere on the edge of the forties, I should say; of medium height, lean; and with hazel eyes, a thin high nose and a thin, firm mouth. "I was just getting through my watch, had my foot on the ladder, in fact, when the boat that we lost got smashed in. A wave about the size of a young mountain climbed aboard, hit the deck, caught the boat, and then poured off with the kindling wood. Then to make things interesting, right when it was blowing the hardest, the men's dog took it into his head to come on deck. Of course, he was only a three months' pup then, and didn't know any better. (He does now though, he won't stick his nose out when the weather's bad.) Well, he slipped his collar or something, and ran on deck. The water was washing about under the torpedo tubes like the breakers at Atlantic City, and the deck plates were buckling. Takes a destroyer to do that. But I keep forgetting the dog. The little brute backed up between two of the stacks and started yapping out a puppyish bark at the world to starboard. It was funny in a way to see the little brute there with his short hair blown backwards and his feet braced on the wet deck. Everybody yelled, and one of the men ran out hanging on to the life line, and not a minute too soon either, for a second later a big wave came thumping down on us, and there was Maloney, the big dark fellow you were talking to this morning, hanging on to the wire by one arm, with the fool dog squashed under the other, and the whole Irish Sea trying to wash them both overboard. I was afraid he'd lose his balance or have the handle that travels along the wire torn out of his grasp. But he got to shelter all right, the darn dog yapping steadily all the time. We had two, almost three days of it, and it never let up one bit. One of our boats got caught in it with only a meagre supply of oil, but managed to make a French port. I've heard that there actually wasn't enough oil left in her tanks to have taken her three miles further. Other destroyers, too, had boats smashed up, and one of 'em came in with her smokestacks bent up for all the world like the crooked fingers of a hand. Some had depth charges washed overboard. It certainly was the worst blow that I remember."

Here the navigator came over with a twinkle in his eye, and touched me on the shoulder.

"Don't let him fill you with that dope," said he, "that storm wasn't in it with the storms we have on the other side off Hatteras."

"Hatteras, my neck," said the other. "What do you think you are, anyway--Hell-Roaring Jake the Storm King?"

And then the talk shifted to something else.

XIV

ON NIGHT PATROL

It was the end of the afternoon, there was light in the western sky and on the winding bay astern, but ahead, leaden, still, and slightly tilted up to a grey bank of eastern cloud, lay the forsaken and beleaguered sea. The destroyer, nosing slowly through the gap in the nets by the harbour mouth, entered the swept channel, increased her speed, and trembling to the growing vibration, hurried on into the dark. High, crumbling, and excessively romantic, the Irish coast behind her died away. Tragic waters lay before her. Whatever illusory friendliness men had read into the sea had vanished; the great leaden disk about the vessel seemed as insecure as a mountain road down whose length travellers cease from speaking for fear of avalanches. "A vast circular ambush." Somehow the beholder cannot help feeling that the waters should show some sign of the horrors they have seen. But the sea has engulfed all, memories as well as living men, engulfing a thousand wrecks as completely as time engulfs a thousand years.

The dark came swiftly, almost as if the destroyer had sailed to find it in that bank of eastern cloud. There was an interval of twilight, no dying glow, but a mere pause in the pale ebb of the day. The destroyer had begun to roll. Looking back from the bridge one saw the lean, inconceivably lean, steel deck, the joints of the plates still visible, the guns to each side with their attendant crews, a machine gun, swinging on a pivot like a weather vane, the gently swaying bulk of the suspended motor dories and life boats, the four great tubes of the funnels rising flush from the plates, and crowned with a tremble of vibration from the oil flames below. And all this lean world swung slowly from side to side, rocking as gently as a child's cradle, swayed as if by some gentle force from within.

The destroyer was out on patrol. A part of the threatened sea had been given to her to watch and ward. She was the guardian, ... the avenger.

The supper hour arrived, men came in groups to the galley door, some to depart with steamy pannikins, there was a smell of good food very satisfying to children of earth. In the officer's wardroom when dinner was over, and the negro mess boys were silently folding the white cloth, securing the chairs, and tidying up, those not on watch settled down to a friendly talk. All the lights except one bulb hanging over the table in a pyramidal tin shade had been switched off. It was very quiet. Now and then one could hear the splash of a wave against the side, a footfall on the deck overhead, or the tinkle of the knives and forks which the steward was putting away in a drawer. The hanging light swayed with the motion of the ship, trailing a pool of light up and down the oaken table. Cigarette smoke rose in wisps and long, languorous oriental coils to the clean ceiling. A sailor or two came in for his orders. Hushed voices talking apart, a direction to do this or that, a respectful business-like "yes, sir," a quiet withdrawal by the only door. It was all very calm, it had the atmosphere of a cruise, yet those aboard might have been torpedoed any minute, struck a mine, crashed into a submarine fooling about too near the surface (this has happened) or been sunk in thirty seconds by some hurrying, furtive brute of a liner which would have ridden over them as easily as a snake goes over a branch. The talk flowed in many channels, on the problems of destroyers, on the adventures of other boats, on members of the crew soon to be advanced to commissioned rating, and under the thought under the words, could be discerned the one fierce purpose of these fighting lives; the will to strike down the submarine and open the lanes of the sea. Oh, the vigilance, the energy, the keenness of the American patrol! There were tales of U-boats hiding in suspected bays, of merchantmen swiftly and terribly avenged, of voices that cried for help in the night, of life boats almost awash in whose foul waters the dead floated swollen and horrible. The war of the destroyer against the submarine is a matter of tragic melodrama.

The wandering glow of the swaying lamp now was reflected from the varnished table to one keen young face, now to another. "Running a destroyer is a young man's game," says the Navy. True enough. Pray do not imagine them, as a crew of "hell-driving boys." The destroyer service is the achievement of the man in the early thirties, of the officer with a young man's vigour and energy and the resolution of maturity. After all, the Navy Department is not yet trusting vessels worth several million dollars and carrying over a hundred men to eager youngsters who have no background of experience to their energy, good-will and bravery. If you would imagine a destroyer captain, take your man of thirty-two or -three, give him blue eyes, a keen, clear-cut face essentially American in its features, a sailor's tan, and a sprinkling of grey hair. A type to remember, for to the destroyer captain more than to any other single figure do we owe our opportunity of winning the war.

The evening waned, the officers who were to go on watch at twelve stole off to get a little sleep before being called. The navigator and the senior engineer slept on the transoms of the wardroom. A junior officer lingered beneath the solitary ever-swinging light, reading a magazine. A little hitch worked itself into the destroyer's motion, a swift upward leap, a little catch in mid air, a descent ending in a quiver. The voice of the waters grew louder, there were hissing splashes, watery blows, bubbly gurgles.

The sleeping officers had not paused to undress. Nobody bothers to strip on a destroyer. There isn't time, and a man has to be ready on the instant for any eventuality.

The door giving on a narrow passageway to the deck opened, and as it stood ajar, the hissing of the water alongside invaded the silent room. A sailor in a blue reefer, a big lad with big hands and simple, friendly face, entered quietly, walked over a transom and said:

"Twelve o'clock, sir."

"All right, Simmons," said the engineer, sitting up and kicking off the clothes at once with a quick gesture. Then he swung his legs over the side of the bunk, pulled on a coat and hat and wandered out to take his trick at the bridge.

He found a lovely, starlit night, a night rich in serenity and promised peace, a night for lovers, a poet's night. There was phosphorescence in the water, and as the destroyer rolled from side to side, now the guns and rails to port, now those to starboard stood shaped against the spectral trail of foam running river-like alongside. One could see some distance ahead over the haunted plain. The men by the guns were changing watch; black figures came down the lane by the funnels. A sailor was drawing cocoa in a white enamel cup from a tap off the galley wall. The hatchway leading to the quarters of the crew was open; it was dark within; the engineer heard the wiry creak of a bunk into which some one had just tumbled. The engineer climbed two little flights of steps to the bridge. It was just midnight. It was very still on the bridge, for all of the ten or twelve people standing by. All very quiet and rather solemn. One can't escape from the rich melodrama of it all. The bridge was a little, low-roofed space perhaps ten feet wide and eight feet long, it had a front wall shaped like a wide, outward pointing V, its sides and rear were open to the night. The handful of officers and men on watch stood at various points along the walls peering out into the darkness. Phosphorescent crests of low, breaking waves flecked the waters about; it was incredibly spectral. In the heart of the bridge burned its only light, a binnacle lamp burning as steadily as a light in the chancel of a darkened church, the glow cast the shadow of the helmsman and the bars of the wheel down upon the floor in radiations of light and shade like the stripes of a Japanese flag. The captain, keeping a sharp lookout over the bow, gave his orders now and then to the helmsman, a petty officer with a sober, serious face.

Suddenly there were steps on the companionway behind, the dark outline of some messenger appeared, a shadow on a background of shades. The sailor peered round for his chief and said, "Mr. Andrews sent me up, sir, to report hearing a depth bomb or a mine explode at 12.25."

"Was it very loud, Williams?"

"Yes, sir, I should have said that it wasn't more than a few miles away. We all heard it quite distinctly down below."

Evidently some devil's work was going on in the heart of the darkness. The vibration had travelled through the water and had been heard, as always, in that part of the ship below the water line.

Williams withdrew. The destroyer rushed on into the romantic night.

"Must have spotted something on the surface," said some one.... A radio operator appeared with a sheaf of telegrams. "Submarine seen in latitude x and longitude y," "Derelict awash in position so and so." "Gun fire heard off Cape Z at half past eleven"--it all had to do with the channel zone to the south. The captain shoved the sheaf into a pocket of his jacket.

Suddenly, through the dark, was heard a hard, thundering pound.

"By jingo, there's another," said somebody. "Nearby, too. Wonder what's up?"

"Sounded more like a torpedo this time," said an invisible speaker in a heavy, dogged voice. A stir of interest gripped the bridge; one could see it in the shining eyes of the young helmsman. Two of the sailors discussed the thing in whispers, fragments of conversation might have been overheard.--"No, I should have said off the port bow." "Isn't this about the place where the _Welsh Prince_ got hers?" "Listen, didn't you hear something then?"

From somewhere in the distance came three long blasts, blasts of a deep roaring whistle.

"Something's up, sure!"

The destroyer, in obedience to an order of the captain, took a sharp turn to port, and turning, left far behind a curving, luminous trail upon the sea. The wind was dying down. Again there were steps on the way.

"Distress signal, sir," said the messenger from the radio room, a shock-haired lad who spoke with the precise intonation of a Bostonian.

The captain stepped to the side of the binnacle, lowered the flimsy sheet into the glow of the lamp, and summoned his officers. The message read: "S.S. _Zemblan_, position x y z torpedoed, request immediate assistance."

An instant later several things happened all at once. The "general quarters" alarm bell which sends every man to his station began to ring, full speed ahead was rung on in the engine room, and the destroyer's course was altered once more. Men began to tumble up out of the hatchways, figures rushed along the dark deck; there were voices, questions, names. The alarm bell rang as monotonously as an ordinary door bell whose switch has jammed. But soon one sound, the roaring of the giant blowers sucking in air for the forced draught in the boiler room, overtopped and crushed all other fragments of noise, even as an advancing wave gathers into itself and destroys pools and rills left along the beach by the tide. A roaring sound, a deep windy hum. Gathering speed at once, the destroyer leaped ahead. And even as violence overtook the lives and works of men, the calm upon the sea became ironically more than ever assuring and serene.

"Good visibility," said somebody on the bridge. "She can't be more than three miles away now. Hello, there's a rocket."

A faint bronzy golden trail, suddenly flowering into a drooping cluster of darting white lights gleamed for a furtive instant among the westering winter stars.

"I saw her, sir!" cried one of the lookouts.

"Where is she, O'Farrell?"

"Quite a bit to the left of the rocket, sir. She's settling by the head."

The beautiful night closed in again. O'Farrell and the engineer continued to peer out into the dark. Suddenly both of them cried out, using exactly the same words at exactly the same time, "Torpedo off the port bow, sir!"