Part 8

The day was a pleasant one, the sun was shining clear and a fresh salty breeze was blowing down the estuary. The officers, however, shook their heads, talked of "low visibility," and pointed out that an invisible mist hung over the water, whose cumulative effect was not at all to their liking. First there went out a new variety of submarine, steam submarines of extraordinary size and speed; there followed a swift procession of destroyers and lighter cruisers, many signalling with blinker and flag. The outgoing of the destroyers was a sight not to be forgotten, for more than anything else did it impress upon me the titanic character of the fleet. _Destroyers passed one every fifty seconds for a space of many hours_. You would hear a hiss, and a lean, low rapier of a vessel would pass within a hundred yards of the flagship and hurry on, rolling, into the waiting haze of the open sea, and as you watched this first vessel leave your bow astern, you would hear another watery hiss prophetic of the following boat. On our own vessel all boats had long before been hoisted to their places; there were mysterious crashing noises, bugle calls, a deal of orderly action. Time passed; a long time full of movement and stir. The greater vessels began to go out, titans of heroic name, _The Iron Duke_, _Queen Elizabeth_, _Lion_. A broad swirling road of water lay behind them as one by one they melted into that ever mysterious obscurity ahead. Then with a jar, and a torrent of crashing iron thunder dreadful as a disintegration of the universe itself, our own immense anchor chains rose from the water below, and the American flagship got under way. We looked with a meditative eye on the bare shores of the firth wondering what adventures we were to have before we saw them again. Behind us the mist gathered, ahead, it melted away. And thus we stood out to the open sea. Night came, starlit and cold. Just at sun-down one of the British ships destroyed a floating mine with gun fire. I sought information from an officer friend.

"What about the mine problem?"

"Never bothers us a bit, though the Germans have planted mines everywhere. This North Sea is as full of them as a pudding is of plums."

"Why is it then that the fleet doesn't lose ships when out on these expeditions?"

"Because the British mine sweepers have done so bully a job."

"But once you get beyond the swept channels at the harbour mouths, what then?"

"The mine-sweepers attend to the whole North Sea."

"You mean to say that the Admiralty actually clears an ocean of mines?"

"To all intents and purposes, yes. Haven't you read of naval skirmishes in the North Sea? They are always having them. Many of those skirmishes take place between patrol boats of ours and enemy patrols. Of course it's a task, but the British have done it. One of the most wonderful achievements of the war."

"Suppose the Germans try to reach the British coast?"

"They do their best to find the British path. As a result, the Germans are always either bumping into their own mines or into ours. I feel pretty sure that their loss from mines has been quite heavy."

"Where, then, are the German cruising grounds? Doesn't their fleet get out once in a while?"

"Not to the outer sea. Once in a while they parade up the Danish coast, never going more than two or three hours from their base. Our steady game, of course, is to nab them when they are out, and cut off their retreat. If the weather had held good at Jutland, this would have been done. But the Germans now hardly ever venture out. Destroyers of theirs, based on the Belgian coast, try to mix things up in the Channel once or twice a year, but the fleet seems to stick pretty closely to dear old Kiel."

"Any more information in regard to this present trip?"

"Not a thing. It's always mysterious like this. Yet in twenty minutes we may be right in the thick of the world's greatest naval battle."

The next morning I rose at dawn to see the fleet emerge from the dark of night. A North Sea morning was at hand, cold, windy and clear. Now seas have their characters even as various areas of land, and there is as much difference between the North Sea and the Irish Sea as there is between a rocky New England pasture and a stretch of prairie. The shallow North Sea is in colour an honest salty, ocean green, and its surface is ever in motion; a sea without respite or rest. It has a franker, more masculine character than the beleaguered sea to the west with its mottlings of shadow and shoal and weaving, white-crested tide rips. A great armament, scouts, destroyers, and light cruisers had already passed over the edge of the world, and only a very thin haze revealed their presence. Miles ahead of us in a great lateral line, a number of great warships, vast triangular bulks, ploughed along side by side, then came the American squadron in a perpendicular line, each vessel escorted by destroyers. Behind us, immense, stately, formidable and dark, the second American ship followed down the broad river of our wake which flowed like liquid marble from the beat of the propellers. And behind the American squadron lay other ships, and over the horizon the bows of more ships still were pointing to the mine-strewn German coast. The Grand Fleet line, _eighty miles long_, rode the sea, a symbol of power, an august and visible defiance. Standing beneath the forward turret, beside the muzzles of the titan guns, I felt that I had at last beheld the mightiest element of the war.

Tightly wrapped in a navy great coat, the young officer whose guest I had been at turret drill walked up and down the deck watching the southeastern horizon. What eagerness lay in his eyes! If we only might then have heard a heavy detonation from over the edge of the dawn-illumined sky! ... All day long we cried our challenge over the sealed waters ahead.

Were "they" out? To this day, I do not know. The ways of the fleet are mysterious. Certainly, none came forth to accept our gage of battle. A time passed, and we were in port again. We saw the vessels we had left behind, the supply ships, tugs, oil tenders, colliers ... all the servants of the fleet.

Down in the wardroom, the tension relaxed. The anchor chain rattled out; once more the universe seemed to part asunder. The mail had arrived, joyous event. Somebody put a roll of music into a rather passé player piano, and let loose an avalanche of horribly orderly chords.

And all the time the Olympians were preparing, not the battle of the ages, but the Great Surrender!

XXIV

"SKY PILOTS"

We know him as chaplain, the gobs use the good old term "Sky Pilot," and the British call him "Padre." His task, no light one, is to look after the spiritual and moral welfare of some thousand sailor souls. He is general counsellor, friend in need, mender of broken hearts, counsel for the defence, censor, and show manager. Now he comes to the defence of seaman, first class, Billy Jones, whose frail bark of life has come to grief on the treacherous reef of the installment plan, and for whose misdemeanours a clamouring merchant is on deck threatening to "attach the ship." Now he is assuring the clergyman of the church on the hill that 2nd class petty officer Edgar K. Lee (who is going to marry pretty little Norah Desmond) is not, as far as he knows, committing bigamy. They tell of a chaplain of the destroyer force who, pestered beyond bearing by these demands that the American bridegroom be declared officially and stainlessly single, floored his tormentor by replying: "I've told you that as far as we know the man's unmarried. We can't give you any assurance more official. He may be bigamous, trigamous, quadrugamous, or," here he paused for effect, "pentagamous, but I advise you to risk it." The land sky pilot is said to have collapsed.

Aboard the flagship of the Grand Fleet, the chaplain of the vessel was my guide, counsellor, and friend. In the words of one of the sailors, "Our chaplain is a real feller." And indeed it would have been hard to find a better man for the task than this padre of ours with his young man's idealism, friendliness, and energy. In addition to his welfare work, he had his duties as a de-coder, and his spare time he spent tutoring several of the enlisted personnel who were about to take examinations for higher ratings. It is a great mistake, by the way, to imagine that a violent gulf lies between the commissioned officer and the enlisted man. One finds the higher officer only too glad to help the sailor advance, and many times have they said to me, "Don't write about us, write about the sailors; get to know them; get their story." On this particular ship many of the younger officers were, like the chaplain, giving up their spare time to help the ambitious men along. Correspondence school courses are great favourites in the Navy, and have undoubtedly helped many a sailor on to a responsible rating.

Our flagship chaplain used to make several rounds of the ship every day, "tours of welfare inspection," he used to call them humorously. Everywhere would he go, from wardroom to torpedo station, not neglecting an occasional visit to the boiler room. Friendly grins used to salute him on his passage; as the sailor said he was a "real feller." I often accompanied him on his rounds. When the tour was over, we would go to the chaplain's room for a quiet smoke and a good talk. The chaplain's room was always clean and quiet, and on the bookshelf, instead of weighty books on thermodynamics and navigation, were the pleasant kind of books one found in friendly houses over home.

"Do you know," said the chaplain to me one day, "you have landed here at an interesting time. There's very little shore leave being given because it can't be given, and as a result the life of the ship is thrown back upon itself for all its amusements and social activities. What do you think of the morale here?"

"I think it's very high," I answered. "The men seem very contented and keen. I've talked with a great many of them. How do you keep the morale up?"

"Well, this ship has always been famous as a 'happy ship'" (here I ventured to say that any other condition would be impossible under the captain we had) "and when men get into the habit of working together good-naturedly, that habit is liable to stick. And I find the men sustained by the thought of active service. You may think it calm here, having just arrived from a destroyer base, but think of what it is over on the American coast."

"Calm?" said I. "Don't put that down to me. The very idea of being with the Grand Fleet is thrilling. It's the experience of a lifetime. And let me tell you right from personal experience that no sight of the land war can match the impressiveness and grandeur of the first view of the fleet."

"I feel just as you do. The whole thing is a constant wonder. And some day the Germans may come out. Moreover, summer is now at hand, and we shall have a chance to use the deck more for sports. This long, raw, rainy winter doesn't permit much outdoor exercise. As soon as it gets warm, however, we shall have boxing matches on the deck between various members of the crew and the champions of the different ships. We have some good wrestlers, too. At present we are reduced to vaudeville competitions between our various vessels, and movies. I'm doing my best to get better movies. So we shan't fare badly after all."

"When do you hold Sunday services?"

"I have a service in the morning and another in the evening. Yes, I muster a pretty big congregation. But I'm afraid I've got to be going now, got to ram a little algebra into the head of one of the boys. See you at dinner." And our sky pilot was gone. May good luck go with him, and good friends be ever at hand to return him the friendliness he grants.

They tell a story of a favourite chaplain who retired from the Navy to take charge of a parish on land.

"Good-bye, sir," said one of the old salts to him, as he was leaving the ship. "Good-bye, sir. We'll all look to see you come back with a _bishop's rating_."

XXV

IN THE WIRELESS ROOM

I haven't the slightest idea where the wireless room is or how to find it. All that I remember is that some kind soul took me by the hand, led me through various passages and down several ladders, and landed me in a small compartment which I felt sure must have been hollowed out of the keel. The wireless room of a great ship is, by the way, a kind of holy of holies, and my visit to it more than an ordinary privilege.

There are as many messages in the air these times as there were wasps in the orchard in boyhood days after one had thrown a large, carefully-selected stone into the big nest. Messages in all keys and tunes, messages in all the known languages, messages in the most baffling of codes. Now the operator picks up a merchantman asking for advice in English, this against all rules and regulations; a request once answered by a profane somebody with "Use the code, you damned fool." At intervals the Eiffel Tower signals the time; listening to it, one seems to hear the clear, monotonous tick-tock of a giant pendulum. Now it is a British land station talking to a British squadron on watch in the North Sea, now the destroyers are at it, now one hears the great station at Wilhelmshaven sending out instructions to the submarine fleet in ambush off these isles.

How strange it is to come here at midnight and hear the Germans talking! Germany has been so successfully cut off from contact with the civilization she assaulted that these communications have the air of being messages from Mars. There are times when the radio operator picks up frantic cries sent by one U-boat to another; I have before me as I write a record of such a call. It began at 2.14 A.M., shortly after a certain submarine was depth-bombed by an American destroyer. First to be received was _OLN's_ clear, insistent call for _RXK_ and _ZZN_, probably the two nearest members of the U-boat fleet. Were they cries for help? Probably. Again and again the spark uttered its despairing message. For some time there was no answer. The other two boats may have been submerged; quite possibly sunk. Then at 2.40 from far, far away came _ADL_ calling _OLN_. At 2.45 _OLN_ answered very faintly. A minute or two later, _ADL_ tried and tried again to get either _RXK_ and _ZZN_. But there was no answer. Was she trying to send them to the help of the stricken vessel? At 2.57 _ADL_ tries for the hard pressed _OLN_, but no answer comes to her across the darkness of the sea.

Night and day, a force of operators sit here taking down the messages, sending important ones directly to the chief officers, and letting unimportant ones accumulate in batches of four and five. The messages are written or typewritten on a form in shape and make-up not unlike that of an ordinary telegram blank. All day and all night long, the messengers hurry through the corridors of the great ship with bundles of these naval signals. And since everything intended for the Navy comes in code, decoders too must be at hand at all hours to unravel the messages. It is no easy task, for the codes are changed for safety's sake every little while. On board the great ship I visited, the chaplain did a big share of this work. I can see him now bent over his table in the wireless room, spelling out sentences far more complicated than the Latin and Greek of his university days.

There is one wireless service which will not be remembered with affection by our sailors over there, the Government Wireless Press Service. I was in the Grand Fleet when that dashing business of the first Zeebrugge raid occurred. The "Press News" on the following morning mentioned it, and warned us impressively to keep our knowledge to ourselves. As a result we spoke of it at breakfast time with bated breath. I myself, a modest person, was stricken with a sudden access of importance at possessing a Grand Fleet secret.

Then at ten o'clock the morning papers came down from a certain great city with a full, detailed account of the raid!

The thing that we have most against it, however, is its conduct during the great offensive of the spring of 1918. The air was resounding with the wireless pæans of the on-rushing Germans; and everybody was worried, and anxious to know the fortunes of our troops. One rushed to breakfast early to have first chance at the press news. Friends gathered behind one's shoulder, and tried to read before sitting down. What's the news? What's the news? This (or something very like it) was the news:

"Dr. Ostropantski, president of the Græco-Lettish Diet, denounced yesterday at a meeting of the Novoe Vremya the German assault on the liberties of Beluchistan."

There was one vast, concerted groan from the sons of the Grand Fleet. Some wondered what the anxious folk far out at sea on the destroyers were saying. Finally the wit of the table shook his head gravely.

"Boys," said he, "where _would_ we be if the civilians refused to tell?"

XXVI

MARINES

This paper does not deal with the marines fighting in France, but with the marines such as one finds them on the greater ships. The gallant "devil dogs" now adding fresh laurels to the corps have army correspondents to tell of them, for though they are trained by the Navy and are the Navy's men, the Army has them now under its command. It is rather of the genuine marine, the true "soldier of the sea" that I would speak. Having been myself something of a soldier and a sailor, the marines were good enough to receive me in a friendly fashion when I was a guest on one of the battleships now on foreign service.

Even as the traditional nickname for the sailor is "gob," so is "leatherneck" the seaman's traditional word for the marine. I am guileless enough not to know just how marines take this term, but if there is any doubt, I advise readers to be easy with it, for marines will fight at the drop of a hat. All those aboard declared, by the way, that the antipathy between the sailor and the marine in which the public believes, does not exist, nor do the marines according to the popular notion "police the ship." The marine has his place; the sailor has his, and they do not mix, not because they dislike each other, but simply because the marine and the sailor are the products of two widely different systems of training. Moreover, the marine is bound to his own people by an _esprit de corps_ without equal in the world. It was very fine to see each man's anxiety that the corps should not merely have a good name, but the best of names.

We swopped yarns. In return for my gory tales of shelled cities, gas attacks, and air raids, they gave me gorgeous ... gorgeous tales of the little wars they have fought in the Caribbean. I realized for the first time just what it meant to Uncle Sam to be Central America's policeman. Now, as they spun their yarns, I could see the low, white buildings of a Consulate against the luminous West Indian sky, the boats on the beach, the marines on patrol; now the sugar plantation menaced by some political robber-rebel, the little tents under the trees, the business-like machine gun. A harassed American planter is often the _deux ex machina_ of these tales.

We used to talk in a little office aboard the battleships down by the marines' quarters, which lie aft. I believe it was the sergeant's sanctum sanctorum. There were marine posters on the wall, a neat little stack of the marines' magazines handy by, a few books, and some filing cabinets. Just outside were the marine lockers, each one in the most perfect order, and a gun breech used for loading drills. The sergeant, himself, was a fine, keen fellow who had been in the corps for some time. His men declared themselves, for the most part, city born and bred.

"What happened then?"

"Just as soon as they got the message, a detail was sent into the hills for the defence of the plantation. It was a big sugar plantation. The American manager was seeing red he was so peeved, the harvesting season had come and the help, scared by the insurgents, were beating it off into the hills. What's more, the insurgents had told the manager that if he didn't pony up with five thousand dollars by a certain date, they'd burn the place. Actually had the nerve..."

"In fiction," said I, "a lean, dark, villainous fellow mounted on a magnificent horse which he has looted from some fine stable dashes up to the plantation door, delivers his threat in an icy tone and gallops back into the bush. Or else a message wrapped round a stone crashes through the window onto the family breakfast table. Which was it?"

I think the marine telling the story wanted very much to utter: "How do you get that way?" however, he merely grinned and answered:

"Neither. A big, fat greaser in a dirty, Palm Beach suit came ambling up one morning as if somebody had asked him to chow. This was his game. A holdup? Oh, no! Only his men were getting a bit restless under the neck, about five thousand dollars restless, and if they didn't get it, there's no telling what they wouldn't do. He thought he could restrain them till Tuesday night, of course it would be a pretty stiff job to hold them in, but if something crisp and green hadn't shown up by Tuesday P.M., those devils might actually burn the plantation. Did you ever hear such a line of bull? And that's the honest truth of it, too; none of this stone in the mashed potatoes guff."

"And then," I broke in, "the faithful servant gallops through the valley to the shore; a stray bullet knocks off his hat, but he gets there, and delivers his message to the warship in the bay. A bugle blows, the marines rally, launches take them to the beach; they rush over the hills, and get to the plantation just as Devil's-hoof Gomez or Pink-eyed Pedro has set fire to a corner of the bungalow. Rifles crack, bugles sound a charge, the marines rush the Gomez gang who take to their heels. Brave hearts put out the fire. Isn't there always an exquisitely beautiful señorita to be rescued? There always is in the movies. Now, please don't destroy any more of my illusions."

"The message comes all right, all right, but I doubt very much if that faithful servant comes in a hurry. Down there, if a man goes by in a hurry, everybody in the village will be out to look at him.... The major gets the message, works out his plan of campaign, and away we go. Arrived at the plantation, we pitch camp, establish pickets, and generally get things ready to give the restless greasers a hot time. Sometimes the greasers try their luck at sniping; other times, they go away quietly and don't give you a bit of trouble. There aren't any beautiful señoritas, ... no broken hearts. Yes, it's tough luck."

Thus were my illusions dispelled by a group of Uncle Sam's marines. They forgot to tell me that many members of their little company had been wounded, and seriously wounded in these West Indian shindies. The list of wounds and honours in the records was an impressive roll.

The visitor aboard a warship will see marines acting as orderlies and corporals of the guard and manning the secondary batteries. I attended many of their drills, and never shall forget the snap and "pep," of the evolutions. Nor shall I forget the courtesies and friendly help of the gallant officer under whose command these soldiers of the sea have the good luck to be stationed.

N.B. (Very secret), to Huns only. The marines man the gun in the "Exec's" office and the corresponding one in the line officers' reading room. If you want to get home to the old home canal, ... keep away from their range.

XXVII

SHIPS OF THE AIR