Part 2

The seaman raised his head and shoulders cautiously and took a rapid glance around as they topped a sea, then resumed his attitude along the keel, his chin on his crossed wrists. "You're a parson, sir," he said, "and you're ready for it, so I'll tell you. We were on detached duty, and there mayn't be another ship here for a week yet."

"A week! But, man, a merchant ship or fisherman might pass any time."

"A fisherman might, sir; but I never saw a merchantman since we came on this trip, and I don't see anything now."

There was a pause, and the padre shivered in his thin wet clothes. "The sea was going down this morning; how long do you think we could stay alive on this?"

"That's the trouble, sir. This is the pinnace, and she's stove in a bit."

"Do you mean she'll sink? But they float when they are waterlogged, don't they?"

"Not this one, she won't, and she's got the launch's slings in her too--half an hour I give her; but you're right, sir; the sea's going down, and I'm keeping a watch out for more wreckage if it goes by, sir."

The shivering-fit passed and he tried to collect his thoughts. Yes, the pinnace _had_ settled a bit since he had been dragged aboard. She did not lift so easily to the sea, and had lost the tendency to broach-to which had made him grip the keel so tightly at first. He was quite calm now, and everything seemed much more simple. Half an hour! He lowered his forehead to his hands and his thoughts raced. What had he left undone? Yes, the ship was gone, so he had nothing to think of in connection with her. As Dunn would say, his affairs in her were all "clewed up" by her loss. But ashore, now--ah! For a full minute he fought with his panic. He felt a rage against a fate that was blindly killing him when he had so much more of life to enjoy. He wanted to scream like a trapped rabbit. He felt his eyes wet with tears of self-pity, and at the feeling his sense of humour returned. He thought of himself as a child about to be smacked, and when he raised his head he was smiling into Dunn's eyes. "Half an hour is not long, Dunn," he said, "but it is longer than our friends had."

Dunn took another swift glance to right and left, then, reaching a hand cautiously into his jumper, pulled out a wet and shiny briar pipe, and began to reflectively chew the mouthpiece.

He was a young _padre_, but he had been in the Service most of the war. He knew enough to choose his words with care as he spoke again.

"Dunn," he said, "we haven't got long. I am going to pray."

"Yessir," said the bony, red face before him.

He tried again. "Dunn, you're Church of England, aren't you?"

"Yessir. On the books I am, sir."

"You mean you have no religion?"

Dunn blew hard into the bowl of his pipe and replaced the mouthpiece between his jagged teeth. "Not that sort quite, sir--but I'm all right, sir."

The _padre_ moved a little bit nearer along the keel. The pinnace was certainly deep in the water now, but his mind was at ease and he did not feel the cold. "Listen, Dunn," he said; "I am going to pray--I want you to repeat what I say after me."

Dunn moved his hands from under his chin and took his pipe from his mouth. "Yessir," he said.

The _padre_ paused a moment and looked at the long blue slope of a sea rising above his eyes. He wondered vaguely why he was not feeling sea-sick. "O God, Who made the sea and all that therein is, have mercy on us Thy servants called to-day to Thy judgment-seat. Pardon us the manifold sins we have committed, and lead us to a true repentance; and to us, who have in the past neglected Thee in our hearts, send light and strength that we may come without fear before Thy throne. Have pity, O Lord, upon those who are made widows and orphans this day. Grant to our country final victory and Thy peace. Amen."

The sun was behind clouds now, and the seas were washing occasionally along the sinking boat.

"You did not join me in the prayer, Dunn," he said. "Was it not within the scheme of your religion?"

Dunn put his pipe carefully back in his jumper and took a firmer grip of the keel. "Yes, sir," he said, "it was--but I don't whine when I'm down."

"Do you mean I was whining, Dunn?"

"No, sir, I don't. You've always prayed and you're not going back on anything. I don't go much on Church, and God wouldn't think nothing of me if I piped down now."

The _padre_ was, as has been said, a young man, and being young he did the right thing and waited for more. It came with a rush.

"You see, sir, it's God this, and God that, and no one knows what God is like, but I'm a Navy man and I think of Him my way. If I'm not afraid to die I'm all right, I think, sir. It wasn't my fault the ship sank, sir. I've always kept my job done, and I've got 'Exceptional' on my parchment. When I joined up I took the chance of this, and I ain't kicking now it's come. I reckon if a man plays the game by his messmates, and fights clean in the ring, and takes a pride, like, in his job--well, it ain't for me to say, but I don't think God'll do much to me. He'll say, 'Jack,' He'll say, 'you've got a lot of things against you here, but you ain't shirked your work and you aren't afraid of Me--so pass in with a caution,' He'll say. You're all right, sir, and it may be because you're a good Christian; but I reckon, sir, it's because you know you've done your job and not skrimshanked it that you ain't afraid, just the same as me.... Hold tight, sir,--she'll not be long now."

The _padre_ ducked his head as a swell passed, but the sea had no crest now, the weather was certainly improving. "I don't say you're right," he said, "but I haven't time to bring you to my way of thinking now."

The pinnace began to stand on end with a gurgling and bubbling of air from her bow. The two men slipped off on opposite sides, still holding the rough splintery keel between them.

"Listen, Dunn--repeat this after me: 'Please God, I have done my best, and I'm not afraid to come to You.'"

"'Please God, I've done my best, and I'm not afraid to come to You,' sir. Good-bye, sir."

"Thank you, Dunn--good-bye."

The sunset lit up the slope of a sea that looked majestically down on them, and flashed on something behind it. As they looked the wet grey conning-tower of a submarine showed barely fifty yards away. The startled sea pounded at her hull as she rose and grew, and a rush of spray shook out the folds of a limp and draggled White Ensign that hung from the after-stanchion of her bridge.

A NAVAL DISCUSSION.

The air was thick with smoke, and a half-circle of officers sat clustered round the stove in the smoking-room. True--there was no fire in the stove, but that did not count. A stove was a place you sat around and jerked cigarette ash at, or, if you were long enough, rested your heels on. The party consisted of six ship's officers and a guest. A few feet away a Bridge-party was in progress. It was the usual Naval party, and was composed of one man who could play, two who thought they could, and one who had come in in response to urgent demands to "make up a four," and who held no illusions about his own play or his partner's. However, he argued well, which was a help. The game appeared to go in spasms--a few minutes' peace punctuated only by subdued oaths, and then a cross-fire of abuse and recriminations--usually opened by the fourth player, who had somewhere learnt the wonderful feminine art of getting in first accusation, and then dodging his opponents' salvoes behind a smoke-screen of side-issues.

The group by the stove were not in the least disturbed by the game behind them. They had heard Naval Bridge played before, and knew that it was only when the players became polite that trouble was in the offing. The talk, as always, was of the War, and swung with startling suddenness from one queer aspect to another. The Senior Engineer was leaning back in his chair, his pipe between his teeth, listening to the mixture of views and voices from either side of him.

"What do they want this saluting order at all for? They're making everybody salute everybody in London now, and they say it isn't safe to walk down the Haymarket to the Admiralty, because the traffic stands to attention for you."

"All damn nonsense. There's too much saluting--that sort, I mean--and there's too little of the other sort. Let's have an order that every civilian must salute a wounded man, or a man with a wound stripe, and then I'll take Provost-Marshal and see it done."

"They'd chuck their hands in. They're all talking of Democracy now, and a wounded man would count as a gilded autocrat."

"Democracy, my foot! I know their sort of Democracy. It's like Russia's special brand--do as you please, and make all you can for yourself. A civilian's no good till he's a conscript or done his time in the Territorials. If they want democracy they can come here. This is the most democratic Service in the world."

"But you can't run down civilians over this war; why--the whole Army's civilian now. They haven't done so badly, though they had to wait for war before they moved."

"Whose fault was it they didn't help before? It wasn't ours. But that's just what I'm saying. They're all right once they've been drilled, but no damn good till they have been. We ought to put the whole lot through a short course of drill and a week of trench work, and let them go again."

The guest's voice broke in--"You mean, I take it, that the people who are going to make the peace are the people who have not yet learnt discipline?"

"Yes, sir--that's about it. They haven't learnt to think for their side instead of their own private ends."

"Call 'em politicians and have done with it, Pongo!"

"Well, they are--aren't they? They get the politicians they like, and they appoint men of their own sort, so they are all politicians really."

"Well, I think that's being rather hard on them. They have to take the men the party whips gave them. I think they're a poor lot, but I wouldn't call them politicians."

The guest moved uneasily. "I don't quite see your point," he said. "Is the term 'politician' one of reproach or praise? I once stood for my local constituency and----"

The young officer with his heels on the stove gave a sudden snort. "Don't you believe him, he's pulling your legs--so don't apologise. He's no politician, anyway."

The guest laughed. "Well, I'm not in politics now," he said. "What is your definition of this strange animal?"

There was a pause, and then a cautious reply, "Well, he's an M.P."

"But I know some very charming M.P.'s--are they all politicians?"

"Oh no, sir. They're different. It's a question of standards, really."

"Ah, but what are the standards?"

"Well, you see--we have one--and civilians have another, business people and so on, and then there's the politicians."

"You ought to write a dictionary, Pongo--you snub-nosed old shell-back. No, I ain't scrapping, and if you get up I'll take your chair."

"Whose got a cigarette? No, not one of your stinkers--gimme one of yours, Guns."

The officer addressed politely passed a cigarette across in his fingers, and turning in his chair beckoned to a marine servant who was just returning with an empty tray from the Bridge table.

"A cigarette, please, waiter--and debit it to the account of my honourable friend Mr Maugham, here. I'll stop your cadging, Pongo--if I have to take on the tobacco accounts to do it."

"Lucky there's no shortage of 'baccy, or all the armies would strike."

"Well, that'd be one way to stop the war. You can't fight without it. Wish we had some tobacco shares. Some people must be making a lot."

"Not so much as the food people."

"I don't believe the food people do make so much. It's the world shortage that causes the trouble, not the prices--or rather one involves the other."

"It isn't so much that. It's a rise of prices all round. Things get expensive, so the country strikes for higher wages and gets them--then prices go up because the sovereign has depreciated, and they strike again. It goes on in a vicious circle."

"Can't be a circle--because that's progression. You've got to get to a smash in time."

"Yes, it means there'll be just as much cash in the world, but every one will be poor. Cash isn't wealth--work is wealth, and all work nowadays is wasted. We're chucking it into the air in Flanders."

"Well, we'll last out this war, and then have to lash out."

"Oh yes--there'll be room to lash out in, too. We'll be back in Elizabeth's days--lots of room for every one, but no capital."

"So long as there are no Huns we'll be happy, so what's the odds? Give us a match."

"Well, I want a few Huns left to compare notes with after this. It would be dull to hear our own side only. One couldn't meet their Army, of course, but their Navy's not so bad. They've tried to fight clean, at any rate, and they fight good and 'earty. Yes, I know about Fritz, but if you had orders to torpedo liners, wouldn't you do it? 'Course you would, if you were told they were carrying munitions and you were saving your country by it. There are Fritzes who _like_ it, certainly, but we have to give the others the benefit of the doubt."

"Well, I'd like to read their logs and so on after the war, though we'll be so damn sick of all the truck they'll publish here when the Censor pays off that we wont want to read much of anything."

"It isn't the stuff just after the war one would like to read. I'd like to be alive in a hundred years to read the truth."

"Well, you wont be if you knock my drink over with your hairy hoofs--sit still!"

"It'd do you good if I did knock it over--your hoary-headed old rip. Guns, do you think they'll have raised our pay in a hundred years' time?"

"I doubt it. They'll pay off the Navy and economise as soon as peace is signed--"

"--And we'll have another war on our hands inside six months--we always do; we've always retrenched after a war, and then had to give bonuses to get the men back inside a year."

"Well, they'll pay off the battleships, anyway--and only keep the fast cruisers and the submarines."

"You and your submarines! Have you heard from your brother lately?"

"Yes, he tells me if I'm going to join I've got to remember it's the greatest honour to be--half a sec., I've got the letter here--to be alive and able to get into the greatest and most efficient Service of the Greatest Navy the world has ever seen, in the Greatest event in History since the Moon broke off."

There was a two seconds' silence (which is long for a Naval discussion), then--

"Well, cutting out the swollen-headed tosh about the Greatest Service, which I take it he means to refer to submarines, I don't know that he's far wrong."

"Well, I suppose we shall have our pasts and presents all looked up, and that people at the U.S. Institution will argue about us like they did a few years ago about Trafalgar."

"No fear. They'll all be peaceful then, and we'll be barbarians, and not to be spoken of."

"Barbarian, my foot! We're the cleanest lot in England, and the English are cleaner than most races."

"Do you think there'll be another battle?"

"Oh, help! If that cag's going to start, I'm off. Good-night, sir."

"I must go too, Jim," said the guest, with a startled glance at the clock. "Where did I leave my coat?"

The Senior Engineer rose and followed them out, hearing as he passed through the door an unwearying voice by the stove--"I know a chap on Beatty's staff, and he says they'll fight next spring or summer."

THE GUNLAYER.

"_Hit first--hit hard--and keep on hitting_, is a good rule, but what I want to impress on you is that in this war the last part of that rule is the most important. The enemy shoots remarkably well--at a target--but he does not appear to stand punishment well himself. It is remarkable how the German shooting falls off once he gets a few big shells aboard him, and up to date it has been noticeable that our own practice is, up to a certain point, improved by our being hit. It is just a matter of sticking power...."

The Gunnery Lieutenant paused in his lecture and sighed. "Would these pasty-faced beggars stick it?" He had had a week to train the crew--most of them raw hands--of the latest and fastest light cruiser, into a semblance of war efficiency, and the effort was tiring him. They were so very new and unintelligent, and he had had to go over the A B C of gunnery with them as if they had never been through their course before joining. Seven bells struck, and he dismissed the class and sent them shuffling and elbowing out of the flat.

* * * * *

They had been stationed at the guns three hours and had seen nothing. This was their second day out, and the first nervousness and feeling of shyness at being in enemy waters was wearing off. The mist that had been with them since dawn was clearing away too, and the gunlayer of No. Five straightened his back and stretched himself against the shield. This was a silly game, he decided. Two cables astern the knife-edge stem of a sister ship was parting their wake into two creamy undulating waves which seemed to spoil the mirror-like surface of what the German wireless has with inimitable humour termed "The fringe of the English barred zone," or as their Lordships more drily put it, "The mouth of the Bight."

* * * * *

The gunlayer spat carefully over the side and felt in his cap-rim for a cigarette. He calculated that he would make the "fag," with care, last till breakfast. Fourteen days in commission had at any rate taught him that the art of shortening up the frequent spells of boredom consisted in a judicious mixture of tobacco and thinking, and as smoking was barred under heavy penalties during the dark hours, his brain had been somewhat overworked since four. As he fumbled for his matches he froze suddenly still as a bugle blared "Action stations!" from the bridge above him. He heard the beginnings of the clatter of men closing up and the hum of activity along the deck, but till the cold shiver had passed from him he could not move. His one idea was that this was _real_, and he would give anything to be out of it. Then in a flash he was at his sights, his hands on the focussing-ring and his head close up to the telescope, in fear that others might see something in his face that he did not want them to see. For exactly the same reasons some hundred other men on the upper deck were becoming feverishly busy, but before the last note of the bugle had died the guns' crews were over their stage fright, and were, with perhaps a little more care and intelligence than they had shown at drill, closing up to their guns.

The gunlayer of No. Five stepped to one side and looked out on the beam. The mists had cleared, and far to the east he could see a line of little smoke puffs that could only mean one thing--ships in station and burning high-speed fuel. The cruiser heeled a little, and the smoke dots swung from abeam to nearly ahead as she turned, and he lost sight of them behind the shield of the next gun. He wanted to go forward and watch them. It seemed worse to have it hanging over him like this. He did not know if he would be quite ready if the ship turned suddenly to bring his gun to bear and he should see the enemy at close range, and no longer as little brown smoke blurs.

The sight-setter, a boy of seventeen, spoke to him and he looked round. The boy's face was rather white, and his lips trembled a little. The gunlayer woke up at the sight, and broke into a pleased grin.

"Only little beggars," he said, "hardly enough to make a mouthful. Don't you make no blinkin' errors this morning, my lad, or I'll land you one you'll be proud of!"

The speech cheered him up, and he began to believe he _might_ come out of it alive--with luck. The ship was travelling now. The white water raced past at a dizzy speed, and a great sloping V of bubbling foam followed them fifty yards astern. Every few seconds a quivering vibration started from forward and travelled through the hull--reminding him of a terrier waiting at a rat-hole. He wanted to smoke--there would be just time for a cigarette--but although he was afraid of death, he was afraid of the Gunnery Lieutenant more. He snuggled down to the shoulder-piece and began working his elevating wheel slowly. There was little roll on the ship, and he realised thankfully that there was going to be no difficulty about keeping his sights on. The oblong port in the shield through which his telescope passed worried him: it seemed so unnecessarily big. That was just like the Admiralty designers, he thought--so long as they didn't have to stand behind the hole they didn't care how big it was. Why, it would let a six-inch shell through! He felt quite a grievance about it. Then, with a heel and an increase of vibration the ship turned. Lord! there they were--one--two--three--four--five of them--going like smoke, too. He pressed close to his telescope, and the enemy sprang into view--many times magnified. The boy sight-setter in a cracked voice repeated an order, and he heard the quick shuffle of feet and the word "Ready" come like a whip-crack from behind him. The leading enemy danced in the heat-haze as his telescope swayed up and down her foremast. It all depended on him and a few others now. The responsibility worried him. The gun's crew behind him were invisible, but he felt that their eyes were glued to his back, and that they were wondering if he was going to make good.

Boom--Br-r-room--Boom! That was the next ahead. It sounded a rotten salvo. Was she ranging--or would they all start now? He saw no splashes by the ship in his sights. Was it a complete miss, or was it fired at another enemy?

Boom--B-r-_room_! That was a better one. Weren't _they_ going to do anything? As he wondered, the enemy cruiser flashed like a red helio, and he gasped in admiration at the simultaneous firing of her battery. A great sheet of white shut out the view in his telescope, and a deafening crack announced the bursting of a short salvo. _Wow_-ooo! Something whined overhead, and his own gun spoke--rocking the shield, and making him flinch from the sights. _Gawd!_ had he fired with the sights on, or were his eyes shut? Anyhow, the men behind him did not seem to notice anything wrong. The breech slammed viciously, and the word "Ready" came on the instant. "_Clang_"--something hit the shield and glanced upwards as his gun spoke again. He knew he hadn't had the sights on then--he hadn't been ready,--how the hell could a man keep the sights on with this going on? Behind him a man began a scream, a scream which was cut short suddenly with the crack of a bursting H.E. shell and the whistle and wail of splinters. Gawd! this was chronic--the ship must be getting it thick. The enemy swung into his telescope field again, and he saw the throbbing flame jerk out and vanish from her upper deck.