Part 9

At this point in the story we come across Mr. Frazer, the Scotch engineer, who, like most of his countrymen, had been holding his trump-card in reserve. He knew the _Sarah Sands_ was built with a water-tight bulkhead behind the engine-room and the coal-bunkers; and he proposed to cut through the bulkhead and pump on the fire. Also, he pointed out that it would be well to remove the coal in the bunkers, as the bulkhead behind was almost red-hot, and the coal was catching light.

So volunteers dropped into the bunkers, each man for the minute or two he could endure it, and shovelled away the singeing, fuming fuel, and other volunteers were lowered into the bonfire aft, and when they could throw no more water on it they were pulled up half roasted.

Mr. Frazer’s plan saved the ship, though every particle of wood in the after part of her was destroyed, and a bluish vapour hung over the red-hot iron beams and ties, and the sea for miles about looked like blood under the glare, as they pumped and passed water in buckets, flooding the stern, sluicing the engine-room bulkhead and damping the coal beyond it all through the long night. The very sides of the ship were red-hot, so that they wondered when her plates would buckle and wrench out the rivets and let the whole affair down to the sharks.

The foremast had carried away on the squall of the 7th of November; the mizzen-mast, as you know, had gone in the fire; the main-mast, though wrapped round with wet blankets, was alight, and everything abaft the main-mast was one red furnace. There was the constant danger of the ship, now broadside on to the heavy seas, falling off before the heavy wind, and leading the flames forward again. So they hailed the boats to tow and hold her head to wind; but only the gig obeyed the order. The others had all they could do to keep afloat; one of them had been swamped, though all her people were saved; and as for the long-boat full of mutinous seamen, she behaved infamously. One record says that “She not only held aloof, but consigned the ship and all she carried to perdition.” So the _Sarah Sands_ fought for her own life alone, with the sharks in attendance.

About three on the morning of the 12th of November, pumping, bucketing, sluicing and damping, they began to hope that they had bested the fire. By nine o’clock they saw steam coming up from her insides instead of smoke, and at mid-day they called in the boats and took stock of the damage. From the mizzen-mast aft there was nothing that you could call ship except just the mere shell of her. It was all one steaming heap of scrap-iron with twenty feet of black, greasy water flooding across the bent and twisted rods, and in the middle of it all four huge water-tanks rolled to and fro, thundering against the naked sides.

Moreover,—this they could not see till things had cooled down—the powder explosions had blown a hole right through her port quarter, and every time she rolled the sea came in there green. Of the four masts only one was left; and the rudder-head stuck up all bald, black and horrible among the jam of collapsed deck-beams. A photograph of the wreck looks exactly like that of a gutted theatre after the flames and the firemen have done their worst.

They spent the whole of the 12th of November pumping water out as zealously as they had pumped it in. They lashed up the loose, charging tanks as soon as they were cool enough to touch. They plugged the hole at the stern with hammocks, sails, and planks, and a sail over all. Then they rigged up a horizontal bar gripping the rudder-head. Six men sat on planks on one side and six at the other over the empty pit beneath, hauling on to the bar with ropes and letting go as they were told. That made the best steering-gear that they could devise.

On the 13th of November, still pumping, they spread one sail on their solitary mast—it was lucky that the _Sarah Sands_ had started with four of them—and took advantage of the trade winds to make for Mauritius. Captain Castles, with one chart and one compass, lived in a tent where some cabins had once been; and at the end of twelve more days he sighted land. Their average run was about four knots an hour; and, it is no wonder that as soon as they were off Port Louis, Mauritius, Mr. Frazer, the Scotch engineer, wished to start his engines and enter port professionally. The troops looked down into the black hollow of the ship when the shaft made its first revolution, shaking the hull horribly; and if you can realize what it means to be able to see a naked screw-shaft at work from the upper deck of a liner, you can realize what had happened to the _Sarah Sands_. They waited outside Port Louis for the daylight, and were nearly dashed to pieces on a coral reef. Then the gutted, empty steamer came in—very dirty, the men’s clothes so charred that they hardly dared to take them off, and very hungry; but without having lost one single life. Port Louis gave them all a public banquet in the market place, and the French inhabitants were fascinatingly polite as only the French can be.

But the records say nothing of what befell the sailors who “consigned the ship to perdition.” One account merely hints that “this was no time for retribution”; but the troops probably administered their own justice during the twelve days’ limp to port. The men who were berthed aft, the officers and the women, lost everything they had; and the companies berthed forward lent them clothes and canvas to make some sort of raiment.

On the 20th of December they were all re-embarked on the _Clarendon_. It was poor accommodation for heroes. She had been condemned as a coolie-ship, was full of centipedes and other animals picked up in the Brazil trade; her engines broke down frequently; and her captain died of exposure and anxiety during a hurricane. So it was the 25th of January before she reached the mouth of the Hugli.

By this time—many of the men probably considered this quite as serious as the fire—the troops were out of tobacco, and when they came across the American ship _Hamlet_, Captain Lecran, lying at Kedgeree on the way up the river to Calcutta, the officers rowed over to ask if there was any tobacco for sale. They told the skipper the history of their adventures, and he said: “Well, I’m glad you’ve come to me, because I have some tobacco. How many are you?” “Three hundred men,” said the officers. Thereupon Captain Lecran got out four hundred pounds of best Cavendish as well as one thousand Manilla cigars for the officers, and refused to take payment on the grounds that Americans did not accept anything from shipwrecked people. They were not shipwrecked at the time, but evidently they had been shipwrecked quite enough for Captain Lecran, because when they rowed back a second time and insisted on paying, he only gave them grog, “which,” says the record, “caused it to be dark when we returned to our ship.” After this “our band played ‘Yankee-Doodle,’ blue lights were burned, the signal-gun fired”—that must have been a lively evening at Kedgeree—“and everything in our power was had recourse to so as to convey to our American cousins our appreciation of their kindness.”

Last of all, the Commander-in-Chief issued a general order to be read at the head of every regiment in the Army. He was pleased to observe that “the behaviour of the 54th Regiment was most praiseworthy, and by its result must render manifest to all the advantage of subordination and strict obedience to orders under the most alarming and dangerous circumstances in which soldiers can be placed.”

This seems to be the moral of the tale.

THE LAST LAP

How do we know, by the bank-high river, Where the mired and sulky oxen wait, And it looks as though we might wait for ever, How do we know that the floods abate? There is no change in the current’s brawling— Louder and harsher the freshet scolds; Yet we can feel she is falling, falling, And the more she threatens the less she holds. Down to the drift, with no word spoken, The wheel-chained wagons slither and slue. Steady! The back of the worst is broken. And—lash your leaders!—we’re through—we’re through!

How do we know, when the port-fog holds us Moored and helpless, a mile from the pier, And the week-long summer smother enfolds us— How do we know it is going to clear? There is no break in the blind-fold weather, But, one and another, around the bay, The unseen capstans clink together, Getting ready to up and away. A pennon whimpers—the breeze has found us— A headsail jumps through the thinning haze. The whole hull follows, till—broad around us— The clean-swept ocean says:—“Go your ways!”

How do we know, when the long fight rages, On the old, stale front that we cannot shake; And it looks as though we were locked for ages, How do we know they are going to break? There is no lull in the level firing, Nothing has shifted except the sun. Yet we can feel they are tiring, tiring. Yet we can tell they are ripe to run. Something wavers, and, while we wonder, Their center trenches are emptying out, And, before their useless flanks go under, Our guns have pounded retreat to rout!

THE PARABLE OF BOY JONES

_This tale was written several years before the War, as you can see for yourselves. It is founded on fact, and it is meant to show that one ought to try to recognize facts, even when they are unpleasant and inconvenient._

The long shed of the Village Rifle Club reeked with the oniony smell of smokeless powder, machine-oil, and creosote from the stop-butt, as man after man laid himself down and fired at the miniature target sixty feet away. The Instructor’s voice echoed under the corrugated iron roof.

“Squeeze, Matthews, squeeze! Jerking your shoulder won’t help the bullet.... Gordon, you’re canting your gun to the left.... Hold your breath when the sights come on.... Fenwick, was that a bull? Then it’s only a fluke, for your last at two o’clock was an outer. You don’t know where you’re shooting.”

“I call this monotonous,” said Boy Jones, who had been brought by a friend to look at the show. “Where does the fun come in?”

“Would you like to try a shot?” the Instructor asked.

“Oh—er—thanks,” said Jones. “I’ve shot with a shot-gun, of course, but this”—he looked at the miniature rifle—“this isn’t like a shot-gun, is it?”

“Not in the least,” said the Friend. The Instructor passed Boy Jones a cartridge. The squad ceased firing and stared. Boy Jones reddened and fumbled.

“Hi! The beastly thing has slipped somehow!” he cried. The tiny twenty-two cartridge had dropped into the magazine-slot and stuck there, caught by the rim. The muzzle travelled vaguely round the horizon. The squad with one accord sat down on the dusty cement floor.

“Lend him a hair-pin,” whispered the jobbing gardener.

“Muzzle _up_, please,” said the Instructor (it was drooping towards the men on the floor). “I’ll load for you. Now—keep her pointed towards the target—you’re supposed to be firing at two hundred yards. Have you set your sights? Never mind, I’ll set ’em. _Please_ don’t touch the trigger till you shoot.”

Boy Jones was glistening at the edges as the Instructor swung him in the direction of the little targets fifty feet away. “Take a fine sight! The bull’s eye should be just sitting on the top of the fore-sight,” the Instructor cautioned. “Ah!”

Boy Jones, with a grunt and a jerk of the shoulder, pulled the trigger. The right-hand window of the shed, six feet above the target, starred and cracked.

The boy who cleans the knives at the Vicarage buried his face in his hands; Jevons, the bricklayer’s assistant, tied up his bootlace; the Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society looked at the roof; the village barber whistled softly. When one is twenty-two years old, and weighs twelve-stone-eight in hard condition, one does not approve of any game that one cannot play very well.

“I call this silly piffle,” said Boy Jones, wiping his face.

“Oh, not so bad as that,” said the Instructor. “We’ve all got to begin somehow. Try another?” But Boy Jones was not practising any more that afternoon. He seemed to need soothing.

“Come over to the big range,” said the Friend. “You’ll see the finished article at work down there. This is only for boys and beginners.”

A knot of village lads from twelve to sixteen were scuffling for places on the shooting-mat as Boy Jones left the shed. On his way to the range, across the windy Downs, he preserved a silence foreign to his sunny nature. Jevons, the bricklayer’s assistant, and the F. R. G. S. trotted past him—rifles at the carry.

“Awkward wind,” said Jevons. “Fishtail!”

“What’s a fishtail?” said Boy Jones.

“Oh! It means a fishy, tricky sort of a wind,” said the Friend. A shift in the uneasy northeast breeze brought them the far-away sob of a service rifle.

“For once in your young life,” the Friend went on, “you’re going to attend a game you do not understand.”

“If you mean I’m expected to make an ass of myself again——” Boy Jones paused.

“Don’t worry! By this time I fancy Jevons will have told the Sergeant all about your performance in the shed just now. _You_ won’t be pressed to shoot.”

A long sweep of bare land opened before them. The thump of occasional shots grew clearer, and Boy Jones pricked his ears.

“What’s that unholy whine and whop?” he asked in a lull of the wind.

“The whine is the bullet going across the valley. The whop is when it hits the target—that white shutter thing sliding up and down against the hillside. Those men lying down yonder are shooting at five hundred yards. We’ll look at ’em,” said the Friend.

“This would make a thundering good golf-links,” said Boy Jones, striding over the short, clean turf. “Not a bad lie in miles of it.”

“Yes, wouldn’t it?” the Friend replied. “It would be even prettier as a croquet-lawn or a basket-ball pitch. Just the place for a picnic too. Unluckily, it’s a rifle-range.”

Boy Jones looked doubtful, but said nothing till they reached the five-hundred-yard butt. The Sergeant, on his stomach, binoculars to his eye, nodded, but not at the visitors. “Where did you sight, Walters?” he said.

“Nine o’clock—edge of the target,” was the reply from a fat, blue man in a bowler hat, his trousers rucked half-way to his knees. “The wind’s rotten bad down there!” He pointed towards the stiff-tailed wind-flags that stuck out at all sorts of angles as the eddy round the shoulder of the Down caught them.

“Let me try one,” the Sergeant said, and reached behind him for a rifle.

“Hold on!” said the F. R. G. S. “That’s Number Six. She throws high.”

“She’s _my_ pet,” said Jevons, holding out his hand for it. “Take Number Nine, Sergeant.”

“Rifles are like bats, you know,” the Friend explained. “They differ a lot.”

The Sergeant sighted.

“He holds it steady enough,” said Boy Jones.

“He mostly does,” said the Friend. “If you watch that white disc come up you’ll know it’s a bull.”

“Not much of one,” said the Sergeant. “Too low—too far right. I gave her all the allowance I dared, too. That wind’s funnelling badly in the valley. Give your wind-sight another three degrees, Walters.”

The fat man’s big fingers delicately adjusted the lateral sight. He had been firing till then by the light of his trained judgment, but some of the rifles were fitted with wind-gauges, and he wished to test one.

“What’s he doing that for?” said Boy Jones.

“You wouldn’t understand,” said the Friend. “But take a squint along this rifle, and see what a bull looks like at five hundred yards. It isn’t loaded, but don’t point it at the pit of my stomach.”

“Dash it all! I didn’t _mean_ to!” said Boy Jones.

“None of ’em mean it,” the Friend replied. “That’s how all the murders are done. Don’t play with the bolt. Merely look along the sights. It isn’t much of a mark, is it?”

“No, by Jove!” said Jones, and gazed with reverence at Walters, who announced before the marker had signalled his last shot that it was a likely heifer. (Walters was a butcher by profession.) A well-centred bull it proved to be.

“Now how the deuce did he do it?” said Boy Jones.

“By practice—first in the shed at two hundred yards. We’ve five or six as good as him,” said the Friend. “But he’s not much of a snap-shooter when it comes to potting at dummy heads and shoulders exposed for five seconds. Jevons is our man then.”

“Ah! talking of snap-shooting!” said the Sergeant, and—while Jevons fired his seven shots—delivered Boy Jones a curious little lecture on the advantages of the foggy English climate, the value of enclosed land for warfare, and the possibilities of well-directed small-arm fire wiping up—“spraying down” was his word—artillery, even in position.

“Well, I’ve got to go on and build houses,” said Jevons. “Twenty-six is my score-card—sign please, Sergeant.” He rose, dusted his knees, and moved off. His place was taken by a dark, cat-footed Coastguard, firing for the love of the game. He only ran to three cartridges, which he placed—magpie, five o’clock; inner, three o’clock; and bull. “Cordery don’t take anything on trust,” said the Sergeant. “He feels his way in to the bull every time. I like it. It’s more rational.”

While the F. R. G. S. was explaining to Boy Jones that the rotation of the earth on her axis affected a bullet to the extent of one yard in a thousand, a batch of six lads cantered over the hill.

“We’re the new two-hundred-ers,” they shouted.

“I know it,” said the Sergeant. “Pick up the cartridge-cases; take my mackintosh and bag, and come on down to the two hundred range, quietly.”

There was no need for the last caution. The boys picked up the things and swung off in couples—scout fashion.

“They are the survivors,” the Friend explained, “of the boys you saw just now. They’ve passed their miniature rifle tests, and are supposed to be fit to fire in the open.”

“And are they?” said Boy Jones, edging away from the F. R. G. S., who was talking about “jump” and “flip” in rifle-shooting.

“We’ll see,” said the Sergeant. “This wind ought to test ’em!”

Down in the hollow it rushed like a boulder-choked river, driving quick clouds across the sun: so that one minute, the eight-inch Bisley bull leaped forth like a headlight, and the next shrunk back into the grey-green grass of the butt like an engine backing up the line.

“Look here!” said the Sergeant, as the boys dropped into their places at the firing-point. “I warn you it’s a three-foot wind on the target, _and_ freshening. You’ll get no two shots alike. Any boy that thinks he won’t do himself justice can wait for a better day.”

Nothing moved except one grin from face to face.

“No,” said the Sergeant, after a pause. “I don’t suppose a thunder-storm would shift you young birds. Remember what I’ve been telling you all this spring. Sighting shots, from the right!”

They went on one by one, carefully imitating the well-observed actions of their elders, even to the tapping of the cartridge on the rifle-butt. They scowled and grunted and compared notes as they set and reset their sights. They brought up their rifles just as shadow gave place to sun, and, holding too long, fired when the cheating cloud returned. It was unhappy, cold, nose-running, eye-straining work, but they enjoyed it passionately. At the end they showed up their score-cards; one twenty-seven, two twenty-fives, a twenty-four, and two twenty-twos. Boy Jones, his hands on his knees, had made no remark from first to last.

“Could I have a shot?” he began in a strangely meek voice.

But the chilled Sergeant had already whistled the marker out of the butt. The wind-flags were being collected by the youngsters, and, with a tinkle of spent cartridge-cases returned to the Sergeant’s bag, shooting ended.

“Not so bad,” said the Sergeant.

“One of those boys was hump-backed,” said Boy Jones, with the healthy animal’s horror of deformity.

“But his shots aren’t,” said the Sergeant. “He was the twenty-seven card. Milligan’s his name.”

“I should like to have had a shot,” Boy Jones repeated. “Just for the fun of the thing.”

“Well, just for the fun of the thing,” the Friend suggested, “suppose you fill and empty a magazine. Have you got any dummies, Sergeant?”

The Sergeant produced a handful of dummy cartridges from his inexhaustible bag.

“How d’you put ’em in?” said Boy Jones, picking up a cartridge by the bullet end with his left hand, and holding the rifle with his right.

“Here, Milligan,” the Friend called. “Fill and empty this magazine, will you, please?”

The cripple’s fingers flickered for an instant round the rifle-breech. The dummies vanished clicking. He turned towards the butt, pausing perhaps a second on each aimed shot, ripped them all out again over his shoulder. Mechanically Boy Jones caught them as they spun in the air; for he was a good fielder.

“Time, fifteen seconds,” said the Friend. “You try now.” Boy Jones shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said. “This isn’t my day out. That’s called magazine-fire, I suppose.”

“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “but it’s more difficult to load in the dark or in a cramped position.”

The boys drew off, larking among themselves. The others strolled homewards as the wind freshened. Only the Sergeant, after a word or two with the marker, struck off up the line of firing-butts.

“There seems to be a lot in it,” said Boy Jones, after a while, to his friend. “But you needn’t tell me,” he went on in the tone of one ill at ease with himself, “don’t tell _me_ that when the hour strikes every man in England wouldn’t—er—rally to the defence of his country like one man.”

“And he’d be _so_ useful while he was rallying, wouldn’t he?” said the Friend shortly. “Imagine one hundred thousand chaps of your kidney introduced to the rifle for the first time, all loading and firing in your fashion! The hospitals wouldn’t hold ’em!”

“Oh, there’d be time to get the general hang of the thing,” said Boy Jones cheerily.

“When that hour strikes,” the Friend replied, “it will already have struck, if you understand. There may be a few hours—perhaps ten or twelve—there will certainly not be more than a day and a night allowed us to get ready in.”

“There will be six months at least,” said Boy Jones confidently.

“Ah, you probably read that in a paper. I shouldn’t rely on it, if I were you. It won’t be like a county cricket match, date settled months in advance. By the way, are you playing for your county this season?”

Boy Jones seemed not to hear the last question. He had taken the Friend’s rifle, and was idly clicking the bolt.

“Beg y’ pardon, sir,” said the Marker to the Friend in an undertone, “but the Sergeant’s tryin’ a gentleman’s new rifle at nine hundred, and I’m waiting on for him. If you’d like to come into the trench?”—a discreet wink closed the sentence.

“Thanks awfully. That ’ud be quite interesting,” said Boy Jones. The wind had dulled a little; the sun was still strong on the golden gorse; the Sergeant’s straight back grew smaller and smaller as it moved away.

“You go down this ladder,” said the Marker. They reached the raw line of the trench beneath the targets, the foot deep in the flinty chalk.