Part 10

At dinner his resentment against the Universe in general swelled into an excited flood of lower-deck jargon. In particular, he poured out invective on the perfidy of Woman, and 43 Mess, with the peculiar understanding vouched in the matter to men who go down to the sea in ships, sucked its teeth in sympathetic encouragement.

"I'd serve 'er to rights," said a youthful Second-Class Stoker darkly. He removed the point of his clasp-knife from his mouth, whither it had conveyed a potato, and illustrated with a gesture an argument certain of his feminine acquaintances in the Mile End Road were supposed to have found conclusive.

"Don't you take on, Taff," said another, pushing over his pannikin of rum. "'Ave a rub at this lot." Ivor finished his sympathiser's tot, and several others that were furtively offered him--for he was a popular little man among his messmates. But spirit--even "three-water" rum--is not the soundest remedy for an alcoholic head. It set him coughing, and deepened the sense of injury that rankled within him.

"Wot you wants," said a Leading Stoker, "is to run about an' bite things, like. You go on deck an' 'ave a smoke." He knew the danger-signals of a mess-deck with the intimacy of seventeen years' experience, and Ivor went sullenly. But it was a dangerous man that stopped at the break of the forecastle to light his pipe.

"Well," he said presently, "what d'you reckon I'll get whateffer?" His "Raggie" considered the situation. "Couldn't rightly say; there's the Jauntie[#] over by the 'atchway--go 'long an' ask 'im." Ivor smoked in silence for a moment, then nodded, and stepping through the wreaths of tobacco smoke, touched the Master-at-Arms on the shoulder. The latter, who was listening to a story related by the Ship's Steward, was a small man, with a grim vinegary face. He turned sharply--

[#] Master-at-Arms.

"Well?" he said curtly.

Now Ivor had stepped across the deck, honestly intending to ask the probable extent of the punishment the Captain would award him for breaking his leave. The suddenness with which the Master-at-Arms turned jarred his jangled nerves; the sour face opposite him was the face of the man who, on the Lower Deck, represented Law, Order, and Justice, things Ivor knew to be perverse and monstrous mockeries. His brain swam with the fumes of the thirty-six hours' debauch, reawakened by his messmate's rum. A sudden insane rage closed down on him like a mist, leaving him conscious only of the Master-at-Arms' face, as in the centre of a partly fogged negative, very distinct, and for an instant imperturbable and maddening.... Yet, as Ivor struck, fair and true between the eyes, he somehow realised that not even now had he got level with Fate.

*IV.*

A man seated in the foremost cell raised an unshaven face from his hands as the sullen report of a gun reached him through the open scuttle. For a while he speculated dully what it was for; then with curious disinterestedness remembered that it was the court-martial gun, and that he, Ivor Jenkins, was that day to be tried for an offence the extreme penalty for which is Death.

They said he'd slogged the Jauntie. For a while he had been, dazed and incredulous, but as the testimony of innumerable witnesses seemed to leave no doubt about the matter, Ivor accepted the intelligence with stoical unconcern. Personally he had no recollection of anything save a great uproar and a sea of excited faces appearing suddenly on all sides out of a red mist.... However, there were the witnesses, and, moreover, there was still an unexplained tenderness about his knuckles.

"I pleads guilty," was all the prisoner's friend (a puzzled and genuinely sympathetic Engineer Lieutenant) could get out of him.

"Well, I should have thought you were the last man to have done such a thing in the whole of the ship's company."

"Same 'ere, sir," said Ivor, and fell a-coughing.

Subsequent proceedings bewildered and finally bored him. They thrust documents upon him, wherein he found his name coupled to the incomprehensible prefix "For that he," and his misdemeanour described in a style worthy of the 'Police Budget.' The Chaplain visited him and spoke words of reproof in a kindly and mechanical tone. For the rest, he was left to himself throughout the long days; to cough and cough again, to watch the light grow and fade, to count the stars in the barred circle of the scuttle, and to the recollection of green, slanting eyes vexed by dusty sunlight in their depths....

* * * * *

"Have you any objection to any members of this Court?"

Ivor started at the question and looked round the cabin. Till then he had not noticed his surroundings much. A Captain and several Commanders in frock-coats and epaulettes were seated round a baize-covered table; they were enclosed by a rope covered with green cloth, secured breast-high to wooden pillars, also covered with green cloth. It was the Captain's fore-cabin, and the bulkheads were covered with paintings of ships. One of these in particular--a corvette close-hauled--arrested Ivor's attention. The Deputy Judge-Advocate, a Paymaster with a preternaturally grave face and slightly nervous manner, repeated his question.

"Do you object to being tried by any of the Officers present on the Court?" Ivor moistened his lips; why on earth should they expect him to object to them? An unknown Master-at-Arms standing beside him with a drawn sword nudged him in the ribs.

"No, sir."

The Captains and Commanders then rose with a clank of swords, and swore to administer justice without partiality, favour, or affection, in tones that for a moment brought Ivor visions of a stuffy chapel (Ebenezer, they called it) in far away Glamorganshire. Then the Judge-Advocate turned to him again.

"You need not plead either 'Guilty' or 'Not Guilty.' But if you wish to plead 'Guilty' you may do so now."

At last: "Guilty," said Ivor Jenkins.

For an instant there was utter silence. The junior Commander stirred slightly and glanced at the clock: he would have time for that round of golf after all.

The Prisoner's Friend then gave evidence, and Ivor experienced his first sensation of interest at hearing himself described as an excellent working hand, who had never given anything but satisfaction to his superiors. A perspiring and obviously embarrassed Chief Stoker followed.

"The last man in the ship I'd 'a' thought 'ud do such a thing," he maintained. Ivor glanced at him indulgently, as one who hears an oft-repeated platitude, and resumed his study of the corvette close-hauled.

"Clear the Court," said the President briskly. Ivor found himself once more in the lobby, sitting between his escort. One, a kindly man, pressed a small, hard object into his hand. Ivor nodded imperceptible thanks, and under cover of a cough, conveyed it to his mouth. It was a plug of Navy tobacco.

A bell rang overhead, and the prisoner was marched back into Court.

"... to be imprisoned with hard labour for the term of twelve calendar months." It was over.

* * * * *

"Now say 'Ah!' ... Again! ... Raise your arms ... H'm." The Surgeon disentangled himself from his stethoscope and looked Ivor in the eyes.

"My lad," he said bluntly, "it's Hospital for you--and too late at that."

In the Wardroom later on he met the Engineer Lieutenant. "I'd make a better Prisoner's Friend than ever you will," he remarked. Pressed for an explanation, he tapped the stethoscope-case in his pocket.

"Consumption--galloping," he said.

Perhaps Ivor had held the Ace of Trumps after all.

*XXII.*

*CONCERNING THE SAILOR-MAN.*

"Able Seaman, Seaman Gunner, one Good Conduct Badge." Thus, with a click of unaccustomed boot-heels, he might describe himself at the monthly "Muster by open-list." In less formal surroundings, however, he is wont to refer to himself as a "matlow," a designation not infrequently accompanied by fervid embellishments.

Occasionally he serves to adorn the moral of a temperance tract: a reporter, hard pressed for police court news, may record one of his momentary lapses from the paths of convention ashore. Otherwise Literature knows him not.

Generally speaking, his appearance is familiar enough, though it is to be feared that the world--the unfamiliar world of streets and a shod people, of garish "pubs" and pitfalls innumerable--does not invariably see him at his best. The influence of the Naval Discipline Act relaxes ashore, and not unnatural reaction inspires him with a desire to tilt his cap on the back of his head and a fine indiscrimination in the matter of liquid refreshment.

But to be appreciated he must be seen in his proper sphere. On board ship he is not required to play up to any romantic _role_: no one regards him with curiosity or even interest, and he is in consequence normal. Ashore, aware of observation, he becomes as unnatural as a self-conscious child. A very genuine pride in his appearance is partly the outcome of tradition and partly fostered by a jealous supervision of his Divisional Lieutenant. A score of subtleties go to make up his rig, and never was tide bound by more unswerving laws than those that set a span to the width of his bell-bottomed trousers or the depth of his collar. This collar was instituted by his forebears to protect their jackets from the grease on their queues. The queue has passed away, but the collar remains, and its width is 16 inches, no more, no less. The triple row of tape that adorns its edge commemorates (so runs the legend) the three victories that won for him his heritage; in perpetual mourning for the hero of Trafalgar, the tar of to-day knots a black silk handkerchief beneath it. It is doubtful whether he is aware of the portent of these emblems, for he is not commonly of an inquiring turn of mind, but they are as they were in the beginning, they must be "just so," and that for him suffices.

A number of factors go to make his speech the obscure jargon it has been represented. Recruited from the North, South, East, and West, he brings with him the dialect he spoke in childhood. And it were easier to change the colour of a man's eyes than to take out of his mouth the brogue he lisped in his cradle. A succession of commissions abroad enriches his vocabulary with a smattering of half the tongues of Earth--Arabic, Chinese, Malay, Hindustanee, and Japanese: smatterings truly, and rightly untranslatable, but Pentecostal in their variety. Lastly, and proclaiming his vocation most surely of all, are the undying sea phrases and terms without which no sailor can express himself. Even the objects of everyday life need translation. The floor becomes a deck, stairs a hatchway, the window a scuttle or gun-port. There are others, smacking of masts and yards, and the "Tar-and-Spunyarn" of a bygone Navy; they are obsolete to-day, yet current speech among men who at heart remain unchanged, in spite of Higher Education and the introduction of marmalade and pickles into their scale of rations. The tendency to emphasis that all vigorous forms of life demand, finds outlet in the meaningless oaths that mar the sailor's speech. Lack of culture denies him a wider choice of adjectives: the absence of privacy or refinements in his mode of life, and a great familiarity from earliest youth, would seem an explanation of, if not an excuse for, a habit which remains irradicable in spite of well-meaning efforts to counteract it.

The conditions of Naval Service sever his home ties very soon in life. The isolation from feminine and gentler influences that it demands is responsible for the curiously intimate friendships and loyalty that exist on the mess-deck of a man-of-war. With a friend the blue-jacket is willing to share all his worldly possessions--even to the contents of the mysterious little bag that holds his cleaning-rags, brick, and emery paper. Since the work of polishing a piece of brass make no great demand on his mental activity, the sailor chooses this time to "spin a yarn," and, from the fact that the recipient of these low-voiced quaintly-worded confidences usually shares his cleaning-rags, the tar describes his friend as his "Raggie." To the uninitiated the word signifies little, but to the sailor it represents all in his hard life that "suffereth long and is kind." His love for animals, which is proverbial, affords but another outlet for the springs of affection that exist in all hearts, and, in his case, being barred wider scope, are intensified.

Outside events have for him but little interest. So long as he is not called upon to bear a hand by his divinely appointed superior, while his ration of rum and stand-easy time are not interfered with, the rise and fall of dynasties, battle, murder, and sudden death, leave him imperturbable and unmoved. Only when these are accompanied by sufficiently gruesome pictorial representations in the section of the press he patronises can they be said to be of much import to him. But he dearly loves a funeral.

His attitude towards his officers is commonly that demanded by an austere discipline, and accompanied more often than not by real affection and loyalty. He accepts punishment at the hands of his Superior in the spirit that he accepts rain or toothache. Its justice may be beyond his reasoning, but administered by the Power that rules his paths, it is the Law, as irrevocable as Fate.

Morally he has been portrayed in two lights. Idealists claim for him a guilelessness of soul that would insult an Arcadian shepherd. To his detractors he is merely a godless scoffer, rudely antagonistic to Religion, a brand not even worth snatching from the burning. Somewhere midway between these two extremes is to be found the man as he really is, to whom Religion presents itself (when he considers the matter at all) a form of celestial Naval Discipline tempered by sentimentality.

But these are generalities, and may not apply to even a fraction of the men in the Fleet to-day. Conditions of life and modes of thought on the Lower Deck are even now changing as the desert sand, and those who live among sailor-men would hesitate the most to unite their traits in one comprehensive summary. It is only by glimpses here and there of individuals who represent types that one may glean knowledge of the whole.

In the Ship's Office of a man-of-war are rows of neat brass-bound boxes, and here are stowed the certificates of the Ship's Company, those of each Class--seamen, engine-room ratings, marines, &c., being kept separately. At the first sight there is little enough about these prosaic documents to suggest romance or even human interest to the ordinary individual. Yet if you read between the lines a little, picking out an entry here and there among the hundreds of different handwritings, you can weave with the aid of a little imagination all manner of whimsical fancies. And if, at the end, the study of them leaves you little wiser, it will be with a quickened interest in the inner life of the barefooted, incomprehensible being on whose shoulders will some day perchance fall the burden of your destiny and mine.

The King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions, with a flourish of unwonted metaphor, refer to the document as "a man's passport through life." The sailor himself, ever prone to generalities, describes his Certificate as his "Discharge." In Accountant circles in which the thing circulates it is known as a "Parchment."

A Service Certificate--to give its official title--is a double sheet of parchment with printed headings, foolscap size, which is prepared for every man on first entry into the Service. At the outset it is inscribed with his name, previous occupation and description, his religion, the name and address of his next of kin, and the period of service for which he engages.

In due course, when he completes his training and is drafted to sea, his Certificate accompanies him. As he goes from ship to ship, on pages 2 and 3 are entered the records of his service, his rating, the names of his ships, and the period he served in each.

On 31st December in each year his Captain assesses in his own handwriting, on page 4, the character and ability of each man in the ship. These fluctuate between various stages from "Very Good" to "Indifferent" in the former case; "Exceptional" to "Inferior" in the latter. Here, too, appear the history of award and deprivation of Good Conduct Badges; the more severe penalties of wrong-doing, such as cells and imprisonment. Here, too, they must remain (for parchment cannot be tampered with, and an alteration must be sanctioned by the Admiralty) in perpetual appraisement or reproach until the man completes his Engagement and his Certificate becomes his own property.

The heading PREVIOUS OCCUPATION shows plainly enough the trades and classes from which the Navy is recruited, and is interesting, if only for the incongruity of the entries. They are most varied among the Stokers' Certificates, as these men entered the Service later in life than the Seamen.

_Labourer_ suggests little save perhaps a vision of the Thames Embankment at night, and the evidence that some one at least found a solution of the Unemployment problem. But we may be wronging him. Doubtless he had employment enough. Yet I still connect him with the Embankment. At the bidding of the L.C.C. it was here he wielded pick and crowbar until the sudden distant hoot of a syren stirred something dormant within him: the barges sliding down-stream out of a smoky sunset into the Unknown suggested a wider world. So he laid down his tools, and his pay is now 2s. 1d. per diem: from his NEXT OF KIN notation he apparently supports a wife on it.

_Farm Hand_. Can you say what led him from kine-scented surroundings and the swishing milk-pails to the stokehold of a man-of-war? Did the clatter of the threshing-machine wake an echo of

"... the bucket and clang of the brasses Working together by perfect degree"?

Perhaps it was the ruddy glow of the hop-ovens by night that he exchanged for the hell-glare of a battleship's furnaces. Or, as a final solution, was it the later product of these same ovens, in liquid form, that helped the Recruiting Officer?

_Newspaper Vendor_. A pretty conceit, that Vendor! He has changed vastly since he dodged about the Strand, hawking the world's news and exchanging shrill obscenities with the rebuke of policemen and cab-drivers. But the gutter-patois clings to him yet: and of nights you may see him forward, seated on an upturned bucket, wringing discords of unutterable melancholy from a mouth-organ.

_Merchant Seaman--Golf Caddie_. He spat in the sand-box before making your tee, and looked the other way when you miss your drive, if he was as loyal as caddie as he is a sailor. _Errand Boy--Circus Artiste_. Of a surety he was the clown, this last. His inability to forget his early training has on more than one occasion introduced him to a cell and the bitter waters of affliction. But he is much in demand at sing-songs and during stand-easy time.

Now here is one with a heavy black line ruled across his record on page 2, and in the margin appears the single letter "K" He is a recovered deserter. He "ran," after eight years' service and stainless record. Was it some red-lipped, tousle-haired siren who lured him from the paths of rectitude? Did the galling monotony and austere discipline suddenly prove too much for him? Was it a meeting with a Yankee tar in some foreign grog-shop that tempted him with tales of a higher pay and greater independence? Hardly the latter, I think, because they caught him, and on page 4 of the tell-tale parchment appears the penalty--90 days' Detention.

Lastly: _Porter_. Where on earth did he shoulder trunks and bawl "By y'r leave"? Was it amid the echoing vastness of a London terminus, with its smoke and gloom? Or--and this I think the more probable--was it on some sleepy branch-line that he rang a bell or waved a flag, collected tickets, and clattered to and fro with fine effect in enormous hobnail boots? Then one fine day ... but imagination falters here, leaving us no nearer the reason why he exchanged his green corduroys for the jumper and collar. And if we asked him (which we cannot very well), I doubt if he could tell himself.

They make a motley collection, these tinkers and tailors and candlestick-makers, but in time they filter through the same mould, and emerge, as a rule, vastly improved. You may sometimes encounter them, in railway stations or tram-cars, returning on leave to visit a home that has become no more than an amiable memory.

And some day, maybe, you will advertise for a caretaker, or one to do odd jobs about the house and garden, whose wife can do plain cooking. Look out then for the man with tattooed wrists, and eyes that meet yours unflinching from a weather-beaten face. He will come to apply in person for the job--being no great scribe or believer in the power of the pen. He will arrange his visit so as to arrive towards evening,--this being, he concludes, your "stand-easy time." He wastes few words, but from the breast-pocket of an obviously ready-made jacket he will produce a creased and soiled sheet of parchment.

It is the record of his life: and after two-and-twenty years through which the frayed passport has brought him, at forty years of age, he turns to you for employment and a life wherein (it is his one stipulation) "there shall be no more sea."

*XXIII.*

*THE GREATER LOVE.*

The sun was setting behind a lurid bank of cloud above the hills of Spain, and, as is usual at Gibraltar about that hour, a light breeze sprang up. It eddied round the Rock and scurried across the harbour, leaving dark cat's-paws in its trail: finally it reached the inner mole, alongside which a cruiser was lying.

A long pendant of white bunting, that all day had hung listlessly from the main top-mast, stirred, wavered, and finally bellied out astern, the gilded bladder at the tail bobbing uneasily over the surface of the water.

The Officer of the Watch leaned over the rail and watched the antics of the bladder, round which a flock of querulous gulls circled and screeched. "The paying-off pendant[#] looks as if it were impatient," he said laughingly to an Engineer Lieutenant standing at his side.

[#] A pendant, one-and-a-quarter times the length of the ship, flown by ships homeward bound under orders to pay off.

The other smiled in his slow way and turned seaward, nodding across the bay towards Algeciras. "Not much longer to wait--there's the steamer with the mail coming across now." He took a couple of steps across the deck and turned. "Only another 1200 miles. Isn't it ripping to think of, after three years...?" He rubbed his hands with boyish satisfaction. "All the coal in and stowed--boats turned in, funnels smoking--that's what I like to see! Only the mail to wait for now: and the gauges down below"--he waggled his forefinger in the air, laughing,--"like that...!"

The Lieutenant nodded and hitched his glass under his arm. "Your middle watch, Shortie? Mine too: we start working up for our passage trial then, don't we? Whack her up, lad--for England, Home, and Beauty!"

The Engineer Lieutenant walked towards the hatchway. "What do you think!" and went below humming--

"From Ushant to Scilly...

The Lieutenant on watch turned and looked up at the Rock, towering over the harbour. Above the green-shuttered, pink and yellow houses, and dusty, sun-dried vegetation, the grim pile was flushing rose-colour against the pure sky. How familiar it was, he thought, this great milestone on the road to the East, and mused awhile, wondering how many dawns he had lain under its shadow: how many more sunsets he would watch and marvel at across the purple Bay.