Part 7

"Guard Boat!" he answered, and as he did so a vast towering shape had loomed up over them. "Answer's, 'Guard Boat!' sir," said the faint voice somewhere above their heads, addressing an unseen third person. A dark wall appeared, surmounted by a shadowy superstructure and a giant tripod mast that was swallowed, long before the eye could reach its apex, in vapour and darkness. The sleek flanks of guns at rest showed for an instant.... A sleeping "Super-Dreadnought." It faded into the darkness astern; then nothing but the mist again, and the throb of the boat's engines.

Another, and another, and yet another watchful Presence loomed up out of the night, hailed suspiciously, and, at the megaphone's answering bellow, merged again into the silent darkness. A figure stepped aft in the Guard Boat and adjusted the tarpaulin that covered the rifles lying on top of the cabin: moisture had collected among the folds in little pools. Then the engine-room gong rang, and a voice quite near hailed them. A long black shadow appeared abreast, and the Guard Boat slid alongside a Destroyer at anchor. The dark water between the two hulls churned into foam as the boat reversed her engines. A tall figure holding a lantern leaned over the Destroyer's rail.

"Night Guard," said the Lieutenant curtly. As he came forward, three men climbed silently up from below and stood awaiting orders at his side. The lantern shone unsteadily on their impassive faces.

"Are you the Quartermaster?"

"Yessir." The tall man in oilskins leaning over the Destroyer's rail lowered his lantern.

"All right, I won't come inboard. All correct?"

"All correct, sir."

"Right. Put it in the log that I've visited you. Good-night."

"Good-night, sir."

The gong clanged, and the Guard Boat slid away into the mist again. The figure in the bows was relieved by a comrade, and together with the remaining two vanished down the foremost hatch. The faint reek of Navy tobacco drifted aft to the stern-sheets, where the Lieutenant of the Night Guard had resumed his position, leaning against an angle of the cabin with his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat. He was reflecting on the strangeness of a profession that dragged a man from his bed at one o'clock in the morning, to steam round a foggy harbour in the company of armed men, these times of piping peace.

Once a night throughout the year, in every Dockyard Port in the kingdom, a launch slid away from the Depot jetty, slipped in and out among the anchored ships, and returned to her moorings when the patrol was completed. Why? Some grim significance surely lay in the duty, in the abrupt hails that stabbed the stillness, greeting the throb of her engines: in the figure of the armed man in the bows with the megaphone, ready to fling back the reassuring answer....

He shifted his position and glanced forward. The bowman was chewing tobacco, and every now and again turned his head to spit overside. Each time he did so the port bow-light lit his features with a ruddy glare. It was a stolid countenance, slightly bored.

The Lieutenant smiled gravely. Did the figure wonder why he wore a cutlass in peace time? Did he realise the warning it embodied--the message they conveyed night by night to the anchored ships? His thoughts took a more sombre turn. Would the night ever come--just such a night as this--and under the fog a Menace glide in among the blindfold Fleet? To the first hail of alarm answer with a lever released, a silvery shadow that left a trail of bubbles on the surface.... And then--the fog and silence riven to the dark vault of heaven.

He raised his head. "All right, Coxswain, enough for to-night. Carry on back." Over went the helm: the boat swung round on a new course, heading whence she had come an hour before.

Carry on back! It was so easy to say.

His thoughts reverted to the grim picture his imagination had created. How would that shadowy Terror, her mission fulfilled, "carry on back"? Wheel wrenched over, funnels spouting flame, desperate men clinging to the rail as she reeled under the concussion, racing blindly through the outraged night for safety.

Thus had a warring Nation written a lesson across the map of Manchuria for all the world to read--and, if they might, remember.

Where did he come in, then--this figure leaning thoughtfully against the angle of the steamboat's cabin? What was his mission, and that of the steamboat with its armed crew, night after night, in fog and by starlight, winter and summer...?

A chord of memory vibrated faintly in his mind. There was a phrase that summed it up, learned long ago.... He was a cadet again on the seamanship-deck of the old _Britannia_, at instruction in a now obsolete method of sounding with the Deep-Sea Lead and Line. They were shown how, in order to obtain a sounding, a number of men were stationed along the ship's side, each holding a coil of the long line. As the heavy lead sank and the line tautened from hand to hand, each man flung his coil overboard. As he did so he called to warn the next--

"Watch there, watch!"

The steamboat, slowed as she passed close under the stern of a battleship. The fog had lifted, and the Officer of the Middle Watch was leaning over the quarter-deck rail. The Lieutenant of the Night Guard raised his head, and in the gleam of the ship's stern light the two officers recognised each other. They had been in the _Britannia_, together. The former laughed a greeting.

"Go back to bed, you noisy blighter!"

The cloaked figure in the boat chuckled. "That's where I am going," he called back.

*XVII.*

*"FAREWELL AND ADIEU!"*

The Junior Watch-keeper paused at the corner of the street and smote the pavement with the ferrule of his stick.

"Lord!" he ejaculated, "to think this is the last night! Look at it all...." Dusk had fallen, and with it a wet mist closed down on the town. The lights from the shop windows threw out a warm orange glow that was reflected off the wet pavements and puddles in the street. The shrill voice of a paper-boy, hawking the evening paper, dominated all other sounds for a moment. "Eve ... nin' Er-r-rald!" he called. Then, seeing the two figures standing irresolute on the kerb, ran towards them.

"Evenin' 'Erald! sir? Naval 'Pointments, sir ... To-night's Naval 'Point----"

The Lieutenant shook his head half impatiently, then added as if speaking to himself, "No--not yet." It was such a familiar evening feature of life ashore in a Dockyard Port, that hoarse, "jodelling" cry. One bought the paper and glanced through the columns over a gin-and-bitters at the Club. But this was the last night: every familiar sensation and experience should be flavoured in their turn--ere they two went hence and were no more seen!

The Young Doctor at his elbow gave a curt laugh: "We shan't be very interested in the Appointments to-morrow night, Jerry!" An itinerant seller of violets drifted down the pavement and thrust his fragrant merchandise upon them.

"What shall we do first?" asked the Junior Watch-keeper. "Let's go and have our hair cut and a shampoo."

"I hate having my hair cut," pleaded the Surgeon.

"Never mind: it's all part of the show. You won't get another chance of talking football to a barber for years.... And that awful green stuff that he rubs in with a bit of sponge--oh, come on!"

Together they drifted up the familiar street, pausing to stare into shop windows with a sudden renewal of interest that was half pathetic. A jeweller's shop, throwing a glittering white arc of light across the pavement arrested their progress.

"I never realised before," mused the Surgeon, "how these fellows cater for the love-lorn Naval Officer. Look at those brooches: naval crowns; hat-pins made of uniform buttons, bracelets with flags done in enamel--D-E-A-R-E-S--" he spelt out, and broke off abruptly, "Pouf! What tosh!"

The other was fumbling with the door-latch. "Half a minute, Peter, there's something I've just remembered..." and vanished inside muttering. The Young Doctor caught the words "some little thing," and waited outside. The traffic of the street, a fashionable shopping street in a Dockyard town at 6 P.M., streamed past him as he stood there waiting. Girls in furs, with trim ankles, carrying parcels or Badminton raquets, hurried along, pausing every now and again to glance into an attractive shop window. Several tweed-clad figures, shouldering golf clubs, passed in the direction of the railway station; one or two nodded a salutation as they recognised him. Little pigtailed girls with tight skirts enclosing immature figures, of a class known technically as the "Flapper," drifted by with lingering, precocious stares. The horns of the motors that whizzed along the muddy street sounded far and near. They, together with the clang and rumble of tram-cars a few streets away, and the voices of the paper-boys, dominated in turn all other sounds in the mirky night air. The man with the basket of violets shuffled past again, and left a faint trail of fragrance lingering. Long after that night, in the uttermost parts of the earth he remembered it, and the half-caught scent of violets, drifting from a perfume shop in Saigon, was destined to conjure up for the Surgeon a vision of that glittering street, with its greasy pavement and hurrying passers-by, and of a pair of grey eyes that glanced back for an instant over their owner's furs....

The Junior Watch-keeper reappeared, buttoning up his coat. "Sorry to have kept you waiting, Peter," and fell into step beside his companion.

Half an hour later they emerged from the hairdresser's establishment, clipped and anointed as to the head.

"Now," breathed the Lieutenant, "where to?"

"Sawdust Club!" said the Surgeon. They crossed the road and turned up a narrow passage-way. As they quitted the street, a diminutive boy, with an old, wizened face and an unnaturally husky voice, wormed his way in under the Young Doctor's elbow, "'Erald, sir? Latest, sir! Naval--" The Surgeon slipped a sixpenny bit into his hand and took the proffered paper, still damp from the press. They entered a long vault-like apartment, its floor strewn with sawdust and long counters and a row of wooden stools extending down each side. Behind the counters rose tiers of barrels, and in one corner was a sandwich buffet, with innumerable neat piles of sandwiches in a glass case. The place was crowded with customers: a bull-dog sauntered about the floor, nosing among the sawdust for pieces of biscuit. As the new-comers entered several of the inmates, perched on their wooden stools, looked round and smiled a greeting.

"Ah-ha! Last night in England, eh?"

"Yes," replied the Junior Watch-keeper, "the last night." He sniffed the mingled aroma of sawdust, tobacco-smoke, and the faint pungent smell of alcohol. "Good old pot-house! Good old Sawdust Club! Dear, dear, curried egg sandwiches! ... _And_ a drop of sherry white-wine 'what the orficers drinks'--yes, in a dock-glass, and may the Lord ha' mercy on us!"

* * * * *

"And now," said the Young Doctor, "a 'chop-and-chips,' I think."

"A mixed-grill," substituted the other. "Kidney and sausage and tomato and all the rest of it. Oh yes, a 'mixed-grill.'"

They entered swing-doors, past a massive Commissionaire, who saluted with a broad smile. "They're askin' for you inside, sir," he whispered jocularly to the Junior Watch-keeper. "Wonderin' when you was comin' along.... Sailin' to-morrow, ain't you, sir?"

Together the "last-nighters" descended a flight of carpeted stairs and entered a subterranean, electric-lit lounge bar. A dozen or more of Naval men were standing about the fireplace and sitting in more or less graceful attitudes in big saddle-bag arm-chairs. The majority were conducting a lively badinage with a pretty, fair-haired girl who leaned over the bar at one end of the room. She smiled a greeting as the new-comers entered, and emerged from her retreat. The Junior Watch-keeper doffed his hat with a low bow and hung it on the stand. Then he bent down, swung her into his arms, and handed her like a doll to the Young Doctor, who in turn deposited her on the lap of a seated Officer reading the evening paper. "Look what I've found."

With a squeal she twisted herself to her feet and retreated behind the bar again, her hands busy with the mysteries of hair-pins.

"Hullo! hullo!" Greetings sounded on all sides. A tall broad-shouldered figure with a brown beard elbowed his way through the crush and smote the Junior Watch-keeper on the breast-bone.

"Dear sakes! Where have you sprung from? I just come from the Persian Gulf, and it's a treat to see a familiar face!"

"We're off to China again to-morrow," said the other, a half-suppressed note of exultation in his voice--"China-side again! Do you remember...?"

The bearded one nodded wistfully. "Do I not! ... You lucky devils.... Oh, you lucky devils! Here, Molly----"

* * * * *

The waiter sought them presently with the time-honoured formula: "Your grill's spoilin', gentlemen, please," and they took their places in the mirror-walled grill-room, where the violins were whimpering some pizzicato melody. A girl with dark eyes set a shade obliquely in a pale face, seated at the grand piano, looked across as they entered and smiled a faint greeting to the Young Doctor.

"I think we're entitled to a voluntary from the pianist to-night," said the other presently, his mouth full of mixed-grill. "What shall we ask for?"

The other thought for a moment. "There's a thing ... I don't know what it's called ... it's like wind in the leaves--_she_ knows." He beckoned a waiter and whispered. The girl with the pale face looked across the room and for an instant met the eyes of the Young Doctor; then she ran her fingers lightly over the keys and drifted into Sinding's _Fruehlingsrauschen_.

The Surgeon nodded delightedly. "That's the thing.... Good girl. I don't know what it's called, but it reminds me of things." He munched cheerfully, pausing anon to bury his face in a tankard of beer, and they fell to discussing prospects of sport up the Yangtse. Once or twice as she played, the girl behind the piano allowed her dark eyes to travel across the crowded grill-room over the heads of the diners, and her glance lingered a moment at the table where the two "last-nighters" were seated. The first violin, who was also a musician, sat with a rapt expression, holding his fiddle across his knees. When the piece was over he started abruptly--so abruptly it was evident that for him a spell had broken. He looked up at the pianist with a queer, puzzled expression, as if half-resentful of something.

The Young Doctor was arranging forks and a cruet-stand in a diagram on the table-cloth. "There was a joss-house here, if you remember, and the guns were here ... the pigeon came over that clump of bamboo...." The other, leaning across the table, nodded with absorbed interest.

/TB

The Lieutenant glanced at his watch. "Come along; we must be moving if we're going to the 'Palace.'" They paid their bill, tipped the waiter in a manner that appeared to threaten him with instant dislocation of the spine, and walked up the tiled passage that led past the open door of the lounge. From her vantage behind the bar inside, the girl some one had addressed as "Molly" caught a glimpse of their retreating figures. She slipped out through the throng of customers, most of whom had dined, and were talking to each other over their port and liqueurs, into the quiet of the corridor.

"Jerry!" she called; "Mr----"

"Lord!" ejaculated the Junior Watch-keeper, "I'd forgotten--" He turned quickly on his heel. "Hullo, Molly! We're coming back presently. But that reminds me..." he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and the Surgeon strolled slowly on up the steps, round a bend, and was lost to view.

The girl gave a little breathless laugh. "That's what you all say, you boys. And you never do come back.... _You_ weren't going without saying good-bye to me, were you?"

"No, no, Molly, of course I wasn't: and look here, old lady, here's a gadget I got for you--" he fumbled with the tissue paper enclosing a little leather case.

The girl stood with one hand on the lapel of his coat, twisted a button backwards, and forwards. "Jerry, I--I wanted to thank you ... you were a real brick to me, that time. It saved my life, goin' to the Sanatorium, an' I couldn't never have afforded it...." Her careful grammar became a shade confused.

The man gave a little, deep laugh of embarrassment. "Rot! Molly, that's all over and forgotten. No more nasty coughs now, eh?" He patted her shoulder clumsily.

"An' mind you drop me a line when that fathom of trouble of yours comes up to the scratch, and send me a bit of wedding-cake--here, hang on to this thing.... No, it's nothing; only a little brooch.... Good-bye, old lady--good-bye. Good luck to you, and don't forget to----"

The girl raised her pretty, flushed face and gave a quick glance up and down the deserted corridor. "Ain't you--aren't you going to--say good-bye ... properly--Jerry?"

The Junior Watch-keeper bent down. "'Course ... and another for luck...! Good-bye, dear; good-bye...!"

The Young Doctor was waiting with his nose flattened against the darkened window of a gunsmith's opposite when the Lieutenant joined him. His silence held a vague hint of disapproval as they fell into step. "That girl," he ventured presently, "isn't she a bit fond of you, old thing?"

The Junior Watch-keeper paused to light a pipe. "I--I don't think so, Peter. Not more than she is of a dozen others." He glanced at his companion: "You don't think I've been up to any rotten games, do you?" The other shook his head with quick protest. "But I like her awfully, and she's a jolly good little sport. They all are, taking them all round, in a Naval Port. It's a rotten life when you think of it ... cooped up there in that beastly atmosphere, year in, year out, listening to everlasting Service shop, or being made love to by half-tight fools. Their only refuge from it is in marriage--if they care to take advantage of some young ass. Who else do they meet...? The marvel of it is not that a few come to grief, but that so many are so jolly straight. That girl to-night--Molly--I suppose she has refused half a dozen N.O.'s. Prefers to wait till some scallywag in her own class can afford to take her away out of it. And I've heard her talking like a Mother to a rorty Midshipman--a silly young ass who was drinking like a fish and wasting his money and health pub-crawling. She shook him to the core. Lord knows, I don't want to idealise barmaids--p'raps I'd be a better man if I'd seen less of them myself--but----"

The Surgeon gripped his elbow soothingly. "I know--_I_ know, old son. Don't get in a stew! And as for seeing less of them ... it's hard to say. Unless a man knows people ashore, and is prepared to put on his 'superfine suitings' and pay asinine calls when he might be playing golf or cricket, where else is he to speak to a woman all the days of his life? Dances...? I can't dance."

They had turned into the main thoroughfare, and the traffic that thronged the pavements and roadway made conversation difficult. The liberty men from scores of ships in the port streamed to and fro: some arm-in-arm with quietly-dressed servant girls and shop girls; others uproarious in the company of befeathered women. At short intervals along the street a flaring gin-palace or cinema-theatre flung smudges of apricot-coloured light on to the greasy pavements and the faces of passers-by. Trams clanged past, and every now and again a blue-jacket or military foot-patrol, belted and gaitered, moved with watchful eyes and measured gait along the kerb.

As they neared the music-hall the throng grew denser. On all sides the West Country burr filled the night, softening even the half-caught oath with its broad, kindly inflection. Men from the garrison regiments mingled with the stream of blue-clad sailors. A woman hawking oranges from the kerb raised her shrill voice, thrusting the cheap fruit under the noses of passers-by. A group of young Stokers, lounging round a vendor of hot chestnuts, were skylarking with two brazen-voiced girls. At the doorway of the music-hall, a few yards away, a huge man in livery began to bawl into the night, hoarsely incoherent.

The two officers mounted the steps together, and, as one obtained tickets from the booking-office, the other turned with a little smile to look down the mile-long vista of lights and roaring humanity. The scintillant tram-cars came swaying up the street from the direction of the Dockyard: on either side the gleaming windows of the shops that still remained open--the tattooists, the barbers, tobacconists, the fried-fish and faggot shops, and the host of humbler tradesmen who plied most of their trade at this hour--grew fainter and duller, until they dwindled away to a point under the dark converging house-tops. A girl, shouting some shameless jest, broke away from the horse-play round the chestnut-oven, and thrust herself, reeling with laughter, through the passing crowd. A burly Marine caught her by the waist as she wriggled past, and kissed her dexterously without stopping in his stride. His companion smirked appreciation of the feat, and glanced back over his shoulder....

The watcher on the steps turned and followed the other up the broad stairway.

* * * * *

A man with a red nose and baggy trousers was singing a song about his mother-in-law and a lodger. His accents were harshly North Country, and out of the paint-streaked countenance, his eyes--pathetic, brown monkey-eyes--roamed anxiously over the audience, as if even he had little enough confidence in the humour of his song.

The Lieutenant leaned back in his seat and refilled his pipe. "Isn't it wonderful to think that when we come home again in three years' time that chap with the baggy trousers and red nose--or his twin-brother, anyhow--will still be singing about the same old mother-in-law!"

Presently a stout, under-clad woman skipped before the footlights and commenced some broadly suggestive patter. The audience, composed for the most part of blue-jackets and Tommies, roared delight at each doubtful sally. She ended with a song that had a catchy, popular refrain, and the house took it up with a great burst of song.

"Hark at 'em!" whispered the Surgeon. "Don't they love it all! Yet her voice is nothing short of awful, her song means nothing on earth, and her anatomy--every line of it--ought to be in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.... Let's go and have a drink."

They ascended the stairway to the promenade, and passed under a curtain-hung archway into a long bar. The atmosphere was clouded with tobacco smoke, and reeked of spirits and cheap, clinging scent. From a recess in one corner a gramophone blared forth a modern rag-time, and a few women, clasped by very callow-looking youths, were swaying to a "One-step" in the middle of the carpeted space. Behind the bar two tired-looking girls scurried to and fro, jerking beer handles as if for a wager, and mechanically repeating orders. Settees ran the length of the walls under rows of sporting prints, and here more women, with painted lips and over-bright, watchful eyes, were seated at little tables. Most of them were accompanied by young men in lounge or tweed suits.

"Phew," grunted the Junior Watch-keeper, "what an atmosphere! Look at those young asses.... Kuemmel at this time of night.... And we did it once, Peter! Lord! it makes me feel a hundred."

A panting woman disengaged herself from her youthful partner, and linked her arm within that of the Young Doctor. "Ouf!" she gasped, "I'm that 'ot, dearie. Stand us a drop of wot killed auntie!"