Part 9

"Claim-to-have-put-you-out-of-action," spelt the handflags. The Captain smiled dryly and lifted his cap by the peak with a little gesture of greeting; there was answering gleam of teeth in the sunburnt face of the Lieutenant across the water. The Captain turned to his Commander. "But he needn't have torpedoed his own father," he said, as if in continuation of his last remark. "The penalty for marrying young, I suppose."

The Submarine recovered her torpedoes and returned to harbour. Her Commanding Officer summoned his Sub-Lieutenant, and together they delved in a cupboard; followed the explosion of a champagne cork. Glasses clinked, and there was a gurgling silence.

"Not bad work," said the Sub-Lieutenant, "bagging your Old Man's ship."

"Not so dusty," replied the Lieutenant in command of the Submarine, modestly.

She was a brand-new Battleship, and had cost a million and three-quarters. It was his twenty-fourth birthday.

*XX.*

*THE NIGHT-WATCHES.*

"Out pipes! Clear up the upper deck!" The Boatswain Mate moved forward along the lee side of the battery repeating the hoarse call. Slowly the knots of tired men broke up, knocking the ashes out of their pipes, or pinching their cigarette-ends with horny fingers before economically tucking the remnants into their caps. A part of the Watch came aft, sweeping down the deck, coiling down ropes for the night. Then, as the bell struck, the shrill wail of the pipe rose again above the sound of the wind and waves. It grew louder and shriller, and died away: then, rising again, changed to another key and ended abruptly. It was the sailor's Curfew--"Pipe down."

On the crowded mess-decks, where scrubbed canvas hammocks swung with the roll of the ship above the mess-tables, the ship's company was turning in. A struggle with a tight-fitting jumper, which, rolled up in company with a pair of trousers, was tucked under the tiny horse-hair pillow; a pat to the mysterious pockets lining the "cholera-belt," to reassure a man that his last month's pay was still intact, and then, with a steadying hand on the steel beam overhead, one after another they swung themselves into their hammocks and fell a-snoring.

Aft in the Gunroom an extra half-hour's lights had been granted in honour of somebody's birthday, and the inmates of the Mess were still gathered round the piano. It was a war-scarred instrument: but it served its purpose, albeit the hero of the evening--in celebration of his advance into the sere and yellow leaf--had emptied a whisky-and-soda into its long-suffering interior. The musician, his features ornamented by a burnt-cork moustache, thumped valiantly at the keys.

"And then there came the Boatswain's Wife,"

roared the young voices. It was an old, old song, familiar to men who were no longer even memories with the singers and their generation. But its unnumbered verses and quaint, old-world jingle had survived unchanged the passing of "Masts and Yards," and were even then being handed on into the era of the hydroplane and submarine.

"Ten o'clock, gentlemen!" said the voice of the Ship's Corporal at the door. The Sub. eyed him sternly. "You may get yourself a glass of beer, Corporal," and thereby won a five-minutes' respite. Then----

"Out lights, please, gentlemen," again broke in upon the revels.

"Corporal, will you----"

The man shook his head with a grim smile. "Come along, please, gentlemen, or you'll get me 'ung."

Reluctantly the singers withdrew, drifting by twos and threes to the steerage flat where their hammocks swung. The Ship's Corporal switched off the lights and locked the gun-room door. "I likes to see 'igh sperits meself," he admitted to the yawning Steward who accompanied him out of the Mess. The Gunroom Steward's reply was to the effect that you could have too much even of a good thing, and he retired gloomily to the pantry, where, in company with a vast ham and the gunroom crockery, he spent most of his waking hours.

In the nearly deserted Wardroom a rubber of bridge was still in lingering progress; a sea raced frothing past the thick glass of a scuttle, and one of the players raised his eyes from his hand. "Blowing up for a dirty night," he observed. A Lieutenant deep in an arm-chair by the fire lifted his head. "It's sure to--my middle watch." He closed the book he was reading and stood up, stretching himself. Then with a glance at the clock he moved towards the door. As he opened it the Senior Engineer came into the Mess. His face was drawn with tiredness, and there were traces of dust round his eyes. He pulled off a pair of engine-room gloves, and, ordering a drink, thoughtfully rolled a cigarette. At the sound of his voice the Engineer Commander looked up from the game and raised his eyebrows in an unspoken question to his subordinate. The Senior Engineer nodded. "Yes, sir, she's all right now; I don't think she'll give any more trouble to-night." He finished his drink and sought his cabin. He had had three hours' sleep in the last forty-eight hours, and hoped, as he undressed, that the infernal scrap-heap would hold together till he'd had a bit more.

The night wore on, and one by one the inmates of the Wardroom drifted to their respective cabins. Outside the Captain's cabin the sentry beguiled the tedium of the vigil by polishing the buckle of his belt. Every now and again he glanced at the clock.

At last the hands pointed to a quarter to twelve. In fifteen minutes his watch would be over. He buckled on his belt and resumed his noiseless beat. Occasionally from some cabin or hammock the snore of a tired sleeper reached his ears. The rifles, stowed upright round the aft-deck, moved in their racks to the measured roll of the ship, with a long-drawn, monotonous rattle, like a boy's stick drawn lightly across area railings.

A tread sounded overhead, and a figure carrying a lantern came lightly down the hatchway. It was the Midshipman of the First Watch, calling the reliefs. He descended to the steerage flat, and bending down under the hammocks of his sleeping brethren, knocked at the door of one of the cabins. There was a lull in the stertorous breathing, in the warm, dim interior.

"Ten minutes to twelve, sir!" The inmate grunted and switched on his light. "All right," he growled.

The boy moved off till he came to a hammock slung by the armoured door. He ranged up beside it and blew lightly into the face of the sleeper.

"Jimmy! Ten to twelve!"

The occupant of the hammock opened one eye.

"'Ll right," he murmured sleepily, and closed it again.

The Midshipman of the First Watch eyed him suspiciously.

"No you don't!" He shook the hammock. "Wake up, you fat-headed blighter, or I'll slip you." Then, changing his tone to a wheedling one: "Come on, Jimmy, it's a lovely night--much more healthy on the bridge than fugging in your beastly hammock."

His relief said something under his breath, and emerged shivering from the blankets, blinking in the light of the lantern. Once his feet were fairly on the deck, the other turned and scampered up the ladder again.

The bell struck eight times as the Lieutenant and Midshipman of the Middle Watch climbed the ladder to the fore bridge. The Fleet was steaming in two divisions, with a flotilla of destroyers stationed on the beam. Beyond them the silhouette of an island was just visible in the pale moonlight.

At the last stroke of the bell the pipe of the Boatswain's Mate shrilled out, calling the Middle Watch. "A-a-all the starboard watch! Seaboats, crews, and reliefs fall in!" Fore and aft the ship the mantle of responsibility changed wearers. Sentries, seamen, stokers, signalmen, their tale of bricks complete for a few hours, turned over to their reliefs and hurried to their hammocks.

On the bridge the two Lieutenants walked up and down for a few minutes, while the newcomer received details of the course and speed of the Fleet and the Captain's orders for the night. Then the Officer of the Watch that was ended unslung his binoculars and turned towards the ladder.

"I think that's all.... She's keeping station very well now, but they had a bit of trouble in the Engine-room earlier in the Watch. Captain wants to be called at daybreak. Good-night."

"Good-night."

The Midshipman of the Watch was already in position on the upper bridge, settling down to his four hours' vigil with a sextant on the lights of the next ship ahead. From the battery below came the voice of the Corporal of the Watch mustering the hands. Overhead the wind thrummed in the shrouds and halliards: the steady throb of the engines beat out an accompaniment--a deep _pizzicato_ accompaniment as if from some mighty bass-viol floating up through the open casings--and, somehow dominating all other sounds, the ceaseless swish and murmur of the waves breaking along the ship's side.

The Officer of the Watch crossed over to the Midshipman's side. "Are we in station all right?"

The boy lowered the sextant: "Yes, sir, quite steady."

"Right: give me the sextant and go and brew some cocoa in the chart-house. There's a spirit-lamp there."

The Midshipman vanished and reappeared a few minutes later with two cups of steaming beverage. They drank together, gulping it hastily to warm themselves.

"A-ah!" sighed the Lieutenant gratefully. "That's better. Now put the cups back, and come and show me Arcturus--if you have shaken off your fat head!"

* * * * *

A couple of hours passed. The Midshipman of the Watch, accompanied by the Corporal with a lantern, had gone his rounds of the mess-decks and cell-flat. The seaboat's crew had gone through an undress rehearsal of "Man overboard!" and were huddled yarning in the lee of the forecastle screen. Twice the ship had crept a shade out of her appointed station in the line, and, when the telegraph had rung the trouble to the Engine-room below, stolen back to her appointed bearing. Once the Fleet altered course majestically to avoid a fishing-fleet as it lay spread over the waters, a confusion of flares and bobbing lights.

The bridge was in darkness, save for the faint glow of the binnacle that threw into relief the rugged features of the Quartermaster at the wheel. The face might have been that of a bronze statue, but for a slight movement of the jaws as he thoughtfully chewed his quid. Suddenly a light at the masthead of the Flagship began to blink hurriedly. A signalman stepped out of the lee of the chart-house and rattled the key of the masthead flashing lamp. On all sides the other ships began blinking in answer to the Admiral's call. Presently the Yeoman spoke: a rocket soared up into the night ahead of them. The Lieutenant put his mouth to the voice-pipe and gave a clear spoken order, which the telegraph-man repeated: somewhere overhead a bell rang in answer from the engine-room.

The Fleet had increased speed.

The breeze freshened, and the men on the bridge ducked their heads as from time to time a shower of spray drifted over the weather-screens. The Midshipman of the Watch lowered his sextant and sniffed longingly, his nose in the air; the off-shore wind had brought with it a hint of heather and moist earth. Then, with a little sigh, he steadied his sextant again on the lights of the next ahead.

* * * * *

The sky was turning pale in the East, and the chilly dawn crept over a grey sea. The faces of the men on the bridge slowly became distinguishable. They were the faces of the Morning Watch, wan in the growing light.

The Lieutenant rubbed the stubble on his chin and turned his glasses on a school of porpoises chasing each other through the waves. The sky astern changed gradually from grey to lilac. Low down on the horizon a little belt of cloud became slowly tinged with pink. Out of a hen-coop on the booms the shrill crow of a newly-awakened cockerel greeted another day. Then from the mess-deck, drifting up hatchway and ventilating cowl, came the hoarse bellow--

"'Eave out, 'eave out, 'eave out! Show a leg there, show a leg! 'Sun's a-scorching your eyes out!..."

The look-out in the foretop watched the antics of a small land-bird balancing itself on the forestay.

"Poor little bloke," he muttered, blowing on his benumbed fingers, "'spect's you wants yer breakfus'--same's me!"

*XXI.*

*A ONE-GUN SALUTE.*

"Every person subject to this Act who shall strike ... or lift up any weapon against his superior officer in the execution of his office, shall be punished with Death or such other punishment as is hereinafter mentioned."--Sec. 16, _Naval Discipline Act_.

In Official eyes--even in eyes anxious to condone--illicit rum and the unreasoning passion of a Celtic temperament were the sole causes of the trouble. Yet a man may fight Destiny in the shape of these evils and still make a very fair show of it. It was the addition of the third factor that in this case overtipped the scales.

Her red, untidy hair was usually screwed into wisps of last night's 'Football Herald.' She had green, provocative eyes that slanted upwards ever so slightly at the corners, and coarse, chapped hands--useful hands, as many an overbold Ordinary Seaman had discovered to his fuddled amazement, but in no wise ornamental. Her speech was partly Lower-deck, partly Barrack-room, softened withal by the broad West Country burr; her home was an alehouse in an obscure back street near Devonport Dockyard.

She was in no sense of the word a "nice" girl; but she was tall, deep-bosomed, and broad of hip, and appealed inordinately to Ivor Jenkins, Stoker 1st Class of His Majesty's Navy, who was dark and undersized, and had lately developed a troublesome cough.

The recreations of a man who, on a daily rate of pay of 2s. 1d., contrives to support a bed-ridden mother and a consumptive sister, cannot perforce partake of the elaborate. Ivor, denied a wider choice, was therefore content to spend as much of his watch ashore as a jealously eked-out pint would allow, at the "Crossed Killicks." For many weeks past, alternate nights had found the little man perched on a three-legged stool in a corner of the bar, raging inwardly at an unnumbered host of rivals, dumbly grateful for such crumbs of recognition as Arabella, from behind the beer handles, was pleased to fling him.

The sailor-man a-wooing usually conducts his financial affairs with an open-handed generosity calculated to make a ministering angel pensive. In consequence, Ivor, who could not afford to back his protestations by invitations to the Hippodrome, whelk-suppers, and the like, dropped by degrees more and more out of the running. At first the girl gave him encouragement--not the vague, nebulous coquetry Mayfair recognises as such, but an intimate familiarity extended to slaps on the nose (boko), and once a dash of swipes down the back of his neck as Ivor stooped to recover a broken pipe. But nothing came of it--not even a penn'orth of fish-and-chips. Accustomed to tribute tendered with a lavish hand, Arabella decided that this must be a "proper stinge,"--one, moreover, niggardly in his consumption of beer, and (since there was the good of the house to be considered) to be dealt a lesson in due season.

"Bella! ... Give us a kiss!"

Save for Ivor and the girl, the squalid bar was deserted. She paused in the act of replacing a bottle on the shelf behind her, and looked over her shoulder, half-surprised, half-contemptuous. A beam of afternoon sunlight slanted through the dusty panes and caught the greenish feline eyes and ruddy hair, innocent for once of curl-papers.

"Wot? ... Me--kiss--yu!" She spoke slowly, and flung each word like a whip-lash at the soul of Ivor Jenkins.

"Ah, yus, Bella--jest one. There ain't----"

"Mai dear laife! Yu ain't 'arf got no neck!" She turned with her hands on her hips and regarded him with a smile on her thin lips, measuring his undersized stature with her eyes. "I only kisses men--yu don' even drink laike no man, yu don'. 'Sides, wot've 'ee done for us tu kiss 'ee? Us laikes men wot does things, yu know."

Ivor winced, but never took his smouldering eyes from the girl. "I'd do anything for you," he said tensely, "so I would," and coughed abruptly.

She laughed and fell to wiping the sloppy counter. "Them as wants mai kisses earns un. Same's Pete Worley: broke out of uns ship, un did, tu take I tu theatre. An' w'en th' escort commed tu fetch un back, Pete un laid un out laike nine-pins! Proper man, un was!" She surveyed Ivor, perched smoking on his stool, and a sudden gleam came into her eyes.

"Yeer!--us knows of a kiss goin' beggin' tu-morrow afternoon." She leaned across the counter with a dangerous tenderness in her rather hoarse voice, "If so be as a man (she laid a slight intonation on the word) as't leave tu go tu Dockyard Bank for'n hour, an' slipped out, laike...."

It was his watch on board, as she knew; but she had also noted the red Good Conduct Badge on his arm, and chose it instead of the accustomed tribute he had denied her. Then her eyes hardened like agates. "Simly yu ain't got no money tu bank, though?"

"Aye," said Ivor slowly; "aye, indeed I have. Three poun'." It was his sheet-anchor, saved (how Heaven and he alone knew) that his mother might eventually be buried with that circumstance which is dearer to the hearts of the Welsh than life itself.

The girl nodded, and laid her hand caressingly on his sleeve. "Tha's right, mai dear. Yu get leave tu go tu bank, an' slip along 'ere. Tu-morrow afternoon 'bout five--will 'ee now?" She looked at him from beneath tawny lashes.

Ivor finished his beer and wiped his mouth musingly on the back of his hand. The girl thought he was considering the Good Conduct Badge: as a matter of fact Ivor was wondering how the Police at the Dockyard Gate might be circumvented.

"'Course," she said indifferently, turning away, "ef yu'm 'feered----"

The man flushed darkly and stood up. "You'll see," he replied, and went out through the swing-doors in a gust of coughing. It had been worrying him a good deal lately, that cough.

*II.*

The short November afternoon was drawing to a close as Ivor left the Dockyard Bank with a shining sovereign gripped tightly in his trousers pocket. Dusk was settling down on the lines of store-houses, and from the Hamoaze below came the hoot of syrens that told of a fog sweeping in from the Channel. Ivor strolled across the cobbles to where the figurehead of a bygone frigate lifted an impassive countenance, and from the shelter of its plinth he surveyed the gateway. The main entrance was closed, and the narrow door, that only admitted the passage of one person at a time, was guarded by a watchful policeman. It seemed as if nothing short of a miracle would get a man in uniform through without a pass.

Presently a bell in some neighbouring tower struck the hour, and the waiting man turned in the direction of the sound. The ships in the lower yard were invisible, only their top-masts appeared out of a fog that came slowly swirling in from the sea. Higher and higher it crept; then suddenly the policeman at the gate was blotted out, and the wall became a towering blackness that loomed up through the vapour. Still Ivor waited, holding his sovereign tightly, and wrestling with a cough that threatened every minute to betray him. Some parties of liberty-men going on leave tramped past: he heard the gates open and saw for a moment the glare of the streets beyond. A couple of officers in plain clothes appeared suddenly into the blurred circle of his vision and were swallowed again by the blackness. "What a fog!" he heard one say. The other laughed, and grumbled something about being glad he was not Channel groping. Their voices died away, and Ivor emerged to reconnoitre, only to scurry back into shelter as a telegraph boy on a bicycle steered a devious course past him across the cobbles. The little disc of light from his lamp zigzagged to and fro for a minute and was gone. Then Ivor heard the rumble of wheels and the clatter of a horse's hoofs: the lights of a four-wheeler passed him and stopped. The policeman was unbolting the gates.

It was Ivor's chance, and, realising it, he slipped up beside the cab. Inside was a figure muffled in a greatcoat, above which he caught a glimpse of a clean-shaven, impatient face. Presently the inmate lowered the further window and leant out, effectually interposing his body as a screen between Ivor and the guardian of the gate.

"Hurry up," he called; "I've got a train to catch."

The gates swung slowly back, the cab rumbled through, and with it passed Ivor Jenkins. Then for the first time he relinquished his grip on his sovereign, and permitted himself the luxury of a fit of unchecked coughing.

"Bilked 'im," he gasped when he got his breath again, half-awed at the ease with which he found himself in the strangely unfamiliar streets. At the corner of the side-street he turned and looked back at the grim wall. In the signal-tower that loomed above it into the murky sky the yeoman on watch had just tapped the key of the flashing lamp to test the circuit. To Ivor it seemed as if Fate had winked at him, solemnly and portentously.

* * * * *

Ivor pushed through the swing-doors of the "Crossed Killicks" and looked hastily round the bar.

"'Ullo!...." he ejaculated blankly. "W'ere's Bella?"

The girl behind the counter, a short, stout woman in a purple plush bodice, tossed her head. "'Er a'ternoon orf," she explained tartly.

"Aye, but--w'ere's she gorn?"

"Walkin' out with a Blue Marine. 'Ippodrome, I think, they was goin'."

Ivor sat down and fumbled blindly in the lining of his cap for his pipe. Save for a spot of colour on either cheek-bone, his face was an ugly grey.

"Fine upstanding feller, 'e was too," added the barmaid, weighing Ivor in the balance of comparison, and finding him somewhat wanting. Ivor nodded dully, and for a while examined with apparently absorbed interest an advertisement on the wall opposite. Passion surged through him in waves that made the skin of his forehead tingle. So she'd bilked him after all: given him the go-by for a Blue Marine! Ivor knew him too, ... had once even stood him a drink.... The Adam's-apple in his throat worked like a piston.

Presently the girl behind the bar looked up from her occupation of drying glasses and eyed him curiously; but all she saw was a small dark man, who sucked hard at an empty pipe, one fist clenched tightly in his trousers pocket, staring hard at an advertisement for somebody's whisky.

At length, out of the chaos of his thoughts, two courses of action took shape and presented themselves for consideration. One was to bash the Blue Marine into irrecognition; the other was to get mercifully drunk as soon as possible. The Blue Marine, Ivor remembered, scaled a matter of fourteen stone, so he chose the latter alternative, and for thirty-six hours Oblivion, as understood by men of His Majesty's Forces, received him into her arms.

*III.*

"Did remain absen' over leave thirty-six tours, under haggravated circumstances," declaimed the Master-at-Arms.

It was the first time Ivor had broken his leave for three years. His head ached intolerably: he felt sick, too, and heard as from an infinite distance the cool, crisp tones of the Commander, who spoke sternly of the penalties attached to "not playing the game." Ivor listened sullenly. It was another and an older game he had tried to play,--a game in which Fate seemed to hold most of the trumps. There was a good deal more in the same strain about the abuse of privileges, and it all ended in his being placed in the Captain's Report, to stand over till next day.