Category: Historical Novels
The leading seaman in charge of the party paused, and waved a hand toward a squat gray battleship lying on the other side of one of the basins in Portsmouth Dockyard.
Joshua grinned. He knew well enough that an ordinary seaman's pay of one shilling and threepence _per diem_, less various necessary personal expenses, did not go far when one wa...
15. CHAPTER XV.The distant airship, floating apparently motionless above the eastern horizon, certainly did appear a thing of beauty for the time being. Her elongated body, dwarfed by the dist...
17. CHAPTER XVII.All through the peaceful night of 30th May 1916 British squadrons were at sea steaming steadily eastward. Fighting-ships of almost every class were represented; great battleship...
14. CHAPTER XIV.There were many different topics of conversation in the wardroom of the _Mariner_. The seven members of the mess talked learnedly upon dozens of subjects, no matter whether they...
12. CHAPTER XII.Your modern destroyer differs from her prototype of twenty years ago in much the same way as the present-day Rolls-Royce differs from the early motor-car of 1895. She is just ab...
7. CHAPTER VII.Miss Emmeline Figgins was a well-built, capable-looking young lady of seventeen. She wore her hair neatly coiled in a golden aureole on the top of her head. Her blue eyes were a...
11. CHAPTER XI.''Appy Noo Year, chum,' said the lookout-man on the starboard side of the _Belligerent's_ bridge, as Pincher Martin came up to relieve him at five minutes past midnight on the m...
10. CHAPTER X.Dinner in the wardroom had been over for some time, and the long table in the centre of the apartment was cleared. The mess, though it was close on ten o'clock, seemed very full...
3. CHAPTER III.Tickle, the junior watch-keeping lieutenant, nodded in agreement. 'She's broken mine already,' he observed dolefully. 'How on earth we're going to take in six hundred tons from...
9. CHAPTER IX.It all happened very suddenly. The fleet had been reviewed by his Majesty the King at Spithead in the middle of July, and after this certain exercises were carried out in lieu o...
2. CHAPTER II.A considerable amount of art is necessary in laying out a kit for inspection; but when he had folded his clothes, and had placed the neat rolls and bundles, together with his ca...
5. CHAPTER V.The _Belligerent's_ captain, John Horatio Spencer, D.S.O., was a fine type of the modern British naval officer, and a thorough seaman, who had risen in his profession through sh...
6. CHAPTER VI.From the quarterdeck one climbed down a steep ladder, walked aft along the maindeck past the wardroom, descended another ladder, and finally emerged into a large flat lit by ele...
4. CHAPTER IV.Twenty-four hours later the _Belligerent_ was at bleak, wind-swept Portland; and during the next fortnight Martin began to realise what life in the navy really meant. He fondly...
16. CHAPTER XVI.The skipper grunted, sat up, switched on the light, and blinked. He was used to sudden calls and excursions in the middle of the night, and knew instinctively from the tone of t...
13. CHAPTER XIII.In the _Belligerent_ a cast-iron routine had always been adhered to, at sea or in harbour, fair weather or foul. Nothing was suffered to disturb that routine, unless it were occ...
1. CHAPTER I.The leading seaman in charge of the party paused, and waved a hand toward a squat gray battleship lying on the other side of one of the basins in Portsmouth Dockyard.
18. CHAPTER XVIII.Mrs Billings, drying her eyes with a handkerchief, read it for the third time. 'Emmeline!' she called softly, going to the door of the sitting-room at the back of the shop.