CHAPTER XVIII

THE CASUALTY

THERE were duties performed by the new navy which bore no relationship to anti-submarine fighting, or, in fact, to warfare at all, unless it was to the ceaseless battle waged between all who go down to the sea in ships and the elements they seek to master.

One such as this occurred at a little northern seaport in the late winter of 1917, unimportant and scarcely worth relating except as an illustration of the diverse services rendered by men of this great force during the years of national peril.

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The gale was at the height of its fury when the March day drew to a close. The whole east coast of Scotland, from John o' Groats to the mouth of the Tweed, was a study in black and white--the white of foam and the black of rocks. All the minesweepers and smaller patrol ships had been confined to their respective bases for several days, and in a certain small harbour many of the officers and crews of the imprisoned ships were spending their time ashore, in the warmth and cheery comfort of hospitable firesides.

The boisterous day became a wild night. The wind howled and whistled over the barren moors and through the streets of the small fishing town. Houses trembled and chimneys rocked under the blasts. Although a watch on the signal tower and elsewhere was religiously maintained, it was of little value, as all that could be seen in the darkness to seawards was a hazy mist of flying spray which the wind whisked from the surface and carried several miles inland.

Standing back from the sea, and some half-mile from the centre of the little fishing town, stood a substantially built house, more commodious and better furnished than many of its neighbours, which had providentially fallen into the temporary grasp of one of the married officers of the patrol flotilla, who generously kept open house for his less fortunate brothers-in-arms.

On this wild winter night the interior looked excessively cosy and inviting. Before a big blazing fire of logs sat three officers, talking between copious sips of whisky and soda. Their conversation was subdued and their inhalations of cigar smoke long. By their side were the faithful women who had followed them from the comforts of home and the gaieties of the great southern cities to this remote corner of northern Scotland. They too were talking among themselves and knitting for the crews of their husbands' ships.

This quiet domestic scene would have gone on uninterruptedly until a late hour, for it was seldom that such precious moments of rest and contentment could be snatched amid the ever-recurring duties and the turmoil of war, had it not been for one of the officers who glanced ruefully at his wrist watch and then apologetically informed his host that it was his turn for night duty on the signal tower.

Scarcely had he risen from the fire and moved towards the door of the room, however, before the dull boom of a gun was borne on the howling wind. All stood still and listened. The women ceased their knitting and looked up apprehensively. Then a minute or so later the boom came again, this time in a lull of the storm, and it sounded nearer.

The three officers hurried into the hall to get on oilskins and sea-boots, but almost before this could be done there came a report which echoed sharply through the little town. They knew the sound only too well, for the coast was a dangerous one. It was the reply of the life-boat crew to the call of distress, and with one accord they moved towards the door. Almost instantly it was thrown violently open and the rush of wind and rain extinguished the hall light. For the next few minutes they were struggling against the gale, battling their way to the lofty little signal station, impeded in every movement by driving rain, flying scud, intense blackness and flapping oilskins.

When they had reached the coast and mounted the rough stone steps leading to the elevated look-out tower, a clear sweep of the dark, foam-crested surface was obtained, and the news was shouted above the roar of the gale that somewhere out in the night, amid the tormented waters, a ship was in distress, though the flying spray made it impossible to locate the exact direction.

Below the signal tower, and built on a mass of rock projecting into the half-sheltered water inside the concrete pier, was the life-boat house. From this point the white rays of a chemical flare lighted up the surface of the sea as far as the harbour bar, which, with its flanking rocks, resembled a seething cauldron. Into this the life-boat plunged from its inclined slipway, and was almost instantly swallowed up in the outer ring of darkness and spray. The flare died out suddenly and the night seemed even blacker than before.

After a brief struggle with the wind, now blowing at a speed of over seventy miles an hour, the men who had assembled around the signal station made their way out on to the spray-swept breakwater, and there waited for the coloured rocket from the life-boat which would signify that she had found the wreck.

Nearly an hour passed but no sign came from the darkness and boiling sea. Then a light appeared momentarily on the harbour bar and was lost in the smother of white. A few minutes later a grinding crash came from the rocks less than a hundred yards distant from the end of the breakwater.

The groups of sailors standing under the lee of the wall, chafing at their apparent helplessness and gazing anxiously out to sea, were suddenly electrified into action by a few sharp orders from the oilskinned commander. A minute or two of seemingly inextricable confusion resulted in the beams of a portable searchlight flashing out from the spray-swept breakwater and lighting up rocks, foam, and a big three-masted Norwegian sailing ship, with sails torn, her fore-mast broken off short and every sea lifting high her stern and driving her farther on to the half-hidden tongues of stone. Even as the light played on her she heeled over to starboard at an angle of about forty-five degrees with an ominous rending of timbers which sounded above the roar of wind and surf.

Orders were bellowed through a megaphone, and again men moved quickly in all directions. This time a fiery rocket, bearing a life-line, soared from its tube with a loud hiss and sped across the hundred yards of boiling sea. It straddled the wreck. The thin line it carried was soon exchanged for a stout hawser--hauled from the breakwater--and this was made fast to the stump of the mainmast, which had followed the other "sticks" overboard when the vessel heeled over on the rocks. It was now floating, wrestling and tugging at the mass of confused rigging, and pounding dangerously at the ship's side.

One by one the unfortunate Norse crew were hauled over the harbour bar in the breeches-buoy by fifty willing British sailors, and the first to come was the captain's wife and little daughter.

There was but one casualty, and that among the rescuers. The stretcher was lifted from the ambulance at the door of the substantially built house standing back from the little town. A white-faced woman ran out into the storm. She had spent a year of nights and days half expecting such as this, and now that it had come the blood seemed to ebb from her body, and at first she scarcely heard a familiar voice assuring her that it was only a cut on the head from a broken wire rope.