POSTS OF
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FLEET
EDWARD NOBLE
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ARTES
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1837
SCIENTIA
VERITAS
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OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET

OUTPOSTS OF

THE FLEET
STORIES OF THE MERCHANT
SERVICE IN WAR AND PEACE
BY
EDWARD NOBLE
AUTHOR OF “THE BOTTLE-FILLERS"
bien-Sou
Bout
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
1917
[



Printed in Great Britain.
I have to thank the Editors of The Yorkshire
Post, The Evening Standard, The Daily Mail
and Bristol Observer, for their permission to
reproduce here the sketches which first appeared
in their columns. Also the Editor of Cassell's
Magazine for a similar courtesy in the case of
those stories which he originally published.
!
+
NOTE
IN the year 1903, when writing one of a
series of articles on the Merchant Service in
The Yorkshire Post, I said, in referring to the
question of recognition—
"How is this man recognized? He is not
recognized at all. He is a sailor. The Church
knows nothing of him except that annually it
dispenses tracts, printed in block letters, to
him and wonders at his stolid indifference.
The State passes him by; he is without repre-
sentation; practically cut off from voting; he
cannot make himself heard. Thus the greatest
race of sailor-men the world has ever seen is
treated as a negligible quantity by the two
great upholders of national dignity.
"Oh, but you say, the Board of Trade looks
after these matters. True, it does-but how?
A crew comes in after having gone through
a fight with Nature. Perhaps it has rescued
vii
Vill
NOTE
a ship's company; perhaps it has towed a dis-
abled vessel into port. The Board of Trade
steps along and says: "You have been good
boys, you have behaved nobly here is a
watch for you, a pair of binoculars; something
nice and useful.' Precisely. But these things
men can buy. You pay with a paltry watch.
or spy-glass for heroism, for services that
sometimes empty the chairs at home, while a
grocer's ability to amass a fortune is considered
worthy of Knighthood. How British!
"For risk of life one does not ask payment,
one asks for recognition. Is there nothing
due beyond a watch or binoculars? Is there
no Honour, no Order, for the sailor who has
done his duty and a little more? Is he lower
in the scale of things than the soldier, the
fireman, or policeman? Or is it that he has
not the means of making his presence felt?
If there be an Order one has never heard of
it. It must be as difficult to obtain as a
Commission in the Naval Reserve."
And still, in spite of added hazards, I see
no Order.
E. N.
CONTENTS
PAGE
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN—
I. THE SUNRISE SQUALL .
II. UP THE SLOPE
I
13
III. UNDER FIRE
26
HOLDING THE BLUE RIBBON
50
TORPEDOED
60
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF CAPTAIN BIN
THE CHANNEL'S VOICES
74
100
139
THE TRAMP
151
THE MONSTER
160
A STRANGE LIGHT IN CHANNEL
172
A 2
ix
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
I
THE SUNRISE SQUALL
"A man who would go to sea for pleasure, should go
to hell for pastime."-Old Saying.
DAWN on the confines of the South Pacific,
and a sea marching with brazen crests to
thrash the torn edges of the island with the
inappropriate name-Tierra del Fuego.
Dawn. The sky aflame, slashed with cop-
pery wisps, a dun bank of clouds grouped
upon an horizon glowing like a brazier, and
two ships under a heavy pressure of canvas
drawing foam-tracks towards the dim cluster
of rocks perched eerily at the end of the world,
which they must pass. Men call them the
islands of Diego Ramirez, in memory of the
adventurous navigator who discovered them;
but they stand to the south of Tierra del
Fuego, and are cold, bleak mountain peaks
2
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
:
+
from which the softer terrain has been washed
by the greybeards of Cape Horn.
A sou'-west gale roared in the rigging of
these two ships. Seas leaped upon them,
sweeping their decks, hammering at them,
even as they leaped upon the island with its
granite outposts; but the ships moved on-
ward, carrying grain for the British nation,
as was their destiny.
On the bow and under the stern of each
was a name printed in white lettering-Manitou
on this, Jugg rnaut on that. Sometimes the
legend appeared through the driving-spume,
sometimes the spume smothered it, and it
seemed that the ships had melted into the giant
rollers which battered them.
Grey air, grey sea, grey sky, flecked and
whipped with coppery ribbons of cloud, and
out there the still pinnacles of Diego Ramirez,
foam-clad, cold, to mock them. It was a
point these two must pass before the driving
could be eased.
They came together at dawn. Two hours
ago neither had been conscious of the other's
presence; now men stood on deck and com-
mented on the capers each cut as they slammed
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 3
at the greybeards. They stared, too, at a
cloud lifting out there in the sou'-west, snow
and hail in its keeping.
The
The men on the Juggernaut were screened
from the sea, and stood lashed awaiting its
advent. It was the sunrise squall which
heralds the approach of day, and in the wilder-
ness screams with a note of anger.
Manitou required easing. Even a landsman
could have seen that. She leaned over, under
whole topsails and courses. She dug at the
rollers and showered them upon her in tons.
The water ran white from her decks-spouting
like water from an opened sluice. She rose
to a greybeard as a steeplechaser rises to a
wall in his path, and her forefoot appeared
She flounced
curving back upon the keel.
suddenly at the impact, struggling to regain
her stride, and her rudder lifted from the seas.
Her crew stood, like those who watched, on
the break of the poop, grabbing the lifelines
and staring at the bath on the main deck where
presently they must work waist deep.
Some snowflakes drove horizontally through
the rigging. The dun cloud had lifted, and
was now an arch moving to the zenith. The
4
Ţ
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
wind raised its voice-a low moan which the
wire shrouds transformed into a shriek.
The Juggernaut's lord, a still figure clad in
gleaming oilskins, moved slightly behind the
weather-cloth. He lifted one hand and cried
out-
"Tops'l halliards there! Stand by!"
The men heard and turned to obey. Eight
able seamen and three boys passed chattering
into the main-deck wash.
"Whirroo! It's cowld, it's cowld!" said
one.
"Phut! Yer sister's cowld," said another.
"See the bloomin' Manitou !'
The Manitou was busy scooping the seas,
lurching, smothered in foam. She was rigid,
without spring-the modern thing of steel and
iron we still term a ship. She was built to
carry a batty of cargo; all other considerations
were expunged. And now the spray flew high
over her, wetting her tops'ls as she swooped
upon the seas.
"They'd best take some of them
of 'er," said a voice, "else
>>
rags
off
the man
waved his hand, descriptively painting the end.
The watch stared from their new vantage
!
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
5
place upon the fife-rails, and saw their com-
panion heeling, leaning over, clad in foam.
For perhaps a minute she remained thus, in
full view, then snow drove over the pair, and
again the wind motif rose—a dull note.
The Manitou was enveloped now in a shroud
which effectually hid her from criticism. The
horizon had narrowed down to a small circle
through which the Juggernaut's bow protruded
-a pounding U-shaped wedge lifting in
spume.
"It's the sun-up squall," said a grey-haired
man, who stood staring sidelong at the driving
snow.
"Late then," another commented.
"The squall as scoffed the Redjacket's free
t'gallen-m'sts," the man insisted, solemn of
visage, blinking at the snow. "I know," he
added, "for I wer' in 'er."
}
No one had any objection to urge. They
were "standing by," and it seemed quite pos-
sible, judging by the lines on the old fellow's
face.
"We wer' runnin' down the Eastin'," he
announced without emotion, "doin' fourteen
if we're doin' one, an' all sail's on us. It's
6 - OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
blowin, you may bet yer boots on that, an'
our free skys'ls wer' set-when along comes
this-yer sun-up squall. The old man cocks.
his eye aloft, an' sez to the mate, 'Give 'er bell-
tinker, mister,' an' goes away down out of it.
'Give her bell-tinker it is, sir,' sez the mate.
"Then the snow drives over us, an' we
'oozed. Like bein' in a bloomin' drain, it
was; but we never lowered nuffing. Couldn't.
Halliards locked fore an' aft an' the old man's
got the key in his pocket-see? But," said
the man with a sweep of reminiscence, "we
'ad a crew as could scoff 'er. Lord! we 'ad
a crew... not like to us, or 'im," he jerked
his thumb to indicate the vanished Manitou,
"but a crowd as could eat 'er-if so be t'wer'
necessary.
"Bime-by that squall passed, an' the old
man pokes 'is 'ead out of 'is shell, as you
might say. He cocks 'is eye up aloft. Ullo!'
ee sez, quiet like, 'wot's come of our free
t'gallen-m'sts, mister?'”
"Then the mate cocks 'is eye up aloft. Ee
looks more than a minute, then ee turns to
the old man 'an sez, I guess,' ee sez, 'that
'I
sun-up squall hez scoffed 'em.'
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
7
"An' it 'ad," the old sailor asserted, stolidly
eyeing the snow. "It took 'em all-lock,
stock an' barrel. I know, fer I'm one o' them
as went up to see. Mast'eads razzeed clean
off, same as if you-d cut 'em wiv a sawr.
Nuffin' left. 'Alliards unrove, gear unrove
---all cleaned out, an' we never 'eard so much
as damn-it.
"That," said the man, as he moved to get
tighter grip, "was a sun-up squall in a ship
as could stand 'em. This," he waved one
hand, "is anovver, in one as can't. You can
bet high on that."
His voice failed. A new gloom had fallen
upon the racing vessel, a gloom which suddenly
became darkness. The snow streamed hori-
zontally between the masts—and from the poop
came the order which brings all sailors into
action-
"Let go the tops'l halliards! Smart's the
word!"
A grinding squeal of running chain, a war
of canvas and the long, minor chant of
Merchant Jack as he lay back upon the gear-
those were the sounds that made way amidst
the turmoil of slatting sails. Snow, hail, seas
8
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
i
-a blinding mixture sent by the Force which
stood over them, threatened the end; then a
ripped sheet and the thunder aloft increased,
the wind note triumphant.
A voice on the poop broke in upon it,
saying very sternly-
"Steady with her, there! Keep your luff."
Again, still more urgently, "Steady! Steady!
You'll shake the guts out of her. Steady
with your helm !”
And the wind note multiplied a hundred-
fold, screamed in the murk, striving to drown
the thunder of a mainsail and two topsails
blowing to ribbons somewhere up there where
the snow whirled and the hail made music.
A giant sea raised head close to windward,
the crest spitting fury, and again there camè
that calm voice from the poop-
"Another hand to the wheel, there! One
hand forward! Look out for that ship
steady lad . . . steady now!"
steady now!" And after a
minute of watching, "Look out for yourselves
down there!"
Five men and three boys remained now to
tend this grain-ship unless the still lord who
commanded her chose to call all hands. They
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 9
faced their task unconscious of what came;
unconscious as the giant ship which had
stooped to greet that greybeard of which they
had been warned. They clung to the gear,
twisted their legs and arms about it and
looked round. The squall towered and they
swung back, wind-driven and tangled in the
ropes to which they clung.
A rush, a grunt, and the Juggernaut dug
with her nose at the slope of that advancing
maṣs; a lurch, a sudden trip, and the sea
whelmed her, filling her to the rail, hammering
at her houses, gutting them.
Dead? Scarcely. Winged? In one pinion:
Crew safe? In part
In part . . . but out there in
the spume to leeward two waved arms passing
the way of all sailor-men; and ahead, a trifle
on the weather bow the loom of a ship-the
Manitou.
She stooped as the Juggernaut stooped, only
her angle was more acute. She heeled, dip-
She
ping yard-arms and scooping the seas.
lay in the trough they had sucked out there
in the gloom; a ship on her beam-end, carry-
ing her crew and her grain drunkenly in the
wilderness. She lay inert, an obstacle suddenly
10
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
.*
prepared for the Juggernaut to leap, to scrape
over, to escape as she might.
'દુર
"Up helm! Hard over!"
The still form dominating this charging ship
seemed to vibrate with sudden energy, yet it
made no move. The commander lifted one
hand, emphasizing his order, looked round to
see it obeyed, that is all. But at the back of
his mind he knew that if the Manitou recovered,
then the Juggernaut might throw up the sponge.
Nothing could save her. The Manitou was
too close-and, were not the pair of them
built of steel?
These two ships, which had come together
only with the dawn, had swiftly closed in the
stress of the squall. So close were they that
now the end appeared. Half an hour ago
they had laughed at each other's capers, had
been content, perhaps, to back their own.
Without any preliminary they had become
friends, ready when the Horn was passed to
chat, if the weather were kind, or to signal
with flags. Now, suddenly they were enemies.
The survivor of them, if one survived, would
be compelled to stand his trial at the courts.
They were at war already. Words, deeds,
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN II
actions, must be noted. What, each cried, in
God's Name was that other doing that he had
blundered so near? Were her skipper and
officers blithering idiots, or were they asleep?
Couldn't they see where they were going?
If they steered as it was evident they had
steered, what in the world . . . The questions
trailed off into blasphemy. And the end was
before them. Perhaps the end of both. In
such a sea anything might happen. Phut!
It was a toss up
a toss up.
•
The ships were of steel. A blow on the
gaunt side the Juggernaut lifted so brazenly
to the winds, and she would crack like a
bottle. In five minutes there would be no
Juggernaut . . . no Manitou yet the com-
manders standing there, gauging possibilities,
scarcely stirred.
There came a heavier gust, and with it, in
a moment, the tension lapsed. The Jugger-
naut's master stood with bared head acknow-
ledging it.
She lay
The Manitou had ceased to move.
down in the smother. Her sails no longer
scooped, they pulsed in the seas which had
conquered her. Hen-coops, buckets, life-
2
12
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
V
buoys, suddenly littered the sea, bobbing and
oscillating in the gloom. Small figures ap-
peared climbing the ship's rail as she turned
over. The men still clinging to the Juggernaut's
gear saw them. Their voices rose in prayer.
Voices from the Juggernaut joined in the shout
-but the wind-roar carried the sound to
leeward, away from those marionette forms
which crawled on the shell-like hull and clung
there watching.
One dizzy moment they remained poised,
then fell away before the rush of a greybeard
which creamed over them, smote the Jugger-
naut, and passed hissing into the wilderness.
When next men were able to use their eyes,
a white sheet lay sizzling in the path of their
vessel, and the Manitou had created a new
position for those who methodically star our
wreck-charts.
"
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 13
II
UP THE SLOPE
THE Juggernaut with her gutted houses and
her crew picnicking, as the phrase goes, in sail-
rooms and bo'sun's store-room, crept away from
Cape Horn and steadily lifted the sun. A week
ago its
rays gave no more heat than the moon,
and were as white. A week ago the greybeards
of the implacable south still chased them,
creamed over the rail and banged drearily from
side to side as the ship rolled; but now under
the driving force of a gale straight from the pole,
it was possible to bring out wet clothes, sodden
sea-boots and oilskins and string them up aloft
to dry. On Sunday, ten days after rounding
Diego Ramirez, Captain Mason, marching the
poop in high feather, declared that the ship
looked like a junk-shop for'ard; but rubbed
his hands when the mate became explanatory.
True, true," he said. "I am not picking
holes. I am just noting facts. She looks,
perhaps, more like the beach of a seaside town
after the folk have done bathing."
46
14
+
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
He marched two turns in silence then again
halted beside the mate to add-
Everybody
"Middle of August, Carter.
is at the seaside up our way, enjoying them-
selves getting wet. A few days ago we couldn't
get dry when we were wet . . . rather a dif-
ference-what? I remember it was the same
with me once-long ago, of course and with
you, no doubt. Neither of us were happy, I
I dare swear, if we weren't wet to the arm-pits
in August. Lord! What days those were ! "
He walked on without waiting for the chief's
comment. He was in high feather, a fair wind
booming and a spell of decent weather on the
horizon of things. The loss of that ship which
had so nearly wrecked his own was already set
in its place as a memory, an incident from
which experience is drawn. The progress made
by the Juggernaut was now the first considera-
tion.
He acknowledged it, standing a moment
to watch the wake as it boiled and twisted
away there to the south. And the Juggernaut
dragged her load up the slope with the gait of
a team proud of the effort which had brought
them so far. True, another Kill loomed in the
distance; but if they had accomplished that
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 15..
part of the journey which was always boggy
and rugged and seamed with great furrows,
they would surely accomplish the rest-especi-
ally that fine section where the sun was warm
and the breezes soft to tired eyes.
The ship reeled off steadily her eight knots,
rising, when a squall struck her, to nine and
ten. The men brought out what clothes they
had saved when their house was gutted, dried
and patched and hung them in the rigging.
They moved sedately up the home stretch con-
templating garments in half section, ballooning
filled with wind.
They had forgotten Cape Stiff, its grey-
beards, the ice and snow of that dismal tract.
they had passed, and were busy forecasting the
day when the docks would hold the old Jugger-
naut and they would be free. They planned
what they would do with their freedom. It
would be great! No freedom at any time
would be like this which would be theirs.
October would do the trick, they decided, early
with the help of a few policemen, late without.
What did it matter? More days more dollars.
The old man would see they didn't lose time:
so would the Juggernaut, that sly witch that was
I
•
..
16
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
1
snaking it like a dolphin, or the barracoota that
were under the bows this morning.
They were jubilant, too, and explanatory
over the claims which some one must satisfy.
It stood to reason they must not be the losers
of what they had lost. Their chests and duds
had gone when the house went. Only a few
rags remained, and they had been compelled in
consequence to buy at the "slop chest " things
to carry them home. They looked upon the
matter with calm eyes.
It should mean a new
outfit at the very least; new donkey, new
shore-going togs, new bowler or slouch, new
ducks and dungaree for further voyaging-
they called it South Spaining. They made out
in crabbed writing lists of the "things " lost,
things acquired at sea prices to replace them,
things which may have existed-books, papers,
telescopes, instruments and other imaginative
traps which, on leaving Oregon, were theirs.
And they came one evening in the quiet at the
end of the Trades, to a booming as of guns.
far off in the nor'-west.
At six o'clock, when the sun was dipping
they saw silhouetted against its glow, two shapes
which stood out pounding one at the other
-HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 17
across its disc. Two far-away blue wedges with
pin-like masts and puffs of smoke which melted
into the blob which hung above them. That
surprised the men. Watch below and watch on!
deck took their fill of the sight, questioning
what it all meant. And when the sun, red and
angry at the noise, had gone out and the dark-
ness of a starless night wrapped them, the boom
still trembled in the air, caught the great yards.
and masts of the Juggernaut and jarred them.
Flashes came now in place of the silhouettes
and lambent smoke. But the jar went on, the
thud of steel drumming on slings and ties up
there where the sails drew curves against the
night.
The old grey-haired sailor who had seen the
sunrise squall which had "scoffed the Red Jacket's
free t'gall'n-m'sts," drew on his powers as he
sat with his mates on the fo'c's'le head. It was
the second dog-watch. Pipes were alight and
pannikins of half-cold tea stood on deck beside
them.
"'Nuther revalution," he declaimed. "Some
one collarin' the President like as not. Can't
do nothin' in Souf America wivout revalutions.
I know. I were in one once."
★
A
18
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
མ་
A young boy, one of the afterguard, drew
near and gave him the necessary impetus:
"Tell us, Charlie," he begged. "Did they
hang him out of the Cathedral window like
they did in Lima ?"
"No," said Charley, "they didn't 'ang 'im.
'Anging's off. We took 'im out to sea in a
tramp called the Merveelouse, a Frenchman
belongin' to Haver that they had collared, wiv
us that were in her, an 'held 'im to ransom-
"Who did?" asked the boy, drinking at the
font.
cr
"The parties that revalutioned,” said the old
man. "A gang of 'em came on board to do
the bargainin'. It was werf somethin' to 'ear
'em. They kep' 'im a prisoner, arm an' leg
irons, an' they dressed 'im down each mornin'
wiv rattans, like uz-if ee were a boy instead of
a thumpin' fat man an' the head of the fishiest
State in Souf America.
"We 'ad wireless of course, they saw to that.
So twice a day we had the two parties on toast
ashore. One was biddin' in thousands fer us
to dump 'im overboard, the other was offerin'
the world an' all to get 'im back.
"An 'undred an' fifty-five thousand was the
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 19
price paid by the party that wanted him back,
an' we took it. Lasted an 'ole fortnight did
that raffle, an' I never see a man so glad to get
quit of a ship in my time, as that yellow-faced
dollup of fat as was the President of the half of
Souf America . . . so they said."
Salvoes punctuated the old man's speech.
The chain slings and ties jarred with each
discharge. Flashes lighted their distance carry-
ing death to unknown fighters; yet the interest
for these men lay in the question the boy
put-
"Was it dollars or pounds, if you please?”
"Pounds," said Charley, without a blink.
"There's not a man in this world or the
next," a new voice proclaimed, "that is worth
so much money to any one-let alone a Dago."
"Ee wasn't a Dago, ee was a Square 'ead,"
old Charley asserted.
"Then I wouldn't 'a' wiped my shoes on
him," said the voice. "Ullo! Wot's
Wot's up
now?"
There was silence at this. Both forward
and aft men stared at the flame that suddenly
shot up, far out there where flashes had leaped
and stung.
·
•
20 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
1.
"Somebody's gone west," said the fo'c's'le.
"Lumme! I'd give somethin' to know who."
"Blown up," said Captain Mason to the
chief.
"Magazines hit by the look of it.
Eyah! I wonder who is at war now?"
"When we left Oregon there was talk of
trouble between the States and Mexico," the
chief suggested.
"And there was the Balkan hullabaloo,"
Mason interjected. "But they have no fleets
that I know of. It's a puzzle. It was a fight
right enough, a regular set to, if I know
anything of ships and guns. I wonder who
it was !"
"We shall find out when we get home,
sir," the chief decided as his commander went
below. But they discovered something before
daylight.
It was at three in the morning watch, the
darkest hour of a black night, when the second
mate first caught sight of a light that blinked
rapidly a message he could not read. He
could take the letters: but they spelled no
words. Another light he presently discovered
was blinking to leeward: yet, on neither hand
were any signal lamps. For all that appeared
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 21
it might have been lightning, or will-o'-the-
wisp-something uncanny and flustering. He
sent down to report, and presently the old man
stood on the top stair of the companion in
his pyjamas, staring first to starboard, then to
port. The sea was a mirror which mocked the
Juggernaut with fleeting glimpses of fire.
"Where away?" he asked at length. “I
can see nothing."
"It was plain enough just now, sir.”
"But there are no sidelights, nothing to
suggest a ship. Are you sure?"
"I'd stake my life on it, sir."
"Hum!" said Mason. Then he reached
into the companion for a coat, put it on and
came on deck. "We seem to be getting mixed
up," he complained, "in some sort of
game.
He yawned openly. "I was nicely asleep
too. Eyah!!" Again he yawned. Then he
stretched and sat on the companion, swinging
one bare foot.
A sudden, blinding glare disturbed the pair,
and the captain looked round, twisted and
screened his eyes. "A searchlight," he an-
nounced angrily. "What the devil do they
want with them here?" he shouted aloud.
22
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
"Swing the thing round or switch off. Can't
you see you are blinding us?" and knew
that he was talking through his hat. He was
certain now that a ship was at hand, though
a moment ago he had decided that the Juggernaut
toyed with the mirror alone.
Down the path of light came the hiss of
a vessel moving swiftly, the roll of machinery
and a sudden gong clamour. Then a voice
hailed in the formula of the sea-
(C
Ship ahoy! What ship is that?
There was a burr in the pronunciation which
suggested Scotland. Captain Mason seized a
megaphone and replied-
"Juggernaut of Liverpool. What ship is
that?"
"H.M.S. Highflyer. Where are you from
and where bound?"
"Oregon. Ninety-five days out. Queens-
town for orders."
"Right. Back your main yard. I am
sending a boat alongside."
Captain Mason responded. He was brusque
because he considered the order trenched on
his position as Master: but he obeyed. He
was accustomed to look with reverence on
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 23
vessels who wore the magic letters before
their names. H.M.S. Highflyer, eh? Well,
but what in the world was he after down here,
without lights, too, holding ships up as though
he had the right. Was this an explanation
of last night's fight? Perhaps. He turned
to the mate and said quietly, "All hands on
deck. Back the main yard.
"
In ten minutes the Juggernaut had gone to
sleep on the glassy sea, and when she was quiet
and snug a cutter arrived carrying a lieutenant
and sixteen sturdy sailors. The officer and two
men climbed the small ladder.
<<
Morning, Captain," said the lieutenant.
"Let me see the ship's papers, will you?”
Captain Mason acknowledged the salute, and
replied, "Certainly; but, may I ask, sir, what
is the meaning of it all?”
"All what?"
"Last night's fight, for instance, and now
this."
"Last night," the officer chuckled, "we sank
a Fritz raider, who would have sunk you if we
hadn't been handy."
"Fritz?" Mason interjected. "I don't pre-
tend to understand. I am ninety odd days out
B
:
!
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
24
+
and have seen nothing I could speak till now.
What is going on?"
"War," said the officer. Then he struck a
match and lighted a cigarette.
"And are we in it ?”
"Very much in it." He blew a cloud and
stared at the red end of his cigarette. "It's
England, France and Russia v. Germany and
Austria, with Italy and Turkey sitting on the
fence."
20
The captain drew a long breath: "That's a
big job," he suggested.
c
'Biggest since Nelson's day
going to
give them socks, though. Our men are over
in France helping to hold the fort. What fort?
Oh, France and Belgium generally while Russia
gets up steam.
We weren't ready-any of us.
Never are. But we," he alluded to the Navy,
with a sweep of his hand, "are keeping the
seas free while K. of K. makes an army.
Quick-papers, please, I must toddle."
He entered the cabin rolling out details of
actions and villainies that were on the lips of
all the world, saw the papers, scribbled some
directions and passed glowing into his boat.
And the Juggernaut headed for the island
:
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 25.
that awaited her grain. The Navy had taken
her under its wing: She would be shepherded,
docketed, and passed from outpost to outpost,
as though she were a parcel and the post office
had acknowledged the receipt.
26 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
III
UNDER FIRE
HOMEWARD now with a new impetus to stir
them, legends to consider, snippets of con-
versation filtered through the brain of a steward
who bid fair to outdo Münchhausen, to harass
them.
Homeward without lights, with a new
code of signals and a Morse lamp which some-
body must learn to flash. Homeward at a
snail's pace through latitudes which had for-
gotten the trick of steadiness and produced
wind which was gusty, baffling, light, all in a
day; because, forsooth, orders had been given
that the Juggernaut should cross the line where
ships never crossed it, look for Trades where
least she might expect to find them, and keeping
to the westward avoid the western islands as
though the Huns had garrisoned them and
the seas were mined.
So they came up the long trail from the
south, caught Trades which bustled them west,
until it seemed they must sight Bermuda, and
here again a cruiser held them up, gave them
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
27
instructions and told them of the loss of the
Cressy, Aboukir and Hogue. That made them
gasp; but the manner of their loss made them
angry. It seemed as the cruiser vanished and
the Juggernaut bent once more to the breeze
that blows would presently fall out here in
defence of chivalry, even as in France.
England was at war with Germany. That
thought throbbed to the exclusion of all others.
But Germany, it seemed, was not fighting as
a man should. She was running wild, using
weapons and means that no man would use.
That made them savage. The Squareheads
who were on board went warily, for they were
in a minority, and the British inclined to resent
their presence. Von Schmidt was the excep-
tion here, a man with a bullet head and a neck
which gave the same circumference.
England had no army it was true; but she
was engaged in the task of making one. More
power to her elbow, that was the cry of these
men who knew the Squarehead for what he
was. England played the game, but she had
lost in one short hour the Cressy, Aboukir and
Hogue to one of those new-fangled sneaking
boats they called submarines. That thrilled
28 OUTPOSTS
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
them. It bred a fight up there on the fo'c's'le
head one night when the Juggernaut was nosing
about in the dark, seeking a breeze. A Conway
boy from the half-deck and von Schmidt from
the port fo'c's'le were the protagonists. Von
Schmidt had been heard to brag of this adven-
ture and old Charley had taken him up. He
was talking to him like a Dutch uncle, as he
said, when Conway came through the night to
challenge him.
"You say it's fair game to torpedo chaps
when they are trying to save their pals?" he
shouted, flinging off his coat.
"Ja-that iss so. It iss our way ven ve
fight. It vos good pizness."
"You are
Conway.
a liar and a coward!" quoth
"That iss mine own pizness."
"And this is mine," Conway remarked, in
that still fashion that he had learned on the
Mersey. Then he knocked von
von Schmidt
down, stripped off his shirt and stood waiting.
"Get up!" He stirred him with his foot.
And von Schmidt rose. He was heavier,
older than the boy; but the boy had science
and von Schmidt had none. After fifteen
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 29
minutes' milling the "Dutchman" refused to
rise and Conway stood over him like a
bantam.
"Say it
demanded.
was damned cowardly!" he
"I say it," said von Schmidt.
"Out loud so that the chaps can hear you.
""
And von Schmidt, whose other name was
Goldstein, repeated the words without shame.
Then Conway went down and put his head
in a bucket of water, and made ready for two
hours at the wheel. He could scarcely see
the binnacle, and he grinned painfully when
the chief commented on his atrocious manage-
ment of a course which should be meticulous
in war-time. He promised to do better, and
the mate eyeing him sidelong asked: "Who
have you been fighting?" learned after some
fencing, and remarked: "Good boy! By
the Lord I wish I had had the job.
He strode up and down rubbing his hands.
That made Conway glow.
They came in the second week of October
to a circle on the chart from which they had
been told it was permissible to make a bee-
A
30
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
line for home. They turned there, singing
joyously on the braces. Home at last! It
seemed close. The very act of steering for it
after all these twistings, put them in touch
with the essential fervour.
seemed so beautiful.
England had never
Now that difficulty
stood in the shape of mines, torpedoes and
shell-fire, it became the more necessary to en-
joy her. They did not know they were what
is called patriotic; they knew simply that home
lay over there in the east, that the boys were
mustering round Kitchener's banner, making
ready to fight for their King. That thrilled
them. Once it had been otherwise, they had
been snubbed for patriotism, scarcely permitted
to hoist their flag, and all the while they had
been in touch with Squareheads who lorded
it over them mouthing stupidities about race
exhaustion, fear, decadence. They scarcely
recognized the terms; but they knew that in
some undefined fashion it meant that England
was on the down grade, and that hurt. It
was the reason that produced that encounter
on the fo'c's'le head. It was race antagonism,
the result of years of competition, espionage,
and hog-like pushing for the trough.
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
31.
Things and impressions, these, which they
had learned on the seas which were their home;
which had been whispered, then shouted into
ears attuned always for news; which had
arrived by way of the press and chatter of
America, Australia, wherever they sailed, west,
east, or south. It had grown acute during the
period when England warred in South Africa ;
when, it seemed, all the world was leagued
together to brand us impotent. It had been
dinned in bars and dance-houses, in street and
on shipboard-the Old Country was done, tired,
played out.
The thing had been reiterated
till the red flush of shame had gathered and
thousands had fallen away, taken new citizen-
ship and guessed and bragged like the bucko
iconoclasts of the States. But now a period
was set. England was at war.
So far the Navy had kept faith with them,
shepherding them, smiling at their sluggish
march. The Navy, it appeared, knew the
Juggernaut quite as well as her crew knew
her; had seen her grassy sides and marvelled
that she moved at all; but now, since they
had squared away for the run home the Navy
had been invisible.
B 2
They were sorry for that.
か
​:
་
32
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
my.
They had grown accustomed to see the grey
hulls popping up and coming to greet them.
They missed the news they gave, diluted and
censored as it was, they missed the new com-
radeship which had been born of this war;
the acknowledgment at last, that, the Mer-
cantile Marine was an admitted safeguard.
That was splendid. It gave a new colour to
all their work.
Yesterday a couple of trawlers had steamed
past, punching into the breeze which kept the
Juggernaut humming; but the men who had
prattled of the Red Jacket's "free t'gall'n-
m'sts," and the revolutions of South America
did not connect them with the Navy.. They
wondered stolidly what fishermen were doing
so far from home, and hazarded a guess that
they were going to fill up on the Banks
because of the difficulty of fishing nearer.
Then on a day when they drew down to
the Irish Coast, they heard the thunder of
guns so distant, that they wondered what sort
of luck had permitted the Squareheads to get
so far west. They babbled over this for an
hour, saw more trawlers and confessed they
were done. At noon a destroyer vomiting
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 33
smoke from four funnels came full tilt from
the east and halted a moment alongside to ask
had they seen anything of the enemy. The
Juggernaut had seen nothing and said so.
"But we heard gun fire out west," Captain
Mason added; "it went on for an hour. Is
there any news?"
"None. We are after one of his cruisers.
Seems to have got through though. Make
the best of your breeze in to the land, Captain,
if you want to see it."
And he was off, dancing into a sea that
tried to swallow him. He moved in a Niagara
of spray, leaping like the cars on a switchback,
If they wanted to see home! They whis-
pered the officer's phrase, staring at the dim
seascape, wondering, thrilled. At last they
were in touch with the war. They talked
incessantly of it, reiterating the facts they had
gleaned. They longed for the speed of that
destroyer and questioned whether the Navy
would have any use for them when they got
in. They had been pushed here and prodded
there, told how to steer and how to run with
a sang-froid and detachment which was new
and immensely alluring. There had been hints
34
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
of raiders and submarines. Captain Mason
knew just how much and how little to pass
on to the crew, and he succeeded in keeping
them enthusiastic. He had been told among
other things, that if he had an opportunity,
he must sink any enemy ship, and he looked
at the dim. bulk of this grain-carrier and
acknowledged her power, end on.
But he was not prepared for what happened.
For some time a dense blob of smoke had
lain over the eastern horizon in the direction
of the Channel. It had grown suddenly out
of nothing, far off, and shortly after the
destroyer had passed them. It was a smoke
blotch similar in character to that made by
the destroyer, but very much denser. Captain
Mason decided when his attention had been
drawn to it that it must be the smoke of a
squadron, and again became engrossed in the
details of sailing. The yards required a small
check. The foresail would draw better if the
weather clew of the mainsail were lifted and
the crossjack furled. There ensued an interval
given over to the men's song as they hauled,
and at the end of it all hands clustered in the
waist to watch that growing cloud of smoke.
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 35
It was nearer already by six or seven miles.
They began to pick out the funnels that threw
it, to count them. Two or three were on the
leading ship, the rest astern. They decided
presently there were three if not four vessels
astern, destroyers or cruisers, then quite sud-
denly the leading ship fired. That made them
silent. They could not tell where the shells
fell; they only knew they did not come
near the Juggernaut. The excitement became
intense. Here they were in the middle of it,
listening to the thud of guns, watching the
flashes. They guessed it was an enemy ship
chased by some of ours and knew that they
would pass within a stone's-throw unless the
old man jibbed-so they put it, leaning out
praying for a chance to see the end.
The vessels which were astern made no
reply, only their smoke cloud became blacker,
more detached from that of the leading vessel.
It was wonderful and very grim-a race for
life, there could be no doubt about that. And
as they formulated their theories twin puffs
of greenish smoke lighted momentarily by
tongues of flame leaped forth; and far, far
astern two columns of water lifted without
C
36 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
sound into the air. The men rubbed hands
and broke into a cheer. Instinctively they
had come to understand that this vessel which
approached at such speed, was the enemy ship
about. which the destroyer had inquired with
so much feeling.
Then suddenly came an order from the
poop to spoil their jubilation. Captain Mason
snapped it as he shut his glass and the chief
hurried forward reiterating the cry. "Star-
board fore brace, there. Smart's the word,"
and the men sprang to their task nodding one
to the other. "Good. The old man's sized
German! Mind your eye, sonny.
Give it lip there some one. Then, to their
song, quietly, speedily the yards were trimmed
and the ship hauled out with the wind on her
beam. They remarked, as they hauled, a new
blob of smoke towering high to port, and
they knew that meant a vessel steaming with
the wind, heading towards Channel.
her up.
The Juggernaut sizzled onward throwing
cascades of spray. She liked the change. She
acknowledged that it was her best way out
and under the press of canvas she carried she
could reel off nine or ten quite easily. Tacks
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
37
}
were boarded, sheets hauled home, jigger clad
in sails which bellied from gaff and boom.
She lay down to it humming and again the
men clustered to leeward watching their enemy.
There was no doubt in their minds now.
They could see the three great funnels tower-
ing above tier upon tier of decks. She was
an armed cruiser, one of the Atlantic Liners,
Captain Mason decided in confab with his
chief, and she could steam twenty five or six
knots an hour. She had the heels of those
who followed, she could drive into a sea too,
as they could not. He moved anxiously up
and down the poop, his eyes on the sails
alternately with the chase, and a moment later
gave orders for the men to take cover.
He had noticed a small alteration in the
cruiser's course, nothing more; then a shell
struck the water a cable's length astern and
he took up his glasses to examine the smoke
blotch which approached to port. He nodded
to the chief, "Yes, you were right, it is our
friend of this morning. Coming full tilt too."
Again he compared distances. It seemed posi-
sible she would reach the Juggernaut as soon
as the enemy; but meanwhile they would
38
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
1
have to run the gauntlet of German shells.
The ethics of frightfulness scarcely touched
him. He knew very little about it, he only
knew that Squareheads were the devil, meet
them where you would. A second shell came
to advise him of tactics about which all the
world talked; he saw that it passed over
them and decided that the fellow's elevation
was faulty. It was followed by one which
cut away a fore-topmast backstay and left a
humming all down the spar; but the mast
held. It was of steel, one with the lowermast,
and while all hands gazed considering this
outrage, a shell fell amidst the pump gear and
two of those who had craned out to watch lay
writhing on the deck.
The captain looked over, calling to the
mate: "Get them in the cabin, Carter, and
see what you can do for them. Make the
men stay in cover."
Flags caught his eye fluttering to the raider's
yard-arm. He fetched his code and read out:
"Heave to or I will sink you. And," he
commented grimly diagnosing the situation,
"if I heave to you will sink me."
He closed his glass, crossed to the signal
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
39
locker and with the help of two whom he
summoned, hoisted flags which said: "I will
see you," then spelled slowly and laboriously,
"damned first," and set the red ensign at the
peak.
"Cut that down if you can," he growled.
“If I am not a thousand miles out, one of our
destroyers is dancing along to cut you off."
Again he moved slowly up and down before
the helmsman.
The Juggernaut leaned over heavily pressed,
towards the land and humming like a top
newly set spinning. She seemed to know
what was required of her and bent to her
task jovially.
"Let her have it, skip!" came from the
throats of those who watched. "Give her all
she knows!" Then a shell reached which
pierced the ship's side forward and they
hurried to see its handiwork. A wisp of
smoke at once appeared from the scuttle, and
when the carpenter returned from his burrow-
ing match in the fore-peak he announced that
she was holed. "Got us just fore-side the
bulkhead, sir. She's a-fire and you could pass
a bucket through the hole they've made."
:
..
40
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
-
"Good," said his commander, "tell the
second mate to get the head pump rigged
and put the hose on her." He added as an
after-thought: "Clear away the boats aft here,
a couple of hands. We may as well be ready
in case anything should happen."
A
The men cheered. Was their ship not
drawing away? Was not the raider twisting
on her helm, too? Possibly he had sighted.
the column of smoke rising out there in the
west, perhaps he considered he had already
cooked the goose. But the Juggernaut was
not yet out of range. Half a dozen shells
came her way and one of them got the ship's
short bowsprit. It was the raider's last shot
as she turned and made off at full speed for
the south, and with the crash it made, the
Juggernaut's fore-topmast came down quite
gracefully and took up a position alongside.
Captain Mason scarcely stirred; he seized
his megaphone and gave a new order
"Forward there! Let go t'gallant and royal
halliards, main and mizzen. Clue them up!"
"Aye, aye, sir!" answered the chief whose
hands already were full in all conscience.
"One watch go on with the pumping, the
है
↓
1
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
4I
other aft to shorten sail!" the commander
added.
He luffed to ease the pressure, watching,
still, in spite of the strain he endured. He
could not call for assistance as men do in these
days of wireless telegraphy; he must fight for
his own life and the ship's. The grain he
carried was wanted at home and presently
would be worth treble its value, unless ships
could run the gauntlet and bring it through in
safety. He was unaware that the Navy, which
seemed to have deserted him, was even at that
moment sending out messages which would
bring him aid. He turned to watch the
raider, acknowledging that she had scored;
but that great vessel had lost interest in the
Juggernaut and was bent on escape, smoke
driving from her funnels, plunging, smothered
in spray. From his own ship came the cry of
men carrying out orders which he had given,
snugging up the sails, and crossing the stern
were those three cruisers, heading hell for
leather in the wake of the flying raider. It
would have been good to watch them; but he
dared spare only a passing glance. He saw
the leader of them fire and wondered whether
•
42
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
at that range it was possible to do much. He
refused conjecture; noted the fact and con-
tinued as before, conning his ship, nursing her
as only a master can.
The royals and, topgallant-sails presently
hung in their gear and he saw the mate lead
his small group forward to commence, with
axes and cold chisels, the work of cutting away
the spars which trailed alongside. The ship
moved easily now; but she was down by the
head, dipping in a fashion that troubled him.
She was holed badly forward; yet it was
possible the mast and bowsprit would cause
even greater damage than that wrought by the
shell. By supreme good luck, or the grace of
God, that had taken effect foreside the bulk-
head instead of abaft it. He acknowledged
the mercy in the quiet fashion which comes to
men of the sea when in the presence of peril.
It might have been worse-easily it might have
been worse.
From time to time messengers came to
report progress. They announced that they
were holding their own; that the fire no
longer raged but smouldered, the bulkhead
standing finely; and after a while the mate
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 43
sent word that the spars were lying cannily
alongside and would soon be cut out of her.
Under the captain's eye two of the boys
worked preparing boats; provisioning them,
filling the small breakers with fresh water,
taking covers off the sails, putting oars, tiller,
boat-hooks in readiness for the last lap, if it
came to that. Things were shaping better
than he had dared to expect. As he had
lifted his cap when the Manitou no longer
lay in his path, so he lifted it now; but with
no thrill of anguish for the men he could do
nothing to save. He looked astern and saw
the raider melting into the haze, the three who
followed dashing in her wake. That was fine.
He noticed, too, a signal fluttering on the
yard of the leading cruiser and read it. "Ship
ahoy!" it said on the one hand; "Are
"Are you in
immediate danger?" on the other. Captain
Mason realized that the question had long
been hoisted and hurriedly replied with a
single flag: "No."
He felt the thrill that comes to those who are
prepared to give blows as he pulled it aloft.
Fine! Fine! He would have exchanged at
that moment his command for a chance to
J
44
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
work the guns on the ship which first came up
with the raider; then back to earth, to the
humdrum business of getting this cargo home,
and to greet the second mate who arrived post
haste with a message.
"The fore peak is full of water, sir," he
announced, "and she is dipping so badly we
can't get at the head gear to cut it away. I am
afraid I shall lose somebody if I put them over
the side."
The commander recognized this.
"Quite. We can open the sluice a trifle," he
said tentatively, "and drain it out with the main
pumps, if you think we can keep it under."
"I think we can, sir—if—
"Good. I will lay the main yard aback and
see what we can do. She won't trouble us any
more." He referred to the raider, far off now
on her run for freedom. "I would have done
it sooner, but those spars are better trailing
alongside than jabbing at us while we are hove
to. Wait. Get rid of the topmast first, then
have a sail ready to pull over the hole and I
will bring her round."
For an hour they cut and prised, clinging to
the gear and to the rails, working in water
S
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN 45
{
which strove to flatten them out, to wash them
from their lashings, to crush them with those
giant spars which lifted and surged with every
thrust of the sea. The sun sank to the horizon,
the sky became overcast and glum; the wind
moaned over them and with it came squalls of
ice-cold rain to force them to their knees. It
made their task more perilous. At one time it
seemed that wind and sea had joined hands and
the Juggernaut would follow in the path of the
Manitou; but help was on the way, coming
swiftly through the twilight, marvellously
summoned when help from anywhere seemed
impossible.
Three of the mosquito fleet, the trawler fleet
if that be plainer, called by the cruisers as they
swept out in chase, came tumbling and rusty to
see what passed. They came direct, not by
intuition or guess-work, nor by the law which
produces a tug when salvage is in the air; but
by methodic ordering. "Out there," said the
message, “in something north and something
west, one hundred and fifty-three miles west
by south of Cape Clear, is a sailing vessel
dismasted and in danger. Go to her assist-
ance." And they were there.
ร
46 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
Rusty, with numbers painted large on their
bows, net and trawls vanished, and in their
place curious slides as for some unknown
game, they came and asked no questions.
With buoys and other oddments stacked on
deck, bundles of cork, lifebuoys and chunks of
wood lying haphazard on hatch and fiddley;
with aerials twisting aloft and men wearing the
badges of His Majesty's Naval Service, they
brushed through the seas, like steeplechasers
on a closely hurdled course, and came.
Smudged white ensigns flicked at their mast-
head, proudly declaring their character; flicked
as they drove through the Atlantic haze, flicked
when those who set them aloft came down
beside the Juggernaut, and, halting there, asked
simply for orders.
Captain Mason was not the man to look
a gift horse in the face, or to bargain with the
white ensign. Had that ensign been of red,
he would have moved more slowly; as it was,
he cried out, "Glad to see you! Come on
board and lend a hand to clear away the gear
and plug that shell hole.
That set the white ensigns fluttering. Shell
hole, eh! These men knew something of
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
47
shells and mines and many other devilments.
They asked no questions, but got into their
boats and a dozen braw fishermen climbed on
board, melted into the two watches, and helped
to make things hum.
Two hours later a procession was trailing
beneath the flying scud; two trawlers ahead,
the Juggernaut, with her stern in the air and
her nose down, following; and aft another
trawler to give her a jerk if she failed to steer
as she should. As a matter of fact, the Jugger-
naut trusted entirely to the pluck of that
gentleman who hung on her quarter, could not
port or starboard without his aid, and an
hour before dawn slobbered shamelessly past
Haulbowline and reached a breathing place.
She had been much agitated. She had lost
men and spars. Her maker would scarcely
have known her had she happened on that far-
away north-eastern yard that had fashioned her.
But she arrived, sent her dead ashore to the
sound of muffled drums and the march that
wails, sad as the pipers of the north, and came
back to sit down and learn the news. To find
out why England was at war; to discover what
those queer slides on the trawler's decks were
1.
4
•
:
48
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
for, and to hear miraculous stories of escapes
from mines and submarines, and the method
adopted by the Admiralty to fight them.
They learned all about Belgium, and Mons,
and the new armies which were marching over
there in England with dummy rifles and broom
handles for arms. They learned of Germany's
rush on Calais, and the desperate stand made
by our men to hold him back. They heard,
too, for the first time, of "the contemptible
little army," and they marched the decks.
deciding what each man of them would do.
"Contemptible!" The phrase stung.
Later in the day a gang arrived who took
the ship once more by the nose, put a hose
down her fore-peak, and drained her dry in an
hour. Then came people with plates and
ratchets and a wonderful medley of tools and
iron and forges. People who started making
a clatter at once, drilling holes, hammering,
blowing iron red hot : who presently screwed
a plate down upon the hole the shell had torn,
caulked it, and pronounced the Juggernaut
water-tight, ready to be tackled by the high-
powered tug that lay off snorting and bubbling
impatience.
HOMEWARD WITH GRAIN
49
1.
And again they took her by the nose and
plucked her forth to dock in Liverpool, where,
it appeared, there were stevedores and others
ready to suck the grain out of her which had
cost her so many throes.
And that, if any further word be required,
was how a cargo of wheat from Oregon reached
England in the early days of her trial; how
her crew held out against odds while the men
in Flanders stood in ice-cold water holding
back the Hun.
J
!
HOLDING THE BLUE RIBBON
“EIGHTY-TWO fathoms, sir . . . fine grey
sand and shell,” said the quartermaster of the
watch. He carried in his hand the last speci-
men drawn from the bed of the Atlantic. He
stood at the salute, holding forth the tallow
armouring for the commander to examine.
"Ha! Thank you.
Thank you. Very good."
The answer fell sharply, and the quarter-
master disappeared with his evidence, to register
it and lay it on the flag locker.
Captain Fitzgerald moved up and down the
bridge revolving this announcement in his
mind. He knew precisely how much he might
value it, how far he might depend upon it and
escape censure, if "Eighty-two fathoms,
grey sand and shell-Umm!" The knowledge
oppressed him. It rilled in a brain usually
clear, usually prompt to act.
fathoms
•
.
it was . .
. Pish!
"Eighty-two
It was con-
50
HOLDING THE BLUE RIBBON 51
spiracy, fraud. Nature's handicap sent to try
him. Sand and shell . . . sand and shell."
Captain Fitzgerald crossed to the wing of
the bridge and stood there thinking. His
officers saw him pass, and one half met him,
as though expecting an order. It did not
come.
A greyhound of the Atlantic hummed be-
neath these people, carrying the mail to
England. From every nerve and fibre came a
hint of the tension-pistons throbbing, steam
sizzling, pumps clucking. The buzz of dyna-
mos came up to them, the roar of furnaces,
the roll of turbines churning yeast. And far
beneath, out there where the gale held revel,
the seas chased their ship with hands of fire.
Great blobs of phosphoresence lay at intervals.
all down her track, marking the effort of that
giant hull, moving so smoothly yet so vigor-
ously channelward; describing in circular
patches the impact, the slapdash hurling aside
of the life she bruised and left bleeding-the
delicate organisms wrecked that she might
pass.
Far to the south another greyhound steamed
channelward carrying the mails to England.
•
+
.
A
-
52
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
She did not fly the same ensign, she had less
speed, but Authority had started her some
hours earlier
yet, the two were not racing.
Captain Fitzgerald, standing there in the dark,
acknowledged the situation with lips firm set.
Each night since they left New York he had
stood there staring into the black pall which
had accompanied them hither on their way;
watching the changing hues hovering fitfully
above the light-screens; staring at an horizon.
which always receded-illusive, visionary, chal-
lenging capture.
Each night the throb of the engines and the
hum of the gale in pursuit had filled his ears.
Each night for sixteen hours he had moved to
and fro on that narrow platform, sixty feet
poised in space; had noted the changing
watches, the orderly procession of those who
made reports, the broad and fiery pathway
drawn by their passage. Each night he had
noted how, when the second engineer was on
duty, the machines moved with more snap;
how the man in the crow's nest always appeared
to stretch at the approach of dawn-as though
the kindling skies affected him, standing there
in his bag, so far from home, as it affects the
}
HOLDING THE BLUE RIBBON
53
i
3
birds; how the third officer marched the bridge
with the swing of the Army. And nothing had
ruffled him.
But now, the information contained in those
words sent by a junior officer at work with the
sounding machine refused to lie still. "Eighty-
two fathoms-grey sand and shell
sand and shell."
grey
Captain Fitzgerald stared into the black
seascape.
All his life this man had been an analyst,
accustomed to sift evidence, to read character,
judge events and pronounce upon them swiftly.
For thirty years he had been one of the lords
of the sea, giving orders without hesitation,
using his authority with the precision that had
gained him command of this greyhound of
England, this scout for war-time, this swift and
incomparable cruiser of the Naval Reserve.
He had the eye of a hawk, the instinct of
the dumb brutes, and the knowledge of a man
who is well read. During his long apprentice-
ship, Captain Fitzgerald had learned the value
of giving instructions promptly; of choosing
officers in whom he could trust, and of heeding
that axiom of all strong men of the sea, "At
54
•
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
all hazards keep off the rocks." Yet, here was
a message sent by one of those officers on whom
he relied, carrying in the burden of it a warning:
'Grey sand and shell," a factor upon which he
should act, and could not.
It was a phase
he did not comprehend. Something must be
He questioned what he who was in
done.
command.
Some inward prompting had fallen upon this
man, telling him that he was becoming nervous,
fidgety, suggesting that he saw shadows where
none existed; vessels under sail crossing his
track, rocks which were not; that he was tired,
stale, getting old.
A man on the right side of sixty, who had
lived abstemiously, avoided gaiety, and breathed
pure air, stale!
He drummed on one arm
with his night-glasses, examining for symptoms
of sleep. No, he was not sleepy, but he was
anxious. Below deck were two thousand people
sleeping, careless of danger, pinning their trust
in his sagacity. He was up there in command
to see their trust was not misplaced. He put
it to himself as he stood there staring into
shadows which moved, listening to the throb
and roll of machinery, to the hustle and jar of
.
HOLDING THE BLUE RIBBON 55
seas that charged: "When there is the whole
of God's ocean on the one hand and the rocks
on the other, why juggle with the rocks?"
Yet was he unable to fix on the order that was
becoming imperative.
The Irish lights should have been in sight.
Grey sand and shell admonished him of this.
The log, the patent indicator clicking out revo-
lutions in the engine-room, all pointed to the
ship's position. Apparently the atmosphere was
clear, yet fronting them was the blackness of a
cave. A gale moved booming over them from
the sou'-west, but there was no fog, nor any
hint of it, only the lights remained hidden.
spite of this warning Captain Fitzgerald could
not bring himself to act.
In
His keen mind acknowledged the facts, but
registered it as a phase. It was a suggestion
pointing definitely to the ground on which he
stood; but for the moment this subtlety escaped
him.
They were crossing to England with the
mails. Further south another greyhound was
furrowing through the dark, carrying also a
mail to England. The two were not racing.
C
.
56
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
That thing is anathema to Authority, and Au-
thority had condemned it in a Minute printed
and circulated for the direction of commanders.
They were not racing, therefore, but each was
doing, as America phrases it, "his level best to
get there." That must be considered. It was
the creed in which a commander is trained. He
must get there.
Fitzgerald argued the matter mentally.
The depth of water told him he was within
the hundred fathom line; the detailed state-
ment of sand and shell, approximately where;
but whether he was to the north of his objec-
tive, or to the south was mere guesswork. Yet
he hesitated.
The knowledge that there had come to him
this rank thing, indecision, annoyed. He de-
cided to stop, but had not given the order
when across his mind came a vision of that
other greyhound far to the south, steaming in
seas unhampered as yet by rocks and lights
which refused to be seen a greyhound intent
on "getting there," and filching the blue ribbon
of the Atlantic. He decided to "haul out,"
as the phrase goes, and again came the remem-
brance of that slim craft stealing a march úpon
HOLDING THE BLUE RIBBON 57
him. The order remained ungiven. He stood
on, telling himself he knew his way blindfold;
that if he did not, then certainly the ship knew
it-the ship that trembled beneath him, hissing
through space, fiery all down her throbbing
sides, the sentient thing he lorded.
The notion thrilled him. He decided to
proceed-for, he argued, battling with inde-
cision, was it not certain that given similar
conditions, the greyhound down south would
proceed?
Unknown, this thing was influencing him.
Against his instinct this subterfuge baffled him.
He objected to this attempt to take down his
record. He knew there was risk; but, he
decided, prodding with one hand at the rail,
in all endeavour there is risk. That is a
law.
The fancy stirred in a mind unaccustomed
to fear. Unseen a force was at work demand-
ing that he should put aside this chimera of
possible danger, and win for England the
battle of the mails. English shipowners were
handicapped. English sailors were less com-
petent than they were. The papers drummed
it out. Statistics were hurled to prove it.
58
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
England was decadent, her manhood on a
glissade. It was necessary, therefore, to show
to all opposition nations a strong front, a reso-
lute will; to win without turning a hair, and,
without racing.
If he relied on his perspicacity, on his records,
and refused to heed the clamour evolved by
those words, "eighty-two fathoms, grey sand
and fine shell," he would be the first to arrive.
That was a result decided by his speed, and
the papers would hum with his praise-his.
Personally, it was he who would win.
Praise, blame! Win, lose! Dare, shrink
the personal equation loomed bold in
the forefront, admonishing him, warning him,
cajoling him, holding a sword or a crown on
high for him to choose. It was the writing on
the wall, and he faced it.
Life or death. Life
or death. But not for him alone .. and
against it the personal equation!
From
Ah! that surely was a new factor.
what forgotten cell, from which unused nerve
had it sprung? Life or death, the personal
equation. Fitzgerald stared into the murk;
twisted on his heel; snapped out-
"Hard a-port! Stand by, below!" Then,
HOLDING THE BLUE RIBBON 59
as the ship came swinging into the rut of seas,
"Stop!"
·
The thing was done. He faced disgrace,
mockery perhaps even sympathy. He
would lose. But he had given the order for
which he had battled, and the giant ship re-
sponded with little tremors, flicks and quiver-
ings in the new-born silence. She looked
scornfully at the rollers moving out of space,
and settled down to drowse before the release
of propellers set eternally to drive.
And out of the shadows there came once
more the quartermaster, carrying a piece of
armour in his hand.
the commander's side.
sir," he said. "Gravel."
He moved quickly to
"Fifty-seven fathoms,
Captain Fitzgerald acknowledged the message
with firm lips, and when the man had departed,
lifted his cap and stood bareheaded under the
clouds.
At that moment the personal equation
seemed a factor too remote and humiliating
for remembrance.
*
י
TORPEDOED
A STILL night, glum, soundless, but for the
lap of seas still turbulent and vengeful from
the late gale. The sky obscure, packed with
clouds which had no movement; dense, heavy,
full of presage.
No moon, no stars; every-
thing covered as with a lid, and the thud of
a liner pushing for the east, a track of foam
beads in her wake.
She came from England by a less direct
route than had been her custom in pre-war
days; but now the Mediterranean put bonds
on her and she stole swiftly down the Maltese
Channel heading for Port Said. She did not
steer straight, but followed a zigzag course which
added to her burden of days, for the sea is not
wide here and submarines infested it.
For that matter she had run the gauntlet
of this menace from the Irish Sea, had sighted
a periscope in the Bay and fallen foul of
another before Cape Bon was passed. It was
60
TORPEDOED
61
part of her business to fight for her life with-
out guns. The enemies she might encounter
would be armed; but the Merchant Service to
which she belonged, fights with its head and
with the ship's. She was called the Calliope,
which is the muse of eloquence; but she was
not eloquent. She was dumb as were those
who sailed her. Only her owner indulged in
eloquence and he could afford it. Last voyage
the Calliope had poured sixty thousand pounds
into his lap and now she was off, submarine
dodging, to double it.
For various doles the crew had accepted
these conditions, submarine peril included.
They called it war risk, which sounds well on
paper, and in the captain's case added half-a-
crown daily to his pay. And now they were
engaged zigzagging down the eastern end of
the Maltese Channel. They were zigzagging
because suddenly out there, where it was too
dark to see, a cry had flustered the officer in
charge. Twice he heard it. Then he sent for
his commander, who was lying down after ten
days' duty.
He came up with the alacrity of one who is
disciplined.
62
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
"A cry," he commented.
"Starboard bow, sir."
"Where away?"
1
The captain took up his night-glasses and
stared. "I don't see anything," he said. "Do
you?"
"No, sir-not yet."
"You are sure it was a cry, I suppose?
"Not a doubt, sir. It was plain enough the
second time. I heard it as plainly as I hear you."
"Hum!" said the captain. "I'm inclined
to remember the decoy theory."
He marched to the wing of the bridge and
stood there staring into the darkness. The
ship continued her zigzag course.
He recog-
nized that the still solitudes were alive with
more peril than before—that is all. A perfect
opportunity for those lurking sea-devils was in
being, and he was tensely aware of it; aware
that life was in the balance. He questioned
what he must do if the cry were repeated.
Should he stop or obey orders? Behind a
cry there would be men perhaps women,
and if that were so, would it be possible to pass
on? He knew the answer. He knew that at
all hazards he would turn away to the south
perhaps continue searching for
and search
..
TORPEDOED
63
3
hours. If the Calliope had carried a gun, he
would have had no qualms, nothing to worry
him. It would have been a fight of course;
but in war one fights of necessity, whether one
stands behind armoured plating or a sardine
tin. Meanwhile the cry, if it were a cry, had
not been repeated. He began to question the
officer's report. If one wanted help one would
shout and shout as long as strength remained.
True—but what if strength were failing? A
wave of hot air from the fiddley passed over
the bridge and the captain swerved like one
struck. He recognized that he required rest.
It had been a long spell . . . and, meanwhile,
he had not yet heard the cry.
He crossed to consult with the officer and
suddenly stood still. The voice rang out,
long drawn, faint. It was given by a man,
perhaps by several shouting in unison.
came close to the officer-
"Is that what you mean?" he asked.
"Yes, sir."
He
"In all likelihood it's a decoy," he insisted.
"You know these devils as well as I do. You
know they will stick at nothing to get us—and,
you know the orders."
C 2
64
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
:
"I do, sir-but—”
"There is no but. Don't mistake me,
Chief. You are married and so am I; but
somehow I don't fancy your wife would care
to know you turned tail on drowning men any
better than mine would. Port!" he swung
round defiant. "Bring her south half a dozen
points-we will take our chance.”
Again the cry rang out. It was faint, faint,
the shout of those at the end of their tether,
people these men could not see, whose where-
abouts was the merest guesswork. It was also,
as they knew, one of the tricks practised by
Fritz and his cousins, to lure ships to the
slaughter chamber.
If ever men needed eloquence these of the
Calliope needed it . . . if debate and the pro-
cesses of committees be essential methods of
governance. Yet, having given orders in tones
which suggested annoyance, the captain and his
companion stood silent under the grey dome.
They saw their orders carried out, boats' crews
in readiness, belts strapped on, lifebuoys free
to float away
away if the unspeakable happened.
The Calliope moved without lights, her scuttles
screened, skylights rigorously covered.
It was
TORPEDOED
65
1
}
not considered wise to carry lights at sea now
that Germany had declared her intention of
freeing it. Ships made no difficulty here.
They were accustomed to do what landsmen
found essential only after long argument,
printed columns of appeal, and many raids.
They passed through danger zones unlighted.
"See anything?"
Again it was the captain who spoke.
"Not a sign, sir.'
"Nor can I. How did you make the sound
bear?"
"Five points out. As nearly dead ahead
now as I can guess."
"So I thought. Jove! I would give some-
thing to signal; but I daren't."
The chief made no comment. He was
scarcely impressed by the decoy theory, al-
though he was aware such cases had been
known. The U-boats would be on the surface
a night like this, and on the surface probably
could walk round the old Calliope, blow her sky-
high and look around for more. The chief had
heard the cry, you understand, often enough to
judge its meaning: his captain had but just come
up and the voice had sounded weak since, weak.
66
OUTPOSTS ´OF THE FLEET
The chief stared over the bridge-screen using
his glasses, and sometimes with his hands con-
centrating on a small sector of the horizon
without aid. The sea slapped the ship's side
as they headed it more, otherwise no sound was
noticeable. If wind existed it was following
them round the compass. Clinkers from the
funnel fell on the bridge and crunched under
foot. The rail was wet, the gratings wet, the
chief's clothes wet and clammy to the touch. It
was as though a sea were running and they
were plunging through it. But it was not the
sea, it was dew which made them wet; and
that, too, is a portent in the Mediterranean.
The chief moved over to meet his commander.
"We should be there or thereabouts now,
sir," he said. "It is ten minutes since we
altered the course and that should give us
two-and-a-half miles at this speed."
cr
"I agree. Prepare to lower Number Four.
Send down to the electrician to get ready to
put on the searchlight forward. Helm hard-a-
port. Quartermaster, go to the look-outs and
tell them to keep their eyes skinned all round."
The chief gave orders and returned. There
was no shouting, no bo'sun's whistle, no bugle
TORPEDOED
67
-word was passed and the men took up their
positions in silence.
"Helm's hard-a-port, sir!" announced the
man at the wheel.
"Good. Keep it so."
They steamed in a circle, small at first, but
larger after a while, and suddenly the cry came
out broad on the port beam. They had over-
shot the distance; but now they closed and the
searchlight blinked the attention signal for those
who could read it.
Again 'came the cry, perhaps in response, and
they caught its direction, took its bearing and
steadied the helm at "right ahead."
"Now," said the captain, "we are in for it,
U-boat or no U-boat." He leaned over a tube
and spoke into the engine-room: "We shall
be stopping directly, perhaps for some time.
Keep her in hand to whack her up if necessary.”
He heard the answer and chuckled grimly at
the tube, "Right-we'll tell you!"
The searchlight of a merchant ship is not
powerful. It is intended for use mainly in the
Canal, and for picking up buoys when coming
into harbour at night; but it sufficed. It
wavered a trifle at first, then threw a fair
68
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
beam, and at its second sweep drew a picture
in white which was definite.
"That's no decoy
it's the real ma'kye,
Chief," came from the captain's lips. "Half-
speed, there . . . Stop!
The telegraph clanged brazenly. It seemed
there was need for silence no longer. Men
strained their eyes searching that white picture.
"There's a bunch of 'em there!" came
from the fore-deck with emphasis.
"Women too, if I can see straight," said
another.
CC
Gawd, look sideways on the pirates!
quoth a third, diagnosing the cause out of
hand.
Then an order from the chief: "Number
Four to the water-level and stand by! Pre-
pare Number Two!"
The Calliope pushed slowly nearer and came
to a halt. At a signal from the bridge Number
Four dropped bodily into the sea, and started
away with a fine flourish. "Let her have it !"
came from the officer who steered.
The men responded with a will.
There were days, not far distant, when it
would have been impossible to lower that boat
TORPEDOED
69
and
get her
away from the ship much under
half-an-hour; but that was all past and done
with. War had produced the change. War,
which had galvanized the nation as no other
danger could, as no talk or propaganda or the
stirring of authority by scaremonger writers or
preachers could, as only the necessity to fight
can or will. It had become a case of "You
or me, my friend-you or me-and if I know
anything it will be me." So they rowed away
in their cockle-shell, banging the lumpy sea,
spilling water, intent on getting there and en--
entirely ignoring all questions of decoy, or
those brazen specimens of frightfulness which
were intended to burke our zeal.
Some
Meanwhile the Calliope, forgetful of share-
holders, steamed in a circle drawing ever nearer
her children. They bashed at the sea, making
a white track. They plunged, and a cascade,
phosphorescent and amazing showered them.
There came the voice of their officer.
one appeared to have caught a crab or broken
an oar. The Calliope lurched, solemnly con-
sidering this factor. She sidled in a long roll
and climbed back without effort. There had
been a day when she, too, had lost means of
!
3
70
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
*
control. But that had happened in the China
Sea, when a thing called a typhoon roared
over her and she was sick, sick and very weary
of battle. Then her children had banged
with hammers, heated iron and steel, flogged,
twisted, turned and made an immense noise
deep in her entrails, and they had cured her.
So, too, would those in the boat cure the ill
which had come to them.
She watched. The boat moved on. Again
a cloud of phosphorescence whelmed her, and
the voices of those on deck gave vent to their
approval.
Anon the frail craft returned, and the Calliope
lay at the mercy of any U-boat that happened
to be near. No one made light of the danger
she faced. Look-out men stood as always
searching for the pin-head which is the sign
of it. One waited at the telegraphs ready to
pass orders which would stir her, but the
process of embarkation went on.
Five men, three women, and one child.
That was the tale of those drawn from the
edge of the pit. Others had existed on the
raft; but now Valhalla held them as it holds
A
TORPEDOED
71
those who have fallen elsewhere. Cold, hunger,
thirst, had contributed, each its part, to their
end. They were dead, and some smiled as
they lay staring at the Force which had con-
quered them. The sea was littered with them,
with upturned boats, hen-coops, oars, buckets
-all bobbing under the grey dome.
But five men, three women, and one girl-
child survived-nine who bore no relation one
to the other. The child's mother had existed
on that raft, but stupor and the sea had called
her. The women had each of them left a
a husband on the ship; two had lost children,
which the sea had taken. Of the five who
were men, one was the sailor in charge of the
raft, three others had clambered on board while
hell yet yawned over them, and one sat jibber-
ing, drinking from the sea, and tying knots in
a handkerchief for remembrance.
For this ship which had gone, unwarned,
in a crash of red flame, instant and annihi-
lating, had carried neither gun for defence nor
war stores, nor foodstuffs. She was a mailship
from the east, and on her decks when she left
Port Said were few very short of four hundred
people. With the exception of the crew, who
!
72 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
are legitimate game in these days for those
who would free the seas, were folk returning
from the east after a life spent in the service
of the Empire; other who were, as we say,
globe-trotters; others who were business men,
children, ayahs, Chinese servants, and some
officials of the Indian Government.
The ship's name was known to the peoples.
of two hemispheres; her occupation plainly
stated, her port of departure and destination
no secret. In her splendid sphere she was as
well known as the Lusitania in hers—and she
had vanished in the same appalling way. An
instant of blood-red massacre, an instant of
noise and agony, an instant presently acknow-
ledged by the German people with wild shouts
of delight, the ringing of bells, and by the
rest of the world with amazement bordering
on incredulity.
So it stood in the first ghastly days, then
slowly the world came to understand that the
nation who had done this thing was mad. They
saw a nation berserk and gloating over infamies
too terrible for recapitulation, infamies too
trivial, too childish to count for one grain's
weight in the scales of war. And they saw
.

TORPEDOED
73
England gathering in those who were saved,
sounding the Last Post over the dim solitudes
which hold those who have passed-silent,
calm, at one with the immense cohort of Empire,
turning again to the task which is hers.
The captain from his place on the bridge as
light streamed in at the east, looked down
upon the evidences of that crime, and gave
vent to the prevailing desire.
"God help the U-boat I come across this
side of Kingdom Come, for no one else will."
He turned
turned to officers standing at hand:
"Starboard to
Full speed
ahead!"
your course.
And the dawn climbing high as they moved,
threw a blood-red glow upon the screen of
clouds out there where the mailship had dis-
appeared.
}
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
"THAT," said the skipper, jerking his thumb
skyward, "is a seaplane, an' don't you forget it.
Starb'd a bit. Bring her in a point an' steady
her. A seaplane, mister, an' I don't care if I
never see another. They are no use for any-
thing bar throwin' bombs an' such like. I
wouldn't be seen dead in an aeroplane of any
sort, not if you'd give me the worth of her," he
indicated the steamer by his hand; "not even
if
you were to throw in the value of the freights
I've carried for Grimshaw, Peck'am & Co. this
twelve months past—that's me."
He slapped the rail, looking very fierce.
The Nelson, homeward on this trip from Brix-
ham to the Thames, throbbed on her course
unheeding. She made a big bow wave. Harry,
to whom the skipper spoke, said "She pushed
one half of the Channel in front of her, and
left the other half behind in the shape of a
74
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
75
*
counter-wave." But of course he exaggerated.
Mates are of no use unless they can exagger-
ate, as any log-book will testify. It is called
"spinning yarns," which is, in its way, some
sort of frigid inexactitude, hitherto masquer-
ading as truth.
Now, the mate was on the bridge because
McFuz, who was chief engineer, had impressed
upon him the increasing value of aeronautics,
and, being younger than Captain Bin, he had a
natural leaning towards the new science.
He would have argued with the skipper had
he been sure of his position; but, as this was
his first trip in the Nelson, and her owners
were uncertain of him, he held his gas, as he
expressed it.
Having struck the Nelson's bridge rail
without result, and slammed erroneous data
at the head of his subordinate without opposi-
tion, Captain Bin marched two turns up and
down in complete and exasperating triumph.
It was as though he crowed.
The mate recognized this, and in a deferential
yoice said: "It must be smooth sailing any-
how, sir. No seas to butt you into the middle
of next week up there . . nothing but air."
76
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
The skipper halted, withdrawing the short
pipe he smoked.
"Air!" he puffed out.
"Air smooth !
Who in Moses ever heard the like?
runs in lumps same as the sea does.
Why, it
I'd like
to see you up in that chap with a breeze.
I'd
like to squint at you holding on like grim
death to a mop-stick in your air. . . . I'd like
to see you when you got down out of your air
and staggered about blue with it, blue with
it. I'd bet my last dollar you wouldn't call it air;
you'd call it
'Allo! what's he up to now?"
They both turned to see.
The seaplane came down on a long volplane
and swerved round the bows of a large steamer
which headed up Channel about two miles to
the eastward. Half an hour ago she had
passed the little coaster with her nose in the
air, as Captain Bin announced wrathfully.
Homeward from Spain with copper ore for
England's enemy as like as not, viâ some
neutral port, so he put it, judging with the
acumen of a trained observer.
The Channel was spread like a mirror after
a series of gales and wetness which for months.
had added to its dangers. A few smoke-clouds
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
77
were visible, but not the vessels which pro-
duced them. Far away on the French coast
the sails of a ship gleamed white in the sunshine..
A sparkling day, too fine to last in Captain
Bin's opinion, suggesting more rain or mist or
westerly winds. To the east of the sailing
ship four blobs of smoke indicated the presence
of destroyers steaming to safeguard the trans-
ports carrying our light-hearted Tommies to
the Front. A day so quiet and peaceful, so
English, so resonant of the Spring which came,
that the swift swoop of the seaplane appeared
out of place, antagonistic.
Like a great bird she came down and slowed
beside the rusty coaster. Her floats touched
the pitted sea with the tinkle of a wherry
moored in a tideway. Again she moved ahead,
passed twice round the steamer, then rose,
throwing a streak of foam for the sun to touch
with silver. Up, up, up, circling as she rose,
then still, motionless as a bird, a cormorant
hovering against the blue.
"Well," said the skipper, "I allow that beats
all."
<<
re
Fine, I call it," the mate joined in. “I
could stay on deck all day watching her."
!
78, OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
.
“An' nap behind the dodger at night-time
to make up for it," snapped his lord. "Oh!
I know you young fellers-was young myself
once-an' I've got nothing against bein' young,
except-well, there, that's me. 'Allo !"
The tramp they followed suddenly sheered
broad off and seemed to be making a bee-line
for Grisnez.
"What in smoked tea is she up to now?"
asked Captain Bin.
"Seen something, I expect-mines perhaps,"
the mate ventured.
"Not it. You feel mines-don't see 'em,
my son. Feel 'em, if I know anything, for
one nicking second, an' then you feel nothin'
more till Kingdom Come. That's mines. I
go near 'em, drag for 'em, try to sink 'em?
Not if you paid me. I hate war! My
wife says
war's murder," said Captain Bin.
"'Allo!"
A column of water shot high into the
sunlight, and a moment later a growling roar
came down to scare them. Captain Bin stood
quite still, straggle-legged, staring through his
binoculars. He dropped his pipe, omitted to
pick it up, and sprang to the telegraph.
He
---
}
1
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
79
}
rang it fiercely for full speed ahead. Back and
fore he pushed the handle, each time leaving it
at full speed. He turned to the open skylight
which bounded the after-bridge rail, and roared
into cavernous space : "Let her have it, McFuz.
Give her smoke if it's the last trump! Kim
up, McFuz!"
He looked to see the old Nelson jump; but
she did not jump, she moved in her placid
fashion, pushing the Channel before her, un-
disturbed. Then he came back to the bridge
wing and elbowed the mate aside.
"Where is she now?" he growled, search-
ing for her and finding her with his glasses.
"Starb'd! Round with your hel-lum-starb'd
till you
have her dead on end. Lord love us!
She's goin'. The nasty, sneakin', lyin', up-
endin' German sausage! You would, would
you? Lord give me patience!" He turned
to the mate. "Down you go, mister. Get
your boat ready. Get all hands up. Tell 'em
to smirk. An' stand by till I give you the
word."
The mate vanished like one blown from his
station. A vast bustle ensued: shouts, the
clang of ropes flung down, the tramp of several

80
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
2
;
pairs of very heavy boots, a rain of oars, row-
locks, and the boat hung ready at the water
level.
The Nelson pushed onward with praiseworthy
weight. She could have done better if that
front half of the Channel had kept to the sea-
level. McFuz, at the throttle, could have
done more with her in the way of "lettin' her
oot," but as it was he was free to climb the
fiddley trap and glance around. He stared at
the still horizon.
"What's agley?" he asked, pipe in mouth.
Mines," said Captain Bin.
"Whaur ?"
"Dead ahead."
"Hoo d'ye ken it's mines?" quoth the
engineer.
"Five minutes ago," said his captain with
impressive intonation,
intonation, "there was a cock-a-
hoop cargo-boat paddlin' yonder-two miles
distant at most.
Now she's gone. See that
scatterin' of black dots ?"
"I do," said the engineer.
"That's what is left of her. A scrap-heap,"
Captain Bin announced.
"Eh, mon!" ejaculated the engineer.
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
81
>>
Just so, McFuz. Nothin' more, nothin'
less; and I'm goin' in to see what's left to
pick up!"
The engineer viewed him with large appre-
ciation. "Gude for ye," he said. "But I
thought ye aye refused tae tamper wi' mines an'
minefields?”
Captain Bin turned smartly on his critic.
"Who told you that?" he demanded.
<<
'Yoourself," said McFuz.
The skipper took two turns up and down his
small bridge, then halted by the fiddley-
tr
"Sandy," he said in a complaining voice,
you are like all Scotchmen, you have no
more humour than a sausage."
"I wasna aware," McFuz blinked back,
"oor skeeper looked on submarines as points.
o' humour. But I'm lairnin'. . . ou, aye,
I'm lairnin'."
Captain Bin stared. The engineer descended
slowly to the black depths whence he had
emerged. He stood a moment with head and
shoulders just clear of the bars, and jerked his
thumb seaward. "See yon?” he ejaculated,
and vanished.
Then Captain Bin discovered, within half a
82
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
mile of the scrap-heap they approached, the
periscope of U05 dabbling lazily at the swell.
His lips came in line at this. A stern crease
showed between his eyes. He stared over the
screen at the hill they pushed before them, saw
where it sucked hollow abreast the bridge, the
rolling counter-wave that climbed astern. No
use pretending that a puncher of the Nelson's
breed could approach unseen. The noise she
made was like the swish and drone of a
threshing-machine on a still day in the fields.
Nevertheless, he would have a go for it.
"Starb'd!" he said, but so quietly it seemed
he fancied the periscope could hear as well
as see.
The old Nelson punched round, pointing to
strike that sneaking, deadly sink-me-quick. She
came slowly until she was end on; then Captain
Bin whispered as before-
Steady! Keep her there. See that wee
stickin'-up thing? Well, I'm goin' to razee it
off of him . . . if he'll let me.
""
So, he was in for it. No use squirming,
pretending he could not see.
No use sticking
to formulas and peace precepts. There were
things in that scrap-heap which showed signs
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
83
of life and made him angry-arms, legs, splut-
tering foam. The mate must attend to that.
He approached the rail after slowing the
engines.
"Let go ! See what you can find," he
ordered, and returned to jam the telegraph
again at full speed, and to watch that "trans-
mogrified telescope," as he called it.
ર
"Thinks I can't see him," he mused, staring.
'Right-o! Thinks I'm jolly well blind." He
smoked hard. The periscope disappeared. In
a little circle of foam it passed from the seas,
just as Captain Bin was bracing himself for the
shock. Lord love us! The beast was gone.
It was the work of an instant. But it was gone.
Nothing for the Nelson to punch; nothing to
grind and smash with her blunt, bluff bow but
the Channel. And now it would be necessary
to stop right in the path of the thing, to give
him a chance-the chance for which he waited
-perhaps.
Captain Bin felt a cold trickle run down his
back. He smoked hard to drive it away. It
was a new experience. He was not of a
thrilling type; solid, rather, like the Nelson
and Mrs. Bin. Where, by the way, were
84
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
י.
Mrs. Bin and the children Bin? He wondered
if they knew just where their father was-stuck
at point-blank range, staring into the eye of a
thing that could blow him into the middle of
next week in less time than it takes to say
"Je-rusalem." Playin' the giddy goat, that's
what he was doin'; acting as he had sworn to
Mrs. Bin he would never act. Well, anyhow
unless he sailed over that scrap-heap he would
have to stop. That was a moral. He advanced
to the telegraph and set it amidships.
Stop," said he, "and be hung to you."
If the old Nelson had been fast, Captain Bin
would have had that periscope, Mrs. Bin or
no Mrs. Bin; but that was impossible now.
He realized that the Nelson would be unable
to scotch a submarine in a month of Sundays
-under steam. So he stopped, just as the
Hogue and Cressy stopped to pick up those who
were drowning from the Aboukir; stopped, as
was his duty, to save life. The cold trickle.
which had troubled Captain Bin passed away.
He glowed with pride.
His engineer climbed from the depths, and
stood again to survey the scene. High over-
head sounded the drone of the seaplane, and
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
1
85
h
on looking up they discovered the beautiful
machine drawing near. The engineer was the
first to put the new aspect in focus-
"Now for it, Cap'. It's ten to five on the
bird."
"What bird?" asked Captain Bin.
"Yon."
"The skipper glanced up.
"She can't fight submarines," he objected.
"Aiblins submarines canna fecht her," the
engineer corrected.
whaur he's gone
or stay sinkit."
"Ah'm waitin' tae see
whether he wull bark
This was quite beyond Captain Bin, and he
said so.
"Talk English," he advised, "if you want
to talk; else leave it to them that can. I'm
goin' to move the engines."
McFuz retired, firing a final shot as his head
disappeared.
"Look oot for the tin fish he wull send
ye." He vanished, chuckling broadly. The
submarine had dived.
The skipper squared his shoulders. His
teeth were set. He felt it would be good
to bite-if he only knew how. The pacifist
1
86
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
theories of the Reverend Mr. Thomas, his
wife's instructor in these matters, failed alto-
gether at this crisis. A ship had been blown
up right under his nose. Some of her chaps, no
doubt, had already solved the great mystery.
Others were shivering in the boat Harry was
laboriously urging towards the old Nelson.
There seemed to be quite a crowd. Lucky it
was calm, decided Captain Bin; otherwise how
many would reach in that cockle-shell? No, he
could not offer his cheek in a case like this:
but he ached to offer his boot.
He manœuvred his engines so as to bring
his ship round, and halted her with a seaman-
like sweep, so that the mate had little to do
but fall alongside. Then came the deluge.
Twenty-five men climbed on board, and lined
the rail, shivering, to hoist a consignment of
those who had been injured. Captain Bin
straddled beside them issuing orders. He
had forgotten the ship's peril: the fact that
a submarine lay somewhere, waiting to strike.
He had forgotten the seaplane whizzing high
in their wake. He was busy prescribing the
stokehold for drenched mariners, pants for
In his new rôle as belligerent,
the undressed.
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
87
he had time to consider merely his men, as
he called them, and to get them stowed.
He learned from one who stood in a wet
singlet and drawers that there were others
missing, and instantly set his boat cruising
about amidst the litter which still appeared.
He had forgotten everything but the fact that
he was there to pick up sailors attacked with-
out warning by a pirate manned by persons
who were known as Sausages. He was busy
and immensely important. At that moment
the possibility of seeing his name in the
papers, with perhaps a photograph of himself,
his wife, and kids, all standing grouped about
him, had begun to take shape.
Then the seaplane came towards him on
a long, dropping swoop, and touched water
with its floats just abaft the bridge.
"Picked them all up?" demanded the pilot,
a person in goggles and a leather tunic.
SCC
Bin.
Nigh on forty of 'em, sir," said Captain
"Good! Any more about?"
"Can't see any.
t
""
Right! Then get a move on. Don't
lie waiting to be pilled. Follow me in to the
D
88
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
·
land. We can get him, if you care to co-
operate."
The skipper demurred.
"I've got my owner's instructions to obey,
sir," he explained. "Nice I should look if
I lost the Nelson, after picking up all those
poor chaps. Anyhow," he braced himself for
contingencies, "what is it you want
to do?"
me
The seaplane moved easily beside this
coaster, her propeller revolving sufficiently to
enable her to keep pace-a wonderful, shining,
shimmering creation that held Bin spellbound.
It's a lucky thing for you, my friend,"
the pilot informed him in the silence of shut-
off engines, "that I happened to be in the
neighbourhood when that devil struck. How
long do you think you would have been
afloat after you had picked up the men if I
had not been here ?"
Captain Bin expressed his absolute ignor-
He said—
ance.
"I am a quiet man. I know nothin' at all
about fighting. I've been drilled to believe
fighting's wrong; but I'm beginning to have
my doubts. Still, it seems to me I can't do
..
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
89
!
much. Why, I haven't got so much as a
pea-shooter on board! Couldn't hit a haystack
if I had, let alone a submarine: I'm that
rusty."
"Exactly. That is why I came alongside,"
said the pilot. "Now, look here, Captain,
you listen to me," again for a moment the
engines roared as the seaplane drew ahead,
then in the silence, “I believe there's a pretty
big reward offered to the merchant ship that
sinks a submarine. Very well. If
Very well. If you don't
funk it, I can help you to score.
can show
you want to know—that is,
I take it, to hit that devil which has just
torpedoed one ship, and would torpedo you
if he didn't know it's my day, not his, and
that he must lie close.
you all
I think I
"Come, what do you say? My name is
Mathieson. I'm Flight-Commander G. S.
Mathieson, R.N., and this gentleman behind
is Lieutenant Harold, R.N., who can shoot
more than a bit. If there is any trouble with
your owner, the Admiralty will stand by you.
What do you say?"
Captain Bin expanded his chest.
Say, sir? Why, I'm on, if you think
90
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
I can do anything with a slow old tub like
this.”
" I
"Good Nelson !!'
Nelson!" cried the pilot.
thought I could see fire somewhere. You
have an anchor, I suppose-perhaps two?"
"Well, sir, what d'you think?" asked
Captain Bin.
parlour."
"I'm not
not in my missus's
The two seated so lightly at their ease in
the skimming seaplane laughed broadly, and
the commander said-
"What do they weigh?
CC
My anchors, sir?"
"Yes."
<<
Perhaps a ton and a half between the two."
"Good," said Mathieson. "I guess that
will hold us. Now, follow me. Don't hesi-
tate; just follow, and I will tell you what to
do. Anyone there who can signal- Morse
code, whistle or flags ?"
"You leave that to me, sir, and to my
mate, Harry Nairn."
"Good! Then I lead.
When I am too
distant for sound signalling, I shall use flags;
otherwise a horn. Good luck."
Then, before Bin quite recognized what was
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
91
happening, he was in for it.
The waterplane
began to buzz in earnest, to dip like a bird
just starting from the sea, to skim, rising,
rising, with a most wonderful facility and ease,
until she seemed to be moving at the rate of
an express train towards Dungeness.
Captain Bin slammed the telegraph over to
full speed ahead, brought his ship round and
followed patiently. He sighed as he glanced
at the distant machine.
"What d'you think of that, Harry?" he
asked, with the air of one responsible for the
whole operation. "Something like, ain't it?”
'ર
"Wish I was one of 'em," said the mate.
"I believe I could fly, if I had the chance."
"Stick to your job here, my son," the
"You will find it
skipper advised.
than flyin'."
pay
better
He glanced around, and seeing McFuz
solemnly watching the seaplane, became pro-
vocative.
"Nothin' better to do than star-gazin'?"
he asked.
McFuz held him with his eye.
"That's what comes of star-gazin', Cap', an'
don't you forget it. Engineer star-gazin','
92
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
#
; not
he hammered home, "not sailor-man star-
gazin'. That's oor handiwark, man
yoours. Not in fifty thoosand years could
sailor-men raise the like o' that--not in a
million. Look at this!" He snapped at the
Nelson's dim shape. "Ships, ye ca' 'em-
yoour sort o' ships. F-s-s-s! We make 'em
ta fly an' tae dive."
"An' when you've made 'em," said the
skipper, "we sail 'em. Phut! Go below,
Sandy, an' look after your job.'
Mc Fuz retired blinking. He was aware
that Captain Bin had scored; and that warlike
personage shot his cuffs, such as they were,
picked up his binoculars and said to the
:nate-
"Get out our waggers, blue ones then
blow the water off the whistle. Don't sound
it, though-see?"
southern wave
Over there, a
The Nelson solemnly pushed the northern
section of the Channel before her, and did
her best to get away from the
which aimed at her taffrail.
speck in the blue already, the seaplane made
direct for the high, bluff hills which touch
the coast at Fairlight. Captain Bin got out
1
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
93
his chart and patted it smooth. He put
weights on it to keep it from blowing away,
and bent over refreshing his memory. There
was Rye Bay, with Stephenson Shoal, just this
side of Dungeness. Fairlight shoal on the left.
It seemed from the course taken by the sea-
plane that she would lead right over the
sand ridge which has Fairlight Shoal for its
centre. "All very well," said Captain Bin,
"for a flyin' machine; but won't do for me,
not at any price."
cr
They punched on, steadily drawing nearer.
The seaplane swerved now, going first to the
west, then north, then east. Captain Bin
became warm. All very well, but if he was
to do just what the seaplane did, good bye
Nelson, good-bye Captain Bin, good-bye grub.
It couldn't be done. He became emphatic as
the coastline lifted and the sea shoaled. He
was on the point of turning out again, when
to his immense relief, the seaplane turned.
He drew alongside, and signalled-
"He's not there. He's over in Rye Bay.
Nice soft bottom-sandy; one of his special
docks. I will go in and look. You follow
slowly; but don't come in till I signal."
94
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
:
He dropped on the water alongside, switched
off and said—
"You understand he will be lying doggo.
He won't see us, but I shall see him. What
water are you drawing?"
"Fifteen feet forward, eighteen feet aft,
sir."
"Good. That will do.
I won't put you
ashore. Get your anchors ready, with plenty
of run on them. When I give the word, let
go port. Then stand by starboard. I will
signal from overhead. If you do as I tell
you, I think you will be handling a fatter
cheque this time next week than I shall.
Good luck!"
Again the seaplane skimmed off, rising and
sailing straight for the new objective.
Rye Bay. Out there, then, within sight of
the sand dunes, the golf-links and the winding,
mud-laden Rother, was one of England's
enemies. Lying on the bottom, if you please,
ready to move when it was dark and the sea-
plane had vanished, and he had finished think-
ing. It appeared that they always thought
things out on the bottom. A murderous
business, Captain Bin decided, stumping to
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
95
and fro his small bridge; the sort of thing you
might expect of savages or Sausages.
He followed slowly until the sand-dunes of
Rye were plainly in sight, and the Nelson began
to acknowledge the influence of shoal water.
Then he went slow, very slow, watching the
seaplane, which now hovered not far above his ·
stumped mastheads, circling to obtain a position.
"Wonder if she's spotted him?" he ques-
tioned of McFuz.
"I wud like tae be as sairtain o' my share in
that fifty-pund note ye'll be haundlin'."
They both stood ricking their necks to
watch. The seaplane buzzed like a giant bee,
high overhead, sailing at varying altitudes, until
suddenly the observer waved his flag. Captain
Bin waved his.
"Stand by your port anchor, there," he
ordered, translating for the mate's benefit, and
Harry acknowledged that he understood.
"Let go!" signalled the seaplane.
"Let go!" roared Captain Bin.
The cable jingled, drowning all sound, and
the little skipper shot out his cuffs.
He stood
wondering what in the world he had let go his
anchor for, squared his hands on his hips, and
##
י
D 2
96 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
looked very wise.
That was essential, in view
of the presence of the helmsman. McFuz,
too, had bugled loudly his nose from the
fiddley trap.
"Go full speed astern!" signalled the
seaplane.
Captain Bin slammed the telegraph over, and
McFuz disappeared.
"Full!" reiterated the seaplane,
Captain Bin waved his flags. Something
was happening. He could feel the runch of
his cable.
"Full speed!" he roared, craning over the
engine-room skylight. "Give her socks!
Never mind your bed-plates. Back the eternal
soul-case out of her, McFuz, an' say I told
you."
The engines raced. The Nelson quivered
like an express suddenly brought to a standstill
by her brakes. Then came a fresh signal from
the cormorant which hung over them all-
"Let go starboard anchor !"
"Let go!" Captain Bin accentuated. "Let
go quick. Hold on to nothin'. Let her have
it neat, windlass an' all. Dump the bloomin'
fo'c's'le on her an' be hung to her. So!"
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
97
7
熱
​He drew himself up, aware that he was on
the edge of profanity, mopped his brow and
turned to find McFuz staring at the seaplane.
"Cruise in a circle at full speed !" said the
flags, and, with a shock, Captain Bin gave the
necessary order.
"Missed!" he announced to the bridge
darkly. "Don't know what's happening-
don't know nothing. Nice position for a
British shipmaster. Just what he might have
expected, taking orders from a thing like that!"
He glowered at the seaplane.
The cables ground in their hawse-pipes.
The Nelson heeled, dumped, kicked, as though,
in Captain Bin's phrase, "she'd gone off her
blessed Nanny." McFuz was giving her socks
with a vengeance. Then something snapped,
and the old coaster staggered to an even keel.
"What's gone?" Bin shouted.
"Starboard anchor, sir-cable short off at
the hawse."
Captain Bin was very angry.
"Swear," said McFuz, coming up.
do ye gude."
“'Twull
Then, as it happened, the seaplane intervened
with a message of peace.
She came sailing
2
1
98
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
:
down in a most wonderful spiral, and halted on
her floats beside the worried coaster.
“Good Nelson !" said her pilot.
congratulate you. She's done."
"Done?" the skipper gulped.
CC
Cap'n, I
"Holed, sir. Your starboard anchor hap-
pened on a weak spot. I should say it's on
her cabin table."
Captain Bin took off his cap.
"I'm that hot," he explained, "it might be
June." Then he faced the pilot and said
quietly, for the propeller no longer buzzed:
"Do you mean to say I've finished him—done
him in ?"
The pilot pointed to a patch which was
spreading on the water.
"See that?" he asked. ર
'Well, that's oil.
See those bubbles? Well, I need not tell you.
what that is; but, if you want my opinion, I
should say that submarine will stay in dock till
we pick her up, Captain; so you may as well
put in a claim for your cheque."
"But I didn't see her, couldn't have touched
her without your help, sir.
take it that way. We'll go
anything in it.
Lord! but I can't
shares-if there is
I couldn't think of it else.'
*
THE NELSON'S ANCHOR
99
"That's all right, Captain. It's our job to
wipe them out one way or another. I was
helpless by myself-still, if you want to be
generous, send Fifty Pounds to the Disabled
Sailors' Fund, and call it quits."
"I will," said Captain Bin.
And as the Nelson steamed on her course
that night, the skipper addressed the stars
with-
"It's dead against my wife's principles, an'
it's dead against all I've promised; but, blow
me, if I were twenty years younger, if I
wouldn't enlist in something-even if it was
air!"
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF
CAPTAIN BIN
I
THE Coaster known as the s.s. Nelson, wearing
the Red Ensign of all the seas, pushed through
the puddle we politely term the North Sea.
Astern, faint against a lifting dawn was the
Maas Lightship, curtseying in a ground-swell ;
ahead and on either hand an open expanse of
water very much the colour of Flanders mud,
sown with mines.
“A year ago,” said Captain Bin with a side-
long glance at the mate, "if any super-'eaded
duffer had told me I'd be navigatin' the old
Nelson through mine-fields to-day, I'd - I'd
have knocked him silly."
The mate struggled with a smile and said:
"Just so, sir . . and I'd have liked to be
there to back you up."
Captain Bin took this for what it was worth.
19
·
100
CAPTAIN BIN
ΙΟΙ
•
He had no great opinion of Henry Nairn's
prowess as a fighter; but he failed to comment
on it.
He was immersed in larger issues.
"Six months ago," he asserted, staring round
the dim horizon, "I was what they call a
pacifist, an' my wife was an out an' outer of
the same kidney. We had to be at our place
o' worship. The Reverend Mr. Thomas saw
I'd like to have 'im
to that.
here now,
•
up
on the s.s. Nelson's bridge beside you an' me,
mister, and watch which cheek he'd offer 'em
if he got slapped.
"Cheek!" He enunciated, using his eyes
busily as his tongue, "I doubt he'd be that
flustered he wouldn't know where to put his
hand on one—what ?”
The mate guffawed suddenly, and the skipper
paused with equal promptitude-
"An' you laugh!" he complained. “I
don't see anythin' to laugh at.
that I know of. I can't
It's not funny
see what it is
this isn't a
makes you laugh so easy. .
pantomime-an' I'm not a clown that I know
of-what?"
"No, sir."
The mate as suddenly at attention found it.
:
102 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
essential to add: "The fact is, sir, it just crossed
me what he'd look like going up-coat-tails
here, you know, brimmer there, gloves. . . oh!
and that dicky of his————
cr Who says
Captain Bin.
(C
>>
he wears a dicky?" asked
Well, sir, I know he wears flannel shirts-
so he"
"Doesn't follow at all. . . and how do you
'Ullo! What's that?”
know.
.
A dull roar came to them on the breeze
from the south. The Nelson purred as she
plunged at the bow-wave she heaped, jarred
amidships where it scooped away, jarred heavily
aft where the counter-wave steadily pursued
her..
(C
one."
My word!" said the mate.
"Big what?"
"That's a big
The mate swept the horizon with his glasses,
lowered them and said-
"Explosion of some sort, sir."
Captain Bin marched two or three times up
and down his small bridge, took a bearing of
the Maas Lightship, laid it off on the chart
and came again to the wing.
CAPTAIN BIN
103
CC
Explosion, yes, that's so, he gave out.
"Mines in collision perhaps.
perhaps. Submarines
punching them perhaps. Crabs or jelly-fish
skylarking around the detonators perhaps.
but dangerous if you ask me-upliftin', as the
Reverend Mr. Thomas calls it. . . . Um-
perhaps."
He marched again. The Nelson shook through
succeeding rollers, brushed foam out of them,
plodding on her way to market, her eggs
intact.
"I don't like it," said Captain Bin as he
passed the broad back of his subordinate, "and
I don't suppose you like it. It isn't in reason
we should, seeing we can't hit back . . . but, if
that chap they say cruises round about the
Maas Light should stick his ugly Unterseeboot
in my way I'll do my best to show him what I
think of him. Dynamite, gun-cotton, shells are
for the fightin' line-not for the bridge of a
peaceable sailorman, eh! Lord, give me patience.
If I get alongside him I shall hurt him. 'Pon
my Jimmy I will."
He entered the wheelhouse, brought out a
telescope and searched methodically the horizon,
the sea, the coast line, every inch of it, with
.
104 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
the patience of a novice. Then he shut the
glass, replaced it and came once more to stand
straddle-legged beside the mate.
"Nothing," he remarked. "Not so much as
a drifter-anywhere. Wonder what it was?
Who it was? If Sandy McFuz was on watch
he'd be up here to tell us. He'd tell us it was
the logical outcome of star-gazin'. . . ' engineer-
star-gazin',' you'll remember; not 'sailor-man
star-gazin'. Maybe," said Captain Bin with
heavy irony, "he's right. Maybe he's wrong
but I call star-gazin' that blows peaceful
sailor-men up into the presence of their Maker,
like a freyed jigjag puzzle for the angels to
sort and put together, murder; that's what I
call it. Not star-gazin', mister."
And again the mate smiled broadly, taking
care to lift his glasses so that the smile was
hid, and holding his breath so that no sound
escaped. Captain Bin seemed to resent this
as he marched to and fro, hands deep in
pockets. He eyed the fiddley trap. It is
possible he resented the mate's stoicism under
torture, and that the presence of Sandy
McFuz, the engineer, whose Christian name
was Archibald, would have been welcome.
CAPTAIN BIN
105
""
But Sandy "prefaired his pew in the early
hours of dawn. He said it made him feel
"releegious."
Again a heavy booming roar shook over the
plodding coaster, jarring her bones, her cargo,
her attenuated masts; and again Captain Bin
halted to search for the elusive enemy ships
known to sailors as U-boats.
The glum horizon rimmed them round un-
broken; a leaden circle which accompanied
them in their march towards home even as it
had accompanied them on their march for the
breakfast bacon and eggs of Amsterdam de-
manded so clamorously by an Island Nation.
Captain Bin commented on the situation from
a different standpoint. He said, "They're
fighting over there on the coast Zeebrugge way
.. that's what it is; and if I get my eggs into
the Thames without breaking any, I'll deserve
a leather medal with a wooden string. And
I'll get it too. That's the new tip, mister.
Medals. Don't you forget that when you are
up for master. 'What is it,' the examiner
will ask you, 'a sailor looks for and never
expects to see?' And you will answer-
'Medals.'
-
i
106 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
"A little while back," he went on, with
necessary point and emphasis, "we Merchant
Service men weren't worth our salt. Nothing
we did was right.
meant the sack.
Board of Trade
Most things that happened
Neither shipowners nor the
cared two snaps of a muzzle-
loader for us. There were thousands of us,
and the bulk of us were fools. stupid,
wooden-headed, grumblin', three-sheets in the
wind, Nicodemus fools! If we could get
into collision in any possible sort of way,
we got into collision. If we could
could run
full tilt on to icebergs, we ran full tilt on to
them. If we
could smash ships, drown
passengers and play the giddy imbecile
anyhow, we did it. They all agreed on
that. It was the only question on which
every soul was agreed
heroes.
an' now we are
"Stamp on 'em,' they shouted all together,
like a flock of disturbed geese.
hard; they have no friends.
'Sit on 'em
We wouldn't
trust a mother's son of them further than
we could throw Buckingham Palace. They
aren't sailors. They are 'longshoremen got
out of Jacobs's books that can't navigate
CAPTAIN BIN
107
better than they can carry fiz.
now, if you please, we get this
thing..
An'
sort of
Captain Bin pushed out his arms, showing
cuffs decorated by the wavy insignia of a
lieutenant in, the Royal Naval Reserve. He
glanced sharply at his companion.
"That's one of the results of war," he
added. "The first to my mind. It makes
us feel we're not worms.'
The mate stared through glasses at the
pallid sea.
He had heard these things on
various stages before; but now, it appeared,
he was in for a dress rehearsal. He knew
that he was neither expected nor asked to
supply comment; not even to quack in chorus.
He knew that it is the province of subordinates
to acquiesce simply and with enthusiasm when
their commanders hold forth-even as else-
where. But Harry Nairn was touched by the
"worm" simile, and he showed it by lowering
his glasses, meeting his skipper's eyes and
saying apologetically: "Soon maybe though,
sir."
He could not have said much less in speech,
yet Captain Bin frowned, pursed his lips, and
108
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
for a space of minutes devoted his energies to
marching from side to side, examining the
horizon from every possible vantage. Then he
came back, bubbling as before with suppressed
pride-
"A little while ago," he said, "people at
home thought no more about us than they
thought of the Army. Then we and the
Army were both on the same dead level of
disgrace. That was altered just for a day or
so while we pulled things out of the fire for
'em in South Africa; but after that it fell
back again . . same old stifling indifference,
same old stupid jokes in the comics, same.
old bunkum about not serving men in uniforms
at an hotel-just for all the world as though
bein' in uniform made a man into a sort of
Bashi-Bazouk, unfit for Cive to elbow..
Oh, an' the same old snubs an' cheese-parin'
an' dying in the workhouse for chaps that had
helped to stick old Krüger in his patch.
and, I give you my word for it, I was no
better than the rest till now. They pretty
nearly made a Socialist of me," said Captain
Bin, with tremendous confidence, "they made
me squirm.
CAPTAIN BIN
109
"Why, I couldn't go to my place in chapel
but what they turned on the gas hot
'the devil's livery,' they called it, and me
brass-bound! 'Our God,' said one of them
in my hearing, 'Who has bidden us love our
enemies and suffer evil without complaint, has
no mind that we should cross the sea to cut
the throats of our brothers, because murderers
in khaki an' puttees desire to test the new-
fangled guns they've invented on
ships!
men on
"Murderers, mister!" said Captain Bin,
with increasing emphasis. "That's our Tom-
mies . . . you, me, and every jack-snipe of
us that sets up a front when he's pecked.
Murderers, mind! Healthy doctrine I call
it . . . I told Mrs. Bin so when I got out
into the open, and we had words over it . . .
but that was before I got these," again he
shot out his stripes, "and put a matter of
five hundred pounds to her credit in the
bank. I thought I had converted her then.
I thought I had got her for good and all
But what can a man
away from the Pacifists.
do when he's home twelve hours once a
fortnight or thereabouts, an' is dead sleepy
+
110 ΙΙΟ
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
when he gets there? Why, nothing. 'Ullo!
What's that out there?"
He clapped glasses to his eyes and stood like
one carven on the Nelson's bridge, staring.
The mate searched also.
"Looks like a can buoy," said he, "or a
chunk of timber."
"But isn't," said Captain Bin. "Starboard,
hard. Let her have it. Call the hands out.
Smart's the word."
The mate seized the whistle cord and gave
one long blast, followed by three short-which
meant in that ship, "All hands on deck. Boat
Stations."
In her dull way the Nelson persisted to push
through the yellow sloppiness which surrounded
her on every hand, as though intentionally she
refused to obey orders. Then with sullen
quiescence began to pay off, to acknowledge her
master, much as a sulky child obeys, lest greater
trouble ensue.
And in the process she pushed so near that
patch of cold grey, rising and falling with the
swell, that Captain Bin ordered all hands to take
cover in the alley-way, while he stood straggle-
legged and expectant on guard.
CAPTAIN BIN
III
Archibald McFuz, the engineer, climbed to
his vantage place on the fiddley, gratings and
waved cheerily his greetings; but Captain Bin
was too much occupied to reply.
He was oppressed by the fact that the Nelson
steered like an island drifting on the Amazon.
He said she usually required ten days' notice of··
a change of course, and a week to carry it
through. McFuz admitted she was slow. He
explained her predilection for the status quo by
saying there was a strike at Govan, where she
was built, when her keel was laid, and that
she acquired "pairmanent" rather than "sub-
pairmanent" magnetism while she was waiting.
To make things worse, it appeared that a further
strike took place about the time she was ready
for her boilers, consequently she had got the
habit of waiting in her bones. He inferred
from these factors that she would "gae canny all
her days, and now, that if ever she touched a
mine or came in contact wi' the blunt end of a
torpedo, she would gae up sae geengerly that
all hands would think she was a new kind o'
flying' machine."
And he said now, as he sat on the edge of
his fiddley-trap, gazing at Captain Bin, "that it
II2 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
was proveedential she was a slow ship, an'
canny," otherwise her " pereemeter" would have
been increased to an extent that would have
assured contact with the mine they both watched.
"In point of fact, if ye ask my opinion, we
should be at this moment gaein' skywards in
laups an' boonds wi'oot breakfast.'
>>
But Captain Bin scarcely heard. He stood
there with beads of sweat trickling from beneath
his cap, watching "her swing," noting her way-
ward method, her sovereign calm in the presence
of that dim thing which, in a moment, could
hoist her, split and torn, in a tornado of red
flame from her place on the waters. He saw
the ship's moment of greatest peril, her dilatory
curve; saw her draw away and plunge her nose
in still safer regions and learned the lesson
which an Island Nation has been overlong
learning that war is hell. That the only way
to avoid war is to be ready to make war.
He turned to McFuz, blazing at the
knowledge-
"How about the other cheek with things
like that in your path, Sandy?"
If," quoth the engineer, "ye want an answer
tae that, Tom Bin, I'm of opeenion there would
+
CAPTAIN BIN
113
be nae ither cheek tae offer. .. Eigh, mon!
but its weel for us they engineers made her slow."
"Slow or fast I'll show you something,
Sandy McFuz, that a sailor can do wi' her.”
He turned to the helmsman. "Steady your
wheel! Starboard! Bring her round!" He
found a handkerchief and sponged his brow.
"Slow! there mister. Stop!'
The telegraph worked by Harry Nairn gave
emphasis to his commands with the usual gong-
clamour, and the Nelson obeyed in her ambling
way, came round, halted and lay nudging
the swell. Captain Bin in the interval had
manoeuvred so that the sun was behind him,
the mine distinct, bobbing in the puddled sea.
It looked ugly. A thing calculated to blow
men into eternity in an instant of time. He
could see the spiked projections, the detonating
points of this adjunct of the Mailed Fist, and
marched into the chart room his lips grimly
set on the word. Once he had smiled in-
dulgently at the mere suggestion of War Lords.
or Mailed Fists. He said Democracy was its
own Lord, and inferred that Germany was so
ruled; but now he found room to question
these statements.
114
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
He came back to the bridge armed with a
rifle and a case of cartridges, frowning, the
antithesis of any known breed of Pacifist. He
glanced sidelong at McFuz, as though that
doughty soul had challenged him. "Now,"
said he, "I will show you what I can do. I've
got the sun behind me and I wasn't in the
Reserves for nothing, in spite of the Reverend
Mister Thomas."
He took up his glasses and examined the
still death lying so close to his elbow. McFuz
thought he was temporizing and attempted to
stir him.
"I'll gie ye three tae one ye canna hit her,"
said he.
Captain Bin turned upon him with the sorrow
of one who refuses an opportunity-
"She's half our length distant, no more," he
said. "I'm a poor man, Sandy, an' so are you
otherwise I would take your money.”
He slipped a cartridge home, watched till the
Nelson stooped, then fired.
Instantly there was a violent explosion. The
ship trembled as though the thing had struck
home. Water descended upon her from a vast
column which towered for an instant high above
CAPTAIN BIN
115
the stumpy masts-a white geyser-like pyramid
which fell upon her and ran gobbling to leeward
with a swiftness that amazed.
McFuz, wet to the skin and flattened to the
bars of his grating, was the first to find breath-
"Losh!" he cried, "but you're a dandy shot,
Tom Bin."
"I learned that," the skipper answered
without pause, while an' Govan were busy
you
wi' rivets an' cold-chisels an' strikes . . . but
a lucky shot! A shot I couldn't make twice
ask me. Starboard to your course!
Full speed, mister !
-if
you
The Nelson slowly ambled in the direction
ordered. Captain Bin marched watching her
gravely. "She couldn't hasten if the devil
was in her tracks," he decided as the water
slowly percolated to his boots. He squelched
as he walked. He stood still and glanced at
the mate-
"Send a hand for the steward," he com-
manded, "I ooze. Tell him to bring me up
a dry rig-out-pants, shirt, all the lot. Tell
him to put 'em in the chart room with a cup
of Oxo hot as the south-east corner of that
I-talian's Inferno. Tell him to look slippy
116 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
with it, or blest if that stinkin' Kaiser won't
score a win!'
""
He turned and marched' nearer McFuz,
whose head appeared emerging again from
his cage.
"For two pins!" he cried out, as McFuz
faced him smiling broadly, "I'd chuck this
dazzlin' job and take to fightin' straight. Call
that war?"
"Engineer's war," said McFuz.
"I call it murder," Captain Bin asserted.
"You might as well poison the grub."
CC
They do," said McFuz, "an' the wells-
but they ca' it war."
"Then I'd hang all engineers," the skipper
announced.
"Chemists," McFuz pleaded.
"An' chemists too," came to hearten him.
"Losh! but you'd want some rope," the
engineer smiled up in reply.
"You seem to approve?" growled the
skipper, challenging at once.
"Nay nay. I just make notes o' what
comes my way
an' I'm remembering
sairtain conversations we've had in days gone
by an' wonderin'-just wonderin'!"
CAPTAIN BIN
117
Captain Bin turned and left the bridge with
a curt order to Henry Nairn who stood with
lifted glasses searching the horizon—
"Look out you don't run up against any-
thing while I get changed," said he.
II
The Nelson continued to push a muddy hill
before her which foamed and broke on the
bluff of her bows, trailed off into hissing
bubbles and formed her wake. It was a quiet
day. Captain Bin made comfortable by a dry
outfit stood on the bridge shooting occasionally
his cuffs and anon the sun.
For years he had neglected the sun in favour
of the colour of the mud he sailed. His boast
was that he could find his way blindfold from
the Maas to the Thames in weather as thick
as pease-pudding. But since his sleeves had
been decorated by the insignia of a rank which
was legitimately his, he had adopted the views
of his brother officers" and called in navi-
gation to aid him. It seemed wise, for hitherto
his voyages had been accomplished by means
usually known as rule-of-thumb. Now he
C
118 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
+
i
took cross-bearings and angles on every possible
occasion; noted the time on a four-point bear-
ing to a decimal; pestered the mates for
azimuths and amplitudes; and had, one night,
a smack at the stars, much to Harry Nairn's
dismay, in the hope of obtaining a latitude.
Harry Nairn remained on the bridge while
Captain Bin worked up that sight; but failed
to discover any note of latitude when he wrote
up the log at eight bells. It seemed that
Captain Bin had failed. Poverino !
But behind these signals, which any seaman
can read, was a stiffening, a return to that
beautiful conception of duty and sacrifice.
which is part of the birthright of all boys
who go to sea. Hitherto this conception had
been blurred and smudged by the ignominy
of the man's environment; but now, suddenly,
almost miraculously, rank had become his and
he was conscious of the old outlook. He did
not know that it had been his when as a boy
he clambered about chests and bunks in the
half deck of a windjammer. He accepted the
thing as it stood-because, forsooth, the King
had seen in the humble effort of a coasting
skipper, matter for praise, and had ordained
CAPTAIN BIN
119
that henceforth he should figure on the Nelson's
pay-sheet as Lieutenant Bin, R.N.R. That
was an outstanding event in the man's life. It
caused the blood to circulate more stirringly.
It pulled him back to a recognition of the
heritage which is Ours, and was his, and he
shot his cuffs with a pride which long had
drowsed.
War had produced this change in him. It
had given him his chance, and now, as he
plodded to and fro the bridge which held him
prisoner, the noise of it rolled down to keep
him alive.
They were fighting over there amidst the
sands Zeebrugge way. The Navy was in there,
snaking in waters scarcely deep enough to
float the old Nelson. The guns boomed. As
they drew nearer they boomed more heavily
and the Nelson jarred as she moved solemnly
in the greyness. Everywhere it was grey.
Sea and sky were blurred in one soft mono-
tint. Drops of moisture clung trembling to
the bridge rails and ridge ropes. It was calm
here; but over there the guns belched fire
and iron on enemy battalions struggling amidst
the floods and mud of Flanders. These men
E
120
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
had tried by all means of devilment to push
through and reach Calais. Would they yet
succeed, or would "our chaps" backed by the
Fleet, hold them up and finally drive them
from the land they had so wickedly ravished?
If the Fleet could get at them then would
they never reach Calais, or any whither but
the red earth which held them.
The guns
boomed. Captain Bin, staring through bin-
oculars, pretended he saw and warmed to the
notion. He marched again, jostling with
pride. The Fleet was there, the silent Fleet
as they called it ashore, giving them socks.
Boom!
A heavier note rolled through the waste,
jarring the taut steel girders and ties which
went to make the Nelson's frame. She quaked
in every nerve and limb as the roar went
sobbing in the murk. It spoke of heavy stress.
out there on the coast. It rolled for an interval
like thunder. The still air shook under succes-
sive waves of sound and again Captain Bin
halted to search a skyline which was invisible.
Nothing to be seen of it all. Nothing-
nothing. And out there perhaps those Sausages
were busy with their scandalous methods of
CAPTAIN BIN
121
war-shooting civilians, driving women and
kids before them as they moved to the attack,
stabbing the wounded, gassing those who stood
to confront them-gassing them! Captain
Bin considered this iniquity as he stared. It
seemed that when a man was gassed he did not
die, he was not even wounded; but he was
unable to stand. He rolled gasping horribly
for breath. They said he was drowning on dry
land, just as a fish drowns in the air we breath.
This appealed to him. He knew what it was.
He had seen men drown-and once in the far-
off days he had heard, as he lay on the deck
and others brought him to.
It was said, too, that a man who was gassed
and recovered must go the rest of his days
burdened by some terrible disease. That was
more horrible still. The sea, if a man won
back from it, never maimed. It was clean in
its methods. It would slay but this
. . . this was damnable. A nation which
wrought in horrors must be pushed off the face
of the earth, from the sea it strove to control,
out, out into the hell men believe is prepared
for those who are unclean
.
But it might be that these tales were
But-it
122
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
"...
-
exaggerated. It was possible they had no basis
in fact. He had heard, who has not, how a
story grows and is added to by each teller until
nothing of its origin is found. And, at the
back of his mind there arose a questioning of
all these reports of murder and slaughter
whether on the high seas or in the trenches.
With a sudden curb on his imagination he asked
whether it were not possible that these Boches
were maligned. They denied it most strenu-
ously and some of the papers which Captain
Bin had been in the habit of reading, threw
doubts upon it also. He decided that it would
be necessary to be quite sure before believing
all that was said. Why, now he remembered
it, the President of the United States, a more
pregnant authority in Captain Bin's opinion,
had refused to condemn.
His
As he marched, with the guns booming their
message, Captain Bin came the full circle.
creed for years had been pacifism, not of the
clamorous brand it is true, but still pacifism.
He found now that it was essential to move
slowly, to be very sure. In spite of his rank
and the King's command, he must not allow
Mrs. Bin or the Reverend Mr. Thomas to catch
CAPTAIN BIN
123
him tripping. For they would crow. Lord!
A vision of it dawned.
He marched wet decks with the moisture
dripping from aloft with every crashing volley
from the unseen guns. He marched there
throbbing-hot, cold; hot, cold. It was plain,
at all events, that they were going at it hammer
and tongs, Zeebrugge way, and the wind was
coming out easterly. Light, very light, it came,
trailing over the land. Easterly! Again there
followed the sequence in his thoughts. Easter-
lies all the world over mean difficulty for man ;
but easterlies, to-day, mean gas attacks in
the trenches of Flanders and France. That
treacherous, hell-found method of war prepared
by the chemists of Germany for torturing
mankind. God! He questioned was it true.
Could it be true of the Germans he had met?
He had commanded hundreds, carried thous-
ands-could it be true of these men? And if
so, then all the other things of which they were
accused came in line
He marched the
bridge sniffing the breeze which stole over
Flanders flats, questioning, prepared to accept
evidence if it came.
•
And far off the thing which was to satisfy
*
124 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
him winged swiftly east, searching the sea.
It came back humming as it had gone, but
wrathful from repulse. Captain Bin did not
see it, nor, for that matter did any soul on
board the little coaster. She plodded London-
ward, carrying her cargo of eggs and farm
produce for the nation which expected it at
her hands, and would complain if it failed to
arrive. Captain Bin, indeed, saw the smoke
of a steamer blobbed upon the horizon and
watched it grow with that interest a man
bestows on the sole moving object within
ken; but he had no great thought connected
with it, no stirring or premonition. He was
busy searching the sea fòr periscopes, drift
mines, and mindful of the necessity to avoid
those fields where they were sown.
And the winged thing humming from the
west espied the blob of smoke even as Captain
Bin. It drew over from the Essex shore,
whence it had been chased by British airplanes,
driven seaward and given the opportunity of
death or flight.
So it whirred homeward carrying a full
cargo of bombs and searching the dim seas
for some less formidable enemy. It desired
to the
CAPTAIN BIN
125
some peaceful, unarmed, slow-moving thing
that it might bomb and report to Berlin as
a troopship on transport of sorts. The pilot
who directed it desired recognition and had
visions of displacing the great Hindenburg in
Germany's affections. He desired especially
to bomb the ship of some Englander, to be
the first to sink one from the skies even as
the Unterseeboten sunk them from the depths.
The Kultured crime of torpedoing unarmed
merchantmen was beginning to pall with Ber-
liners. Their old God quavered approval,
where, in the beginning he had bravo-ed.
These things are sad to consider from the
cab of a Taube driven by too great a demon-
stration from the legitimate business of bomb-
ing a great city.
When the blob of smoke had increased
sufficiently it became necessary for Captain
Bin to take his glasses from their case and
examine it for signs of a funnel and masts.
In the old peaceful days this would not have
occurred. Captain Bin would have saved his
eyes. More, he, in common with the majority
of these prescient bridge-people, who guide
vessels in home waters, would have told you
126 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
1
1
becomes neces-
the name of the ship by the colour of her
smoke. To-day, however, it
sary to examine more closely.
New coal-mines
have come into existence; others are on strike,
coal has been imported-all the world is con-
spired to compel sailors to use their eyes.
Therefore Tom Bin stared.
He discovered twin thin masts which in
peace times doubtless carried a wireless instal-
lation, and a funnel which proclaimed her to
be a London trader bound for the Hook.
She would be light, there would be passengers
on board—a dozen perhaps, or fifty-and she
might carry a small mail. Nothing at all
events to disturb the equanimity
equanimity of sane
fighters but sufficient to inflame the Huns.
She was a good boat, a trader. There were
three others of the same company, all running
to the Hook, year in, year out.
Captain Bin, having decided these points,
marched to and fro revolving the queer
medley of happenings which had come to an
Island Nation since August 1914. Things
had become terribly complicated. Everybody's
apple-cart had been upset, and now, to add to
the confusion there was all this talk about
:
CAPTAIN BIN
127
He
compulsion, and fighting compulsion, that had
troubled both the skipper and mate. Although
Captain Bin was a Lieutenant in the R.N.R.,
he was not in the fighting line. He recognized
that he was a supernumerary, or as Authority
put it, he held an honorary commission only;
yet if compulsion came in, or any real necessity
arose, he would be wanted for the Navy and
so would Harry Nairn. Harry Nairn had no
Mrs. Bin to goosewing this movements.
was free to do as he listed; but Captain Bin
was not free. When a man is goosewinged
by a woman his condition is sad. He fights
with one arm, walks with one leg, thinks with
one side of his brain and argues with the
other. As a matter of fact he is handicapped.
Although he did not know it, in all great
affairs, if Mrs. Bin was present, it became
necessary to efface Captain Bin.
He marched the bridge considering these
things and the blob of smoke grew into a cloud
which twisted ever denser and blacker from the
funnel of that boat bound for the Hook of Hol-
land. It increased until Harry Nairn who stood
in his corner to leeward watching and surprised,
drew his hand across his mouth and said-
E 2
128 OF THE FLEET
OUTPOSTS OUTPOSTS
=
"Seems to be firing up a lot over there, sir.
No hurry either."
Captain Bin halted and used his glasses-
"H'm!" he said. "You're right. Waste o'
coal."
"It's not as though he could get in before
dark either," the mate pursued.
The skipper had nothing to add. He stood
there using his glasses as did the mate, mark-
ing a drone which had come into the air and
had no relation to the spasmodic gun-fire from
the coast.
"What's that ?"
Captain Bin was the first to appreciate it.
He twisted on his heel to search the east for
signs of attack, for periscopes, Zeppelins, any
of the new-fangled methods of destruction
coming from the enemy country astern. He
could see nothing. The air was like soup.
But the drone grew in volume until the mate,
his eyes glued to binoculars suddenly cried
out-
<c
Why, she's put her helm hard over, sir.
She's cutting across our hawse !'
Round came Captain Bin, anger in his gaze.
"Ring stand by!" he snapped and stood
CAPTAIN BIN
129
searching the driven steamer. "Maybe he's
sighted a mine," he added after a moment.
"Go dead slow! Don't like that buzzin'
seems to me it's aircraft of some kind." He
swept the distance ahead without glasses and
suddenly checked. "Got him!" he ejaculated,
happy in discovery. "It's a sausage for a
dollar."
Out of the mist above the fleeing steamer
came the thing that hummed. Like a stick
set horizontally in the dimness it grew swiftly
from tenuity, became definite and explanatory
with a pyramid of turgid water towering white
and high beside the Hook boat.
Captain Bin twisted to face the mate.
"Right again!" he announced, "Missed
though. Good God!
Good God! Was it was it a
bomb?"
Flags fluttered from the bridge of the Hook
boat and the mate deciphered them :
your course," they said.
Captain Bin nodded. He
legged staring into the murk.
he gave out, conscious of the
CC
Keep
stood straddle-
"Full-speed,"
necessity to do
something, and again a bomb fell from the
fluttering machine in the air.
The Hook boat
130
OUTPOSTS
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
$
came round on her heel, twisting eight points
with the swirl of a destroyer marking her curve,
while Captain Bin choked out-
"See that, Nairn? What did I say?" He
stared at the mate with incredulous eyes.
"That was a bomb. . . missed though. It's
a Taube, Henry Nairn, and don't you forget it.
Call Sandy McFuz. . . it's a blasted, didderin'
German, Boche-plane
match we can hit with
Ready the boats. .
>>
and we haven't a
Hands on deck!
The mate blew a signal on the Nelson's fat
hooter and the small crew came tumbling out.
They lined up at their stations aware of
necessity. Harry Nairn reported, and standing
beside the skipper said—
"But it's the Hook boat, sir . . . Surely he
can't want
•
""
Captain Bin smashed that. "Just what he
does want. Hook boat or Hell boat murder is
what he's after . Look at that, and that!
He's trainin' his damned machine-gun on her
. . an' she can't answer no more than we can,
can't do anything but blow her whistle. . . Oh
my God! If I was up alongside you, my son,
I'd give you socks!”
3.
1
CAPTAIN BIN
131
He apostrophized the Taube, not the
Almighty, and marched hot to the compass.
"Keep a look-out there!" he ordered. "Watch
out for mines, periscopes . all hands."
The hum had long since passed into a whir
and a jangle of valves. as the machine sloped
nearer, hovering, kite-like in gait, kite-like in
aim; but without the kite's necessity. Here
rending was imperative in order to hearten the
guileless, spoon-fed Teuton and to provide a
sensational paragraph for Teuton scribblers,
preaching as ever Bernhardi's gospel of fright-
fulness. And the Hook-boat swerved, escaping
once again a shot which was aimed to slay.
"Four! How many does the beast carry-
ten, fifty?'
"God knows."
"Let 'em all come !" chanted a man on the
lower deck, ricking his neck to see.
One came in a blinding crash of spat flame,
revealing a hit far aft where the boats hung and
passengers were grouped attempting to aid
sailors who prepared them. Another, from a
Taube low enough now to see precisely the
character of his swerving, driven steamer which
would figure in Berlin as a trooper. And again
I
:
132
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
a hit which roared with a double crash as the
boilers were touched. Steam belched forth,
white against the muddy air The Hook boat
lurched. She lay sloping gradually, and facing
the ditch. People slithered from her higher
side like apples shaken from a tree. She
wobbled there horribly facing the end, and the
Taube, satisfied here, pushed on to visit other
fields. She climbed, her eye on that slow moving
old Nelson which doggedly approached. Another
Englander! Hoch! Never will they learn-
never will they learn! She drew near, this
Englander, and would rescue those drowning
devils who, with their Navy, aim to starve
German women and children; who, with their
too-contemptible army had created this drawn-
out war when three months, without her, would
have seen it complete. Englander? Who
shall say ? If she be not Englander then Dane
or Dutch or Norwegian, tribes all of them
sympathetic and itching for her favours. Give
her a bomb!
The Taube mounting on a slow spiral drew
nearer, and Captain Bin recognized the peril for
what it was. He turned sharply on the
mate-
•
CAPTAIN BIN
133
"Get you into the wheelhouse," he ordered,
"and keep your eye on my hand. If they get
me come out an' keep her zigzaggin'. Pass
me my rifle and cartridges out of the chart-
house. And
And you"-he faced the crew gaping
from below the bridge-"get under cover!"
The machine approached roaring. She
seemed immense, fateful the black crosses on
the tips of her wings prophetic. Captain Bin
marched with the sense of shrugged appre-
hension; yet in truth he marched erect.
could see the observer working at something, a
machine-gun perhaps, and heard with a curious
aloofness McFuz hailing him from the fiddley
grating: "Mind your eye, Skip . . . it's auld
Horny beyant that gun."
He
There came a spatter of bullets upon the
bridge deck in verification of this, but none
touched either skipper or engineer.
Then McFuz saw Tom Bin lie down as the
machine passed just wide of the rail—lie down
and blaze away a full clip. One, two, three,
four, five-the magazine empty, the Taube
roaring into the mist ahead, the Hook boat
busy with her last plunge.
Tom Bin climbed to his feet rubbing a bruised
134 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
…. -
shoulder: "Takes some hitting, Sandy, lad,"
he cried cheerily.
CC
doesn't get
get o'er
·
'Might as well blow peas at her," McFuz
announced. "She's armoured. Look out he
ye or he will drop ye a bomb."
"Starboard hard!" said the skipper. "Wi'
God's help we'll dodge him." Then quite
suddenly he flushed and added: "Yes-I
mean that. Wi' God's help,
down below an' whack 'er up
me a prayer.”
•
Sandy.
Sandy. Get
then say
"I wull," said the engineer. "It's o'er due."
The ship swerved as the Taube banked to
come round, swerved in the Nelson way, as a
'bus of the old type skidded with locked wheels.
in the Strand. She tried to look at her track,
which was unusual, to bring her walrus-like
headpiece to gaze at this caper; but McFuz
was on the stokehold plates singing hymns in
the ears of two stripped firemen, and she gave
up the attempt. Besides, the attraction of that
Thing which buzzed over her was enormous.
The noise of it seemed to churn the muddiness
into wrath; but the sea was calm.
As it approached Captain Bin suddenly by
imperceptive signal steadied the helm, then
slapped it hard aport. The manoeuvre suc-
CAPTAIN BIN
135
ceeded and again the Taube climbed, and banked
twisting while the skipper let off another clip.
He saw no result after firing, but shouted
brazenly to the mate: "If I can't bring her
down I can keep her from coming too near.
Steady helm!" He turned to the engine room
tube and hailed Mc Fuz: "Whack her up, lad.
Give her all you know!"
Again the Taube came to greet them, nose-
dived and loosed a bomb from scarce three
hundred feet. It struck just abaft the engine-
room with a blare of red flame; and two of
the Nelson's men fell to ricochetting bullets
from the machine-gun as the whirring monster
passed astern.
Bin came to the rail and instantly gave the
signal for "Fire stations. Aft there, my sons.
Get the hoses on her!
No resounding bugle or shrill whistle from
bo'sun here; just Harry Nairn and a handful
of sailormen to fight the fire, win or lose.
And as they trailed hose under the bridge
the airplane mounted with a fusillade which
mercifully failed in direction, and Captain Bin
twisted once more to watch for her return.
What were the odds? Would she succeed as
in the case of the Hook boat, or would the
136 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
old Nelson stern-wag her way once more into
the Thames unharmed? It was a toss up.
Captain Bin knew that it would be impossible
always to elude so swift a machine, impossible
to avoid the end if she risked coming near.
He prayed for a gun, for something mounted
aft there which would enable him to compete
on easier terms-then he would show them
something tall in the way of-
"Hullo !"
He stared. The Taube was taking an
almighty big sweep.
Was she coming back,
or was she .. Tom Bin felt for the first
time a tingling sensation which alarmed him.
He lifted his cap. His forehead dripped
moisture
She was off. She was not com-
ing back! She was off for the coast with her
record for the encouragement of Germany-
"One British troopship sunk with all
on board, a second which strove to help the
first set on fire
Hoch! Hoch!"
•
McFuz noting the silence climbed once
more to the fiddley grating to look out. He
saw and raised his voice-
"Gaen ?" he asked.
"Had no more bombs," gurgled Captain
Bin.
CAPTAIN BIN
137
"Oor luck!" said the engineer.
"God's mercy," the skipper prophesied.
Then with a sudden twist. "Any casualities?"
"Twa-one shot through the heed; the
Wi' nursin'
ither, may be aye, may be no.
he should do."
The skipper took a deep breath. He stared
a moment at the engineer then crossed to the
the wheelhouse and looked in.
"Starboard!" he ordered. "Get that mush
of wreckage on our bow and steady her there.
I'm goin' down to see what we can pick up,
McFuz. Send any spare hands ye have on
deck and we will find them a job."
He was going to be busy. A fire raged
aft. A wounded matelot must be doctored.
A ship's company and passengers were frog-
He
ging it over there waiting to be rescued.
was going to be very busy indeed.
Yet they crept into the Thames within
twelve hours of scheduled time. They crept
in with a scorched and half flooded compart-
ment, with twenty-seven survivors from the
sunken Hook boat and a skipper certain he
was born for the Navy. Then, with their load
of eggs and farm produce for a nation wroth
i
$
138 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
!
at the prices it was paying for breakfast dishes,
the Nelson wormed up to the docks and found
them crammed.
So she toddled off and lay at a buoy in
midstream till her eggs stank and the sides
of bacon became mouldy. Then when she .
bid fair to cause a plague among shipmen,
Authority called her alongside and the cargo
for which sailors had fought and two had died
was passed up to make fuel for the City's
Destructor.
So was the last straw laid in this matter of
the metamorphosis of Captain Bin. Hence-
forth he would fight from the decks of a ship
intended to fight; fight the Reverend Mr.
Thomas if he opened his head on the subject.
of loving our enemies; fight Mrs. Bin and all
the family of Bins if they attempted to prevent
him fighting.
Here, too, Sandy McFuz came in, promising
to back him.
You perceive the point of course?
Sandy McFuz, whose other name was
Archibald, told the present historian there was
a point. Therefore . .
Bene quiescat !
THE CHANNEL'S VOICES.
A MAILSHIP lifted anchor in Plymouth
Sound and stole through the yellowing dawn.
She came past the breakwater with a premoni-
tory gasp on her whistle; avoided, by a species
of legerdemain, an incoming Tramp; then,
settling on her course, broke away for her
run to the south.
"In three days, if we have any sort of
luck," said my friend, "we shall be sunning
ourselves at Gib, while here they will continue
to shiver."
The bell on the lighthouse we had passed
continued to toll at intervals. It sounded
like a knell.
I reflected on those words, "if we have
luck," spoken by the captain. He was one
of those whom I could scarcely consider in
the light of a pessimist, nor one given
undue quibbling about external forces. Mean-
while he had gone to the bridge and now
139 !
to
140, OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
stood beside the pilot. Two officers were on
duty, one in either wing.
The sun pierced the mists as we came
rippling upon a fleet of fishing-boats lying
with flapping sails awaiting the breeze which
should carry them home. They formed a
deep-set barrier and seemed placed to bar our
progress; but we threaded the maze without
a flutter. We slowed and put the pilot into
the cockleshell sent to receive him; passed the
gaunt watch-tower of our sou'-western coast,
with its stumpy predecessor lying shorn beside
it, and entered the peopled Channel.
Astern a gun still boomed.
It is a street, this highway of ours, a street
of modern times. It is full of blundering
ne'er-do-wells who elbow rudely the gentle-
manly Liners, the aristocratic Fighters and all
the speedier world of ships, as loafers elbow
the man who moves down town in a hurry.
It is crammed, in certain pathways, as are the
sidewalks of a city, with people who lounge,
people who hasten, people who are careless of
the rule of the road, who are criminally neg-
ligent; people clad sometimes in rags, some-
times in furbelows. It holds, too, those who
stand and stare blear-eyed at what is passing;
THE CHANNEL'S VOICES
141.
*
as though, like the derelicts of our bars, they
have guzzled and been turned out with empty
pockets. It is the border-land of England,
these Islands which are our home, and it is
thronged by those who have made it and keep
it free. It is the throat of the immenser ocean
and across it go, at all times, in gale or calm,
snow or driving rain, the messengers for other
shores, carrying the wealth of England.
We see it from the cliffs lying in serrated
lines of green and blue under the storm-cloud.
We see it scintillating in a breeze, foam-tipped,
blue, translucent. We see it at night speckled
by moving lights; picturesque, fairy-like, or
again, when mists oppress us, lying veiled and
sad, echoing with the voices of those children
who move upon its surface, far, far out, striv-
ing to make their presence known, like children,
with little tin trumpets and cheeks puffed out
in effort
But the haze which looks so glorious from
the cliffs is a peril to those who drive post-
haste into the thick of it; the lines of colour
so loved by artists, a danger to those who
move amidst them. For these things mark
unseen and nearly incalculable forces, one
moon-driven, others formed by gales raging
142
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
deep in the heart of the Atlantic, by the in-
equalities of the ocean bed. No one can
accurately gauge the effect of these forces.
You may guess, you may use tables, consult
charts and fill pages with calculations; but for
the man in a hurry, accident waits.
Eddystone had disappeared, its fog-signal
was becoming faint, and my friend now stood
in a corner of the bridge alone. I began to
see what he had hinted at back there at the
edge of the beautiful Sound. We had entered
a strata of walled-in fog; a spaće narrowed
down to a small circle never more than a mile
in diameter, which travelled with us. In the
centre where we sped, the sun gleamed upon
tiny wavelets, showing a surface nearly smooth
and dappled by touches of the softest emerald;
but all about us, clinging to us as though we
carried it, was the thin white haze veiling the
horizon; isolating us from the world of ships.
Their voices came down to us in a growing
chorus.
My friend crossed the bridge and halted
beside the officer of the watch.
"Double the look-out," he said, "and put
a quartermaster at the whistle cord," then he
went back and stood as before.
THE CHANNEL'S VOICES
143
From somewhere in the mist came a howl,
the cry of a powerful siren rising horribly to
a shriek. We answered.
As the sun gained altitude so the mist
deepened. Overhead the sky remained blue
and only thinly veiled. The air streamed
past us, wet, wet like steam. The gulls swept
screaming out of it, curved to search the wake
with eyes alert for scraps; turned somersaults,
fought, vanished-then suddenly from the
heart of the mist came a new signal a small
and wistful gasp, like the cry of a sheep with
a brazen throat. "Baa! Baa!"
I glanced at the bridge and saw that my
friend was staring into the westward, though
why he looked there was not apparent. He
might, with equal relevance, I imagined, have
searched the smoke pouring from our funnels.
He came towards the officer at the binnacle
and said-
"Ring stand-by," and a moment later came
the order, "Quartermaster, sound our siren."
The man pulled the cord and the instrument
brayed a scale of appalling diatones.
"See anything?" asked the captain.
<C
'Nothing, sir," answered the officer.
"Slow."
:
-
144 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
-
' י
The gong pealed and in less than a minute
a notable change came over the ship. We
no longer hissed through the broad ribbon of
foam lying on either hand; but stole along
with scarcely a perceptible quiver, the great
hull vibrant, like a lately beaten drum. Then,
into the silence came once more that illusive
signal, saying simply, "Baa! Baa!" and the
promenade became thick with people anxious
to see.
The mist, the ring of blue sky and the
dappled emerald water, pulsing in steam, met
them-nothing else.
"Baa! Baa!" cried our unseen friend,
feebly coughing her whereabouts, and again,
"Baa! Baa!"
"What is it?" I questioned beneath the
ladder, and the captain turned round. "A
ship saying her prayers. Come up," he
rejoined.
I obeyed as the siren again appealed to the
world to give us room, and when its voice was
dead there came once more that agitated cry
from the sheep we had disturbed:
"Baa!
Baa!... Baa! Baa!"
I stared into the mist. There was nothing
there. I glanced at my companion's face, it
THE CHANNEL'S VOICES
145
told me nothing. I turned to look at the
officer beside the binnacle, at the quartermaster
waiting patiently to administer further ear-
torture . . . their eyes said nothing and again
I turned to stare into the fog.
There came from it voices crying with
different shades of feeling: "Watch there,
watch watch there, watch!" as though
a crowd of madmen jabbered of approaching
danger.
•
It was weird. We could see nothing, yet
it was plain that a vessel was close at hand,
her crew engaged in taking soundings with
the old-time patent of the 'sixties, a lump of
lead and a line with knots. A splash echoed
in the stillness and a voice remarked with a
bird-like croak, "Look out there, aft!" and
with that cry my friend moved swiftly to the
wheelhouse: "Helm hard a starboard!" he
ordered. "Full speed ahead starboard, astern
port . . See her, Harrison ?"
"Aye, sir. She's moving up Channel.'
The captain returned to my side. "Do you
see her?" he questioned.
I shook sorrowfully a negative. There was
nothing, nothing anywhere approaching the
semblance of a ship. He pointed: "High up,'
:.
146
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
he said.
"Sails only," and I lifted my eyes in
CC
answer. The devil would have made a
sailor," he commented, "only he would not
look aloft."
A blue-grey spread of canvas towered broad
on our starboard bow, and as we swerved fast
on our helm the clang of blocks and the creak
of ponderous yards came to point how near had
been our danger.
The ship faded away to the cry of her childish
horn: "Baa! Baa! I am on the starboard
tack!" she coughed, "Baa! Baa!" until our
siren rose and drowned it. We stole again
more swiftly down the treacherous lane of fog,
making pauses to listen, and through the still-
ness came the clamour of steamers bellowing,
the shriek of unseen sirens and amidst them,
thrown hastily into gaps as it were, the wheezy
notes of the sailing ship's trumpet-like the
bleat of lonely sheep, astray on the marches.
Once or twice a grey shadow followed close
upon the voice, then the helm buzzed, strange
orders were snapped, and men moved swiftly to
obey. Thus, for perhaps half an hour, we
were cheek by jowl with collision; moving,
stopping, twisting under the torture of our ear-
splitting signals, then came silence. And out
↓
THE CHANNEL'S VOICES
147
of it, after a space, arrived the melancholy
boom of a steamer. Her prow appeared with
marvellous celerity it seemed, and again the
helm buzzed. A little fish-cutter, rusty, heavy
with food for the British Nation, and sunk
deep by her stern-placed engines, rushed our
length, a fussy bow-wave white about her stem.
In three minutes she was gone, her voice rolling
dolefully in the mist. "She has to move," said
my friend, answering my astonishment;
her skipper went slow because of fog, he need
not turn up next time her people sign on."
"if
I stared into the steaming air. We crept
at half speed only and the silence wrapped us
as blankets wrap us from cold. There was
nothing in sight. The sun shone upon our
narrow mirror. About us the waters shim-
mered, green, blue, vanishing in lines of mist.
Half an hour thus, then a heavy, distant bellow
to which we responded with a shriek. Again
the warning note, vibrating, immense: "Boo-
o!" a long-drawn gasp and my friend turned to
me with "One of the greyhounds. I fancy
our tracks will converge. You will see how
records are made, despite the fogs."
He turned to the officer standing conning
our course: "Tell them to stand by below.
148 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
•
Warn the crow's nest
anywhere on the
starboard side," he ordered abruptly.
We pushed slowly onward. Our decks were
crowded with people all agog, cognizant, perhaps,
of danger, watching the officers and listening.
Suddenly a rocket broke high in the west and
my friend pointed to the smoke-balls descend-
ing through the thinner strata. "A signal,”
he said. "She is out there. Listen!
that?" he asked.
Hear
That was the thud of propellers water-borne
to our ears, and a moment later came the deep-
toned roar of a steam horn.
Shriek, boom shriek, boom, that was the
order of things and neither signal gave the
remotest notion of how the signaller moved.
Just two ear-splitting sounds: a siren on the
one hand, a hooter on the other, and, on either
side a new chorus of frightened sheep bleating
nervously: "Baa! Baa! . . . Baa! Baa!"
"Boo!" The note throbbed close after an
interval and in an instant my friend cried out :
"Full speed ahead, both engines!" He stood
unflustered to watch.
The screws kicked out with a fine flurry of
churned water as the ship hung vibrant and
gathering way; then with a dash, it seemed,
!
THE CHANNEL'S VOICES 149
we pushed ahead. The crow's nest tong-
tonged, sending messages in italics: "Vessel
broad abeam!" and a quartermaster opened
our siren valve, shouting our intent.
The grim, black nose of an Atlantic grey-
hound broke out of the mist showing a curl of
white at the forefoot. She came on with a
growling rumble, the bow wave flashing emerald
and white, her hooter muttering like a lion
aroused.
"Boo!"
It was as one might say: "Get out
of my way before I hurt you, run over you,
crush you," and we, suddenly dwindled to a
pigmy, flourished propellers hastening to
obey.
But the great ship, if she moved swiftly, had
alert guides. They saw us, marvellously
gathered our intent, and with a deft touch
sheered slightly and passed our stern. She
seemed to point scornfully to the reality of her
monstrons power; to the delicate organism
by which, in any circumstances, she could
manœuvre; to the disdain she felt for all
She
our species-sprats, minnows of the sea.
approached in silent indifference, her funnels
belching smoke and crusted white from the
fight she had endured; her decks crammed
150 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
with people staring as we stared, thrilling as
we thrilled.
A gong clanged high on her bridge. An
officer approached her rail and looked over the
He signalled with his hand and again.
screen.
a rocket flared to the zenith.
She made no sign, asked no question, offered
no advice; but passed foaming and vibrant into
the mist, her port-holes, her brass work, the
whole castellated side of her for a moment
aflame. Then with a muttering roar slid into
the fog-immense, throbbing, flashing deto-
nators to warn men of her passage.
"Engines half speed," said my friend with
stern brevity. "Sound our whistle auto-
matically."
Then we too passed onward through the
wall of fog; but like a dog fresh from the
whip-tail down.
"You will remember," said the captain as he
crossed to the binnacle, "I said, 'if we have
luck.'"
THE TRAMP
SHE came through the greyness from the
black north, burrowing like a mole in seas that
rolled unceasingly to meet her.
The Tyne built her. Miners had delved for
her far in the bowels of the earth; ironworkers
had fashioned her, sweating, black of face.
Then when she was ready they decked her with
flags as for a gala; and a girl, dressed in costly
silks and furbelows, and wearing a black
picture hat, gave her her name. She called
her the Magician, speaking the word with an
accent quite faultless.
A cynical person standing to watch the launch
described her as a triumph of engineering
audacity, and surmised that she would be dirty
in a sea-way. She was. But, at the moment
she looked clean and particular and spinster-like
in her nice grey coat, white collars and cuffs, and
a funnel elaborately ribboned in red and yellow.
So they loaded her with four thousand tons
F
151
152 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
of north country diamonds, and sent her
through the dock gates to blacken the wharves
at Colombo, and to frighten the shipping in
Channel. A thing of steel with a bow like a
barn and a stern like a pillow; with two
stumped masts standing decorously apart, and a
pair of grapnel anchors set in her hawse like.
the fangs of a walrus. She grinned at the seas
she was christened to lord.
The grey Channel had nothing to say to her.
The liners examined her, tongue in cheek; but
at the edge of the Bay, where white spume
rolled mistily towards Ushant, the seas which
had swung sleepily to greet her all the way from
her home in the north, rose, took a new motif
and rushed spluttering to maim her.
The Magician burrowed, mole-wise in the
pother, kicking her heels as the mole kicks, spill-
ing the seas as a mole spills earth. Sportively,
with a clean face and shining ribbons, she fronted
the rollers at six o'clock. With a light heart, in
the plenitude of her strength and youth, she
entered on the dark watches of her first night
in the Bay; and the gale, marking her gutter-
like approach, settled down to speak in italics.
Seas charged where before they had ambled.
THE TRAMP
153
?
Seas leaped to destroy where before they had
sluggishly strolled. It was dark; dark as the
mines from whence she and her diamonds were
sprung; dark as the lives of the men who
manned her.
Her decks were of steel, her sides were of
steel, her bridge, her masts, her houses, her
bunks, her rigging were of steel, and each indi-
vidual bit of her sung its own tune, triumphantly
innocent of harmony. She shrieked at the butts,
groaned at the plates, whistled at the engines,
purred at the boilers; and when the seas smote
her, her voice rang out amidst the boom of a
monstrous drum. An unending hum heralded
her approach.
Four bells! Ten o'clock, and silence as a
roller drew breath for an effort. . . silence,
then with lifted head and a brazen whistle she
reeled at her bath and floundered over, bridge
deep in brine. She revelled in the seas as a
child revels in a warm tub before the nursery
fire; she lay down in them as a child lies
sprawling at the edge of a beach kicking pink
heels at the sun. The waters clucked past
her laughing; the declivities, the chasms, the
}
154 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
1
She
spewing foam-stretches harmed her not at all;
it was her crew that stood to be shot at.
objected to crews. They appeared futile, un-
necessary. She put down her head with a swirl,
grumbling audibly she could get to Colombo
quite well without them. Was she not the
Magician, the triumph of that yard which had
built her?
On the bridge men faced the turmoil un-
dismayed. The Bay was up to its games as
usual. Good-let it whirl. The engine-room
telegraph standing at full speed, pointed dis-
tinctly to the attitude of the bridge. The
Bay! Well
she would be christened
early.
The captain, a thick-set man standing beat-
ing numbed fingers behind the small dodger,
had no qualms on the subject. She was a
punching machine. A thing of modern inven-
tion given to rollicking moods, fearless of
the elements, chattering like a steam-roller,
supremely disdainful of her lords and their
bones.
She wallowed sidelong at a monster solemnly
ambling from the Atlantic, and the water
gushed about her decks as it gushes amidst
1
1
155
THE TRAMP
the rocks at the edge of the land. She stood
up to look at her accomplishment, her walrus
fangs spouting misty streamlets into the void
-and nothing had happened!
Incredible! Absurd! She had twisted
cunningly at the onset; she had driven deep
into the heart of that straight wall, flicked
with her heels, and . . . Nothing?
The clang of a punching machine assailed
her. Her rivets chattered as she lifted to
hear, and . . . Nothing?
Her crew stood in their places marking her
march—one man on the fiddley nursing his
pipe, one on the look-out clinging to the rail,
a third on the bridge twisting the little iron
wheel-the Magician's watch all told. The
Magician's watch safe, but drenched; safe,
but gloomily blasphemous. They were at
their posts eyeing the leaden sea, waiting for
eight bells and cursing the fate which had
made them sailors.
The night was black, the wind a gale in
force. The noise of a steam-roller grinding
flints in a roadway blurred all speech. It was
as though she sought to drown it, to keep her
actions hid, her movement a mystery
156 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
then came a new sorrow to test men's vision
-rain from the south. The Magician lolled
brazen to meet it and the rain drew a curtain
to hide her. She was ugly.
She was ugly. She staggered
as a drunken
man staggers at the houses
spanning his path. She advertised her approach
with a blob of smoke. It seemed necessary
to shroud her therefore the Bay sent rain.
Eight bells!
Eeya!
Thank God for that," said the
mate as he struck it.
Far off in the murk and shadows where the
side lamps threw misty light upon the spray,
red here, green there, the man on look-out
duty repeated the signal. The notes carried
bridge-ward by the gale, droned comfortably
of sleep. The watch would go below, turn
in, light their pipes, go to sleep; the mate
would go below, write up the log, smoke, pull
off his boats, sleep. Another mate, another
watch would stand to face the racket .
"Eeya! Thank God for that."
There followed an interval; three minutes,
five, then the clang of an iron door heralded
the approach of footsteps dodging amidst the
lifelines. The watch had turned out. They
THE TRAMP
157
}
They
came to relieve those who were sodden.
moved slowly, circumspectly, down there where
the water hissed and roared. Then swiftly
they clung to their lines, to stanchions, any-
where, watching it leap. The Magician, bent
on new antics, prodded at this moment with
her nose at a mountain.
It advanced to greet her, to greet the watch.
From the caves of the sou'-west it rolled
booming to greet them . . . and the Magician
prodded with her nose!
Three men, one mate, faced it. They were
the watch, come drowsily from the humours
of a forecastle of steel, the mate from a tub
on the deck of his room which no wash-boards
could defend. They advanced by stages, aim-
ing for the bridge ladder. The mate reached
first and climbed ; but the crew, the three who
comprised the Magician's port-watch, having
run the gauntlet of the fore-deck, clung to
the lifelines, waiting their opportunity.
"Now!" said one, "now's the time, sons!"
He acted on the word and reached the
ladder in safety.
"Gott-for-tam!" said the second and climbed
to the look-out spluttering. "Vet alreaty
!
*
158 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
Schwein !" He spat upon her, complaining.
A sodden companion received him, grinned,
passed the orders and escaped unimpressed.
But the third, the "farmer" of the watch,
and doubly a farmer, seeing he was green to
the sea and its moods, halted alone on the
fore-deck inquiring precisely of his ship-mates—
(C
Hey yous! Veech vay I go... veech vay?”
No one answered. Indeed no one heard.
But the Magician saw him leaving the lifelines
and made ready to greet him. She floundered
at a sea and rolled mammering in its grip. It
moved swiftly a black smudge against the
sky-line crossing the man's path, and he
squealed. Like a stuck pig he cried out,
floating breast high on the flood. The decks
sloped under him preparing a'glissade, and he
crossed like a plank, end on.
The squeal
died. But a note of it had swept bridge-ward
on the gale and the captain still standing beat-
ing numbed feet beside the dodger cried out
to know who shouted.
•
there
"What's wrong?" he repeated. "Hi!
who's singing out?" Then again,
as a new notion struck him. "Relieve the
wheel and no nonsense."
•
•
THE TRAMP
159
The wheel was relieved, the look-out re-
lieved, the "farmer" relieved; for out there
in the blackness the squealer bobbed in a new
environment. Unmindful now of charging
seas, unmindful of the crash and jar of seas,
unmindful indeed that it was he who had
squealed.
But at four bells, two weary and drenching
hours later, the mate scratched in the log-book
with a hand that dripped rivulets of brine—
"One of the crew, shipped as John Johnson,
missing. Supposed to have been washed over-
board. Heavy gale. Wind S.W. Vessel
labouring badly."
The Magician flung up her heels, revelling
in the foam-stretches. "One!" she said, and
dived like a herring on the approach of a
dog-fish.
F 2
THE MONSTER
HER calling was that of a collier, yet some one
had the audacity to christen her Venus. It is
quite possible she had other names, but this was
the one stencilled on her bow and on her stern.
Outward with coal, homeward with ore,
carrying her cargo scuppers gurgling, like a
vulgar feeder sucking noisily at his soup-that
was her business. From Cardiff to Gib or
Lisbon, from Barry to Gib or Malta, hazarding
sometimes a trip so far afield as Taganrog or
Sulina, but more generally home from Bilboa;
home over the grey waters, home through the
sunshine, home through the gales, wallowing,
erratic, carrying coal or ore or grain for the
British Nation-that was her destiny.
Men were paid to stand on her deck and
tend her. The glorious red ensign of England
gave a touch of colour to her general ugliness.
Once for a novelty she appeared newly painted,
160
THE MONSTER
161
1
wearing bright vermilion bands on her funnel;
but that was when she came gorgeously from
the hands of her builders. Afterwards she was
painted in sections, and rust and grease were
her flamboyant dress; grey grease in dabs, to
make her slip through the seas without spilling
them.
She was commanded by a Swede, so said her
Articles; but the crew had doubts and called
him Dutchy, when it was obvious Holland had
no part in him. He was squarely built, a man
who never smiled, who, when his ship drove
sidelong at a quay wall she was escaping,
crunching a boat in the process, watched with
dull eyes and said "So! This Venus haff ze
lug of der teufel. Ve vant no poats
so!
give it lib, Misder Made, give it lib or somesings.
vill habben."
Now the way in which Mister Mate gave it
lip was through the neck of a steam siren of
marvellous power, chromatic in tone. She used
it to clear a passage, which, considering the
country's necessities in the early war days, was
not praiseworthy. Mister Mate, too, had an
opinion over which he frowned. He said that
someday something would happen to knock
162 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
Dutchy off his perch. He said as much to the
patriots who employed him, pointing especially
to the man's hatred of w's; but they snubbed
him for his pains. That made it worse.
The Channel, the Bay, the Mediterranean,
the gulls and gambolling porpoise all knew the
Venus. They had seen her in gales, in calms,
and every species of devilment. They had
listened to her groans, marked her contortions,
sighted her fins churning the water to foam,
and had cowered breathless at the noise of her
siren. The birds had learned to hate it; the
seas had decided to drown it. Yet she was old
and had escaped. The rust on her sides should
have made underwriters chary of accepting the
risk; but she was comfortably insured by the
firm who made money out of her and sent
strange men, speaking strange tongues, to tend
her.
+
Out of the dock gates she strayed one
morning, winches clattering, fins churning, and
Dutchy, who still ruled her, looked up with
his formula: "Give it lib, Misder Made, give it
lib!" Then white from its throat thrilled the
voice of the siren-two jets of steam heralding
4
'THE MONSTER
163
•
:
ن
it, and the gulls swept clear to avoid it. They
screamed raucously at the din.
The Channel lying mistily at ease, passively
lazy under skies of lead, rilled at the noise with
offence. It was angry.
It was angry. It laid hands to ears.
The sun sank flushed. A curtain of steam
drew past it, veiling the great red disc of it,
hiding it, whispering of the necessity for dignity,
here, in the presence of the cold, grey sea which
would presently couch it. It whispered, too, of
the necessity for restraint; and over the dim
waters the gulls swept screaming.
Rusty, patched like a target, wearing the
dishevelled and cantankerous air of one just
emerged from a gin palace, the Venus moved
out to face the wide, still sea; to frighten the
gulls, to slash with her tail at the fishes, and to
astonish with her antics the sedater shipping.
In all her life nothing had harmed her
permanently; she was of steel. In all her life
not once had she sunk like the goddess in
foam; but thrice she had practised ramming
and had watched while a sister had explored
"the cellar." In all her life never had she
stranded; but, in avoiding her, a liner once
took lodgings on the edge of the Nore, and
1
}
164 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
.
the underwriters said things in their sleeves.
which never appeared in her policy.
There were others, too, those braw little
fishermen with the red-sailed boats, the trawlers
and netters who, remembering her methods,
hove in gear at the sight of her coming.
The seas could not hinder her-she was
pushed by a screw with manganese blades.
The fogs could not stifle her-she bellowed
her advent on a siren that scared. Unlike
Venus, she
she was heavy and waistless and
angular; but like Venus she was naked and
unashamed. Nothing on her head, nothing
on her feet; no girdle, no furbelows-all
plain, dividend earning iron and steel, bare
even to nudity.
Ships coming up astern passed her swiftly—
for she was slow, slow as the "Dutchman
pacing her bridge. Ships meeting her by day
steered to give her room-half the Channel if
need be. Ships coming upon her at night
decided that her crew was drunk, perhaps
dotty, and swept out of her path as though
she were plague-ridden. But her crew was
not drunk, nor was she ridden by any plague.
but penury. She steered like a barn-that is
THE MONSTER
165
all. Her rudder was as ineffectual as the
For
screw was effectual in twisting her.
definite safety the channels required widening.
In a sea-way anything might happen.
Yet, in the docks and at shipping offices,
were found men willing to experiment with
her-men who perhaps would starve if they
did not sign on and kow-tow to the personage
who ordered her.
The skipper, when he found time for
thought, decided somewhere behind the mask
"that someday somesings vould habben," and
straightway blew a nose with the noise of a
miniature siren. The "sailors," Dutchmen or
Dagoes every soul, let fall a doubt of her
safety as they watched her, and prayed for
the end of the trip. They said "she took
the whole ocean for her course," dressing the
phrase according to their taste and nation.
Lopsided, spluttering, breathing wheezy
blobs of blackness, she strolled, then, to the
gates of the sea, and the Channel opened its
mouth to receive her. It tucked her up in
a haze it had brewed for her coming, hiding
her, struggling to stifle that siren, splitting the
silence up there by her funnel. But Nature
166 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
was powerless here. The sea moaned restlessly
deciding that. Nothing but drowning could
still it.
Then came night. The Venus uncovered
her eyes, green here, red there, white high
above the twain, mistily sweeping the greyness.
Sometimes all three went out. Sometimes
only one smouldered when day looked over
the edge of the world for events.
Past Flatholm, past Steepholm she yawed,
still finning her passage, bluff as a dustman.
Near Scarweather she sighted an incoming
liner, a Bristolian successful thus far from New
York, and essayed to scare her with the siren.
"Whouf! Whouf! I am hoping to star-
board," she announced, grim of face, muscles
twitching, and promptly ambled to port.
liner asked no questions. She hastened her
footsteps, describing a circle to baffle her, and
swept into space untouched but profane. The
Venus brayed merrily her triumph. Like a
cock she strained her neck crowing at the
solitudes.
The
"If you vish to starboard in ziss Venus,
you moust bort for ze breliminary ganters,
said the skipper to his mate. "So! That ish
*
THE MONSTER
167
goodt! Give it lib, Misder Mate, give
lib."
it
And Mister Mate, at the end of the cord, a
man with no illusions, no enthusiasm, no hope,
gave it lip mournfully, a prolonged tort; a
blast covering a minute of time.
The Venus swept onward thrilling.
Lundy, in the small hours, caught a glimpse
of her triangle heading serenely for the Hen
and Chickens; and the lighthouse, anticipating
a wreck, instantly liberated a charge which
crashed at the zenith to warn her. But the
Venus just smiled. She was yawing, not yawn-
ing, simply and harmlessly yawing.
Her skipper looked up with the notion of
romance--
(C
Onze," he announced with an air, "I
gome town here mit my Venus, andt it plow-
-pough! like mountains; andt my Venus
gould not loog id in the faze. Durn roundt
she did. Vant to go 'ome again. Dired out,
zick of the sea, like her boss. So I say to
her, Venus,' I say, 'durn roundt again andt ve
go starn virst . . . andt pe tammed to you!
So!' Andt she durned roundt andt ve vent
starn virst andt nottings habben...
(
168
OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
..
+
nottings, onlie ze engineer he gome oop
growlin' andt vanting a live-pelt. A live-
pelt!" said the skipper, punching the rail,
suddenly hilarious; then sobering, he fell
back on the inevitable, "Give it lib, Misder
Made, give it lib."
And the siren acknowledged his command.
"Other dime," he resumed meditatively,
"I vass goming acroz the Bay. No vindt.
Onlie svell-pig, lige the side of a houze,
andt the Venus vant to zagg town on Ben-
marche; put I says, 'No, Venus, no you ton't.
I vant get home again, zee my gurl andt draw
zat dree veeks' bay vot iss mine-So!' Then
I dwist her andt I dwist her ontil she looug
lige she go to New York, andt I hang a
bunge of razins on her bort bow andt she
snivy them andt so ve get bast Benmarche
vith no drouple a tall . . . So! Give it lib,
Misder Made, give it lib."
And as the siren strolled up the scale, there
came a scream from the bank they faced; one,
short, swift scream; shrill, piercing the air.
The skipper gripped the rail and leaned out.
"Whad's that?" he questioned, suddenly
grave.
THE MONSTER
169
"Whistle. Nothing in sight, though," said
the mate.
"Give it lib, Mister Made," came the reply
unruffled, "andt if it iss a sheep he vill run avay.'
"
Five
The Venus took the incident from the same
calm aspect. She moved solemnly in the mist,
brushing an acre of channel before her. Some-
times she bullied the night with her siren,
sometimes strolled without speech.
minutes passed, then the skipper, alive to
contingencies, demanded: "Whad about our
lights?" facing the mate, head thrust forward,
hands in pockets.
And Mister Mate climbed down the bridge
ladder and went to see.
"Out!" he announced dimly from the fore-
castle, "out and be damned to them."
"Light zem!" came back in response, "or
somesings vill habben sure."
The lamps were on deck, two souls striking
matches leaned over them; the siren was silent,
the sea watching triumphant-then, suddenly,
out of the blackness came a long ray of light
to dazzle them. It blinded the bridge.
"Zearchlide!" the skipper commented un-
moved. "Bort! Hardt a-bort!"
*
170' OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
The Venus was long in obeying. She dallied
with the notion of starboard, put her hands on
her hips while she considered the "steady
and finally swept calmly to port and butted.
She butted because there was something in
her way. She continued butting because the
engines remained at full speed.
Something hard and now lighted from stem
to stern stood in her path to the south; some-
thing more durable than the steel sides of
those sisters she had sent to the bottom;
something more solid. An ironclad. One of
the Fleet, manoeuvring in search of the enemy,
lights out.
"Bah!" said the skipper as he climbed the
war-ship's netting. "I dold you so . . . vere
iss all handts ? "
Fifteen grimy souls mustered presently to
answer this query-
"All here!"
"Goodt!" said the skipper.
loog andt zee vat ve moust bay."
"Now ve
He examined the side in the light of a
lantern. A little strip was paintless.
"So!" said the skipper facing Nemesis, "I'
alvays say, sometay somesings vill habben
1
THE MONSTER
171
1
andt it hass. Ze Venus this dime hass her own
Boor Venus!"
nose proken.
And the gulls looking at the hole she made
in the greyness, swirled about and fought for
the scraps still floating. But the day, when
it came, dispersed the mists, and the sun
looking out on the waters, noted the whirling
gulls, the gambolling porpoise, and hearing
nothing of the siren, decided to shine and
make men warm.
A STRANGE LIGHT IN CHANNEL
Rain, mist, and tumbling seas.
A BLACK night, with thin, driven rain licking
the masts and funnels, the houses and bridge,
with a soft, dull patter. Falling here in a halo
of steam, there hissing on the hot fiddleys;
here cold on the tanned faces of the watch and
everywhere pattering with the note of hurled
shot. High aloft a gleam of radiance streamed
white and staring upon the clouds. On either
hand rose a blurr of coloured mist and spray,
wonderful to see-on this side red, like blood;
on that green, like the dim fires over a kiln.
For the rest there was darkness.
a
And through it, springing buoyantly as
steeple-chaser, shaking spray-clouds from her
head, a mailship, scintillating at the bows, fiery
all down her throbbing sides, with a brush of
fire-beads hissing in her wake, her signal-lamps
blazing, driving over an arm of the sea we term
172
A STRANGE LIGHT
173
the Channel-a sea turbulent, profound, and
nearly invisible.
Except in the form of spray, it did not exist;
except from the intangible tangibility of know-
ledge, it was not there. A glance over the
bridge screen revealed blackness, the blackness
of a pit; empty, void, slashed with rain-yet
out there vessels moved.
The watch crept about in the drizzle like
black ghosts on a darkened stage.
Two bells!
Somewhere in the shadows a voice carolled,
"Lights bright and all's well," and retired to
brood upon the fact. The sound rolled down
the decks and, as though in answer, or refutation,'
cynically inserted, there came a stifling and
acrid smell. The smoke of an unseen steamer
pushing through a halo of it, and, like a denizen
of the slums, advertising his presence by the
smell of rank tobacco. The watch stared.
The man in the crow's-nest sniffed, but the
gong he controlled made no suggestion, and
the officers continued their watch with hunched
shoulders. It
It was wet. The rain drove.
They saw nothing.
Yet, out there in the spume and mist a
174 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
submarine slouched with her hand on the wall,
holding a smashed nose. She skimmed by
unseen, unheard'; a thing silent and mysterious
as a ghost; hiding her hurts, her sodden crew,
and the ghastly business from which she scuttled,
in the shroud of a kindly night. Darkness
enveloped her, hid her. She was the centre of
it, a machine escaping, tongue in cheek, unable
to sink either that mailship or the tramp which
moved in shadow beside her.
Rain, mist, and flying spray.
Three
The watch bunched, the nest silent.
bells! Again the cry of "All's well," and a
sarcastic smile on the face of the look-out in
his eerie, sixty feet poised in space, as he gave
voice to the opinion he had formed, "so fur."
There came the half-hourly stream of men
who patrolled the decks, saloons, and passages
far below; the master-at-arms with a salute
confirming the reports of those who had
preceded him.
"All's well in the saloon, sir ;
all's well on the main deck, on the poop deck,
lower deck, fore deck; all's well; all's well."
And the answers falling seriatim, “Good;
Very good; Thank you," the salute punctilious
A STRANGE LIGHT
175
following from an officer free once more to
watch the compass and admonish the helmsman.
Weariness, rain, and mist.
Phut! What a night for paper oilskins.
Say, sonny, who wouldn't sell a farm and go
to sea?" The man in the nest threw forth the
question at a venture and concentrated his gaze
on a new distraction. Something out there
approached in a halo of blurred light, and the
nest accentuated the fact that he was keep-
ing his eyes skinned by triple gong-strokes.
Ahead, he particularized.
"
On the bridge the officers were already ex-
amining it, searching it with their night glasses.
White," said the chief, "eh, Nicholls?"
"White, sir," the junior acknowledged.
"A stern light probably."
"Perhaps
•
. or masthead, or pilot-boat,
or fishing boat, or anything
•
True. But meanwhile what was it?
It was unsteady. It burned sometimes large
and sometimes small; sometimes went out and
sometimes appeared like a will-o'-the-wisp
floating in space. A flare of sorts, some one
suggested and retired throbbing.
176 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
·
The man in the nest had doubts, that was
evident by the way in which he repeated signals.
The officers had theirs, they showed them by
sending a messenger to call the commander. A
strange light. A white light. A thing of
hourly occurrence, yet strange. The man in
the nest objected to its coming in phrases which
stung.
The crew, gathered in groups on the lee side
of the promenade, handy in case the officers
should call, had no doubt about it, and declared
it several things tinged with blood. The com-
mander, when he arrived, decided it was the
Start a pronouncement which sent his officers
to opposite corners of the bridge to chuckle
unheard. The Start! It was plain the old
man had not yet grown accustomed to the
darkness, or he dreamed.
Weariness, rain, and mist.
They stood again in a group, bunched behind
the screen, staring over it.
The rain drove up
and blurred their glasses; sprays leaped joyously
to flick faces already red with whipping; the
great ship hissed onward kicking with her
heels.
R
1
A STRANGE LIGHT
177
}
སྙ
She regarded this phenomenon as solemnly
as the watch. A light was there—one she did
not comprehend. In that wide range of signals,
all white, and all having different significations,
sent by Authority to confuse and hinder a ship,
this at all hazards was the stupidest. It was
there.
It was
not there. It waned. It
danced. The mailship put her head under a
roller meandering slowly from the Atlantic, and
She
flung up her heels in wonderment.
acknowledged that she was mystified. The
sea whelmed her to the bridge and when she
had lifted from her bath, the thing faced her,
visibly near.
And out of the roar of spray and sea came
the commander's voice: "Stand by, there!"
And as the gong pealed: "Half speed!
Stop!"
It was plain from this that he had recovered
his sight; plain that he no longer dreamed.
He crossed the bridge as the steam broke
gurgling high overhead, and approaching the
chief, shouted and shook his head.
"You were right, "he said.
Start. It must be a flare."
"No, not
Steam bellowed upon the words, drowning
178 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
cr
them, and the two men bobbed together like a
pair of pigeons in love. "Right," said one.
"Quite so," the other; then, simultaneously,
"Gad! it is a flare! See that?" They bowed
and the chief turned away shrugging his
shoulders. It was plain, plain, for those who
knew and could read the signals.
There was evidence, too, for those who
watched. For them, at all events, there was
no further question, no halting, no guesswork.
They would have to do or Well, on con-
sideration, were they not British sailors, and,
has not the Board of Trade watches, parchments,
and binoculars to dispense in recognition of the
thing called bravery at sea?
Oilskins
Shoulders were no longer bunched.
made of paper and otherwise had strapped upon
them belts that made the men look heavy, yet
would keep them light. A message had gone
to the engine-room, another to the watch below.
There followed the shrill scream of the bo'sun's
pipes and a voice saying in a hoarse bellow:
"Boat's crew, there!
Number Two away!
Bear a hand, my sons.
Then down the black
side out of sight of craning necks, forty feet
through space, slid the small cockle-shell
´A STRANGE LIGHT
179
dubbed Number Two, and departed punching
the seas.
Five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen—the light
was no longer there to see, but in its place
gleamed the boat signal.
It came at length under the mailship's lee,
toiling through rollers that rose foaming to blot
it out.
The rain curtained it. The wind
joined hands and shouted of victory in other
fields; of the wreck throbbing on the edge
of Skerries; of the stress of that stripped
sailing ship clinging to the ground off
Portland; of the strange gait of that tramp
moving up Channel, hugging her hurts and
scuttling for harbour. It rained. The mists
Chaos yawned. But the boat stole
onward unswallowed, reached a rope, steadied
beneath the tackles, and, in obedience to orders,
crept rail high and halted.
were out.
"Seen anything.
What have you
found?" came from the bridge.
They passed what it was on deck and the
doctor leaned over it making strange movements
with its arms. They passed up, too, a lifebuoy
bearing a name-s.s. Tomlinson, Bristol; and at
the end of a line fast to it, the flare, burnt out.
180 OUTPOSTS OF THE FLEET
A young girl had rested in that lifebelt, a girl
with yellow hair which hung limp and wet;
unstirred now by the sea moaning restlessly at
the loss it had sustained. A note escaped the
crest of a roller charging through the shadows
-it might have been a scream. And with it
came a thrill, a movement of the childish form;
a flicker of eyes long closed.
The doctor made no halt in those movements
he had commenced with arms limp and heavy
as clay.
The wind swept past the motionless vessel.
Seas churned at her ports, gurgling up the glass,
peeping to see how she fared who lay there so
still, so white, but now panting.
The doctor continued his movements.
From
time to time he gave orders. Presently one
stooped and raised the girl's head and there
came softly a sound, almost a sigh-
"Mummie!"
The child's eyes opened and searched the
cabin. Blue eyes which had looked one
moment into the Beyond. And again after
an interval came the voice, plainer now, with
a note of fear-
"Mummie!"
•
A STRANGE LIGHT
181
}
From high above the wet decks sounded the
stroke of time. Four bells! Then the
Then the cry of
the watch: "Lights bright and all's well!"
But the mailship remained uncertain in the
rain. Her boats were out running the risk of
an individual or joint ascent, together with their
ship, to realms from which no man has returned.
They searched amidst the wreckage they found,
praying for day.
It came at length with a dim mistiness which
stole over the Channel rim and tinged the seas
with saffron. It lighted the mailship lying
there aslant the gale; picked out her ports,
binnacles and the spider-web of her aerials;
then passed leaving the greyness, the mist, rain
and menace of a sou'-west wind.
But it discovered no boats, no wreck, no men
! clinging to spars or lifebuoys; no mother for that
little one lying now between warm blankets in the
ship's hospital; only matchwood and the jumbled
oddments torn from a vessel's deck by a torpedo
which had run true to the course set.
JUN C
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E..
AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
!


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