The roar of voices on either side of the course surged in their ears like the sound of a waterfall. Astern of them was the picket-boat, a graceful feather of spray falling away on either side of the stem-piece. A concourse of Wardroom and Gunroom officers had crowded into her bows, and the Commander, purple with emotion, bellowed incoherencies through a megaphone.
Then, with one keen glance at the Flagship"s crew and one at the rapidly approaching finishing line, the Young Doctor chose the psychological moment.
"Stand by!" he croaked. "Now, all together--_spurt!_"
His crew responded with the last ounce of energy in their exhausted frames. They were blind, deaf and dumb, straining, gasping, forcing "heart and nerve and sinew" to drive the leaden boat through those last few yards. Suddenly, far above their heads, rang out the crack of a rifle, and the next instant another. The crew collapsed as if shot.
For a moment none was capable of speech. Then the First Lieutenant raised his head from his hands.
"Which is it," he asked, "us or them?"
The Young Doctor was staring up at the masthead of the Flagship. A tangle of flags appeared above the bridge-screen.
"I can"t read "em," he said. "Which is it? Translate, someone, for pity"s sake."
The crew of the Flagship"s boat, lying abreast of them a few yards away, answered the question. They turned towards their late adversaries and began clapping. The next moment the Dockyard tug burst into a triumphant frenzy, and the picket-boat, full of cheering, clapping mess-mates, slid alongside to take the painter.
The First Lieutenant stretched out a large, blistered hand. "Shake, Pills," he said.
One race is, after all, very much like another. Yet the afternoon wore on without any appreciable abatement in the popular enthusiasm. And it was not without its memorable features. The Bandsmen"s Race crowned one of the partic.i.p.ators in undying fame. This popular hero broke an oar half-way through the race, and rising to his feet promptly sprang overboard.
His spectacular action plunged the remainder of the crew in hopeless confusion, and he himself was rescued with difficulty in a half-drowned state of collapse by the Umpire"s boat. Yet for some occult reason no feat of gallantry in action would have won him such universal commendation on the Lower-deck. "n.o.bby Clark--"im as jumped overboard in the Bandsmen"s Race" was thereafter his designation among his fellows.
The last race--the All-comers--did not justify universal expectation.
The treble-banked launch was indeed c.o.xed by the Chief Boatswain"s Mate. A "Funny-party" in the stern, composed of a clown, a n.i.g.g.e.r and a stout seaman in female attire, added their exhortations to the "Chief Buffer"s" impa.s.sioned utterances. But the Flagship"s galley, pulling eight oars, with the c.o.xswain perched hazardously out over the stern, won the three-mile tussle, and won it well.
As the Quartermaster of the Morning Watch had foretold, a breeze sprang up towards the close of the day. It blew from the southward and carried down the lines a medley of hilarious sounds.
A drifter hove in sight, shaping course for the Fleet Flagship. She was crowded to suffocation with singing, cheering sailor-men, and secured to her stumpy bowsprit was a silver c.o.c.k. As she approached the stern of the Flagship, however, the uproar subsided, and the densely thronged drifter was white with upturned, expectant faces.
A solitary figure was walking up and down the quarterdeck of the Battleship. He paused a moment, suddenly stepped right aft to the rail, and smilingly clapped his hands, applauding the trophy in the bows of the drifter. The last rays of the setting sun caught on the broad gold bands that ringed his sleeve almost from cuff to elbow.
A wild tumult of frantic cheering burst out almost like an explosion from every throat still capable of emitting sound. There was grat.i.tude and pa.s.sionate loyalty in the demonstration, and it continued long after the figure on the quarterdeck had turned away and the drifter had resumed her noisy, triumphant tour of the Fleet.
"That"s what I likes about "_im_," whispered a bearded seaman hoa.r.s.ely, as they swung off on their new course. ""E"s that "_Uman_!" He jerked his head astern in the direction of the mighty Battleship on whose vast quarterdeck the man who bore a share of the Destiny of Europe on his shoulders was still pacing thoughtfully up and down.
[1] Arguing.
[2] Chief Boatswain"s Mate.
CHAPTER VII
CARRYING ON
The fresh Northern breeze sent the waves steeplechasing across the surface of the harbour, and lapping over the hull of a British Submarine as she moved slowly past the anch.o.r.ed lines of the Battle-fleet towards the entrance.
Her Commanding Officer stood beside the helmsman, holding a soiled chart in his hands; further aft on the elliptical railed platform of the conning tower a tall, angular, grey-haired man, clad in civilian garb, stood talking to the First Lieutenant. A Yeoman of Signals, his gla.s.s tucked into his left arm-pit, was securing the halliards to the telescopic mast, at which fluttered a frayed White Ensign. A couple of figures in sea-boots and duffle coats were still coiling down ropes and securing fenders, crawling like flies about the whale-backed hull. A hundred and fifty feet astern of the conning-tower the unseen propellers threw the water into vortices that went curling away down the long wake.
"We"ll pick up the trawler outside," said the Lieutenant-Commander, folding up the chart and sticking it into the breast of his monkey-jacket. "Deep water out there, and we can play about." His face was burned by the sun to the colour of an old brick wall; the tanned skin somehow made his eyes look bluer and his hair fairer than was actually the case; it accentuated the whiteness of his teeth, and gave his quick smile an oddly arresting charm.
The elderly civilian considered him with grave interest before replying. "Thank you," he said. "That"s just what I want to do--play about!"
"The other experts are all in the trawler, with the apparatus,"
supplemented the Lieutenant-Commander. "We"re under your orders, sir, for these experiments."
"Thank you," said Sir William Thorogood, Scientist; he drew a cigar case out of his pocket. "I feel rather like a man accepting another"s hospitality and spending the day trying to pick his brains."
The Submarine-Commander smiled rather grimly. "You mean you"re trying to find a way of cutting our claws and making us harmless?" he said.
"Well--Fritz"s claws," amended Sir William.
"Same thing," replied the Lieutenant-Commander. "What"s ours to-day is theirs tomorrow--figuratively speakin", that is. If it"s sauce for the goose it"s sauce for the gander--just t.i.t for tat, this game."
"That," said Sir William, "is rather a novel point of view. It"s not exactly one that is taken by the bulk of people ash.o.r.e."
The figure beside the helmsman crinkled up his eyes as he stared ahead and gave a low-voiced order to the helmsman. "Oh?" he said. "I don"t know much about what people ash.o.r.e think, except that they"re all rattled over this so-called Submarine menace. Anyone that"s scared is apt to cling to one point of view."
"That is so," replied the Scientist. "But I chose to come out with you to-day for these experiments on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief."
"That"s sound," said the Submarine expert. "Because, you know, in the Navy we all look at life from different points of view, according to our jobs. No, thanks, I won"t smoke till we get outside. Now, those fellows"--the speaker jerked his head astern to the great grey Battleships--"those big-ship wallahs--they"re only just beginning to take Us seriously. I put in my big-ship time at the beginning of the war--we do a year in a big ship, you know, for our sins--and the fellows in the Mess used to jeer at Us. They talked about their rams...." He laughed. "Rams!" he repeated. "They called us pirates.
P"raps we were, but we didn"t carry bathrooms in those early boats--nor yet manicure sets.... Port ten! ... Ease to five--steady!"
The speaker was silent for a moment, musing. "I don"t know that I altogether blame "em." He turned to his First Lieutenant, a youth some years his junior with preposterously long eyelashes. ""Member the manoeuvres before the War?" The other laughed and nodded. "I torpedoed my revered parent"s Battleship," continued the speaker, "at two hundred yards in broad daylight and a flat calm." He chuckled.
"Lor" bless me! It"s like a fairy tale, lookin" back on it after two years of war."
"Haven"t they rather altered their tune since, though?" asked the visitor.
"A bit, yes. They don"t quite know how to take us nowadays. We come in from patrol and tie up alongside them to give the men the run of the canteen; they ask us to dinner and give cinema shows for the sailors, bless "em. We"re beginning to feel quite the giddy heroes when we find ourselves among the Battle-fleet."
"Cold feet," interposed the First Lieutenant. "That"s what"s behind it all. We"re It...."
Sir William laughed. "Well," he said, "what about those craft yonder?
There I suppose you have yet another point of view?"
A division of Armed Trawlers lumbered out of their path, the bow gun on each blunt forecastle rising and dipping as they plunged in the incoming swell.
"Ah!" said the Lieutenant-Commander, "they"re different. They never had any preconceived notions about us or their own invulnerability.
The boot"s on the other foot there. We used to jeer at them once; but now I"m not so certain...."
"You never know what the h.e.l.l they"ll do next," explained the Lieutenant with the shadow of his eyelashes on his cheek-bone. "That"s the trouble. "They knows nothin" an" they fears nothin","" he quoted, smiling.