"They"re a" sae sonsie!" said the young lady from the buffet with a rapturous sigh.
At the junction where the train stopped at noon, Naval occupation of the North proclaimed itself. A Master-at-Arms, austere of visage and stentorian voiced, fell upon the weary voyagers like a collie rallying a flock of sheep. A Lieutenant-Commander of the Reserve, in a tattered monkey-jacket, was superintending the unstowing of bags and hammocks by a party of ancient mariners in white working rig and brown gaiters. A retired Boatswain, who apparently bore the responsibilities of local Traffic Superintendent upon his broad shoulders, held sage council with the engine driver.
The travellers were still many weary hours from their destination, but the solicitude of the great Mother Fleet for her sons" welfare was plain on every side. There were evidences of a carefully planned, wisely executed organisation in the speed with which the great crowd of blue-jackets and marines of all ranks and ratings, and bound for fifty different ships, were mustered, given their dinners and marshalled into the "Navy Special" that would take them on their journey.
Mouldy Jakes deposited his bags and rug strap on the platform and surveyed the scene with mournful pride. "Good old Navy!" he observed to the India-rubber Man, while Thorogood went in search of food. "Good old firm! Father and mother and ticket collector and supplier of ham-sandwiches to us all. Who wouldn"t sell his little farm and go to sea?"
Standish picked up his suit-case and together they made for the adjoining platform, where the train that was to take them on their journey was waiting.
They selected a carriage and were presently joined by Thorogood, burdened with eatables and soda water. The bluejackets were already in their carriages, and the remaining officers, to the number of about a score, were settling down in their compartments. They represented all ranks of the British Navy; a Captain and two Commanders were joined by the Naval Attache of a great neutral Power on his way to visit the Fleet. An Engineer Commander and a Naval Instructor shared a luncheon basket with a Sub-Lieutenant and a volunteer Surgeon. Two Clerks, a Midshipman and a Torpedo Gunner found themselves thrown together, and at the last moment a Chaplain added himself to their company.
The last door closed and the King"s Messenger, carrying his despatch case, came limping along the platform in company with the grey-bearded Commander in charge of the base. The King"s Messenger climbed into his carriage and the journey was resumed. Along the sh.o.r.es of jade-tinted lochs, through far-stretching deer forest and grouse moor, past brawling rivers of "snow-brew," and along the flanks of shale-strewn hills, the "Navy Special" bore its freight of sailor-men.
No corridor connected the carriages to afford opportunities for an interchange of visits for gossip and change of companionship. The occupants of each compartment settled down grimly to endure the monotony of the last stage of their journey according to the dictates of their several temperaments.
The King"s Messenger, in the seclusion of his reserved compartment, read a novel at intervals and looked out of the window for familiar landmarks that recalled spells of leave in pre-war days, when he tramped on two feet through the heather behind the dogs, or, thigh deep in some river, sent a silken line out across the peat-brown water.
In an adjoining compartment a Lieutenant of the Naval Reserve sat at one end facing a Lieutenant of the Volunteer Reserve, while a small Midshipman, effaced behind a magazine, occupied the other corner.
Conversation, stifled by ham sandwiches, restarted fitfully, and flagged from train weariness. Darkness pursued the whirling landscape and blotted it out. Sleep overtook the majority of the travellers until the advent of tea baskets at the next stopping place revived them to a more lively interest in life and one another.
The Reserve Lieutenant fussed over his like a woman. "I wouldn"t trouble if I never smelt whisky again," he confided to his vis-a-vis, "but I couldn"t get on without tea." He helped himself to three lumps of sugar.
The ice thinned rapidly.
"With fresh milk," said the Volunteer Reserve man appreciatively, pouring himself out a cup. "Eh, Jennings?"
The Midshipman, thus addressed, grinned and applied himself in silence to a scone and jam.
"Ah," said the Reserve man with a kind of tolerance in his tone, such as a professional might extend to the enthusiasm of an amateur in his own trade. "Cows scarce in your job?"
"A bit," was the unruffled reply. "We"ve just brought a Norwegian wind-jammer in from the South of Iceland...." He indicated with a nod the young gentleman in the corner, who was removing traces of jam from his left cheek. "I"m bringing the armed guard back to our base."
The Reserve man drank his tea after the manner of deep-sea sailor-men.
That is to say, you could shut your eyes and still know: he was drinking hot tea.
"Armed Merchant-cruiser squadron?" he queried. Imperceptibly his tone had changed. The Armed Merchant-cruisers maintain the Allied blockade across the trade routes of the Far North: "fancy" sailor-men do not apply for jobs in one of these amazons of the North Sea, and it takes more than a Naval uniform to bring a suspect sailing ship many miles into port for examination under an armed guard of four men.
The Volunteer nodded. "We had a picnic, I can tell you. It blew like h.e.l.l from the N.E., and the foretopmast--she was a barque--went like a carrot the second day. We hove to, trying to rig a jury mast, when up popped a Fritz."[1] The speaker laughed, a pleasant, deep laugh of complete enjoyment. "I thought we were in for a swim that would knock the cross-Channel record silly! However, I borrowed a suit from the skipper--and he wasn"t what you"d call fastidious in his dress either----"
The Volunteer made a little grimace at the recollection, because he was a man of refined tastes and raced his own yacht across the Atlantic in peace time.
"It was too rough to board, but the submarine closed to within hailing distance, and a little pipsqueak of a Lieutenant, nervous as a cat, talked to us through a megaphone. Fortunately I can speak Norwegian...."
"What about the skipper of the wind-jammer?" interrupted the other.
"He kept his mouth shut. Wasn"t much in sympathy with the company that owned the submarine, having lost a brother the month before in a steamship sh.e.l.led and sunk without warning. You can"t please everybody, it seems, when you start out to act mad in a submarine.
Well, this lad examined our papers through a gla.s.s and I chucked him a cigar.... He hadn"t had a smoke for a week. Then he sheered off, because he saw something on the horizon that scared him. He was very young, and, as I"ve said, nerves like fiddle strings."
The Reserve man lit a cigarette and inhaled a great draught of smoke.
There was something in his alert, intent expression reminiscent of a bull terrier when he hears rats scuffling behind a wainscot.
The war has evolved specialists without number in branches of Naval warfare hitherto unknown and unsuspected. Among these is the Submarine Hunter. The Reserve man belonged to this type, which is simply a reversion to the most primitive and savage of the fighting instincts.
At the first mention of the German submarine he leaned forward eagerly.
"Threw him a cigar, did you?" he said grimly. "Sorry I wasn"t there. I"d have thrown him something. That"s my line of business--Fritz-hunting."
The ribbon of the Distinguished Service Cross on the lapel of his monkey-jacket showed that he apparently pursued this branch of sport with some effect. "Been at it from the kick-off," he continued.
"Started with herring nets, you know!" He laughed a deep bark of amus.e.m.e.nt. "Lord! We had a lot to learn. We began from an East Coast fishing port, working with crazy drifters manned by East Coast fishermen. There was a retired Admiral in charge, as tough an old terror as ever pulled on a sea boot--and half a dozen of us all together, some Active Service and some Reserve like me. Navy? Bless you, _we_ were the Navy, that old Admiral and us six." The speaker raised his voice to make plain his words above the rattle of the train.
"There was a lot of talk in the papers about Jellicoe and Beatty and the Grand Fleet and the Battle Cruisers, but they didn"t come our way and we didn"t trouble them. We had a couple of score of trawlers and drifters and four hundred simple fishermen to cram the fear of the Lord into. That was our job!"
He spoke with the peculiar word-sparing vividness of the man to whom the Almighty had vouchsafed the mysterious gift of handling other men.
"Long-sh.o.r.e and deep-sea fishermen, good material, d.a.m.ned good, but they took a lot of coaxing." He paused and contemplated his hands resting on his knees. Scarred by frost-bite they were, with huge bones protruding like knuckle-dusters. "Coaxing, mind you," he repeated.
"I"ve been chief of an Argentine cattle-boat for four years and Second on a windjammer round the Horn for three years before that. I know when to drive and when to coax. Never touched a man, sir." He paused, rubbing off the moisture condensed on the window, to peer info the night.
Here, then, was an Apostle of Naval Discipline among a community of fishermen whose acknowledged tradition it was to get drunk when and where it suited their inclinations, to put to sea in the top-hats of their ancestors and return to harbour as weather or the fish dictated, whose instinctive att.i.tude towards strangers was about as encouraging as that of the Solomon Islanders.
"We took "em and trained "em--gradually, you understand. Taught "em to salute the King"s uniform, an" just why orders had to be obeyed: explained it all gently"--the stupendous hand made a gesture in the air as if stroking something. "Then after a while we moved "em on to something else--the Game itself, in fact--and my merry men tumbled to it in no time. It was in their blood, I guess. They"d hunted something all their lives, and they weren"t scared because they had to take on something a bit bigger. I tell you, after a few weeks I just prayed for a submarine to come along and show what we could do."
The Volunteer grinned understandingly. "Well?" he said.
"We got one a week later. Just for all the world like a bloomin"
salmon. First we knew that there was one about was the _Merrie Maggie_, one of our trawlers, blowing up. Well, I"d been over the same spot in the morning, and there were no mines there then, so I knew our friend wasn"t far off...." The Submarine Hunter mused for a moment, staring at his clasped hands, with the faint blue tattoo-marks showing under the tan. "We got him at dawn--off a headland.... Oh, best bit of sport that ever I had!" The speaker"s hard grey eye softened at the recollection. "We"ve got lots since, but never one as neat as that.
He just came to the surface and showed his tail-fin and----" the huge hands made a significant downward gesture.
If you have ever heard a Regimental Bombing Officer describe the clearing of an enemy traverse, you will understand the complete expressiveness of that gesture.
"I"m going North now to join a new base up there. There are one or two dodges that I can put them up to, I reckon."
The Volunteer filled and lit a pipe.
"Pretty work it sounds. Ours is duller, on the whole, but we get our share of excitement. You never sight a steamer flying neutral colours without the possibility of her hoisting the German ensign and slipping a torpedo into you. That"s why we introduced the Red Pendant business.
It meant inconvenience for all parties, but neutrals have only got the Hun to thank for it."
"Never heard of it," said the other. "Fritz-hunting is my game."
"Well, you see, ever since they"ve tried to slip raiders through the blockade we can"t afford to close a stranger flying neutral colours within gun or torpedo range. So we had to explain to neutrals that a red flag hoisted by one of our merchant cruisers is the signal to heave to instantly, and that brings her up well out of range. Then we drop a boat and steam off and signal her to close the boat, and the boarding officer goes on board and examines her papers. If she"s got a cargo without guarantees she"s sent into one of the examination ports under an armed guard to have it overhauled properly."
"For contraband?"
"Yes, and to see that the commodity she carries isn"t in excess of the ration allowed to the country of destination--if she"s eastward bound, that is. Also the pa.s.sengers are scrutinised for suspects, and so on; it"s a big job, one way and another. That"s all done by the Examination Service at the port, though, and I don"t envy them the job.
We only catch "em and bring "em in."
For a while longer he talked between puffs at his pipe of the "twilight service" rendered by the Armed Merchant-cruisers. He spoke of grim stern-chases under the Northern Lights, of perils from ice and submarines and winter gales, while the Allied strangle-hold tightened month by month, remorselessly, relentlessly.
"It"s a peaceful sort of job, though, on the whole," he concluded.
"n.o.body worries us. The public, most of "em, don"t know we exist.
Journalists don"t want to come and visit us much," he chuckled. "We don"t find our way into the ill.u.s.trated papers...."