There was the metallic sound of metal striking metal as the hatchway opened, a rush of cool, sweet air, and the Scientist found himself beside the two officers, without the slightest recollection of how he got there, standing in the wind and sunlight on the streaming platform of the conning-tower. The boat was heading with the waves tumbling away on either side of them in the direction of a cloud of grey smoke that still hung over the water, slowly dissolving in the wind. As they approached a dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark sc.u.m gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few sc.r.a.ps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had once been a man.
"Pretty shot," said the First Lieutenant approvingly, and leaned over the rail to superintend the dropping of a sinker and buoy. The Commanding Officer said nothing. Beneath the tan his face was white, and his hand, as he raised his gla.s.ses to sweep the horizon, trembled slightly.
The Yeoman of Signals turned to Sir William and jerked his thumb at the water. "Eh!" he said soberly, "yon had a quick call!"
"I ask for no other when my hour strikes," replied the Scientist.
"Maybe juist yeer hands are clean," said the Yeoman, and turned to level his telescope at the trawler which was rapidly approaching with a cloud of smoke reeling from her funnel and the waves breaking white across her high bows.
"Here comes Gedge," observed the Lieutenant-Commander, speaking for the first time, "foaming at the mouth and suffering from the reaction of fright. Hark! He"s started talking...."
Amid the cl.u.s.ter of figures in the trawler"s bow stood a big man with a megaphone to his mouth. The wind carried sc.r.a.ps of sentences across the water.
"... Darned bunch of tricks aft.... How was I to know.... Scared blue ... torpedo ... prisoners.... Blamed inventors...."
"Translate," said Sir William. The Lieutenant-Commander coughed apologetically. "He"s peevish," he said. "Thought it was us blowing up at first. Wants to know why we wasted a torpedo: thinks he could have captured her and taken the crew prisoners if we"d left it to him."
"Silly a.s.s!" from the First Lieutenant. "How could we let him know he was playing round with a Fritz? If we"d shown ourselves Fritz would have torpedoed us!"
"I appreciate the compliment," began Sir William, "that he implies to my device, but, as a matter of fact, I hardly think the apparatus is sufficiently perfect yet----"
The Lieutenant-Commander laughed rather brutally. "He isn"t paying compliments. He went on to say he didn"t want the a.s.sistance of--er--new inventions to bag a Fritz once he"s sighted him."
The First Lieutenant came quickly to the rescue. "Of course," he said, "that"s all rot. We"re only too grateful to--to Science for trying to invent a new gadget.... Only, you see, sir, in the meanwhile, _until_ you hit on it we feel we aren"t doing so badly--er--just carrying on."
CHAPTER VIII
"ARMA VIRUMQUE ..."
The Flagship"s Wardroom and the smoking-room beyond were packed to suffocation by a dense throng of officers. The Flagship was "At-Home"
to the Fleet that afternoon on the occasion of the Junior Officers"
Boxing Tournament which was being held onboard, and a lull in the proceedings had been the signal for a general move below in quest for tea.
Hosts and guests were gathered round the long table, standing in pairs or small groups, and talking with extraordinary gusto. Opportunities of intercourse between ships are rare in War-time. Save for an occasional visitor to lunch or dinner, or a haphazard meeting on the golf-links, each ship or flotilla dwelt a little community apart. On occasions such as this, however, the vast Fleet came together; Light Cruiser met Destroyer with a sidelong jerk of the head and a "Hullo, Old Thing..." that spanned the years at a single leap; Submarine laughed across the room at Seaplane-carrier; Mine-sweeper and Mine-layer shared a plate of sandwiches with a couple of Sloops and discussed the boxing; but they were no more than a leavening amid the throng of "big-ship folk" who reckoned horse-power by the half hundred thousand and spoke of guns in terms of the 15-inch.
Almost every rank of Naval officer was represented, from Commander to Sub-Lieutenant and their equivalent ranks in other branches; yet the vast majority shared a curious resemblance. It was elusive and quite apart from the affinity of race. The high physical standard demanded of each on entry, the athletic training of their early years, the stern rigour of life afloat, perhaps accounted for it. But in many of the tanned, clean-shaven faces there was something more definite than that; a strain that might have been transmitted by the symbolic Mother of the Race, clear-eyed and straight of limb, who still sits and watches beneath stern calm brows the heritage of her sons.
A few there were among the gathering with more than youth"s unwisdom marring mouth and brow; eyes tired with seeing over-much looked out here and there from the face of Youth. Yet amid the wholesome, virile cheerfulness of that a.s.sembly they were but transient impressions, lingering on the mind of an observer with no more permanency than the shadows of leaves flickering on a sunny wall.
A Lieutenant-Commander, on whose left breast the gaudy ribbons of Russian decorations hinted at the nature of his employment during the War, was talking animatedly to a Lieutenant with the eagle of the Navy-that-Flies above the distinction lace on his cuff. A grave-faced Navigating Commander, scenting the possibility of an interesting discussion between these exponents of submarine and aerial warfare, pushed his way towards them through the crush.
"... I remember her quite well," the Flying Man was saying as he stirred his tea. "Nice little thing ... married, is she? Well, well..."
"You"re a nice pair," said the Commander, smiling. "I came over here expecting to hear you both discussing the bursting area of a submarine bomb, and find you"re talking scandal."
"It"s a year old at that," said the be-ribboned one, with a laugh.
"I"ve just come back from the White Sea, but I seem to know more about what Timmin"s lady friends have been doing in the meanwhile than he does himself!"
He bit firmly into a sardine sandwich and laughed again. A great hum of men"s voices filled the room. Sc.r.a.ps of home gossip exchanged between more intimate friends, and comments on the afternoon"s boxing mingled with tag-ends of narratives from distant seas and far-off sh.o.r.es. It was nearly all war, of course, Naval war in some guise or other, and it covered most of the navigable globe.
A general conversation of this nature cannot be satisfactorily reproduced. A person slowly elbowing his way from the big tea-urns at one end of the mess to the smoking-room at the other, would, in his pa.s.sage, cut off, as it were, segments of talk such as the following:
"... Ripping little boxer, isn"t he? I had his term at Osborne College, but he"s learnt a good deal since then...."
"... Jess? Poor little dog: she was killed by a 4-inch sh.e.l.l in that Dogger Bank show. I"ve got an Aberdeen terrier now."
"... Bit of a change up here, isn"t it, after being under double awnings for so long? But the Persian Gulf was getting rather boring ... were you invalided too?"
"... Not they! They won"t come out--unless their bloomin" Emperor sends them out to commit a sort of hari-kiri at the end of the war....
That"s what makes it so boring up here...."
"As a matter of fact we caught the Turk who laid most of the mines in the Tigris. He conned us up the river--we put him in a basket and slung him on the bowsprit: just in case he got careless, what? ..."
"... Beer? My dear old lad, the j.a.ps had scoffed all the beer in Kiao-Chau before I got into the main street...."
"... I had a Midshipman up with me as observer--aged 16 and 4 months precisely.... Those machines scared the Arabs badly...."
"... Just a sharpened bayonet. You slung it round your neck when you were swimming.... Only had to use it once ... nasty sticky job. No joke either, crawling about naked on your belly in the dark...."
"... We had a fellow chipping the ice away from the conning-tower hatch all the time we were on the surface, "case we had to close down quick. I tell you, it was h.e.l.l, that cold! ..."
"... Five seconds after we had fired our torpedo a sh.e.l.l hit the tube and blew it to smithereens. A near thing, I give you my word...."
A Lieutenant-Commander appeared at the doorway from the smoking-room.
"There will be an exhibition bout next," he shouted, "and then the final of the Light-weights!" A general move ensued on to the upper deck.