Читать книгу: «H.M.S. –», страница 8

NIGHT ROUNDS

It was a dark night with no moon, while only occasionally could a star be seen from the leader's bridge. The next astern could be made out by the bands of blue-white phosphorescence that fell away from her bow, but the rest of the line was quite invisible. The flotilla slid along at a pace that to them was only a jog-trot, but which would have been considered rather too exciting for night work by the big ships. The night was calm, with hardly a breath of wind, while the hush—hush—hush from the bow-waves seemed to accentuate the silence and to increase the impression the destroyers gave of game moving down on a tiptoe of expectancy to the drinking-pool, ready at a sight or sound to spring to a frenzy of either offensive or defensive speed. On the leader's bridge men spoke in low tones, as if afraid that they might be overheard by the enemy – actually to enable them to listen better to whatever sound the echoes from the sea might carry. On bridges and at gun-stations look-outs stared out around them at the night, and there was no need for the officers to be anxious as to whether their men kept good watch or slept. The crews knew the rules of destroyer-war in the Narrow Seas – that "The first one to see, shoots; and the first one to hit, wins." It is true that they did not always see first. There were exceptions. Not so long before, they had been seen at a range of perhaps half a mile by an officer on the low unobtrusive conning-tower of a submarine. This officer had instantly and accurately smitten on the back of the head the sailor who shared his watch, and had rapped out one word "Down!" The sailor (evidently quite accustomed to this procedure) had vanished down the conning-tower like a falling stone, the officer's boots chasing the man's hands down the ladder-rungs. The lid had clanked down and locked just a few seconds before a little "plop" of water closed over the swirling suction that showed where a big patrol submarine had been. The boat was English (that is to say, her Captain was Scotch, and her First Lieutenant Canadian, while the remainder of her officers and men together could hardly have mustered half a dozen men from the Home Counties), but she had no intention of risking explanations at short range with her own friends. She had been warned of their coming, but she looked on it as a piece of extraordinarily bad luck to have been met with at visibility range on such a dark night and to have been inconvenienced into a matter of ninety feet in a hurry. But it is known that submarines dive for almost everything and swear at everybody.

As the flotilla moved on its way a portent showed on the bow to landward. A faint red glow began to light up the low clouds over the Belgian frontier, and the bridge look-outs whispered together as they watched it brighten. As it grew clearer it showed to be not one light, but a rapid-running succession of instantaneous lights far inland. The white pencil of a searchlight beam showed and swung to the zenith and back – perhaps half-way between the watchers and the flicker in the sky. Ten minutes later, as the light drew farther aft, a faint murmur of sound (that began as a mere suspicion, and grew to be unmistakably but barely audible) announced the origin of the glow.

On the leader's bridge the tall officer in the overcoat spoke to the shorter one in the "lammy." "That's a bit on the big side for a night raid – they must be attacking round by – "

"Yes, sir; there's something like what they call 'drum-fire' going on. Wonder why they put searchlights on for it, though?"

"Can't guess. They'll have 'em on on the coast in a minute too, if I know them. Perhaps when they hear guns inland they think it's airbombs coming down. There they go! Two of 'em – "

The searchlights came on together, and on such a clear and dark night they seemed startlingly close. They swept the heavens over and back, steadied awhile pointing inland, and went out again, leaving an even inkier blackness than before, and setting the watchers blinking and rubbing their dazzled eyes. Away to the south-east the pulsating growl of the guns continued, though the breadth and height of the glow in the sky was gradually decreasing.

"There isn't any fighting on near the coast now, sir. That must be away down in France. If they'd only fire slow we'd be able to get a sort of range by the flash."

"You'd have to hold your watch for some time, then," said the taller officer. "I haven't the inland geography well enough in my head to say where it is, but that scrap's nearer seventy than sixty miles from here. Good Lord! And I suppose we'll read in the papers when we get in that 'there was activity at some points.'"

"And from here it looks like Hell. What it must be like close to – ! Wish we could run up one of the canals and join in, sir."

"You'd be too late if we could. It's dying out now. Just as well, too; it keeps all the look-outs' heads turned that way. How's the time? All right, we'll turn now and try back."

The glow faded and passed, and left the velvety dark as blank as before. The leader swung round on a wide curve, and, as if held by one long elastic hawser, the flotilla followed in her gleaming wake. At the same cantering speed as they had come, they started on the long beat back of their bloodthirsty prowl, at the moment when the Scotch submarine officer turned over the watch to his Canadian subordinate.

"I've sheered right out now, and they ought to be clear of us all right, but keep your eyes skinned for them and nip under if you see them again. They're devilish quick on the salvoes in this longitude, and 'pon my soul I don't blame 'em either."

IN THE BARRED ZONE

 
They called us up from England at the breaking of the day,
And the wireless whisper caught us from a hundred leagues away —
"Sentries at the Outer Line,
All that hold the countersign,
Listen in the North Sea – news for you to-day."
 
 
All across the waters, at the paling of the morn,
The wireless whispered softly ere the summer day was born —
"Be you near or ranging far,
By the Varne or Weser bar,
The Fleet is out and steaming to the Eastward and the dawn."
 
 
Far and away to the North and West, in the dancing glare of the sunlit ocean,
Just a haze, a shimmer of smoke-cloud, grew and broadened many a mile;
Low and long and faint and spreading, banner and van of a world in motion,
Creeping out to the North and West, it hung in the skies alone awhile.
 
 
Then from over the brooding haze the roar of murmuring engines swelled,
And the men of the air looked down to us, a mile below their feet;
Down the wind they passed above, their course to the silver sun-track held,
And we looked back to the West again, and saw the English Fleet.
 
 
Over the curve of the rounded sea, in ordered lines as the ranks of Rome,
Over the far horizon steamed a power that held us dumb, —
Miles of racing lines of steel that flattened the sea to a field of foam,
Rolling deep to the wash they made,
We saw, to the threat of a German blade,
The Shield of England come.
 

A MATTER OF ROUTINE

There was little or no wind, and only a gentle swell from the south. The ships rose and fell lazily as they steamed to the south-eastward, while only occasionally a handful of light spray fell across a sunlit forecastle, drying almost as it fell. But if the air was still the ships were certainly not so – as vast as a great moving town, the Fleet was travelling at the speed of a touring car. From the Flagship's foretop the view was extraordinary. Destroyers or light cruisers when pressed seem to be slipping along with something always in hand and with no apparent effort; a battleship, however, seen under the same conditions, makes one think of St Paul's Cathedral being towed up the Thames; she carries a "bone in her teeth," and her bows seem to settle low and her stern to rise. In this case the Grand Fleet was hurrying – moving south-east at full speed, because – well, they might just cut the enemy off; but the Hun was canny, and knew exactly the danger-limit in this game of "Prisoner's base."

The visibility was good, and as far as the eye could see the water was torn and streaked with the wakes of ships – cruisers, destroyers, battleships, and craft of every queer and imaginable warlike use. The great mass of steel hulls had one thing only in common – they could steam, and could steam always with something in hand above the "speed of the Fleet." From the ships came a faint brown haze of smoke that shimmered with heat and made the horizon dance and flicker. From the foretop, looking aft, it seemed incredible that there could be any power existing which could drive such a huge beamy hulk as the Flagship was, and leave such a turmoil of torn and flattened water astern. Battleships in a hurry are certainly not stately; an elderly matron in pursuit of a tram-car shows dignity compared to any one of them. But if they looked flustered and undignified, they carried a cargo which no one could smile at. "Battleships are mobile gun-platforms." I forget who said that – probably Admiral Mahan – but it is true; and if these ships showed an ungraceful way of moving, they certainly complied with the definition of gun-platforms. The low-sloped turrets all pointed the same way – out to the starboard bow. The long tapering guns moved up and down, following the horizon against the roll, and sighing as they moved, as if the hydraulic engines were weary of the long wait. On the tops of the turrets the figures of officers could be seen pacing to and fro across the steel – checking now and then to stare at the southern horizon. Somewhere out there beneath the blazing sun were the scouts, and beyond them – well, that question was one that the scouts were there to answer. The smaller ships in sight seemed like motor-cycle pacers escorting a long-distance foot-race. With their sterns low and their bow-waves running back close to the beautifully-shaped hulls, they gave the impression of sauntering along at their leisure and of looking impatiently over their shoulders at the big heavy-weights astern of them. A destroyer division suddenly heeled and altered course like redshank, each ship turning as the leader swung, and with a fountain of spray at their sharp high stems they cut through the intervals of a Battleship division, swinging up again together to the south-east course as they cleared. The watcher in the top had seen the trick before, but familiarity could not prevent his eyes from widening a little as he saw the stem of his next astern throw up a little cloud of spray as it met the foaming V-wake that followed a few yards from the leader's counter. He smiled as he thought of an old picture in 'Punch' of a crowd of small children urging and dragging a huge policeman along to a scene of disturbance. The darting, restless destroyers seemed like the small bloodthirsty boys – hurrying on ahead to see the fun, and then back to wait for the ponderous but willing upholder of the law – anxious to miss nothing of the excitement.

The Fleet was running down to intercept, and might be in action at any moment if the luck held, but there was no signalling or outpouring of instructions. There was just nothing to be said. Everybody knew more or less what the tactical situation was; all knew that the enemy might be met with any time in the next few hours, but in the turrets the guns' crews proceeded with the all-important task of getting outside as much dinner as they could comfortably stow. The procedure of endeavouring to meet the High Sea Fleet and of dealing with it on sight had been rehearsed so often, that the real thing, if it came, would call for one signal only, and no more. Many prophets have said that the increase of Science and Applied Mechanics in the Navy would make men into mere slaves of machines, and into unthinking units. This is another theory which has been shown to be hopelessly wrong – certainly so in the Navy, as in it both officers and men are taught, and have to be taught, far more of the reasons for and the object aimed at in the Rules for Battle than ever Nelson thought it necessary to communicate to his subordinates in the last Great War. The Prussian system may be good, but it produces a bludgeon – ours produces the finest tempered blade.

The sight from the foretop was a thing that one would remember all one's life, and be thankful not to have missed. The almost incalculable value of the great mass of ships – the whirl of figures conjured up by a rough estimate of the collective horse-power and the numbers of men present; the attempt and failure to even count the actual ships in sight; the vision of a scared and wondering neutral tramp lying between the lines with engines stopped as the great masses of grey-painted steel went past her along the broad highroads of churned water, – this was the Fleet at sea; and the known fact that it would wheel, close, or spread at the word of one man, from the ships that foamed along four hundred yards away to those whose mastheads could only just be seen above the horizon, made the wonder all the greater. One thought of the thousands of eyes looking south in the direction of the big gun-muzzles, of the shells that the guns held rammed close home to the rifling, and of the thousands of brains that were turning over and over the old question, "Is it to be this time, or have they slipped in again?"…

WHO CARES?

 
The sentries at the Castle Gate,
We hold the outer wall,
That echoes to the roar of hate
And savage bugle-call —
Of those that seek to enter in with steel and eager flame,
To leave you with but eyes to weep the day the Germans came.
 
 
Though we may catch from out the Keep
A whining voice of fear,
Of one who whispers "Rest and sleep,
And lay aside the spear,"
We pay no heed to such as he, as soft as we are hard;
We take our word from men alone – the men that rule the guard.
 
 
We hear behind us now and then
The voices of the grooms,
And bickerings of serving-men
Come faintly from the rooms;
But let them squabble as they please, we will not turn aside,
But – curse to think it was for them that fighting men have died.
 
 
Whatever they may say or try,
We shall not pay them heed;
And though they wail and talk and lie,
We hold our simple Creed —
No matter what the cravens say, however loud the din,
Our Watch is on the Castle Gate, and none shall enter in.
 

THE UNCHANGING SEX

 
When the battle-worn Horatius, 'midst the cheering Roman throng —
All flushed with pride and triumph as they carried him along —
Reached the polished porch of marble at the doorway of his home,
He felt himself an Emperor – the bravest man of Rome.
The people slapped him on the back and knocked his helm askew,
Then drifted back along the road to look for something new.
Then Horatius sobered down a bit – as you would do to-day —
And straightened down his tunic in a calm, collected way.
He hung his battered helmet up and wiped his sandals dry,
And set a parting in his hair – the same as you and I.
His lady kissed him carefully and looked him up and down,
And gently disengaged his arm to spare her snowy gown.
"You are a real disgrace, you know, the worst I've ever seen;
Now go and put your sword away, I know it isn't clean.
And you must change your clothes at once, you're simply wringing wet;
You've been doing something mischievous, I hope you lost your bet…
Why! you're bleeding on the carpet. Who's the brute that hurt you so?
Did you kill him? There's a darling. Serve him right for hitting low."
Then she hustled lots of water, turning back her pretty sleeves,
And she set him on the sofa (having taken off his greaves).
And bold Horatius purred aloud, the stern Horatius smiled,
And didn't seem to mind that he was treated like a child.
Though she didn't call him Emperor, or cling to him and cry,
Yet I rather think he liked it – just the same as you and I.
 

TWO CHILDREN

His age was possibly nineteen, and his general appearance had decided the members of his last gunroom mess in their choice of a nickname for him. "Little Boy Blue," or "Boy" for short, would probably stick to him throughout his naval career. The name had certainly followed him to his present appointment as "third hand" of a destroyer, where the other sub-lieutenants of the flotilla were not likely to allow him to forget it. He would have made a perfect model for a Burne-Jones angel. His mother would have worded that comparison differently, being under the impression that no angel could hope to equal him: on his part, he always took most filial care not to disillusion her on such a point. At the moment, in the first flush of glory induced by the fact that he had left gunroom life for ever, and that his midshipman's patches were things of the recent past, he was making the most of a week's leave, and making the most also of the opportunity of cultivating the society of a home Attraction whom the discerning eyes of his mother may or may not have yet noticed. The Attraction was aged sixteen, extremely pretty, and, as is usual in such cases, extremely self-possessed.

The Boy, as he accompanied her along the garden path, was not feeling self-possessed at all. He had discovered from frequent experience that the only position he could retain with reference to the lady as she walked was, as he would put it, "half a cable on the starboard quarter." Knowing as he did that he was being kept thus distant by intention, he followed the broad lines of strategy which his naval training had taught him, and acted in a way which on such occasions is always right – that is, he aroused doubt and curiosity in the mind of his adversary.

The lady, who – carrying a ball of string in one hand and a bowl of peas in the other – had walked in cool silence for at least fifty yards, turned suddenly and spoke.

"I suppose this is the first time you've – What are you staring at?"

The Boy blushed at once. "I beg your pardon," he murmured; "I – "

"Is my hair coming down?"

The Boy looked fixedly again at a large black bow which, as he told me afterwards, "held the bight of it up." "No-o," he said slowly.

"Then don't stare at it, and don't lag behind. What was I saying?"

"You asked me how long leave I'd got."

"I didn't – you've told me that, and anyhow I've forgotten. I was going to ask you if this is the first time you've done any war-work."

"Yes, I was out in the Straits till last Thursday week, and – "

"Don't be silly. I mean work like this, digging and doing without things, and helping, and so on."

"Yes, I suppose it is. I haven't had time, really – "

The lady turned on him in righteous scorn. "Time– oh, you're one of the worst I know. Won't you ever take the war seriously? You just look on it all as a joke, and you won't make any sacrifices. Now come here – take the other end of this string, and lay it out till I tell you to stop."

The Boy meekly obeyed instructions. He pegged the end of the string firmly down and returned to the Attraction, who was engaged in hunting out a hoe from among a litter of horticultural implements that lay in a corner of the garden wall. He stood watching her for a moment, and with her eyes away from him, his attitude altered slightly and became almost proprietary, while his face seemed to harden a shade and give an inkling of the naval stamp that it would develop later on. She looked round suddenly and saw him again as a shy and awkward youth.

"Have you done it?" she said. "All right, you can really start doing some work now. I'm going to make you dig a trench. That's the best way to serve your country when you're ashore and have the chance. And to think you've never used a hoe before!"

The Boy scraped the hoe reflectively with the toe of his boot. It did not seem to him politic to mention the fact that vegetable gardens do not usually grow either on the decks of battleships or on the shell-beaten slopes of Gallipoli. He made no attempt to follow the tortuous wanderings of a feminine mind, but held on his own course. "Are you going to help?" he said.

"No. You'd only loaf at the work if I did, and I've got other things to do, too. Now, come along and start, or you'll never get it finished by to-night."

"I'm leaving to-morrow," said the Boy.

"So you've told me – heaps of times to-day. But you must finish that trench before you go."

The Boy nodded and walked away towards the pegged-out end of the string. The lady, without turning her head, walked back up the path until she came to the grassy slope at its end. Selecting a spot from which a view could be obtained through the hedge of her oppressed admirer, she sat down and carefully laid the basin of peas on the bank beside her.

"He's rather a dear," she observed cautiously to herself. "But he is such a child. 'Wonder why boys are always so awfully young compared to women?"

The flotilla would have turned round for its run back in another half-hour if the last destroyer in the enemy's line had not shown a faint funnel-glare for the fractional part of a second. They were only a couple of miles from the end of the "beat" when it showed, and considering the poor visibility that accompanied the frequent snow-showers, it was a piece of happy luck that the glare was seen at all. Three people on the leader's bridge saw it together; two of them gave a kind of muffled yelp, as foxhound puppies would at sight of their first cub, while the third gave an order on the instant. The destroyer settled a little by the stern, her course altered slightly, and she began really to travel. For some hours she had been jogging along at seventeen knots, but her speed now began to rise in jumps of five knots at a time, till in a few minutes she had become a mad and quivering fabric of impatient steel. As she gained her speed the snow began to pour down again, blotting out the faint shadow that had meant the bow of her next astern. The Captain glanced aft once, and then continued his intent gazing forward. He had passed a rough bearing and the signal to chase to his subordinates astern, and could do no more till he could get touch again. He had no intention of easing his speed to wait for clearer visibility. He knew too much of flotilla war to let a chance of fighting go by in that way. If he once got to the enemy, the rest of his flotilla would steer to the sound of the guns; and anyhow, he decided, if he did have to fight single-handed, the worse the visibility was and the greater the confusion and doubt among the enemy, the better would be the chances for him. The snow ahead cleared for a minute to leave a long narrow lane between the showers, and he saw the loom of the last ship of the enemy's line. The German destroyer seemed to fall back to him, as if she was stopped, though in reality she was holding station on her next ahead at a fair sixteen knots. With a startling crash and a blaze of blinding light the guns opened from along the leader's side – the German guns waiting, surprised, for a full minute before they replied. When they did open fire, the duel had become too one-sided to be called a fight at all. Between the crashes of the guns, the clatter and ring of ejected cartridge-cases could be heard but faintly, yet as the big leader passed her battered opponent at barely half a cable distance, through the din and savage intensity of a yard-arm fight the quartermaster stooped over his tiny wheel, oblivious to all things but the clear quiet voice that conned the ship past and on to her next victim. The rear destroyer of the enemy swung away, stopped, and remained – a horrible illustration of the maxim of naval warfare, which says that he who is unready should never leave harbour.

At the head of the German line a man of decision had acted swiftly. As the blaze of the gun-fire broke out astern of him, and before the first German gun had fired a round, he had swung the leading division four points off its course. As the British destroyer tore on up the line, he swung inwards again and closed on her to engage on her disengaged side. As a piece of tactics it was pretty and well performed, but nothing can be judged to perfection in war, and this evolution was no exception to the rule. As he closed in on the British leader, she started her broadside on her second quarry, – an opponent better prepared than her first, – and the snow-laden air quivered to the shock of furiously worked guns. The flashes lit the contending ships in rippling, blinding light, and across the foaming waters that the fighters left in their passage, the drifting snow showed up like flying gold. At short range the leading German division broke in with a burst of rapid fire, and in his swift glance towards this menace from his disengaged side the British leader saw the flaw in his enemy's harness. The last of the German division was too far astern for safety in view of the fact that the British ship was at the moment fighting-mad. The German leader had a glimpse of a high bow swinging round towards him in the midst of salvoes of bursting shell – then came an increased burst of firing from down the line astern, followed by a great crash and a dull booming explosion. The gun-fire died down and stopped as the guns' crews lost sight of their target, until the scattered flotilla was running on in the same darkness as had preceded the fight, though in far different condition. The German leader was not sure as to what had happened to the first of his command to be attacked, but he knew well what had come to the rear ship of his own division. She had been blown up in the shock of being rammed by the English madman, and although she had probably taken her slayer with her, she had left an impression on the minds of the rest of the flotilla on the subject of what odds an English ship considered to be equal, that would take some considerable drilling to eradicate. He flashed out a signal to tell his unseen ships to concentrate, and the signal, shaded as it was, drew down a salvo of shell from half a mile away on his quarter. At full speed he tore on for home, realising a fact that he had only suspected before – that the savage who had attacked him had been but the forerunner of a flotilla of unknown numbers and strength. The crackling sound of battle – a battle at a longer range now – passed on and died down as the unheeding snow smothered both light and sound. Both flotillas were occupied, and in their occupation had no time to think of what was left astern of them, – a shattered German destroyer stopped, helpless, and an easy prey for the returning British – a litter of lifebelts, corpses, and wreckage, that marked the grave of the rammed ship – and a barely-floating hulk, her stern and half her deck only above water, that lay rolling to the swell; a broken monument to a man who had fought a good fight and gone to his death with the sound of the trumpets of the Hall of all Brave Men calling in his ears.

The Boy twisted the seaman's silk handkerchief more tightly round his left wrist, and drew another fold across his broken hand. He snapped his orders out furiously, and men hastened to obey them. He knew that his after-gun was the only one above water, and that the sloping island of the stern that formed its support was not likely to retain buoyancy long, but so long as there were survivors clustered aft and dry ammunition with which they might load, he was going to be ready for fighting. To the luck that caused one of his flotilla to lose touch in the chase and blunder across him, he owed the fact that he was ever able to fight again. She came tearing by down wind – threw the narrow beam of a searchlight full on to him – and recognising by that extraordinary nautical "eye for a ship," which can see all when a landsman could see nothing, that the sloping battered wreck was the remnant of a ship of her own class, turned on a wide sweep to investigate. The Boy knew nothing of her nationality, and cared less what her intentions were. In the midst of a litter of ammunition, wounded men, and half-drowned or frozen survivors, he slammed shell at her from his sightless and tilted gun till his store of dry cartridges dwindled and failed him. His shooting was execrable; he could hardly make out the dark blotch that was his target as, astonished and silent, she circled round him. Savage and berserk, he fired till his last round was gone, then drew his motley collection of ratings around him, and with pistol, knife, and spanner they waited for their chance to board.

A long black hull slid cautiously into view and closed them, till up against the beating snow and rising wind a voice roared out through a megaphone a sentence which no German could ever attempt to copy – "You blank, blank, blank," it said, "are you all something mad?"

The Boy stood up, and his wounded hand just then began to hurt him very much. "No sir," he called in reply. "I'm sorry, sir; I made a mistake. We've got a lot of wounded here."

The night seemed to turn suddenly very cold, and he realised that at some moment since the collision he must have been in the water.

The Boy did not see her till he had left the train and was half-way along the station platform. Then she came forward from the ticket-collector's barrier, and he discovered with a start that not only was the sun shining, but that the world was a very good place to be alive in. He dropped his suit-case to shake hands, and then hastily snatched it up to forestall her attempt to carry it for him. She turned and piloted him out of the station to where an ancient "growler" waited, its steed dozing in the sunshine. "I ordered this old thing, as I thought you mightn't be strong enough to walk, but you're not such an invalid as I expected. The carrier is bringing your luggage." The lady spoke, looking him carefully over from under the shade of her hat.

"Walk! Yes, of course I can. I'm not an invalid. I – No, I mean – let's drive." He slung his suit-case hastily in through the open cab door.

The lady seemed to see nothing inconsistent in his incoherencies. She may have possibly followed his train of thought. She merely nodded, and reached in for his suit-case, which she swung easily upwards, to be received by the driver and placed on the roof. She then stepped in, and watched as the Boy cautiously entered and took his station beside her. With what seemed almost a yawn, the old horse roused and began to work up to his travelling pace, a possible five miles to the hour.