Chapter II: Part 2

The descent into a picket-boat's stern-sheets, especially if you are encumbered by a skirt, is no easy matter. Perhaps the Midshipman of the boat realised it too, for he abandoned the wheel and assisted in the embarkation with the ready hand and averted eye that told of no small experience in such matters.

Then they heard a clear-cut order, the bell rang again, and the return journey commenced; but they did not hear the hoarse whisper conveyed down the voice-pipe to the Leading Stoker to "Whack her up!" And so they failed to realise that they were throbbing through the water at a speed which, though causing the Midshipmen of passing boats to gnash their teeth with envy, was exceedingly bad for the engines and wholly illegal. But then one does not bring a messmate's sisters off to the ship every day of the week.

Presently the bell rang again, and a grey steel wall, dotted with scuttles and surmounted by a rail, towered above them. The boat stopped palpitating beside a snowy ladder that reached to the water's edge. The occupant of the stockhold threw up the hatch of his miniature Inferno and thrust a perspiring head into view; but it is to be feared that no one noticed him, though he had contributed in no small degree to the passengers' entertainment. The Mother looked at the mahogany-railed ladder and sighed thankfully. "I always thought you climbed up by rope-ladders, dear," she whispered.

The ascent accomplished, followed introductions to smiling and somewhat bashful youths, who relieved the visitors of parasols and handbags, and led the way to a deck below, where racks of rifles were ranged along white-enamelled bulkheads, and a Marine sentry clicked to attention as they passed. Down a narrow passage, lit by electric lights, past a cage-like kitchen and rows of black-topped chests, and, as the guide paused before a curtained door, a glimpse forward of crowded mess-decks. Then, a little bewildered, they found themselves in a narrow apartment, lit by four brass-bound scuttles. A long table ran the length of the room, with tea things laid at one end; overhead were racks of golf-clubs and hockey-sticks, cricket-bats and racquets. A row of dirks hung above the tiled stove, and a baize-covered notice-board, letter-racks, and a miscellaneous collection of pictures adorned the rivet-studded walls. A somewhat battered piano, topped by a dejected palm, occupied one end of the Mess, and beneath the sideboard a strip of baize made an ineffectual attempt to cover the end of a beer barrel.

"This," said the host, with a tinge of pride in his voice, "is the Gunroom--where we live," he added.

"It's very nice," murmured the visitors.

"It's not a bad one, as Gunrooms go," admitted another of the escort. He did not add that under his personal supervision a harassed throng of junior Midshipmen had pent a lurid half-hour "squaring off" before their arrival.

After tea came a tour of the ship, and to those who inspect one for the first time the interior of a man-of-war is not without interest. They emerged from a hatchway on to the Quarter-deck, beneath the wicked muzzles of the after 12-inch guns: they crossed the immaculate planking and looked down to the level waters of the harbour, thirty feet below. They admired the neatly-coiled boat's falls, the trim and slightly self-conscious figure of the Officer of the Watch, and as they turned to mount the ladder that led over the turret a Signalman came on to the Quarter-deck, raising his hand to the salute as he passed through the screen-door.

"Who did that sailor salute?" inquired the Mother.

"Oh," replied her escort vaguely, "only salutin' the Quarter-deck. We all do, you know." So much for his summary of a custom that has survived from days when a crucifix overshadowing the poop required the doffing of a sailor's cap.

Then they were taken forward, past the orderly confusion of the "booms," to a round pill-box, described as the Conning Tower. with twelve-inch walls of Krupp steel, and introduced to an assortment of levers and voice-pipes, mysterious dials, and a brass-studded steering-wheel. Then up a ladder to the signal-bridge, where barefooted men, with skins tanned brick-red and telescopes under their arms, swung ceaselessly to and fro. They examined the flag-lockers--each flag rolled neatly in a bundle and stowed in a docketed compartment--the black-and-white semaphores, and the key of the mast-head flashing lamp that at night winked messages across five miles of darkness.

From then onwards that afternoon became a series of blurred impression of things mysterious and delightfully bewildering. They carried away with them memories of the swarming forecastle and batteries, where they saw the sailor-man enjoying his leisure in his own peculiar fashion. Of the six-inch breech-block that opened with a clang to show the spiral grooved bore--rifled to prevent the projectile from turning somersaults.... The younger girl wiped a foot of wet paint off the coaming of a hatch and said sweetly it didn't matter in the least. They invaded the sanctity of the wireless room, with its crackling spark and network of wires, and listened, all uncomprehending, to the petty officer in charge, as, delighted with a lay audience, he plunged into a whirl of technical explanations. And, lastly, the Mother was handed the receivers, and heard a faint intermittent buzzing that was a ship calling querulously three hundred miles away.

After that they descended to electric-lit depths, and were invited into cabins; they visited the "Slop-room" (impossible name), where they fingered serge and duck with feminine appreciation. They saw the nettings where the hammocks were stowed, and the overhead slinging space--eighteen inches to a man! And so back to the upper deck, to find the picket-boat again at the bottom of the ladder.

* * * * *

"Hasn't it been lovely!" gasped the elder girl, as they walked back to their hotel.

"Scrumptious!" assented her sister. "And _did_ you notice the boy who steered the boat that brought us back?--he had a face like a cherub looked at through a magnifying-glass!"

Meanwhile, he of the magnified cherubic countenance was rattling dice with a friend preparatory to indulging in a well-earned glass of Marsala. Outside the gunroom pantry the grimy gentleman whose sphere of duty lay in the picket-boat's stockhold sought recognition of his services in an upturned quart jug.

Which is also illegal, and contrary to the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions.

*VIII.*

*THE LEGION ON THE WALL.*

"Not now. Not now. Not yet."
--_Sea Law and Sea Power_.

The last of the Battle Squadrons filed majestically to its appointed anchorage. A snake-like flotilla of Destroyers slid in under the lee of the land and joined the parent ship; wisps of smoke east and west heralded the arrival of far-flung scouts. The great annual War-game was at an end, and the Fleet had met, with rime-crusted funnels and rust-streaked sides, to talk it over and snatch a breathing space ere returning to their wide sea-beats and patrols. Evening drew on, and the semaphores were busy waving invitations to dinner from ship to ship. Opportunities of meeting friends are none too frequent, and when they occur, are often of the briefest. So no time was lost, and a sort of "General Post" ensued among Wardrooms and Gunrooms.

In the Flagship's Wardroom dinner was over, and a haze of tobacco smoke spread among the shaded lights and glinting plate. Conversation that began with technical discussion had become personal and reminiscent. "Do you remember that time..." commenced one. His immediate listeners nodded delightedly, and sat with narrowed eyes and retrospective smiles as the narrator continued, twirling the stem of his wine-glass. Well did they recall the story, but it had to be told again for the joy of the telling, while they supplemented with a forgotten name or incident, harking back to the golden yesterday, when the world went very well indeed. The talk swung north to the Bering Sea and south to Table Bay, forging swift links with the past as it went. It would have seemed to a stranger as if the members of a club had met to discuss a common experience. And yet these men were here haphazard from a dozen ships--their club the Seven Seas, and their common experience, life, as it is to be met in the seaports of the world. As chairs were pushed from the table and the evening wore on, fresh greetings sounded on all sides: "Hullo! Old Tubby, as I live! Good Lord! How long is it since--seven--nine--my dear soul! It's ten weary years..." and so on. They were all young men, too: almost boys, some of them, with eager, excited faces, lean with hard work--worthy sons of the same grey, hard Mother.

Through the skylight came the opening bars of the "Lancers," and there was a general move on deck. The Gunroom was there already, and, two sets being formed, the dance began. Much it left in point of elegance, it is to be feared, but it was fine strenuous exercise. The last figure was reached, and on completion of the Grand-Chain, the two sets linked arms, dashed whooping across the deck, and met in an inextricable heap of arms, legs, crumpled shirt-fronts and mess-jackets.

"Oh, my aunt!" gasped an ex-International, crawling from beneath a mound of assailants, and vainly striving to adjust collar and tie. "My last boiled shirt--and it's got to last another week!"

Presently every one repaired to the Wardroom, where corks were popping from soda-water bottles, and an amateur humourist of renown sat down to the piano as the laughing crowd gathered round. A couple of bridge-tables were made up, and the players settled down with that complacent indifference to outside distraction peculiar to men who live habitually in crowded surroundings. Seated astride the chairs at one end of the mess, two teams of would-be polo-players were soon locked in conflict, table-spoons and an orange being accessories to the game.

The singer of comic songs had finished his repertoire, and the Mess turned in search of fresh distraction. "Come on, old Mouldy, what about putting up your little turn?" called out one, addressing a grave-faced officer who sat smoking on the settee. "Yes," chorussed half a dozen voices, "go on, do!" The officer addressed as "Mouldy" sat down at the piano, fingered the keys contemplatively for a moment, and then in a deep baritone voice began--

"God of our fathers, known of old,
Lord of our far-flung battle line,"

and so on to the end of the first verse. The polo-players ceased their horseplay, and leaned panting over the backs of their wooden steeds to listen. The second verse drew to a close--

"An humble and a contrite heart,"

and then the group round the singer joined in the refrain--

"Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!"

At the fourth verse the Mess clustered round the piano. The bridge-players had laid their hands down, and at the skylight overhead appeared faces and the glint of uniforms. The Gunroom started the last verse, and the rest joined--men's voices, bass and tenor, lifting the stately words in a great volume of harmony up through the skylight into the night--

"All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding calls not thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word
Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!
Amen!"

The last solemn chord died away, and a sudden silence fell upon the Mess: it was some moments before the conversation once more became general. By twos and threes the guests departed. Groups clustered at the gangways; the night was full of farewells and the hooting of picket-boats' syrens. Gradually the Mess emptied, and in the flat where the midshipmen slept silence reigned among the chests and hammocks. The Admiral's guests had also departed, but on the silent quarter-deck two tall figures walked up and down, pipes in mouth.

"I wonder why they sang that thing," said one musingly. His companion paused and stared across the water at the lights of the town. From there his gaze travelled round to the silent Fleet, line after line of twinkling anchor-lights and huge hulls looming through the darkness. "Somehow, it seemed extraordinarily appropriate, with things as they are ashore just now."

"You mean all these strikes and rioting--class-hatred--this futile discussion about armaments--brawling in Parliament.... 'Lesser breeds without the law' gradually assuming control....?"

The other nodded and turned again to the sea; as he moved, a row of miniature decorations on his jacket made a tiny clink. "Yes. And meanwhile we go on just the same, talking as little as they will let us--just working on our appointed task: holding to our tradition of 'Ready, Aye Ready!'"

"Our tradition--yes." His companion gave a little grim laugh. "D'you know the story of the last Legion left on the Wall--?" he jerked his head towards where the Pole Star hung in the starry heavens. "How Rome, sliding into Chaos, withdrew her Legions till only one was left to garrison the Wall. And it was forgotten. Rumours must have reached the fellows in that Legion of what was going on at Home: of blind folly in high places--corruption: defeat. The draggle-tailed Roman Eagle must have been a jest in the market-places of the world."

He paused, puffing thoughtfully. "You can imagine them," he continued, "falling back, tower by tower, on the centre: attacked in front and behind and on both flanks by an enemy they despised as barbarians, but who, by sheer force of numbers, must annihilate them in the end--unless Rome rallied, suppose they could have retreated--or compromised,--haggled for their skins. No one would have thought less of them for it in those days. But they had been brought up in all the brave traditions of their Empire.... When you think of it, there wasn't much left to fight for, except their proud traditions. And yet they fought to the last ... while the Roman Empire went fiddling into ruin."

Far away down the line a mast-head lamp flickered a message out of the darkness. The Fleet was resting like a tired giant; but the pin-point of light, and another that answered it on the instant a mile away, showed that its sleep was light. "But the end is not yet," concluded the speaker.

"No," replied his companion. He made a little gesture with his pipe-stem, embracing the silent battle-array stretching away into the night. "Not yet."

*IX.*

*A TITHE OF ADMIRALTY*

It was the hour preceding dinner, and a small boy in the uniform of a Naval Cadet stood on the balcony of an hotel at Dartmouth.

Earlier in the day a tremendous self-importance had possessed his soul; it was begotten primarily of brass buttons and a peaked cap, and its outward manifestation at Paddington Station had influenced a short-sighted old lady in her decision that he was a railway official of vast, if premature, responsibilities. He leaned over the balustrade and looked up harbour; beyond the scattered yachts and coal-hulks, black against the path of the sunset, lay the old _Britannia_. She was moored, this cradle of a generation's Naval destiny, where the Dart commenced to wind among green hills crowned by woods and red-brown plough lands; and as he stared, the smaller vanities of the morning passed from him.

He was barely fifteen, and his ideas were jumbled and immature, but in a confused sort of way he thought of the thousands of other boys those wooden walls had sheltered, and who, at the bidding of unknown powers, had gone down to the sea in ships.

He pictured them working their pinnaces and cutters--as he would some day--soaked and chilled by winter gales. Others departed for the Mediterranean, where, if the testimony of an aunt (who had once spent a winter at Malta) was to be accepted, life was all picnics and dances. He saw them yet farther afield, chasing slavers, patrolling pirate-infested creeks, fighting through jungle and swamp, lying stark beneath desert stars, ... and ever fresh ones came to fill the vacant places, bred for the work--even as he was to be--on the placid waters of the Dart, amid Devon coombes. It was all a little vainglorious, perhaps; and if his imagination was coloured by the periodicals and literature of boyhood, who is to blame him?

Why it was necessary for these things to be he understood vaguely, if at all. But in some dim way he realised it was part of his new heritage, a sort of brotherhood of self-immolation and hardship into which he was going to be initiated.

His thoughts went back along the path of the last few years that had followed his father's death. With a tightening of the heart-strings he saw how an Empire demands other sacrifices. How, in order that men might die to martial music, must sometimes come first an even greater heroism of self-denial. Years of thrift and contrivance, new clothes foresworn, a thousand renunciations--this had been his mother's part, that her son might in time bear his share of the Empire's burden.

She came out on to the balcony as the sun dipped behind the hills, and the woods were turning sombre, and slipped a thin arm inside his. It is rarely given to men to live worthy of the mothers that bore them; a few--a very few--are permitted to die worthy of them. Perhaps it was some dim foreknowledge of the end that thrilled him as he drew her closer.

They had dinner, and with it, because it was such a great occasion, a bottle of "Sparkling Cider," drunk out of wine-glasses to the inscrutable Future. Another boy was dining with his parents at a distant table, and at intervals throughout the meal the embryo admirals glanced at one another with furtive interest. After dinner the mother and son sat on the balcony watching the lights of the yachts twinkling across the water, and talked in low voices scarcely raised above the sound of the waves lapping along the quay. At times their heads were very close together, and, since in the star-powdered darkness there were none to see, their hands met and clung.

She accompanied him on board the following day, to be led by a grave-faced Petty Officer along spotless decks that smelt of tar and resin. She saw the chest-deck, where servants were slinging hammocks above the black-and-white painted chests--the chest-deck with its wide casement ports and rows of enamelled basins, and everywhere that smell of hemp and scrubbed woodwork.

"Number 32, you are, sir," said the Petty Officer; and as he spoke she knew the time had come when her boy was no longer hers alone.

They bade farewell by the gangway, under the indifferent eyes of a sentry, and Number 32 watched the frail figure in the waterman's boat till it was out of sight. Then he turned with a desperate longing for privacy--anywhere where he could go and blubber like a kid. But from that time onwards (with the rare exceptions of leave at home) he was never to know privacy again.

*II.*

The old _Britannia_ training consisted of four terms, each of three months' duration, during which a boy fresh from the hands of a tutor or crammer had many things to learn. He was taught to "drop everything and nip!" when called; how, when, and whom to salute. To pull an oar and sail a boat; to knot, splice, and run aloft; how to use a sextant. He learned that trigonometry and algebra were not really meaningless mental gymnastics, but a purposeful science that guided men upon trackless seas. In short, at an age when other schoolboys see their education nearing its end, he had to begin all over again, to be moulded afresh for a higher purpose.

The path of the "New" in those days was by no means strewn with roses. Jerry had to submit to strange indignities and stranger torments at the hands of Olympian "Niners" (Fourth-term Cadets). He had to accustom himself to bathe, dress and undress, to sleep and to pray, surrounded by a hundred others. There was also the business of the hammock, in and out of which he was learning to turn without dishonour.

But the conclusion of the first breathless three months found him amazingly fit and happy. His mind was stored with newly-acquired and vastly interesting knowledge. The beagles and football sweated the "callow suet" off him and gave him the endurance of a lean hound. He was fitting into the new life as a hand into a well-worn glove.

The end of his second term brought the coveted triangular badge on the right cuff that marks the Cadet Captain among his fellows. The duties (which are much the same as those of monitor or prefect) offered him his first introduction to the peculiar essence we call tact, necessary in dealing with contemporaries. About this time began his friendship with Jubbs. This young gentleman's real name was as unlike his sobriquet as anything could be; among a community of Naval Cadets this was perhaps a sufficient _raison d'etre_: anyhow none other was ever forthcoming. They earned their "Rugger" colours together as scrum and stand-off halves, and as time went on a slow friendship matured and knit between them. Their first sight of each other had been in the hotel the evening before joining. Thenceforward it pleased the power that is called Destiny to run the brief threads of their lives together to the end.

At the close of their third term they became Chief Cadet Captains, and Jubbs' papa, a long, lean baronet with a beak-like nose, came down to attend the prize-giving. At the conclusion of the ceremony he was piloted to the Canteen, where the Cadet Captains were pleased to "stodge" at his expense, while he--as one who sits at meat among the gods--trumpeted his satisfaction into a flaring bandana handkerchief.

At the end of the fourth and last term Jerry's mother came down to see the last prize-giving, and thus was present when her son received the King's Medal. For one never-to-be-forgotten moment she watched him turn from the dais and come towards her, erect and rather pale, with compressed lips. But the cheering broke from the throats of three hundred inveterate hero-worshippers like a tempest, and then a mist hid him from her sight.

*III.*

A P. & O. liner, a few months later, carried Jerry and Jubbs to China. During the voyage they came in contact with a hitherto unrecognised factor in life, and found themselves faced with unforeseen perplexities. One evening, as they leaned over the rail experimenting gingerly with two cigars, Jubbs unburdened himself. "... Besides, they jaw such awful rot," was his final summary of feminine allurements. Jerry nodded, tranquil-eyed. "I know. I told Mrs What's-her-name--that woman with the ear-rings--that I'd got one mother already; and as I'm going to China, and she's going to India, I didn't see the use of being tremendous friends. 'Sides, she's as old as the hills."

Jerry! Jerry! The lady in question was barely thirty, even if she had an unaccountable partiality for taking him into the bows to watch the moon rise over the Indian Ocean.

They joined their ship at Hong-Kong, and found themselves members of a crowded, cockroach-haunted gunroom, where every one was on the best of terms with every one else, and there reigned a communism undreamed of in their philosophy. It is said that in those days of stress and novelty, among unknown faces and unfamiliar surroundings, their friendship bound them in ever-closer ties. The Sub-Lieutenant, when occasion arose for the chastisement of one, thrashed the other out of sheer pity. They kept watch, took in signal exercise, went ashore, shot snipe, picnicked and went through their multifarious duties generally within hail of one another. Till at length Jerry's call of "Jubbs!" and Jubbs' unfailing "Coming!" brought half-wistful smiles to older eyes.

The Boxer rising broke out like a sudden flame, and their letters home, those voluminous and ill-spelt missives that meant so much to the recipients, announced the momentous tidings. Jerry was landing in charge of a maxim gun; Jubbs was to be aide-de-camp to the Commander. Their whites were being dyed a warlike tint of khaki, and they were being sent up to take part in the defence of Tientsin. For a while silence, then at last a letter scrawled in pencil on some provision wrappers. Jerry boasted a three-weeks' growth of stubble, and had killed several peculiarly ferocious Boxer bravos. They were looking forward to being moved up to Peking for the relief of the Legations, and there was practically no danger as long as a fellow took reasonable precautions. He had not seen Jubbs for some time, but expected to meet him before long.

As a matter of fact, they came together the next afternoon, and their meeting-place was a Joss-house that had been converted into a temporary field-hospital. Jerry was the first to arrive, "in the bight of a canvas trough"--Jerry, very white and quiet, a purple-brown stain spreading over his dusty tunic and a bullet lodged somewhere near the base of the spine. Towards sunset he became conscious, and the Red Cross nursing sister supported his head while he drank tepid water from a tin mug. "'Sparkling Cider,'" he whispered weakly, "for luck, ... thank you, mummie darling."

The firing outside was becoming intermittent and gradually growing more distant, when the patch of dusty sunlight in the doorway was darkened by a fresh arrival. The stretcher party laid him on the bed next to Jerry and departed. The Surgeon made a brief examination, and as he straightened up, met the pitying eyes of the Red Cross sister. He shook his head.

"The poor children," she whispered. Outside there came a sudden renewal of firing and the spiteful stammer of a maxim. It died away, and there was silence, broken by the buzzing of flies in the doorway and the sound of some one fighting for his breath. In the heavy air the sickly smell of iodoform mingled with the odours of departed joss-sticks and sun-baked earth.

Suddenly, from a bed in the shadows, a weak voice spoke--

"Jubbs!" said Jerry.

A moment's pause, while the motionless figure in the next bed gathered energy for a last effort of speech. Then--

"Coming!" said Jubbs.

*X.*

*THE CHOSEN FOUR.*

The Admiral, it was rumoured, had said, "Let there be Signal Midshipmen." Wherefore the Flag-Lieutenant communed with the Commander, who sent for the Senior Midshipman.

The Senior Midshipman responded to the summons with an alacrity that hinted at a conscience not wholly void of offence.

"Let there be Signal Midshipmen," said the Commander, or words to that effect, "in four watches."

"Aye, aye, sir," said the Senior Midshipman. He emerged from the Commander's cabin and breathed deeply, as one who had passed unscathed through a grave crisis. Apparently that small matter of the picket-boat's damaged stem-piece had been overlooked.

Ere he was out of earshot, however, the Commander spoke again. "By the way," added the Arbiter of his little destinies, "I don't want to see your name in the leave-book again until the picket-boat is repaired."

"Aye, aye, sir," repeated the Senior Midshipman. He descended to the Gunroom, where, it being "make-and-mend" afternoon, his brethren were wrapped in guileless slumber. An 'Inman's Nautical Tables,' lying handy on the table, described a parabola through the air, and, striking a prominent portion of the nearest sleeper's anatomy, ricochetted into his neighbour's face. The two sat up, glowered suspiciously at each other for an instant, and joined battle. The shock of their conflict overturned a form, and two more recumbent figures awoke wrathfully to "life and power and thought."

"You four," announced the Senior Midshipman calmly, when the uproar had subsided, "will take on signal duty from to-morrow morning." Then, having satisfactorily discharged the duty imposed upon him, he settled himself to slumber on the settee.

Three of the four, to whom this announcement was made gasped and were silent. _Signals_! Under the very eye of the Admiral! Each one saw himself an embryo Flag-Lieutenant.... One even made a little prophetic motion with his left arm, as though irked by the aiguilette that in fancy already encircled it. The fourth alone spoke---

"Crikey!" he muttered, "an' my only decent pair of breeches are in the scran-bag"[#]

[#] The "scran-bag" is the receptacle for articles of clothing, &c., left lying about at First Lieutenant's rounds in the morning. Gear thus impounded can be redeemed once a week by payment of a bar of soap.

* * * * *

Men say that with the passing of "Masts and Yards" the romance of the Naval Service died. This is for those to judge who have seen a fleet of modern battleships flung plunging from one complex formation to another at the dip of a "wisp of coloured bunting," and have watched the stutter of a speck of light, as unseen ships talk across leagues of darkness.

The fascination of a game only partly understood, yet ever hinting vast possibilities, seized upon the minds of the Chosen Four. Morse and semaphore of course they knew, and the crude translations of the flags were also familiar enough. But the inner mysteries of the science (and in these days it is a very science) had not as yet unfolded themselves.

At intervals the Flag-Lieutenant would summon them to his cabin, where, with the aid of the Signal Books and little oblong pieces of brass, he demonstrated the working of a Fleet from the signal point of view, and how a mistake in the position of a flag in the hoist might result in chaos--and worse.

The Chosen Four sat wide-eyed at his feet amid cigarette ash and the shattered fragments of the Third Commandment.

Harbour watch-keeping perfected their semaphore and Morse, till by ceaseless practice they could read general signals flashed at a speed that to the untrained eye is merely a bewildering flicker. As time wore on they began to acquire the almost uncanny powers of observation common to the lynx-eyed men around them on the bridge.

Each ship in a Fleet is addressed by hoisting that ship's numeral pendants. The ship thus addressed hoists an answering pendant in reply. At intervals all through the day the Signal Yeoman of the Watch would suddenly snap his glass to his eye, pause an instant as the wind unfurled a distant flutter of bunting at some ship's yard-arm, and then jump for the halyard that hoisted the answering pendant. The smartness of a ship's signal-bridge is the smartness of that ship, and in consequence this is a game into which the stimulus of competition enters, Signal Boatswain, Midshipmen, and Yeomen vying with each other to be the first to give the shout, "Up Answer!"

One night at the Junior Officers' Club one of the Chosen Four encountered another of his ilk from a different ship: and, since at eighteen (if you are ever to become anything) shop is a right and necessary topic of conversation, they fell to discussing their respective bridges.

Presently said he of the other ship, waxing pot-valiant by reason of Marsala, "I'll bet you a dinner ashore we'll show your pendants before the week's up."

Now should a ship fail to see a signal made to her, other ships present can be very offensive by hoisting the pendants of the ship addressed at mast-head and yard-arms. This is to hold the delinquent up as an object of scorn and derision to the Fleet, and is a fate more dreaded by right-minded signalmen than the Plagues of Egypt.

"An' I'll give you fifteen seconds' grace," added the speaker.

The challenge was accepted, and for five sweltering days--it was summer at Malta--the two ships watched each other from sunrise till dark, the pendants "bent" to the halyards in readiness. On the evening of the sixth day a thunderstorm that had been brewing all the afternoon burst in a torrential downpour over the harbour. At that instant a signal crept to the flagship's yard-arm.

On board the ship addressed the Midshipman had dashed for the shelter of the bridge-house, the Yeoman was struggling into an oilskin, and the Second Hand had stepped into the lee of a search-light.

"Stand by--thirteen, fourteen..." counted the small figure standing in the driving rain on the flagship's bridge, watch in hand: "fifteen, Hoist!" Then for the first time in his short career he deserted his post. Clattering pell-mell down the ladders to the Gunroom, where the remainder of the Chosen Four were playing cut-throat whist, he flung back the drab-coloured curtain.

"Got him!" he shouted triumphantly. "By the aching stomach, I had him _cold_!"

* * * * *

I have said that of the Chosen Four--three saw visions, while the other bewailed the inaccessibility till the end of the week of his best trousers. Now of the four he alone came to wear the aiguilettes of a Flag-Lieutenant, and to-day the mysteries of Tactics, Fleet Organisation and Formation, are to him as an open book. A Baker Street photographer once had the temerity to display his photograph in the window, in uniform, tinted. Passing by, I heard a woman gush foolishly to her companion, "Oh, isn't he a darling!"

The relevancy of this anon.

Another forsook the bunting-draped path of Signals to climb to fame through the smoke of many battle practices. He now adds after his rank the cryptic initial (G). The third married an heiress and her relations, and retired. He has several children and is reported to have lost interest in the Service.

The remaining one, when I saw him last, had also lost interest in the Service. He was lying in a curiously crumpled heap across the stakes of a jungle stockade, his empty revolver dangling by the lanyard round his neck. A handful of his men fought like demons to recover possession of the mutilated body.

"Sure," said a bearded Petty Officer, half apologetically, wiping his cutlass with a tussock of grass, "we couldn't lave him there--an' himself somewan's darlin', likely..."

Sailors are inveterate sentimentalists.

*XI.*

*A COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY.*

The Junior Watch-keeper entered the Wardroom and rang the bell with an air of gloomy mystery.

"The Russians are coming," he announced. "Cocktail, please, waiter."

The Young Doctor looked up from the year-old 'Bradshaw' with which he was wont to enliven moments of depression by arranging mythical week-ends at friends' houses in various parts of England. It was a dreary amusement, and, conducted off the coast of Russian Tartary, stamped him as the possessor of no small imaginative powers.

"Who said so?"

"Skipper: three Russian Destroyers, an' we're to invite them to dinner, an' there's nothing to eat." The Junior Watch-keeper managed the affairs of the Mess for that quarter.

"Those chaps feed like fighting-cocks," observed the Assistant Paymaster. "Let's send for the Messman."

The Junior Watch-keeper applied himself to his cocktail in silence, and the Celestial bandit who, in consideration of a monthly levy of thirty dollars per head, starved or poisoned them according to his whim, appeared in the doorway. The Mess broached the subject with quailing hearts; it was proposed to dine the representatives of a foreign Power. Could he for once rise to the occasion and produce a suitable repast?

The Oriental summed up the situation with impassive brevity--

"No can do."

"Oh, rot!" said the Junior Watch-keeper, who up to this juncture had been gracefully pursuing the olive at the bottom of his glass with the tip of his tongue. "Pull your socks up, Ah Chee, an' think of something."

The Messman brooded darkly. "S'pose you go shore-side, catchee salmon, catchee snipe, pl'aps can do."

"By Jove, yes," said the A.P., rising and walking to the scuttle. "We never thought of that. But it's a God-forsaken place--look at it."

The ship was anchored in a little bay off the mouth of a shallow river. On one side the ground rose abruptly to a bleak promontory, and on the other stretched a waste of sand-dunes. Inland not a tree or vestige of human habitation broke the dreary expanse of plain, which was covered with stunted bushes and rolled away to a range of low hills in the distance.

"All very fine to talk about salmon," said the Young Doctor, "but there isn't a rod in the ship, and no one could use it if there was."

"Make one," suggested the Junior Watchkeeper, with cheerful resource begotten of cocktails.

"But flies--? A rod's no good without flies and things."

"I'll make a spinner. They won't take a fly in these parts, a fellow told me at Shanghai. 'Sides, we can't chuck a fly."

The Carpenter was summoned to the conclave, and the result of his labours was a formidable spar, resembling more closely a hop-pole than a salmon-rod, some fourteen feet in length.

"Why not take the lower boom and have done with it?" inquired the Young Doctor, who had abandoned 'Bradshaw' in favour of his gun-case, and was dabbling with awful joy in oil and cotton-waste.

The Junior Watch-keeper vouched no reply. His was the spirit of the "Compleat Angler," and armed with a nippers and clasp-knife he wrestled grimly with the lid of a tobacco-tin. Half an hour's toil, conducted in profane silence, resulted in a triangular object which, embellished with red bunting and bristling with hooks, he passed round for the startled consideration of the Mess.

"Well," admitted the Young Doctor, with the air of one generously conceding a debatable point, "you _might_ catch the bottom, with a certain amount of luck, but--" a well-flung cushion cut short further criticism, and the Committee of Supplies adjourned.

The rising sun next morning beheld three depressed-looking figures disembarking on the sandy beach. The Junior Watch-keeper had fashioned a wondrous reel out of pieces of a cigar-box, and the Boatswain had provided about thirty fathoms of mackrel-line and some thin wire. The A.P. essayed a joke about using the rod as a flagstaff to commemorate their landing, but it lacked savour--as indeed jests do in the pale light of dawn. Wreaths of mist hung over the river, swirling between sandy banks, leaden-grey and noiseless. A few gulls wheeled overhead, protesting at the invasion with dismal cries, and the waves broke whispering along the beach in an arc of foam.

The three adventurers gazed despondently at the sand-dunes, the receding stern of the boat, and finally each other's sleepy, unshaven faces. The Young Doctor broke suddenly into a feeble cackle of laughter. An unfamiliar chord of memory vibrated, and with it came a vision of a certain coffee-stall outside Charing Cross Station and the Junior Watch-keeper's wan face surmounted by a battered opera-hat. "Jove!" he murmured. "... Reminds me ... Covent Garden Ball...!"

The A.P. had toiled to the top of an adjacent mound, from which, like Moses of old, he "surveyed the landscape o'er." "Come on," he shouted valiantly.

"Well," said the Junior Watch-keeper, "_Vive le sport_! If there were no fools there'd be no fun." He shouldered his strange impedimenta and joined the A.P.

Away to their left a glint of water showed intermittently as the river wound between clumps of low bushes and hillocks. Patches of level ground covered with reeds and coarse grass fought with the sand-dunes, and stretched away in dreary perspective to the hills. Briefly they arranged their plan of campaign: the Junior Watch-keeper was to fish up-stream, the other two meeting him about five miles inland in a couple of hours' time. They separated, and the Junior Watchkeeper dipped behind a rise and was lost to view.

It is not recorded what exactly the snipe were doing that day. The Young Doctor had it that they were "taking a day off," the A.P. that they had struck the wrong part of the country. But the melancholy fact remains that two hours later they sat down to share their sandwiches with empty bags and clean barrels. A faint shout from out of the distance started them again into activity.

"He's fallen in," suggested the Young Doctor with cheerful promptitude.

"Sat on the hook, more likely." There was grim relish in the A.P.'s tone. Neither was prepared for the spectacle that met their astonished eyes when they reached the river.

Standing on a partly submerged sand-bank, in the middle of the stream, dripping wet and "full of strange oaths," was the Junior Watchkeeper. The point of his rod was agitated like the staff of a Morse signaller's flag, while a smother of foam and occasional glimpses of a silver belly twenty yards up-stream testified that the age of miracles had not yet passed.

"Play him, you fool!" yelled the A.P.

"Can't," wailed the Junior Watch-keeper, battling with the rod. "The reel's jammed!"

"Look out, then!" shouted the Young Doctor, and the safety-catch of his gun snapped. "Let me have a shot----"

But the Junior Watch-keeper had abandoned his rod. Seizing the stout line in his fingers, his feet braced in the yielding sand, shamelessly he hauled the lordly fish, fighting, to his feet. "Come on," he spluttered, "bear a hand, you blokes!" The "blokes" rushed into the shallows, and together they floundered amid a tangle of line and showers of spray, grabbing for its gills. Eventually it was flung ashore, and the _coup de grace_ administered with the butt-end of the A.P.'s gun.

"Thirty pounds, if it's an ounce," gasped the Junior Watch-keeper, wringing the water out of his trousers. They stood and surveyed it in amazed silence, struck dumb with the wonder of the thing. Contrasted with the salmon as they knew it--decorated with sprigs of fennel on a fishmonger's slab--it looked an uncouth creature, with an underhung jaw and a curiously arched back. The A.P. prodded it suspiciously with the toe of his boot.

"'S'pose it's all right--eh? Clean run, an' all the rest of it?"

"Course it is," replied the Junior Watchkeeper indignantly. He knew no more about its condition than the other two, but his was all the pride of capture. He relieved the tedium of the return journey with tales of wondrous salmon that lurked in pools beneath the bank; unmoved they listened to outrageous yarns of still larger salmon that swam in open-mouthed pursuit of the home-made spinner, jostling each other by reason of their numbers. The Junior Watch-keeper had set out that morning an honourable man, who had never angled for anything larger than a stickleback in his life. He returned at noon hugging a thirty-pound salmon, his mouth speaking vanity and lies.

"An' I nearly shot the damn thing," sighed the Young Doctor at the close of the recital.

"What _did_ you shoot, by the way?" asked the Junior Watch-keeper loftily.

"Nothing," was the curt reply, and his cup of happiness ran over.

* * * * *

The principal guest of the evening eyed a generous helping of salmon that was placed in front of him, and turned to his neighbour. "Pardon me," he said courteously, "but does this fish happen to have been caught in any of the local rivers?"

All eyes turned to the Junior Watchkeeper, who, prevented by a mouthful from replying, sat breathing heavily through his nose. "Because if it was," went on the Russian, "I think I ought to warn you--at the risk of giving you offence--that local salmon are poisonous. That is, unfit for human consumption."

Followed an awful silence. The Young Doctor broke it. "How interesting," he observed feebly; "but why?"

The Russian shook his head. "I don't really know. And I hope you will forgive me for assuring you that they are dangerous to the health."

"Oh," said the captor faintly, "I've eaten my whack!"

The remainder of the dinner was not, gastronomically speaking, a success. The Mess and their guests eyed one another at intervals with furtive apprehension, much as Cleopatra's poisoned slaves must have awaited the appearance of each other's symptoms. But it was not until some hours later that the Young Doctor was awakened by some one calling his name aloud. He sat up in his bunk and listened, and presently it was borne upon him that somewhere, in the stillness of the night, watches, the Junior Watch-keeper was dreeing his weird.

*XII.*

*THAT WHICH REMAINED.*

Oddly enough, no record exists of the origin of his nickname. "Periwinkle" he had been all through crammer and _Britannia_ days. As senior Signal Midshipman of the Mediterranean Flagship, he was still "The Periwinkle," small for his years, skinny as a weasel, with straight black hair, and grey eyes set wide apart in a brown face; the eyelashes, black and short, grew very close together, which gave him the perpetual appearance of having recently coaled ship and neglected to clean the dust from his eyes.

The Signal Midshipmen of a fleet, especially the Mediterranean Fleet of those days, were essentially keen on their "job." The nature of the work and inter-ship rivalry provided for that. But with the Periwinkle, Signals were more than a mere "job." They formed his creed and recreation: the flag-lockers were tarpaulin-covered shrines; the semaphores spoke oracles by day as did the flashing lamps by night. And the high priest of these mysteries was the Flag-Lieutenant, a Rugby International and right good fellow withal, but, to the Periwinkle, a very god who walked among men.

To understand something of his hero-worship you would need to have been on the bridge when the Fleet put out to sea for tactics. It was sufficient for the Periwinkle to watch this immaculate, imperturbable being snap out a string of signals apparently from memory, as he so often did, while hoist after hoist of flags leaped from the lockers and sped skywards, and the bridge was a whirl of bunting. Even the Admiral, who spoke so little and saw so much, was in danger of becoming a mere puppet in the boy's sight.

But there was more than this to encourage his ardour. The Flag-Lieutenant, recognising the material of a signalman of unusual promise, would invite the Periwinkle to his cabin after dinner and unfold, with the aid of printed diagrams and little brass oblongs representing ships, the tactical and strategical mysteries of his craft. There was one unforgettable evening, too, when the Periwinkle was bidden to dinner ashore at the Malta Club. The dinner was followed by a dance, whereat, in further token of esteem, the Flag-Lieutenant introduced him to a lady of surpassing loveliness--The Fairest (the Periwinkle was given to understand) of All the Pippins.

The spring gave place to summer, and the island became a glaring wilderness of sun-baked rock. For obscure reasons of policy the Fleet remained at Malta instead of departing on its usual cruise, and week after week the sun blazed pitilessly down on the awnings of the anchored ships. Week by week the Periwinkle grew more brown and angular, and lost a little more of his wiry activity. The frequent stampedes up and down ladders with signals for the Admiral sent him into a lather like a nervous horse; at the end of a watch his hair was wet with perspiration and his whites hung clammily on his meagre limbs. After a while, too, he began to find the glare tell, and to ease the aching of his eyes, had sometimes to shift the telescope from one eye to the other in the middle of a signal. As a matter of fact, there was no necessity for him to read signals at all: that was part of the signalman's duty. And if he had chosen to be more leisurely in his ascent and descent of ladders, no one would have called him to account. But his zeal was a flame within him, and terror lest he earned a rebuke from the Flag-Lieutenant for lack of smartness, lent wings to his tired heels.

It was August when the Flag-Lieutenant sought out the Fleet Surgeon in the Wardroom after dinner, and broached the subject of the Periwinkle.

"P.M.O., I wish you'd have a look at that shrimp; he's knocking himself up in this heat. He swears he's all right, but he looks fit for nothing but hospital."

So the Periwinkle was summoned to the Fleet Surgeon's cabin. Vehemently he asserted that he had never felt better in his life, and the most the fatherly old Irishman could extort from him was the admission that he had not been sleeping particularly well. As a matter of fact he had not slept for three nights past; but fear lest he should be "put on the list" forbade his admitting either this or the shooting pain behind his eyes, which by now was almost continual. The outcome of the interview, however, was an order to turn in forthwith. Next morning the Periwinkle was ignominiously hoisted over the side in a cot--loudly protesting at the indignity of not even being allowed to walk--en route for Bighi Hospital as a fever patient.

*II.*

The news of the world is transmitted to Naval Stations abroad by cable, and promulgated by means of Wireless Telegraphy to ships cruising or out of reach of visual signalling. At Malta the news is distributed to ships present in harbour by semaphore from the Castile, an eminence above the town of Valletta, commanding the Grand Harbour and nearly opposite the Naval Hospital.

One morning a group of convalescents were sunning themselves on the balcony of the hospital, and one, watching the life of the harbour through a telescope, suddenly exclaimed, "Stand by! They're going to make the Reuter Telegram. I wonder how the Navy got on at Lords."

"It's hopeless trying to read it," said another, "they make it at such a beastly rate."

The Periwinkle, fuming in bed in an adjacent ward, overheard the speaker. In a second he was on his feet and at the open window, a tousled-haired object in striped pyjamas, crinkling his eyes in the glare. "I can read it, sir; lend me the glass."

"You ought to be in bed, my son. Haven't you got Malta Fever?"

"It's very slight," replied the Periwinkle--as indeed it was,--"and I'm quite as warm out here as in bed. May I borrow your glass?"

He took the telescope and steadied it against a pillar. The distant semaphore began waving, and the group of convalescents settled down to listen. But no sound came from the boy. He was standing with the eye-piece held to his right eye, motionless as a statue. A light wind fluttered the gaudy pyjamas, and their owner lowered the glass with a little frown, half-puzzled, half-irritated.

"I--it's--there's something wrong--" he began, and abruptly put the glass to his left eye. "Ah, that's better...." He commenced reading, but in a minute or two his voice faltered and trailed off into silence. He changed the glass to his right, and back to his left eye. Then, lowering it, turned a white scared face to the seated group. "I'm afraid I can't read any more," he said in a curiously dry voice; "I--it hurts my eyes."

He returned the glass to its owner and hopped back into bed, where he sat with the clothes drawn up under his chin, sweating lightly.

After a while he closed his left eye and looked cautiously round the room. The tops of objects appeared indistinctly out of a grey mist. It was like looking at a partly fogged negative. He closed his right eye and repeated the process with the other. His field of vision was clear then, except for a speck of grey fog that hung threateningly in the upper left-hand corner.

By dinner-time he could see nothing with the right eye, and the fog had closed on half the left eye's vision.

At tea-time he called the Sister on duty--

"My eyes--hurt ... frightfully." Thus the Periwinkle, striving to hedge with Destiny.

"Do they?" sympathised the Sister. "I'll tell the Surgeon when he comes round to-night, and he'll give you something for them. I shouldn't read for the present if I were you."

The Periwinkle smiled grimly, as if she had made a joke, and lay back, every nerve in his body strung to breaking-point.

"Can't see, eh?" The visiting Surgeon who leaned over his bed a few hours later looked at him from under puzzled brows. "Can't see--d'you mean...." He picked up an illustrated paper, holding it about a yard away, and pointed to a word in block type: "What's this word?"

The Periwinkle stared past him with a face like a flint. "I can't see the paper. I can't see you ... or the room, or--or--anything.... I'm blind." His voice trembled.

To the terror by night that followed was added physical pain past anything he had experienced or imagined in his short life. It almost amazed him that anything could hurt so much and not rob him of consciousness. The next room held a sufferer who raved in delirium: cursing, praying, and shrieking alternately. The tortured voice rose in the stillness of the night to a howl, and the Periwinkle set his teeth grimly. He was not alone in torment, but his was still the power to meet it like a man.

By the end of a week the pain had left him. At intervals during this period he was guided to a dark room--for the matter of that, all rooms were dark to him--and unseen beings bandied strange technicalities about his ears. "Optic neuritis ... retrobulbar ... atrophy." The words meant nothing to the boy, and their meaning mattered less. For nothing, they told him, could give him back his sight. After that they left him alone, to wait with what patience he might until the next P. & O. steamer passed through.