Chapter V: Part TWO (2)

Of course, as the time drew near, and we had rehearsed and drilled to the last gasp of preparedness, others were added to the complement. We had a Padre, a bullet-headed athlete, who before the war was the parson of a roaring miners' camp in the North. Not the wife-beater's terror of the Sunday periodicals to look at, though--a quiet, friendly little chap, with a way of blinking when he talked, as though the sun was in his eyes. But one night in the Mess when we were having a scrap to keep our spirits up and help our digestions, he picked me up and threw my twelve stone about like a rag doll.

Jock Macrae was our P.M.O., with two assistants fresh from some hospital. For a man who was no despiser of whisky he had the most iron nerve and steadiest hand of any "butcher" I've met. I have wondered since how many torn and bloody bundles of humanity owe their lives to his imperturbable pluck and skill. He brought a banjo with him, and night after night he would sit cross-legged on the deck, plucking at the catgut with those long surgical fingers of his, and sing old Jacobean ballads to the moon.

The blockships were moored not far away from us, and we organised concerts and dinners that will always remain vivid in my memory as the gayest entertainments of the kind I have ever participated in.

I saw little of Mouldy or Milsom during the training period. The former was coaching his braves in the gentle art of demolishing things ashore at the Base, and the latter was at Headquarters introducing his band of warriors to the inner mysteries of bomb-throwing, flame projecting, and similar cults. Once or twice I went over to confer with them separately, and found that, by a curious succession of accidents, they had never met each other.

"Went over twice to see that Marine bloke," grumbled Mouldy, seated on a case of explosives and measuring off some fuse, "and blowed if he wasn't in Town each time, havin' a frolic; an' here are we sweatin' our guts out..." He launched into a brief description of the activities of his disciples during the past month.

Milsom had a similar grievance. "What's the bird's name--the demobilisation expert?" he inquired. "Jakes? Well, I went over to look him up t'other day; I've never met him, and I thought that, as we were going over the bags together, we might meet and have a chin-wag. Of course, the day I chose to toil over to the Base he had gone afloat to try some experiments somewhere, so I came back none the wiser."

"You'll meet as soon as they transfer the forces on board us," I said.

I saw Milsom once more before they all took up their quarters on board. It was in Town, and I had gone up for the last time to set a few private affairs straight. I don't worry my solicitor much, and I think he was genuinely concerned at my "clewing up" my affairs so thoroughly. Anyhow, when the business was over he insisted on taking me to lunch "somewhere cheerful," as he put it. He thought, I suppose, that I was getting morbid.

We lunched at a large crowded restaurant full of red-tabbed soldiers and pretty women smoking cigarettes. I'd rather have gone to the club, but old Addison was all for this place. "Brighten you up, my boy," he said, pouring out the champagne. It was at that moment I saw Milsom. It wasn't so much seeing him there that surprised me as the glimpse I got of his companion's profile. It was Miss Mayne, and judging by the angle at which Milsom's head was inclined towards her, and the grave intentness with which she was listening to what he had to say, they appeared to know each other pretty well. They had finished luncheon, and she was aimlessly stirring her untasted coffee and answering Milsom in rare monosyllables, her eyes on her cup. Altogether, they didn't appear to be having a particularly gay time, and in a little while they rose and threaded their way side by side out of the babbling overheated room and were lost to view.

10

I had completed everything I came up to London to do by 4 P.M., and found on looking up a timetable at the club that I had just time to get to the station and catch a train back to the Base. I got to the terminus with a few minutes to spare, and on going to the bookstall to buy something to read I saw a familiar figure standing beside the stall turning the pages of a magazine. It was a Commander of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, a tough old yachtsman called Armitage. I did not know him well, but I had heard a good deal about him from Thorogood. He was well over fifty and was, I believe, a very rich man. Yet he spent the first three years of the war slamming about in the North Sea, and he was now stationed at the Base in charge of the Armed Motor Launches.

He nodded a greeting at me and gathered a bundle of papers. "Going down by this train?" he said. "Let's find a carriage together. I'd like to have a yarn with you."

As luck would have it, we got a carriage to ourselves, and after we had started and Armitage had got a gigantic bulldog pipe in full blast, he broached the topic that was uppermost in the minds of all of us those days.

"It's this blockship business that's been worrying me," he said. "Even with the crews cut down to the bare minimum and disembarking surplus steaming parties before they get across, there'll be an awful lot of men on board when they sink themselves."

"Yes," I said; "but they've got boats. They'll just have to pull across the harbour under cover of your smoke screen"--the motor launches were detailed to lay the smoke screen inshore--"and the Destroyers will pick up the boats outside."

Armitage nodded and puffed his enormous pipe. "That's all right as long as the wind holds. But supposing the wind shifts and blows the harbour clear of smoke?"

I was silent. We all knew there was a possibility of such a thing happening, but that had been taken into consideration by the gallant lads who had volunteered for the job.

"I saw the Admiral this morning," continued Armitage, "after talking it over with some of my boys. I told him six motor launches would volunteer to go inside the harbour and bring off the blockships' crews."

I stared at him. "But..." I said, "have you seen the photographs of the place? There's a machine-gun about every two yards round the harbour, to say nothing of any destroyers there may be moored alongside the Mole. You'll get smothered with gunfire at point-blank range before the blockships are abandoned."

"Oh!" he said, "I'm not making out it's a joy-ride. Thirty years ago I might have laughed at it. Remember," he said, pointing the stem of his pipe at me. "I'm not making a proposal that I'm not going to see through myself. I'm going to lead the boats in. But I feel that it would be wrong not to have a try at saving some of those gallant children's lives. Why," he went on, "I might have had a son there----" He broke off and was silent for a moment, puffing hard as if he were laying one of his own defensive smoke screens.

"We're the R.N.V.R.," he said. "Remember that. We want to show the Navy what we're good for. The R.N.V.R.!" he repeated. "Lord! I could tell you tales of the old days. The _Buzzard_----"

He laughed, a little hard laugh without any mirth in it.

We were silent for a while after that. My brain was busy with this new development of the affair, and I was beginning to see all manner of heroic possibilities in the proposal.

"When a man gets to my age," continued Armitage presently, "he sees things more clearly somehow--the things that matter and things that don't. You get down to bedrock. Money! I know something about that commodity, and just how much happiness you can buy with it." He made a little movement with an empty hand. "Hope makes for two-thirds of the happiness of life: hoping for something you believe God'll be good enough to give you--something you think you've lived clean enough to earn. Maybe you get it, maybe you don't. But you just go on hoping something, you know." He looked at me with patient, steadfast eyes. "I want to be of some use to somebody before my number goes up. And if I bring back to his lover some boy who might otherwise have been buried by a German funeral party, perhaps I shan't altogether have lived in vain.

"'A little hope that when we die
We reap our sowing, so--good-bye!"

he quoted, smiling. And I thought his smile was as pathetic as his words.

11

The storming and demolition parties came on board one lovely sunny morning--the sort of day that makes you want to forget there's a war. They were two of the finest bodies of men I've ever set eyes upon, and as I watched them disencumbering themselves of their arms and accoutrements along the upper deck, laughing and joking among themselves, it occurred to me that if blood must be the price of Admiralty, we were going to pay full measure of our best.

We had a sort of informal Council of War in the Wardroom during the morning, and the Mess was crowded to the limits of its capacity with Subalterns and Lieutenants, smoking and talking nineteen to the dozen. Into that Dutch Parliament presently strolled Mouldy Jakes, and stood a moment in the doorway. "My word," he ejaculated, "who wouldn't sell his little farm and go to sea--eh, boys? Anybody got a drink to give the Officer in Charge of the demolition party?" Someone handed him a cocktail and his lugubrious face brightened. It then occurred to me that he and Milsom had not yet met, and I rose from my seat on the edge of the table to find the latter in the crowd. I discovered him standing upright by the door staring at Mouldy with one of his odd, inscrutable smiles, and it struck me, I remember, that he looked unusually white. I introduced him and left him yarning over a drink.

We half expected to get our eagerly awaited signal that night. The factors of weather, wind and sea and visibility on which the whole business depended were favourable enough at noon. Every soul committed to the venture was aboard and the motley force was assembled with steam raised. Somewhere to the northward of us I knew the supporting forces, big ships, destroyers, motor launches, and coastal motor boats were fretting at the leash, and then, just when our hopes were at their highest, the wind veered and a nasty sea got up. We banked our fires for the night, and for the first time for many a long day we found we had leisure to think and talk of other things. I remember walking up and down the bridge that night in the windy darkness with the sparks flying from my pipe, and wondering what Beth thought about it all, and whether she was glad.... And presently a form loomed up out of the darkness and Milsom fell into step beside me. I had left him playing poker in the Wardroom, and was rather surprised to see him. We paced up and down in silence for a while, and I knew and liked him so well that he hardly interrupted my train of thought.

"Bill," he said presently, "this is going to be a hell of a scrap. I thought the Lancashire Landing was warm work, but I guess this'll knock it silly."

I grunted assent, and for a while he went on to talk about the show; how he and Mouldy were going to lead two rushes simultaneously, and his dispositions for his machine-gun sections and bombing parties, and while he talked his cigar glowed red in the darkness. As I've said, I was rather a long way off in my thoughts and wasn't listening to him properly.

"... And we'll light such a candle, Master Ridley, as by God's Grace----" he broke off, soberly. Down in the forecastle a gramophone was humming the refrain of a popular song, and the sound floated up to us on the wind. It was somehow familiar to me, and I connected it with laughter and women's voices.... Somewhere aft a soda-water bottle popped as the cork was drawn. I remembered then. The orchestra had been playing it the day I lunched with Addison at that restaurant and I'd seen Milsom.... The incident had gone clean out of my mind.

"By the way," I said, "I forgot till this minute, but something's reminded me; that girl we travelled up with in the train that day--Miss Mayne?"

"Yes," said Milsom; "what about her?"

"I didn't know you knew her."

Milsom had got out of step; he shuffled his feet and picked it up again before replying.

"Didn't you?" he said, and glanced sideways at me. "Yes," he went on, after a pause, "we got to know each other rather well. But how did you----"

I told him about the luncheon at that restaurant, and how I had seen them. "Soj," I said, "did you ever ask her who that--that fellow was?"

Milsom was silent for a moment. "No," he replied presently. "I never asked her what his name was." We walked the length of the bridge before he spoke again. "She told me the story, though; rather a pitiful little tale. She was a governess, it seems. No people: orphan. Very little money, and what there was she gave to an only brother to keep him in the Guards. Father's old regiment, don't you know. Brother was killed and she eventually learned shorthand and took on that job at the Admiralty. Thought she ought to do war work. But it was while she was a governess she met this--er--naval officer, somewhere in the country."

"Naval officer, was he?" I interrupted.

"Yes, and she--I think she got fond of him.... and she thought he cared for her ... but they had a row.... It sounds as if he was that sort of fellow who would make a mess of it. Anyhow, he mucked up the whole business and went back to sea and never wrote again ... or anything." Milsom pitched the glowing stump of his cigar overboard. "And he'll never have her now." There was a hard note in my companion's voice I'd never heard there before.

I reflected. "But," I said, "couldn't you find out his name? If it was only a silly misunderstanding between two kids, we might have helped."

"He wasn't a kid." Milsom halted at the head of the ladder. "And as to helping him, ... I don't know that I wanted to--particularly," and with that he descended the ladder, leaving me staring after him in the darkness.

12

Hopes ran high with the rising of the sun next morning. The wind was light and steady, and the sea, as the morning wore on, grew calm as a mill pond.

About noon the signal came through, and by five o'clock we were aweigh.

It is difficult now, after all the momentous happenings of the ensuing twelve hours, to recapture precisely one's sensations as we sighted the escorting Destroyers and Motor Launches sweeping down to meet us, and forming up on either wing as our little column, _Intolerant_, _Daring_, _Dauntless_, and _Determination_, fell into line ahead. A squadron of 'planes hummed overhead, searching the sky for signs of inquisitive aircraft, and louder than that resonant sound was the deep drone of men's voices on the decks below, talking amongst themselves. We were committed at last to the bravest adventure that ever caused a man to tighten his girths and roll up the sleeve of his sword arm, and as I looked up from the binnacle, across the broad expanse of water, and saw that doughty array spread out beneath the afternoon sunlight, I thought that a man might choose worse company than this in which to fight his last fight. Shorty Casseen came up presently and stood beside me whistling a little tune between his teeth.

"How are the bulgines heaving round, old lad?" I asked.

"Fine," he replied. "She's going as well as she did when I was an Engineer-Sub and tinkered that scrap-heap through a Commission in the Pacific. But don't you worry, sir," he said, with one of his bird-like sidelong glances, "we'll get the old hooker alongside that Mole if the bottom drops out of her."

In so saying, I think he somehow voiced the feeling that was predominant in all our hearts.

The Padre held a sort of informal service later, on the upper deck, which was attended by all who could be spared from their duties. The light was fading from the sky, and the violet shadows of evening were closing in on us. The men's faces, as they stood bareheaded and intent upon his words, were whitely visible from the bridge.

The attack was timed for midnight but it was half an hour before that when we saw the first gleam of star-shell that betrayed an apprehensive spirit amongst the Boches. Our Coastal Motor Boats and Motor Launches had been at work some time, and were weaving their curtains of artificial fog to and fro across the harbour mouth. We heard the occasional distant boom of a gun, but nothing that betokened a bombardment or that the enemy had any real inkling of what was afoot. One by one we picked up the mark buoys that had been laid since dark by the dauntless C.M.B.'s.

The moments passed, and the tension grew with every muffled throb of the engines. The batteries were crowded with silent men, and the starlight gleamed on their steel helmets and here and there a naked bayonet. Somewhere in front of those densely packed ranks were Milsom and his six Subalterns and Mouldy Jakes, his impassive features hidden by a gas mask. He had donned it some time previously, and persisted in wearing it "as a type of English beauty," he said, and shook hands in silence before he went to his post. Milsom and I had a few words outside the flame-thrower's hut a little while after that.

"I knew of this show before you did, Hornby," he said laughingly, as he broke open a packet of revolver ammunition. "D'you remember that night in the Dockyard when we said good night?"

"Yes," I said. "'Stonework and searchlights.'"

"That's it. It puzzled me at the time, but I'll know all about it in a little while. And the rest----"

He shrugged his shoulders. "Who can tell? It's written somewhere, I suppose?

"'Nor all thy piety and wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.'

"Well, I'll send a Boche or two ahead of me to pipe the side before I step over it. And if I come back"--he gave one of his reckless devil-may-care laughs (the laugh I once heard him give when he flung his last louis on the table at Monte Carlo)--"faith, Bill, you shall foot it at my wedding...." He turned abruptly on his heel, and as he strode away I heard him humming:

"Wid me bundle on me shoulder,
Sure there's no man could be bolder...."

At the prearranged point we shifted from the bridge; the Navigator and Quartermaster moved into the conning tower, and I took up my position in the port flame-thrower's hut from where I conned the ship. I had previously been round the gun and howitzer positions, and exchanged a few words with the waiting officers and men, and as I passed from one motionless group to the other my heart swelled with pride and love for them. There wasn't an anxious face or a wavering eye. Broad grins and whispered jests, like children waiting for the curtain to go up at a pantomime; and among the Marines grouped in the rear of each brow some whispered catchword of Milsom's was rife.

"'Urry up there, please! Step smartly, plenty of room in the front...."

Gallant, gallant lads! And astern of us in the quiet darkness lay England--England lighting its candles and going to bed; England bending over cradles; and here and there, beside some open window that looked out to the sea, perhaps some English girl kneeling and praying as she never prayed before.

A guttering smoke buoy went down our port side, and the next moment we were enveloped in the artificial fog of our own making. We had parted company from the Destroyers some minutes before, and the blockships had swerved aside to make the entrance. Then, as I stood with my hand on the key of the fire gongs, peering ahead into the swirling murk, I felt a breath of damp air blow strong in my face. The wind had changed and was rolling back our fog on top of us. Like magic I saw a space of water clear ahead, and the next instant the Mole stood out black and distinct a couple of cables away, limned against the glare of searchlights and star shell.

There was a blinding yellow flash--it seemed on top of us; and that instant, as the old ship answered to her helm, hell was unloosed.

Every gun and howitzer on board opened fire with a roar that shook the ship from bridge to keel. The machine-guns in the top broke into a hysterical chatter, and all along the Mole bursts of flame belched forth. The shrapnel was spattering about the upperworks like hailstones, and as I got the bows round, heading for the Mole, I felt the ship check and shudder as a heavy shell struck her. Another burst aft and again another; they must have struck us in the battery where all those men were waiting, and try as I would I could not shut out of my consciousness the thought of the carnage that they must have caused. The foremost howitzer gun's crew were lying in heaps round the gun, and as they rolled over fresh men came running and stumbling over the dead to take their places. The tide was flooding strong, and the ground swell of yesterday's breeze broke ominously against the stonework. The ship lifted her bows to it, and plunging and scending, we grated alongside. I left the shelter of the hut then and got out on to the bridge to superintend the placing of the grappling anchors. Three of the brows were out, rising and falling above the parapet of the Mole as the ship lurched in the swell; at one moment they were six feet above the level of the stonework, the next they were striking it with a shuddering jar. And as I watched I saw Milsom and Mouldy go lurching out along them with their men at their heels. A dazzling star shell lit the scene like day, and I saw Milsom stoop and vault a clear drop of six feet, turn and catch a burly Marine in his arms, and rush forward to help secure the grappling anchor. They had got another brow out by now, and men were pouring over it with scaling ladders. The din surpassed all description. The almost ceaseless roar of guns, the grinding and crash of the brows, the sob of the waves as they broke against the pier, flinging the spray high, and ever and anon the explosion of shrapnel overhead spattering their deadly hail broadcast. Our monitors and aircraft were busy, too, and ashore the tall flames of a score of great conflagrations leaped into the sky.

It must be explained that the outer pathway along the top of the Mole was about six feet wide. Then came a drop of 30 feet on to the Mole itself, and once they passed over into this abyss both storming and demolition parties were lost to view. They took ladders for the purposes of this descent, and the sight of those reeling brows a-swarm with men, laden as they were with these ladders, flamethrowers, machine-guns, bombs, cutlasses, and demolition implements, will always haunt me. They dropped like flies, to lie where they fell, dangling across the narrow gangways or clinging piteously for a moment ere they let go and slipped into oblivion. The forecastle was just a battered heap of dead and shattered wreckage, and aft along the batteries I saw Jock Macrae's assistants bending among the motionless heaps and rushing the wounded below.

The Pilot joined me after a while, and together we watched the blockships pass through the entrance a few cables away, vomiting flashes and spurts of heavy and machine-gun fire. How they got across that harbour, lit like day by searchlights, whipped into a sheet of foam by shrapnel and machine-gun fire, only God and their Captains know. We saw Jimmy Thorogood in the _Dauntless_ go crashing through the flimsy anti-submarine defences, and I believe we gave him a crazy, cracked cheer. They were plastering him with gas shell, and he was on fire aft and blazing like a hay-rick. But he held on and made the entrance to the Canal, and was lost to view behind some sheds. _Daring_ came next, and _Determination_, trailing in the rear and almost hidden by waterspouts of falling shell. And then Selby gripped my arm and pointed to the foremost brow. Our Padre was lurching along it with splinters flying all round him, looking for all the world like a tightrope walker learning his profession. He reached the Mole intact, and stood looking about him. Then suddenly bending down, he swung the unconscious form of a giant Marine over his shoulder, and carrying him thus, turned and retraced his steps. Other matters claimed my attention for the moment, but when I next looked along the ship's side I saw him returning with another precious human freight slung on his back.

It was impossible to tell what was going on along the causeway below the parapet of the Mole. Twice with a deafening concussion a great sheet of flame leaped into the air, and I came to the conclusion that Mouldy's merry men had "touched off" something. It was afterwards, when we came to piece together the breathless narratives of those who returned, that we, whose business it was only to stand and wait, learned something of that desperate hand-to-hand righting; of the rushing and bombing of the machine-guns and a Destroyer alongside; the destruction of the seaplane sheds; and the yelling bayonet charge Milsom led against the angry reinforcements of the Huns.

From where I stood I could see the whole panorama of the harbour in that unearthly light. I saw the blockships lying athwart in the entrance to the Canal, blocking it effectually; I saw the Motor Launches, led by old Armitage, dashing through that hellish barrage of machine-gun fire and pom-poms, and run alongside to embark the crews, turn and race blindly for the harbour mouth and safety; and then, when the last was clear, our work was done.

I seized the lanyard of the syren and tugged it, and shrill above the ceaseless uproar rose the hoot of the "Recall."

According to the arrangements we had made beforehand, the demolition party retired first, while the Marines covered the retreat, and no sooner had the first reluctant figures begun to struggle back across the shattered brows than the enemy concentrated every gun he could bring to bear upon the crowded scaling ladders and the gangways.

Fountains of flame and sparks flew skywards, through which the forms of men came stumbling, each living figure that reached our deck, it seemed to me, the embodiment of a miracle. The planking flew about me as chips fly from a woodman's axe. My cap was torn from my head, my monkey-jacket was ripped and scorched, but there wasn't a scratch on my body that I was conscious of.

I saw my First Lieutenant forward busy about the slip of the cable; I saw the top above me shattered by a shell, and after a silence heard the pom-pom there break out again undismayed. The upper deck was a reeking shambles, with men pouring down into it from the Mole, exhausted, bloody, and triumphant. Nearly every man carried a wounded mate slung across his back, and most of them had a chunk of masonry or a fragment of shell gripped in his fist to bring back as a "souvenir" of the night's work--as if their memories or those of their children's children needed any such reminder.

The Marines fell back at length, and the last to embark was Milsom, one arm hanging limp and bloody. He laughed as he saw me.

"Thank God you're all right," he panted.

"Ditto," I shouted.

"The Devil looks after his own," he said, and then the business of getting clear claimed all my attention.

We got out of range of their batteries, and the last fire on board extinguished before we stopped to transfer our wounded to some of the Destroyers, to be rushed back to the Base. A battered Motor Launch came alongside and I recognised the number painted on her bows. It was Armitage's boat. I went to the gangway and hailed her. A Volunteer Reserve Sub. with a bandage round his smoke-begrimed face, standing by the wheel, raised his arm.

"Armitage?" I shouted. The boy shook his head and climbed inboard. They were passing the wounded down to be transferred to one of the Destroyers laying off.

"Where is he?" I asked. The youngster jerked his thumb towards the launch's tiny cabin. "Aft," he said, in the dull tone of utter exhaustion of body and emotions.

"Five times he was hit an' he wouldn't budge.... Kneeling in a pool of blood for'ard givin' directions.... Got the last man from _Determination_ aboard and he said 'Finish,' and rolled over in a heap. Just that one word, 'Finish.'" The dead man's second in command stood with his face working. "Oh, God!" he said; "he was a man, he was a man!"

We resumed our voyage with four Destroyers to screen us, and the dawn broke chill and wan; a mist closed down upon us like a pall as the light strengthened.

Jervis was below having a wounded eye dressed and I was alone, but for the Quartermaster, on the wreckage of the bridge; but presently I saw Milsom, with a bandaged arm in splints and a cigar stuck truculently in the corner of his mouth, climbing stiffly up the ladder.

"Jakes is all right," he said, as he joined me beside the rail.

"Yes," I said. "Hasn't got a scratch. Only got a sniff of gas--but he'll shake that off in a few hours. The Destroyers say that those Motor Launches saved all the officers and most of the men from the blockships. How's the arm?"

"Bit stiff. Broken in two places." Milsom leaned against the rail and took a deep breath. "But I'm still alive." He repeated the sentence and stared at the dim outline of one of our escort just visible through the mist. His tone was like that of a man awakening from sleep. "Oh, damn it!" he said. "No, no," ... and then he turned abruptly and faced me. "Look here, Bill," he said, "I was going to play the rottenest trick a man ever was tempted to stoop to." He was talking as if he was in a desperate hurry, the words coming in a rush. "This is a funny time to tell a love story, in all conscience, but I--I--d'you remember that girl, Miss Mayne? I've never looked at a woman in my life till I saw her. She wasn't in love with me, but I made her say she'd marry me....

"Oh, I understand her, Bill, as no other man alive could.... I tell you, I could read every thought that was in her head--and knowing that, I was going to take her. I told myself I had every right to if I could, and she was mine--just made for me, body and mind and soul. I'm telling you this now--you've never heard me talk like this before, Bill, and God knows you never will again.... Don't stare like that, old thing. I'm not light-headed--I'm telling you all this, because I--I know who the other man is. You've got to help him find her again and patch up their silly squabble and make her happy--happier than ever I could. And I understood her better five minutes after I'd first set eyes on her than he will with her lying in his arms----"

Somewhere at the back of my brain I heard a far-off drone like the sound of a distant beehive.

"Well," I said. "What's his name?"

Milsom stood staring past me into the mist that lowered over us.

"I'll tell you," he said, "because I----"

The events of the next few seconds will always remain a blur in my memory; the bark of a high-angle gun from one of the Destroyers astern cut short his words. The drone above us seemed suddenly to become a rushing roar of sound, and a blast of machine-gun fire swept the deck and bridge as a flight of seaplanes whizzed overhead flying low, so that I could see the goggled faces of the pilots behind the spurts of flame from their guns. The next instant they were gone again in the mist. It was the last sting from the hornets' nest we had been burning out, and Milsom was at my feet leaning on his one arm and staring stupidly at the thin dark stream trickling across the planking. The Destroyers on our beam were firing fruitlessly into the mist.

I bent and put my arms about him and he turned his face towards me. Twice he tried to speak, and an attempt at a smile, a ghost of the old jaunty smile, flitted across his grey face. He made one more supreme effort, and with my ear to the bloody lips I just caught the last whispered breath that took his soul with it.

13

We passed up harbour to our berth alongside the following afternoon, and every craft in harbour manned ship and gave us a cheer while the tugs and ferry craft hooted, and the folk ashore lined the beach and waved flags and handkerchiefs. I am not ashamed to own that I saw it all through a blur; and as the off-shore wind carried the thin sound of women's voices, I couldn't help thinking of the lads below the shattered upper deck, who had fallen asleep that England on the morrow might wake to a fuller realisation of her glory.

We dined together that night in the coffee room of the big hotel that had been converted into the Naval Headquarters of the Base. We had counted on having a tremendous jamboree--those of us who returned. But somehow the feeling that predominated was a sort of dazed astonishment that we were still alive. And our heads ached "fit to split" as housemaids say.

Mouldy was in bed, recovering from a slight gassing, but Thorogood sat next to me, squeezing my arm at intervals as if to reassure himself that he wasn't dreaming; and on the other a big subaltern of Marines who seemed to regard his recent experiences with less emotion that the last Army _v._ Navy rugger match, in which I saw him play. Glegg was there with a bandage over one eye, but Brakespear was in hospital with a piece of shrapnel somewhere in his anatomy.

Jervis had shorn his beard, and in the process seemed to have parted with something of his effervescent vivacity, and when I remembered him as I had last seen him, as we shoved off from the blazing Mole, stumbling amid the dead and bawling through his megaphone.... No, we weren't feeling gay.

It was after dinner that we got really talking. There must have been a dozen of us altogether, because Shorty had gone home to his wife, and Selby had gone Home too: a longer journey, but perhaps an even happier meeting at the end of it.... Anyhow, there were about a dozen of us that lit cigars and cigarettes and put our elbows on the table, and the scene, as I remember it, was just like some big family happily reunited, with the shadow of the Angel's wing still hovering over all.

Messengers were coming and going all the while with signals and telegrams, and presently the orderly murmured, "The Director of Offensives, sir, wants to talk to you on the telephone."

I went up to the room I used as an office when ashore, and as I picked up the receiver of the Admiralty line, heard the Director's voice faintly, speaking not to me but to someone in his room.

"Tell them I'll be at the War Office at 3 P.M. for that meeting ... that's all for to-night, Miss Mayne," I heard him say. Then clearer and louder, "Hallo, that you, Hornby?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Well, I'm damned glad to hear it." Then he said a lot of nice things about what we'd done and being proud of us, and finished off: "Well, I'd like to see you at 3.30 P.M. to-morrow if you can get to town by then."

"Aye, aye, sir," and as I answered a thought flashed through my brain: it was one of those brilliant inspirations that come once in a lifetime, and in the course of a sleepless night (none of us slept that night) I perfected it into a piece of strategy for which I claim, in all modesty, a place in this already unduly prolonged narrative.

Mouldy occupied a spare room at my diggings where most of us were billeted for the night, and when I turned out the following morning, I visited him. I found him drinking tea and reading the morning, paper.

"How d'you feel?" I asked.

He pointed to a tin of cigarettes with a wry face.

"Dead off baccy," he said lugubriously.

"Well," I replied, "that'll do you no harm. All right otherwise?"

He nodded. "All right last night. Lord knows why I should have been rammed into bed while all you pirates lapped up bubbly and made a night of it."

"Doctor's orders. Anyhow, he says you can go to town to-day."

Mouldy sat up. "Damn good of him, 'cos I was goin', anyhow. I'm going to have a hell of a jamboree." He blinked at me defiantly from under a lank lock of black hair.

"You've got to come with me to the Admiralty at three o'clock," I said as sternly as I could. Mouldy groaned.

"Have I got to keep sober till three--an' pubs closing at half-past two?"

"Yes," I said. "You won't have a drink till the evening--and then you can have as many as you want."

He acquiesced reluctantly, and we caught a train to town that landed us at the terminus shortly before three; thence we taxied to Whitehall.

"This place gives me the holy pip," said Mouldy, as we threaded our way through the stuffy-smelling corridors of the Admiralty. "Looks as if the Navy was run by women from what I can see of the place. Phew! Shockin' frowst!" We reached the Director's room.

"Never mind that," I said, and opened the door. I breathed a sigh of relief to find the room was empty, and glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes past three. Well, if Mouldy couldn't fix things in twenty minutes.... He walked to the open window and stood staring out on the Horse Guards Parade.

"Humph!" he observed moodily. "I reckon the bounding blue's good enough for me.... I wouldn't come and work here for a thousand a year. What the blazes does the Director want to see me for, anyway? He's all adrift too."

I was hunting about on the paper-strewn desk for the bell press I knew was there if I could find it. There were three: one marked "Secretary," another "Messenger," and a third "Stenographer." I took a long breath and pressed the third.

"Mouldy," I said, "don't get into mischief. Wait here till I come back. I shan't be a minute." Then I made tracks for the door.

In the semi-gloom of the passage outside a tall girl brushed past me and entered the room, pencil and notebook in hand. It was Miss Mayne, and I waited till the door closed before I looked at my watch. "I'll give them two minutes," I thought. "And if she doesn't come back----"

I gave them ten minutes, as a matter of fact, then I knocked at the door and went in.

"Mouldy," I said, "you needn't wait. It's all right. I mean, the Director doesn't want to see you after all."

They had not apparently heard my knock, because Miss Mayne's head was resting on Mouldy's shoulder, and he was stroking her hair with his damaged hand. She was crying softly, with her cheek against his coat.

Mouldy raised his head and glared at me over Miss Mayne's shoulder. She neither moved nor turned her head.

"Here," he said, "you _'op_ it!"

I went out into the corridor, closing the door softly behind me.

Then for the Erst time since we landed I felt tired--more tired than I had ever felt in my life before.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

_For purposes of fiction, only the broad outlines of a great achievement have been sketched into this story; and no attempt has been made to reproduce faithfully the strategy or events of St. George's Day, _1918_. Indeed, only such ships find their replicas here as the turning-circle of the tale allows, and if the Author has anywhere endeavoured to be true to facts, it is in the portrayal of those fearsome and bloody conditions under which the Navy added so fair a page to History._

II

BEHIND THE VEIL:

THE STORY OF THE Q BOATS

(1918)

1

FIRST BLOOD

There was a day, now happily past, when the submarine scourge was broadcast upon the seas; then the country turned for its salvation to the Navy, upon which, under the good providence of God, it had grown accustomed to rely in most of the crises of its history. Scientific and mechanical appliances, on a scale adequate to meet and checkmate the outrage of unrestricted submarine warfare, could not be produced by pressing a button. With workshops and laboratories yielding their output at highest pressure, the German submarine building yards were gaining in the race. Every day brought its sickening tale of sinking and burning and murder on the high seas, and in Whitehall offices men studied statistics and columns of figures with faces ever growing graver.

The irritable tension of those days is best forgotten now. Prices rose, ships sank, and the Navy said not a word. It was "doing its damnedest" in silence, according to its wont. And not even in forecastle or Wardroom did men so much as whisper what was afoot. To-day* the submarine remains merely as a stern corrective, curbing waste and extravagance, bracing the nation's nerve. The ingenuity of man is boundless, and science has not yet said her last word; human courage and devoted valour alone seem to have reached a point there is no transcending. It was these two factors which stemmed the flood at the moment of supreme crisis; on these the veil is at last lifted, and the tale now told in all simplicity and truth.

* Written in August, 1918.

The methods of the German submarine in its war against unarmed shipping gradually settled down to a routine which varied but little in the early phases of the conflict. It was the custom to attempt to torpedo at sight, on the principle of the least said the soonest mended. If the torpedo missed, as was not infrequently the case, the submarine broke surface a mile or so away from the ship and fired a shot across her bows. The merchantman had then two alternatives: to take to his heels and try to escape, or to heave to and abandon ship. In the latter case the submarine closed the derelict to within a few hundred yards and summoned the boats alongside. At the muzzle of a revolver the Captain was ordered into the submarine with his papers, and the crew of his boat directed to row a party of German sailors, bearing bombs, back to the ship. These worthies, having placed the bombs in the ship's vitals and looted the officers' quarters, returned to the submarine, propelled by the men they had robbed and whose ship they were engaged in sinking. In due course the bombs exploded and the ship disappeared. It was an economical method, since bombs cost less than torpedoes, and the formality of looting the ship helped to preserve its popularity.

For a while the Navy noted these methods and the little human failings of the enemy in silence. Then it drew a deep breath and made its plans accordingly. It argued that a man-of-war could be disguised as a tramp steamer and carry concealed armament. Such a vessel, by plying on the trade routes, must inevitably meet a submarine in time, and in her character of peaceful merchantman be ordered to abandon ship. The ship might be abandoned to all outward appearances, but still retain sufficient men concealed on board to fight the hidden guns when the moment came for her to cast disguise to the winds and hoist the White Ensign. Certain risks had to be taken for granted, of course; the almost inevitable torpedo sooner or later, the probability of a little indiscriminate shelling while the submarine approached, the possibility of being ultimately sunk before assistance could arrive. Yet the odds were on the submarine being sunk first, and the rest was on the knees of the gods.

An old collier of some 2,000 tons was selected from among the shipping at the disposal of the Admiralty and taken to a Dockyard port, where she unostentatiously underwent certain structural alterations. These included disappearing mountings for guns concealed beneath hatchway covers, and masked by deck-houses which collapsed like cards at a jerk of a lever. From the host of volunteers, among whom were retired Admirals, Captains, Commanders, and Lieutenants of the Royal Navy, a young Lieutenant-Commander was selected and appointed in command. His officers were volunteers from the Royal Naval Reserve, ex-merchant seamen, familiar enough with the rôle they were required to play, and in some cases with little mental scores of their own which required adjustment when the time came. The crew was mostly from the West Country, men of Devon with one or two traditions to uphold in the matter of brave adventure. It also included Welshmen and Irish with a pretty taste for a fight, and a few Scots, of the dour type, hard to frighten. They were picked from the Royal Navy, Fleet and Royal Reserves--merchant seamen and fishermen the last, many of whom had formed a nodding acquaintance with Death long before they received this invitation to a closer intimacy. Their ages ranged between 17 and 52.

They sailed from Queenstown under the Red Ensign; but before they left some of the crew trudged, as pilgrims to a shrine, and stood awhile among the mounds in that pathetic God's acre where the women and children of the _Lusitania_ rest. They were then but freshly turned, those mounds, in their eloquent diversity of lengths, and men had not begun to forget....

For five weary months they endured the winter gales of the Atlantic, wallowing to and fro along the trade routes, outwardly a scallywag tramp, but behind her untidy bulwarks observing, with certain necessary modifications, the discipline and customs of his Majesty's Navy. With paint-pot and sail-cloth they improved the ship's disguise from time to time, and wiled away the heart-breaking monotony of the days by inventing fresh devices to conceal their character.

The ship's steward's assistant, when not engaged upon his office as "dusty boy," was ordered to don female attire over his uniform and recline in a prominent position on the poop in a deck-chair. This allurement was calculated to prove an irresistible bait. The Navigator, whose action station was the abandonment of the ship in the rôle of distracted Master, fashioned the effigy of a stuffed parrot and fastened it inside a cage which he proposed to take away with him in the boat, thus heightening the pathos of the scene and whetting the blood-lust of the enemy....

From time to time watchful patrols swooped down upon them, exchanged a few curt signals in the commercial code, and bade them pass on their imaginary occasions. Once a Cruiser, less easily satisfied than the remainder, bade the rusty-sided collier heave to, and sent an officer to board her; he climbed inboard at the head of armed men to find himself confronted, in the person of the "Master," with a term-mate of Britannia days and a grin he is not likely to forget. Then, early one spring morning, when the daylight was stealing out of grey skies across the Atlantic waste, the track of a torpedo bubbled across the bows and passed ahead of the ship. The moment for which they had waited five weary months had come.

In accordance with her rôle of tramp steamer in the early days of the War, the ship held steadily on her way, observing the stars in their courses, but not otherwise interested in the universe. Inboard, however, the alarm rang along the mess-decks and saloons, and men crawled into hen-coops and deck-houses to man the hidden guns. A few minutes later the submarine broke surface half a mile astern of the ship, and fired a shot across her bows. Whereupon the supposed collier stopped her engines, and lay rolling in the trough of the seas with steam pouring from her exhausts, while the crew, who had rehearsed this moment to a perfection never yet realised on the boards of legitimate drama, rushed to and fro with every semblance of panic. The Captain danced from one end of the bridge to the other, waving his arms and shouting; boats were turned out and in again amid a deliberate confusion that brought blushes to the cheeks of the ex-merchant seamen called upon to play the part.

In the meantime the submarine had approached at full speed to within about 700 yards, and, evidently not satisfied with the speed at which the ship was being abandoned, fired another shot, which pitched 50 yards short of the engine-room. There was apparently nothing further to be gained by prolonging the performance for this impatient audience, and the Lieutenant-Commander on the bridge, cap in hand, and breathless with his pantomimic exertions, blew a shrill blast on his whistle. Simultaneously the White Ensign fluttered to the masthead, deck-houses and screens clattered down, and three minutes later the submarine sank under a rain of shells and Maxim bullets. As she disappeared beneath the surface the avenger reached the spot, and dropped a depth-charge over her. A moment after the explosion the submarine appeared in a perpendicular position alongside the ship, denting the bilge-keel as she rolled drunkenly among the waves. The after gun put five more rounds into the shattered hull at point-blank range, and, as she sank for the last time, two more depth-charges were dropped to speed her passing.

The Lieutenant-Commander in command had personally been superintending the administering of the _coup de grâce_ from the stern, and, as he turned to make his way forward to the bridge, for a few brief moments the bonds of naval discipline relaxed. His men surged round him in a wildly cheering throng, struggling to be the first to wring him by the hand. They then mustered in the saloon, standing bare-headed while their Captain read the Prayers of Thanksgiving for Victory, and called for three cheers for his Majesty the King. They cheered as only men can cheer in the first exultant flush of victory. But as the vessel gathered way and resumed her grim quest, each man realised, deep down in his heart, that far sterner ordeals lay ahead.

2

ORDEAL BY FIRE

Because man is mortal, not infallible, and Fortune at her brightest a fickle jade, it was inevitable that sooner or later a day must come when a crippled German submarine would submerge beneath a hail of shells, miraculously succeed in patching up her damaged hull, and, under cover of darkness, crawl back to port. Word would then go out from Wilhelmshaven of a British man-of-war disguised as a lumbering tramp, with such and such a marking on her funnel, with stumpy masts and rusty deck-houses, who carried guns concealed in wheel-house and hen-coops, whose bulwarks collapsed, and whose bridge screens masked quick-firers and desperate men. German submarines would be warned that to approach such a vessel was to enter a death-trap, unless every precaution was first taken to ensure she had been abandoned.