Chapter II: Prologue

Anyone familiar with the River Dart knows the Mill Creek. The hills on either side slope steeply down to the edge of the water, oak and beech and elm clustering thick on the one hand, red plough, green shoots, and golden corn-fields alternating on the other through all the changing seasons.

The creek is tidal, transformed at half-flood into a fair expanse of shimmering water; at low tide, however, it dwindles to a score of meagre channels winding tortuously through whale-backed mudbanks, the haunt of scurrying crabs and meditative heron.

Here, one afternoon in midsummer some dozen years ago, came a gig (or, in local parlance, a “blue-boat”) manned by seven flannel-clad cadets from the Naval College. Six sat on the thwarts pulling lazily against the last of the ebb. The seventh sat in the stern, with the yoke-lines over his shoulders, refreshing himself with cherries out of a bag.

As they approached the shelving mudbanks, purple in the afternoon sunlight, the figure in the bows boated his oar and began to sound cautiously with his boathook. The remaining five oarsmen glanced back over their shoulders and continued paddling. The helmsman smiled tolerantly, as a man might smile at the conceits of childhood, but refrained from speech. They all knew the weakness of the bowman for dabbling in mud.

“Half a point to port!” said the slim form wielding the dripping boathook. “I can see the channel now.... Steady as you go!” A minute later the boat slid into the main channel and the crew drew in their oars, punting their narrow craft between the banks of ooze. None of them spoke, save the bowman, and he only at rare intervals, flinging back a curt direction to the helmsman over his shoulder.

For half an hour they navigated the channels winding up the valley, and came at length to a crumbling stone quay beside the ruin of a mill. Ferns grew in the interstices of the old brickwork, and a great peace brooded over the silent wood that towered behind. They made the boat fast there; and because boats and the sea were things as yet half-unknown and wholly attractive, none of them attempted to land. Instead, with coats rolled up as pillows and their straw hats tilted over their eyes, the seven made themselves comfortable as only naval cadets could in such cramped surroundings, and from under the thwarts each one drew a paper bag and a bottle of lemonade.

“Dead low water,” said Number 1 (the bow oar) presently. “We shall have a young flood against us going back; but then there’s no chance of getting stuck on the mud.” He drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and proceeded to take careful soundings round the boat, using the keys as a sinker and the lanyard as a lead-line.

“Oh, shut up about your everlasting tides,” said Number 2, “and keep quiet; I want to sleep.”

“They interest me,” replied Number 1 simply. “I shall be a navigator, I think.”

“You’d better go in for submarines,” said Number 4, applying himself to his bottle of fizzing beverage. “Plenty of poking about mudbanks in them if it interests you. One of the first we ever had stuck in the mud one day and never came up again.”

“P’raps I shall,” admitted the bow. “In fact I shouldn’t be surprised if I _did_ go in for submarining.”

Number 3 was lying on his back on the thwart, his head resting on the gunwale. “They’ll never come to anything,” he said. “The submarine’s a failure.” His eyes followed the flight of a white-winged gull that circled with outstretched wings far above their heads. “No. It’s going to be in the air, when we have a war. I’m all for flying machines....” He was silent awhile meditating, then turned his head quickly. “Bombs!” he said. “Fancy being able to drop bombs all over an enemy’s country.”

“You couldn’t do it,” said Number 2. “You’d go killing women and civilians. They’d never let you.”

“Who?” demanded the prospective aviator, his enthusiasm rather damped. “Who’d stop me?”

“International Law,” cut in the coxswain quickly. “Conventions and all that.... Why, there’d be no limit to anything if it weren’t for international law. An enemy could go off in his beastly submarine and paralyse the trade routes.”

“Paralyse ’em--how?” inquired the bow man.

“Just torpedoing ’em, of course, you ass.”

“What, merchant ships?”

The jurist nodded.

“But no one could do that. I mean you’d never get a naval officer to do that, international law or no international law. That ’ud be piracy--like those fellows at Algiers. ’Member the lecture last week?”

“I don’t mean _we’d_ do it,” conceded the coxswain. “But some nations might.”

The idealist shook his head. “No naval officer would,” he repeated stoutly, “whatever his nationality.”

“The surface of the sea’s good enough for me,” chipped in No. 2. “I don’t want to bomb women or torpedo merchant ships. I’m going to be captain of a destroyer.” He raised his head. “Thirty knots at night, my boy!... Upper-deck torpedo tubes and all that....”

“I’d blow you out of the water with a 12-inch gun,” said Number 5, speaking for the first time, and laying aside a magazine. “Gunnery is going to save this country if ever we have a war. That’s why gunnery lieutenants get promoted quickly--my governor told me so.”

“Did he?” said the stroke oar. “He’s wrong. You can only fire big guns from big ships, and you know what happened to big ships in the Russo-Japanese war.”

“What?” inquired the visionary coldly.

“Mines. Big ships can’t move when there are mines about.”

“We don’t use mines any longer,” said the coxswain, crumpling up his empty bag and throwing it over the side. It floated slowly past the boat towards the head of the valley. “They’re not considered sporting. ’Sides, even if you could, you can always countermine, and sweep ’em up. My brother went through a course in the Mediterranean once--place called Platea. I remember him telling me about it.”

The stroke oar sat upright and glanced the length of the boat. “Wouldn’t it be a rum thing,” he said, “if there was a war some day and we were all in it.” He ticked off their names on his fingers: “Submarine, aeroplane, destroyer, minelayer, minesweeper, battleship----” He paused. “I’d like to be in a cruiser,” he said. “A big cruiser scouting ahead of the Fleet. You’d get more excitement there than anywhere.” His voice deepened to a sudden note of triumph. “It ’ud be the forefront of the battle.”

“Then we’d all meet afterwards,” said Number 2, “and have a blow-out somewhere ashore and talk about our experiences. Wouldn’t that be topping?”

The bow oar sat with his eyes on the crumpled paper bag that floated up-stream, shading them against the glow of the sun turning all the creeks into molten gold. “Those of us that were left,” he said dreamily. “Tide’s turned.... We’d better think about getting back.”