A Tall Ship Part 1

A Tall Ship.

by Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie.

PREFACE

It is almost superfluous to observe that the following sketches contain no attempt at the portrait of an individual. The majority are etched in with the ink of pure imagination. A few are "composite" sketches of a large number of originals with whom the Author has been shipmates in the past and whose friendship he is grateful to remember.

Of these, some, alas! have finished "the long trick." To them, at no risk of breaking their quiet sleep--_Ave atque vale_.

"Crab-Pots," "The Day," and "Chummy-Ships" appeared originally in _Blackwood's Magazine_, and are reproduced here by kind permission of the Editor.

A TALL SHIP

I

CRAB-POTS

1

In moments of crisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or fl.u.s.tered by outward circ.u.mstance.

Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere electricity could never attain.

Thus with James Thorogood, Lieutenant, Royal Navy, when he--together with his bath, bedding, clothes, and scanty cabin furniture, revolver, first-aid outfit, and all the things that were his--was precipitated through his cabin door across the aft-deck. The ship heeled violently, and the stunning sound of the explosion died away amid the uproar of men's voices along the mess-deck and the tinkle and clatter of broken crockery in the wardroom pantry.

"Torpedoed!" said James, and was in his conjecture entirely correct.

He emerged from beneath the debris of his possessions, shaken and bruised, and was aware that the aft-deck (that s.p.a.cious vestibule giving admittance on either side to officers' cabins, and normally occupied by a solitary Marine sentry) was filled with figures rushing past him towards the hatchway.

It was half-past seven in the morning. The Morning-watch had been relieved and were dressing. The Middle-watch, of which James had been one, were turning out after a brief three-hours' spell of sleep.

Officers from the bathroom, girt in towels, wardroom servants who had been laying the table for breakfast, one or two Warrant-officers in sea boots and monkey jackets--the Watch-below, in short--appeared and vanished from his field of vision like figures on a screen. In no sense of the word, however, did the rush resemble a panic. The aft-deck had seen greater haste on all sides in a scramble on deck to cheer a troopship pa.s.sing the cruiser's escort. But the variety of dress and undress, the expressions of grim antic.i.p.ation in each man's face as he stumbled over the uneven deck, set Thorogood's reeling mind, as it were, upon its feet.

The Surgeon, pyjama clad, a crimson streak running diagonally across the lather on his cheek, suddenly appeared crawling on all-fours through the doorway of his shattered cabin. "I always said those safety-razors were rotten things," he observed ruefully. "I've just carved my initials on my face. And my ankle's broken. Have we been torpedoed, or what, at all? An' what game is it you're playing under that bath, James? Are you pretending to be an oyster?"

Thorogood pulled himself together and stood up. "I think one of their submarines must have bagged us." He nodded across the flat to where, beyond the wrecked debris of three cabins, the cruiser's side gaped open to a clear sky and a line of splashing waves. Overhead on deck the twelve-pounders were barking out a series of ear-splitting reports--much as a terrier might yap defiance at a cobra over the stricken body of its master.

"I think our number's up, old thing." Thorogood bent and slipped his arms under the surgeon's body. "Shove your arms round my neck. . . .

Steady!--hurt you? Heave! Up we go!" A Midshipman, ascending the hatchway, paused and turned back. Then he ran towards them, spattering through the water that had already invaded the flat.

"Still!" sang a bugle on deck. There was an instant's lull in the stampede of feet overhead. The voices of the officers calling orders were silent. The only sounds were the lapping of the waves along the riven hull and the intermittent reports of the quick-firers. Then came the shrill squeal of the pipes.

"Fall in!" roared a voice down the hatchway. "Clear lower deck! Every soul on deck!" The bugle rang out again.

Thorogood staggered with his burden across the buckled plating of the flat, and reached the hatchway. The Midshipman who had turned back pa.s.sed him, his face white and set. "Here!" called the Lieutenant from the bottom of the ladder. "This way, my son! Fall in's the order!"

For a moment the boy glanced back irresolute across the flat, now ankle deep in water. The electric light had been extinguished, and in the greenish gloom between decks he looked a small and very forlorn figure.

He pointed towards the wreckage of the after-cabin, called something inaudible, and, turning, was lost to view aft.

"That's the 'Pay's' cabin," said the Doctor between his teeth. "He was a good friend to that little lad. I suppose the boy's gone to look for him, and the 'Pay' as dead as a haddock, likely as not."

Thorogood deposited the Surgeon on the upper deck, fetched a lifebuoy, and rammed it over the injured man's shoulders. "G.o.d forgive me for taking it," said the latter gratefully, "but my fibula's cracked to blazes, an' I love my wife . . ."

All round them men were working furiously with knives and crowbars, casting off lashings from boats and baulks of timber on the booms, wrenching doors and woodwork from their fastenings--anything capable of floating and supporting a swimmer. The officers were encouraging the men with words and example, steadying them with cheery catch-words of their Service, ever with an eye on the forebridge, at the extreme end of which the Captain was standing.

On the after shelter-deck the Gunner, bare-headed and clad only in a shirt and trousers, was, single-handed, loading and firing a twelve-pounder as fast as he could snap the breech to and lay the gun.

His face was distorted with rage, and his black brows met across his nose in a scowl that at any other time would have suggested acute melodrama. Half a mile away the shots were striking the water with little pillars of white spray.

The figure on the forebridge made a gesture with his arm. "Fall in!"

shouted the Commander. "Fall in, facing outboard, and strip! Stand by to swim for it!" Seven hundred men--bluejackets, stokers, and marines--hurriedly formed up and began to divest themselves of their clothes. They were drawn up regardless of cla.s.s or rating, and a burly Marine Artilleryman, wriggling out of his cholera belt, laughed in the blackened face of a stoker fresh from the furnace door.

"Cheer up, mate!" he said encouragingly. "You'll soon 'ave a chance to wash your bloomin' face!"

The ship gave a sudden lurch, settled deeper in the water, and began to heel slowly over. The Captain, clinging to the bridge rail to maintain his balance, raised the megaphone to his mouth:

"Carry on!" he shouted. "Every man for himself!"--he lowered the megaphone and added between his teeth--"and G.o.d for us all!"

The ship was lying over at an angle of sixty degrees, and the men were cl.u.s.tered along the bulwarks and nettings as if loath to leave their stricken home even at the eleventh hour. A muscular Leading Seaman was the first to go--a nude, pink figure, wading reluctantly down the sloping side of the cruiser, for all the world like a child paddling.

He stopped when waist deep and looked back. "'Ere!" he shouted, "'ow far is it to Yarmouth? No more'n a 'undred an' fifty miles, is it? I gotter aunt livin' there. . . ."

Then came the rush, together with a roar of voices, shouts and cheers, cries for help, valiant, quickly stifled s.n.a.t.c.hes of "Tipperary," and, over all, the hiss of escaping steam.

"She wouldn't be 'arf pleased to see yer, n.o.bby!" shouted a voice above the hubbub. "Not 'arf she wouldn't! Nah then, 'oo's for compulsory bathin'. . . . Gawd! ain't it cold! . . ."

How he found himself in the water, Thorogood had no very clear recollection; but by instinct he struck out through the welter of gasping, bobbing heads till he was clear of the clutching menace of the drowning. The Commander, clad simply in his wrist-watch and uniform cap, was standing on the balsa raft, with scores of men hanging to its support. "Get away from the ship!" he was bawling at the full strength of his lungs. "Get clear before she goes----!"

The stern of the cruiser rose high in the air, and she dived with sickening suddenness into the grey vortex of waters. Pitiful cries for help sounded on all sides. Two cutters and a few hastily constructed rafts were piled with survivors; others swam to and fro, looking for floating debris, or floated, reserving their strength.

The cries and shouts grew fewer.

Thorogood had long parted with his support--the broken loom of an oar--and was floating on his back, when he found himself in close proximity to two figures clinging to an empty breaker. One he recognised as a Midshipman, the other was a bearded Chief Stoker. The boy's teeth were chattering and his face was blue with cold.

"W-w-what were you g-g-g-oing to have for b-b-b-breakfast in your m-m-mess?" he was asking his companion in misfortune.

Hang it all, a fellow of fifteen had to show somehow he wasn't afraid of dying.

"Kippers," replied the Chief Stoker, recognising his part and playing up to it manfully. "I'm partial to a kipper, meself--an' fat 'am. . . ."

The Midshipman caught sight of Thorogood, and raised an arm in greeting. As he did so a sudden spasm of cramp twisted his face like a mask. He relaxed his grasp of the breaker and sank instantly.

The two men reappeared half a minute later empty handed, and clung to the barrel exhausted.

"It's all chalked up somewhere, I suppose," spluttered James, gasping for his breath.

"Child murder, sir, I reckon that is," was the tense reply. "That's on their slop ticket all right. . . . 'Kippers,' I sez, skylarkin'

like . . . an' 'e sinks like a stone. . . ."