A Tall Ship Part 20

"What about one of the guests for a song?"

"Yes, yes!" cried several voices. "Where's Number One? He's our Madame Patti. You ought to hear him sing '_We don't serve bread with one fish-ball!_' It's really worth it. But it takes a lot of port to get him started. How d'you feel about it, Number One?" They spoke with indulgent affection, as a nurse might persuade a bashful child to show off before company.

He of the choleric blue eye was still sitting at the table with one of his hosts. He turned in his chair, smiling grimly.

"What's that about me? I don't want to start sc.r.a.pping in a strange mess, s.n.a.t.c.her, but if you really _are_ looking for trouble----!"

"Don't mind us!" shouted the Indiarubber Man delightedly. "We'll put up a sc.r.a.p for you in half a jiffy if you feel like a crumpled shirt-front!" He looked round the mess. "Wait till Flags and the Secretary come in from dinner with the Old Man, and we'll out the gilded Staff. They're good 'uns to sc.r.a.p."

As he spoke the door opened, and the Flag Lieutenant came in, to be met by a volley of greetings.

"We of the cuddy," he began in a tone of mincing severity, "are not pleased at the raucous uproar said to be coming from a mess of officers and gentlemen. We are pained. We come to lend our presence to what might otherwise develop into an unseemly brawl----" He helped himself to a walnut out of a dish on the sideboard. "Here comes my colleague the Secretary-bird. He, too, is more grieved than angry."

The Secretary entered warily, and intending combatants girded their loins for battle.

"Pouf!" he exclaimed. "What a fug!" And elevated his nose with a sniff. The Fiery Cross was out.

"Out Staff!" said the Indiarubber Man in a low voice. "Dogs of war!

Out gilded popinjays!"

With a prompt.i.tude that hinted at long experience of internecine warfare, the newcomers embraced the first maxim of war: "If you must hit, hit first, hit hard, and keep on hitting."

Like a flash, the two members of the Personal Staff were on the Indiarubber Man. A chair went crashing, a broken gla.s.s tinkled on to the deck, to the accompaniment of protests from the Paymaster, and, before the mess could join battle, the Indiarubber Man hurtled through the doorway on to the aft-deck, to pitch at the feet of a delighted Marine sentry. By the rules of the game, once through the portals of the mess there was no return until a truce was declared. The younger members of the mess rose to a man; for a moment the guests hung back.

It is not in the best of form to sc.r.a.p in a strange mess, except by express invitation.

"Come on!" shouted the Junior Watchkeeper. "Bite 'em in the stomach!"

and flung himself upon the Secretary.

The guests waited for no second invitation. It was a battle royal, and the Indiarubber Man, interned on the aft-deck, yelped encouragement to his erstwhile conquerors because they were fighting valiantly against hopeless odds.

A Rugby International and a middle-weight boxer of some pretensions, although hampered by aiguilettes and outnumbered six to one, were not easily disposed of. But they were ultimately overpowered, and carried, puffing with exhaustion and helpless with laughter, over the debris of the bridge-table, gramophone and paper-rack, out through the doorway.

The mess, breathing heavily, adjusted its ties and collars and smoothed its dishevelled hair. The Flag Lieutenant and Secretary retired to their cabins for more extensive repairs. The bridge-table was set upon its legs once more, the scattered cards collected.

"Polo!" said the Indiarubber Man. "Let's play polo!"

"How d'you do that?" asked one of the ecstatic guests. At the bottom of his heart he was also wondering why the greybeards of the mess stood all this tomfoolery without protest. He had never been shipmates with the Indiarubber Man.

The Indiarubber Man took an orange off the sideboard, a dessert-spoon out of a drawer, and straddled over the back of a chair. "Like this, d'you see? We generally play three a-side, but as there are six of you we'll play double sides." He tossed the orange on to the deck, and hopped his chair in pursuit, brandishing the dessert-spoon.

"That's a great game," said the First Lieutenant of the _What Ho!_ and got him to horse. "Come on, our side, boot and saddle!"

As the game was about to start the door opened, and the Flag Lieutenant entered hurriedly. He carried a signal-pad in his hand, and there was that in his face that silenced the polo players and caused the bridge players to lay down their hands.

"Signal," he said curtly. "Raise steam for full speed. Prepare for immediate action on leaving harbour." And was gone.

Those who had immediate duties elsewhere stampeded out of the mess.

Overhead there was a thud of feet and ropes ends and the shrilling of pipes as the watch fell in. A Midshipman thrust his head inside the door of the Wardroom. "Boat's alongside, sir!" he said, and vanished.

The First Lieutenant of the visitors flung his boat-cloak over his shoulders. "Well," he said, "we've had a topping evening. S'long, and thanks very much."

Their hosts helped the departing ones into their great-coats. "Not 't all," they murmured politely in return. "Sorry to break up a cheery evening. Let's hope they've really come out this time!"

The Indiarubber Man slid on to the music-stool again, put his foot on the soft pedal, lightly touched the familiar chords, and began humming under his breath:

"We don't want to lose you---- But we _think_ you ought to go . . ."

There are many ways of saying _Moriturus te saluto_.

X

THE HIGHER CLAIM

1

All night long the wind, blowing in across the dunes from the North Sea, had brought the sound of firing.

At times it was hardly perceptible: a faint reverberation of the ether that could scarcely be defined as sound; it would resolve itself into a low, continuous rumble, very much like distant thunder, that died away and recommenced nearer and more distinct. Then the sashes of the open window trembled, and Margaret, who had lain awake all night, every nerve strained to listen, leaned on one elbow to stare from her bed out into the darkness.

She had tried not to listen. For hours she had lain without moving, with limbs tense beneath the coverings, the palms of her hands pressed against her ears. But imagination sped through the dark pa.s.sages of her mind, brandishing a torch, compelling her at length to listen again.

She had no very clear idea, of course, what a naval action was like. A confused recollection of pictures seen in childhood only suggested stalwart men, stripped to the waist and bare-footed, working round the smoking guns of ships whose decks blazed up in flame to taunt the quiet heavens; while the ships' scuppers ran red.

Modern naval warfare could be nothing like that, though.

She had only seen the results of modern warfare. Men tortured till they came near to forgetting their manhood; burnt, deaf, scalded, torn by splinters, blinded; she had seen them smiling under circ.u.mstances that thrilled her to feel they shared a common Flag.

On the outbreak of war the training inst.i.tute on the East Coast, of which Margaret was the matron, had, on account of its position near the coast and other advantages, been converted into a Naval Hospital. Miss Dacre, the princ.i.p.al, Margaret, and a few others who had already qualified in nursing, were retained as Red Cross sisters, and it was not long before the cla.s.srooms and dormitories were occupied by very different inmates from those for whom they were intended. Only the more serious cases reached these wards. The less dangerously hurt pa.s.sed by rail or hospital ship to the base hospitals in the South.

All night long the wounded men in the long wards stirred fretfully under the white counterpanes, each man translating the sounds according to his own imagination or experience. The night-sisters moved softly to and fro on the beeswaxed boards, smoothing tumbled pillows, adjusting a splint or a bandage, calming the bearded children who fretted because they were hopelessly "out of it."

Towards the dawn the sounds of firing gradually grew fainter, and died away as the first pale bands of light appeared in the east. The sparrows under the eaves stirred and commenced a sleepy twittering.

Margaret rose as soon as objects in her room were discernible, bathed her face and hands in cold water, and stood awhile at the window watching the day growing over the sea and sombre sky.

The sounds of the battle that pa.s.sed away to the northward had shaken her nerves as had nothing else in all her experience. Standing there by the open window, drinking in the indescribable freshness of the dawn, she despised herself. She, who had devoted her life to a Purpose, should be above the petty weakness of her s.e.x. Yet the cold fear that had been her bedfellow throughout the night, and was concerned with neither defeat nor victory, haunted her still.

She closed the window, lit a small spirit-lamp on a side table, and, while the kettle boiled, dressed in riding things. The earliness of the hour made it improbable that she would meet a soul, and yet she dressed carefully, coiling her soft hair, with its silver threads, on the nape of her neck, fastidiously dusting riding boots, and giving a brisk rub to the single spur before she strapped it on. She was adjusting her hard-felt hat before the gla.s.s when someone knocked at the door.

She turned questioningly, with hands still raised. "Come in!"

A girl was standing in the doorway; she wore a dressing-gown, and beneath it her slim ankles peeped out of a pair of the felt slippers nurses wear at night.

"Betty! What's the matter?"

"Did you hear the firing?"