A Tall Ship Part 5

The coastguard drew near, wiping his face with a vast blue and white spotted handkerchief, for he had been running. "Beg pardon, sir," he called as he came within earshot, "but would you be a naval officer?"

"I am," replied Torps. "Why?"

The man saluted. "There's a telephone message just come through, sir, 'Prepare to mobilise. All officers and men are recalled from leave.'"

Torps stared at him. "Where did it come from--the message?"

"From the port, sir. I was to warn anyone I saw out this way . . ."

"Right; thank you. I'm going back now." He turned towards Margaret.

"Did you hear that?" There was a queer note of relief in his voice.

"Yes," she replied quietly. "The Drum."

III

A CAPTAIN'S FORENOON

The Captain came out of his sleeping-cabin as the last chord of the National Anthem died away on the quarter-deck overhead with the roll of kettledrums.

"Carry on!" sang the bugle; and the ship's company, their animation suspended while the colours crept up the jackstaff, proceeded to "breakfast and clean." The signalman whose duty it was to hoist the Ensign at 8 a.m. turned up the halliards to his satisfaction, and departed forward in the wake of the band.

The Captain had "cleaned" already, and his breakfast was on the table in his fore-cabin. He sat down, glanced at the pile of letters beside his plate, propped the morning paper against the teapot, and commenced his meal. He ate with the deliberate slowness of a man accustomed to having meals in solitude, who has schooled himself not to abuse his digestion.

As he ate his quick eye travelled over the headlines of the paper, occasionally concentrating on a paragraph here and there. Ten minutes sufficed to give him a complete grasp of the day's affairs. The naval appointments he read carefully. His memory for names and individuals was unfailing; he never forgot anyone who had served under his command, and followed the careers of most with interest. His daily private correspondence, which was large, testified to the fact that not many forgot him.

Breakfast over, he laid aside the paper, lit a cigarette, and turned over the little pile of letters, identifying the writers with a glance at the handwriting on each envelope. Only one was unknown to him: that he placed last, and carried them into the after-cabin to read, leaning his shoulder against the mantel of the tiled and bra.s.s-bound fireplace.

The first letter he opened was from his wife, and, in consequence, its contents were n.o.body's affair but his own. He read it twice, and smiled as he returned it to the envelope.

The next, written on thick notepaper stamped with the Admiralty crest, he also read twice, and mused awhile. Apparently this also was n.o.body's concern but his, for, still deep in thought, he tore it up and put the pieces in the fire before taking up the third. This was an appeal for a.s.sistance from a former watch-keeper who aspired to the Flying Corps. The next was also a request for a.s.sistance from a young officer, who, having recently taken a wife to his bosom, apparently considered the achievement a qualification for the command of one of H.M. torpedo-boat destroyers.

The Captain rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I sent him a silver photograph frame. . . . He'll want me to be G.o.dfather next." He occasionally spoke aloud when alone.

An appeal for funds for a memorial to someone or another followed.

Then two advertis.e.m.e.nts from wine merchants and a statement of his account with his outfitter were consigned in turns into the fire. The last envelope, in the unknown hand, he scrutinised for a moment before opening. The postmark was local, the caligraphy illiterate. He opened the letter and read it with an inscrutable face. Then, with a quick movement as of disgust, he crumpled it up and threw it into the flames.

It was anonymous, and was a threat, couched in lurid and ensanguined terms, to murder him.

Judges, and post-captains of the Royal Navy, perhaps as a reminder of their great responsibilities, occasionally receive communications of this nature. Their life insurance policies, however, appear to remain much the same as those of other people.

The after-cabin, where the Captain perused his correspondence, was an airy, chintz-upholstered apartment leading aft through two heavy steel doors on to the stern-walk. The doors were open on that particular morning, and the high, thin cries of seagulls quarrelling under the stern drifted through almost unceasingly.

Forward, the white-enamelled bulkhead was pierced by two entrances.

One led from a diminutive sleeping-cabin and bathroom, the other from the fore-cabin, which the Captain had just quitted, and which in turn communicated with a lobby where a marine sentry paced day and night.

The after-cabin was lit by a skylight overhead and scuttles in the ship's side. The sunlight, streaming in through the starboard ones, winked on the b.u.t.terfly clamps of burnished bra.s.s and small rods from which the little chintz curtains hung. A roll-topped desk occupied a corner near the fireplace, and round the bulkheads, affixed to white enamelled battens, hung water-colour paintings of his ships. A sloop of war under full sail; a brig, close-hauled, beating out of Plymouth Sound; a tiny gunboat at anchor in a backwater of the Upper Yangtse.

There were spick-and-span cruisers; a quaint, top-heavy looking battleship that in her day had been considered the last word in naval construction, and whose name to-day provokes reminiscences from the older generation and from the younger half-dubious smiles; then, near the door, came modern men-of-war of familiar aspect. They represented the milestones of a long career.

A chart lay folded on a table in the centre of the cabin, with a pair of dividers and a parallel ruler lying on it. Another table stood in a corner near the door--a small, gla.s.s-topped table such as collectors of curios gather their treasures in. The contents of this table, however, were not curios in the strict sense of the word. A number of them were very commonplace objects, but each one held its particular a.s.sociations.

You will find just such a collection of insignificant mysteries in a boy's pocket or a jackdaw's nest. Bits of string, a marble polished by friction, a piece of coloured gla.s.s, an old nail--in themselves rubbish, but doubtless linking the possessor to some amiable memory, and cherished for no better reason.

Some men retain this instinct of boyhood. But whereas the boy is secretive and reticent about the particular a.s.sociations his pocket holds, the man will talk about his h.o.a.rd.

In the gla.s.s-topped table in that corner of the after-cabin were ties with all the seven seas and the sh.o.r.es they wash. Mementoes of folly or friendship, sport or achievement; fragments of the mosaic that is life.

A bit of brick from the Great Wall of China recalled a bag of geese in the clear cold dusk of Northern Asia. Memories, too, of the whaler's beat back to the fleet in the teeth of a rising gale that swept in from the Pacific, when the bravest unlaced his boots and they baled with the empty guncase.

There was a piece of the sacred pavement of Mecca, brought back in the days when few Europeans had brought anything back from there--even their lives. A gold medal in a morocco-leather case, won by an essay that had called for months of unrelaxed study. A copper bangle from the wrist of a Korean dancing-girl (it was somebody else's story, though). A wooden ju-ju from Benin, dark-stained and repulsive; a tiny clay G.o.dling that had guarded the mummied heart of an Egyptian queen.

A flint arrow-head picked up on Dartmoor during a long summer tramp after the speckled trout. A jewelled cigarette-case, gift of an empress who could give no more than that, however much she may have wanted to.

Rubbish, all rubbish. Yet occasionally, when two or three post-captains, contemporaries and fleet-mates, gathered here to smoke after-dinner cigars, the host would unlock the gla.s.s-topped table, select some object from his miscellany, and hold it up with a "D'you remember----?" And one or other of his guests--sometimes all of them--would laugh and nod and blow great clouds of smoke and slide into eager reminiscence. Yesterday is the playground of all men's hearts, but more especially those of sailor men. These odds and ends were only keys that unlocked the gate.

A few photographs stood on the shelf above the hearth. Some books occupied a revolving bookcase within reach of anyone sitting at the desk; not very interesting books: old Navy Lists, a "King's Regulations," a "Manual of Court Martial Procedure," one or two volumes on International Law, and a treatise on so-called 'modern'

seamanship--which, by the way, is a misnomer, seamanship, like love, being of all time.

The revolving bookcase supported a bowl of flowers. The Captain's c.o.xswain had personally arranged them that morning; had, in fact, had a slight difference of opinion with the Captain's valet (conducted _sotto voce_) over the method of their arrangement. The c.o.xswain won on the claim of being a married man and understanding mysteries beyond the ken of bachelors. The result in either case would have brought tears to the eyes of any woman.

The Captain finished his cigarette and opened the roll-topped desk, slipped his letters into a pigeon-hole, and closed the desk again. As he did so the Commander entered the cabin, tucking his cap under his arm.

"Nine o'clock, sir; all ready for divisions. The Chaplain is sick--will you read prayers?"

"Sick, is he? What's the matter?"

"He twisted his knee yesterday playing football. The Fleet Surgeon has made him lie up."

The Captain nodded. "All right; I'll read them." As the Commander turned to go he spoke again: "By the way, that fellow I gave ninety days to yesterday--was there a woman in the case, d'you happen to know?

There was nothing in the evidence, of course, but I wondered----"

The Commander paused while the busy brain searched among its dockets.

The man whose business it is as Executive Officer to control the affairs of close on a thousand of his fellow men must of necessity sometimes learn curiously intimate details of their lives.

"Yes; the Master-at-Arms mentioned to me that a woman was at the bottom of it. She's a wrong 'un, I understand."

"Thank you."

The Commander went out, and a moment later the bugle overhead blazed forth "Divisions."

"I thought it was a woman's writing," added the Captain musingly.

"Divisions correct, sir!" The Commander saluted and made his report.