H.M.S Part 11

Right across the deep Atlantic where the _Lusitania_ pa.s.sed, With the battle-flag of Yankee-land a-floating at the mast, We are coming all the while, Over twenty hundred mile, And we're staying to the finish, to the last.

We are many--we are one--and we're in it overhead, We are coming as an Army that has seen its women dead, And the old Rebel Yell Will be loud above the sh.e.l.l When we cross the top together, seeing red.

A RING AXIOM.

When the pitiless gong rings out again, and they whip your chair away, When you feel you'd like to take the floor, whatever the crowd should say, When the hammering gloves come back again, and the world goes round your head, When you know your arms are only wax, your hands of useless lead, When you feel you'd give your heart and soul for a chance to clinch and rest, And through your brain the whisper comes, "Give in, you've done your best,"

Why, stiffen your knees and brace your back--and take my word as true-- _If the man in front has got you weak, he's just as tired as you_.

He can't attack through a gruelling fight and finish as he began; He's done more work than you to-day--you're just as fine a man.

So call your last reserve of pluck--he's careless with his chin-- You'll put it across him every time--Go in--Go in--_Go in!_

CHANCES.

The boxing-stage was raised a clear three and a half feet above the deck, and the mat showed glaringly white in the northern sunshine. The corner-posts were padded and wound with many layers of red and blue bunting. A glance round showed a great amphitheatre of faces, rising tier on tier up to the crouching figures of men on the main-derrick, funnel-casings, and masts. The spectators numbered, perhaps, close on three thousand, and there was hardly a man among them who had not qualified as a critic by personal experience at the game. The last two compet.i.tors had just left the ring in a storm of hand-clapping, and the white-sweatered seconds ceased their professional chatter and their basin-splashing employment to jump up and place the chairs back against the corner-posts as the next two officers entered.

Lieutenant Cairnley of H.M. T.B.D. ---- pulled the loose sleeves of his monkey-jacket across his chest and stretched out his legs as he sat down in the Blue corner. He looked across at his opponent, who was standing talking in a low voice to a second. Yes, he was evidently only just inside the middle-weight limit, and he, Cairnley, must be giving away all of half a stone. Still, that was half a stone less to carry about the ring, and he felt really fit and well-trained. An officer was standing in the ring, with a paper in one hand, and the other raised to call for silence.

"First round of the Officers' Middle-weights. In the Red corner, Lieutenant Santon of the----, in the Blue corner, Lieutenant Cairnley of the----." He slipped under the ropes and jumped down from the stage as the voice of the timekeeper followed his own--"Seconds out!"

Cairnley felt the coat plucked from his shoulders, and he stood up as his chair was drawn away. "_Clang!_" went the heavy gong, and he walked forward with his right hand out and his eyes on his opponent's chest, in the midst of a great silence. As their gloves touched, Cairnley jumped quickly to one side and began his invariable habit of working round to his opponent's left hand. He was not allowed much time for "routine work." He had an impression of a looming figure getting larger, a whirl of feinting, and he was being rushed back across the ring in a storm of punches. His habit of keeping his chin down, shoulders up, and elbows in, saved him. He felt a thrill of respect for Santon's punch as his head rocked from heavy hook-blows on either side, and then he was inside his opponent's elbows, working his head forward, and lowering his right for a body punch before they struck the ropes. As he felt their springing contact at his back, he stiffened up and pushed his man away. The recoil of the hemp a.s.sisted him, and Santon gave ground a yard. Cairnley jumped at him, and, taking an even chance, sent a straight right over, which landed cleanly on the mouth. His left followed at once, but only touched lightly. Santon gave ground again, and the lighter man slid after him, sending a long left home to the nose. Cairnley thrilled as it landed.

This man was strong, he felt, but not quick enough in defence. He half-feinted with his right, and sent his left out again. As the punch extended he slightly lifted his chin, and the ring whirled round him as he took a tremendous cross-counter that came in over his elbow. He came forward quickly to get to close quarters, but his opponent had no intention of letting him. There was a whirl of gloves and a sound of heavy, grunting hitting, and Cairnley found himself on his hands and knees, with a very groggy feeling in his head, looking across at Santon's white knees by the ropes at the far side of the ring. He stretched his neck, took a long breath, and rose shakily. He did not feel as shaky as he looked, for he had been in the ring before, and knew that a knock-down blow sometimes entraps the optimistic giver of it into sudden defeat, but in this case he was engaged with a boxer who took no chances. Santon approached quickly and began rapid feinting just outside hitting distance. Cairnley gave ground slightly and waited for the rush. This chap had a wicked right, he reflected, and he did not want to get caught napping again. Then Santon was on him slamming in lefts and rights, and working furiously to get him into a corner. Cairnley stooped and struggled to get in close. A muscular change in the body a foot from his eyes gave him warning of an approaching upper-cut, and he brought his right glove in front of his face in time to stop it. He felt Santon's left on the back of his head, and instantly shifted feet and escaped round his opponent's left side. As he shifted he jerked a hard, short left punch into the mark, and then repeated the blow. Santon broke away, and received a perfectly-timed straight left on the nose as the gong rang. There was a storm of applause as the men went to their corners, for Cairnley's recovery had been well guarded, and his quick hitting at the end of the round showed that he had not lost much speed. He lay back in his chair while his seconds fussed around him, and thought hard. That right cross-counter of Santon's was certainly a beauty, so much so that it must be his favourite punch. Could he be absolutely certain of its being produced if he gave it the same chance? Well, he had to win this on a knock-out, or not at all. He could not pick up all the points he had lost in the first round with only two to go, so it was a case of chancing it on his brains alone. Yes, he would just check his idea once, and if that proved that Santon would use the same punch for the same lead, he would go all out on the next. _Clang!_ He rose and walked straight forward to meet his man. At six-feet range he jumped in and drove his left for the mark. It did not land true, but it enabled him to close and start a succession of furious body punches.

The two hammering, gasping white figures reeled about the ring for half a minute, heads down and arms working like pistons.

Cairnley knew that his man was too strong for him at that game, but for that round, brain and not muscle was his guide, and he wanted Santon to be warmed up and made to act by habit and use. They locked in a clinch, and a moment later broke clear at the word of the Referee--the first he had spoken in that fight. For a second they stood on guard swaying from side to side as they waited for an opening. Then Cairnley leaped in and sent out a full straight left. Even with his chin tucked well down he felt the jar of the right that slid again over his elbow, and striking full on the cheek, made his head ring and his neck ache. He stopped the left that followed, then landed on the face with his own left and closed again to hammer in short arm punches. He felt as he did so that the work he was engaged on must be done soon, as at this high-speed work he would not have the strength for a hard punch for long. Santon appeared to be a little inclined for a rest, too, for it was he who clinched this time.

Cairnley rested limply against him and took a long breath as the voice of the Referee called them apart. He caught his breath again and called up all his reserve strength as they posed at long range, then he jumped forward as before, sent his left out three-quarters of the way, and showed his chin clear of his chest. Without a check in the movement his left dropped, his body pivoted, and he sent a full "haymaker" right up and across to the half-glimpsed head in front of him. A bony right wrist glanced from the top of his bent head, and at the same instant a jar, from his right knuckles to his back, told him that brains had beaten skill. He slipped aside, his hands mechanically raised in defence, and stumbled over Santon's falling body. As he scrambled up to cross the ring he looked back, and knew at once that not ten nor twenty seconds would be enough for that limp figure to recover in.

II.

"Yes, I've got leave now, and Cairnley's in hospital; he had a couple of splinters in him, and they packed him off, though he wanted to get leave and treat himself. The old packet's got to be just about rebuilt from the deck up, and he's certain to get a bigger one instead. He's going to take me on with him,--good thing for me,--as I'll be pretty young to be Number One of one of the Alpha cla.s.s ships. I tell you, it was a devilish funny show, and all over in a second. It came on absolute pea-soup at four and we had only heard the guns in the action. Never saw a thing. We had been out away from the line four hours. Had nothing but wireless touch to tell us they had got into a mix-up. We went to stations at full speed trying to close on them, and we'd hardly got ready when the Hun showed up four hundred yards off. My word! she was smart on it. She was only a cruiser, but in the fog she showed up like the _Von der Tann_, and she was going all of twenty-four. She let fly at the moment we saw her, and she spun round and charged right off. We let go too as she fired, but her turning to ram saved her. We turned too and bolted, and she just cut every darned thing down from the casing up.

The mast went on the first salvo, one funnel and most of the guns. The shooting was just lovely, and if it hadn't been such close range we'd have been shot down in one act. As it was, they just shaved us clean as if we'd gone full speed under a low-level bridge. At six hundred yards we could only see her gun-flashes, and we yanked round across her bow and opened out. The skipper gave her five minutes and then levelled up on the same course we had been on before, and eased a bit to keep station on her beam. We did a bit of clearing up and he sent for me. He was on the bridge--which had d.a.m.n little left on it, bar him,--it was a proper wreck--and told me to arrange hands to shout orders to the engine-room if required, as the telegraphs were gone. The wheel was all right--or at least the gearing was,--the wheel itself had only a bit of rim and two spokes on it. He told me to get what fish we could fire set for surface, and that he was going to go for her again and fire at twenty-five yards. I thought he was mad, but I went down and got 'em ready. (The gunner was killed.) I shouted up to him when I had done, and had mustered a tube's crew, and we whacked on full bat again and began to close. You see we had crossed her bow once, and Cairnley reckoned then that she would have altered back to her original course of East, so he had kept on her port beam at about a mile, going the same speed. I did not get what he was driving at till afterwards. At the time I thought he was just going to do it again, because he thought he ought to make another effort. We saw her first this time as we were closing on the opposite side, and the skipper told them to p.o.o.p off the bow gun, which was all we had, to wake them up. They woke up all right, and we got the same smack from all along her side we'd had before. She was just abaft our starboard beam going the same course, and I was wondering what the deuce he'd meant by telling me to train the tubes to port, when we went hard a-port and came round all heeled over and shaking. I just thought to myself, Well, if the Hun keeps on and doesn't try to ram, we're going to look d.a.m.n silly, when I saw her again and she _was_ ramming. Her guns did no good then,--the change was too quick for any sights to be held on. He banged away all right, and I believe he put more helm on--but he couldn't get us. The skipper had said twenty-five yards, but it looked to me like _feet_. He was going all out, and so were we, and I pulled off as his stem showed abreast the tubes--all spray and grey paint--and those fish hit him abaft the second funnel.

Eh? Well, perhaps it was a few yards, but it's the closest I've seen to going alongside a gangway. Well, that's all I knew about it for half an hour. The bang put me out. Skipper said he turned back and searched for her, but it was so thick then he couldn't have found an island except by mistake. We'd been hit below water too and couldn't steam much. We got a tow home. Good egg! Here's St Pancras, and there's a flapper--thirty if she's a day--Good old blinkin' London!"

THE QUARTERMASTER.

I mustn't look up from the compa.s.s-card, nor look at the seas at all, I must watch the helm and compa.s.s-card,--If I heard the trumpet-call Of Gabriel sounding Judgment Day to dry the Seas again,-- I must hold her bow to windward now till I'm relieved again-- To the pipe and wail of a tearing gale, Carrying Starboard Ten.

I must stare and frown at the compa.s.s-card, that chases round the bowl, North and South and back again with every lurching roll.

By the feel of the ship beneath I know the way she's going to swing, But I mustn't look up to the booming wind however the halliards sing-- In a breaking sea with the land a-lee, Carrying Starboard Ten.

And I stoop to look at the compa.s.s-card as closes in the night, For it's hard to see by the shaded glow of half a candle-light; But the spokes are bright, and I note beside in the corner of my eye A shimmer of light on oilskin wet that shows the Owner nigh-- Foggy and thick and a windy trick, Carrying Starboard Ten.

Heave and sway or dive and roll can never disturb me now; Though seas may sweep in rivers of foam across the straining bow, I've got my eyes on the compa.s.s-card, and though she broke her keel And hit the bottom beneath us now, you'd find me at the wheel In Davy's realm, still at the helm, Carrying Starboard Ten.

A LANDFALL.

The dawn came very slowly--a faint glow in the sky spreading until first the streaming forecastle and then the dirty-yellow seas could be seen. The destroyer was steaming slowly along the coast with the wind just before the beam. She made bad weather of it, lurching at extraordinary angles from side to side, yawing from two to four points off her course, and throwing her stern up as each wave pa.s.sed under her, until the water spouted in the wake of her slowly-moving propellers. The wind and the mist had come together, and the visibility extended to perhaps three or four foaming wave-crests away.

They knew within a dozen miles where they were, but a dozen miles is too vague a reckoning to make a mine-guarded harbour from, and her captain, with the greatest respect for the fact that he was on a dead lee sh.o.r.e, and a most inhospitable and rocky sh.o.r.e at that, was feeling for the land with an order for "Hard-over" helm running through his head. Occasionally he ceased his staring out on the lee bow to look back along the deck. The sight each time made him frown and tighten his lips. The beam-sea was sweeping across the ship regularly every half-minute. The water shot across her 'midships three feet deep, and foaming like a Highland burn in spate. The squat funnels showed through the turmoil of water and spray, streaked diagonally upwards with crusted white salt, through which showed patches of red funnel-scale; from them came a steady roaring note--the signal of suppressed power below them. Battened-down as she was, he knew that the hatches were not submarine ones; built as they were on a foundation little thicker than cardboard, they could not keep out such seas, and he visualised the turmoil and discomfort there must be beneath him on the flooded decks. He, personally, had not seen in what state she was below, having been on the bridge for the last nine hours, but he felt he would like to take a look at his own cabin and see if his worst foreboding--a foot of water washing to and fro across a sodden carpet--was true.

He glanced at his wrist-watch, and then to the east. Half-past seven and full daylight. Well, he thought, it might as well be just dawning still for all the light there was. Air and sea were the same colour, a creamy dull white, and they merged into one at a range of perhaps five hundred yards. If only he could--he raised his head sharply and turned to face out on the beam. Bracing his feet and gripping the rail with wet-gloved fingers he held his breath in an intensity of listening concentration. Yes, it was clearer that time, a faint high whine broad on the beam. He walked, timing the roll so that he had no need to clutch for support, to where the helmsman crouched over a wildly swinging compa.s.s-card, and gave an order. The destroyer came bowing and dipping round till she met the full drive of the sea ahead. With a roar and a crash the water tumbled in over the forecastle, shaking the bridge, and falling in tons over the ladders on to the upper deck.

The destroyer still turned, shaking from end to end, until she had the sea on the other bow. The telegraph reply-gongs rang back the acknowledgment of an order, and easing to barely steerage-way, the ship settled in her new position--hove-to in the direction from which she had come overnight. The faint sound he had heard had seemed too distant for the captain to be a.s.sured of his position, and until he could hear it clearly and from fairly close he was not going to risk taking a departure from it. He knew that hove-to as she was the destroyer was going to be driven closer in, and with a steep-to sh.o.r.e he could allow her to accept the leeway for some time. He moved across and stood on the other side of the bridge, looking out to leeward, his att.i.tude less strained and anxious now, as the ship was making fairly easy weather of it. The motion, it is true, was far more uncomfortable. She sidled, dived, and wallowed in a way that would have thrown a man unaccustomed to T.B.D.'s completely off his feet; but far less water was coming aboard, and the amount that did so arrived on a bearing from which she was better fitted to receive it.

At the end of twenty minutes the captain began to resume his rigid att.i.tude. There was something wrong somewhere. Sounds came erratically through fog, but this could not be counted on. He knew he had made no mistake in the sound he had heard. It was certainly the high note of the lighthouse, and not a steamer's whistle. The low note should have been heard in between the high ones, but the fact of not having heard the low was not surprising to him. One seldom heard both notes in a fog. But this silent gap was a nuisance, considering the rate at which they must be closing the land. At half an hour from his first hearing the sound he turned uphill to gain the wheel again, but froze still as the voice of the fog-horn came afresh, this time with no possibility of doubt. A great thuttering roar broke out, as it seemed, almost overhead, a deep ba.s.s note that made the air quiver. The captain jumped amidships and barked an order. The wheel spun hard down and the telegraphs whirred round, bringing the destroyer diving and leaping back head to sea. Looking aft, the captain had a glimpse of three pinnacle rocks showing a moment in the trough between two seas, and then the fog shut down over them again, leaving only the regular deep roar of the fog-signal, that grew gradually fainter astern. Two points at a time he eased the ship round till she was hove-to on the opposite tack, then he called to another oilskinned figure that stood swaying to the roll by the helmsman. "Will you take her now?" he said; "I am going to look for some breakfast. Hold her like this half an hour, and then turn her down wind for the run in. The tide's setting us well round the point now. All right?"

"Yes, sir. I'll lay it off again on the chart before I turn. That was a queer hole in the fog, sir."

"Yes, quite a big blank. Glad it wasn't much bigger. Still, we could see four cables under the land, and the land's alright if you've got your stern to it."

With a huge yawn of relief he stretched his arms back and up, then started down the thin iron ladder on his perilous trip to the inevitable chaos and confusion of his cabin.

NIGHT ROUNDS.

It was a dark night with no moon, while only occasionally could a star be seen from the leader's bridge. The next astern could be made out by the bands of blue-white phosph.o.r.escence that fell away from her bow, but the rest of the line was quite invisible. The flotilla slid along at a pace that to them was only a jog-trot, but which would have been considered rather too exciting for night work by the big ships. The night was calm, with hardly a breath of wind, while the _hush_--_hush_--_hush_ from the bow-waves seemed to accentuate the silence and to increase the impression the destroyers gave of game moving down on a tiptoe of expectancy to the drinking-pool, ready at a sight or sound to spring to a frenzy of either offensive or defensive speed. On the leader's bridge men spoke in low tones, as if afraid that they might be overheard by the enemy--actually to enable them to listen better to whatever sound the echoes from the sea might carry.

On bridges and at gun-stations look-outs stared out around them at the night, and there was no need for the officers to be anxious as to whether their men kept good watch or slept. The crews knew the rules of destroyer-war in the Narrow Seas--that "The first one to see, shoots; and the first one to hit, wins." It is true that they did not always see first. There were exceptions. Not so long before, they had been seen at a range of perhaps half a mile by an officer on the low un.o.btrusive conning-tower of a submarine. This officer had instantly and accurately smitten on the back of the head the sailor who shared his watch, and had rapped out one word "_Down!_" The sailor (evidently quite accustomed to this procedure) had vanished down the conning-tower like a falling stone, the officer's boots chasing the man's hands down the ladder-rungs. The lid had clanked down and locked just a few seconds before a little "plop" of water closed over the swirling suction that showed where a big patrol submarine had been. The boat was English (that is to say, her Captain was Scotch, and her First Lieutenant Canadian, while the remainder of her officers and men together could hardly have mustered half a dozen men from the Home Counties), but she had no intention of risking explanations at short range with her own friends. She had been warned of their coming, but she looked on it as a piece of extraordinarily bad luck to have been met with at visibility range on such a dark night and to have been inconvenienced into a matter of ninety feet in a hurry. But it is known that submarines dive for almost everything and swear at everybody.

As the flotilla moved on its way a portent showed on the bow to landward. A faint red glow began to light up the low clouds over the Belgian frontier, and the bridge look-outs whispered together as they watched it brighten. As it grew clearer it showed to be not one light, but a rapid-running succession of instantaneous lights far inland. The white pencil of a searchlight beam showed and swung to the zenith and back--perhaps half-way between the watchers and the flicker in the sky. Ten minutes later, as the light drew farther aft, a faint murmur of sound (that began as a mere suspicion, and grew to be unmistakably but barely audible) announced the origin of the glow.

On the leader's bridge the tall officer in the overcoat spoke to the shorter one in the "lammy." "That's a bit on the big side for a night raid--they must be attacking round by----"

"Yes, sir; there's something like what they call 'drum-fire' going on.

Wonder why they put searchlights on for it, though?"

"Can't guess. They'll have 'em on on the coast in a minute too, if I know them. Perhaps when they hear guns inland they think it's airbombs coming down. There they go! Two of 'em----"

The searchlights came on together, and on such a clear and dark night they seemed startlingly close. They swept the heavens over and back, steadied awhile pointing inland, and went out again, leaving an even inkier blackness than before, and setting the watchers blinking and rubbing their dazzled eyes. Away to the south-east the pulsating growl of the guns continued, though the breadth and height of the glow in the sky was gradually decreasing.

"There isn't any fighting on near the coast now, sir. That must be away down in France. If they'd only fire slow we'd be able to get a sort of range by the flash."

"You'd have to hold your watch for some time, then," said the taller officer. "I haven't the inland geography well enough in my head to say where it is, but that sc.r.a.p's nearer seventy than sixty miles from here. Good Lord! And I suppose we'll read in the papers when we get in that 'there was activity at some points.'"

"And from here it looks like h.e.l.l. What it must be like close to----!