H.M.S Part 16

"Jim, there's a car coming. All right, be quick. That will do.

_There_, you old brute--now go and meet that car. Give me your hanky."

Rainer reluctantly dodged round the farm cart, holding a side-lamp in his hand. The headache was forgotten, and the world seemed a remarkably pleasant place in spite of bruises and stiff joints. The car pulled up and a group of figures came towards him. "Hullo," said one, "what's all this?"

Rainer recognised the speaker. "That you Deane?" he replied. "Three escaped Huns have attacked us. They've gone now. I was bringing despatches for the Wing-Commander, but they didn't get them. Miss Woodcote's in the car. She's smashed--the car, I mean--and she's had a blow on the head from a club."

"Lord! Those are our men. They walked out to one of our machines at dusk just after it landed, but they ran when they were challenged.

We're after them now."

"Well, they can't get far. One's groggy and one's lame. What about Miss Woodcote? She'll have to be sent home. She's got a nasty crack on the head."

"We'll send her to Admiralty House in this lorry. Give me the despatches and you go back with her. I'm going to spread my men out and hunt the fields. They must have been after your car."

Rainer walked back as the air-mechanics began to move the farm cart out of the road. "Ruth," he said, "we're going back on this lorry.

I've handed the despatches over, and I'm going to take you home."

"Only ten miles, Jim, and you expected forty, didn't you?"

"I did, but I hoped to have kissed you all the last twenty of them, you little angel."

"Well, Jim, it looks a very dark lorry, doesn't it? But as for kissing me in the other car----Well, you may have decided on the last twenty miles, but I had arranged for the last hundred yards up the drive.

Why? You silly old thing. I can't do two things properly at once, and I made up my mind when we started I was not going to be kissed when I was driving. Carry me across carefully, Jim, dear. I'm feeling rather fragile now...."

LOOKING AFT.

I'm the donkey-man of a dingy tramp They launched in 'Eighty-one, Rickety, old, and leaky too--but some o' the rivets are shining new Beneath our after-gun.

An' she an' meself are off to sea From out o' the breaker's hands, An' we laugh to find such an altered game, for devil a thing we found the same When we came off the land.

We used to carry a freight of trash That younger ships would scorn, But now we're running a decent trade--howitzer-sh.e.l.l and hand-grenade, Or best Alberta corn.

We used to sneak an' smouch along Wi' rusty side an' rails, Hoot an' bellow of liners proud--"Give us the room that we're allowed; Get out o' the track--the Mails!"

We sometimes met--an' took their wash-- The 'aughty ships o' war, An' we dips to them--an' they to us--an' on they went in a tearin'

fuss, But now they count us more.

For now we're "England's Hope and Pride"-- The Mercantile Marine,-- "Bring us the goods and food we lack, because we're hungry, Merchant Jack"

(As often I have been).

"You're the man to save us now, We look to you to win; Wot'd yer like? A rise o' pay? We'll give whatever you like to say, But bring the cargoes in."

An' here we are in the danger zone, Wi' escorts all around, Destroyers a-racing to and fro--"We will show you the way to go, An' guide you safe an' sound."

"An' did you cross in a comfy way, Or did you have to run?

An' is the patch on your hull we see the mark of a b.u.mp in 'Ninety-three, Or the work of a German gun?"

"We'll lead you now, and keep beside, An' call to all the Fleet, Clear the road and sweep us in--he carries a freight we need to win, A golden load of wheat."

Yes, we're the hope of England now, And rank wi' the Navy too; An' all the papers speak us fair--"Nothing he will not lightly dare, Nothing he fears to do."

"Be polite to Merchant Jack, Who brings you in the meat, For if he went on a striking lay, you'd have to go on your knees and pray, With never a bone to eat."

But you can lay your papers down An' set your fears aside, For we will keep the ocean free--we o' the clean an' open sea-- To break the German pride.

We won't go canny or strike for pay, Or say we need a rest; But you get on wi' the blinkin' War--an' not so much o' your strikes ash.o.r.e, Or givin' the German best.

GRIT.

The Captain of H.M. T.B.D. _Upavon_ was in a bad humour. He had decided when he left harbour that this patrol was going to be an uninteresting one, as the area allotted to him covered no traffic lane, and was therefore unlikely to hold an enemy within its boundaries. The dulness of a blank horizon had continued to confirm him in his opinion since the patrol began. He spoke from his arm-chair as the First Lieutenant struggled into his oilskins preparatory to going on deck for the First Watch.

"I don't care what courses you steer so long as you work along to the west'ard and keep the alterations logged. Beat across in twelve-mile tacks, and tell your relief to do the same. I'll be keeping the morning, and I'll turn round and work east at six. Got it?"

The First Lieutenant intimated that he had "got it," and, pulling his sou'wester well down over his ears, pa.s.sed out: he was none too cheerful at the moment himself. The rain had been beating down in heavy streams since dusk, and the long oily swell that had been with them since leaving harbour had, although it had not wetted their rails, made the steady rolling rather monotonous.

The big tramp steamer might have had a fighting chance if it had not been for the torpedo. It hit fairly abreast her bridge, and two boats at the port-davits broke to splinters above the explosion, while the wireless instruments developed defects that would have taken a week to cure. The Chief Mate never saw the periscope. The explosion, and the sight of a hard white line stretching away to port at right angles to their course, were impressed on his brain simultaneously. It was a few seconds later when he rose shakily to his feet and mechanically set the engine-room telegraphs to "stop." As he did so, the Captain arrived with a rush on the bridge and released him from his post. He hurried below to examine the damage, and to fight, by every means possible to seamanship, the great Atlantic waters that he knew must by then be flooding nearly half the hold-s.p.a.ce of the ship. Ships have reached harbour with worse damage than she had received, and she might have added another name to the list of tributes to good seamanship had not the enemy risen astern of them to complete his work. A sh.e.l.l hummed over them, skimming the tilted deck from two thousand yards away. The second sh.e.l.l arrived as the tramp's stern-gun fired, and the steamer quivered to a dull rumbling shock that told of a well-delayed fuse and a raking shot.

The tramp's big propeller threshed along, half out of water, as her Captain rang down for speed with which to dodge and manuvre; but the vicious sh.e.l.ls came steadily home into her, and it was a question only of whether the straining bulkheads forward would go before her stern was blown in. The stern-gun could hardly be depressed enough to get a clear view of its target, and Fritz knew it. The Chief Mate reckoned that it was about the twelfth sh.e.l.l that finished them.

Following its explosion, he heard a noise that told him much,--a hissing, rushing sound of air from beneath his feet--the sigh of flooding holds.

There was little time, but they did what they could. The gun's crew, wrestling with a refractory cartridge-box lid, hardly seemed to look up as the tramp sank, carrying them down as so many British seamen have gone down, intent only on the job in hand. In five minutes' time the ocean was clear again save for a half-dozen bobbing heads cl.u.s.tered round a small white upturned boat.

The sea, that from the deck of the tramp had seemed to be only a long gentle swell, now appeared tremendous and threatening. With a cable's length between their smooth crests the big hills came majestically on, giving the numbed survivors glimpses of the empty s.p.a.ces of the sea at intervals before lowering them back to the broad dark valleys between.

For a few minutes the men simply paddled their feet in silence as they clung with unnecessary strength to the life-lines, stem, and stern-posts of the capsized boat; then the Chief Mate called to two of them by name. He gave the white-bearded, semi-conscious figure he supported into their charge and commenced diving, or rather ducking down, under the gunwale. He was blue with cold and weariness before he gained his object--a heavy eighteen-foot ash oar. The other two men came to his a.s.sistance, and between them they succeeded in pa.s.sing the oar-loom across and under the boat, and in working it about until it caught and held at the far side. It took the Chief Mate a ghastly quarter of an hour before he could climb to the swaying keel, but once there he easily hauled the lighter of his a.s.sistants up beside him. With the other man steadying the loom in position, they swung their weight back on the painter clove-hitched to the bending blade.

Time after time the oar slipped and had to be replaced, and on each failure the cramped workers panted and shivered a while before patiently setting to the task again. As they toiled, the send of the swell worked the boat broadside on, and suddenly as they threw back on the line she came sharply over, throwing them into the sea before they could clutch the rising gunwale with their hands. Followed an hour of heart-breaking baling with caps and hands, and then one by one the six came aboard--the old Captain, who in the face of active work was recovering consciousness, insisting on being at any rate one of the last three to leave the water.

The Chief Mate collapsed at once across the after-thwart. He had been working with the strength of desperation, and the effort had been great. The others knelt or sat on the thwarts, staring around them as they swung periodically on the crests of the waves in hungry desire for the sight of help. One man faced aft and began swearing, cursing the cold, the Germans, the war, and, in a curious twist of recollection, the ship's cook, who had died twenty minutes before, but who had done so suffering under the accusation of having stolen the swearer's sugar ration. The Captain rose, steadying himself by a hand on the gunwale: "Stop that swearing, you," he said; "lay aft here and rummage these lockers. You other hands, muster the gear in the boat and clear away the raffle. Mr Johnson, you and I will bail for an hour; the boat is leaking, and we'll take the first spell. We want warming, I think."

The Chief Mate raised his head from against the thwart--"I can't bale, sir; let the men do it. I'm done."

"Mr Johnson, I'm sixty-five years old and I'm going to bale, and I'm captain of this ship."

The Chief Mate clawed himself up to a kneeling position, and taking a sodden cap from the stern-sheets set feebly to work. As he went on he warmed a little, and the deadly feeling of despair began to leave him.

The movements of men about him as they hunted for missing masts and oars roused him at length to an oath at a seaman who lurched against him.

An hour later the dusk closed down, and with two men baling wearily the boat rose and fell to what was undoubtedly a threatening sea, tugging and jerking at her sea anchor. The other four crouched in the stern-sheets, huddled together to find warmth beneath the beating rain.

"If the sail wasn't gone, sir, would you 'ave tried to make land?" A seaman spoke, his cheek against the Chief Mate's serge sleeve.

"I would, Hanson; and if we had two sound oars, I'd use those too,"