Modern Essays Part 3

The officer commanding troops has come on the bridge at the first alarm. His juniors have opportunity to take their stations before the struggling ma.s.s reaches to the boats. The impossibility of getting among the men on the lower decks makes the military officers' efforts to restore confidence difficult. They are aided from an unexpected quarter.

The bridge-boy makes unofficial use of our megaphone. "Hey! Steady up you men doon therr," he shouts. "Ye'll no' dae ony guid fur yersels croodin' th' ledders!"

We could not have done it as well. The lad is plainly in sight to the crowd on the decks. A small boy, undersized. "Steady up doon therr!" The effect is instant. Noise there still is, but the movement is arrested.

The engines are stopped--we are now beyond range of a second torpedo--and steam thunders in exhaust, making our efforts to control movements by voice impossible. At the moment of the impact the destroyers have swung round and are casting here and there like hounds on the scent: the dull explosion of a depth-charge--then another, rouses a fierce hope that we are not unavenged. The force of the explosion has broken connections to the wireless room, but the aerial still holds and, when a measure of order on the boatdeck allows, we send a message of our peril broadcast. There is no doubt in our minds of the outcome. Our bows, drooping visibly, tell that we shall not float long. We have nearly three thousand on board. There are boats for sixteen hundred--then rafts. Boats--rafts--and the gla.s.s is falling at a rate that shows bad weather over the western horizon!

Our drill, that provided for lowering the boats with only half-complements in them, will not serve. We pa.s.s orders to lower away in any condition, however overcrowded. The way is off the ship, and it is with some apprehension we watch the packed boats that drop away from the davit heads. The shrill ring of the block-sheaves indicates a tension that is not far from breaking-point. Many of the life-boats reach the water safely with their heavy burdens, but the strain on the tackles--far beyond their working load--is too great for all to stand to it. Two boats go down by the run. The men in them are thrown violently to the water, where they float in the wash and shattered planking. A third dangles from the after fall, having shot her manning out at parting of the forward tackle. Lowered by the stern, she rights, disengages, and drifts aft with the men clinging to the life-lines. We can make no attempt to reach the men in the water. Their life-belts are sufficient to keep them afloat: the ship is going down rapidly by the head, and there remains the second line of boats to be hoisted and swung over. The chief officer, pausing in his quick work, looks to the bridge inquiringly, as though to ask, "How long?" The fingers of two hands suffice to mark our estimate.

The decks are now angled to the deepening pitch of the bows. Pumps are utterly inadequate to make impression on the swift inflow. The chief engineer comes to the bridge with a hopeless report. It is only a question of time. How long? Already the water is lapping at a level of the foredeck. Troops ma.s.sed there and on the forecastle-head are apprehensive: it is indeed a wonder that their officers have held them for so long. The commanding officer sets example by a cool nonchalance that we envy. Posted with us on the bridge, his quick eyes note the flood surging in the pent 'tween-decks below, from which his men have removed the few wounded. The dead are left to the sea.

Help comes as we had expected it would. Leaving _Nemesis_ to steam fast circles round the sinking ship, _Rifleman_ swings in and brings up alongside at the forward end. Even in our fear and anxiety and distress, we cannot but admire the precision of the destroyer captain's manuver--the skilful avoidance of our crowded life-boats and the men in the water--the sudden stoppage of her way and the cant that brings her to a standstill at the lip of our br.i.m.m.i.n.g decks. The troops who have stood so well to orders have their reward in an easy leap to safety. Quickly the foredeck is cleared. _Rifleman_ spurts ahead in a rush that sets the surrounding life-boats to eddy in her wash. She takes up the circling high-speed patrol and allows her sister ship to swing in and embark a number of our men.

It is when the most of the life-boats are gone we realize fully the gallant service of the destroyers. There remain the rafts, but many of these have been launched over to aid the struggling men in the water.

Half an hour has pa.s.sed since we were struck--thirty minutes of frantic endeavor to debark our men--yet still the decks are thronged by a packed ma.s.s that seems but little reduced. The coming of the destroyers alters the outlook. _Rifleman's_ action has taken over six hundred. A sensible clearance! _Nemesis_ swings in with the precision of an express, and the thud and clatter of the troops jumping to her deck sets up a continuous drumming note of deliverance. Alert and confident, the naval men accept the great risks of their position. The ship's bows are entered to the water at a steep incline. Every minute the balance is weighing, casting her stern high in the air. The bulkheads are by now taking place of keel and bearing the huge weight of her on the water. At any moment she may go without a warning, to crash into the light hull of the destroyer and bear her down. For all the circling watch of her sister ship, the submarine--if still he lives--may get in a shot at the standing target.

It is with a deep relief we signal the captain to bear off. Her decks are jammed to the limit. She can carry no more. _Nemesis_ lists heavily under her burdened decks as she goes ahead and clears.

Forty minutes! The zigzag clock in the wheelhouse goes on ringing the angles of time and course as though we were yet under helm and speed.

For a short term we have noted that the ship appears to have reached a point of arrest in her foundering droop. She remains upright as she has been since righting herself after the first inrush of water. Like the lady she always was, she has added no fearsome list to the sum of our distress. The familiar bridge, on which so many of our safe sea-days have been spent, is canted at an angle that makes foothold uneasy. She cannot remain for long afloat. The end will come swiftly, without warning--a sudden rupture of the bulkhead that is sustaining her weight.

We are not now many left on board. Striving and wrenching to man-handle the only remaining boat--rendered idle for want of the tackles that have parted on service of its twin--we succeed in pointing her outboard, and await a further deepening of the bows ere launching her. Of the military, the officer commanding, some few of his juniors, a group of other ranks, stand by. The senior officers of the ship, a muster of seamen, a few stewards, are banded with us at the last. We expect no further service of the destroyers. The position of the ship is over-menacing to any approach. They have all they can carry. Steaming at a short distance they have the appearance of being heavily overloaded; each has a staggering list and lies low in the water under their deck enc.u.mbrance. We have only the hazard of a quick out-throw of the remaining boat and the chances of a grip on floating wreckage to count upon.

On a sudden swift sheer, _Rifleman_ takes the risk. Unheeding our warning hail, she steams across the bows and backs at a high speed: her rounded stern jars on our hull plates, a whaler and the davits catch on a projection and give with the ring of buckling steel--she turns on the throw of the propellers and closes aboard with a resounding impact that sets her living deck-load to stagger.

We lose no time. Scrambling down the life-ropes, our small company endeavors to get foothold on her decks. The destroyer widens off at the rebound, but by clutch of friendly hands the men are dragged aboard. One fails to reach safety. A soldier loses grip and goes to the water. The chief officer follows him. Tired and unstrung as he must be by the devoted labors of the last half-hour, he is in no condition to effect a rescue. A sudden deep rumble from within the sinking ship warns the destroyer captain to go ahead. We are given no chance to aid our shipmates: the propellers tear the water in a furious race that sweeps them away, and we draw off swiftly from the side of the ship.

We are little more than clear of the settling fore-end when the last buoyant breath of _Cameronia_ is overcome. n.o.bly she has held afloat to the debarking of the last man. There is no further life in her. Evenly, steadily, as we had seen her leave the launching ways at Meadowside, she goes down.

THE MARKET

_By_ WILLIAM MCFEE

William McFee's name is a.s.sociated with the sea, but in his writing he treats the life of ships and sailors more as a background than as the essential substance of his tale. I have chosen this brief and colorful little sketch to represent his talent because it is different from the work with which most of his readers are familiar, and because it represents a mood very characteristic of him--an imaginative and observant treatment of the workings of commerce. His interest in fruit is intimate, as he has been for some years an engineer in the sea service of the United Fruit Company, with a Mediterranean interim--reflected in much of his recent writing--during the War.

The publication of McFee's _Casuals of the Sea_ in 1916 was something of an event in the world of books, and introduced to the reading world a new writer of unquestionable strength and subtlety.

His earlier books, _An Ocean Tramp_ and _Aliens_ (both republished since), had gone almost unnoticed--which, it is safe to say, will not happen again to anything he cares to publish. His later books are _Captain Macedoine's Daughter_, _Harbours of Memory_, and _An Engineer's Notebook_. He was born at sea in 1881, the son of a sea-captain; grew up in a northern suburb of London, served his apprenticeship in a big engineering shop, and has been in ships most of the time since 1905.

There is a sharp, imperative rap on my outer door; a rap having within its insistent urgency a shadow of delicate diffidence, as though the person responsible were a trifle scared of the performance and on tiptoe to run away. I roll over and regard the clock. Four-forty. One of the dubious by-products of continuous service as a senior a.s.sistant at sea is the habit of waking automatically about 4 A. M. This gives one several hours, when ash.o.r.e, to meditate upon one's sins, frailties, and (more rarely) triumphs and virtues. For a man who gets up at say four-thirty is regarded with aversion ash.o.r.e. His family express themselves with superfluous vigor. He must lie still and meditate, or suffer the ignominy of being asked when he is going away again.

But this morning, in these old Chambers in an ancient Inn buried in the heart of London City, I have agreed to get up and go out. The reason for this momentous departure from a life of temporary but deliberate indolence is a lady. "Cherchez la femme," as the French say with the dry animosity of a logical race. Well, she is not far to seek, being on the outside of my heavy oak door, tapping, as already hinted, with a sharp insistent delicacy. To this romantic summons I reply with an articulate growl of acquiescence, and proceed to get ready. To relieve the anxiety of any reader who imagines an impending elopement it may be stated in succinct truthfulness that we are bound on no such desperate venture. We are going round the corner a few blocks up the Strand, to Covent Garden Market, to see the arrival of the metropolitan supply of produce.

Having accomplished a hasty toilet, almost as primitive as that favored by gentlemen aroused to go on watch, and placating an occasional repet.i.tion of the tapping by brief protests and reports of progress, I take hat and cane, and drawing the huge antique bolts of my door, discover a young woman standing by the window looking out upon the quadrangle of the old Inn. She is a very decided young woman, who is continually thinking out what she calls "stunts" for articles in the press. That is her profession, or one of her professions--writing articles for the press. The other profession is selling ma.n.u.scripts, which const.i.tutes the tender bond between us. For the usual agent's commission she is selling one of my ma.n.u.scripts. Being an unattached and, as it were, unprotected male, she plans little excursions about London to keep me instructed and entertained. Here she is attired in the flamboyant finery of a London flowergirl. She is about to get the necessary copy for a special article in a morning paper. With the exception of a certain expectant flash of her bright black Irish eyes, she is entirely businesslike. Commenting on the beauty of an early summer morning in town, we descend, and pa.s.sing out under the ponderous ancient archway, we make our leisurely progress westward down the Strand.

London is always beautiful to those who love and understand that extraordinary microcosm; but at five of a summer morning there is about her an exquisite quality of youthful fragrance and debonair freshness which goes to the heart. The newly-hosed streets are shining in the sunlight as though paved with "patines of bright gold." Early 'buses rumble by from neighboring barns where they have spent the night. And, as we near the new Gaiety Theatre, thrusting forward into the great rivers of traffic soon to pour round its base like some bold Byzantine promontory, we see Waterloo Bridge thronged with wagons, piled high.

From all quarters they are coming, past Charing Cross the great wains are arriving from Paddington Terminal, from the market-garden section of Middles.e.x and Surrey. Down Wellington Street come carts laden with vegetables from Brentwood and Coggeshall, and neat vans packed with crates of watercress which grows in the lush lowlands of Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, and behind us are thundering huge four-horse vehicles from the docks, vehicles with peaches from South Africa, potatoes from the Canary Islands, onions from France, apples from California, oranges from the West Indies, pineapples from Central America, grapes from Spain and bananas from Colombia.

We turn in under an archway behind a theatre and adjacent to the stage-door of the Opera House. The booths are rapidly filling with produce. Gentlemen in long alpaca coats and carrying formidable marbled note-books walk about with an important air. A mountain range of pumpkins rises behind a hill of cabbages. Festoons of onions are being suspended from rails. The heads of barrels are being knocked in, disclosing purple grapes buried in corkdust. Pears and figs, grown under gla.s.s for wealthy patrons, repose in soft tissue-lined boxes. A broken crate of tangerine oranges has spilled its contents in a splash of ruddy gold on the plank runway. A wagon is driven in, a heavy load of beets, and the broad wheels crush through the soft fruit so that the air is heavy with the acrid sweetness.

We pick our way among the booths and stalls until we find the flowers.

Here is a crowd of ladies, young, so-so and some quite matronly, and all dressed in this same flamboyant finery of which I have spoken. They are grouped about an almost overpowering ma.s.s of blooms. Roses just now predominate. There is a satisfying solidity about the bunches, a glorious abundance which, in a commodity so easily enjoyed without ownership, is scarcely credible. I feel no desire to own these huge aggregations of odorous beauty. It would be like owning a harem, one imagines. Violets, solid patches of vivid blue in round baskets, eglantine in dainty boxes, provide a foil to the majestic blazonry of the roses and the dew-spangled forest of maiden-hair fern near by.

"And what are those things at all?" demands my companion, diverted for a moment from the flowers. She nods towards a ma.s.s of dull-green affairs piled on mats or being lifted from big vans. She is a c.o.c.kney and displays surprise when she is told those things are bananas. She shrugs and turns again to the musk-roses, and forgets. But to me, as the harsh, penetrating odor of the green fruit cuts across the heavy perfume of the flowers, comes a picture of the farms in distant Colombia or perhaps Costa Rica. There is nothing like an odor to stir memories. I see the timber pier and the long line of rackety open-slatted cars jangling into the dark shed, pushed by a noisy, squealing locomotive. I see the boys lying asleep between shifts, their enormous straw hats covering their faces as they sprawl. In the distance rise the blue mountains; behind is the motionless blue sea. I hear the whine of the elevators, the monotonous click of the counters, the harsh cries of irresponsible and argumentative natives. I feel the heat of the tropic day, and see the gleam of the white waves breaking on yellow sands below tall palms. I recall the mysterious impenetrable solitude of the jungle, a solitude alive, if one is equipped with knowledge, with a ceaseless warfare of winged and crawling hosts. And while my companion is busily engaged in getting copy for a special article about the Market, I step nimbly out of the way of a swarthy gentleman from Calabria, who with his two-wheeled barrow is the last link in the immense chain of transportation connecting the farmer in the distant tropics and the c.o.c.kney pedestrian who halts on the sidewalk and purchases a banana for a couple of pennies.

HOLY IRELAND

_By_ JOYCE KILMER

This echo of the A.E.F. is probably the best thing Joyce Kilmer ever wrote, and shows the vein of real tenderness and insight that lay beneath his lively and versatile career on Grub Street. In him, as in many idealists, the Irish theme had become legendary, it was part of his religion and his dream-life, and he treated it with real affection and humor. You will find it cropping out many times in his verses. The Irish problem as it is reflected in this country is not always clearly understood. Ireland, in the minds of our poets, is a mystical land of green hills, saints and leprechauns, and its political problems are easy.

Joyce Kilmer was born in New Brunswick in 1886; studied at Rutgers College and Columbia University; taught school; worked on the staff of the Standard Dictionary; pa.s.sed through phases of socialism and Anglicanism into the Catholic communion, and joined the Sunday staff of the New York _Times_ in 1913. He was killed fighting in France in 1918. This sketch is taken from the second of the three volumes in which Robert Cortes Holliday, his friend and executor, has collected Joyce Kilmer's work.

We had hiked seventeen miles that stormy December day--the third of a four days' journey. The snow was piled high on our packs, our rifles were crusted with ice, the leather of our hob-nailed boots was frozen stiff over our lamed feet. The weary lieutenant led us to the door of a little house in a side street.

"Next twelve men," he said. A dozen of us dropped out of the ranks and dragged ourselves over the threshold. We tracked snow and mud over a spotless stone floor. Before an open fire stood Madame and the three children--a girl of eight years, a boy of five, a boy of three. They stared with round frightened eyes at les soldats Americans, the first they had ever seen. We were too tired to stare back. We at once climbed to the chill attic, our billet, our lodging for the night. First we lifted the packs from one another's aching shoulders: then, without spreading our blankets, we lay down on the bare boards.

For ten minutes there was silence, broken by an occasional groan, an oath, the striking of a match. Cigarettes glowed like fireflies in a forest. Then a voice came from the corner:

"Where is Sergeant Reilly?" it said. We lazily searched. There was no Sergeant Reilly to be found.

"I'll bet the old b.u.m has gone out after a pint," said the voice. And with the curiosity of the American and the enthusiasm of the Irish we lumbered downstairs in quest of Sergeant Reilly.

He was sitting on a low bench by the fire. His shoes were off and his bruised feet were in a pail of cold water. He was too good a soldier to expose them to the heat at once. The little girl was on his lap and the little boys stood by and envied him. And in a voice that twenty years of soldiering and oceans of whisky had failed to rob of its Celtic sweetness, he was softly singing: "Ireland Isn't Ireland Any More." We listened respectfully.

"They cheer the King and then salute him," said Sergeant Reilly.

"A regular Irishman would shoot him," and we all joined in the chorus, "Ireland Isn't Ireland Any More."

"Ooh, la, la!" exclaimed Madame, and she and all the children began to talk at the top of their voices. What they said Heaven knows, but the tones were friendly, even admiring.

"Gentlemen," said Sergeant Reilly from his post of honor, "the lady who runs this billet is a very nice lady indeed. She says yez can all take off your shoes and dry your socks by the fire. But take turns and don't crowd or I'll turn yez all upstairs."

Now Madame, a woman of some forty years, was a true bourgeoise, with all the thrift of her cla.s.s. And by the terms of her agreement with the authorities she was required to let the soldiers have for one night the attic of her house to sleep in--nothing more; no light, no heat. Also, wood is very expensive in France--for reasons that are engraven in letters of blood on the pages of history. Nevertheless--

"a.s.seyez-vous, s'il vous plait," said Madame. And she brought nearer to the fire all the chairs the establishment possessed and some chests and boxes to be used as seats. And she and the little girl, whose name was Solange, went out into the snow and came back with heaping armfuls of small logs. The fire blazed merrily--more merrily than it had blazed since August, 1914, perhaps. We surrounded it, and soon the air was thick with steam from our drying socks.

Meanwhile Madame and the Sergeant had generously admitted all eleven of us into their conversation. A spirited conversation it was, too, in spite of the fact that she knew no English and the extent of his French was "du pain," "du vin," "cognac" and "bon jour." Those of us who knew a little more of the language of the country acted as interpreters for the others. We learned the names of the children and their ages. We learned that our hostess was a widow. Her husband had fallen in battle just one month before our arrival in her home. She showed us with simple pride and affection and restrained grief his picture. Then she showed us those of her two brothers--one now fighting at Salonica, the other a prisoner of war--of her mother and father, of herself dressed for First Communion.

This last picture she showed somewhat shyly, as if doubting that we would understand it. But when one of us asked in halting French if Solange, her little daughter, had yet made her First Communion, then Madame's face cleared.

"Mais oui!" she exclaimed, "Et vous, ma foi, vous etes Catholiques, n'est-ce pas?"