The Secrets of a Kuttite Part 33

"Splendid, splendid. Try a bit more, kick it in."

Stuff got swept overboard. We held like grim death.

The ship plunged and reared like a mad horse as we were hurled from side to side, and the deck took every imaginable angle. But Nicholson somehow managed to keep her nose to it. Something snapped, and there was a wild beating and creaking. The next moment the repair party, headed by Captain Wells, all on life-lines, got to work, and one or two who fell off were fished back. Then the propeller went, and a violent controversy was waged between Parsnip and Bamptarius on the matter. But a new one was fitted by Bamptarius with extraordinary skill and daring. It was just in time. The ship was bearing round, and once beam on she would have gone smash. I remember looking astern the while and seeing the dinghy playing high jinks and whizzing like a ball. Then came the hail and lightning that played over the steel ribs in an awful fashion. Something else gave on top, and there was a wild fluttering of canvas.

"Hold tight," yelled Tipton. It happened the second time, and this time much worse.

A man astride of a bullet couldn't have gone up faster than we did. Something to do with exploding a gas charge--a secret stunt of Tipton's own. We found ourselves gliding along smoothly and evenly with incredible swiftness, possibly doing eighty knots. The relief from the storm-tossing to the thrill of racing smoothly was wonderful. Have you ever while yachting beaten up in the teeth of a heavy gale round a headland and had the sea sweeping over you and the boat dancing and leaping like a mad thing, and then suddenly found yourself gliding down a smooth channel with the wind behind you? Then you will know what this was.

"Why on earth did not you do it before?" we all demanded.

Tipton laughed. "To lend colour to our enterprise, of course, and then we have now left one emergency charge only."

Our first thought was to have the dinghy alongside and rescue Sir Pompous. We found him very white. "Thank G.o.d you are alive," we said.

"Seems so!" he answered sarcastically, a favourite phrase of his.

"Fearful time, wasn't it?"

"No. I liked it, of course."

With that King Arthur clapped him on the shoulder and poured half a bottle of mastik down his throat and shirt. Sir Lancelot gingerly climbed along the ladder with a reviver for Lieutenant Wully, expecting to see that officer in a faint, instead of which he was quite cheery with an empty bottle of mastik protruding from his pocket.

"How the devil did you stick on?"

"Stick on? Oh, eashy!"

"What's this?" asked Le Fumeur, producing the empty mastik bottle from the pocket of our Intelligence Officer.

"Ohsh, thaths noshing. Nerve resthorah. Keep oush cold, verish draftish ere. Donst shay anyshing to boysh.

Don't wansh go dingsh."

Sir Lancelot helped him down, and he slept.

IV. LOST.

The wind fell and the sun came out. The ship was put to rights and, scarcely knowing where we were, we headed due north. It seemed about midday. We had a full ration and dosed away in a pleasant sunshine to the steady creaking of some stay or rippling flutter of some loose ribbon in the air-chambers above. We smoked and dreamed of home. A little later our Intelligence Officer, now at his post again, a.s.sured us he could tell from the birds beneath us that we were near land.

"What land?" we all asked.

"I'll tell you at tea-time," he said. At tea-time he reappeared.

"Through a break in the mists below us I'm sure I saw a town," he said, "white dots on green."

"Possibly sheep," said one.

"Or sea birds on a green sea," ventured another.

"Rot," replied he. "It is not green; why, it is the Black Sea."

Two hours later, as the twilight fell around us, we saw, as in a flash through a rent veil, the twinkling of a myriad lights.

Some one suggested fire-flies. "A mirage," said an orderly from the stern raft.

Without doubt it was a town. Great excitement prevailed.

Our navigating officer believed it to be Odessa.

"I believe it's Constanty," declared Wully, and as the lights grew nearer he became more insistent. "The sea is beyond and around the lights, it must be Constanty." And half an hour later, "I tell you I can see mosques and minarets; besides, I know Constanty. I am absolutely----"

Boom! A dull billowy wave of sound reached us.

"That proves it," he said; "we are being fired at."

On this a council was held, and it was decided to steer due N.W. We ran before a strong southerly wind that until now had been on our port beam. We did about sixty knots, and by fifty hoped to have reached Russian territory. But to be quite sure we kept on until midnight, when we descended to what we considered was 5000 feet. Suddenly a cry from the pilot brought every one to his feet. There, not a 1000 feet below us--a mere 300 yards--were the white-crested, creeping waves towards which we were rushing.... "Hold on."

Boom! Swish! Our second barrel of gas was exploded and we rushed up and up. But once there the "Homeward Bound" began to sink again.

"Pedal, pedal, or we are lost," shouted Tipton. And they _did_ pedal. But we still sank slowly....

"Lighten ship," he roared, as the repair party tackled a huge rent in the side of the bag. Things were slung overboard wholesale and the dinghy cut adrift. The ship then steadied and gently rose, but not before a large volume of the _Mastik_ was hurled overboard by Blind Hookey.

"My poems, my precious poems," shouted Mr. Belton, as he leaped to save them. He slipped, beat the air, and had not Mr. _Smoke_ seized him by the coat tails and twirled himself around a stanchion he had followed _Mastik_ into the abyss of mist and cold grey sea. The gas generator was set going and we gradually rose to 10,000 feet once more.

"Gentlemen," said our commander coolly, "we have been under way twenty-four hours, and I beg to report we are lost at sea."

Lost, lost, lost, the words echoed. A ringing cheer was our only answer.

(12) FROM MY BEDROOM WINDOW

Spring has come. The tree I told you of is thick with leaves. And so when as now the evening wind blows, a changed music falls on my ear. Instead of the soft swish of branches is the lisp of the young leaves, stirring in delight as they listen to the story about the winter dreams of the old tree. Birds are back once more, Old Jim Crow, the jackdaws that awoke me early last summer, and a little fellow like a wagtail who in his own fashion is accompanying the lyrics of a thrush in the mosque garden close by. One and all they have the look of adventurers thick upon them. "Happy to meet, Sorry to part, Happy to meet again," is the leit-motif of their song. Perhaps like birds we shall ourselves soon return to English woods.

A great window is this of mine with its view from the garden across the town to the distant hills. Now, to appreciate a view fully, it is imperative that you shall have spent just previously some considerable time in trenches and dug-outs and gun-pits. No, it is not a view either, but rather a stage. In the background is the drop-scene of mountainous hills, dotted with villages and scored with paths and gullies.

It is a scene shadowed with forests and sprayed by the advancing sunlight, or sometimes by this light misty rain.

Other drop-scenes are the mists that advance or retreat with the rain, and sometimes a thunder blanket shuts off the stage just outside the town. For the curtain there is the mantle of night--when there is no moon.

An extraordinary stage. Let us look at it more closely.

I can promise you no set drama, but great entertainment if you are the sort of fellow to enjoy sitting on a bit of a hill above a winding river in the country--with a pipe and some field-gla.s.ses wherewith to watch the affairs of the world around you. No man-made drama, no plot, no prompter, and not a cue. The players stray on to and off the stage, and suggestion can do lots.

In the fowlyard below two c.o.c.ks have renewed their battle for the right to crow last. "Seems so," says Sir Pompous beneath my window, as he watches them intently. The youngest pullet, coy and not uncoquettish, withdraws from the scene of combat to arrange her feathers in the far corner.

She, in any case, will have to abide by the decision of the contest.

Cynically the old hens condescend to a dull interest only, contrasting this sorry affair with the strenuous and gory combats that waged over _them_ in _their_ day, when their hearts, too, were young. Love's young dream long since awakened to matter of factness and steady routine. But for an example of love still dreaming observe the c.o.c.ks themselves--the younger lamenting his lack of experience, but game; the elder no doubt regretting that his Virgil is not at hand to adorn further Georgics with the account of his strenuous endeavours--to point anew that old moral in the Battle of the Bulls.

A mate has joined the chirruping wagtail with many a ship and twist of her small head. The c.o.c.k-bird, prepared to earn his amours, indulges in risky flights round the twigs and back again, landing suddenly beside her with a little joyful chirp. "In the spring a brighter crimson comes upon the robin's breast--in the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest."

"The call of Spring," as Pacific Roller says in another column, "announcing that the season of love is at hand and inviting youth to put on his gayest apparel."

There has just appeared in the foreground of our stage the wee bear Alphonse, delightful little fellow except when he makes that awful noise--and why shouldn't he? 'Tis time, he thinks, that he was on the warpath alongside his dam, for it grows dark and the call of the wild rings out for him in clarion notes, challenging him to fulfil his destiny. Manfully the little fellow is trying to do so, roaring l.u.s.tily and making commendable attempts to stand on his hind legs and reach a bough. As he thrusts his way through some _debris_ I can see his woodcraft is coming on apace.