Traffics and Discoveries Part 16

Pyecroft lay on his disreputable oars till Captain Malan, full-uniformed, descended the _Devolution's_ side. With due compliments--not acknowledged, I grieve to say--we fell in behind his sumptuous galley, and at last, upon pressing invitation, climbed, black as sweeps all, the lowered gangway of the _Cryptic_. At the top stood as fine a constellation of marine stars as ever sang together of a morning on a King's ship. Every one who could get within earshot found that his work took him aft. I counted eleven able seamen polishing the breechblock of the stern nine-point-two, four marines zealously relieving each other at the life-buoy, six call-boys, nine midshipmen of the watch, exclusive of naval cadets, and the higher ranks past all census.

"If I die o' joy," said Pyecroft behind his hand, "remember I died forgivin' Morgan from the bottom of my 'eart, because, like Martha, we 'ave scoffed the better part. You'd better try to come to attention, Sir."

Moorshed ran his eye voluptuously over the upper deck battery, the huge beam, and the immaculate perspective of power. Captain Panke and Captain Malan stood on the well-browned flash-plates by the dazzling hatch.

Precisely over the flagstaff I saw Two Six Seven astern, her black petticoat half hitched up, meekly floating on the still sea. She looked like the pious Abigail who has just spoken her mind, and, with folded hands, sits thanking Heaven among the pieces. I could almost have sworn that she wore black worsted gloves and had a little dry cough. But it was Captain Panke that coughed so austerely. He favoured us with a lecture on uniform, deportment, and the urgent necessity of answering signals from a senior ship. He told us that he disapproved of masquerading, that he loved discipline, and would be obliged by an explanation. And while he delivered himself deeper and more deeply into our hands, I saw Captain Malan wince.

He was watching Moorshed's eye.

"I belong to Blue Fleet, Sir. I command Number Two Six Seven," said Moorshed, and Captain Planke was dumb. "Have you such a thing as a frame- plan of the _Cryptic_ aboard?" He spoke with winning politeness as he opened a small and neatly folded paper.

"I have, sir." The little man's face was working with pa.s.sion.

"Ah! Then I shall be able to show you precisely where you were torpedoed last night in"--he consulted the paper with one finely arched eyebrow--"in nine places. And since the _Devolution_ is, I understand, a sister ship"-- he bowed slightly toward Caplain Malan--"the same plan----"

I had followed the clear precision of each word with a dumb amazement which seemed to leave my mind abnormally clear. I saw Captain Malan's eye turn from Moorshed and seek that of the _Cryptic's_ commander. And he telegraphed as clearly as Moorshed was speaking: "My dear friend and brother officer, _I_ know Panke; _you_ know Panke; _we_ know Panke--good little Panke! In less than three Greenwich chronometer seconds Panke will make an enormous a.s.s of himself, and I shall have to put things straight, unless you who are a man of tact and discernment----"

"Carry on." The Commander's order supplied the unspoken word. The cruiser boiled about her business around us; watch and watch officers together, up to the limit of noise permissible. I saw Captain Malan turn to his senior.

"Come to my cabin!" said Panke gratingly, and led the way. Pyecroft and I stayed still.

"It's all right," said Pyecroft. "They daren't leave us loose aboard for one revolution," and I knew that he had seen what I had seen.

"You, too!" said Captain Malan, returning suddenly. We pa.s.sed the sentry between white enamelled walls of speckless small arms, and since that Royal Marine Light infantryman was visibly suffocating from curiosity, I winked at him. We entered the chintz-adorned, photo-speckled, bra.s.s- fendered, tile-stoved main cabin. Moorshed, with a ruler, was demonstrating before the frame-plan of H.M.S. _Cryptic_.

"--making nine stencils in all of my initials G.M.," I heard him say.

"Further, you will find attached to your rudder, and you, too, Sir"--he bowed to Captain Malan yet again--"one fourteen-inch Mark IV practice torpedo, as issued to first-cla.s.s torpedo-boats, properly buoyed. I have sent full particulars by telegraph to the umpires, and have requested them to judge on the facts as they--appear." He nodded through the large window to the stencilled _Devolution_ awink with bra.s.s work in the morning sun, and ceased.

Captain Panke faced us. I remembered that this was only play, and caught myself wondering with what keener agony comes the real defeat.

"Good G.o.d, Johnny!" he said, dropping his lower lip like a child, "this young pup says he has put us both out of action. Inconceivable--eh? My first command of one of the cla.s.s. Eh? What shall we do with him? What shall we do with him--eh?"

"As far as I can see, there's no getting over the stencils," his companion answered.

"Why didn't I have the nets down? Why didn't I have the nets down?" The cry tore itself from Captain Panke's chest as he twisted his hands.

"I suppose we'd better wait and find out what the umpires will say. The Admiral won't be exactly pleased." Captain Malan spoke very soothingly.

Moorshed looked out through the stern door at Two Six Seven. Pyecroft and I, at attention, studied the paintwork opposite. Captain Panke had dropped into his desk chair, and scribbled nervously at a blotting-pad.

Just before the tension became unendurable, he looked at his junior for a lead. "What--what are you going to do about it, Johnny--eh?"

"Well, if you don't want him, I'm going to ask this young gentleman to breakfast, and then we'll make and mend clothes till the umpires have decided."

Captain Panke flung out a hand swiftly.

"Come with me," said Captain Malan. "Your men had better go back in the dinghy to--their--own--ship."

"Yes, I think so," said Moorshed, and pa.s.sed out behind the captain. We followed at a respectful interval, waiting till they had ascended the ladder.

Said the sentry, rigid as the naked barometer behind him: "For Gawd's sake! 'Ere, come 'ere! For Gawd's sake! What's 'appened? Oh! come '_ere_ an' tell."

"Tell? You?" said Pyecroft. Neither man's lips moved, and the words were whispers: "Your ultimate illegitimate grandchildren might begin to understand, not you--nor ever will."

"Captain Malan's galley away, Sir," cried a voice above; and one replied: "Then get those two greasers into their dinghy and hoist the blue peter.

We're out of action."

"Can you do it, Sir?" said Pyecroft at the foot of the ladder. "Do you think it is in the English language, or do you not?"

"I don't think I can, but I'll try. If it takes me two years, I'll try."

There are witnesses who can testify that I have used no artifice. I have, on the contrary, cut away priceless slabs of _opus alexandrinum_. My gold I have lacquered down to dull bronze, my purples overlaid with sepia of the sea, and for h.e.l.l-hearted ruby and blinding diamond I have subst.i.tuted pale amethyst and mere jargoon. Because I would say again "Disregarding the inventions of the Marine Captain whose other name is Gubbins, let a plain statement suffice."

THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER

THE KING'S TASK

After the sack of the City, when Rome was sunk to a name, In the years when the Lights were darkened, or ever Saint Wilfrid came.

Low on the borders of Britain, the ancient poets sing, Between the cliff and the forest there ruled a Saxon king.

Stubborn all were his people, a stark and a jealous horde-- Not to be schooled by the cudgel, scarce to be cowed by the sword; Blithe to turn at their pleasure, bitter to cross in their mood, And set on the ways of their choosing as the hogs of Andred's Wood ...

They made them laws in the Witan, the laws of flaying and fine, Folkland, common and pannage, the theft and the track of kine; Statutes of tun and of market for the fish and the malt and the meal, The tax on the Bramber packhorse and the tax on the Hastings keel.

Over the graves of the Druids and over the wreck of Rome Rudely but deeply they bedded the plinth of the days to come.

Behind the feet of the Legions and before the Northman's ire, Rudely but greatly begat they the body of state and of shire.

Rudely but greatly they laboured, and their labour stands till now If we trace on our ancient headlands the twist of their eight-ox plough.

THE COMPREHENSION OF PRIVATE COPPER

Private Copper's father was a Southdown shepherd; in early youth Copper had studied under him. Five years' army service had somewhat blunted Private Copper's pastoral instincts, but it occurred to him as a memory of the Chalk that sheep, or in this case buck, do not move towards one across turf, or in this case, the Colesberg kopjes unless a stranger, or in this case an enemy, is in the neighbourhood. Copper, helmet back-first advanced with caution, leaving his mates of the picket full a mile behind. The picket, concerned for its evening meal, did not protest. A year ago it would have been an officer's command, moving as such. To-day it paid casual allegiance to a Canadian, nominally a sergeant, actually a trooper of Irregular Horse, discovered convalescent in Naauwport Hospital, and forthwith employed on odd jobs. Private Copper crawled up the side of a bluish rock-strewn hill thinly fringed with brush atop, and remembering how he had peered at Suss.e.x conies through the edge of furze-clumps, cautiously parted the dry stems before his face. At the foot of the long slope sat three farmers smoking. To his natural l.u.s.t for tobacco was added personal wrath because spiky plants were p.r.i.c.king his belly, and Private Copper slid the backsight up to fifteen hundred yards....

"Good evening, Khaki. Please don't move," said a voice on his left, and as he jerked his head round he saw entirely down the barrel of a well-kept Lee-Metford protruding from an insignificant tuft of thorn. Very few graven images have moved less than did Private Copper through the next ten seconds.

"It's nearer seventeen hundred than fifteen," said a young man in an obviously ready-made suit of grey tweed, possessing himself of Private Copper's rifle. "Thank _you_. We've got a post of thirty-seven men out yonder. You've eleven--eh? We don't want to kill 'em. We have no quarrel with poor uneducated Khakis, and we do not want prisoners we do not keep.

It is demoralising to both sides--eh?"

Private Cooper did not feel called upon to lay down the conduct of guerilla warfare. This dark-skinned, dark-haired, and dark-eyed stranger was his first intimate enemy. He spoke, allowing for a clipped cadence that recalled to Copper vague memories of Umballa, in precisely the same offensive accent that the young squire of Wilmington had used fifteen years ago when he caught and kicked Alf Copper, a rabbit in each pocket, out of the ditches of Cuckmere. The enemy looked Copper up and down, folded and re-pocketed a copy of an English weekly which he had been reading, and said: "You seem an inarticulate sort of swine--like the rest of them--eh?"

"You," said Copper, thinking, somehow, of the crushing answers he had never given to the young squire, "are a renegid. Why, you ain't Dutch.

You're English, same as me."

"_No_, khaki. If you cannot talk civilly to a gentleman I will blow your head off."

Copper cringed, and the action overbalanced him so that he rolled some six or eight feet downhill, under the lee of a rough rock. His brain was working with a swiftness and clarity strange in all his experience of Alf Copper. While he rolled he spoke, and the voice from his own jaws amazed him: "If you did, 'twouldn't make you any less of a renegid." As a useful afterthought he added: "I've sprained my ankle."

The young man was at his side in a flash. Copper made no motion to rise, but, cross-legged under the rock, grunted: "'Ow much did old Krujer pay you for this? What was you wanted for at 'ome? Where did you desert from?"