The Long Trick Part 10

"Buck up?" echoed Harcourt. "Buck up! How the devil can I buck up--ah, here we are." He picked up an envelope, glanced carelessly under the still open flap and sat down to address it. "Got yours, Billy? Here's the stamp."

"Yes," replied the other, grovelling in the darkness under the table.

"This is it." He reappeared with a letter in his hand.

"The Padre----" again began the impatient envoy.

"All right--all right!" Mordaunt hurriedly affixed the stamp and addressed the envelope without looking at the contents. "Here you are," he said, holding it out. The messenger departed hastily.

The bang of the door awoke the Sub.

"Now, then," he said. "Enough of this. Switch off that cursed gramophone. Get up off the deck. Mop that ink up and square off the table-cloth. Knock off sc.r.a.pping, you three hooligans."

The hooligans obeyed reluctantly, and sat panting and dishevelled on the settee. By degrees the Mess resumed its tranquillity.

Harcourt stretched his slim form and yawned sleepily. "I'm going to turn in now. And to-morrow know all men that I start training."

"That's right," said Lettigne, still panting and adjusting his disordered garments. "Nothing like being really fit--ready to go anywhere an' do anything--that's my motto." He rang the bell and ordered a bottle of ginger beer.

[1] Tinned sausages. A delicacy peculiar to Gunrooms of the Fleet.

CHAPTER V

UNCLE BILL

Sir William Thorogood rose from the table on which lay a confusion of papers, drawings and charts. He walked across the cabin to the tiled fireplace, selected a cigar from his case, and lit it with precise care.

"You're right," he said. "You've put your finger on the weak spot. No one in Whitehall saw it, and they're seamen. I didn't see it, and--and I'm called a scientist." He made an imperceptible inclination of his head towards his companion as if to convey a compliment.

The other occupant of the broad cabin smiled a little grimly. "It's a question of actual experience," he said. "Experience of this particular form of warfare, and the means of meeting it hitherto at our disposal."

He pencilled some figures on a piece of paper and studied them with knitted brows.

"It's a pity," he said presently. "You're on the brink of the most stupendous discovery of our day. The submarine was a wonderful invention, and there's no limit to the possibilities of its development--or abuse. Until an effective counter can be devised it remains a very terrible menace to civilisation in the hands of an unscrupulous belligerent."

Sir William smoked in silence. His thin, aristocratic face, and his level grey eyes, had a look of fatigue. "I was particularly glad to avail myself of your invitation," he said. "I wanted practical experience of the conditions in the North Sea--weather and visibility.

And, later on, in the North Atlantic. I'm going over to Ireland next month." His tired eyes followed the blue smoke curling upwards. "Of course, the experiments we tried down South answered all right for short distances. That's what rather deceived us. They were harbour trials, no more. We want something more exhaustive than that. And, as you say, there's the pull of the tides to consider.... Confound the tide!"

His companion smiled. "That's what Canute said. Or words to that effect. But it didn't help matters much."

"Quite," replied Sir William dryly. "Well, I should like to take a patrol boat and one of our submarines for a day or two and test that new theory--to-morrow if I may. And--while I think of it--I have promised a young nephew of mine to dine with him to-night in his s.h.i.+p, if it in no way inconveniences you?"

The other nodded, and, reaching out his hand, pressed the b.u.t.ton of an electric bell beside his desk.

It was the hour preceding dinner, and the majority of the members of the Wardroom had congregated in the ante-room to discuss sherry and the day's affairs before descending to their cabins to change. It was a cheerful gathering, as the hour and the place betokened, and the usual mild chaff flowed to and fro in its mysteriously appointed channels.

In Naval communities, as in most others where men are segregated from wider intercourse by a common mode of life and purpose, each one occupies the place designed for him by Destiny for the smooth working of the whole. These types are peculiar to no trade or profession. A gathering of farmers or elders of the Church, or even Christy Minstrels, would, if thrown together for a sufficient period of time, and utterly dependent on one another for daily intercourse, fall into the places allotted to each by temperament and heredity. Each little community would own a wit and a b.u.t.t; the sentimentalist and the cynic. The churl by nature would appear through some veneer of manner, if only to bring into relief the finer qualities of his fellows; lastly, and most surely, one other would jingle a merciful cap and bells, and mingle motley with the rest.

The First Lieutenant had just come down from the upper-deck, and stood warming his hands by the fire. Big-boned, blue-eyed, health and vitality seemed to radiate from his kindly, forceful personality. Of all the officers on board "Jimmy the One" was, with perhaps the exception of the Captain, most beloved by the men. A seaman to the fingertips, slow to wrath and clean of speech, he had the knack of getting the last ounce out of tired men without driving or raising his voice. Working cables on the forecastle in the cold and snowy darkness, when men's faculties grow torpid with cold, and their safety among the grinding cables depends more upon the alert supervision of the First Lieutenant than the mere instinct for self-preservation, "Jimmy the One" was credited with powers allied to those of the high G.o.ds. "'Tween decks," where the comfort and cleanliness of close on eleven hundred men was mainly his affair, they abused, loved and feared him with whole-hearted affection. His large football-damaged nose smelt out dirt as a Zulu witch-doctor smells out magic. The majority of the vast s.h.i.+p's company--seamen ratings, at all events--he knew by name. He also presided over certain of the lower-deck amus.e.m.e.nts, and, at the bi-weekly cinema shows, studied their tastes in the matter of Charlie Chaplin and the Wild West with the discrimination of a lover choosing flowers for his mistress.

His own personal amus.e.m.e.nts were few. He admitted possessing three books which he read and re-read in rotation: "Peter Simple," "Alice in Wonderland," and a more recent discovery, Owen Wister's "Virginian." A widowed mother in a Yorks.h.i.+re dower house was the only relative he was ever heard to refer to, and for her benefit every Sunday afternoon he sat down for an hour, as he had since schooldays, and wrote a boyish, detailed chronicle of his doings during the past week.

The two watch-keeping Lieutenants sat one on each arm of the deep-seated chesterfield opposite the fire. They were the Inseparables of the Mess, knit together in that curious blend of antagonistic and sympathetic traits of character which binds young men in an austere affection pa.s.sing the love of woman. One was short and stout, the other tall and lean; an ill.u.s.tration in the First Lieutenant's edition of "Alice in Wonderland"

supplied them with their nicknames, which they accepted from the first without criticism or demur.

The Fleet Surgeon sat between them cleaning a pipe with a collection of seagull's feather gathered for the purpose on the golf links ash.o.r.e. He was thin, a grey-haired, silent man. His face, in repose, was that of a deliberate thinker whose thoughts had not led him to an entirely happy goal. Yet his smile when amused had a quality of grat.i.tude to the jester, not altogether without pathos. He had a slightly cynical demeanour, a bitter tongue, and a curiously sympathetic, almost tender manner with the sick. He was professedly a fierce woman-hater, and when ash.o.r.e pa.s.sed children quickly with averted eyes.

Of a different type was the Paymaster, sunny as a schoolboy, irresponsible in leisure hours as the youngest member of the Mess.

Perhaps there had been a time when he had not found life an altogether laughing matter. He had an invalid wife; his means were small, and most of his life had been spent at sea. But misfortune seemed to have but tossed a challenge to his unquenchable optimism and faith in the mercy of G.o.d. He had picked up the gage with a smile, flung it back with a laugh, and with drawn blade joined the gallant band of those who strive eternally to defend the beleaguered Citadel of Human Happiness.

Others came and went among the gathering; the Engineer Commander, fiercely bearded and moustached, who cherished an inexplicable belief that a studied soldierly accent and bearing helped him in his path through life. The Major, clean-shaven and philosophic; the Gunnery Lieutenant, preoccupied with his vast responsibilities, a seaman-scientist with a reputation in the football-field. The Torpedo Lieutenant, quiet, gentle-mannered, fastidious in his dress and not given to overmuch speech. The Engineer-Lieutenant, whose outlook on life alternated between moods of fierce hilarity and brooding melancholy, according to the tenour of a correspondence with a distracting Red Cross nursing sister exposed to the perils of caring for good-looking military officers in the plains of Flanders. Lastly, the Captain of Marines; he was the musician of the Mess, much in demand at sing-songs; editor, moreover, of the Wardroom magazine, a periodical whose humour was of a turn mercifully obscure to maiden aunts. A first-cla.s.s cricketer and racquet-player, a student of human nature with a tolerance for the failings of others that suggested a strain of Latin blood, and a Marine with an almost pa.s.sionate pride in the great traditions of his Corps.

Such were among the occupants of the anteroom when Thorogood entered the crowded room and crossed over to the door leading to the Wardroom where the Marine waiters were laying the table.

"Tell the Messman I've got a guest to dinner," said Thorogood to the Corporal of the Wardroom servants.

The Young Doctor, who was leaning against the overmantel of the stove warming himself, crossed over to Thorogood with an expression of portentous solemnity on his face.

"James," he said, and laid a hand on the other's shoulder, "before you get busy on the wa.s.sail-bowl, my lad, I should like to remind you that the boat's crew will commence training for the Regatta at 7 A.M.

to-morrow. No fatheads wanted. Enough said."

The Gunnery Lieutenant looked up from a game of draughts with Double-O Gerrard, the a.s.sistant Paymaster. "Who've you got dining with you, Jimmy?" he asked. The introduction of "new blood" into a Mess, even for the evening, is generally a matter of interest to the inmates.

"An old uncle of mine," was the reply. "He signalled from the Flags.h.i.+p that he was coming to dinner. I don't know what he's doing up here."

Mouldy Jakes, who was sitting on an arm of the sofa watching the game of draughts, looked across at Thorogood.

"Sir William?" he asked. "Is that man of mystery up here? What's he up to?"

"Don't know," replied Thorogood. "Dirty work, I suppose."

The Young Doctor a.s.sumed an expression of rapture. "What!" he cried, "my old college chum Sir William!" Then with a swift change of mimicry he bent into a senile pose with nodding head and shaking fingers, mumbling at his lips:

"Ah! Ah!" he wheezed, "how time flies! I mind the day when he and I were lads together--hee-hee--brave lads ... Eton and Christ Church together----" He broke off into a decrepit chuckle.

"Dry up, Pills, you a.s.s," cried the Torpedo Lieutenant, laughing. "You aren't a bit funny--in fact, I'm not sure you aren't rather bad form."

"Bad form?" echoed the First Lieutenant. "Let us see now. What's the penalty for bad form, Pay? I've forgotten."

"To be devoured by lions," said the Paymaster calmly, with an eye on the sofa where Garm, the bull-terrier, sprawled as usual.

"That's right," said the First Lieutenant, "so it is: devoured of lions."