Complete Works of Rudyard Kipling (Illustrated) (1089 page)

Therefore we must pray for foul weather, head- seas and steep swells, gale that bewilders, cold that numbs, and small fine rain that blinds, chills, and dispirits. Our men know them.

MEN WHO TAKE THEIR CHANCES

Under these conditions the possibilities of a good sea-boat are almost illimitable, given always the men who know how to handle her — the men who will take their chances. And as in the Army so in the Navy runs the unwritten Law : ‘ You must not imperil the property of the taxpayer committed to your charge or you will be publicly broke; but if you do not take every risk you can and more also you will be broke in the estimation of your fellows. Your men will not love you, and you will never get on.’ To do him justice the junior officer steers a very fair line between the two councils. Thanks to our destroyers, which give him an independent command early in his career, he studies a little ingenuity and artifice. They are young on the destroyers — the chattering black decks are no place for the middle-aged — they have learned how to handle 200ft. of shod death that cover a mile in two minutes, turn in their own length, and leap to racing speed almost before a man knows he has signalled the engine-room. In these craft they risk the extreme perils of the sea and make experiments of a kind that would not read well in print. It would take much to astonish them when, at the completion of their command, they are shifted, say, to a racing cruiser. They have been within spitting distance of collision and bumping distance of the bottom; they have tested their craft in long-drawn Channel gales, not grudgingly or of necessity because they could not find harbour, but because they ‘wanted to know, don’t you know;’ and in that embroilment have been very literally thrown together with their men.

ENOUGH TO SOBER ULYSSES

This makes for hardiness, coolness of head, and above all resource. You realise it when you hear the dear boys talk among themselves. The Naval man’s experience begins early, and by the time he has reached his majority a Sub-Lieutenant should have seen enough to sober Ulysses. But he utterly refuses to be sobered. There is no case on record of a depressed Sub. It takes three of him to keep one Midshipman in order; but the combined strength of the Assistant Engineer, the Doctor, and the Paymaster will not subdue one Sub-Lieutenant. He goes his joyous way, impartially and picturesquely criticising his elders and his betters; diverse, undulating, and irrepressible. But when he stands on the bridge at midnight and essays to keep the proper distance in front of the next steel ram dreamily muttering through the water, ten knots an hour, two hundred yards behind him — why then the Sub sweats big drops till he gets used to it. Let us suppose he is third in a line of four, that the hour is near midnight, and he has been on watch since eight. So far, we have kept our distance beautifully : we have even sneered at the next line a mile away to the right, where they have once or twice been ‘all over the shop.’ In twenty minutes there will come relief, a bowl of hot cocoa, three pulls at a pipe, and blessed bed. The Sub watches the speed-lights of the next ahead, for as those lanterns change so must he adjust his pace. But the next ahead is using up all the basest coal she can find, and the wind blows not less than two million samples of it into his straining eyes. He has — he had — the distance absolutely correct; he would swear to it. The Quartermaster by the tiny wheel half heaves up one big shoulder. Till that moment he has given no sign of life. The Sub’s heel taps impatiently on the planking; his mouth hovers over the engine-room voice tube; his lips open to speak to the Quartermaster in case — in case it should be necessary to sheer out of line; for something has gone wrong with the next ahead. She has badly overrun her station, and sheers to the left of our leading ship. The Sub wipes the cinders out of his left eye and says something.

NOW BEGINS THE FUN

Now begins the fun. The leading ship has slowed a certain number of revolutions — say, from ten knots to nine and a half; but she has not changed her speed-lights in time. We slide out to the right of our next ahead, swiftly and quietly. And now we must all mark time, as it were, till our leader straightens herself. That which was a line has suddenly become a town on the waters; representing roughly three-quarters of a million sterling in value, ten thousand tons weight, and eight hundred lives. Our next ahead lies on our port bow, and — oh, horror! — our next astern is alongside of us. Heaven send that the Captain may not choose this hour to wake. The Sub has slowed her down to eighty-five, but engines are only engines after all, and they cannot obey on the instant. Meantime we can see into the chart-room of her that should have lain behind us. A Navigating Lieutenant sprawled half over the table, cap tilted over forehead to keep out the glare of the lamp, is poring on a chart; we can hear the officer of the watch on her bridge speaking to his Quartermaster, and there comes over to us a whiff of Navy tobacco. She is slowing — she has slowed with a vengeance, and when ships slow too much they lose steerage-way, and, what is far worse, they wake the Captain. This strikes the Sub with lurid clearness; but the impetus of the recent ten knots is on us all, and we are all going much faster than we think. Again his foot taps the deck.

ARE THEY NEVER GOING TO SLOW?

Are they never going to slow in the engine-room? The pointer on the dial before the Quartermaster moves through some minute arc, and our head falls off” to the left. It is excessively lonely on this high and lofty bridge, and the spindle-shaped hull beneath looks very unmanageable. Our next ahead draws away slowly from our port bow, and we continue at a safe distance to starboard of her. The line is less of a lump and more of a diagonal than it was. Our next astern is sliding back to where she belongs. Now, two revolutions at a time, the Sub lets us out till he sees our erring sister ahead return to her place, and joyfully slinks in behind her. The Sub mops his heated brow, thanking Heaven that the Captain didn’t wake up, and that the tangle was straightened before the end of the watch. But speed-lights unless properly handled — as ours are handled — are, he doubts not, an invention of the Devil. So, also, is the Fleet; so are all cruisers; and the sea and everything connected therewith.

Now comes the judgment! Our leader, of course, cannot signal back down her line, but the signal must be repeated from the leading ship of the line to starboard. Thus, you see, we read it diagonally. A dull glow breaks out at the mast-head of that transmitter of wiggings — and a wigging it is for somebody — a wigging in drunken winks — long and short ones — irresistibly comic if you don’t happen to be in the Service. Once again we are saved. The avenging electric spells out the name of our next ahead, a second-class cruiser — and then — ‘ Why don t you keep station? ‘ Let us thank God for second-class cruisers and all other lightning-conductors!

The middle watch comes up; the Sub demands of the stars and the deep profound about him : ‘Who wouldn’t sell a farm and go to sea?’ descends the bridge in one light-hearted streak, and three minutes later is beautifully asleep, the ship’s kitten purring under his left ear. But the Captain was awake all the time. The change of speed roused him, and he lay watching the tell-tale compass overhead, his mouth at the bridge voice-tube; one eye cocked through the open port, and one leg over the edge of the bunk — in case. The Sub must learn his business by himself — must find confidence in isolation precisely as the Captain did a quarter of a century ago. It is not good for him to know that he is being watched.

Next morning the Captain makes a casual allusion to ‘massed fleets in line of sixes and sevens.’ ‘t was our next ahead, sir,’ says the Sub deferentially. ‘Yes, it was the next ahead when I was a Sub,’ is the reply. ‘ I know that next ahead.’ Then the wardroom, to whom the Sub has been confiding the success of his manoeuvres, ask him whether he got to windward of the ‘owner ‘ — much.

HOW THE SUB GETS LEARNING

And that is one of the ways in which youth gets learning. On a big battleship, they tell me, the Sub is little better than the Midshipmen he despises. He lives in the gun-room, he goes to school, he is sent on errands, and if he is good he is allowed to preserve discipline while a fraction of the decks are being washed. But on a third-class cruiser he is a watch- officer, an ornament of the ward-room, pitched into responsibility, and he enjoys himself, as I have tried to show.

CHAPTER III

Apropos of signals — to go on where I left off — we were to have more than enough of them after target-practice. We finished first of all the cruisers, and went on to our rendezvous off the Fastnet, but if we had listened to the passenger — he wanted to lower a boat and investigate the shattered rock — we should have been spared many sorrows. But we were zealous, Mr. Simple, and we went to the Fastnet; and it was hazy, and through the haze we heard a horrible elemental moaning that should have warned us. The battleships which we had not found at Bantry were scattered about those waters at their practice. Then I remembered that a twelve-inch gun discharges a projectile weighing some 8oolb. and ranging about ten miles. And we went to the rendezvous encircled by these deep mutterings of invisible monsters, and behold! we came slap on the Flagship, who was running torpedoes. Any other of the big ones would not have mattered, but our luck sent us to the Flag. 1 here was a feeling of calamity in the thick air, and I know one man who was not in the least relieved when she signalled : ‘ Where are you bound?’ We replied we were waiting as ordered on that spot, for the rest of the cruisers, and remained in a deferential attitude, while the Flagship maintained her horrible composure.

OUR FATAL MISTAKE

Thinking no harm, we drifted some two miles to leeward, which was our fatal mistake, though we kept a skinned eye on her. Presently we saw a signal, but end on, as flags are apt to be when the signaller is dead up wind and the signallee down. We hung our answering pennant at the dip to show that we saw but could not understand, and scuttled up to the Flagship as fast as might be. The first part of the signal was an order to close, and the second expressed a desire to speak to us by semaphore. (Our signalmen’s faces were studies in gloom about this crisis; and the sad moaning of the guns went on afar.) We learned that the Flag had been trying to attract our attention for some time, and did not appreciate our neglige deshabille, or words to that effect. ‘I here is no excuse in the Navy, and we took what was served out to us by the gibbering semaphore in silence, standing at attention. To tell the truth, we had been rather pleased with our target-practice, and this sudden dash of cold water chilled us. But there is a reason for all things. Now, we must signal the name of the officer of the watch (frantic searchings of heart among the officers) and the signalman (the signalmen had got beyond even despair), on duty on Friday morning last. What the nature of their crime was we knew not, and it was not ours to ask; but later we heard it had something to do with somebody else’s error. We gave that information (the Flag could have learned much more if she had asked for it) and I effaced myself with a great effacement forward, where the wits of the foc’sle were telling the signalman of Friday morning what sorts of death and disrating awaited him.

‘WE’VE LOST THE GAME’

‘We’ve lost the game,’ said one man. ‘First come first served. ‘That shows it,’ and with this dark saying I was forced to be content.

Then the Flag removed herself, her sixty signalmen, her four-deep strings of signals, and her grim semaphore. Truly was it written :

‘Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word, Well for him who has no fear Looking seaward., well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word that he would hear Anon the cruisers popped over the horizon, led by the Powerful — all save one — and the Powerful wished to know where that one had gone. Now the rendezvous given us by the Powerful could have been read in two ways. We all knew how the mistake had arisen, and, with one exception, had all repaired to the place which our leader had in her massive mind. But there was no ship, of course, that could stand up to and gently rebuke the Powerful save her sister ship the Terrible, who signalled politely : ‘I suppose the      is waiting at rendezvous signalled by you?’ To this the Powerful, stiffly, with many flags : ‘ When ships have any doubt about signal, officers should reply: Not understood!’ The ‘Terrible, more politely than ever: ‘ Your signal perfectly understood,’ meaning thereby, ‘ My friend, you made a mistake, and you jolly well know it.’ We small craft stood back and sniggered while this chaff flew between the two mammoths. The thing must have weighed on the Powerful*s mind, for late that evening, as we were going home, she woke up and began talking about it in flashes from the mast-head, to the effect that when signals were obviously wrong ships should do something or other laid down in the Regulations.

ASTONISHING THE CROWDED CHANNEL TRAFFIC

But really it made no difference. The missing cruiser cast up presently with one funnel blistered and a windsail rigged aft, which gave her a false air of being hurried and hot; and home we cruisers all went to Portland, past the Wolf and the toothed edges of the Scillies, astonishing the crowded Channel traffic — sometimes a Jersey potato-ketch full of curiosity; or a full-rigged trader of the deep sea, bound for one or other of the Capes; a Norwegian, Dane, German, or Frenchman; and now and again a white-sided, brass bejewelled yacht.

For a few minutes every funnel was in line. Then one saw the Powerful pulling out for a sailing ship, and blotting half the horizon with her hull. Then a second-class cruiser would flicker from the line to starboard, all spangled with her mast-head, her speed, helm, and sailing-lights as the pale glimmer of a fishing-smack’s lantern crawled out astern of her. And now it was our turn to give way.