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.
That was a Royal progress. No blind man’s bluff off the Lizard or dreary game of hunt-the-Needles such as the liners play, but through the heavenly clear night the leisurely, rolling slow-march of the overlords of all the seas.
Ours By Right of Birth
And the whole thing was my very own (that is to say yours); mine to me by right of birth. Mine were the speed and power of the hulls, not here only but the world over; the hearts and brains and lives of the trained men; such strength and such power as we and the World dare hardly guess at. And holding this power in the hollow of my hand; able at the word to exploit the earth to my own advantage; to gather me treasure and honour, as men reckon honour, I (and a few million friends of mine) forbore because we were white men. Any other breed with this engine at their disposal would have used it savagely long ago. In our hands it lay as harmless as the levin-rods of the Vril-Ya. Thus I stood, astounded at my own moderation, and counted up my possessions with most sinful pride.
The wind, and the smell of it off the coasts, was mine, and it was telling me things it would never dream of confiding to a foreigner. The short, hollow Channel sea was mine—bought for me drop by drop, every salt drop of it, in the last eight hundred years—as short a time as it takes to make a perfect lawn in a cathedral close. The speech on the deck below was mine, for the men were free white men, same as me, only considerably better. Their notions of things were my notions of things, and the bulk of those notions we could convey one to the other without opening our heads.
Things One Takes For Granted
We had a common tradition, one thousand years old, of the things one takes for granted. A warrant officer said something, and the groups melted quietly about some job or other. That same caste of man—that same type of voice—was speaking in the commissariat in Burma; in barracks in Rangoon; under double awnings in the Persian Gulf; on the Rock at Gibraltar—wherever else you please—and the same instant obedience, I knew, would follow on that voice. And a foreigner would never have understood—will never understand! But I understood, as you would have understood, had you been there. I went round, to make sure of my rights as a taxpayer under Schedule D; saw my men in my hammocks sleeping, without shading their eyes, four inches from the white glare of my electric; heard my stokers chaffing each other at my ash-shoot; and fetched up by a petty officer who was murmuring fragments of the Riot Act into my subordinate’s attentive ear. When he had entirely finished the task in hand he was at liberty to attend to me. ‘Hope you’ve enjoyed your trip, sir. You see’ (I knew what was coming) ‘we haven’t quite shaken down yet. In another three months we shall be something like.’
No ship is ever at her best till you leave her. Then you hold her up as a shining example to your present craft. For that is England.
My Marine—the skirmisher in South American Suburbs—stood under the shadow of the poop looking like a stuffed man with an automatic arm for saluting purposes; but I knew him on the human side. ‘Goin’ off to-morrow, ain’t you, sir? Well, there are only twenty of us ’ere, but if you ever want to see the Marines, a lot of ’em, it might perhaps be worth your while to’—and he gave me the address of a place where I would find plenty of Marines. He spoke as though his nineteen friends were no-class animals; and a foreigner would have taken him at his word.
A ‘Commodious Coffee-Grinder’
The entire Ward-room explained carefully that their commodious coffee-grinder must not be taken as a sample of the Navy at its best. Wasn’t she a good sea-boat? Oh, yes; remarkably so. Couldn’t she go on occasion? Oh, yes. She could go, but, after all, she wasn’t a patch on certain other craft, being only a third-class cruiser—practically an enlarged destroyer—a tin-pot of the tinniest. ‘Now in my last ship,’ the Captain began. That was an unlucky remark, for I remembered that last ship and a certain first night aboard her in the long swell of Simon’s Bay, when the Captain took Heaven and Earth and the Admiralty to witness that of all cluttered-up boxes of machinery and bags of tricks his new command was the worst. To hear him now she must have been a trifle larger than the Majestic with twice the Powerful’s speed. We are a deceptive people. ‘Come and see us next year when we’ve shaken down a bit,’ said the Ward-room, ‘and you’ll like it better.’ That last was impossible, but I accepted the offer.
Our cruiser was about to refit at some Dockyard or other in a few days, and I gathered that it would be no fault of the Captain, the Ward-room or the warrant officers if she did not arrive with a list of alterations and improvements as long as her mainmast. So it is with every new ship. The dear boys take her out to see what she can do, and in that process discover what she cannot do. If by any arrangement or rearrangement of stay, stanchion, davit, steam-pipe, bridge, boat-chocks, or hatchway she can, in their judgment, be improved, rest assured that the dockyard will know it by letter and voice. She never gets more than half what she wants, and so is careful to apply for thrice her needs.
Discontented and Impenitent Thieves
To her just and picturesque demands the Yard opposes the suspicion of Centuries, saying, unofficially: ‘You are all a set of discontented and impenitent thieves. Go away.’ The ship, considering her own comfort and well-being for the rest of the commission, replies, also unofficially: ‘Ah, you’re thinking of the So-and-so. She a nest of pirates if you like: but we’re good. We’re the most upright ship you ever clapped eyes on, and you’re the finest Yard in the Kingdom. You’re up to all the ropes. There’s no getting round you, and you’ll pass our indents. We won’t give you any trouble. Just a few minor repairs, and our own people will carry them out. Don’t disturb yourself in the least. Send the stuff alongside and we’ll attend to it.’
And when the stuff comes alongside in charge of a slow-minded understrapper they do attend to
