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.’ ‘It 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 manœuvres, 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 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 800lb. 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. There 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 négligé déshabillé, or words to that effect. There 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
