Then the First Lieutenant grins like a Cheshire cat; the carpenter, so called because he very rarely deals with wood, the armourer and the first-class artificers sweat with joy, and the workshop lathes buzz and hum. But the understrapper gets particular beans because a great part of his stuff was meant for another ship, and she is very angry about it.
Stolen Paint
Late in the afternoon the defrauded vessel sends over a boat to the Early and wants to know if she has seen or heard anything of some oak baulks, a new gangway grating, some brass-work, and a few drums of white paint.
‘Why, was that yours?’ says the First Lieutenant. ‘We thought it was ours.’
‘Well, it isn’t. It’s ours. Where is it?’
‘I’m awfully sorry, but—I say, won’t you come and have a drink?’
They come—just in time to see the brass rods in position, the oak baulks converted into some sort of boat-furniture; the gangway platform receives their weary feet, and a fine flavour of paint from a flat forward tells them all they will ever know of the missing drums.
Then they call the First Lieutenant a pirate, and he, poor lamb, says that he was misled by the chuckle-headed understrapper who brought the stuff alongside. Words cannot express the First Lieutenant’s contrition. It is too bad, too bad, but you know what asses these Dockyard chaps can be.’
With soft words and occasional gin and bitters he coaxes the visitors into their boat again, for he has studied diplomacy under West African Kings. They return to their own place, being young and guileless, and their reception is not cordial. Their Captain says openly that he has not one adequate thief in the ship, and that they had better go into the Church. They should have captured the understrapper early in the day. He will speak to the other Captain. And he does, like a brother, next time he meets him, galley passing galley, going to call on the Admiral.
‘You infernal old pirate! What have you done with my paint?’ cries the robbed one.
‘Me, sar? Not me, sar. My brother Manuel, sar? That paint mafeesh. Done gone finish. Kerritch hogya.’ This from the other potentate.
The coxswains duck their heads to hide a grin. And that is one of the ways they have in the Navy, (see Note I.)
The Early Bird departs with a reputation that would sink a slave-dhow, to try the same trick on Hong Kong or Bombay Yard.
A Blissful Fortnight
This and more—oh! much more—did my friends fore and aft convey to me in that blissful fortnight when I was privileged to watch their labours. I heard, undilutedly, what a boy thinks of punishment and the man who reported him for it; how a carpenter regards a Dockyard ‘matey,’ what are the sentiments of a signaller towards an Admiral and of a stoker towards the Authorities who have designed his washing accommodation. I overheard in the darkness of beautiful nights, fragments of Greek drama from the forward flats which it is my life’s regret that I cannot make public; lectures on all manner of curious things delivered by the ship’s jester; and totally unveracious reports of conversations with superiors retailed by a delinquent Marine.
Fire and collision-drill, general quarters and the like take on new meaning when they are translated for you once, by the Head who orders them and again by the tail who carry them out. When you have been shown lovingly over a torpedo by an artificer skilled in the working of its tricky bowels, torpedoes have a meaning and a reality for you to the end of your days.
‘Men Live There’
Next time you see the ‘blue’ ashore you do not stare unintelligently. You have watched him on his native heath. You know what he eats, and what he says, and where he sleeps, and how. He is no longer a unit; but altogether such an one as yourself—only, as I have said, better. The Naval Officer chance met, rather meek and self-effacing, in tweeds, at a tennis party, is a priest of the mysteries. You have seen him by his altars. With the Navigating Lieutenant ‘on the ’igh an’ lofty bridge persecuting his vocation’ you have studied stars, mast-head angles, range-finders, and such all; the First Lieutenant has enlightened you on his duties as an Upper Housemaid, (see Note Ia.) and the Juniors have guided you through the giddy whirl of gunnery, small-arm drill, getting up an anchor, and taking kinks out of a cable. So it comes that next time you see, even far off, one of Her Majesty’s cruisers, all your heart goes out to her. Men live there.
Chapter IV
It was the Captain’s coxswain (see Note II.)—precise, immaculate, and adequate as ever—who met the returning guest at Devonport a year later—September, 1898. This time my cruiser was not with the Fleet, but on urgent private affairs. A misguided collier had seen fit to sit on her ram for a minute or so in Milford Haven, a few days before, and had twisted it thirteen inches to starboard. The collier was beached as soon as possible, and the Admiral he said to us (this I got from the coxswain as we drove to North Corner, by night, through blue-jacketed Devonport): ‘Can you go round to Plymouth with your nose in that state?’ ‘Lord love you, yes,’ said we, or words to that effect. ‘Very good,’ said the Admiral, ‘then you go.’ This we did at an average speed of sixteen knots, through a head-sea, with a collision-mat over our nose (‘Same mat we used when we tied up the Thrasher, sir’), and we ran her up to eighteen point two for a few hours to see how the bulkhead would stand it. The carpenter and the carpenter’s mate (‘Yes, they’re the same as last year, sir’) sat up to watch, but nothing happened.
‘An’ now we’re under orders to go back and join the Fleet at Bantry. We’ve been cruising all round England since August.’
The Record of a Year
Once aboard the lugger the past twelve months rolled up like a chart that one needs no longer. The ‘commodious coffee-grinder’ welcomed me as a brother, for by good luck no one had been changed; the same faces greeted me in the little ward-room, and we fell to chattering like children. Had I seen the new fore and aft bridge that we had managed to screw out of the Dockyard? A great contraption—a superior contraption. We had worked in a little extra deck under the forebridge, so that now the signalman had a place to stand in, which I would remember was not the case last year. Had I heard of our new coaling record? Nearly fifty tons per hour, which for a third-class cruiser represented four times that amount for a battleship. Had I heard of the zephyr that blew at Funchal; of unrecorded evolutions in Minorca Bay; of the First Lieutenant’s great haul of paint; of a recent target-practice when nothing was left of the target; of the influenza that overtook the steam-whistle; and a hundred other vital matters?
The record of a year with the Channel Fleet is not to be told in two hours, but I gathered a good deal ere I dropped into my well-remembered berth that joyous night. We departed at noon the next day, unhampered by signals. A liner leaves Plymouth in one style; a cruiser snakes out from Devonport in quite another, which was explained to me on the ‘’igh an’ lofty bridge’ as we skated round buoy after buoy, courteously pulled out a little not to interfere with a yacht race, and ran through the brown-sailed Plymouth fishing fleet. It was divine weather—still, cloudless, and blue—and the bridge was of opinion that he who had a farm should sell it and forthwith go to sea.
Our Noble Selves
The Cornwall coast slid past us in great grey-blue shadows, laid out beyond the little strip
