H.M.S Part 6

"Panic?" said the First Lieutenant (neither of them seemed to use more than one word at a time, unless engaged in an argument).

"Sure," was the reply. "Tell 'em to make that blinkin' stuff into sandwiches and send 'em up."

The First Lieutenant went down the ladder in silence. The matter of the tinned beef was to him, as mess caterer, a continual sore point.

The T.B. started on a more erratic course than before, tacking in long irregular stretches out to seaward. Smoke was showing up against the land astern, and there was a sense of stirring activity in the air.

Two more torpedo-boats appeared suddenly from nowhere, hoists of coloured flags flying at their slender masts. The three hung on one course a moment, conferring, then spread fanwise and separated. The first boat turned back towards harbour and the growing smoke-puffs, which rapidly approached and showed more and more mine-sweepers coming out.

A droning, humming noise made the Captain look up, and he pivoted slowly round, following with his eyes a big seaplane a thousand feet above him.

As the sound of the engines died away, it seemed to start swelling again, as another machine appeared a mile abeam of them, and following the first.

The T.B. swung round ahead of the leading sweepers, and turned back to seaward. Her speed was not great, but half an hour after the turn the sweepers were hull down astern. A small airs.h.i.+p slipped out of a low cloud and droned away on the common course. Every type of small craft seemed to be going easterly, and the sea, which an hour ago had been almost blank, was now dotted with patrol s.h.i.+ps of every queer kind and rig. From overhead it must have looked like a pack of hounds tumbling out of cover and spreading on a faint line. But, like the hounds, the floating pack was working to an end, and whatever the various courses steered, the whole was moving out to sea.

The Boy Telegraphist hauled himself, panting, on to the bridge, and thrust a crumpled signal before the Captain's eyes. The Captain grunted and spoke shortly, and the boy dashed off below. A moment later the piping of calls sounded along the bare iron deck, and men in heavy sea-boots began to cl.u.s.ter aft and at the guns. The funnels sent out a protesting spout of brown smoke as the T.B. began to work up to her speed, and the choppy sea sent up a steady sheet of spray along her forecastle and over the crouching figures at the bow gun. The rest of the pack appeared to have caught the whimper too, for everything that could raise more than "Tramp's pace" was hurrying due east. A faint dull "boom" came drifting down wind as the First Lieutenant arrived on the bridge, and the two officers looked at each other in silence a moment.

"Bomb, sir?" said the junior, showing an interest which almost made him conversational.

"Sure thing," said the other. "She gave us the tip when she saw him, and that'll be one to put him under."

"How far d'you think it was?"

"Seven-eight mile. You all ready?"

The First Lieutenant nodded and slipped down the ladder again. Three miles astern came a couple of white specks--the bow-waves of big destroyers pushed to their utmost power. The Captain studied them a moment with his binoculars, and gave a grunt which the helmsman rightly interpreted as one of satisfaction. Slow as she was, the old T.B. had a long start, and was going to be on the spot first. The dark was shutting down, and the shapes of the other T.B.'s on either beam were getting dim.

The night was starlit, and with the wind astern the T.B. made easy weather of it. The two officers leaned forward over the rail staring ahead towards the unseen land. Lights showed on either hand, and occasionally they swung past the dark squat shape of a lit trawler, also bound home.

"Are you going to claim?" asked one of the watching figures. The other paused before replying--

"We-ell," he said, "I'll just report. I think we shook him to the bunt, but it's no good claiming unless you can show prisoners, Iron Cross and all." Another ruminative pause. "Your people were smart on it--devilish smart." Another pause. "What's for dinner?"

A dark ma.s.s ahead came into view, and turned slowly into a line of great s.h.i.+ps coming towards them.

The T.B. swung off to starboard, and slowed her engines. One by one they went past her--huge, silent, and scornful, while the T.B. rocked uneasily in the cross sea made by their wakes. The Captain watched them go, chewing the stem of his unlit pipe. They were the cause of the day's activity, but it was seldom he met them at close range except like this, in the dark on his way home.

The line seemed endless, more and more dark hulls coming into view, and fading quickly into the dark again. As the last swung by the T.B.'s telegraph bells rang cheerfully, and she jogged off westward to where a faint low light flickered at intervals under the land.

BETWEEN TIDES.

A stranger, if suddenly transplanted to the spot, would have taken some time after opening his eyes to realise that the boat was submerged. He would probably decide at first that she was anch.o.r.ed in harbour. Far away forward, under an avenue of overhead electric lamps, figures could be seen--all either rec.u.mbent or seated--and from them the eye was led on till it lost its sense of distance in a narrowing perspective of wheels, pipes, and gauges. All the while there was a steady buzzing hum from slowly turning motors, and about every half minute there came a faint whir of gear wheels from away aft by the hydroplanes. From the bell-mouths of a cl.u.s.ter of voice-pipes a murmur of voices sounded--the conversation of officers by the periscope; while the ear, if close to the arched steel hull, could catch a bubbling, rippling noise--the voice of the North Sea pa.s.sing overhead.

The men stationed aft near the motors were not over-clean, and were certainly unshaven; some were asleep or reading (the literature carried and read by the crew would certainly have puzzled a librarian--it varied from 't.i.tbits' and 'John Bull' to 'Piers Plowman' and 'The Origin of Species'): a few were engaged in a heated discussion as they sat around a big torpedoman--the only man of the group actually on duty at the moment. His duties appeared only to consist in being awake and on the spot if wanted, and he was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied as one of the leading spirits in the argument.

"Well, let's '_ear_ what you're getting at," he said. "We 'eard a lot of talk, but it don't go anywhere. You say you're a philosopher, but you don't know what you do mean."

"_I_ know blanky well, but you can't understand me," said the engine-room artificer addressed. "Look here, now--you've got to die some time, haven't you?"

"Granted, Professor."

"Well, it's all arranged _now_ how you're to die, I say. It doesn't matter when or how it is, but it's all settled--see? And you don't know, and none of us know anything about it."

"That's all very well--but 'oo is it knows, then? D'you mean G.o.d?"

"No, I don't--I'm an atheist, I tell you. There's _something_ that arranges it all, but it ain't G.o.d."

"Well, 'oo the 'ell is it, then--the Admiralty?"

The Artificer leaned forward, his dark eyes alight and his face earnest as that of some medieval hermit. "I tell you," he said, "you can believe in G.o.d, or Buddha, or anything you like, but it's the same thing. Whatever it is, it doesn't care. It has it all ready and arranged--written out, if you like--and it will have to happen just so. It's pre--pre----"

"Predestination." The deep voice came from the Leading Stoker on the bench beside him.

"Predestination. No amount of praying's any good. It's no use going round crying to G.o.ds that aren't there to help you. You've got to go through it as it's written down."

"Prayer's all right," said the Leading Stoker. "If you believe what you pray, you'll get it."

"That's not true. Have you ever had it? Give us an instance now----"

"I don't pray none, thank you. All the same, it's good for women and such that go in for it, like. It ain't the things that alter; it's yourself that does it. Ain't you never 'eard o' Christian Science?"

"Yes; same as the Mormons, ain't it? Is that what you are?"

"No, it ain't--an' I'm a Unitarian, same as you are."

"I'm not--I'm a Baptist, same as my father was; but I don't believe in it."

"Well, if you believe in one G.o.d, that's what you are."

"But I'm telling you, I _don't_. Look here, now. I don't believe there's anything happens at all that wasn't all arranged first, and I know that nothing can alter it."

"Well, 'oo laid it all down first go off, then?" said the Torpedoman.

"Ah! I don't know and you don't know; but I tell you it wasn't G.o.d."

"Well, 'e's a bigger man than me then, an' I takes me 'at off to 'im, 'ooever it is. I tell yer, yer talkin' through yer neck. You say if you're going to be shot, there's a bullet about somewhere in some one's pouch with yer name writ on it. Ain't that it? Well, 'oo the 'ell put yer name on it, then?"

"It doesn't matter to me so long's it's there, does it?"

"Well, if that was so, I'd like to know 'oo 'e was, so's I could pa.s.s 'im the word not to 'ave the point filed off of it for me, anyway."

"Well, you couldn't--and he couldn't alter it for you if he was there, either."