The Long Trick Part 8

"Oh, bored stiff by the whole performance, of course. Still he did make one wild leap for the gun and got off a round at point-blank range. Hit her just below the conning tower. She must have been in diving trim, because she went down like a stone, bubbling like an empty soda-water bottle."

"What about the Huns in the water?" demanded the enthralled Clerk.

"We could only find one. The other must have got mixed up with the submarine's propeller. The one we picked up was nearly done and awfully surprised because we gave him dry clothes and hot drinks and a smoke, and didn't spit in his eye or anything of that sort. Said their officers always told them we illtreated our prisoners. Aren't they Nature's little n.o.bs?"

There was a little silence, each one busy with his own thoughts.

Finally one broke the silence, voicing the opinion of the rest:

"Well," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "some people have all the blinking luck. I've done about twenty night patrols since I've been up here and never seen anything 'cept a porpoise."

The Night Patroller lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke with the air of a man who had earned it. "You were at Suvla Bay and the landing from the _River Clyde_," he retorted. "You can't have _every_ ruddy thing in life."

A fine day in Ultima Thule--they were rare--was an occasion for thankfulness and rejoicing. Directly after luncheon the members of Gunroom and Wardroom made their way on deck to bask in the sun and smoke contemplative post-prandial pipes in the lee of the after superstructure. Forward, in amids.h.i.+ps, the band was playing a slow waltz and fifty or so couples from among the s.h.i.+p's company were solemnly revolving to the music with expressions of melancholy enjoyment peculiar to such exercise.

"It's make-and-mend this afternoon," said the Senior Mids.h.i.+pman, tilting his cap over his eyes and lazily watching the antics of a gull volplaning against the light wind. He sat on the deck with his back against the superstructure and his hands clasped round his knees.

"It's a topping day, too," added Malison from his vantage astride the coir-hawser reel. "Too good to waste onboard. The footer ground's bagged--let's have a picnic in one of the cutters. Have tea ash.o.r.e, an' fry bangers over a fire."

The project found favour generally. "We might ask one or two of the Wardroom," suggested Harcourt. "Some of the cheery ones; Standish and Thorogood and the Doc, say."

"_And_ old Jakes," supplemented the Mids.h.i.+pman of that officer's Division jealously. "I'd like to ask him. He loves picnics."

Mouldy Jakes was included in the invitation list by general consent.

His half-humorous, resigned air of chronic boredom had a peculiar attraction for all the Mids.h.i.+pmen; in the case of the Mids.h.i.+pman of his turret it amounted to idolatry.

"Go an' ask 'em, Harcourt," said the Senior Mids.h.i.+pman. "You're the Blue-eyed Boy with the Wardroom. I'll go and tackle the Commander for the cutter."

"Then Bosh and I will go and ginger-up the Messman," said another, "and get a basket packed. What shall we have for tea?"

"Sloe-gin," promptly responded a tall, pale Mids.h.i.+pman with a slightly freckled nose and sandy hair. "Sloe-gin and bangers.[1] And get strawberry jam: see the Messman doesn't try and palm off any of his beastly gooseberry stuff like he did last time. What about bacon and eggs, and some tins of cocoa and milk, and a cake and some sardines----"

"Wonk," interrupted the caterer, "we're only going to have tea ash.o.r.e.

We aren't going to camp out for the week-end."

"I tell you what," said Mouldy Jake's patron, "I'll bring my line and we'll catch pollack and fry _them_ for tea too."

"Well, I'm going to s.h.i.+ft," said Malison, and the Committee of Supply broke up and pa.s.sed down below.

Half an hour later the cutter, manned and provisioned, with the skiff in tow, hoisted her foresail and sheered off from the after gangway.

The India-rubber Man, as Senior Officer of the expedition, took the helm and banished the Young Doctor into the bows, where, to judge by the ecstatic shouts of merriment that floated aft, his peculiar form of wit was much appreciated. Thorogood, at the main sheet, with an old deerstalker on his head and a pipe in his mouth, led the chorus in the sternsheets. Mouldy Jakes had usurped the skiff, and having satisfied himself that he was required to take no further part in the navigation of the expedition, made himself comfortable in the bottom of the boat and blinked at the sky through puffs of smoke from his pipe.

He was followed into this voluntary exile by the Mids.h.i.+pman of his Division, one Morton, who sat in the bows contemplating him affectionately.

Precisely what it was that inspired this apparently one-sided attachment was never very apparent. The almost pa.s.sionate loyalty and affections of youth are hardy plants, thriving abundantly on the scantiest soil.

For a while only the drowsy swish of the water past the bottom of the boat, and s.n.a.t.c.hes of merriment or song drifting aft from the cutter, broke the silence in the skiff. Then Mouldy Jakes's companion apparently tired of this silent communion.

"Sir," he said, "would you like to fish?"

"No," said Mouldy Jakes.

His host proceeded to unwind his line. "Do you mind if I do?" he enquired.

"No," was the reply.

The Mids.h.i.+pman watched his line in silence for a little while. "Do you think you sank that submarine last night?" he asked presently.

Mouldy Jakes closed his eyes and gave a grunt with an affirmative intonation.

"It must have been a topping show. Weren't you awfully bucked, sir?"

Another grunt.

"I suppose you didn't get a wink of sleep all night?"

A vague confirmatory noise.

"You must be jolly tired, sir. Wouldn't you like to sleep a bit now, sir?"

"Yes."

"Right ho, sir. You can carry on and have a jolly good caulk. I'm going to fish, and I'll call you when we get to the island where we're going to land.... Is your head quite comfortable?"

Silence reigned in the skiff.

The cutter had pa.s.sed beyond the outskirts of the Fleet, and the decorum required of the occupants of a Service boat in such surroundings no longer ruled their behaviour. They sang and shouted for sheer joy of bellowing, full-lunged, across the untrammelled water.

No one whose life is not spent in the narrow confines of a man-of-war, walking paths sternly ruled by Naval Discipline, can realise the intoxicating effect of such an emanc.i.p.ation. The mysterious workings of the Mids.h.i.+pman-mind found full play on these occasions, as they tumbled about in the bottom of the boat in the unfettered enjoyment of a whole-hearted "sc.r.a.p." If you have ever seen young foxes at play, buffeting each other, yelping with simulated anguish, nuzzling endearments half savage and half in play, you have an idea of the bottom of a cutter full of Mids.h.i.+pmen proceeding on a picnic. It was an embodiment of youth triumphant, shouting with laughter at the Jest of Life.

"Where shall we go?" asked Standish, smiling, during a lull when the crew sat panting and flushed with exertion, grinning at each other over the tops of the thwarts.

"Any blooming where," shouted Thorogood. "As long as it is out of sight of the Fleet. I feel I've seen enough of the Silent Navy for an hour or two." Then raising his voice he chanted:

"_Put me upon an island where the girls are few..._"

"Right," retorted the Indian-rubber Man. "We'll go round this little headland. Ready about! Check the fore sheet! Come aft out of the bows, Pills, you clown, unless you want us to miss stays."

"I don't want to go to an island," cried the Surgeon plaintively, "where the girls are few." He surveyed the heather-crowned islets surrounding them on all sides, the lonely haunts of cormorants and black-backed gulls. "I'm all for houris and sirens and whatnots----"

The foresail swung across and knocked him into the bottom of the boat.

"You frail Ulysses!" exclaimed Thorogood, as they set sail on the new course. "You aren't to be trusted in these populous parts. We must lash you to the mast!"

"And stop his ears with cotton-wool," said a Mids.h.i.+pman whose acquaintance with the cla.s.sics was still a recent, if sketchy acquisition.

A party set off into the bows to put the proposal into immediate execution, but the imminence of land and a shout from the helmsman arrested them in their purpose: