Chapter 5 No.5

"Now we can talk!" Margaret settled her back comfortably against a ridge of turf and closed her eyes for a moment.

"Isn't it heavenly up here? The wind smells of seaweed, and there must be some shrub or flower--" She opened her eyes and looked along the cliffs, "There's something smelling divinely. Wild broom, is it?"

Her gaze travelled along the succession of ragged headlands and crescents of sand formed by each little bay of the indented coast. The coastguard track, a brown thread winding adventurously among the clumps of gorse at the very edge of the cliffs, drew her eyes farther and farther to the west. In the far distance the track dipped sharply over a headland where the whitewashed coastguard station stood, and was lost to view. She turned and smiled at her companion. "Now we can talk," she repeated.

Torps, sitting beside her, met her eyes with his grave, gentle smile. "I'm so glad to see you again," he said, "that I can't think of anything else to say. It was nice of you to write and tell me you were here."

As if by common consent, they had discussed nothing but generalities during the half-hour's walk that brought them to this sheltered hollow in the cliffs. The woman was, of the two, the more reluctant to bridge the years that lay between to-day and their last meeting. Yet, womanlike, it was she that spoke first.

"I knew your ship was quite close. I wanted to see you again, Trevor, after all these years. Tell me about yourself. Your letters-yes, I know; but you never talked much about yourself in your letters."

He shook his head quietly. "No, you tell first."

"There isn't much to tell." She interlaced her fingers round her updrawn knees. Her grey eyes were turned to the sea, and Torps watched her profile against the sky wistfully, studying the pure brow, the threads of silver appearing here and there in her soft brown hair, the strong, almost boyish lines of mouth and chin. En profile, thus, she looked very like a handsome boy.

"I've been teaching at one of those training institutes for girls on the East Coast. The principal, Miss Dacre is her name"-Margaret paused as if expecting some comment from her companion: none came-"Pauline Dacre; she was at school with mother: they were great friends; and when mother died she offered me a home. . . . I had a little money-enough to go through a course of training. I learned things--"

"What sort of things?"

"Oh, cooking and laundry, and hygiene-domestic science it's called." Torps nodded. "And then, when I knew enough to teach others, I went to-to this place; I've been there ever since. And that's all. Now it's your turn."

Torps studied the traces of overwork and strain which showed in the faintly accentuated cheekbones and which painted little tired shadows about her eyelids.

"No, it's not all. Why have you come down here?"

"I-I--" She coloured as if accused. "I got a little run down . . . that was all. But I've saved some money; I can afford a rest. I'm what is called 'an independent gentlewoman of leisure' for a while." She laughed, a gay little laugh.

"Do you mean you are going back there again?"

She looked at him with frank surprise. "Of course I am, silly!"

"Don't go back . . . not to that life again. How can you? Shut up in a sort of convent. . . . You can't be a school-marm all your life; you were meant for other things. . . . I suppose you have to sleep on a hard bed, and get up in the dark when a bell rings. There aren't any carpets, and they don't give you enough to eat, as likely as not. Margaret, why should you? It's the sort of work anyone can do-teaching kids to mangle."

"But . . . what do you think I am going to do with the remainder of my days-crochet? embroider slippers for the curate? Trevor, you wouldn't like me to come to that in my old age, would you?" She spoke with gentle banter, as if to fend off something she feared. Had Torps known it, she was fencing for the happiness of them both.

He shook his head gravely.

"I hoped-because you had written to me-that you weren't going back. . . ." His thin, strong hand closed over hers, resting on the turf between them. He bent his head as if considering their fingers. "Margaret, dear--"

"Ah, Trevor, don't-please don't. . . . Not again. I thought all that was dead and buried years ago. And do you really think"-she smiled a little sadly-"if I-if things were different-that I should have written to ask you to meet me to-day? Have you learned so little of women in all these years?" There was something besides sadness in her eyes now: a wistful, half-maternal tenderness. He raised his head.

"I've learned nothing about women, Margaret, but what I learned from you."

She gently withdrew her hand. "Trevor, we're not children any longer.

We're older and wiser. We--"

"We're older-yes. But I don't see what that has to do with it, except that my need is greater. . . . I'm a little lonelier. There's never been anyone but you. I've never looked across the road at a woman in my life-except you. I know we're not children, and for that reason we ought to know our own minds. Do you know yours, Margaret?"

Margaret bowed her head, collecting her thoughts and setting them in order, before she answered:

"It isn't easy to say what I have to say. You must be patient-generous, as you can be, Trevor, of all the men I know." She hesitated and coloured again a little. "You say you want me. If there were no one else who I thought had a greater claim, you should-no, hush! listen, dear-I would give you-what you want . . . gladly-oh, gladly! But the children need me-my influence. . . . Miss Dacre said it is doing the highest service one could for the Empire . . . theirs is the higher claim. Can you understand? Oh, can you?"

Torps made no reply, staring out to sea with sombre eyes.

Gaining confidence with his silence, she continued the shy unfolding of her ideals. "Nothing is too good for boys; no training is high enough, because they are to be the builders and upholders of our Empire. Don't you think that little girls, who are destined some day to be the mates of these boys, should be prepared in a way that will make them worthy of their share of the inheritance? They have to be taught ideals of honour and courage and intelligent patriotism, so that they can help and encourage their men in years to come. They must learn to cook and sew, learn the laws of Nature and hygiene, so that they can make the home not 'an habitation enforced'-as it is for so many women-but a place where they may with all honour bring into the world other little girls and boys. . . ." She drew her breath quickly. "Ah, that is not a thing anyone can do, teaching all that! It must be someone who gives all-and who gives herself gladly . . . as I have."

Torps turned his head as if to speak, but checked himself.

"Don't think I am setting myself upon a pedestal. Don't think my heart is too anaemic to-to care for you, and that I am trying to shelter myself behind talk of a life's mission. Oh!" she cried, "be generous. Don't try to make it harder."

She leaned towards him a little as he sat with lowered eyes. "This is a time of grave anxiety, isn't it?" she continued gently, as if explaining something to an impatient child. "You naval men ought to know. There is talk of war everywhere-of war with Germany. They say we are on the brink of it to-day." Torps nodded. "Supposing it came now . . . and you were recalled. How do they recall you? Sound a bugle-beat a drum?"

Torps smiled faintly. "Something of the sort-no, not a drum; a bugle, perhaps."

"Well, we'll suppose it is a drum. One somehow associates it with war and alarms. Would you hesitate to obey?" Torps refrained from the obvious answer and plucked a grass-stem to put between his teeth. "You would obey, wouldn't you, because it is your duty-however much you'd like to sit here with me? Will you try to realise that I shall be only answering the drum, too, when-I go back."

The breeze that strayed about the floor of the Channel fanned their faces and set the bright sea-poppies nodding all along the edge of the cliffs. The sun was low in the west, and a snake-like flotilla of destroyers crept out across the quiet sea from the harbour hidden by a fold in the hills. Torps watched them with absent eyes, and there was a long silence. The wind had loosened a strand of his companion's hair, and she was busy replacing it with deft fingers.

"Margaret," he replied at last, "you said just now that I understood very little about women. I think you are right. Perhaps if I understood more I might know how to muffle the drum so that you wouldn't hear it. I might have learned to pipe a tune that would make you not want to hear it. . . . I don't know. . . . But I accept all you say-although deep down in my heart I know you are wrong. There will come a day when you, too, will know you are wrong. I shall come back then. And till then, since I must"-he smiled in a whimsical, sad way that somehow relaxed the tension-"I lend you to the children."

She returned his smile quite naturally, with relief in her eyes. "Dear Trevor, yes . . . because they need me so. . . . Believe me, I am not wrong: and we keep our friendship still, sweet and sane--" She broke off suddenly and raised a slim forefinger, holding her head sideways to listen, the way women and birds and children seem to hear better. "Hark! Did you hear? How odd! Listen, Trevor!"

Torps brought himself back with an effort. "Hear what?"

"Listen!"

He listened.

"I can hear the waves along the shingle."

"No, no. . . . There-now!"

"Oh! . . . Yes, I can hear. . . . It sounds like a drum."

"Trevor, it is a drum, somewhere out at sea! How odd when we were just talking about drums-hush! Oh, do listen. . . ."

The sound, borne to them on the light wind, seemed to grow nearer; then it waned till they could scarcely catch the beats. Anon it swelled louder: the unmistakable "Dub! dub! rub-a-dub! dub! . . . Dub! dub! dub!" of a far-off drum.

Margaret shook his sleeve. "Of course it's a drum. It can't be anything else, can it?"

"It's Drake's Drum!" he replied, with mock solemnity. "There's a legend in the West Country, you know--"

"I know!" She nodded, bright eyed with interest, and rose to a kneeling position to gaze beneath her palms out towards the west. The sun had set, and a thin grey haze slowly veiled the horizon. Already the warm afterglow was dying out of the sky.

"He has 'quit the Port of Heaven,'" she quoted half-seriously, playing with superstition as only women can, "and he's 'drumming up the Channel'! They say it foretells war . . . that noise. . . ." Margaret gave a little shiver and rose to her graceful height, extending both her ringless hands to him. "It's getting chilly-come!"

Torps rose to his feet, too, and for a moment faced her, with his grave, patient eyes on hers. For the first time she noticed that his hair was going grey about the temples, and, had he known it, Margaret came very near to wavering in that moment. Perhaps he did realise, and with quick, characteristic generosity helped her.

"I think I understand," he said, "something of their need-the need of the children for such as you. It-it--" He turned abruptly towards the sea. The noise that resembled a distant drum had ceased, and there was only the faint surge of the waves on the beaches far below.

It was the only sound in all the land and sea.

* * * * *

In the whitewashed coastguard station a mile away the bearded occupant on duty was finishing his tea. The skeleton of a herring lay on the side of his plate, the centre of which the boatman was scouring with a piece of bread (preparatory to occupying it with damson jam), when the telephone bell rang. A man of economical habits, he put the bread in his mouth, and, rising from the table, picked up the receiver.

". . . Portree Signal Station-Yes."

". . . 'Oo? Yes."

He stood motionless with the receiver to his ear, his jaws moving mechanically about the last of the piece of bread. Outside the little room the wind thrummed in the halliards of the signal-mast. The clock over the desk ticked out the deliberate seconds. A cat, curled up by the window, rose, stretching itself, and yawned.

". . . Prepare to mobilise. All officers and men are recalled from leave. Detailed orders will follow. Right. Good-bye."

He replaced the receiver and rang off. Then, still masticating, he executed a species of solemn war-dance in the middle of the floor.

"Crikey!" he said aloud. "That means war, that do! Bloody war!"

He snatched up a telescope and ran outside, still talking aloud to himself after the manner of men who live much alone. "I see a bloke an' 'is young woman along there this afternoon. I'd ha' said he was a naval orficer if anyone was to ask me." He scanned the hills through his glass for a moment, and then set off along the track that skirted the edge of the cliffs.

Margaret saw him first, a broad, blue-clad figure, threading his way among the furze bushes. "And you won't be unhappy, will you, Trevor?" she was saying. "You will understand, you--" She broke off to watch the coastguard hurrying towards them. "Does that sailor want to speak to us, do you think? He seems in a great hurry."

Torps stood at her side staring.

The coastguard drew near, wiping his face with a vast blue and white spotted handkerchief, for he had been running. "Beg pardon, sir," he called as he came within earshot, "but would you be a naval officer?"

"I am," replied Torps. "Why?"

The man saluted. "There's a telephone message just come through, sir,

'Prepare to mobilise. All officers and men are recalled from leave.'"

Torps stared at him. "Where did it come from-the message?"

"From the port, sir. I was to warn anyone I saw out this way . . ."

"Right; thank you. I'm going back now." He turned towards Margaret.

"Did you hear that?" There was a queer note of relief in his voice.

"Yes," she replied quietly. "The Drum."

III

A CAPTAIN'S FORENOON

The Captain came out of his sleeping-cabin as the last chord of the National Anthem died away on the quarter-deck overhead with the roll of kettledrums.

"Carry on!" sang the bugle; and the ship's company, their animation suspended while the colours crept up the jackstaff, proceeded to "breakfast and clean." The signalman whose duty it was to hoist the Ensign at 8 a.m. turned up the halliards to his satisfaction, and departed forward in the wake of the band.

The Captain had "cleaned" already, and his breakfast was on the table in his fore-cabin. He sat down, glanced at the pile of letters beside his plate, propped the morning paper against the teapot, and commenced his meal. He ate with the deliberate slowness of a man accustomed to having meals in solitude, who has schooled himself not to abuse his digestion.

As he ate his quick eye travelled over the headlines of the paper, occasionally concentrating on a paragraph here and there. Ten minutes sufficed to give him a complete grasp of the day's affairs. The naval appointments he read carefully. His memory for names and individuals was unfailing; he never forgot anyone who had served under his command, and followed the careers of most with interest. His daily private correspondence, which was large, testified to the fact that not many forgot him.

Breakfast over, he laid aside the paper, lit a cigarette, and turned over the little pile of letters, identifying the writers with a glance at the handwriting on each envelope. Only one was unknown to him: that he placed last, and carried them into the after-cabin to read, leaning his shoulder against the mantel of the tiled and brass-bound fireplace.

The first letter he opened was from his wife, and, in consequence, its contents were nobody's affair but his own. He read it twice, and smiled as he returned it to the envelope.

The next, written on thick notepaper stamped with the Admiralty crest, he also read twice, and mused awhile. Apparently this also was nobody's concern but his, for, still deep in thought, he tore it up and put the pieces in the fire before taking up the third. This was an appeal for assistance from a former watch-keeper who aspired to the Flying Corps. The next was also a request for assistance from a young officer, who, having recently taken a wife to his bosom, apparently considered the achievement a qualification for the command of one of H.M. torpedo-boat destroyers.

The Captain rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I sent him a silver photograph frame. . . . He'll want me to be godfather next." He occasionally spoke aloud when alone.

An appeal for funds for a memorial to someone or another followed. Then two advertisements from wine merchants and a statement of his account with his outfitter were consigned in turns into the fire. The last envelope, in the unknown hand, he scrutinised for a moment before opening. The postmark was local, the caligraphy illiterate. He opened the letter and read it with an inscrutable face. Then, with a quick movement as of disgust, he crumpled it up and threw it into the flames. It was anonymous, and was a threat, couched in lurid and ensanguined terms, to murder him.

Judges, and post-captains of the Royal Navy, perhaps as a reminder of their great responsibilities, occasionally receive communications of this nature. Their life insurance policies, however, appear to remain much the same as those of other people.

* * * * *

The after-cabin, where the Captain perused his correspondence, was an airy, chintz-upholstered apartment leading aft through two heavy steel doors on to the stern-walk. The doors were open on that particular morning, and the high, thin cries of seagulls quarrelling under the stern drifted through almost unceasingly.

Forward, the white-enamelled bulkhead was pierced by two entrances. One led from a diminutive sleeping-cabin and bathroom, the other from the fore-cabin, which the Captain had just quitted, and which in turn communicated with a lobby where a marine sentry paced day and night.

The after-cabin was lit by a skylight overhead and scuttles in the ship's side. The sunlight, streaming in through the starboard ones, winked on the butterfly clamps of burnished brass and small rods from which the little chintz curtains hung. A roll-topped desk occupied a corner near the fireplace, and round the bulkheads, affixed to white enamelled battens, hung water-colour paintings of his ships. A sloop of war under full sail; a brig, close-hauled, beating out of Plymouth Sound; a tiny gunboat at anchor in a backwater of the Upper Yangtse. There were spick-and-span cruisers; a quaint, top-heavy looking battleship that in her day had been considered the last word in naval construction, and whose name to-day provokes reminiscences from the older generation and from the younger half-dubious smiles; then, near the door, came modern men-of-war of familiar aspect. They represented the milestones of a long career.

A chart lay folded on a table in the centre of the cabin, with a pair of dividers and a parallel ruler lying on it. Another table stood in a corner near the door-a small, glass-topped table such as collectors of curios gather their treasures in. The contents of this table, however, were not curios in the strict sense of the word. A number of them were very commonplace objects, but each one held its particular associations.

You will find just such a collection of insignificant mysteries in a boy's pocket or a jackdaw's nest. Bits of string, a marble polished by friction, a piece of coloured glass, an old nail-in themselves rubbish, but doubtless linking the possessor to some amiable memory, and cherished for no better reason.

Some men retain this instinct of boyhood. But whereas the boy is secretive and reticent about the particular associations his pocket holds, the man will talk about his hoard.

In the glass-topped table in that corner of the after-cabin were ties with all the seven seas and the shores they wash. Mementoes of folly or friendship, sport or achievement; fragments of the mosaic that is life.

A bit of brick from the Great Wall of China recalled a bag of geese in the clear cold dusk of Northern Asia. Memories, too, of the whaler's beat back to the fleet in the teeth of a rising gale that swept in from the Pacific, when the bravest unlaced his boots and they baled with the empty guncase.

There was a piece of the sacred pavement of Mecca, brought back in the days when few Europeans had brought anything back from there-even their lives. A gold medal in a morocco-leather case, won by an essay that had called for months of unrelaxed study. A copper bangle from the wrist of a Korean dancing-girl (it was somebody else's story, though). A wooden ju-ju from Benin, dark-stained and repulsive; a tiny clay godling that had guarded the mummied heart of an Egyptian queen. A flint arrow-head picked up on Dartmoor during a long summer tramp after the speckled trout. A jewelled cigarette-case, gift of an empress who could give no more than that, however much she may have wanted to.

Rubbish, all rubbish. Yet occasionally, when two or three post-captains, contemporaries and fleet-mates, gathered here to smoke after-dinner cigars, the host would unlock the glass-topped table, select some object from his miscellany, and hold it up with a "D'you remember--?" And one or other of his guests-sometimes all of them-would laugh and nod and blow great clouds of smoke and slide into eager reminiscence. Yesterday is the playground of all men's hearts, but more especially those of sailor men. These odds and ends were only keys that unlocked the gate.

A few photographs stood on the shelf above the hearth. Some books occupied a revolving bookcase within reach of anyone sitting at the desk; not very interesting books: old Navy Lists, a "King's Regulations," a "Manual of Court Martial Procedure," one or two volumes on International Law, and a treatise on so-called 'modern' seamanship-which, by the way, is a misnomer, seamanship, like love, being of all time.

The revolving bookcase supported a bowl of flowers. The Captain's Coxswain had personally arranged them that morning; had, in fact, had a slight difference of opinion with the Captain's valet (conducted sotto voce) over the method of their arrangement. The Coxswain won on the claim of being a married man and understanding mysteries beyond the ken of bachelors. The result in either case would have brought tears to the eyes of any woman.

* * * * *

The Captain finished his cigarette and opened the roll-topped desk, slipped his letters into a pigeon-hole, and closed the desk again. As he did so the Commander entered the cabin, tucking his cap under his arm.

"Nine o'clock, sir; all ready for divisions. The Chaplain is sick-will you read prayers?"

"Sick, is he? What's the matter?"

"He twisted his knee yesterday playing football. The Fleet Surgeon has made him lie up."

The Captain nodded. "All right; I'll read them." As the Commander turned to go he spoke again: "By the way, that fellow I gave ninety days to yesterday-was there a woman in the case, d'you happen to know? There was nothing in the evidence, of course, but I wondered--"

The Commander paused while the busy brain searched among its dockets. The man whose business it is as Executive Officer to control the affairs of close on a thousand of his fellow men must of necessity sometimes learn curiously intimate details of their lives.

"Yes; the Master-at-Arms mentioned to me that a woman was at the bottom of it. She's a wrong 'un, I understand."

"Thank you."

The Commander went out, and a moment later the bugle overhead blazed forth "Divisions."

"I thought it was a woman's writing," added the Captain musingly.

"Divisions correct, sir!" The Commander saluted and made his report.

The Captain returned the salute briskly. "Sound the 'Close.'"

The bugle sounded again, the bell began to toll for prayers, and the band on the after shelter-deck struck up a lively march as the men came aft.

Anyone interested in the study called physiognomy might with advantage have taken his stand at this moment on the after part of the quarter-deck, where the shadow of the White Ensign curved and flickered across the planking. Perhaps the Captain, who stood there, was himself a student of the art. At any rate, as the men marched aft through the screen doors his level eyes passed from face to face, reflective, observant, intensely alert.

The last division reached its allotted position on the quarter-deck, turned inboard, and stood easy. The band stopped abruptly. The bell ceased tolling. In the brief ensuing silence the Commander's voice was clearly audible as he made his report.

"Everybody aft, sir."

The Captain slipped a small prayer-book out of a side pocket. The Commander gave a curt order, and five hundred heads bared to the sunlight.

"Stand easy!"

There is much beauty in the sonorous periods of the English Rubric. Read in the strong, clear voice of a man who for thirty years had known calm and tempest, sunset and dawn at sea, the familiar words-of appeal and praise alike-assumed somehow an unwonted significance; and when he closed the book, slipped it back into his pocket, and looked up, the face he raised was the face of one who, whatever else his creed had taught him, found in all success the answer to some prayer, in every disaster a call to courage and high endeavour.

* * * * *

Down in the after-cabin, five minutes later, the Fleet Surgeon handed the sick-list to the Captain, who read it with care. For the first time that day his brow clouded. The two men looked at one another.

"It is heavy," said the Fleet Surgeon; "but--" He made an imperceptible upward movement of the shoulders, for his mother had been French.

For some moments after he had gone the Captain stood staring out through the after doorway. A barge, heavily freighted, was passing slowly down-stream. His eyes followed the brown sail absently as long as it was within his field of vision. The anger had gone from his brow and left a shadow of sadness.

"'Si j'etais Dieu,'" he murmured, following some train of thought and musing aloud as was his habit. Then, still in a brown study, he opened the roll-topped desk and pressed a bell.

"Tell Mr. Gerrard I'll sign papers," he said to the marine sentry who appeared in the doorway.

"Double-O" Gerrard (so called because he wore glasses with circular lenses and his name made you think of telephones) answered the summons, carrying a sheaf of papers. He was the Captain's Clerk: that is to say, the junior accountant officer, detailed by the Captain to conduct his official correspondence and perform secretarial work generally. The position is not one commonly sought after, but Double-O Gerrard appeared to enjoy his duties, and as a badge of office carried a perpetual inkstain on the forefinger-tip of his right hand.

The Captain sat down at his desk with a little sigh. If the truth be known, he had small relish for this business of "papers." He picked up his pen and examined the nib.

"Do you ever use your pen to clean a pipe out?" he asked his Clerk.

"Oh no, sir."

"I suppose it depends on the nib one uses whether it suffers much." With a piece of blotting paper the Captain removed fragments of tobacco ash and nicotine from the nib, and dipped it in the ink. "It doesn't seem to hurt mine. Now then, what have we got here?"

A quarter of an hour later he pushed aside the last of the pile of documents and lit a cigarette with the air of a man who had earned a smoke.

"Any defaulters?"

"No, sir, none for you to-day."

"Humph! Tell the Commander I'll buy him a pair of white kid gloves when I go ashore. Request-men?"

His Clerk placed a book upon the desk open at a list of names. The

Captain ran down them with a pencil.

"Badges, all entitled? . . . Stop allotment-who does he allot to? Mother? . . . Restoration to first class for leave. . . . To be rated Leading Seaman-Jones. Jones? Oh, yes, I know: youngster in the quarter-deck division with a broken nose. The Commander spoke to me about him." The pencil slowly descended to the bottom of the page, ticking off each man's request as it was gone into and explained. He stopped at the last one. "'To see Captain about private affairs.' What's his trouble?"

"I don't know, sir. He put in his request to see you through the

Master-at-Arms. He didn't say what it was about."

The Captain closed the book. "All seamen, eh? No Marine request-men?"

"No, sir."

"Right. I'll see 'em at eleven." The Clerk gathered the papers together and departed. As he went out there was a tap at the door. The Captain frowned. The tap was repeated.

"Don't knock," he called out. "If you've got anything to report, come in and report it."

The Chief Yeoman of Signals entered with an embarrassed air. He was new to the ship, and, as everyone knows, all captains have their little peculiarities. Here he was up against one right away. He'd never had much luck.

"I don't want anyone to knock when they come into my cabin on duty.

I'm not a young woman in her boudoir."

"Aye, aye, sir," said the Chief Yeoman. "Signal log, sir."

* * * * *

"Don't forget now," counselled the Master-at-Arms to the request-men fallen in on the starboard side of the quarter-deck. "When your names is called out, step smartly up to the table, an' keep your caps on. You salutes when you steps up to the table an' when you leaves it."

The request-men, who had heard all this a good many times before, sucked their teeth in acquiescence.

The Captain was walking up and down the other side of the deck talking

to the Commander. They turned together and came towards the table.

The Captain's Clerk opened the request-book and laid it before the

Captain.

"'Erbert Reynolds," intoned the Master-at-Arms in a stentorian voice.

"Able seaman. Requests award of first Good Conduct Badge."

The Captain put his finger on the first name at the top of the page, glanced keenly at the applicant, and nodded. "Granted."

"Granted," echoed the Chief of Police, and Able Seaman Reynolds departed with authority to wear on his left arm the triangular red badge that vouched to his exemplary behaviour for the last three years.

Five others followed in quick succession with similar requests, and trotted forward again at a dignified and amiable gait through the screen door.

"To stop allotment." The Captain raised his head.

"Who do you allot to?"

"Me mother, sir."

"Doesn't she want it?"

The request-man was a young stoker, little more than a boy, and his eyes were troubled.

"She don't deserve it," he replied; "she drinks, sir. I got letters from fr'en's--" He thrust his hand inside the breast of his jumper and produced his sad evidence-a letter from a clergyman, one or two from lay-workers in some north-country slum, and one from his mother herself, an incoherent, abusive scrawl, with liquor stains still upon the creased paper.

"I send 'er my 'arf-pay reg'lar ever since I were in the Navy, sir. But she ain't goin' ter 'ave no more." He made the statement without heat or sorrow.

"Stopped," said the Captain, with a nod.

"Allotment stopped," repeated the Master-at-Arms, and the allotter passed forward out of sight to whatever destiny awaited him.

"To be rated Leading Seaman, sir."

A tall, young Able Seaman stepped forward and fixed eyes of a clear blue on the Captain's face.

The Captain met his gaze, and for a moment threw all the weight of thirty years' experience of men into the scales of judgment. "There is a vacancy for a Leading Seaman's rate in the ship," he said. "The Commander has recommended you for it. You're young. Keep it."

"Rated Leading Seaman. 'Bout turn."

The newly created Leading Seaman, whose nose was a reminder of the vagaries of the main sheet block of a cutter when going about, flushed with pleasure and turned smartly on his heel. The vacant rate was due to a lapse from rectitude on the part of one Biggers, leading hand of the quarter-deck, who had returned from leave with a small flat flask tucked inside his cholera belt. The flask contained whisky, and had been thrust there by a friend ashore in an access of maudlin good-fellowship on parting. The night had been a convivial one, and Leading Seaman Biggers overlooked the gift until, coming on board, the keen-eyed officer of the watch drew his attention to it. He paid for the misplaced generosity of his well-wisher with his "Killick."[1]

He happened, moreover, to be employed in coiling down a rope-in the capacity he had reverted to-while his supplanter received the rating; but he eyed the ceremony stoically and without resentment. He had failed, and, of his less frail brethren, another was raised up in his stead. It was the immutable law.

"To be restored to the first class for leave."

A stout Able Seaman stepped forward, and, from force of a habit engendered by long familiarity with the etiquette of the defaulters' table, removed his cap.

"Put yer cap on," added the Master-at-Arms in a fierce undertone.

The suppliant deftly replaced his cap. As he did so a packet of cigarettes, a skein of darning worsted and a picture postcard (depicting a stout lady in a pink costume surf bathing) fell out on to the deck in the manner of an unexpected conjuring trick. An attendant ship's corporal retrieved them, while the conjurer affected an air of complete detachment.

The Captain glanced at the conduct book. "Clean sheet? Right-restored to the first class. And see if you can't stop in it this time."

The stout one made guttural noises in his throat intended to convey assurances of future piety, and departed with an expression that suggested a halo had not only descended upon his head, but had been crammed inextricably over his ears.

The last request-man-the man with "private affairs"-was a small leading stoker with a face seamed by innumerable tiny wrinkles. His skin resembled a piece of parchment that somebody had crumpled in a fit of petulance and made a half-hearted attempt to smooth out again; even his ears were crumpled. His brown eyes, big and sad, were like the eyes of a suffering monkey.

The Commander interposed with an explanation: "This man wishes to see you about a private matter, sir."

The Captain made a little gesture with his hand, and the small group of officers and ship's police near the table stepped back a few paces out of earshot. The Commander, perhaps the busiest man on board, snatched the moment's respite to confer with the Carpenter, who had been hovering round waiting for his opportunity. The Master-at-Arms was standing by the bollards alternately sucking a stump of pencil and making cryptic notations in his request-book. The two ship's corporals had removed themselves with great delicacy of feeling to the screen door, where in an undertone they settled an argument as to whose turn it was to make out the leave tickets. The Captain's Clerk became interested in the progress of work in an ammunition lighter alongside.

The Captain, with knitted brows, was reading a letter that had been handed to him across the table. He folded it up when read, and handed it back to the recipient; then, holding his chin in his fist and supporting the elbow with the other hand, he listened to the tale the small man with the crumpled ears had to unfold. It was an old tale-old when Helen first met the eyes of Paris. But there was no veil of romance to soften the outline of its crude tragedy. It was just sordid and pitiful.

For five minutes, perhaps, the two men faced each other. At the end of that time the Captain was leaning forward resting both hands on the table, talking in grave, kindly tones. He talked, not as Captains commonly talk to Leading Stokers, but as one man might talk to another who turned to him for advice in the bitter hour of need, drawing on the deep well of his experience, education, and kindly judgment.

"Troubles shared are troubles halved." The Captain had said so, and the tot of rum served out at one-bell to the little man with the crumpled ears went some way to complete the conviction.

* * * * *

Jeremiah Casey, Petty Officer and Captain's Coxswain, hauled himself nimbly up the Jacob's ladder to the quarter-boom and came inboard. The Captain was walking up and down, deep in thought, with his hands linked behind his back. Casey pattered up and saluted.

"I've bent on that noo mainsail, sir. . . . There's a nice li'l sailin' breeze, sir." Casey, hinting at a spin in the galley, somehow reminded one of a spaniel when he sees the gun-case opened. Had he been blessed with a tail, he would most certainly have wagged it.

The Captain walked slowly aft and looked down into the galley lying at the quarter-boom. Few men could have resisted the appeal of that long slim boat with the water lapping invitingly against her clinker-built sides. The brasswork in her gleamed in the sun like jewels set in ivory, for the woodwork was as near the whiteness of ivory as holystone and sharkskin could make it. She had little white mats with blue borders on the thwarts and in the sternsheets, and her yoke, of curious Chinese design, had a history as mysterious and legendary as the diamonds of Marie Antoinette.

"Get her alongside," said the Captain. "I want to try that mainsail."

Five minutes later the galley was spinning across the sparkling waters of the harbour.

Once the Captain spoke, and the bowman moved his weight six inches forward. Then she sailed to his light touch on the helm as a violin gives out sound under the bow of a master.

Casey, sitting motionless on the bottom boards with the mainsheet in his hands, gazed rapturously at the new mainsail, and thence into the stolid countenance of the second stroke.

"Ain't she a witch?" he whispered.

For half an hour the galley skimmed to and fro among the anchored fleet, now running free like a white-winged gull, anon close-hauled, the razor bows cleaving a path through the dancing water in a little sickle of creaming foam.

The Captain brought her alongside the gangway with faultless judgment and stood up. Like Saul, he had taken the cares of high command to a witch, and lo! his brow was clear and his eyes twinkled.

"Yes," he said in even tones as he stepped out of the boat, "that mainsail sets all right," and ran briskly up the ladder two steps at a time.

Casey thumbed the lacing on the yard. "Perfection is finality, and finality is death."

"I don't know but what I wouldn't shift the strop 'arf an inch aft-mebbe a quarter . . ."

Inboard the ship's bell struck eight times, and the boatswain's mate began shrilly piping the hands to dinner.

[1] Anchor. The distinctive badge of a leading rating.

IV

THE SEVEN-BELL BOAT

The last answering pendant from the Fleet shot up above the bridge rails, and the impatient semaphore on the Flagship's bridge commenced waving its arms.

The Yeoman of the Watch in the second ship of the line steadied his glass against an angle of the chart house. "'Ere y'are! Write down, one 'and." A Signal-boy stepped to his elbow with a pad and pencil in readiness.

"Flag-general: Leave may be granted to officers from 8.30 to 7 p.m.

Officers are not to leave the vicinity of the town, and are to be

prepared for immediate recall." He lowered the glass sharply.

"Finish. Down Answer!"

Obedient to the order, a Signal-man brought the long tail of bunting down hand over hand. He hitched the slack of the halliard to the bridge rail and puckered his eyes, staring across the waters of the harbour to where the roofs of houses showed among the trees. "'Ow I pities orficers!" he observed under his breath, and walked to the end of the bridge.

The advertisement of a cinema theatre occupied a hoarding near the landing place; away to the left the sloping roof of what was unmistakably a brewery bore in huge block letters the exhortation:

DRINK PALE ALE

"Not 'arf," murmured the cynic at the end of the battleship's bridge.

He mused darkly and added, "I don't think."

The Yeoman of the Watch took the pad from the boy's hand, scribbled a notation on it, and handed it back: "Commander an' Officer of the Watch, Wardroom, Gunroom, an' Warrant Officers' Mess. Smart!"

The boy flung himself down the ladder, sped aft along the fore-and-aft bridge, turned at the shelter-deck, descended another ladder, and brought up in the battery. Here the Commander came in view, conferring mysteriously with the Boatswain over a length of six-inch wire hawser that lay along the upper deck. The Boatswain, with gloom in his countenance, was indicating a section where the strands were flattened and the hemp "heart" protruded in a manner indicating that all was not well with the six-inch wire hawser. In fact, it rather resembled a snake that had been run over. The Commander was rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

The Signal-boy hovered on the outskirts of the conference. Bitter experience in the past had taught him not to obtrude when deep called thus to deep.

"We must cut it where it's nipped, and put a splice in it, Mr.

Cassidy," the Commander was saying, and turned his head.

The boy seized the opportunity to thrust the pad within range of the Commander's vision, one eye cocked on his face to note the effect of this momentous communication. He half expected that the Commander would throw his cap in the air and shout "Hurrah!"

The Commander read it unmoved. "Show it to the Officer of the Watch," he said, and turned again to the wire hawser. Truly a man of iron, reflected the Signal-boy as he saluted and ran aft in search of the Officer of the Watch.

The Officer of the Watch received the intelligence with almost equal unconcern, but when the boy had departed out of earshot he said something in an undertone and added: "Just my blooming luck." Then, raising his voice, he shouted: "Quartermaster! Picket-boat alongside at three-thirty for officers."

A head emerged from the hood of the after turret. The Gunnery Lieutenant, wearing over-alls, a streak of dirt running diagonally down one cheek, emerged and drew off a greasy glove to wipe his face.

"Did I hear you say anything about a seven-bell boat?"

The Officer of the Watch nodded. "There's leave from three-thirty to seven p.m. It's three o'clock now, so I advise you to smack it about and clean if you're going ashore."

The Gunnery Lieutenant slid gracefully down the sloping shield of the turret. Fortunately, the consideration of paint-work vanished with the red dawn of August 5th, 1914.

"My word!" he said, staring towards the distant town. "My missus--" and vanished down the hatchway.

In the meanwhile the Signal-boy had descended to the wardroom, where he swiftly pinned the signal on to the notice board. The occupants of the arm-chairs and settee followed his movements with drowsy interest.

The Young Doctor rose and walked to the notice board.

"Snooks!" he ejaculated. "Leave!" And, with a glance at the clock, hurried out of the mess.

The remainder of his messmates sat up with excitement.

"What time?"

"When till?"

"What about a boat?"

The head of the Officer of the Watch appeared through the open skylight overhead. "Wake up, you Weary Willies. There's a boat to the beach at seven-bells."

"Come along, chaps," snorted the Major of Marines. "Allons nous shifter-let us shift." And he, too, made tracks for his cabin, followed by everybody who could be spared by "the exigencies of the service" to experience for three blessed hours the joys of the land.

The shrill voices of the Midshipmen at their toilet in the after flat proclaimed that the precious moments were flying. Three were simultaneously performing their ablutions in one basin, the supply of water to the bathroom having failed with a suddenness that could only be attributed to the malignant agency of the Captain of the Hold.

Another burrowed feverishly in the depths of his sea-chest, presenting to the flat much the same appearance as a terrier does when busy at a rabbit-hole. He emerged flushed but triumphant with a limp garment in his grasp. "I knew I had a clean shirt," he confided to his neighbour. "I told my servant so a fortnight ago. He swore that every one I possessed had been left behind in the wash at Malta."

His neighbour made no reply, being in the throes of buttoning a collar which fitted him admirably at Osborne College, but which somehow had lately exhibited an obstinate determination to meet no more round his neck. However, physical strength achieved the miracle, and he breathed deeply. "I shouldn't sweat to shift your shirt," he consoled. "It looks all right. Turn the cuffs up."

"I've turned them up three times already," replied the excavator, donning his find. "There are limits."

Another Midshipman came across the crowded flat and calmly rummaged in the open till of the speaker's sea-chest. "Where's your hair juice? All right, I've got it." He anointed himself generously with a mysterious green fluid out of a bottle. "My people are staying at a pub ashore here. Will you come and have tea, Jaggers? Kedgeree's coming, too."

The owner of the green unguent, who was feverishly dusting his boots with a pyjama jacket, signified his pleasure in accepting the invitation.

The sentry on the aft-deck stepped to the head of the ladder with a bellows, on the mouth of which a small fog-horn was fitted, and gave a loud blast. It was the customary warning that the officers' boat would be alongside in five minutes.

The Assistant Clerk ran distractedly for the ladder.

"There's one 'G'! Have I got time to borrow five bob from the messman before the boat shoves off?"

"You might borrow five bob for me while you're about it," shouted a belated Engineroom Watchkeeper, struggling into his clothes.

"And me, too," called another. "Buck up, for the Lord's sake, and we'll have poached eggs for tea."

"And cherry jam," supplemented another visionary voluptuously, "and radishes."

Here a figure, who had been sitting on the lid of his chest swinging his legs, tilted his cap on to the back of his head with a snort that suggested outlawry and defiance to the world at large.

"Hallo!" exclaimed a neighbour, wielding a clothes-brush with energy.

"What's up? Aren't you coming ashore? It isn't your First Dog, is it?"

The outlaw shook his head. "No; my leave's jambed. You know that beastly six-inch wire hawser? We were bringing it to the after capstan yesterday, and the Commander--"

The aft-deck sentry gave two blasts on his fog-horn. Chest lids banged, keys rattled.

"Jolly rough luck!" commiserated his friend, and joined the stampede for the quarterdeck.

In thirty seconds the flat was deserted save for the disconsolate figure swinging his legs. Presently he climbed down from his chest and wended his way by devious and stealthy routes to the after conning-tower, where he smoked a surreptitious cigarette in defiance of the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions (his age being sixteen) and felt better.

In the meanwhile the picket-boat was driving her way shoreward with the emancipated members of Wardroom and Gunroom clustered on top of the cabin and in the stern sheets.

"Bunje," said the First Lieutenant, "come to the club and have tea and play 'pills' afterwards?"

The Indiarubber Man shook his head. "No, thanks; I'm afraid I-I've got something else to do."

The Paymaster contemplated him thoughtfully. "Bunje, my lad, the darkest suspicions fill my breast. Wherefore these carefully creased trousers, this liberal display of fine linen and flashing cuff-links withal? Our Sunday monkey-jacket, too. Can it be--? No." He appealed to the occupants of the stern sheets: "Don't tell me the lad is going poodle-faking!"[1]

"His hands are warm and moist," confirmed one of the Watchkeepers. "He wipes them furtively on the slack of his trousers in frightened anticipation."

The Indiarubber Man reddened. "You silly asses!"

The Junior Watchkeeper squirmed with delight. "He is-he is! He's going poodle-faking. And in war time, too! You dog, Bunje!"

"Can't a fellow know people ashore without a lot of untutored clowns trying to be funny about it?" demanded the victim.

"It's the spring," said the Young Doctor. "Bunje's young fancy is lightly turning-yes, it is." The Surgeon sniffed the air judicially. "The bay rum upon your hair proclaims it. Ah, me! The heyday of youth!" He sighed. "'Time was when love and I were well acquainted.'"

"That's a fact," retorted the Indiarubber Man bitterly. "But you needn't brag about it. I haven't been shipmates with you for four years for nothing. There's nothing you can tell me about your hideous past that I don't know already."

The picket-boat slid alongside the landing place and went astern.

The Engineer Commander made his way towards the little cabin. As the senior officer of the party, his was the privilege of embarking last and disembarking first. "Don't wait for me," he said. "Unstow! I've got to get my golf-clubs."

The Indiarubber Man took him at his word. "Right. I'll carry on, if I may." He leaped ashore, and set off with long strides in the direction of the town.

The First Lieutenant gazed after him. There was a general feeling that the Indiarubber Man had suddenly assumed an unfamiliar and inexplicable role. "Now, what the devil is he up to, I wonder?"

The others, mystified, shook their heads.