Part 33 (1/2)
”The Admiralty. I take the responsibility.”
”As I'll report, sir!” said the sentry, not so convinced but he burred something further into the chauffeur's ear.
This seems to have little to do with the navy, but it has much, indeed, as a part of unfathomable, complicated business of guards within guards, intelligence battling with intelligence, deceiving raiders by land or sea, of those responsible for the safety of England and the mastery of the seas.
It is from the navy yard that the s.h.i.+ps go forth to battle and to the navy yard they must return for supplies and for the grooming beat of hammers in the dry dock. Those who work at a navy yard keep the navy's house; welcome home all the family, from Dreadnoughts to trawlers, give them cheer and shelter and bind up their wounds.
The quarter-deck of action for Admiral Lowry, commanding the great base on the Forth, which was begun before the war and hastened to completion since, was a substantial brick building. Adjoining his office, where he worked with engineers' blue prints as well as with sea charts, he had fitted up a small bedroom where he slept, to be at hand if an emergency arose.
Partly we walked, as he showed us over his domain of steam- shovels, machine shops, cement factories, of building and repairs, of coaling and docking, and partly we rode on a car that ran over temporary rails laid for trucks loaded with rocks and dirt. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, a river bottom had been filled in back of the quays with material that had been excavated to form a vast basin with cement walls, where squadrons of Dreadnoughts might rest and await their turn to be warped into the great dry docks which open off it in chasmlike galleries.
”The largest contract in all England,” said the contractor. ”And here is the man who checks up my work,” he added, nodding to the lean, Scottish naval engineer who was with us. It was clear from his looks that only material of the best quality and work that was true would be acceptable to this canny mentor of efficiency, ”And the workers?
Have you had any strikes here?”
”No. We have employed double the usual number of men from the start of the war,” he said. ”I'm afraid that the Welsh coal troubles have been accepted as characteristic. Our men have been reasonable and patriotic. They have shown the right spirit. If they hadn't, how could we have accomplished that?”
We were looking down into the depths of a dry dock blasted out of the rock, which had been begun and completed within the year. And we had heard nothing of all this through those twelve months! No writer, no photographer, chronicled this silent labour! Double lines of guards surrounded the place day and night. Only tried patriots might enter this world of a busy army in smudged workmen's clothes, bending to their tasks with that ordered discipline of industrialism which wears no uniforms, marches without beat of drums, and toils that the s.h.i.+ps shall want nothing to ensure victory.
XXVII On A Destroyer
Now we were on our way to the great thing--to our look behind the curtain at the hidden hosts of sea-power. Of some eight hundred tons burden our steed, doing eighteen knots, which was a dog-trot for one of her speed.
”A destroyer is like a motor-car,” said the commander. ”If you rush her all the time she wears out. We give her the limit only when necessary.”
On the bridge the zest of travel on a dolphin of steel held the bridle on eagerness to reach the journey's end. We all like to see things well done, and here one had his first taste of how well things are done in the British navy, which did not have to make ready for war after the war began. With an open eye one went, and the experience of other navies as a balance for his observation; but one lost one's heart to the British navy and might as well confess it now. A six months' cruise with our own battles.h.i.+p fleet was a proper introduction to the experience.
After the arduous monotony of the trenches and after the traffic of London, it was freedom and sport and ecstasy to be there, with the rush of salt air on the face! Our commander was under thirty years of age; and that destroyer responded to his will like a stringed instrument. He seemed a part of her, her nerves welded to his.
”Specialized in torpedo work,” he said, in answer to a question. ”That is the way of the British navy: to learn one thing well before you go on with another. If in the course of it you learn how to command, larger responsibilities await you. If not--there's retired pay.”
Behind a s.h.i.+eld which sheltered them from the spray on the forward deck, significantly free of everything but that four-inch gun, its crew was stationed. The commander had only to lean over and speak through a tube and give a range, and the music began. For the tube was bifurcated at the end to an ear-mask over a youngster's head; a youngster who had real sailor's smiling blue eyes, like the commander's own. For hours he would sit waiting in the hope that game would be sighted. No fisherman could be more patient or more cheerful.
”Before he came into the navy he was a chauffeur. He likes this,” said the commander.
”In case of a submarine you do not want to lose any time; is that it?”
”Yes,” he replied. ”You never can tell when we might have a chance to put a shot into Fritz's periscope or ram him--Fritz is our name for submarines.”
Were all the commanders of destroyers up to his mark? How many more had the British navy caught young and trained to such quickness of decision and in the art of imparting it to his men?
Three hundred revolutions! The destroyer changed speed. Five hundred! She changed speed again. Out of the mist in the distance flashed a white ribbon knot that seemed to be tied to a destroyer's bow and behind it another destroyer, and still others, lean, catlike, but running as if legless, with greased bodies sliding over the sea. We snapped out a message to them and they answered like pa.s.sing birds on the wing, before they swept out of sight behind a headland with uncanny ease of speed. Literal swarms of destroyers England had running to and fro in the North Sea, keen for the chase and too quick at dodging and too fast to be in any danger of the under-water dagger thrust of the a.s.sa.s.sins whom they sought. There cannot be too many. They are the eyes of the navy; they gather information and carry a sting in their torpedo tubes.
It was chilly there on the bridge, with the prospect too entrancing not to remain even if one froze. But here stepped in naval preparedness with thick, short coats of llama wool.
”Served out to all the men last winter, when we were in the thick of it patrolling,” the commander explained. ”You'll not get cold in that!”
”And yourself?” was suggested to the commander.