Part 10 (1/2)
He drew nearer. It was no ghost. It was himself, even to the rose in his coat. He hailed Phyllis. She was talking to another skipper. The other skipper turned to see who was b.u.t.ting in, and seeing who it was, said: ”To Egypt and back in seven hours--the quickest voyage ever I 'eard of!”
Which comment so depressed the voyager that he refused to say anything about what had happened, except that five miles outside of the harbor he had been torpedoed, and they had to take to the boats in a hurry.
The foregoing is by way of introducing the captain who commented on the quick voyage. A few mornings later I was up at the Admiralty House when he came into the waiting-room, let himself carefully down into a mahogany chair, dropped his new soft gray hat into his lap, and looked around.
”A solemn place, ain't it? Would they 'ang a chap, d'y' think, if he was to 'ave a bit of a smoke for 'imself while waitin'?”
I said that I thought the fas.h.i.+on nowadays was to take a man out and stand him up against the wall and shoot him.
He was tall, heavily built, fresh-colored, with a way of seeming to reflect deeply before he replied to anything. By and by he said: ”Oh, aye!” and lit his cigarette, but had not taken the second puff when the doorkeeper's feet sounded outside, at which sound he pinched the cigarette hurriedly by the neck, and looked around for somewhere to dump it. There was no ash-tray, and the table being bare mahogany, the floor all polished wood, the fireplace with no fire in it, so bra.s.sy and s.h.i.+ny that to put anything there would be treason--he dropped the cigarette into his hat.
The doorkeeper smelled something, but he wasn't one who looked on lowly things when he walked, and so did not see the little spiral of smoke curling up from the hat.
My seafarer was in a great stew. To sit there and watch him was to warm up to him. There he was, a man who regularly faced death by more ways than one at sea, but now in deep fear that this sh.o.r.e-going flunky would catch him smoking a surrept.i.tious cigarette. He stared determinedly at every place except at his hat until the doorkeeper had pa.s.sed on.
When he looked at his hat the cigarette had burned a hole in it. He viewed the hat sadly. ”No gainsayin' it, war is 'ell, ain't it? I paid fourteen bob for that 'at three days back in Cardiff.”
I went out to help him buy a new hat. Hat stores were scarce, but life does not end with hat stores; there were fleets of little places where a man could sit down and talk about more important things than hats.
In the hotel smoke-room after lunch there was no sugar for our coffee.
His sea-training began to show at once. ”The thing you 'ave to learn to do at sea is to go on your own. n.o.body doing much for a chap that 'e don't do for hisself, is there?” From his coat pocket he drew an envelope which once held a letter from home--in place of the letter now was sugar. ”Preparedness--'ere it is”--and sweetened our coffee from the envelope.
He spoke of his life at sea. ”I can't say that I like it--I can't say I don't like it--but it was my life before the war and it 'as to be since.
You've seen my s.h.i.+p, 'aven't you, lying to moorings? Nothing great to look at, is she? but the managing director of our company--he has the 'andling of maybe a 'undred more like her--'Let 'em 'ave their grand pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps,' 'e says, 'but give me my cargo boats that pays for theirselves every two voyages.' The right idea 'e 'ad, I'll say for 'im.
And for my part of it there is no everlastin' polis.h.i.+n' o' brahss and painting o' white work and no buying o' gold-laced uniforms at your own cost. And there's the bonus for me. Oh, aye! A bit of bonus ain't a bit of 'arm, you know, especially when you've a wife that's no eyesore to look at, and little kiddies growin' up.
”Torpedoed? Oh, aye. It's not to be expected of a man to escape that these days. My chum Bob, remember 'im--that was seven hours to Alexandria and back--with a rose in his coat? His fourth time torpedoed, that was.
I've been blowed up only three times myself. Nothing much of anything special, the last time and the time before that--a matter of getting into boats and by and by being picked up--no more than that--no. But the first time--maybe it was a novelty-like then. 'Owever, I'd carried a load of coal to Naples and getting twenty-two pounds a ton for coal that cost two pound ten in Cardiff maybe makes it a bit clearer what the managing director 'ad in mind when 'e said: 'let 'em have their grand pa.s.senger s.h.i.+ps, but give me my little cargo boats.'
”From Naples I go on to Piraeus in Greece, and we take a load on there--admiralty stuff, and not to be spoken of--and we put out for 'ome. She was a good old single-crew, this one o' mine. Twenty-five year old--not the worst, though I'd seen better. Well warmed up she could squeeze out eight knots, or maybe eight and a 'alf. I 'ung close to the land along that Greek sh.o.r.e, for if anything should 'appen ther's no sense 'aving too long a row to the beach in boats.
”Very good. We're rollin' along one morning when the radio man came in with a message which read: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.'
”And without ado we puts into a little place down at the 'eel of Italy, and that night I 'ad a 'ot barth an' a lovely long sleep in my brahss bed which the missus 'ad given me for Christmas the last time 'ome. And a great pleasure it was, I say.
”Next mornin' we put to sea again, and next day after comes another radio, and it says: 'PUT INTO NEAREST PORT. U-BOATS.' And we put into Malta, and that night again I 'ad another 'ot barth and a fine sleep in my brahss bed.
”We resume our voyage from Malta, and a two days later I gets another radio--more U-boats--and I puts into Algiers. Three times in one week that made with me 'aving me 'ot barth and a fine sleep in me brahss bed--grand good luck, I say now, and said it then to the mate, adding to it: 'There's a signal station west of Gibraltar--wouldn't it be delightful pa.s.sing that signal station to get the word to put back to Gib and stop there for another night and I 'ave another 'ot barth and a lovely sleep in my four-poster bed.' But the mate 'e only says 'e didn't have no brahss bed aboard s.h.i.+p to sleep in, and he saved his 'ot barths, he did,'til he got 'ome to enjoy 'em proper.
”Summer-time it was, and I likes to take my little siesta after lunch--just like the Dons theirselves, y' know--and I'm 'aving me siesta next day after lunch when something woke me up. There's a shelf of books on the wall o' my room--chart-books and the like--and when all at once I see them pilin' down on top of me I say to myself: 'Somethin's 'appened.'
And so it 'ad. The mate 'e sticks 'is 'ead in the door and says: 'We're torpedoed, sir.'
”'There goes my bonus,' I says, and goes on deck.
”We carried a 3-inch gun in a little 'ouse aft, and there was the mate firing at the U-boat, which was out of water and maybe two miles away.
It was one of those out-of-date guns the navy would have no more to do with, and so they pa.s.ses it on to us. New good guns would probably be wasted on us, and maybe that's true. None of us aboard ever fired a shot from the gory weapon till this day. The mate fired two shots at the U-boat, but 'e don't 'it anything. The U-boat fires two shots at us and she 'its something. One of 'em pahsses through the chart house, and the other tears a nice little 'ole in 'er for'ard.
”That'll do for that gun practice,' I says.