Part 35 (1/2)

Then, very slowly, the great steamer began to move. She went at a snail's pace, as it seemed to me, across the lough to the County Down coast. Very slowly she swept round in a wide circle and steamed back again northward. There was something terrifying in the stately deliberation with which she moved. It was as if some great beast of prey paced as a sentinel in front of his victim, so conscious of his power to seize and kill that he could afford to wait before he sprang.

The crowd behind us was silent now. The laughter and the play had ceased. Children were crowding round the women seeking for hands to hold. Some of the women, vaguely terror-stricken, looked into the faces of the men. Others had drawn a little apart from the rest of the crowd and stood in a group by themselves, staring out at the battles.h.i.+p. There were middle-aged women and quite young women in this group. I raised my field-gla.s.ses and scanned their faces. There was one expression on them, and only one--not fear, but hatred. Women fight sometimes in citizen armies when such things have been called into existence. But it is not their fighting power which makes them important. That is, probably, always quite inconsiderable. What makes them a force to be reckoned with in war is their faculty for hating.

They hate with more concentration and intensity than men do. These women were mindful, perhaps, of the girl with the baby whom c.l.i.thering had seen shot. They realized, perhaps, the menace for husbands, lovers, and sons which lay in the guns of the black ironclad parading sluggishly before their eyes. Remembering and antic.i.p.ating death, they hated the source of it with uncompromising bitterness. The men in the crowd seemed crushed into silence by mere wonder and expectation of some unknown thing. They were not, so far as I could judge, afraid.

They were not excited. They simply waited to see what was to happen to them and their town.

Once more a string of flags fluttered from the s.h.i.+p's mast. Once more the answer came from her consorts. Then for the third time she swept round. We saw her foreshortened; then end on; then foreshortened again as her other side swung into view. At that moment--just before the whole length of her lay flat before our eyes she fired. At first I scarcely realized that she had fired. There was a small cloud of white smoke hanging over her near the bow. That was all for the moment. Then came the horrible sound of the great projectile racing through the air. Then it was past.

Some women in the crowd, a few, shrieked aloud. Some girls ran wildly towards the town, driven, I suppose, to seek shelter of some kind.

Most of the crowd stood silent. Then from some young men who stood together there came a kind of moaning sound. It gathered volume. It, as it were, took shape. Voice after voice took it up. The whole crowd--many hundreds of men and women--sang together the hymn they had all been singing for months past, ”O G.o.d, our help in ages past.” I do not know how far back towards the town the singing spread, but it would not surprise me to hear that ten thousand voices joined in it.

Bland had his gla.s.ses raised. He was still gazing at the battles.h.i.+p.

”A strange answer,” I said, ”to make to the first sh.e.l.l of a bombardment.”

”Yes,” said Bland. ”It reminds me of a profane rhyme which I used to hear:

”'There was a young lady of Zion Who sang Sunday-school songs to a lion.'

”But hers, I should say, was the more sensible proceeding of the two.”

I was not sure. It is just conceivable--it seemed to me at that moment even likely--that a hymn, sung as that one was, may be the most effective answer to a big gun. There are only certain things which guns can do. When they have destroyed life and ruined buildings their power is spent. But the singing of hymns may, and sometimes does, render men for a time at least, indifferent to the loss of their lives and the ruin of their houses. Against men in the frame of mind which hymn-singing induces the biggest guns are powerless. The original singers fall, perhaps, but the spirit of their singing survives. For each voice silenced by the bursting sh.e.l.ls ten voices take up the song.

The battles.h.i.+p, after firing the gun, swung round and once more slowly steamed across the lough. I waited, tense with excitement, for her to turn again. At the next turn, I felt sure, another sh.e.l.l would come. I was wrong. She turned, more slowly than ever as it seemed. No white smoke issued from her. Again she steamed northwards. Again, opposite Carrickfergus, close to the northern sh.o.r.e, she turned. Right in front of her bows the water was suddenly broken. It was as if some one had dropped a huge stone close to her. The spray of the splash must have fallen on her fore deck.

”My G.o.d!” said Bland, ”they're firing at her. Look! From the hill above the town.”

I could not look. My eyes were on the s.h.i.+p as she slowly turned. Her side came gradually into view. Then, quite suddenly and for no apparent reason, she staggered. I saw her list over heavily, right herself again, and steam on.

”Hit!” said Bland. ”Hit! Hit!”

He danced beside me with excitement.

Two puffs of smoke hung over the s.h.i.+p's decks, one forward, one aft, and blew clear again. But this time we heard no shrieking sh.e.l.ls. She was firing, not at the town, but at the guns on the hill which threatened and wounded her. Then her signal flags ran up again. Before the answer came from the other s.h.i.+ps the sea was broken twice close to her. I looked to see her stagger from another blow, heel over, perhaps sink. Her speed increased. In a minute she was rus.h.i.+ng towards us, flinging white waves from her great bows. Then she swept round once more. Fire as well as smoke poured from her funnels. She steamed eastwards down the lough. We saw her join the other s.h.i.+ps far out. She and they lay motionless together.

The crowd behind us began to sing their hymn again.

Bland and I left our lighthouse and went back towards the town. We pa.s.sed Bob and his men in their trench but they scarcely noticed us.

We pushed our way through the crowd. We pa.s.sed the s.h.i.+pbuilding yard, now full of eager people, discussing the departure of the s.h.i.+p, canva.s.sing the possibility of her coming back again.

”What guns have they on the Cave Hill?” said Bland.

”I don't know,” I said. ”I did not know that they had any guns.”

”I wonder where they got them,” said Bland. ”I wonder who has command of them.”

I could answer, or thought I could answer, both questions. As we struggled through the crowds which thronged the quay I told Bland of the visits of the _Finola_ to our bay and of the piles of huge packing-cases which G.o.dfrey had shown me in the sheds behind the store.