John Graham Bower

“ Amidst the flash of German guns against the wall of white.
The sons of English carronade or Spanish culverin—
The Danish windows shivered and broke
When over the sea the children spoke,
And groaning turrets rocked again as we went out and in.
We have no passions to call our own, we work for serf or lord,
Load us well and sponge us clean—
Be your woman a slave or queen—
And we will clear the road for you who hold us by the sword. ”

“ Close astern of her came Prism and Axite, and as they showed, the watchers involuntarily caught their breaths.
The Prism looked queer and foreign somehow, with no foremast, a bare skeleton of a bridge, and a shapeless heap where the forward funnel had stood. The Axite looked just what she was—a mere battered hull, with very little standing above the level of her deck, her stern nearly awash, and her bow bent and torn as if some giant hand had gripped and twisted it. ”

“ Howitzer gun or Seventy-five, the game is ours to play,
And hills may quiver and mountains shake,
But the line in front shall bend or break.
What is it to us if the world is mad? For we are the Kings to-day.
SKY SIGNS
23
SKY SIGNS.
WHEN all the guns are sponged and cleaned, and fuzes go to store,
When all the wireless stations cry—"Come home, you ships of war"—
"Come home again and leave patrol, no matter where you be."
We'll see the lights of England shine,
Flashing again on the steaming line,
As out of the dark the long grey hulls come rolling in from sea. ”

“ The Boy Telegraphist hauled himself, panting, on to the bridge, and thrust a crumpled signal before the Captain's eyes. The Captain grunted and spoke shortly, and the boy dashed off below. A moment later the piping of calls sounded along the bare iron deck, and men in heavy sea-boots began to cluster aft and at the guns. The funnels sent out a protesting spout of brown smoke as the T.B. began to work up to her speed, and the choppy sea sent up a steady sheet of spray along her forecastle and over the crouching figures at the bow gun. ”

“ The sparrow started to climb—to climb as he had never done in his life. Twice more—his weariness forgotten—he was urged to further efforts to gain height, by the shock of the great detonations from the water below. The Zeppelin was down to a thousand feet now, swinging round on a wider circle. Five hundred feet below, the sparrow saw a faint streak on the water which faded at one end into blue sea, and at the other narrowed to a little feather of spray round a dark point that was travelling like the fin of some slowly moving fish to the north-westward. ”

“ Do you feel your troubles around you rise in an endless dreary wall?
Well—thank your God you were born in time for the Greatest War of all.
It will be all right in a thousand years—you won't be bankrupt then.
This isn't the time of stocks and shares, it's just the age of men.
The one that sticks it out will win—so don't lie down and bawl,
But thank your God you've helped to win the noblest War of all. 12
Away to the East in Flanders' mud, through Dante's dream of Hell,
The troops are working hard for peace with bayonet, bomb, and shell,
With poison gas and roaring guns beneath a smoking pall ”

“ The snow ahead cleared for a minute to leave a long narrow lane between the showers, and he saw the loom of the last ship of the enemy's line. The German destroyer seemed to fall back to him, as if she was stopped, though in reality she was holding station on her next ahead at a fair sixteen knots. With a startling crash and a blaze of blinding light the guns opened from along the leader's side—the German guns waiting, surprised, for a full minute before they replied. When they did open fire, the duel had become too one-sided to be called a fight at all. ”

“ When the long grey ranks seem to thicken all the while,
And they stamp on the last of the wire,
When all along the line comes a whisper on the wind
That you hear through the drumming of the guns:
"They are through over there and the right is in the air,
And there isn't any end to the Huns,"— 218
Then keep along a-shooting till you can't shoot more,
And hit 'em with a shovel on the head.
Don't forget a lot of folk have beaten them before,
And a Hun'll never hurt you if he's dead. ”

“ The boat broke surface with her stem and half her conning-tower showing, then levelled a little and tore along with the waves foaming round her conning-tower and bridge. From inside they could clearly hear the shells that greeted her, and in a moment there was a rush of men up the ladder. Among the first few the Captain saw his First Lieutenant's legs vanish upwards, and at the sight a sneering smile showed on his sunburnt face. The first man to open the lid died as he did so, for a four-inch shell removed the top of the conning-tower before he was clear of it. ”

“ As we turned the Elbow Ledges—felt the engines ease to "Slow."
Rusty side and dingy paintwork, stripped for war and cleared for battle—
Saw the harbour-tugs around us—smelt the English fields again,—
English fields and English hedges—sheep and horses, English cattle,
Like a screen unrolled before us, through the mist of English rain. 150
Slowly through the basin entrance—twenty thousand tons a-crawling
With a thousand men aboard her, all a-weary of the War—
Warped her round and laid alongside with the cobble-stones a-calling—
"There's a special train awaiting, just for you to come ashore." ”

“ The destroyer settled a little by the stern, her course altered slightly, and she began really to travel. For some hours she had been jogging along at seventeen knots, but her speed now began to rise in jumps of five knots at a time, till in a few minutes she had become a mad and quivering fabric of impatient steel. As she gained her speed the snow began to pour down again, blotting out the faint shadow that had meant the bow of her next astern. The Captain glanced aft once, and then continued his intent gazing forward. ”

“ A BATTLE-PRAYER. SUBMARINES.
WHEN the breaking wavelets pass all sparkling to the sky,
When beyond their crests we see the slender masts go by,
When the glimpses alternate in bubbles white and green,
And funnels grey against the sky show clear and fair between,
When the word is passed along—"Stern and beam and bow"—
"Action stations fore and aft—all torpedoes now!" ”

“ The captain jumped amidships and barked an order. The wheel spun hard down and the telegraphs whirred round, bringing the destroyer diving and leaping back head to sea. Looking aft, the captain had a glimpse of three pinnacle rocks showing a moment in the trough between two seas, and then the fog shut down over them again, leaving only the regular deep roar of the fog-signal, that grew gradually fainter astern. Two points at a time he eased the ship round till she was hove-to on the opposite tack, then he called to another oilskinned figure that stood swaying to the roll by the helmsman. ”

“ It's mine the word that lets her loose and in my ear she sings— 168
"Mark now the way I sport and play with the rising hunted sea,
Across my grain in cold disdain their ranks are hurled at me;
But down my wake is a foam-white lake, the remnant of their line,
That broke and died beneath my pride—your foemen, man, and mine."
The perfect tapered hull below is a dream of line and curve,
An artist's vision in steel and bronze for gods and men to serve.
If ever a statue came to life, you quivering slender thing,
It ought to be you—my racing girl—as the Amazon song you sing. ”

“ The sight from the foretop was a thing that one would remember all one's life, and be thankful not to have missed. The almost incalculable value of the great mass of ships—the whirl of figures conjured up by a rough estimate of the collective horse-power and the numbers of men present; the attempt and failure to even count the actual ships in sight; the vision of a scared and wondering neutral tramp lying between the lines with engines stopped as the great masses of grey-painted steel went past her along the broad highroads of churned water,—this was the Fleet at sea ”

“ When a cloud of steam and lyddite smoke lay o'er the "Bluecher's" grave,
Who, as the bowmen fished him out and passed him aft to dry,
Read the name upon their ribbons with a twinkle in his eye,
And said: "A Westo ship, I think—I guess my luck is in,
I'm sick of German substitutes—now for some Plymouth gin."
And a picture of the sailor in a certain submarine,
Which was diving through the waters where the sweepers hadn't been,
And who heard a muffled bumping noise that passed along the side—
A noise that many men have heard an instant ere they died ”

“ As the boat tore ahead, holding herself up on her angle and her speed, a few men struggled out of her one by one past the torn body of the first man to get out. Two of them leaped instantly overboard, but the next clawed his way up to a rail, and while others scrambled and fought their way overside, and shells crashed and burst below and around him on water and conning-tower casing, he stood upright a moment with arms raised high above his head. ”

“ You went to Death—and the whisper ran
As over the Gates the horns began,
Splendour of God! We have found a man—
Good-bye! Good luck to you!
5
OLD WOMEN
7
OLD WOMEN.
FAINT against the twilight, dim against the evening,
Fading into darkness against the lapping sea,
She sailed away from harbour, from safety into danger,
The ship that took him from me—my sailor boy from me.
He went away to join her, from me that loved and bore him,
Loved him ere I bore him, that was all the world to me.
"No time for leave, mother, must be back this evening,
Time for our patrol again, across the winter sea." ”

“ They cut through the outer surf off the point, the boat leaking from the sprung keel to the opened seams where the frapping hawser-turns bit into her thin sides—the crew baling furiously [Pg 316] to keep their minds from the expectation of a great crash that would tell of a mast tearing its heel up and out through the weather side. It lasted for barely half an hour, but the arm-weary Midshipman felt as if it had been a four-hour watch. As the light drew aft, he eased his sheets and swung up the channel, still at racing speed, but safely bound for harbour. ”

“ Or the High Sea Fleet from the Bight comes forth,
And the twelve-inch shells go by. 71
"We have waited very long, but we haven't any doubt
They are longing for the day we'll meet.
But tell 'em as you pass that the sooner they are out,
All the better for the English Fleet.
"For when we see 'em sinking— (they'll be fighting to the last,
And for those that are lost we'll grieve,)
We will cheer for a signal at the Flagship's mast—
On arrival at the Base—Long Leave!" ”

“ A stranger, if suddenly transplanted to the spot, would have taken some time after opening his eyes to realise that the boat was submerged. He would probably decide at first that she was anchored in harbour. Far away forward, under an avenue of overhead electric lamps, figures could be seen—all either recumbent or seated—and from them the eye was led on till it lost its sense of distance in a narrowing perspective of wheels, pipes, and gauges. ”

“ He was across the keel of a broad grey boat which pitched and heaved at terrifying angles as the seas passed. He crawled cautiously round, pivoting on his stomach till his legs straddled the keel and he had a grip on it with his hands under his chin. Facing him in a similar attitude was a seaman he knew, a tall brawny torpedoman whom he had noticed rigging the lights in the Wardroom flat on occasions when Evening Service had been held there. What was his name—Davies? Denny? No, Dunn! of course—the ship's boxer, and the funny man at the concerts. ”

“ One doesn't talk in drawing-rooms of Prussian dirt and such,
We only want to kill you off—so roll along and fight.
For men like you with filthy minds, you leave a nasty taste,
We can't forget your triumphs with the girls you met in France.
By your standards of morality, gorillas would be chaste,
And you consummate your triumphs with the bayonet and the lance. ”

“ For a few minutes the men simply paddled their feet in silence as they clung with unnecessary strength to the life-lines, stem, and stern-posts of the capsized boat; then the Chief Mate called to two of them by name. He gave the white-bearded, semi-conscious figure he supported into their charge and commenced diving, or rather ducking down, under the gunwale. He was blue with cold and weariness before he gained his object—a heavy eighteen-foot ash oar. ”

“ A destroyer division suddenly heeled and altered course like redshank, each ship turning as the leader swung, and with a fountain of spray at their sharp high stems they cut through the intervals of a Battleship division, swinging up again together to the south-east course as they cleared. The watcher in the top had seen the trick before, but familiarity could not prevent his eyes from widening a little as he saw the stem of his next astern throw up a little cloud of spray as it met the foaming V-wake that followed a few yards from the leader's counter. ”