Bartimeus

“ Engine-trouble or loss of stability over enemy territory means almost infallible capture or death for the pilot of a bombing aeroplane. Yet in cases of disablement, rather than come down on the ground and suffer themselves or their machine to be taken prisoner, it is their gallant tradition to try to struggle out to sea. Here they stand about as much chance of life as a pheasant winged above a lake, but the machine sinks before German hands can touch it. ”

“ A rope ladder dropped from the upper deck of the ship, and a figure in oil-skins, which had been standing in the stern-sheets of the steam-boat, caught it as it swayed.
“Lay off,” he said curtly to the coxswain, and climbed inboard.
A seaman stood at the gangway holding a lantern above his head, and as the new-comer stepped inboard another figure came forward into the light to greet him. He was a loose-limbed, youngish man, wearing the cap and monkey jacket of a commander. Leather sea-boots reached to his knees, and he dragged his feet as he walked, as if oppressed with a great weariness. ”

“ Of the retirement itself mere imagination tells enough to stir the blood and quicken a man’s heart. The enemy had concentrated the fire of every gun that would bear upon the mole and brows leading to the Vindictive: back through this savage barrage came the remnants of those gallant companies, reeling along with their wounded on their backs, to be struck down and to rise again and stagger on with their burdens, turning every now and then to shake bloody fists at the flaming docks and town beneath its pall of smoke.... ”

“ When the supply of motor-boats ran out, the wealthier yachtsmen built their own, fitted them out at their own expense, and manned them. They manned them indiscriminately: one was a captain, another was a deck-hand, and yet another club-mate the engineer. It mattered not a whit how or where a man served as long as the spray was in their faces and the dawn came up out of their beloved sea. They messed together in cheerful communism, save when they found themselves under the immediate observation of the brass-bound Navy. ”

“ Where the long yellow seas break in clouds of surf across sandbanks and no man dares to follow, they lie and draw their breath. Their inquisitive periscopes rise and dip in the churning wake of the German minesweepers themselves. They rise out of the ambush of depths where the groundswell of a forgotten gale stirs the sand into a fog; and an unsuspecting Zeppelin, flying low, lumbers, buzzing angrily, out of range of their high-angle gun. ”

“ And south they came in battle array, battleships, light cruisers, and destroyers, ringed by the misty horizon of the North Sea, with the calling gulls following the white furrows of their keels like crows after the plough.
A division of light cruisers, driving through the crested seas at the speed of a galloping horse, linked the battle fleet with the battle cruisers. Seen from either force they were but wraiths of smoke on the horizon: but ever and anon a daylight searchlight winked out of the mist, spanning the leagues with soundless talk. ”

“ Of all the thunderous panorama in which a Fleet Action presents itself to the imagination, very little is recorded in the mind of a participant at the time. Later on a man may fit the details together into an orderly comprehensive tableau for the benefit of relations and others, supplying from hearsay and imagination all that he missed as an insignificant actor in the great drama.
Groping among the memories of the Battle of Jutland and the part played therein by the fleet flagship, it is not unnatural, therefore, that a private of marines should come most readily to mind. ”

“ In a minute they had vanished in smoke, out of which guns spat viciously, leaving a tangle of little creaming wakes to mark the path of their headlong onslaught.
Neck and neck raced the retreating raiders and the avenging Nemesis from the east coast of Britain. Ahead lay the German minefields and German submarines and the tardy support of the German High Seas Fleet. Somewhere far astern a huddle of nervous merchantmen were being hustled westward by their escort, and midway between the two the hostile destroyer flotillas fought in a desperate death-grapple under the misty blue sky. ”

“ From the bridge of each mass of towering indeterminate shadows the stern light of the next ahead could be discerned dimly through binoculars, and on those pin-points of light they steered. What the battle cruiser flagship steered by, in the narrow confines of the crowded harbour and the inky darkness, only the little knot of figures on her forebridge knew: the admiral{49} and flag captain, the navigator and officer-of-the-watch, muffled in duffle coats and moving mysteriously about the glow-worm arc of light from the binnacle and charttable. ”

“ A crippled German destroyer, crawling out of range, down by the stern, like a hare whose hindquarters have been paralysed by a clumsy sportsman: an enemy light cruiser, dismasted, funnels over the side, one gun spitting defiance from a shambles of a battery as she sank: a great battleship listing over, all aswarm with specks of humanity—surely it was none of our noisy doing? ”

“ On both sides the black cliffs rose, all streaked with snow, out of a thunderous welter of foam. The tide sobbed and lamented in the hollows of unseen caverns, or sluiced the length of a ledge to plash in cascades down the face of the cliff.{227}
The snow had abated, and in the gathering dusk the broken water showed ghostly white. To seaward the gale drove the smoking rollers in successive onslaughts against the reef where the battered remains of the two destroyers lay. All about the distorted plating and tangle of twisted stanchions the surf broke as if in a fury of rapine and destruction.... ”

“ A swift dash through the darkness, with a finger twitching on the trigger of every gun; any spot in thirty-five miles of British coastline decided upon beforehand can be reached in a couple of hours, illumined in ten seconds by star-shell for the few minutes required for a futile bombardment of English soil—and the desired result is achieved.
One disadvantage alone is against Germany, and it is one which may be borne in mind at a time when there is a tendency to regard surface sea-power as an anachronism. A raider disabled outside the protection of German minefields is a raider lost. ”

“ The smoke trailing astern blotted out the rest of the flotilla following in each other’s wake. Aft along the deck, guns’ and torpedo-tubes’ crews began to move and stamp their feet for warmth.
Away to starboard a circular object nearly awash loomed up and dropped astern. Another appeared a few minutes later, and was succeeded by a third. Mile after mile these dark shapes slid past, stretching away to the horizon. They were the buoys of the Channel barrage, supporting the mined nets which are but a continuation of four hundred miles of barbed wire. ”

“ You could detect the deep grumbling tones of the battleships in the air, as the Romans might have heard the talk that floated into the night from the gladiators’ barracks. It mingled with the gossip of the light cruisers, whose conversation was largely technical, as they lay floating at their moorings with steam raised: nervous, high-spirited, mettlesome things, spoiling for a fight. Their talk concerned each other’s boiler tubes, turning circles, thrust bearings, and gyro compasses: rather dull to the layman, but interesting to the destroyers in the flotilla anchorage, who were their cousins. ”

“ A ragged line of coastwise traffic, barges under sail, lighters in tow of tugs, and deepladen freighters hugging the swept channel along the coast, appeared as if by magic out of “the bowl of night”; from the direction of the chalk-cliffs came a division of drifters in line ahead. They passed close to the destroyers, and the figure on the leading destroyer’s bridge bawled through a megaphone. They were curt incoherencies to a landsman—vague references to a number and some compass bearings. A big man on board the drifter flagship waved his arm to indicate he understood the message ”

“ When at length the British light cruisers hauled off and ceased fire on the fringe of the{60} German minefields, the enemy were hull down over the horizon, leaving two destroyers sinking amid a swirl of oil and wreckage, and a cruiser on her beam ends ablaze from bow to stern. The sea was dotted with specks of forlorn humanity clinging to spars and rafts. Boats from the British destroyers plied to and fro among them, bent on the quixotic old-fashioned task of succouring a beaten foe. Those not actively engaged in this work of mercy circled round at high speed to fend off submarine attack ”

“ A crumpled escorting machine may have come down out of the clouds, eddying like a withered leaf, to crash somewhere behind the German line; there may be somewhere near the shore a broken boy in goggles and leather lying amid the wreckage of his last flight. Such is the price paid for a few more dots added in red ink to a couple of feet of chart. But as long as the photographic machine returns with the camera intact, the price is paid ungrudgingly.
The work of these photographic recorders, pilot and observer alike, differs from all other forms of war flying. ”

“ In these unlit depths she lay for an hour, listening to the chunk of many propellers pass overhead and die away. She knew nothing of the mysterious chain of events which sent those cruisers venturing beyond the protection of the far-reaching German minefields. She was as ignorant of popular clamour in Germany for spectacular naval activity as she was of the presence of a large convoy of laden freighters a hundred miles away to the northward, escorted by destroyers and making for a British port. ”

“ The mate stood up and looked aft along the splintered, bloody deck, beyond the smoke and steam trailing to leeward.
“The gun’s wrecked,” he said slowly, as if speaking to himself. “The little smacks are clear o’ danger.... The destroyers are comin’ up.... Ye have fought a good fight, father.” The submarine had ceased fire, and as he spoke, she submerged and vanished sullenly, like a wild beast baulked of its prey. ”

“ His voice was never still: it was to be presumed that he slept at some mysterious time during the twenty-four hours, and yet his square, compact form seemed to be always drifting about at all hours of the day and night. Even when a hapless wight (in the throes of nightmare) tipped bodily out of his hammock on to the deck the first night, it was Harker who appeared noiselessly out of the shadows to tuck him in again.
Their names he had pat within twenty-four hours; this tightened his grip of the term instantly, but it also caused him to be regarded as scarcely canny. ”

“ Aughtlone watched the twin glimmers fade away down the long corridor and turned to his last remaining guest.
“We’re a tongue-tied breed,” he said. “We’ve been trying to voice some tremendous sentiment that’s been struggling for expression all the evening, and——”
“It’s had us beat,” said Brakespear. He made a circle in the air with the wavering candle-flame. “It’s too big. We’ve all seen so much in this bloody war, collectively.... We feel that we are the Navy and the Navy is us; yet, somehow, we don’t count much as individuals.”
“It’s because we’re finite,” said Aughtlone. ”

“ No aerial adventure is ever recounted (and the array of medal ribbons round their mess table is witness to the quality of these blindfold flights) without its humorous aspect well-nigh obliterating all else. One who fought a Zeppelin single-handed with a Webley-Scott pistol and imprecations found himself immortalised only in the pages of a magazine of Puck-like humour they publish (Fate and funds permitting) monthly. Another, disabled on the water off an enemy’s port, succeeded in getting his engine going as the crew of an armed trawler were leaning over the bows with boat-hooks to secure him. ”

“ Since British submarines specialise in attacking enemy men-of-war only, their operations are chiefly confined to waters where such craft are most likely to be found. Those who read the lesson of Jutland aright will therefore be able to locate roughly the area of British submarine activity.
In the teeth of every defensive device known to Kultur, despite moored mines, explosive nets, and decoys of fiendish ingenuity, this ceaseless patrol is maintained. Winter and summer, from sunset to dawn and dawn to sunrise, there the little wet ships watch and wait. ”

“ A moment later he was himself struck by a shell, which took off his right leg above the knee.
He lay on the deck in the rear of the gun while the coxswain and a chief stoker, named Hammell, between them improvised a tourniquet from a piece of rope and fragment of wood. While they were endeavouring to stop the bleeding, Commander Loftus Jones, in the words of an eyewitness who survived, “gentleman and captain as he was,” continued to direct the firing of the gun.
In all history the unquenchable spirit of man has rarely triumphed so completely over shattered nerves and body. ”

“ It lit the shell-torn upper works of five of His Majesty’s ships which had finished their last commissions: Thetis, Sirius, Brilliant, Intrepid and Iphigenia, lying at the gates of the enemy that none might pass out.
To these, at a later date, was added the Vindictive, and though in time the enemy may dredge and blast the passages clear, though weed and rust will creep over the battered hulls, something will long remain for a testimony of the achievement; something—because of the blood which once stained the splintered decks—
“That is for ever England.” ”