Chapter III

       Table of Contents

      Apropos of signals—to go on where I left off—we were to have more than enough of them after target-practice. We finished first of all the cruisers, and went on to our rendezvous the Fastnet, but if we had listened to the passenger—he wanted to lower a boat and investigate the shattered rock—we should have been spared many sorrows. But we were zealous, Mr. Simple, and we went to the Fastnet; and it was hazy, and through the haze we heard a horrible elemental moaning that should have warned us. The battleships which we had not found at Bantry were scattered about those waters at their practice. Then I remembered that a twelve-inch gun discharges a projectile weighing some 800lb. and ranging about ten miles. And we went to the rendezvous encircled by these deep mutterings of invisible monsters, and behold! we came slap on the Flagship, who was running torpedoes. Any other of the big ones would not have mattered, but our luck sent us to the Flag. There was a feeling of calamity in the thick air, and I know one man who was not in the least relieved when she signalled: ‘Where are you bound?’ We replied we were waiting as ordered on that spot, for the rest of the cruisers, and remained in a deferential attitude, while the Flagship maintained her horrible composure.

       Our Fatal Mistake

      Thinking no harm, we drifted some two miles to leeward, which was our fatal mistake, though we kept a skinned eye on her. Presently we saw a signal, but end on, as flags are apt to be when the signaller is dead up wind and the signallee down. We hung our answering pennant at the dip to show that we saw but could not understand, and scuttled up to the Flagship as fast as might be. The first part of the signal was an order to close, and the second expressed a desire to speak to us by semaphore. (Our signalmen’s faces were studies in gloom about this crisis; and the sad moaning of the guns went on afar.) We learned that the Flag had been trying to attract our attention for some time, and did not appreciate our négligé déshabillé, or words to that effect. There is no excuse in the Navy, and we took what was served out to us by the gibbering semaphore in silence, standing at attention. To tell the truth, we had been rather pleased with our target-practice, and this sudden dash of cold water chilled us. But there is a reason for all things. Now, we must signal the name of the officer of the watch (frantic searchings of heart among the officers) and the signalman (the signalmen had got beyond even despair), on duty on Friday morning last. What the nature of their crime was we knew not, and it was not ours to ask; but later we heard it had something to do with somebody else’s error. We gave that information (the Flag could have learned much more if she had asked for it) and I effaced myself with a great effacement forward, where the wits of the foc’sle were telling the signalman of Friday morning what sorts of death and disrating awaited him.

       ‘We’ve Lost the Game’

      ‘We’ve lost the game,’ said one man. ‘First come first served. That shows it,’ and with this dark saying I was forced to be content.

      Then the Flag removed herself, her sixty signalmen, her four-deep strings of signals, and her grim semaphore. Truly was it written:

      ‘Every day brings a ship, Every ship brings a word, Well for him who has no fear Looking seaward, well assured That the word the vessel brings Is the word that he would hear.’

      Anon the cruisers popped over the horizon, led by the Powerful—all save one—and the Powerful wished to know where that one had gone. Now the rendezvous given us by the Powerful could have been read in two ways. We all knew how the mistake had arisen, and, with one exception, had all repaired to the place which our leader had in her massive mind. But there was no ship, of course, that could stand up to and gently rebuke the Powerful save her sister ship the Terrible, who signalled politely: ‘I suppose the —— is waiting at rendezvous signalled by you?’ To this the Powerful stiffly, with many flags: ‘When ships have any doubt about signal, officers should reply: Not understood!’ The Terrible, more politely than ever: ‘Your signal perfectly understood,’ meaning thereby, ‘My friend, you made a mistake, and you jolly well know it.’ We small craft stood back and sniggered while this chaff flew between the two mammoths. The thing must have weighed on the Powerful’s mind, for late that evening, as we were going home, she woke up and began talking about it in flashes from the mast-head, to the effect that when signals were obviously wrong ships should do something or other laid down in the Regulations.

       Astonishing the Crowded Channel Traffic

      But really it made no difference. The missing cruiser cast up presently with one funnel blistered and a windsail rigged aft, which gave her a false air of being hurried and hot; and home we cruisers all went to Portland, past the Wolf and the toothed edges of the Scillies, astonishing the crowded Channel traffic—sometimes a Jersey potato-ketch full of curiosity; or a full-rigged trader of the deep sea, bound for one or other of the Capes; a Norwegian, Dane, German, or Frenchman; and now and again a white-sided, brass bejewelled yacht.

      For a few minutes every funnel was in line. Then one saw the Powerful pulling out for a sailing ship, and blotting half the horizon with her hull. Then a second-class cruiser would flicker from the line to starboard, all spangled with her mast-head, her speed, helm, and sailing-lights as the pale glimmer of a fishing-smack’s lantern crawled out astern of her: And now it was our turn to give way.

      That was a Royal progress. No blind man’s bluff off the Lizard or dreary game of hunt-the-Needles such as the liners play, but through the heavenly clear night the leisurely, rolling slow-march of the overlords of all the seas.

       Ours By Right of Birth

      And the whole thing was my very own (that is to say yours); mine to me by right of birth. Mine were the speed and power of the hulls, not here only but the world over; the hearts and brains and lives of the trained men; such strength and such power as we and the World dare hardly guess at. And holding this power in the hollow of my hand; able at the word to exploit the earth to my own advantage; to gather me treasure and honour, as men reckon honour, I (and a few million friends of mine) forbore because we were white men. Any other breed with this engine at their disposal would