by Bartimeus
*X.*
*THE CHOSEN FOUR.*
The Admiral, it was rumoured, had said, "Let there be SignalMidshipmen." Wherefore the Flag-Lieutenant communed with the Commander,who sent for the Senior Midshipman.
The Senior Midshipman responded to the summons with an alacrity thathinted at a conscience not wholly void of offence.
"Let there be Signal Midshipmen," said the Commander, or words to thateffect, "in four watches."
"Aye, aye, sir," said the Senior Midshipman. He emerged from theCommander's cabin and breathed deeply, as one who had passed unscathedthrough a grave crisis. Apparently that small matter of thepicket-boat's damaged stem-piece had been overlooked.
Ere he was out of earshot, however, the Commander spoke again. "By theway," added the Arbiter of his little destinies, "I don't want to seeyour name in the leave-book again until the picket-boat is repaired."
"Aye, aye, sir," repeated the Senior Midshipman. He descended to theGunroom, where, it being "make-and-mend" afternoon, his brethren werewrapped in guileless slumber. An 'Inman's Nautical Tables,' lying handyon the table, described a parabola through the air, and, striking aprominent portion of the nearest sleeper's anatomy, ricochetted into hisneighbour's face. The two sat up, glowered suspiciously at each otherfor an instant, and joined battle. The shock of their conflictoverturned a form, and two more recumbent figures awoke wrathfully to"life and power and thought."
"You four," announced the Senior Midshipman calmly, when the uproar hadsubsided, "will take on signal duty from to-morrow morning." Then,having satisfactorily discharged the duty imposed upon him, he settledhimself to slumber on the settee.
Three of the four, to whom this announcement was made gasped and weresilent. _Signals_! Under the very eye of the Admiral! Each one sawhimself an embryo Flag-Lieutenant.... One even made a little propheticmotion with his left arm, as though irked by the aiguilette that infancy already encircled it. The fourth alone spoke---
"Crikey!" he muttered, "an' my only decent pair of breeches are in thescran-bag"[#]
[#] The "scran-bag" is the receptacle for articles of clothing, &c.,left lying about at First Lieutenant's rounds in the morning. Gear thusimpounded can be redeemed once a week by payment of a bar of soap.
* * * * *
Men say that with the passing of "Masts and Yards" the romance of theNaval Service died. This is for those to judge who have seen a fleet ofmodern battleships flung plunging from one complex formation to anotherat the dip of a "wisp of coloured bunting," and have watched the stutterof a speck of light, as unseen ships talk across leagues of darkness.
The fascination of a game only partly understood, yet ever hinting vastpossibilities, seized upon the minds of the Chosen Four. Morse andsemaphore of course they knew, and the crude translations of the flagswere also familiar enough. But the inner mysteries of the science (andin these days it is a very science) had not as yet unfolded themselves.
At intervals the Flag-Lieutenant would summon them to his cabin, where,with the aid of the Signal Books and little oblong pieces of brass, hedemonstrated the working of a Fleet from the signal point of view, andhow a mistake in the position of a flag in the hoist might result inchaos--and worse.
The Chosen Four sat wide-eyed at his feet amid cigarette ash and theshattered fragments of the Third Commandment.
Harbour watch-keeping perfected their semaphore and Morse, till byceaseless practice they could read general signals flashed at a speedthat to the untrained eye is merely a bewildering flicker. As time woreon they began to acquire the almost uncanny powers of observation commonto the lynx-eyed men around them on the bridge.
Each ship in a Fleet is addressed by hoisting that ship's numeralpendants. The ship thus addressed hoists an answering pendant in reply.At intervals all through the day the Signal Yeoman of the Watch wouldsuddenly snap his glass to his eye, pause an instant as the windunfurled a distant flutter of bunting at some ship's yard-arm, and thenjump for the halyard that hoisted the answering pendant. The smartnessof a ship's signal-bridge is the smartness of that ship, and inconsequence this is a game into which the stimulus of competitionenters, Signal Boatswain, Midshipmen, and Yeomen vying with each otherto be the first to give the shout, "Up Answer!"
One night at the Junior Officers' Club one of the Chosen Fourencountered another of his ilk from a different ship: and, since ateighteen (if you are ever to become anything) shop is a right andnecessary topic of conversation, they fell to discussing theirrespective bridges.
Presently said he of the other ship, waxing pot-valiant by reason ofMarsala, "I'll bet you a dinner ashore we'll show your pendants beforethe week's up."
Now should a ship fail to see a signal made to her, other ships presentcan be very offensive by hoisting the pendants of the ship addressed atmast-head and yard-arms. This is to hold the delinquent up as an objectof scorn and derision to the Fleet, and is a fate more dreaded byright-minded signalmen than the Plagues of Egypt.
"An' I'll give you fifteen seconds' grace," added the speaker.
The challenge was accepted, and for five sweltering days--it was summerat Malta--the two ships watched each other from sunrise till dark, thependants "bent" to the halyards in readiness. On the evening of thesixth day a thunderstorm that had been brewing all the afternoon burstin a torrential downpour over the harbour. At that instant a signalcrept to the flagship's yard-arm.
On board the ship addressed the Midshipman had dashed for the shelter ofthe bridge-house, the Yeoman was struggling into an oilskin, and theSecond Hand had stepped into the lee of a search-light.
"Stand by--thirteen, fourteen..." counted the small figure standing inthe driving rain on the flagship's bridge, watch in hand: "fifteen,Hoist!" Then for the first time in his short career he deserted hispost. Clattering pell-mell down the ladders to the Gunroom, where theremainder of the Chosen Four were playing cut-throat whist, he flungback the drab-coloured curtain.
"Got him!" he shouted triumphantly. "By the aching stomach, I had him_cold_!"
* * * * *
I have said that of the Chosen Four--three saw visions, while the otherbewailed the inaccessibility till the end of the week of his besttrousers. Now of the four he alone came to wear the aiguilettes of aFlag-Lieutenant, and to-day the mysteries of Tactics, Fleet Organisationand Formation, are to him as an open book. A Baker Street photographeronce had the temerity to display his photograph in the window, inuniform, tinted. Passing by, I heard a woman gush foolishly to hercompanion, "Oh, isn't he a darling!"
The relevancy of this anon.
Another forsook the bunting-draped path of Signals to climb to famethrough the smoke of many battle practices. He now adds after his rankthe cryptic initial (G). The third married an heiress and herrelations, and retired. He has several children and is reported to havelost interest in the Service.
The remaining one, when I saw him last, had also lost interest in theService. He was lying in a curiously crumpled heap across the stakes ofa jungle stockade, his empty revolver dangling by the lanyard round hisneck. A handful of his men fought like demons to recover possession ofthe mutilated body.
"Sure," said a bearded Petty Officer, half apologetically, wiping hiscutlass with a tussock of grass, "we couldn't lave him there--an'himself somewan's darlin', likely..."
Sailors are inveterate sentimentalists.