Part 1

An Awfully Big Adventure

BY

"BARTIMEUS"

CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne

First published 1919

To A. R. S.

NOTE

_The sketch entitled "Unto the Hills" appeared originally in_ Blackwood's Magazine, _and is included in this book with the Editor's kind permission._

PREFACE

It was my original intention to gather this miscellaneous assortment of war sketches and stories together under the heading of "A Scran Bag."

The aptness of this title will be apparent when it is explained that odds and ends of personal possessions left lying about the mess decks of a man-of-war are impounded by the Ship's Police and kept for safe custody in a sack. This receptacle of random gleanings is called the Scran Bag.

My publishers agreed that the title was admirable--to the initiated. They opined, however, that the bulk of the public would be left, so to speak, cold. They reminded me that it was no use explaining it in a Preface, since no one reads Prefaces. They intimated that life was a sordid business, and we all have to make our livings--in short, no book with such a title would sell.

I therefore turned to the classics, and in "Peter Pan" found a title which, I think, is comprehensive of any record, however fragmentary and incomplete, whether bald fact or fact sugared with fiction, of the Navy's share in this War.

"To die," said Peter Pan, "would be an awfully big adventure." It may be so; but, unhappily, the lips of the adventurer are sealed, and we are left theorising, none the wiser.

To wake up in the morning is a better thing than dying, for all the poets may say; and if the day holds, as this book does, somewhat of love, war in a righteous cause, and victory at its close, may not it, too, be called An Awfully Big Adventure?

CONTENTS

I

An Awfully Big Adventure.

1. THE WOOING OF MOULDY JAKES

2. THE NARRATIVE OF COMMANDER WILLIAM DALRYMPLE HORNBY, ROYAL NAVY

II

Behind the Veil: The Story of the Q Boats. (1918)

1. FIRST BLOOD

2. ORDEAL BY FIRE

3. WON BY WAITING

4. THE SPLENDID FAILURE

III

"Not in the Presence of the Enemy." (1918)

1. THE GLEANER

2. THE MILLIONTH CHANCE

3. CHINKS

4. A FORTY-FOOT SETTING

IV

The Action between H.M.S. _Prize_ and German Submarine U93

V

The Forfeit (1916)

VI

Supper Beer (1914)

VII

The Way They Have (1915)

VIII

The Epitaph

IX

The English Way (1917)

X

The Parting of the Ways (1919)

XI

Unto the Hills (1913)

AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE

PART ONE

THE WOOING OF MOULDY JAKES

1

The late afternoon sunlight was slanting across the heather when the "Mantis" came puffing round a bend of the river.

Contrary to the established custom and traditions of British men-of-war, her crew maintained a breathless and high-spirited dialogue with the Captain, who seasoned it with shrill invective directed at a routed enemy, invisible and presumed to be in full flight amid the bracken.

At the bend alluded to, the Captain of the "Mantis" turned and shouted encouragement to the "Moth," who, some hundred yards astern, was negotiating some rapids and presumably under heavy fire.

"I say, _do_ buck up!" he cried. "The Turks are retreating like anything!"

"I can't buck up," wailed the Captain, officers and ship's company of the "Moth." "There's a bramble all caught up in my petticoat."

"Take the beastly thing off then," commanded the Senior Officer, and turned to con his ship through the tortuous shallows of the Upper Reaches.

The fir-clad and boulder-strewn slopes of the valley had given place to the open moor, where the stream abandoned its headlong course and broadened into wide pools and shelving beaches of gravel strewn with bleached twigs.

The "Tarantula" was discernible still among the cataracts, while in the far distance the Main Army clambered deftly from boulder to boulder and fended off the onslaughts of flies with a frond of bracken.

Although the fire of the enemy had perceptibly slackened, the casualties aboard the "Mantis" mounted steadily. Three times the Commanding Officer quitted his ship to wallow in his gore on the springy turf, only returning on each occasion to find the Quartermaster on his knees in the shallows, delivering valedictory rhetoric at his post as his life's blood ebbed.

The barred and speckled trout fled up-stream like bronze flashes as the irresistible advance continued. The shrill bark of the "Mantis's" gun searched the hollows and peat bogs for the possibly lurking rearguard of the rout, and sent the shy kingfisher darting ahead of the bedraggled white ensign in the van of the pursuit.

Finally the "Mantis" dropped anchor from sheer lack of breath and prepared to disembark a landing party. Her Captain, carrying the ensign and armed to the teeth, climbed on to a lichen-scarred boulder in quest of the remainder of the Naval Forces.

"_Come_ on!" he shouted, and the sound of his voice was swallowed by the vast solitude of the moor.

The "Moth" had forsaken the waterways and from discreet glimpses afforded by a furze bush bordering the stream was proceeding in execution of previous orders.

The "Tarantula"--it was useless to disguise the inglorious fact--was engaged in picking blackberries and sharing them with the Main Army. Far out of reach of hail or reproach, the advance guard of that historic force, hitherto invisible, was alone unquenched in spirit and energy, and rushed to and fro with wagging tail among the bewildering blend of scents left by the passage of rabbit, vole and otter.

The Captain of the "Mantis" permitted his nostril to curl contemptuously.

"Pouf!" he said, and added--for the benefit of the officers and men of the landing party, desperadoes all--"what can you expect from girls?"

His fellow-desperadoes, presumably from motives of chivalry or disgust, vouched no reply, and their leader turned to sweep the path of the retreat through a pair of mother-of-pearl opera glasses, suspended from his neck by a piece of string. Then instinctively, like a wild animal surprised, all the supple grace of his young body stiffened tense and rigid. Not fifty yards up-stream sat a man nursing a rifle across his knees.

He was a youngish man, clean-shaven, and he sat, apparently deep in thought, purring a pipe. Not even the tumult of the advance upon Bagdad appeared to have disturbed his reflections, for he had not turned his head.

The Senior Officer of the Naval Forces lowered his mother-of-pearl opera glasses and scrutinised the stranger with his unimpeded vision for nearly a minute. Finally, casting a glance down-stream, he clambered from his place of vantage and advanced.

The boy was about ten paces distant when the stranger turned his head. He was of a lean, rather lantern-jawed cast of countenance, and his reddish-brown eyes showed not the faintest surprise or curiosity at being suddenly confronted by a small sunburnt boy, bare-legged and dripping wet, who wore a brass-hilted sword bayonet (relic of the Franco-Prussian war), cutlass-wise, a leather pistol holster (empty), a soda-water bottle, a bandolier made of corks, and the aforementioned opera glasses all distributed about his person, and who carried a white ensign on an ash-plant.

"'Evening," said the stranger; the safety catch of his rifle went over with a little click.

The boy stood perfectly still, and there was a moment's silence. Then, planting the flagstaff in the sandy margin of the stream, he came closer.

"What's your name?" he inquired.

"Jakes," replied the seated figure. He removed his pipe from between his teeth and blew meditatively into the bowl, contemplating the tendril of smoke issuing from the mouthpiece with the air of an alchemist preoccupied with a phenomenon.

"Graeme Jakes," he added in a lower tone, as if speaking to himself. "Sometimes called 'Mouldy.'

"Mine's Cornelius James Halliday," volunteered the boy. Whatever he read in the stranger's face apparently banished the lurking fear of ridicule from his sensitive and imaginative heart. "I'm the 'Mantis,' you know," he continued, "coming up the river to Bagdad. The 'Moth' and 'Tarantula' are away back in there----" He jerked his hand towards the bend in the stream as if the gesture made the explanation quite clear and sufficing.

The man evinced no apparent surprise at the information; he replaced his pipe between his teeth, took a couple of deep puffs at it and nodded gravely:

"What about the Army?" he asked.

"Oh, she--it's back there too. Miss Mayne's the Army. She's our governess, and her brother was killed in the retreat from Mons, so we always let her be the Army. He was in the Guards, and she only cried once; she'd be here now only Georgie--Georgina, you know, my sister--made her stop and pick blackberries. Georgina swanks rather nowadays when we have games--she usen't to, but she's getting old. Jane doesn't swank, only she got foul of some brambles, and she's coming on in her knickerbockers when she's got her skirt off."

The dilatory advance of the remainder of the British Expeditionary Force having been satisfactorily explained, Cornelius James sat down and clasped his hands about his small scarred knees. His eyes were drawn and held by the magnetism of the lethal weapon which lay idly upon the man's knees.

"Is that loaded?" he queried.

"Yep."

"What do you shoot with it--mostly--hereabouts?"

From his tone the conversation might have been conducted in a country where tiger predominated among the fauna.

"Rabbits," replied the other, adding after a pause: "sitting." He jerked open the breech of the miniature rifle, picked up the tiny shell that flicked out on to the turf and handed it gravely to his interrogator.

Cornelius James accepted it with equal gravity.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed. "What's up with your hand? Why is it all bandaged? Have you been wounded in the war?"

Graeme Jakes surveyed the grubby folds of lint and the maimed fingers of his left hand. For the first time the shadow of a smile played about his mouth.

"Yep. Long time ago. Nothin' much, only it wouldn't heal. Went bad on me. Bit of poison gas shell."

"Oh," said the boy, and contemplated his new acquaintance with renewed interest.

"Are you Army or Navy?"

The man slid a cartridge into his rifle, closed the bolt and raised the weapon to his shoulder, resting his left elbow on his knee. A sharp report followed the instant's silence; the scut of a rabbit flicked white on the opposite slope and vanished.

"Missed him!" ejaculated the sniper. "Generally do."

He lowered the toy on to his knees again. "Navy," he continued as if nothing had interrupted the conversation.

"Daddy's in the Navy too," exclaimed the boy. "Do you know him?--he's an Admiral."

"Know him by name. Don't bump up against Admirals much."

"I wish I was old enough to be in the Navy," sighed Cornelius James. "It's awful not being able to do anything in this war. Even Miss Mayne is going to do war work soon. She says every woman ought to do something."

"Who--who's Miss Mayne?"

"I told you. Our governess. She's a perfect ripper. She's the third governess we've had. But the other two weren't quite----" Cornelius James hesitated. "Well's matter of fact, I don't think they were quite the right sort. They didn't understand how to play, they hadn't any 'magination, and they were always afraid of cows and getting sunburnt and taking off their shoes and stockings when it came to anything wet. Miss Mayne's quite different--because--well, because she's what she is, I suppose. It makes all the difference, doesn't it?"

Graeme Jakes considered the subtlety in silence.

"I don't know," he said finally. He turned his head and looked at the small snob nursing his bare knees. Again their eyes met in friendly searching scrutiny.

"I've hardly ever met any ladies," he said. It was as if he had taken the boy as an equal into a rather pathetic confidence.

Cornelius James surveyed his new friend with a deliberate interest. It absorbed the frayed deerstalker speckled with trout-flies, the flannel shirt open at the throat, the baggy tweed coat of many pockets, the corduroy breeches and muddy boots and gaiters. To the wearer of these garments he applied in turn all the standards of his brief experience of life.

"Don't they like you?" he asked.

"Dunno," was the reply. "Never asked 'em." He looked musingly across the rolling moor. "One did once--but she died when I was little."

The splashing of water down-stream interrupted the speaker.

"Here's Jane," said Cornelius James, looking over his shoulder. "She's all right," he added, quickly, as the other made a hasty movement that suggested fright. "She's really quite sensible for a girl."

Jane drew near, swinging her broad-brimmed hat in her hand and stepping from stone to stone with the lithe grace of a youthful dryad. She had discarded her petticoat and wore only a jersey and knickers.

"Jane," shouted Cornelius James, as she approached. "He's in the Navy, but he doesn't know Daddy." He made a gesture of proprietorship in the direction of the impassive figure seated in the heather.

Jane waded ashore and extended her hand with friendly unconsciousness of self.

"How d'you do?" she said, and devoured him with round grey eyes. "Did you ever know Mr. Standish?" she inquired.

Her brother's protégé nodded smiling. "Bunje?" he said. "Yes, rather--I was shipmates along of Jim."

He lapsed jestingly into the vernacular of the lower deck.

"Jane loves him," interposed Cornelius James. "She was going to marry him only he got married to someone else. She was awfully sick--weren't you, Jane?"

"Shut up," was the graceful retort of the woman scorned. "And did you know Torps--Mr. Mainwaring? He was killed," she added gravely.

"No, never shipmates with him. Heard about him, though. White man by all accounts."

"He was a darling," said Jane, simply. "It's dreadful to think of him dead. But I don't think frightfully nice people _really_ die, do you?"

"Don't know any," was the solemn reply.

Jane pursed up her mouth and opened her eyes wider. She was standing upright as a lath before him, her hands clasped behind her, and the water still glistened on her slim bare legs.

"Where do you live?" she inquired, compassionately. The stranger jerked his head back across the moor to where the ground rose and the façade of a distant mansion was discernible through a vista in the trees of a great park.

"Over there," he added in amplification.

"Does that house belong to you?" asked Jane all incredulous. She had decided at the first glimpse that this was a homeless tramp of the cleaner and rather nice variety, and from the first had been prepared to take him, metaphorically, to her bosom.

"No," said the tramp. "It's my brother-in-law's place. I stay with him and my step-sister when I'm ashore." He eyed the children in turn. "Where do you live?"

"We live ever so far away," replied Cornelius James. "But we've all had chicken-pox and we've come with Miss Mayne to stay in a farm near here. Glebe Farm it's called. Mummie's up in Scotland----"

"So's to be near Daddy's ship," explained Jane.

"Will you come and have tea with us one day?" added the boy. "You needn't be frightened, 'cos we've stopped peeling and we're out of quarantine. Do you know where Glebe Farm is?"

The other nodded. "Belongs to my brother-in-law," he said. His eyes as he spoke were on the lower reaches of the river. Then abruptly he rose to his feet. "Now I must be off," he said. "Awfully important engagement."

At the bend of the river Miss Mayne and Georgina stood shading their eyes from the sun.

"Oh, don't go!" chorused Jane and her brother. "You haven't talked to Miss Mayne yet," added Cornelius James--"or Georgina. She'll run after you when she knows you're in the Navy, so it's no use going yet----Hallo!" He broke off and stared downstream. "Now where's Miss Mayne off to?"

"Gone to put her stockings on," explained Jane, with the mysterious comprehension of sex. "She's shy."

"Pouf!" snorted Cornelius James. "Miss Mayne shy!"

"Must be off," muttered Mr. Jakes with a swift glance at the far-off clump of gorse that concealed Miss Mayne and her modesty. "Just remembered most important engagement----" He extended his hand to each of his small acquaintances, and, turning abruptly, made off across the moor with his shadow stalking jerkily ahead of him.

"Nice man!" was Jane's emphatic conviction.

Cornelius James eyed his sister with suspicion.

"Now look here, Jane," he said, "_I_ found this man. Just remember that. You bagged the shepherd in the little house on wheels, an' that boy who could imitate a bullfinch, and the man with the wooden leg at the level crossing. I found them first and I found this man first. He's mine."

"Here's Miss Mayne," replied his sister.

2

Graeme Jakes found his step-sister in the hall on his return. He laid his rifle down, and, crossing over to the fireplace, stood eyeing her with his back to the empty hearth.

The evening post had been brought in and the surface of the sofa not occupied by the lady's angular form was strewn with opened envelopes, charitable appeals, receipted bills, and a sprinkling of letters. Lady Manners was a woman approaching forty, clad in garments of aggressively country cut, and about her obtrusively brogued feet a collection of dachshunds squirmed and writhed.

She looked up from her correspondence and scrutinised her brother through tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.

"Where have you been all the afternoon?" she inquired. "The Smedleys were over to tea."

"Those people who bought The Garth?"

"Yes. Mrs. Smedley brought her two girls expressly to renew their acquaintance with you. And you--you vanish!"

Lady Manners picked up another envelope and slit it open with an action somehow suggestive of a hard-pressed fishmonger gutting herrings.

"I've had some," was the reply.

"Had what--tea?"

"No, Mrs. Smedley's girls. The Misses Smedley."

"I don't know that I quite follow you, Graeme. Do you mind not knocking out your pipe on the clean hearth?"

The individual addressed ignored the last sentence and thoughtfully rubbed the bowl of his pipe against the side of his sunburnt nose.

"They give me the holy pip," he explained.

"Do they!" said his step-sister icily. "May I ask in what respect they--they fail to meet with your approval? You are fond of complaining that you never meet any nice girls--that your life in the Navy restricts you to the companionship of your own sex; with an alternative the reverse of desirable. I place opportunities in your way of becoming acquainted with the young people of the County and you behave with rudeness to them, and to me, if you'll let me say so. Josephine and Alicia Smedley are both war-workers, and you should have much in common, making all allowances for your--er, peculiar upbringing."

"Thank 'ee," said her step-brother cheerfully. "What particular line of business do they chuck their weights about in?"

"They are both taking a holiday, but normally Josephine drives a War Office car----"

"Abnormally, I should say," interposed the soiler of clean hearths. "She's got a laugh like a Klaxon horn. What's t'other been doing in the Great War, Grannie?"

"Alicia? She places her somewhat exceptional talents at the disposal of the wounded soldiers--officers, of course."

"Course. Don't tell me she nurses 'em?"

"No. Her temperament--sensitive, artistic, fluid as it is--is too refined for the horrors of wards and operating theatres; she dances to amuse the poor things when they are convalescing--convalescence is a trying time."

"It is. Did she come over to give a display for my benefit? I'm only a wounded sailor, though. Don't count, I s'pose?"

Lady Manners began to gather her correspondence together.

"Graeme," she said, "I am at a loss to know why you should adopt this tone. If it is intended to be in keeping with a pose which your profession requires of you, I can only say that it ill becomes a guest before this hearth."

There was a genuinely hurt tone in the lady's voice--which, indeed, trembled a little. This note of unconscious pathos moved Graeme to one of his rare attempts at self-revelation. He knew she was fond of him in her preoccupied, hard way, and was more concerned about his "lone wolf" attitude towards the amenities of civilised life, as she understood them, than she was capable of putting into words.

"Emily," he said, "'tisn't a pose. 'Fore God it's no pose. Call me what you like--intolerant, idealistic, or whatever long word meets my case. Fact remains, I can't stick that type of woman. They shock me, Emily, in the way blasphemy and drunkenness shock you. All my life long--for fifteen years at least--I've lived in ships with men as my sole companions--raucous-voiced, hairy-chested, buck men, my dear; every blessed type; selfish men and unselfish ones, drunkards, bullies, cranks, wise men and fools. 'Tisn't that one doesn't like 'em at heart, most of 'em. Some are lovable; but one gets into the way of thinking women must be somehow utterly different. When I went to sea I thought all women in the world must be like what I could remember of Mother--" unconsciously his voice changed. "I went on thinking so for some years, chiefly because I never met any women to speak to. The more I saw of men the more I felt convinced that women must be wonderful ... their voices..."

The speaker pulled out a ragged tobacco pouch and slowly fell to filling his pipe.

"Course, as time went on I met women--of a sort--but they didn't disillusion me. They strengthened my conviction that the--er--other sort must be all I'd dreamed they were. Trouble was I never met any. I haven't any parlour tricks--too shy----"

For a few moments the lighting of his pipe occupied the speaker's attention. He enveloped himself in wreaths of smoke.

"I wonder why--I wonder how girls--ladies, I mean, to use an old-fashioned word--get like that Josephine Smedley; flicking cigarette ash about and grimacing when they talk. They don't seem able to say anything without George Robey's slang to help 'em, or to finish a sentence without a laugh like a third-rate barmaid's. I believe subalterns describe them as 'sports.' They aren't men, though they try to ape men; they aren't women--they aren't--oh God! how I hate the type!"

Lady Manners rose. There was in her aristocratic, rather narrow face, a suspicion that her relative had been drinking. Once on a previous visit the idealist had been driven by boredom to seek entertainment in the village tavern, and, while adding considerably to his popularity amongst the rustic toss-pots, returned smelling insufferably of beer.