Naval Occasions, and Some Traits of the Sailor-man. Bartimeus

frantic boast and foolish word

      Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!

      Amen!"

      The last solemn chord died away, and a sudden silence fell upon the Mess: it was some moments before the conversation once more became general. By twos and threes the guests departed. Groups clustered at the gangways; the night was full of farewells and the hooting of picket-boats' syrens. Gradually the Mess emptied, and in the flat where the midshipmen slept silence reigned among the chests and hammocks. The Admiral's guests had also departed, but on the silent quarter-deck two tall figures walked up and down, pipes in mouth.

      "I wonder why they sang that thing," said one musingly. His companion paused and stared across the water at the lights of the town. From there his gaze travelled round to the silent Fleet, line after line of twinkling anchor-lights and huge hulls looming through the darkness. "Somehow, it seemed extraordinarily appropriate, with things as they are ashore just now."

      "You mean all these strikes and rioting—class-hatred—this futile discussion about armaments—brawling in Parliament. … 'Lesser breeds without the law' gradually assuming control. … ?"

      The other nodded and turned again to the sea; as he moved, a row of miniature decorations on his jacket made a tiny clink. "Yes. And meanwhile we go on just the same, talking as little as they will let us—just working on our appointed task: holding to our tradition of 'Ready, Aye Ready!'"

      "Our tradition—yes." His companion gave a little grim laugh. "D'you know the story of the last Legion left on the Wall—?" he jerked his head towards where the Pole Star hung in the starry heavens. "How Rome, sliding into Chaos, withdrew her Legions till only one was left to garrison the Wall. And it was forgotten. Rumours must have reached the fellows in that Legion of what was going on at Home: of blind folly in high places—corruption: defeat. The draggle-tailed Roman Eagle must have been a jest in the market-places of the world."

      He paused, puffing thoughtfully. "You can imagine them," he continued, "falling back, tower by tower, on the centre: attacked in front and behind and on both flanks by an enemy they despised as barbarians, but who, by sheer force of numbers, must annihilate them in the end—unless Rome rallied, suppose they could have retreated—or compromised—haggled for their skins. No one would have thought less of them for it in those days. But they had been brought up in all the brave traditions of their Empire. … When you think of it, there wasn't much left to fight for, except their proud traditions. And yet they fought to the last … while the Roman Empire went fiddling into ruin."

      Far away down the line a mast-head lamp flickered a message out of the darkness. The Fleet was resting like a tired giant; but the pin-point of light, and another that answered it on the instant a mile away, showed that its sleep was light. "But the end is not yet," concluded the speaker.

      "No," replied his companion. He made a little gesture with his pipe-stem, embracing the silent battle-array stretching away into the night. "Not yet."

      IX.

      A TITHE OF ADMIRALTY

      It was the hour preceding dinner, and a small boy in the uniform of a Naval Cadet stood on the balcony of an hotel at Dartmouth.

      Earlier in the day a tremendous self-importance had possessed his soul; it was begotten primarily of brass buttons and a peaked cap, and its outward manifestation at Paddington Station had influenced a short-sighted old lady in her decision that he was a railway official of vast, if premature, responsibilities. He leaned over the balustrade and looked up harbour; beyond the scattered yachts and coal-hulks, black against the path of the sunset, lay the old Britannia. She was moored, this cradle of a generation's Naval destiny, where the Dart commenced to wind among green hills crowned by woods and red-brown plough lands; and as he stared, the smaller vanities of the morning passed from him.

      He was barely fifteen, and his ideas were jumbled and immature, but in a confused sort of way he thought of the thousands of other boys those wooden walls had sheltered, and who, at the bidding of unknown powers, had gone down to the sea in ships.

      He pictured them working their pinnaces and cutters—as he would some day—soaked and chilled by winter gales. Others departed for the Mediterranean, where, if the testimony of an aunt (who had once spent a winter at Malta) was to be accepted, life was all picnics and dances. He saw them yet farther afield, chasing slavers, patrolling pirate-infested creeks, fighting through jungle and swamp, lying stark beneath desert stars, … and ever fresh ones came to fill the vacant places, bred for the work—even as he was to be—on the placid waters of the Dart, amid Devon coombes. It was all a little vainglorious, perhaps; and if his imagination was coloured by the periodicals and literature of boyhood, who is to blame him?

      Why it was necessary for these things to be he understood vaguely, if at all. But in some dim way he realised it was part of his new heritage, a sort of brotherhood of self-immolation and hardship into which he was going to be initiated.

      His thoughts went back along the path of the last few years that had followed his father's death. With a tightening of the heart-strings he saw how an Empire demands other sacrifices. How, in order that men might die to martial music, must sometimes come first an even greater heroism of self-denial. Years of thrift and contrivance, new clothes foresworn, a thousand renunciations—this had been his mother's part, that her son might in time bear his share of the Empire's burden.

      She came out on to the balcony as the sun dipped behind the hills, and the woods were turning sombre, and slipped a thin arm inside his. It is rarely given to men to live worthy of the mothers that bore them; a few—a very few—are permitted to die worthy of them. Perhaps it was some dim foreknowledge of the end that thrilled him as he drew her closer.

      They had dinner, and with it, because it was such a great occasion, a bottle of "Sparkling Cider," drunk out of wine-glasses to the inscrutable Future. Another boy was dining with his parents at a distant table, and at intervals throughout the meal the embryo admirals glanced at one another with furtive interest. After dinner the mother and son sat on the balcony watching the lights of the yachts twinkling across the water, and talked in low voices scarcely raised above the sound of the waves lapping along the quay. At times their heads were very close together, and, since in the star-powdered darkness there were none to see, their hands met and clung.

      She accompanied him on board the following day, to be led by a grave-faced Petty Officer along spotless decks that smelt of tar and resin. She saw the chest-deck, where servants were slinging hammocks above the black-and-white painted chests—the chest-deck with its wide casement ports and rows of enamelled basins, and everywhere that smell of hemp and scrubbed woodwork.

      "Number 32, you are, sir," said the Petty Officer; and as he spoke she knew the time had come when her boy was no longer hers alone.

      They bade farewell by the gangway, under the indifferent eyes of a sentry, and Number 32 watched the frail figure in the waterman's boat till it was out of sight. Then he turned with a desperate longing for privacy—anywhere where he could go and blubber like a kid. But from that time onwards (with the rare exceptions of leave at home) he was never to know privacy again.