The Crusaders. I
SEPTEMBER, 1919
BY WILLIAM McFEE
I
THE information that we go out at dusk is received by the ship’s company in various ways, according to the type and degree of responsibility. Some deride it as a joke. Have we not been about to go out these last ten weeks? Some say solemnly, ‘Then we’ll be sunk’; and add in a whisper, ‘and she ’ll go down like a stone.’ They adopt an attitude of mournful pride in serving aboard a coffin-ship, whose fate is sealed as soon as she pokes her aged nose outside the breakwater. Some mutter, ‘Thank goodness!’ for they are weary of harbor life, and desire, though they would never admit it, to see the land sink down behind the horizon. Some are sentimentally regretful, for they are in love with dark-eyed Italian signorine, languorous Syriennes, amiable Maltese, or brisk and stylish Greek Koritsai, with whom they have danced in the gaunt Casino or bathed on the yellow beach below. Some are excited, for they are young and this is almost the first time they have been to sea. And others are serious, for they have responsibilities. It is a singular fact that one cannot be forehanded with an anxiety. One may prepare unto the very last and most ultimate contingency. One may foresee all disaster, and provide barrier behind barrier of remedial devices. One may have been through a precisely identical experience for years on end — N’importe! Fear, born of the stern matron Responsibility, sits on one’s shoulders like some heavy imp of darkness, and one is preoccupied and, possibly, cantankerous.
While I am making out the engineroom station-bill, the Chief enters and hands me a chit. It is a formal order to do something which is already done. It adds at the bottom that at 6.30 sharp we shall move out. I finish making out the bill, apportioning the weaker brethren of the stokehold to different, watches, and assigning Mr. Ferguson, a junior engineer, to take watch with me. More of Mr. Ferguson anon.
I go out and take a survey of progress on deck. In the classic phrase, all is bustle and confusion. Men in khaki are moving rapidly to and fro, hauling heavy cases which contain shells, bombs, detonators, compressed air-bottles, spare parts, and stores of all kinds. Others, mounted on flimsy ladders, are busy adjusting controls, filling petrol tanks, and adjusting engines, on the sea-planes which lie, like huge yellow grasshoppers with folded wings, under the awnings of the fore-deck hangar. Walking about in an extreme undress of gray flannel trousers and petrolsplashed khaki tunics are some of the pilots and observers.
Suddenly there is a roar from one of the engines; the awnings belly and flap violently; a piece of newspaper rushes past me like a bullet, and I find myself in an almost irresistible gale of wind. A mechanic is trying out an engine. One of our cats, seated on the mine-sweeping machine, jumps off in disgust at the noise, and is immediately blown out of sight, tail in air, along the deck. We hold on. The engine dies down, surges up, dies away again, flutters, barks once with astonishing vigor, and stops. A pilot, who has been making frantic gestures to the mechanic, whose head alone is visible above the fuselage, now climbs the piano-wire ladder which leads to the seat, and converses with energy, and, let us hope, wisdom. The flightcommander, an imposing creature in naval uniform, with the gold-lace rings of a lieutenant, a pair of gold wings, and a gold star on his sleeve, hurries up and speaks rapidly to his pilots.
They all light cigarettes. This, I observe, is the one indispensable factor of war — one must light a cigarette. At any given moment of the day, I will guarantee that three fourths of our ship’s company are each striking one of the dubious matches supplied by our glorious Oriental ally, and are lighting cigarettes supplied by our glorious Hellenic ally. I tremble when I think of the noise which is going on beneath the artillery fire of the Western and Eastern fronts — the noise of millions of matches being struck to ignite millions of cigarettes. I observe a youth descending from a ladder, where he has been putting tiny brass screws into a defective aileron, to the gangway between the plane-platform and the bulwarks. He sits down, produces a cigarette. I see the commander, who was master of a sailing ship before the flight-commander’s parents were married, lighting a cigarette from the chief engineer’s. I observe a signal-man’s face protruding from the telephone-exchange window, and I also observe a cigarette pro. truding from his ear. In the flap-pocket of the quartermaster, now testing the steering-gear, is an obvious box of cigarettes. I feel that I have eluded my destiny somehow. It has become perfectly plain to me that no man can achieve greatness in war unless he smokes cigarettes. But I digress. It is time to take a turn out of the engines.
Passing along the bridge-deck, where a small army of young sailors are hoisting the motor-launches and looking extremely serious about it, I come upon a still more serious party clustered about an anti-aircraft gun. Some hold shells under their arms very much as a lady holds her Pomeranian, and tickle the fuse (which corresponds to the nose of the Pomeranian) with a wrench. Some are pushing with tremendous energy a sort of mop which is always getting jammed halfway up the bore. Others stand in readiness, breathing hard and looking round self-consciously. They are the anti-aircraft crew. I pass by, smiling internally. They are about to be blooded, all except the muscular person with the hoarse voice who lectures them on the mysteries of their craft. I know him well. I have a peculiar detestation of this particular gun, which will be comprehended when it is pointed out that the holding-down bolts are precisely three feet, six inches above my pillow. Just as I doze, after a hard day below and a plentiful lunch, followed by a perfect cigar, the muscular person with the hoarse voice begins an oration upon the use in action of the X-pounder ’Otchkiss quick-firin’ gun, anti-aircraft mounting.’ His voice becomes a husky growl as he indicates the various portions of the gun’s anatomy to the open-mouthed youngsters. I lie below, devising a fitting eternal punishment for him and his hobnailed minions. An ammunition-box is opened — slap! A shell is lifted and put in — slap two. Click! The breech closes. Clock! It opens. Then comes a thump, as someone drops one of the spanners. A scuffle of boots. Hoarse voice descanting upon ‘use o’ judgment in estimatin’ speed of objective only obtainable in actual practice on enemy machines.’ Hence I am no friend of this gun and her crew.
I pass on and down the ladder to the spar-deck. Here is where I live. Here is the engine-room, the steeringgear, the heart of the ship. Abaft of this again are more planes under high awnings. Below them is the main deck, what is called the lower or mess-deck, where hammocks are slung at night and meals are eaten during the day. Farther aft is the sick bay, and below that the stokers’ quarters. Below these are cold stores and ammunition-rooms and cells for the unworthy, of whom, alas, even this respectable ship carries a few.
As I step into the alleyway where I live, and pass into the engine-room, the steering-engine, which is situated in its own little steel cottage close at hand, suddenly performs a furious staccato version of a Strauss chorus, and then stops abruptly, as if ashamed of its outburst, breathing steamily through its nostrils. The control-shaft remains motionless. Evidently the quartermaster has satisfied himself that all is well. A perspiring oiler emerges from the engine-room ladder and fusses with the glands and lubricators. I look down at the shining covers of the main-engine cylinders, and suddenly I experience an emotional change. In some mysterious fashion the load of responsibility lifts, and I become light-hearted. I feel gay and care-free. After all, I reflect brazenly, ‘What’s the odds ? One has done one’s utmost — let what may happen. Care killed a cat. There can be no surprises. These huge, simmering, silent engines are my friends. With them and their like I have spent many arduous years. I have their record. I know their secrets. I have had them asunder. Their enormous proportions are our heritage from a bygone generation, and I have stood in amazement before the heroic dimensions of their midmost ventricles. I reflect upon their countless voyages when I was a child; upon the men who have slaved in the heat of the East, who have slept in my bunk, who have come aboard full to the teeth, who have sung their songs and drawn their pay, and now lie, let us hope, in some quiet churchyard at home.’
I reflect upon all this, I say, and I am no longer worried. For a brief spell I savor the pleasure of the seafaring life. It occurs to me that this explains in part the enigmatic affability which the great occasionally display. They have a sudden vision of life as a whole, and for one brief instant they become human, and smile. It may be so. However, I must descend from the heights of speculation into the engine-room. As I reach the middle grating, I feel the undersides of the cylinders, and note that they are sufficiently hot. The thermometer hanging near the generator registers a hundred and ten. Four great ventilators send down cool jets of air, and I decide that the temperature is very comfortable. A glance at the oilgauge and speed-meter and I descend yet farther, to the starting platform.
A young man is walking to and fro in a highly superior manner, as if personally responsible for the conduct of the war, and quite equal to the occasion. He is an engine-room artificer, and assists Mr. Ferguson and myself while on watch. I inquire if everything is ready for me, and he assures me, with a whimsical smile, that he believes so. Rather nettled at this frivolous behavior I become anxious again and put one or two pertinent queries. I try the reversing gear, which moves over with a smart click and a most gratifying hiss, and open the manœuvring-valve. The young man, whom I have lectured assiduously on this point, stands ready, and as the enormous cranks move and I shout, he reverses the gear. The cranks, with a sigh of immense boredom, move back and pause. Again we reverse, and I administer a shade more steam. The cranks move again and the business is repeated — in the opinion of the young man — ad nauseam. At last, after many essays, the high-pressure crank is permitted to descend to the bottom of the stroke, which is six feet; it reaches the dead centre, the point de mort, as our Allies call it, passes it, and comes up like a giant refreshed. We reverse, and it goes down again, and up, over the top, and continues to revolve in a solemn manner. Bon!
I make a brief excursion round to the back, where a number of auxiliary engines are busily engaged about their own particular businesses. I note that the main feed-pumps, the auxiliary feed-pump, the circulating pumps, the bilge-pump, the sanitary-pump, the fresh-water pump, are all working well, glance at one or two gauges, and hasten back to the manœuvring-valve. We reverse and go ahead for a few revolutions. We stop. The young man, who is not so foolish as he looks, presses a button and speaks into a tube marked ‘Chief Engineer.’ What he says I cannot hear, but I know perfectly well that the Chief in his cabin is grinning.
The young man is somewhat of a joke. He effects a felicitous blend of a doctor’s ‘bedside manner’ and the suave courtesy of a department-store floorwalker. This, in an engine-room, is provocative of mirth. Mr. Ferguson, who is already overdue, guffaws with rollicking abandon when Mr. de Courcy emits one of his refined and ladylike remarks. If Mr. de Courcy has the smoothness of oil, — lubricating oil, — Mr. Ferguson has the harsh detergence of water — strong water. However, as I make a hasty pilgrimage into the stokehold and discover four stokers and a coal-passer enjoying a can of tea, it occurs to me t hat if Mr. Ferguson does n’t appear soon, it will be necessary to take steps.
II
I come back to the engine-room, to find Mr. Ferguson descending the engine-room ladder, in a white singlet, khaki short pants, striped socks with red suspenders, and tennis shoes. The inevitable cigarette is in his mouth, and his cap, the white cover of which is stained a chrome yellow with oilsplashes, is over one eye in a negligent and rakish manner. He is a tall strong figure of thirty-odd, his face freckled, his nose twisted, his hair of an Irish flame-red. His voice is stupendously frank and genial, and he disarms criticism with the wealth of his confessions. He is one of the world’s unfortunates, he will inform you gayly (you are bound to meet him).
Just now he is making a specialty of courts-martial. He is continually being court-martialed. He belongs to an obscure and elusive subdivision of the navy known as the M.F.A., which is, being interpreted, Merchant Fleet Auxiliary, though Mr. Ferguson asserts with racial satire that the initials stand for Merely Fooling Around. This indicates one of his main difficulties, which is to realize that he is subject to naval discipline. It is to him an intolerable state of affairs, when he becomes pleasantly jingled ashore in Arab-town, and flings a wine-bottle at a native, that he should be apprehended by a silent and formidable posse of bluejackets, with hangers at their sides and police brassards on their arms. It is still more intolerable when, after joyously beating up said -posse and being carried by main force to the cells in the barracks, he is informed by typed letter that, having been guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer, he will be tried by court-martial on such-and-such a date. He seems unable to comprehend the sudden change in the attitude of the naval authorities. Only a few weeks previously he had been one of the crew of a trawler which had, more by luck than cunning, caught an enemy submarine recharging her depleted batteries, and methodically pounded her to pieces until she filled and sank. Mr. Ferguson’s part in the drama was to stand on the bottom rung of his little engine-room ladder, with his head just above the scuttle, and remark after each salvo, with keen enjoyment, ‘Good again! Hit her up, boys!’ for which he duly received in cold cash five hundred dollars of prize-money. Mr.Ferguson’s interviews with sums over a hundred dollars have ever been fleeting, shadowy episodes of coruscaling and evanescent brilliancy. It was even so on this occasion. The native world that hives and swarms adown the narrow and filth-cluttered alleys of Arab-town profited vastly at Mr. Ferguson’s expense. He was regal in his largess. His method of flinging money abroad and kicking the recipients appealed to their Oriental instincts. In two days he had cleaned up the town, from can-can dances to hashish parties in the disused mosque behind the wall of the Jewish cemetery; and he was sampling for the third time the exquisite transmigrations which befall the soul when steeped in Turkish gin, as the posse already mentioned broke into Ali Ben Farag’s Constantinople Divan for Officers Only, and bore him back to barracks under the quiet eyes of the Syrian stars.
The fact is, Mr. Ferguson is temperamentally averse to discipline. He is one of those to whom the war is of no moment whatever. His patriotism is more a postulated abstraction than a glowing inspiration. He is one of those rootless organisms which float hither and yon over the world, indigenous nowhere, at home everywhere. They fall into no categories of wisdom or virtue, for they have the active yet passionless inconel usiveness of intelligent lower animals. They bear no malice and suffer no regret. They leave a memory without making a name. They resolve their personal belongings to the irreducible minimum of a battered and padlocked sea-bag. Their cabins contain neither curios nor conveniences, neither photographs nor tokens of feminine affection. They have a far look in their pale eyes, and one wonders what distant and delightful haven ihey are already visualizing. For them there is no continuing city. They must on — on! pressing forward in blind ardor toward a retreating paradise whence, even were they to arrive, they would immediately prepare to depart. They are the true romantics of our age. Grimy, dissolute, and incompetent, they pass gayly through our orderly and disciplined crowds of unimaginative realists who do the work of the world, and brush off upon us stray threads of golden fancy, fallen from the clouds of tarnished glory which they trail behind them.
Having reached the starting platform, Mr. Ferguson halts and collects his apparently scattered faculties. Although under what is known in the navy as ‘open arrest,’ he has contrived to get ashore by means of one of those preposterous yet plausible excuses which only the romantic can devise. He is now in the no-man’s land between intoxication and sobriety, and stands with his tennis shoes wide apart, the muscles of his legs distending the scarlet straps of his garters, and his stony stare fixed upon Mr. de Courcy, who patrols the platform in front of the engines.
No man can gaze for long upon Mr. de Courcy’s refined and genteel physiognomy without perceiving the fundamental absurdity of the universe. Mr. de Courcy is a gentleman of good family who, by some mysterious dispensation, evaded the normal destiny of his type; for, instead of entering him for holy orders, his family, who I understand are ‘county,’shipped him to a Central American oil-field, where for some years he occupied an obscure position on the engine-room staff. My own impression is that he would be better in the church, in business, in the House of Lords, in the army — anywhere save in a ship’s engine-room. He has the ineradicable predisposition of his class to treat the actual performance of a job of work as derogatory to his dignity. He assures me that, in the navy, by which he means regular menof-war, he was not required to do the unpleasant things that I regard as his daily portion. His delicately chiseled features flush faintly behind the veil of cigarette-smoke as he regrets the violence of my language and the wild impropriety of my metaphors. Nothing, however, can ruffle the eternal and hereditary conviction in which he reposes, that he and his like are of finer clay, that race and gentility are adequate substitutes for achievement.
Whether Mr. Ferguson focuses the precise and piquant differences between himself and Mr. de Courcy it would be difficult to discover; but as he gazes, the stony stare softens, the drawn lines of his reddish freckled face crinkle into laughter, and the bony ridge of his twisted nose glistens humorously. He is finding himself. None of the stimulants of Western civilization have much power over Mr. Ferguson. They only dim his brightness for a brief period, and not even the most corrosive of cocktails can permanently affect the hard lustre of his inconsequent optimism. With a short laugh, like a dog’s bark, he swings past me and dives round behind the engines, and, lifting a movable plate in the platform, investigates hurriedly among divers cocks and valves, as if he had suddenly remembered a buried treasure, and was reassuring himself as to its exact whereabouts.
III
In the meantime we are standing by. From above comes the blast of the first lieutenant’s whistle, as he presides over the doings of his minions. It is, for all the lateness of the season, intensely hot. The armies in Palestine report a heat-wave of unparalleled length and temperature. And even here, with a breeze blowing in from the Mediterranean, the thermometer remains at 90 degrees all day, and our rooms are like ovens until the small hours.
Mr. de Courcy goes into the stokehold, to get a breath of fresh air. The oiler slowly descends from above and moves in and out among the engines on the middle-grating, filling lubricators, adjusting siphon-wicks and pausing for a well-earned spell under the aft ventilator. As I make a gesture indicating the astern guide-bars he replies with a slight raising of his left hand (with a cigarette in the fingers), which may be interpreted somewhat on these lines: ‘Have no fear. I have attended to the lubrication of the astern guides, and am not likely, at my time of life, to neglect so trifling a precaution. Rest easy. I was doing this when you were a boy.’
What mystifies me about all these men of mine is the new lease of life they have taken since the orders for steam came. They take a fresh interest in everything. They had become slack, lackadaisical, and preoccupied with ridiculous grievances. They went ashore and brought back tales of all disaster told them by the motley-clad survivors of torpedoed ships. They muttered openly in my hearing that they desired to be shifted to a ship that went to sea. And now, so far are they from appreciating the heroic, that their attitude by no means resembles the gladiators of old, with their lugubrious ‘Hail, Cæsar! we who are about to die salute thee.’ Nothing is further from their thoughts than dying, though two submarines broke into our sweepers four miles outside last night and sank three of them. Their attitude is much better rendered as ‘Hail, Cæsar! we who are about to get busy salute thee.’ They come down on the stroke of eight bells, watch after watch, and pursue the even tenor of their ways, cigarette in mouth and oilcan or shovel in hand, and seem never to visualize the oncoming destruction that may be ripping through the dark water outside. Pooh! Such anticipations are foreign to their nature, which seems to have been toughened into an admirable closeness of texture by the frightful climate of their native islands and the indurating labor of the sea.
So we pause, waiting at our allotted stations for the orders, which come at last with a clash and jingle of gongs; the telegraph-pointer swings to and fro and comes to rest at ‘Stand by.’ Mr. de Courcy immediately replies with an elegant manipulation of the handle, and records the time on a little blackboard at his elbow. The Chief, a tall, lank young man in a soiled white uniform, ripples half-way down the upper ladder and catches my eye, raising his eyebrows the while. I nod, and he makes a slow circular gesture. I nod again. I ask Mr. Ferguson if he is ready. He straightens up where he stands by the main feed-pumps, waves his hand with a magnificent air, and says, ‘Let her go, Gallagher!’
Assisted by Mr. de Courcy, I let her go. The immense limbs of the tripleexpansion engines flourish back and forth, and come to rest as I close the manœuvring-valve. Mr. Ferguson prances to and fro in front of the pumps, starting-lever in hand, his head twisted round to observe the behavior of the automatic control. He lays the lever over his shoulder like a weapon, and in the dim twilight he reminds me, with his bare white calves crossed by the scarlet garter-straps, of some Roman legionary on guard. Faithful unto —
But Mr. Ferguson would deprecate the suggestion. He has never been faithful unto anything. Loyalty is not his métier. His digressions from the path of righteousness usually provide him with a free pass to the great outdoors, the wide free world in which he is a joyous and insolvent pilgrim. He is puzzled at this novel attitude of the navy, which, instead of firing him without a reference, oppresses him with typed forms and a periodical courtmartial, which sentences him to be ‘dismissed his ship.’ He will never realize that to those who are brought up within the charmed circle of the officer-class, such a sentence is tantamount to a death-warrant. Huh! Give him his pay and he’ll quit. Yes, sir! He did n’t know he was marrying the darned business. What’s eating them anyway? There’s a war on? Nobody’d think it, to hear those popinjays talk about conduct unbecoming an officer. Huh! It’s a dog’s life, sure.
Now the fact is that when, hereafter, you meet Mr. Ferguson, shaking the dust of the Nevada copper mines from his feet in disgust, or hustling about the levees at New Orleans in search of a job as an oiler, or lounging on the water-front at Port Limon, waiting for a chance to stow away on a fruiter, he will speak of his life in the British Navy, with a break in his voice and his pale eyes full of happy tears. Ah, those were the days! he will tell you. A man was treated as a man there. And so on.
This is the mark of the true romantic. It must be a fascinating existence. One feels a perfect Pecksniff in the presence of beings whose imaginations are forever ahead of their experience. They are but strangers here: heaven is their home. One has the impression, while driving them to their appointed tasks amid the humid heat and noisy chaffering of an engine-room, of employing shackled angels whose wings have been clipped close and their tail-feathers pulled out, And they certainly regard one as a demon with an inexplicable passion for toil, a creat ure without vision and without hope beyond the immediate accomplishment of senseless labor, a slave-driver owing allegiance to a secret and sinister authority which they generally call Capitalism.
Mr. Ferguson is eloquent on the subject of capitalists. This, he assures me, is a capitalists’ war. Look, he cries, at the poor simps being butchered in France, all to fill the capitalists’ bags with gold! Even their own children have to go. Nothing is sacred to a capitalist save his ‘bags of gold.’ It is the mark of the true romantic to be preoccupied with symbols, and Mr. Ferguson is partial to the gorgeous imagery of modern anarchism.
However, it must not be assumed that Mr. Ferguson and I are deadly enemies because of the incompatibility of our ideals. He is graciously pleased to overlook what he calls my funny ideas, and rewards me with thumbnail sketches of episodes in his career. It was so on this occasion as we sailed out to join the squadron off Askalon. Mr. de Courcy having gone up to get his supper, and the telegraph having rung ‘full ahead,’ Mr. Ferguson fell into a vein of reminiscence, and told me tales of ‘the happy days that are no more,’ With one eye on the revolution telegraph and the other on the steamand air-gauges, I listen to his odyssey. For there is a streak of poetry in him, as I have endeavored to adumbrate. All unconsciously, and with a far look in his pale blue eye, he beholds a picture. From the hell of the Present he sees a happy Past and a heavenly Future. He can communicate atmosphere, and when he remarks that once, in Liverpool, it came over him that he ought to settle down and be respectable, I am alert at once. I could see it ‘coming over him’ —the footsore, jaded wanderer treading the bright dirty streets; the smart pretty landlady’s daughter leading him by swift short stages to see how desirable was a small house at Softon Park or Garston; the patient search for employment, ending in a job on the shore-gang of the White Star Line. For a fortnight all went well. He was thinking of getting engaged.
To my disappointment, he slides all too easily from this momentous and interesting subject to a whimsical description of his adventures on the mammoth liners on which he was employed. He tells how, while working in the lowpressure valve-chest of the Gigantic’s port engine, he slipped and fell through the exhaust-pipe into the main condenser. He pictures the consternation of his helper, who had gone for a tool, when he found his mate vanished; the efforts to locate his muffled shouts; the tappings of hammers, the footsteps, the hoarse murmurs broken by an occasional ‘Hi! where are yer, mate?’ and his replies, stifled by his own laughter. It is perfectly plain that this sort, of thing was more to Mr. Ferguson’s taste than humdrum industry. When he was finally fished out at the end of a coil of rope, the leading hand threatened him with dismissal if it occurred again; for the leading hand was not romantic, only a soul besotted with efficiency.
And on the Oceanic again these two fell foul of each other, for Mr. Ferguson lost his way on the boiler-tops. He asserts that there were hundreds of boilers on that ship, all alike, and thousands of ladders. He grew fascinated with the problem as he groped up and down, through cross-bunkers, in and out of fan-rooms, forever encountering fresh boilers, but never the one where he had been working. But the third time that leading hand found him far from his job, he became explosive and personal, led Mr. Ferguson firmly by the arm through interminable corridors, until his boiler stood dimly revealed through a manhole, and informed him that it was his last chance. Mr. Ferguson grew resentful. As if he could help it! Silly, he calls it, to get in a rage over a little thing like that. However, that’s the sort of man he was. Only got himself disliked. And just out of petty spite, he orders him, Mr. Ferguson to wit, to work all night, overtime on a rush job.
Mr. Ferguson has strong views on night-work, as I can testify. He imagines the capitalists ought to be satisfied when they have spoiled a man’s day, without gouging into the hours of rest. Hurrying to his lodgings, he had his tea, and the landlady’s daughter made him up a packet of sandwiches and a can of cocoa, to be warmed on a steampipe when he needed it. You can see them there, slogging away through the night, stripping an auxiliary engine and erecting the new one, pausing about midnight for a snack and a smoke. And while the engineer on watch is having forty winks, one of the gang becomes confidential with Mr. Ferguson and reveals a discovery. One of the storerooms where electrical gear is kept has been left open. And he knows a scrapmetal merchant who — and so on.
Mr. Ferguson becomes vague just here. Well, I know how it is, he suggests. One thing leads to another. You can easily pack a lot of sheet rubber round you and nobody be any the wiser. Nobody was, apparently, until a day or so later. Mr. Ferguson arrived home for a late supper, having been standing treat to the boys after a boxing tournament, when Maggie — that was his girl, you see — met him at the door with wide serious eyes. Two men had called to see him, she said, and she knew one of them was a detective — she’d seen him before when she’d been to the station about having had her pocket picked. What had he done?
Well, by now, Mr. Ferguson knew well enough what he had done, and it is not in the nature of true romantics to deny anything. With Maggie’s eyes searching his face and Maggie’s hands clutching his coat, he backed against the little near-mahogany hall-stand and admitted that it might be awkward if they came back again, as they would when they could n’t find him elsewhere. They stood there, those two — the girl in an agony of sorrow and fear, with a maternal desire to shield the big silly, he devising some way of quitting. And as they stood there, they heard footsteps at the end of the silent street. Mr. Ferguson must have stiffened. He says, in his Celtic way, that he felt his hair move. Maggie stuck his cap on and dragged him through the kitchen into the scullery. She opened the door softly, pushed him out, and followed him into the tiny yard. Quick, over the wall at the bottom, into the next garden! The house is empty; go through and out of the front door into the side street. Run! Yes, write and she’d tell him — run! And she darted into the house to face the future alone.
Mr. Ferguson followed her instructions. I am convinced that he enjoyed himself immensely that evening. He dropped over the wall and put his foot through a cucumber-frame, it is true, but the light crash and jingle only set off two cats at maniac speed. He also fell over something in the hall of the empty house and skinned his knuckles. He says he has often wondered what it was. Once in the quiet suburban street, with two lovers saying good-night under a lamp-post far down on the other side, he walked unobtrusively away. It was characteristic of him that he did n’t write, and therefore never heard any more of the affair. He rode on a trolleycar away out into the suburbs of Liverpool, and then took a train a little way farther. It was autumn, and he began to walk through England.
We are interrupted by a youthful sailor, who comes down with a chit from the bridge, a chit which informs me that, having joined the other vessels of the squadron, we are ordered to proceed at ten knots, and the commander will appreciate it if we can maintain the revolutions at fifty, so as to keep station. Mr. Ferguson laughs satirically, and says the old feller ought to boil his head. This after the youthful sailor has gone up again. I agree that a ship forty years old is a problem when it comes to ‘keeping station.’ ‘There you are!’ says Mr. Ferguson, and conceives his animus against all constituted authority to be only too well founded. ‘And here comes Pinhead Percy,’ he mutters, as Mr. de Courcy descends, a goldtipped cigarette in his lips, and with an engaging smile. Leaving him to carry on, we go up to dinner.
(To be concluded)