III. The Left Flank
The north-east wind carried the steady grumble of gunfire across the sand-dunes and far out to sea.
The foremost gun’s crew of a British destroyer stood huddled in the lee of the gun-shield with their duffle hoods pulled down over their foreheads. The sea was calm, and the stars overhead shone with frosty brilliance. A figure groped its way forward with a bowl of cocoa, and joined the group round the breech of the gun. They drank in turn, grunting as the warmth penetrated into their interiors.
The distant gunfire swelled momentarily. Above the horizon far ahead intermittent gleams marked the activity of searchlight and star-shell.
“Them’s our guns,” said one of the cocoa-drinkers. He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his coat, and stared ahead. It never seemed to occur to any of them that they might equally well be German guns.
“That’s right,” confirmed the sight-setter. “There’s guns going like that for ’undreds an’ ’undreds of miles. Right away up from the sea. Me brother’s there—somewhere....” For a moment they ruminated over a mental picture of the sight-setter’s brother, a mud-plastered stoical atom, somewhere along those hundreds of miles of wire and bayonets that hedged civilisation and posterity from the Unnamable. “Switzerland to the sea,” said the speaker. He jerked the breech-lever absent-mindedly towards him, and closed it again with a little click.
“An’ then we takes on,” said a loading number. “Us an’ these ’ere.” He tapped the smooth side of a lyddite shell lying in the rack beside him.
“An’ this ’ere,” said the man who had brought the cocoa. He thrust forward the cumbersome hilt of a cutlass at his hip. The starlight gleamed dully on the steel guard.
“You won’t use that to-night, my son,” said the gunlayer. “We ain’t goin’ to ’ave no Broke an’ Swift song an’ dance to-night.” He stared out into the clear darkness. “We couldn’t never git near enough.” Nevertheless, he put out his hand in the gloom and reassured himself of the safety of a formidable bar of iron well within reach. Once in the annals of this war had a British destroyer come to grips at close quarters with the enemy; thereafter her crew walked the earth as men apart, and the darlings of the high gods.
The night grew suddenly darker. It was the mysterious hour that precedes the dawn, when warring men and sleeping animals stir and bethink them of the morrow. The destroyer slackened speed and turned, the wide circle of her wake shimmering against the darkness of the water. As they turned, other dark shapes were visible abeam, moving at measured distance from each other without a light showing or a sound but the faint swish of the water past their sides. The flotilla had reached the limit of its beat, and swung round to resume the unending patrol.
Once from the starry sky came the drone of a seaplane moving up from its base that lay to the southward. Another followed, another and another, skirting the coast and flying well out to sea to avoid the searchlights and anti-aircraft guns of the shore batteries. They passed invisible, and the drone of their engines died away.
“Our spottin’ machines,” said the sight-setter. “They’re going up to spot for the monitors at daylight.” He jerked his head astern to the north, and yawned. “I reckon I’d sooner ’ave this job than screenin’ monitors wot’s bombardin’ Ostend. I don’t fancy them 15-inch German shell droppin’ round out o’ nuffink, an’ no chance of ’ittin’ back.”
“They knocks seven-bells outer Ostend, them monitors,” said another. “We ain’t knockin’ ’ell out o’ nobody, steamin’ up an’ down like one of them women slops in the ’Orseferry Road.” The speaker blinked towards the east where the stars were paling.
“We’re all doin’ our bit,” said the gunlayer, “an’ one o’ these nights....” He shook his head darkly. The dawn crept into the sky: the faces beneath the duffle hoods grew discernible to each other, unshaven, pink-lidded, pinched with cold. Objects, shining with frozen dew, took form out of the black void. The outline of the bridge above them, and the mast behind, stood out against the sky; the head and shoulders of the captain, with his glasses to his eyes, appeared above the bridge screen, where he had been all night, watchful and invisible. The smoke trailing astern blotted out the rest of the flotilla following in each other’s wake. Aft along the deck, guns’ and torpedo-tubes’ crews began to move and stamp their feet for warmth.
Away to starboard a circular object nearly awash loomed up and dropped astern. Another appeared a few minutes later, and was succeeded by a third. Mile after mile these dark shapes slid past, stretching away to the horizon. They were the buoys of the Channel barrage, supporting the mined nets which are but a continuation of four hundred miles of barbed wire.
The day dawned silvery grey and disclosed a diffused activity upon the face of the waters. Two great hospital ships, screened by destroyers as a sinister reminder to the beholder of Germany’s forfeited honour, slid away swiftly towards the French coast. A ragged line of coastwise traffic, barges under sail, lighters in tow of tugs, and deepladen freighters hugging the swept channel along the coast, appeared as if by magic out of “the bowl of night”; from the direction of the chalk-cliffs came a division of drifters in line ahead. They passed close to the destroyers, and the figure on the leading destroyer’s bridge bawled through a megaphone. They were curt incoherencies to a landsman—vague references to a number and some compass bearings. A big man on board the drifter flagship waved his arm to indicate he understood the message; which was to the effect that one of the barrage buoys appeared to have dragged a little, and the net looked as if it was worth examining.
The drifters spread out along the line of buoys and commenced their daily task of overhauling the steel jackstays, testing the circuits of the mines, repairing damage caused by the ebb and flow of the tide and winter gales.
Half an hour later the destroyers encountered their reliefs, transferred the mantle of responsibility for the left flank with a flutter of bunting and a pair of hand-flags, and returned to their anchorage, where they were greeted by a peremptory order from the signal station to complete with oil fuel and report when ready for sea again. A coastal airship had reported an enemy submarine in the closely guarded waters of the Channel, and along sixty miles of watchful coast the hunt was up.
“My brother Alf,” said the sight-setter disgustedly, as he kicked off his seaboots and prepared for an hour’s sleep, “’e may be famil’r wif tools wot I don’t know nothin’ about. But there’s one thing about ’em—when ’e lays ’em down, ’e bloody-well lays ’em down.”