II
One forenoon the Captain’s messenger came to the Gunroom to say that the Captain wished to see Mr. Sentley. After an absence of ten minutes, Sentley returned. They read in his face that he had good news. In his hand he carried a sheet from a signal pad.
“We are all to return to England immediately,” he said. “We shall have about a fortnight or three weeks of leave. Then we are to join the Colonsay for passage to Colombo, where we are to recommission the Pathshire, China Station.”
“All of us?” said Howdray. “What do you mean?”
“We junior snotties.”
“Not the others?”
“No.”
“Oh, damn! You lucky, lucky little devils!”
That night the Mess dined the junior midshipmen. As the Gunroom had been drawn together once before by the hope of battle, so was it now united by the prospect of parting. Wrongs were forgiven, enmities forgotten. Soon they would be saying of one another: “I was shipmates with him once.” If an association is to end, let it end sweetly.
Speeches were made. Tintern said, “I’ve always thought it odd that the Service should have a special name for a ship that isn’t mouldy and at cross-purposes. It sounds as if such ships were rare. And so they are nowadays, west of Suez. But the China Birds say that there are still Happy Ships on the China Station. A Happy Ship is a ship in which all the Messes get on with one another—a ship in which, among other things, there isn’t bad blood between Wardroom and Gunroom. And I hope the young gentlemen will get one. I ask you to drink to the health of the Pathshire, and may she be a Happy Ship!”
When the toast had been honoured and the wine passed once more, the Mess shouted at Krame for a speech. He rose slowly, and looked round him.
“As Tintern has been talking about a Happy Ship in the future,” he said, “I suppose the young gentlemen think it’s up to me to say something about their somewhat lurid past. There’s not much to be said—no excuses, or apologies, or that kind of thing. But there is this: a Happy Ship is a happy ship right through, and contrariwise. Nothing that has happened here has happened because of personal ill-will. It has happened because—because—Lynwood, what was that line I picked out of some stuff you were reading? I remember now. It has happened because we are ‘in the fell clutch of circumstance.’ I hope that in the better land to which they are going the young gentlemen will have more leave—not a few hours at a time, pub-loafing at Pompey or Gib., but real leave, clear away from the ship, and long enough to give them a chance not to be bloody-minded. Long leave is what the Service wants, gentlemen, says I, beatin’ the tub! Long leave is what we wishes the young gen’lemen, says us, liftin’ our glasses.”
Krame sits down amid a roar of applause. Presently Tintern goes to the piano and plays all the familiar songs. To-morrow this sing-song party will break up, never to reassemble again. Every tune is made richer by wine and sentiment—the Alphabet, Napoleon, Farewell and Adieu, Screw-Guns.
“If a man doesn’t work, why, we drills ’im and teaches ’im ’ow to behave;
If a beggar can’t march, why, we kills ’im an’ rattles ’im into ’is grave.
You’ve got to stand up to our business an’ spring without snatchin’ or fuss.
D’you say that you sweat with the field-guns? By God, you must lather with us. ’Tss! ’Tss!
For you all love the screw-guns....”
Thus Mr. Kipling to the tune of the Eton Boating Song. And now a round of drinks, and song again—a song whose immortal words are unpublished, whose tunes are various, whose name is the Barrack-Gate.
“... Then the wily Gym. Instructor ...
Just outside the Barrack-Gate.”
There follows a swift catalogue of the merits of a certain Princess whose home is in a few manuscripts of an Opera, rhymed wonderfully by the hand of a master, and sung to music by Sullivan. From this obscurity a swift return is made to the simplicity of The Wives, in which it is told how the Parson’s wife, strangely clad, decorated her hat with the midshipmen’s astronomical observations—
“And in one corner of her hat
She carried the Yearly Sights.
She carried the Yearly Sights, my boys,
And every one was there;
And in the other corner
Was the Book of Common Prayer.”
The evening wears on. Mandalay is sung as a tribute to the East. The room is heavy with smoke. The yellow lamp-shades that swung to and fro on those nights of Evolution seem to be swinging now, though the ship does not roll. The ship seems to roll though the sea is calm. The past is receding. Voices are loud. The rosy flush of wine takes all the sadness from farewell....
The Gunroom is being closed. The group that was leaning over Tintern’s shoulder has scattered. In the Chest Flat Ollenor’s voice is heard repeating the last chorus, and at the piano Tintern, almost alone now, is singing to himself a song that is not a Gunroom song:
“Home is the sailor, home from sea,
And the hunter home from the hill.”