MAJOR HARDY AND PADRE MONTY FINISH THE VOYAGE
§1
But I must hurry on. Here am I dawdling over what happened indoors in the minds of two boys, while out of doors nations were battling against nations, and the whole world was in upheaval. Here am I happily describing so local a thing as the effort of a big-hearted priest to rebuild our spiritual lives on the quiet moments of the Mass and the strange glorious mystery of penance, while the great Division which captured the beaches of Cape Helles had been brought to a standstill by the impregnable hill of Achi Baba, and uncounted troopships like our own were pouring through the Mediterranean to retrieve the fight.
On with the war, then. One morning I was wakened by much talking and movement all over the boat, and by Doe's leaping out of his top bunk, kicking me in passing, and disappearing through the cabin door. Back he came in a minute, crying: "You must come out and see this lovely, white dream-city. We're outside Malta."
I rushed out to find Valetta, the grand harbour of Malta, on three sides of us. We were anchored; and the hull of the Rangoon, which looked very huge now, was surrounded by Maltese bumboats.
Shore leave was granted us. And, ashore, we hurried through the blazing heat to visit the hospitals and learn from the crowds of Gallipoli sick and wounded something about the fighting at Helles. These cheery patients shocked our optimism by telling us that it was hopeless to expect the capture of the hill of Achi Baba by frontal assault and that any further advance at Cape Helles was scratched off the programme. The hosts of troops that were passing through Malta must, they surprised us by declaring, be destined for some secret move elsewhere than at Helles, for there was no room for them on the narrow tongue of land beneath Achi Baba.
"We're wild to know what's in the wind," said a sister. "The stream of transports has never stopped for the last few days."
That we could well believe. There were two huge liners crammed with khaki figures in the harbour that morning.
"We are going to win, I imagine?" asked Monty, with a note of doubt.
"O lord, yes," replied a superbly bonny youngster, without a right arm. "But I don't envy you going to the Peninsula. It's heat, dust, flies, and dysentery. And Mudros is ten times worse."
"What's Mudros?" asked I.
"Mudros," broke in Doe, blushing, as he aired his classical learning, "is a harbour in the Isle of Lemnos famous in classical—"
"Mudros," interrupted the one-armed man, proud of his experience, "is a harbour in the Island of Lemnos, and the filthiest hole—"
"Mudros," continued Doe, refusing to be beaten, "is a harbour in the Isle of Lemnos, which is the island where Jason and the Argonauts landed, and found Hypsipele and the women who had murdered their husbands. Jupiter hurled Vulcan from Heaven, and he fell upon Lemnos. And it's sad to relate that Achilles and Agamemnon had a bit of a dust-up there."
"Well, that may be," said the one-armed hero, rather crushed by Doe's weighty lecture. "But you're going to Mudros first in your transport, and you'll probably die of dysentery there."
"Good Lord," said I.
We selected the ward where we would have our beds when we came down wounded, and the particular pretty sister who should nurse us; and went out into the dazzling sun. Having climbed to a high level that overlooked the harbour, we leaned against a stone parapet, and examined the French warships that slept, with one eye open, up a narrow blue waterway. For Malta in 1915 was a French naval base.
"Sad to see them there, sir," said a convalescent Tommy, pointing to the grey cruisers flying the tricolour. "They've been bottled up there, since the submarines appeared off Helles and sank the Majestic and t'other boats. There's only destroyers loafing around Cape Helles now, sir."
"Great Scott, is that so?" asked Monty. "But I suppose we're going to win?"
"O lord, yes," said the Tommy.
We got back to the Rangoon just before sundown. And, when the sun began to soften and to bathe the white buildings of Valetta in ruddy hues, our siren boomed out its farewell, and two English girls in a small boat waved an incessant good-bye. Crowds gathered to brandish handkerchiefs, as our transport crept away, with the boys singing: "Roaming in the gloaming on the banks of the Dardanelles," and yelling: "Are we downhearted? NO! Are we going to win? YES!"
"Well, that's the last of Malta," murmured Jimmy Doon. "Another landmark in our lives gone."
§2
Two days' run brought us outside Alexandria. And the confoundedly learned Doe, pointing out to me the pink and yellow town upon the African sands, among its palms and its shipping, said: "Behold the city of Alexander the Great, of Julius Cæsar and Cleopatra; the home of the Greek scriptures; and the see of the great saints, Clement, Athanasius, and Cyril."
So I did what he wanted. I called him a Classical Encyclopædia, at which he looked uncomfortable and pleased.
It was Alexandria right enough. We had reached at last the base of the Dardanelles fight, and entered the outskirts of that ancient imperial world, which the old Colonel had told us was the theatre of the campaign.
Travelling very slowly, we steamed into the huge harbour. And soon we were moored against one of its forty quays, and being addressed in an infernal jangle of tongues by hundreds of begging Arabs who came rushing through the guns, limbers and field kitchens arrayed on the quay.
More anxious than ever for news of the fight, we applied for shore leave, and, after lunch, went down the gangway, and trod the soil of Africa for the first time.
At once, like an overpowering personality, the East rose up to greet us, oppressing us with its merciless Egyptian sun and its pungent smell of dark humanity. Heady with the sun, and sick with the smell, we found ourselves in one of the worst streets of Alexandria, the "Rue des Sœurs," a filthy thoroughfare of brothels masquerading as shops, and of taverns, which, like the rest of the world, had gone into military dress and called themselves: "The Army and Navy Bar," "The Lord Kitchener Bar," and "The Victory Bar."
Phew! the sweat and the stench! The East was a vapour bath. What a climate for a white man to make war in! And yet everywhere in this city of Alexander and Athanasius, British and Australian soldiers sauntered on foot or drove government waggons through the streets. Sick and wounded, too, roamed abroad in their blue hospital uniforms. Only too pleased to display before three eager novices their superior acquaintance with Gallipoli, they told us the story we had heard at Malta: the Helles army, firmly stopped by the hill of Achi Baba, was melting away in the atrocious heat; but some startling new venture was expected, for the forty quays of Alexandria had been scarcely sufficient to cater for the troops and stores that had put in there; and all the hospitals in Egypt had been emptied to admit twenty thousand casualties.
We hired a buggy, and drove back through the same odorous street to the dockyard, and, having given the thief of an Arab driver a third of his demands, went straight to our cabins to rinse our mouths out.
Next day at sundown, the siren boomed good-bye. Perhaps there was a military reason for it, but we always left these ports at sunset. It was sunset, as we steamed out of Malta; and now, with the sky flushed and the air rose-tinted, we began to slip gently out of the harbour, amid cheers and handwavings from every ship that we passed. We were picking our course between the ships, when Monty plucked my sleeve, and, pointing to a home-bound liner, murmured:
"Beauty, Rupert."
I looked, and saw what he meant. For in the big liner's bows two tiny English children clad in white, a little boy and girl, waved mechanically under the instructions of their sweet-faced English mother, who, though a young one, looked with a mother's eyes at our yellow rows of helmeted lads, and waved the more energetically (I doubt not) as she strove to keep back her tears. In the sad eyes of that youthful mother I saw looking out at us the maternal love of her sex for all the sons of woman. She was the last Englishwoman that many of these boys ever saw.
As we drew near the entrance of the harbour, a cheery Englishman was swept past in a white-sailed craft, and called out, as the wind bore him away: "Good-bye, lads. Do your duty, lads. Give 'em hell ev'ry time." Almost the next minute he was a white speck among the shipping of the harbour, and we were out in the open sea.
§3
The Rangoon had taken aboard at Alexandria a number of new officers who, after being wounded on Gallipoli and treated in Egypt, were now returning as fit for duty. One showed a long, white scar across his scalp, where a bullet had just missed his brain. Another, who had still two bullets in his body, had been with our schoolfellow Moles White in the River Clyde on the great April morning. These were people to be stared at and admired. They occupied exactly the same position to us as the bloods did when we were at school. They spoke with ease and grace of Mudros Harbour, of the great April landing at Helles, of the Eski Line, the River Clyde, the Gully Ravine, and Asiatic Annie. We felt very near the trenches, when they thus tossed fabled names about in commonplace conversations. They never used the name "Gallipoli," but always "The Peninsula." We made a mental note of this.
And they affected very shrewd ideas about the surprise push that was coming off; but since they only nodded their heads wisely and refused to be drawn, we suspected that they knew no more about it than we did. They would point, with the pride of previous knowledge, to the purple-hilled islands of the Ægean that we were passing all day: Rhodes, and Patmos, and Mitylene. They laughed with damnable superiority at our extensive kit, declaring that for their part they had left everything at the base, and were carrying only a few pounds of necessaries to the Peninsula. Some of them walked the deck in private's uniform, maintaining that it was suicide to go to the Peninsula trenches in the distinctive dress of an officer. They were quite modest, simple folk, no doubt, but they certainly thought they were the only people who realised that there was a war on.
Jimmy Doon, who had heard nothing of his lost draft at Alexandria, and was much relieved thereby, became incorrigible when he smelt the whiff of the trenches brought by these heroes. He would invite our subscriptions to the daily sweepstake with the words: "Come along, fork out. Last few sweeps of your life." And he would take me aside and say: "I suppose I shall be daisy-pushing soon. Tedious, isn't it?"
Late one afternoon, when we were only an hour's run from Mudros, there came by wireless the inspiring news that solved the riddle of the chain of transports in the Mediterranean and the empty hospitals in Alexandria. The simple typed message that was pinned on the notice-board, and could scarcely be read for the crowds surrounding it, ran: "We have landed in strong force at Suvla Bay and penetrated seven miles inland. Ends."
A new landing, hurrah! April 25th over again! The miracle of Helles repeated at Suvla! Out with the maps to study the strategy of the move! The map showed us Suvla Bay far up the coast of the Peninsula, a long way behind Achi Baba. We measured seven miles, and decided that the Turks' communications with Achi Baba must have been cut. "Curse it," said an enthusiast, "we're just too late." We had visions of the Turkish Army flying from the Helles front in frantic efforts to escape the surrounding threatened by this landing in their rear. We saw them abandoning their impregnable positions at Achi Baba, abandoning the forts of the Narrows, and retreating, if they could elude destruction, upon Constantinople.
And while the strategists on deck were getting delirious in their prophecies, the ship steered a path round two outlying islets, and entered the deep indentation in Lemnos Island, which is the mighty, hill-locked harbour of Mudros. A little French destroyer, pearl-grey in the evening light, steamed past us, and the French sailors waved their arms, and danced a welcome to this troopship of their allies. The Rangoon yelled at them: "What price Suvla?" Some English sailors, towed past in coal barges, asked us whether we were downhearted, and we called back: "NO! What—price—SUVLA! Are we going to win? YES!"
Now, I ask you, have the subalterns an excuse, or have they not, for a rough-house this night? It's their last night aboard, for to-morrow morning the smaller boats will come and carry them to the deadly Peninsula: and it's the evening that has brought the news of the Suvla landing. Excuse or not, they fetch the money out of their pockets at dinner, and order the champagne before the soup is off the table. Jimmy Doon, whipping the golden cap off his magnum of "bubbly wine," says: "I've the horrible feeling I shall be dead this time to-morrow. Pass your glasses, damn you. Cheerioh! Many 'appy returns from the Great War—some day." "Cheerioh, Jimmy," we acknowledge. "'Appy days!"
And, when the hundred subalterns, who form the first sitting at dinner, vacate their places at the tables to make room for the seniors, who come in state to the second sitting, anyone who sees them rushing upstairs to the lounge, the bar, and the piano, knows that there will be noise before the clock is an hour older. It begins in the lounge: but the impulse of the spirit of riot is too strong for the rough-house to be localised there. It's the end of the voyage, and they must forthwith go and cheer the General. They must cheer the Captain. Above all they must cheer Major Hardy, the old sport! The mass of subalterns flows down the first flight of stairs to the square gallery which overlooks the dining saloon, like railings looking down into a bear-pit. And, like the bears, the seniors were feeding in the bottom of the saloon. They look up from their nuts and wine to see a hundred flushed young faces staring from the gallery at their meal.
"Three cheers for the General!" cries a voice in the gallery.
Three of the noisiest fill the ship. And, when a hundred British officers have yelled three cheers, it's in the nature of them to go on and sing: "For he's a jolly good fellow," and to finish up with a final cheer that leaves its forerunners nowhere. It's a way they have in the Army.
"Speech! Speech!" demand exalted voices.
The General rises: and that's an excuse, heaven help us, for more cheers, and "He's a jolly good fellow" all over again. The seniors are young enough to beat time on the tables by hammering with their spoons till the plates dance; and by tinkling their glasses like tubular bells. In the last cheer one major so far forgets himself—his name is Hardy—as to let go with a cat-call, after which he immediately retires into his monocle, and pretends he hasn't.
The General, who is a kindly old brigadier with twinkling eyes, says: "I can't make a speech, but I'll sing you a song." He raises his glass to the gallery, and to the hundred faces looking down, and starts in a wheezy tenor: "For they are jolly good fellows." He gets no further, but takes advantage of the tumult of cheering to resume his seat.
The Captain, a naval hero of the Helles landing, is put through it. And in his speech he says: "If the Navy is really the father and mother of the Army in this Gallipoli stunt, then I say—father and mother are proud of their children"—(cheers from the ship's officers). "The ships came as close in shore as possible—and always will, gentlemen, as long as you're on that plagued Peninsula—but, by God! it was the Army that left the shelter of the ships, and went through the blizzard of bullets on to the beaches of Cape Helles."
Can such a compliment be acknowledged otherwise than uproariously? Close your ears, if you can't stand a noise.
The Chief Officer is put through it. And by way of a speech he says: "Suppose, instead of cheering me, you cheer the fellows who have landed at Suvla?"
"Highland Honours!" yells a voice. And the seniors rise, stand upon their chairs, put one foot on the table amongst the plates, and, raising their glasses, join in the musical honours given to the new army at Suvla.
Major Hardy is called, and a speech demanded from him. Loudly applauded, he limps to the middle of the saloon, puts his monocle in his eye, and says one sentence: "I never heard such bloody nonsense in all my life." Releasing his monocle so that it falls on his chest, he limps back to his seat, and apologises to Monty.
The seniors having been thus sporting, it occurs to some bright young devil that it would be a graceful thing to sing "Home, sweet Home" to them, as they finish their meal. And "Home, sweet Home" leads naturally to "Auld Lang Syne," sung with linked arms and swaying bodies.
And then the crowd of subalterns, worked up by the licence allowed it, like a horse excited by a head-free gallop, returns in force to the lounge. The pianist strikes up "The Old Folks at Home." A Scotsman breaks in with the proclamation that It's oh! but he's longing for his ain folk; Though he's far across the sea, Yet his heart will ever be Away in dear old Scotland with his ain folk. And an Irishman, feeling that there's too much of Scotland about these songs, begins to publish the attractions of the hills of Donegal:
"And, please God, if He so wills,
Soon I'll see my Irish hills,
The hills of Donegal, so dear to me."
Then the piano rings out with ancient dance-tunes, and Harry Fenwick, prince of dancers, seizes Edgar Doe round the waist, and, clasping the slim youth to him, leads the boy (who's as graceful as a girl and as sinuous as a serpent) through the voluptuous movements of the latest dance. Up and down go their outstretched arms like a pump handle, but oh! so sweetly; round and round with eyes half-closed swirl their bodies; and, just as you think they are going round again, they surprise you by teasingly stepping out the music in a straight line across the lounge; and, when you least expect it, they are retracing dainty steps along the same straight line—always seductive, tantalising, enticing.
But stop the dance. Here arrives Major Hardy to a din of welcome. And under his instructions they burn the champagne corks, and therewith decorate their faces. One is ornamented with a pointed beard and the devil's horns, and turned into Mephistopheles. One is given an unshaven chin, and made to represent Moses Ikeystein. Another is a White-eyed Kaffir. And don't think Major Hardy omits himself. Not he. He is Hindenburg.
Jimmy Doon, I regret to say, is undoubtedly drunk. He is walking about seeking someone to fight. To my discomfiture he approaches me as his best friend, and therefore the one most likely to fight him.
"Will you fight?" says he. "There's a decent shap."
I try with a sickly laugh to appear at my ease, and answer: "No, damned if I will," blushing to the roots of my hair, and wishing the painful person would go away.
"And you call yourself a Christian!" retorts Jimmy; which provokes the rest of the subalterns to hold a court-martial on James Doon for being tight. And they court-martial Fishy Fielding, an ugly fellow, whose eyes are like a cod's. What for, you seek to know. Well, they court-martial him because of his face. Both culprits are found guilty.
At 1 a.m. Jimmy staggers to his cabin to rest a swimming head. But he doesn't go to sleep till he has summoned his steward, and instructed him to call him early in the morning—call him early—call him early, for he's to be Queen of the May.
§4
The riot had been still young when Doe entered the lounge from the deck, and, walking up to me, said:
"Come outside a minute."
He moved and spoke with the slight excitement and mysteriousness of one who had discovered something. I followed him out from the noise of the lounge into the silence of the deck.
"Come where it's quiet," he whispered.
We walked to the deserted bows.
"Now listen. Do you hear anything?"
"No," I answered, after awhile.
"Listen again. You won't catch it first go."
I strained my ears, while Doe stared at me.
"Yes, I hear it," I proclaimed at last. "Is it Helles, do you think, or Suvla?"
"I expect some of it is the old Turk trying to resist the invasion of Suvla."
For I had heard a distant throb in the air—no more—like a heart beating miles away. At times the throb became a rumble which could be felt rather than heard. Something in me jumped at the sound. The startled feeling was rather pleasing than otherwise. It was not a small thing to hear for the first time the guns of Gallipoli, to whose mouths our lives had been slowly drawing us during nineteen years.
§5
Padre Monty finished the voyage in his own style. Early the next morning he had a corporate farewell Mass for all his servers and his family. And this is the true story how Major Hardy chanced to limp to the service.
He retired early from the revels of the previous night, and, as Doe and I were getting into our bunks, we heard him in his cabin next door whistling "Home, sweet Home," while he disrobed. We heard the steward ask him:
"What time will you be called in the morning, sir?"
"What time?" answered the Major's voice, when he had finished the tune. "What time? Let's see. I say, Ray," he inquired through the wall, "this padre-fellow's got a service or something in the morning—what?"
"Yes, sir," shouted I.
"Some unearthly hour, seven or what?"
"Seven-thirty, sir."
"Ah yes," said the Major's voice, soft again, to the steward, "call me six-thirty."
"Yes, sir. Will you have shaving water then, sir?"
"Shaving water—what? Yes, surely." And the Major shouted through the wall: "We shave, don't we, Ray?"
"Well, yes, sir," agreed I.
"Of course," continued the Major, reproachfully, to the steward. "Bring shaving water. And there'll be the most deplorable row if it's not hot."
"Will you have a cup of tea to get up with, sir?" asked the steward.
"Tea? What? No, I don't think so. No, surely not." Once more he sought enlightenment through the wall. "We don't have tea, do we, Ray?"
"Well, no, sir. That's as you please."
"No. No tea, steward. Of course not. What nonsense!"
"Very good, sir. Good night, sir."
"Good night, steward.... You see, Ray," shouted Major Hardy, "I am a bit out of this church business. Must get into it again—what. And the padre's a good fellow."
In such wise Major Hardy half apologised to two boys for being present, and limped to the service.
Half a hundred others crowded the smoking room. This last Mass being what Monty called his "prize effort," he insisted on having two servers, and selected Doe and myself, whom he chose to regard as his "prize products." On either side of the altar we took our places, not now clad in white flannels, but uniformed and booted for going ashore. Monty, as he approached the altar, gave one quick, involuntary glance at his packed congregation, ready dressed for war, and slightly sparkled and flushed with pleasure.
After the Creed had been said, Monty turned to deliver a little farewell address. Very simply he told his hearers that, when in a few hours' time the boats came to take them to the Peninsula Beaches, they were to know that they were doing the right thing. There was a tense stillness, as he said with suggestive slowness: "I am only the lips of your Church. She has been with you on this ship, and striven not to fail you. And now to God's mercy and protection she commits you. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord give you His peace this day and evermore."
If Monty desired to fill the room with an unworldly atmosphere, and to raise the cloud "Shechinah" around his little altar, he knew by the solemn hush, as he turned to continue the Mass, that he had succeeded. And at the end of it all he added a farewell hymn, which the congregation rose from their knees to sing. Sung to the tune of "Home, sweet Home," like an echo from the purer parts of the previous night, its words were designed by Monty to linger for many a day in the minds of his soldier-servers.
"Dismiss me not Thy service, Lord,
But train me for Thy will:
For even I in fields so broad
Some duties may fulfil:
And I would ask for no reward
Except to serve Thee still."
So they sang: and they went out on to the sunlit deck trailing clouds of glory.
§6
It really did seem the end of the voyage, and the beginning of something utterly new—and something so dangerous withal that our pulse-rate quickened with suspense—when the Military Landing Officer came aboard, laden with papers, and, sitting at a table in the lounge, gave into the hands of boys, who yesterday were playing quoits-tennis, written orders to proceed at once to such places as W. Beach on Helles or the new front at Suvla.
"Here we take our tickets for the tumbrils," murmured Jimmy Doon, as we stood awaiting our turn. "Third single for La Guillotine."
And yet it was with a jar of disappointment that we heard the M.L.O. say to Doe, after consulting his papers:
"Stop at Mudros. Report to Rest Camp, Mudros East."
"Why, sir, am I not going to—" began Doe.
"Next, please. What name?" interrupted the M.L.O. There was war forty miles away, and no time to argue with a young subaltern. "What name, you?"
"Ray, sir. East Cheshires."
"Rest Camp, Mudros."
"But is it for long, sir?" ventured I.
"Next, please. What name, padre?"
"Monty," answered our friend. "East Cheshires."
"Report Rest Camp," promptly said the M.L.O., and, raising his voice, called to the waiting crowd: "All East Cheshire Details detained at Mudros."
"But I have to relieve—" began Monty.
"Next, please. What name?" the M.L.O. burst in, looking up into Jimmy Doon's face.
"Jimmy—I mean, Lieutenant Doon, Fifth East Lancs."
"Held up, Mudros. Report—"
"But my draft, sir, has—"
"Next, please."
And Jimmy came away, hoping he had heard the last of his draft. He joined our Cheshire group, which was discussing the latest thunderbolt.
"Lord, isn't it enormously unseemly?" he grumbled. "I'm left out, too. Why, I've been a year in the Army, and not yet seen a man killed. I hoped I was certain to see one now."
"You detestably gruesome little cad," said Monty.
"I wonder if it's for long," murmured Doe. "I'd take the risk of being killed rather than not be able to say I'd seen the great Cape Helles, or, failing Helles, this new Suvla front."
"As it is," grunted Jimmy, "we shall probably be at Mudros till the end of the world."
The M.L.O. had not been gone an hour before the Navy sent its pinnaces with large lighters in tow for conveying the first drafts to the Peninsula ferry-boats. Each pinnace was in command of a midshipman, generally a fair-haired English boy looking about fifteen. These baby officers, who gave their orders to wide-chested and bronzed Tars, old enough to be their fathers, were stared at by us with romantic interest. For there had been stories in England of the deeds of the middies in the famous First Landing at Helles, when they remained in the bows of the boats they commanded, scorning cover of any kind, as became British officers in charge of men.
After the lighters, the Snaefell, an old Isle of Man steamer, came alongside, and, having taken some hundreds of men aboard, edged away from us, while Major Hardy, his heart ever overthrowing his dignity, said wrathfully:
"Give 'em a cheer or something, damn you."
We raised a cheer. The men responded, though not very effectively, and cheered and waved as the Snaefell carried them away.
"They know what they're going to, poor lads," mumbled Major Hardy.
Next came the Redbreast, whose decks were soon as crowded as the Snaefell's had been. Major Hardy scanned them through his eyeglass, and then turned snuffily upon us and said:
"Damn your English reticence! Damn your unimaginative silence! Why don't you study the psychology of these boys and this moment?"
Leaning over the rail, he cried at the crowd on the Redbreast:
"Good-bye, lads. Let fly! Three cheers for the king! Let 'em go!"
The boys caught his enthusiasm, as boys always will, and followed his lead, cheering the king and singing: "For he's a jolly good fellow.... And so say all of us. With a hip-hip-hip-hurrah!"
And with them cheering and singing thus, the Redbreast slipped quietly away.
Major Hardy dropped his monocle on his chest. A good voyage—a jolly voyage—was over.
And now a little motor-launch puffed alongside to collect the Mudros Details: and we went down the Rangoon's hull to be ferried ashore. We were ferried, as you shall see, out of our dazzling news of the campaign into the darkness of collapsing things.