A MATTER OF ROUTINE.
There was little or no wind, and only a gentle swell from the south. The ships rose and fell lazily as they steamed to the south-eastward, while only occasionally a handful of light spray fell across a sunlit forecastle, drying almost as it fell. But if the air was still the ships were certainly not so—as vast as a great moving town, the Fleet was travelling at the speed of a touring car. From the Flagship's foretop the view was extraordinary. Destroyers or light cruisers when pressed seem to be slipping along with something always in hand and with no apparent effort; a battleship, however, seen under the same conditions, makes one think of St Paul's Cathedral being towed up the Thames; she carries a "bone in her teeth," and her bows seem to settle low and her stern to rise. In this case the Grand Fleet was hurrying—moving south-east at full speed, because—well, they might just cut the enemy off; but the Hun was canny, and knew exactly the danger-limit in this game of "Prisoner's base."
The visibility was good, and as far as the eye could see the water was torn and streaked with the wakes of ships—cruisers, destroyers, battleships, and craft of every queer and imaginable warlike use. The great mass of steel hulls had one thing only in common—they could steam, and could steam always with something in hand above the "speed of the Fleet." From the ships came a faint brown haze of smoke that shimmered with heat and made the horizon dance and flicker. From the foretop, looking aft, it seemed incredible that there could be any power existing which could drive such a huge beamy hulk as the Flagship was, and leave such a turmoil of torn and flattened water astern. Battleships in a hurry are certainly not stately; an elderly matron in pursuit of a tram-car shows dignity compared to any one of them. But if they looked flustered and undignified, they carried a cargo which no one could smile at. "Battleships are mobile gun-platforms." I forget who said that—probably Admiral Mahan—but it is true; and if these ships showed an ungraceful way of moving, they certainly complied with the definition of gun-platforms. The low-sloped turrets all pointed the same way—out to the starboard bow. The long tapering guns moved up and down, following the horizon against the roll, and sighing as they moved, as if the hydraulic engines were weary of the long wait. On the tops of the turrets the figures of officers could be seen pacing to and fro across the steel—checking now and then to stare at the southern horizon. Somewhere out there beneath the blazing sun were the scouts, and beyond them—well, that question was one that the scouts were there to answer. The smaller ships in sight seemed like motor-cycle pacers escorting a long-distance foot-race. With their sterns low and their bow-waves running back close to the beautifully-shaped hulls, they gave the impression of sauntering along at their leisure and of looking impatiently over their shoulders at the big heavy-weights astern of them. A destroyer division suddenly heeled and altered course like redshank, each ship turning as the leader swung, and with a fountain of spray at their sharp high stems they cut through the intervals of a Battleship division, swinging up again together to the south-east course as they cleared. The watcher in the top had seen the trick before, but familiarity could not prevent his eyes from widening a little as he saw the stem of his next astern throw up a little cloud of spray as it met the foaming V-wake that followed a few yards from the leader's counter. He smiled as he thought of an old picture in 'Punch' of a crowd of small children urging and dragging a huge policeman along to a scene of disturbance. The darting, restless destroyers seemed like the small bloodthirsty boys—hurrying on ahead to see the fun, and then back to wait for the ponderous but willing upholder of the law—anxious to miss nothing of the excitement.
The Fleet was running down to intercept, and might be in action at any moment if the luck held, but there was no signalling or outpouring of instructions. There was just nothing to be said. Everybody knew more or less what the tactical situation was; all knew that the enemy might be met with any time in the next few hours, but in the turrets the guns' crews proceeded with the all-important task of getting outside as much dinner as they could comfortably stow. The procedure of endeavouring to meet the High Sea Fleet and of dealing with it on sight had been rehearsed so often, that the real thing, if it came, would call for one signal only, and no more. Many prophets have said that the increase of Science and Applied Mechanics in the Navy would make men into mere slaves of machines, and into unthinking units. This is another theory which has been shown to be hopelessly wrong—certainly so in the Navy, as in it both officers and men are taught, and have to be taught, far more of the reasons for and the object aimed at in the Rules for Battle than ever Nelson thought it necessary to communicate to his subordinates in the last Great War. The Prussian system may be good, but it produces a bludgeon—ours produces the finest tempered blade.
The sight from the foretop was a thing that one would remember all one's life, and be thankful not to have missed. The almost incalculable value of the great mass of ships—the whirl of figures conjured up by a rough estimate of the collective horse-power and the numbers of men present; the attempt and failure to even count the actual ships in sight; the vision of a scared and wondering neutral tramp lying between the lines with engines stopped as the great masses of grey-painted steel went past her along the broad highroads of churned water,—this was the Fleet at sea; and the known fact that it would wheel, close, or spread at the word of one man, from the ships that foamed along four hundred yards away to those whose mastheads could only just be seen above the horizon, made the wonder all the greater. One thought of the thousands of eyes looking south in the direction of the big gun-muzzles, of the shells that the guns held rammed close home to the rifling, and of the thousands of brains that were turning over and over the old question, "Is it to be this time, or have they slipped in again?"...