THE END OF THE VOYAGE.
PERHAPS the last week of the voyage was the longest of all.
From Las Palmas the Perseus ran into bad weather, and the Australians were sharply reminded that instead of their own hot December they were coming to English winter. Ice-cold gales blew day and night; the decks were constantly swept by drifting showers of sleety rain. It was often impossible to keep cabin port-holes open, even in the day-time, since the waves were high; and at night they were definitely closed. Wally, who had opened his on a night that was deceptively calm, was found by Jim “awash,” a wave having entered and deluged everything. Wally was equally apologetic and wrathful; he paddled in the chilly flood, rescuing damp boxes from under the berths.
“I’m awfully sorry, old man,” he said penitently. “The cabin was so horrid stuffy—and the waves seemed quiet. I think”—hopefully—“that my things have got the worst of the mess, anyhow.”
“I wish you’d come out of that and get dry socks on,” said Jim, laughing. “You look like an old pelican, wading round there! Here’s Scott—he’ll fix it up.” They fled, leaving the flood to the much-enduring steward, who had probably grappled with such emergencies before.
The evenings were the worst time. By nightfall the closed-up ship was unbearably airless; rather than remain below, it was better to face the dripping decks, to find a comparatively sheltered corner in the inky gloom, and there to sit, wrapped in mackintoshes and rugs, until bedtime—when the keen salt wind would have effectually made every one sleepy. They woke up heavy-headed, and fled back to the deck as soon as dressing could be hurried through. No one could possibly call the deck comfortable, but at least it was airy—though, perhaps, too airy.
News came now each morning by wireless; unsatisfactory news, for the most part, since it told but little and spoke only of the long winter deadlock just commencing. Still, it was something, and the passengers clustered round the notice-board after breakfast, reading the scrawled items hungrily. Daily the feeling of tension increased, as the ship ploughed her way to the end of her long journey. It was harder than ever to be cooped up in idleness when so much was happening just ahead; so much waiting to be done.
They saw no warships, yet they knew that the watch was all round them, vigilant and sleepless. Daily the wireless operator heard the echo of their signals, telling nothing except that the grey watchdogs of the seas were somewhere near, hidden in the veil of mist through which they went. It was hard to realise, so lonely did the Perseus seem, that her position was known—that, somewhere, preparations and plans were being made, of which she was the centre, although even her captain knew nothing. Three days off the English coast the invisible Powers-That-Be spoke to her.
“Orders!” said Jim, dashing into his father’s cabin, where Mr. Linton and Norah were endeavouring to pack his belongings. “No London or Liverpool for us, thank goodness! We’re all to be landed at Falmouth. It means a day less at sea.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard for a good while,” said Mr. Linton. “Six weeks at sea during war-time is enough for any man. Wireless orders, I suppose?”
“Yes—the captain won’t disclose whether they’re from Government or from the agents—but the officers believe it’s Government, and that the ship is going straight to Brest or Cherbourg with her foodstuffs, as soon as she gets rid of us. We get in at daylight on Monday.” He rushed off to find Wally.
They could, indeed, have got in on Sunday night, but for the war regulations—that no ships should enter an English port between sunset and sunrise; so, from evening on Sunday, the Perseus dawdled along, knowing that she must kill time, and preferring to do it in the safety of open ocean rather than off a rock-bound coast. Then, as if the sea wanted a final diversion with them, a fog came up, and the officers spent an anxious night, “dodging about” in the mist and looking for the unfamiliar entrance to Falmouth Harbour—all the time in dread of hearing breakers on a near shore. Two days before, they found later, a ship had gone on the rocks during the night. The Cornish coast stretches harsh hands to trap the unwary.
Fortune, however, befriended the Perseus. Towards morning the fog lifted, and the harbour entrance showed clearly. Norah, lying awake in her berth, saw through her port-hole a rugged headland—and almost immediately a blinding flash filled her cabin with so bright a light that for a moment it seemed on fire. It passed away as quickly as it had come; and Norah, springing to the port-hole, saw a dim coast and powerful searchlight that went to and fro across the entrance. Not even a fishing-dinghy could have slipped in unperceived by its white ray. Then a black funnel came so close to her face that she jumped back in astonishment. Looking down, she could see, below, the deck of a little gunboat, where were men in blue uniforms. A curt voice was hailing in tones of crisp authority.
“What ship are you, and where from?”
“The Perseus—from Australia.”
“Last port?”
“Las Palmas.”
“What are you doing in here?”
“Wireless orders.” Norah smiled a little at the evident note of grievance in Captain Garth’s voice—as who should say, “I never asked to come!”
The gunboat moved on, until it was directly under the bridge. Norah could hear curt instructions as to anchoring. Then the fierce little grey boat darted away across the harbour.
She dressed hastily. Everything had been left ready overnight, and her little cabin wore a strangely cheerless aspect, denuded of all its homelike touches and with labelled and corded luggage lying about. Jim and Wally found her ready when they looked in on their way to the deck.
“Put on your biggest coat,” Jim said. “It’s colder than anything you ever dreamed of. To think they’re probably having bush-fires on Billabong!”
“I wish we had one here!” said Wally, shivering.
There were yellow lights still showing in the houses round the harbour, but daylight had come, and soon they began to twinkle out. It was a bare coast, with a grey castle on one headland—behind it, on a long rise, a dense cluster of huts that spoke of military encampment. The harbour itself was full of ships; among them, the Perseus, largest of them all, was going dead slow. The crew could be heard exchanging greetings with deck-hands engaged in morning tasks on vessels lying at anchor—question and answer ran back and forth; war news, curiosity about the long voyage, and often, “Goin’ to enlist, now you’re home?” Every one was excited and happy; the crew were beaming over their work; the stewards—most of whom had declared their intention of enlisting—wild with joy at the thought of home after their long months of absence.
The Australians drew together a little; there was something in the bleak grey December morning, in the cheery bustle and excitement, that made them suddenly alone and homesick—homesick for great trees and bare plains, for scorching sunlight and the green and gold splendour of the Bush.
“Doesn’t it seem a long way away?” Norah said, very low; and Jim and Wally, knowing quite well what she meant, nodded silently. To them, too, home was a great way off.
They hurried through an early breakfast, and came again on deck to find the anchor down for the last time, and the Perseus lying at rest. An official launch was alongside; and presently all the passengers were mustered in the saloon, to answer to their names and declare their nationality and business. It was a war precaution, but a perfunctory one; as Wally remarked, the late Mr. Smith would have had no difficulty whatever in passing with full marks.
Then came good-byes, beginning with the captain, somewhat haggard after his final vigil, and ending with little Tommy Field, who insisted on attaching himself to Norah, and was with difficulty removed by his parents. A tender was alongside; great piles of luggage were being shot down to it. There were many delays before the passengers, blue and shivering, were ushered down the gangway to the tossing deck below.
Norah looked back as the tender steamed off slowly. Far above them towered the mighty bulk of the Perseus, as it had towered at Melbourne so many weeks before. Then it had seemed strange and unfriendly; now it had changed; it was all the home she knew, in this cold, grey land. She had a moment’s wild desire to go back to it.
“Well, I am an idiot,” Wally said, beside her. “For weeks I’ve been aching to get off that old ship—and now that I’m off, I feel suddenly like a lost foal, and I want to go back and hide my head in my cabin! Do you feel like that?”
“ ’M,” said Norah, nodding very hard. “England feels very queer and terrifying, all of a sudden, doesn’t it?”
“Don’t you bother your little head,” said Jim. “We’ll worry through all right.”
Ashore there came a long Customs delay, since enthusiastic officials insisted on having a lengthy hunt through luggage for revolvers, which were liable to confiscation. They waited in a huge shed, which smelt of many things, none of them pleasant. Finally they were released, and made their way through a bewildering maze of rough buildings and railway lines, until they found themselves at the station at Falmouth, where a special train awaited them.
It was all strange to the Lintons. The very accent of the Cornish folk around them was unintelligible; the houses, packed closely together, as unfamiliar as the bleak landscape and the leafless trees—trees that Norah considered dead until she suddenly realised that she was no longer in Australia, where a leafless tree is a dead tree, and where there is no long winter sleep for Nature. These trees were bare, but dense with growth of interlaced boughs and twigs; not beaten to gaunt skeletons, like the Australian dead forest giants. Norah found that in their beauty of form and tracery there was something more exquisite than in their spring leafage.
“Don’t the houses look queer!” Jim said. “We’ve been travelling for ever so long, and I haven’t seen a single verandah!”
Gradually, as the day wore on, the rain drifted up in a grey cloud, blotting out all the cold landscape. It blew aside now and then, and showed empty fields, divided by bare hedges; an emptiness that puzzled the Australians, until they realised that they were in a country where all cattle must be housed in winter. The fields, too, were astonishing: quaint, irregularly shaped little patches, tiny beside their memories of the wide paddocks of their own big land. The whole country looked like a chessboard to their unaccustomed eyes; the great houses, among their leafless trees, inexpressibly gaunt and bleak.
Then, so soon after luncheon that they exclaimed in astonishment, darkness came down and electric lights flashed on throughout the train. The conductor came in to pull all blinds down carefully.
“War regulations, sir,” he said in answer to Mr. Linton. “No trains allowed to travel showin’ lights now, for fear of an attack by aircraft—and goin’ over bridges they turns the lights off altogether. Makes travellin’ dull, sir.”
“It sounds as though it should make it exciting,” said Mr. Linton.
“Might, if the aeroplanes came, sir,” said the conductor, laconically. “They do say them Zeppelins is goin’ to shake things up in England. But they ain’t come yet, an’ England ain’t shook up. Might be as well if she wur.” He went on his mission of darkness.
The slow day drew to a close. The train made few stoppages, and travelled swiftly; but it was late before the long journey across England was over, and they began to slacken down. Peering out, Norah and the boys saw a dimly-lit mass of houses, so solid a mass, so far-reaching, that they were almost terrifying. They were gaunt houses, tall and grey, crowned with grimy chimney-pots; for miles they ran through them, finding never a break in their close-packed squares. Then came more lights and a grinding of brakes as they drew up; outside the train, raucous voices of porters.
“Paddington! Paddington!”
“London at last!” said Mr. Linton.
Presently they were packed into a taxi, whizzing along through dim streets. The taxi-lights were darkened; there were few electric lights, and all the upper parts of their glass globes had been blackened, so that hostile aircraft, flying overhead, should find no guiding beams. Lamps in shop windows were carefully shaded.
It was a weird city, in its semi-darkness of war. The streets were full of clamour—rattling of traffic, sharp ringing of tram-bells and the hooting of motors, and, above every other sound the piercing cries of newsboys—“Speshul! War Speshul!” Motor-buses, great red structures that towered like cars of Juggernaut, rattled by them, their drivers darting in and out among the traffic with amazing skill. Taxi-cabs went by in a solid stream. The pavements were a dense mass of jostling, hurrying people. And in whatever direction they looked were soldiers—men in khaki, with quiet, purposeful faces.
“Heaps and heaps of them aren’t a day older than I am!” Wally declared, gleefully, bringing his head in. “Look at that little officer over there! Why, I might be his uncle! If they are taking kids like that, Jim, they can’t refuse you and me!”
“They won’t refuse you,” David Linton said, gravely, looking at the brown faces—Jim’s, quiet, but full of determination; Wally’s vivid with excitement. There was no doubt that they were excellent war material—quite too good to refuse.
Norah’s hand closed on his in the darkness. The same thought had come to them both. The long voyage, with its comparative peace, was behind them: ahead was only war, and all that it might mean to the boys. The whole world suddenly centred round the boys. London was nothing; England, nothing, except for what it stood for; the heart of Empire. And the Empire had called the boys.