CHAPTER XXIII
AT AULDHAIG ONCE MORE
"By Jove, Doris!" he exclaimed. "You here? I say, am I not in a horrible mess?"
"It might have been worse," replied the girl admiringly. "I saw you go, and—and—I thought—oh, I never expected to see you again."
"You never know your luck," said Tressidar. He could think of nothing else to say. The girl's concern on his behalf was more than sufficient compensation for the horrors of that five minutes facing death.
Someone handed him a glass of water. He drank the liquid with avidity and felt the better for it.
"I thought you were on leave, Doris," he remarked. "And you, too, are in a pretty pickle. You weren't hurt?"
The girl's face was grimed with smoke, her uniform soiled with fire and water. On the back of her left hand a rapidly rising white weal was visible.
"No," she replied, "I was on duty. I'm glad I was, although I felt horribly frightened when the shells began to drop. My hand? That is nothing; only a little burn. But I must go. Over there, there are others badly injured."
Left to himself, Tressidar began to realise that he had not come off lightly. Numerous burns, of which in the struggle for existence he had been ignorant, began to assert themselves in a very forcible manner. He stood up and promptly sat down again. The movement racked every limb. His muscles worked like badly oiled machinery. His head was throbbing painfully.
An alert sick-bay man who had been discreetly keeping an eye upon the young officer hurried up.
"Allow me, sir," he said. "I'll get you to bed. They're preparing temporary quarters over yonder," and he pointed in the direction of the rear-admiral's house.
Tressidar submitted without protest. He knew that for the time being he was helpless. Unless he were to miss his ship on the following Thursday, prompt treatment and absolute rest were essential.
Supported by the hospital man, the sub. walked slowly up the hill in the wake of a long procession of cots and stretchers, each bearing a scorched and badly injured patient.
His burns attended to, Tressidar was placed in a bed and given a draught. After that he slept soundly until the following morning, when he awoke to find himself in a temporary ward with four other officers as fellow-patients.
"Thursday?" repeated the fleet surgeon in answer to Tressidar's anxious question. "We'll see. Can't commit myself on that point, you know. A lot depends upon yourself. No, nothing serious. Slight shock to the system, you know. Rest and plenty of food essential."
The whole of that day the sub. saw nothing of Doris. At first he feared that the girl's injuries were more serious than she believed, until enquiries of one of the nurses elicited the information that "Sister Greenwood" was well and was on day duty in another ward.
Meanwhile, news was coming in fast of the progress of the German naval movements. The cruiser that had bombarded Auldhaig, fortunately without so very serious results, had been intercepted in its flight towards the Norwegian coast by a strong squadron of British armoured cruisers. In the burning fight which ensued, the "Heracles" with two consorts had succeeded in heading off two German vessels, and for the time being the two latter were fugitives in the North Atlantic.
For the present they had eluded pursuit but a cordon was being drawn round the isolated hostile ships. On both sides of the Atlantic British warships were lying in wait. Retreat both to Germany and to neutral ports was cut off. Capture or destruction seemed inevitable.
Better still, the attempted raid upon the east coast of England ended in a fiasco. Warned by wireless, the British battle-cruisers issued forth from their bases—not in pursuit of the Auldhaig raiders, as the Germans fondly hoped, but across the North Sea to meet the main hostile warships.
Greatly to the disappointment and disgust of the British tars, the Germans declined battle, and, turning, made off at full speed for the shelter of the guns and minefields of Heligoland.
Early on the second morning of Tressidar's enforced detention in the temporary sick-quarters the sub. was taken into the grounds for an airing. Lying comfortably in a wheeled chair, he was deep in the contents of a newspaper when a bandaged man in hospital clothes and accompanied by a nursing sister and an orderly was wheeled in his direction.
The sister was Doris Greenwood, but the sub. had not the faintest idea of the identity of the patient.
"This man wishes to speak to you, Mr. Tressidar," said Doris demurely.
"You don't remember me, sir?" began the invalid.
"No, I can't say that I do," replied the sub. To tell the truth, he wished both the man and the orderly to Jericho, until he realised that it was solely in an official capacity that Doris was present.
"You pulled me out of that hole the night before last, sir," said the patient, indicating the ruins of the hospital buildings, of which the crumpled masonry and fragments of shattered walls were visible from the grounds. "I'm no hand at a speech, sir, but I want to thank you."
"That's nothing so far as I was concerned," replied Tressidar modestly. He hated a fuss being made merely for doing a plucky action. "You're getting along all right?"
"Middling, sir. By gum!" he exclaimed with intense fervour, "it was touch and go with me."
After a few minutes' conversation Doris gave the word for the orderly to remove the patient, and greatly to the sub.'s disappointment she did not linger.
Doris, however, made amends during the afternoon by spending an hour with him. They talked of many things. Amongst other questions, Tressidar enquired after Mr. Greenwood.
"The pater's simply as skittish as a foal," replied the girl, laughing. "Since his adventure in the cave he's as keen as anything for duty. He's joined the National Guard, and is doing duty at a large reservoir near Plymouth. I wish, for some reasons, I were in Devonshire now," she added wistfully. "Just fancy, it's mid-April and there are hardly any signs of spring in the north. I'm longing for another sight of the red earth and bright green foliage of home There's no place like Devonshire."
"Unless it's Cornwall," rejoined Tressidar, loyal to the county of his birth.
"Practically the same," agreed Doris. "It's all the West Country. Next month, I hope, I'll be able to have a few days there—unless there's a big action out yonder—somewhere in the North Sea, you know."
"I hope there will be," remarked the sub. "Of course it will be a terribly costly affair when it does come off, for the Huns will fight like wild cats rather than let their ships be scuttled in Kiel Harbour. But it will be the climax—an end to months and months of tedious waiting and watching."
He, too, wished for a sight of home—home in the strictest sense. Away from Great Britain, the traveller broadly regards the whole of the United Kingdom as "home"; within its limits he will speak of his own county as "home;" narrowed down, "home" resolves itself, perhaps, into a small house with or without a patch of ground attached.
And now, after nearly two years of war, Britons the wide world over were beginning to realise that home in the broadest and the narrowest sense was in danger. Until Prussian militarism was crushed once and for all time, the freehold of the humblest cottage in Great Britain would not be worth twelve months' purchase.
"You've heard the news of Falkenheim's escape?" asked the girl.
Tressidar had not. The latest he had heard of the German officer who had got clear of the internment camp and had eventually been run to earth in the petrol-depôt, was that he had been sentenced by a General Court-martial to six months' imprisonment.
"He was serving his sentence in Saltport Gaol," explained Doris. "A fortnight ago a portion of the outside wall of the prison was blown in by a charge of gun-cotton. Falkenheim's friends evidently knew exactly in which part of the building he was placed, for in the confusion he was liberated from his cell. Since then all traces of him have vanished. There was a bit of a stir in the papers, but it has quieted down now. I heard Captain Garboard say that the German was a particularly daring submarine officer, and that if he got back to Germany there would be considerable trouble in store for us. People seem to deprecate the spy business, but it shows how active these German agents are."
"It does," agreed Tressidar wholeheartedly, but he was thinking of one spy in particular—the author of the "Pompey" tragedy, Otto Oberfurst.
As a side issue he was wondering whether, by a slice of luck, he might manage to get a few days' leave at the same time as Doris went south. Duty, naturally, came first, but when the West Country beckons, its call cannot lightly be set aside.
Tressidar made rapid progress from his injuries. His indomitable spirit, coupled with a clean, hard-living condition, worked wonders, and by the Thursday morning the fleet surgeon declared him fit for duty.
At noon the "Heracles" entered the harbour and moored in mid-stream. Her smoke-blackened aftermast, blistered and salt-rimmed funnels bore tokens of hard steaming, while several temporarily patched holes in her lofty sides and superstructure showed that German gunnery had taken a toll.
Her orders were brief and hinted at more serious work: she was to land hospital cases, ship ammunition and victualling stores, fill bunkers and replenish oil-fuel, and proceed to Rendezvous K— with the utmost dispatch.
Tressidar's reappearance on board was the subject of considerable surprise, for his messmates were under the erroneous impression that he was still a prisoner of war They had heard that the cutter had been picked up, and that the sub. and the boat's crew had been forcibly removed from the Norwegian tramp in the Kattegat and taken to a German port. Beyond that they were totally unaware of what had befallen the sub. until he turned up, like the proverbial bad halfpenny, upon the quarter-deck of H.M.S. "Heracles."
Assistant Paymaster Greenwood, with his right hand swathed in surgical bandages and his arm in a sling, was one of the first to greet his friend warmly.
"Oh, I've had a great time," he replied in answer to the sub.'s enquiry as to how he sustained his injuries. "In the fire-control platform, you know. Tried to stop a bit of strafed shell. It was luck. I'm off duty in the ship's office for a week at least, and this won't prevent me going aloft when the next scrap takes place."
Eric Greenwood was too modest to relate full details. Tressidar afterwards learnt that the assistant paymaster was assisting a wounded seaman from the fire-control platform to the shrouds when a flying fragment of metal inflicted a nasty gash on the index finger and thumb of the right hand. In spite of the pain, he saw the man safely on deck and returned to his lofty perch. It was not until he was on the point of collapse through loss of blood that the lieutenant noticed his plight and ordered him below.
Night and day the ship's company toiled in order to get the cruiser ready for sea. Eagerly officers and crew awaited the wireless news, hoping for their country's sake that the fugitive German vessels had been captured or destroyed, and for their own that they were still afloat, so that the "Heracles" might have a hand in settling up business. In thirty-six hours the cruiser was ready to proceed, and with the first blush of dawn she slipped quietly out of harbour bound for Rendezvous K— the exact position of which was a jealously guarded secret, known only to the captain and senior navigating officers.