VII
THE DAY
Although it all happened in that dim, remote period of time "Before the
War," Torps and the First Lieutenant, the Indiarubber Man (who was the
Lieutenant for Physical Training Duties), the Junior Watchkeeper, and
others who participated, long afterwards referred to it as "The Day."
Since then they have seen their own gunfire sink an enemy's ship as a well-flung brick disposes of an empty tin on the surface of a pond. The after twelve-inch guns, astride whose muzzles David and Freckles once soared to the giddy stars, have hurled instantaneous and awful death across leagues of the North Sea. The X-ray apparatus, by the agency of which Cornelius James desired to see right through his own "tummy," has enabled the Fleet Surgeon to pick fragments of steel out of tortured bodies, as a conjurer takes things out of a hat. The after-cabin, that had witnessed so many informal tea-and-muffin parties, has been an ether-reeking hospital.
Yet these memories grew blurred in time, as mercifully such memories do. It was another and more fragrant one that sweetened the grim winter vigil in the North, when every smudge of smoke on the horizon might have been the herald of Armageddon. They were yet to see men die by scores in the shambles of a wrecked battery, by hundreds on the shell-torn decks of a ship that sank, fighting gallantly to the last. And the recollection of what I am about to relate doubtless supplied sufficient answer to the question that at such times assails the minds of men.
Two who helped in that unforgettable good-night scene on the aft-deck were destined to add their names to the Roll of Britain's Honour. It is not too much to hope that the echo of children's merriment guided their footsteps through that dark Valley of the Shadow to the peaks of Eternal Laughter which lie beyond.
* * * * *
It all started during one of those informal tea-parties the Skipper's Missus sometimes held in the after-cabin. They were delightful affairs. You needn't accept the Invitation if you didn't want to; there was no necessity to put on your best monkey-jacket if you did. You were just told to "blow in" if you wanted some tea, and then you made your own toast, and there was China tea, in a big blue-and-white pot, that scented the whole cabin.
The Skipper's Missus sat by the fire, with her hands linked round her knees in her habitually graceful and oddly characteristic attitude; Torps and Jess, those gentle philosophers, occupied the chintz-covered settee; the A.P. sat on the hearth-rug, cross-legged like a tailor, so that he could toast and consume the maximum number of muffins with the minimum amount of exertion; the Junior Watchkeeper, who by his own admission "went all the bundle on his tea," and the Indiarubber Man, who was clumsy with a tea-cup, shared the table and a jam-pot, and sat munching, tranquil-eyed, like a pair of oxen in a stall.
The Captain and the First Lieutenant were rummaging through the drawers of the knee-hole table in search of an ancient recipe of the former's for manufacturing varnish of a peculiar excellence wherewith to beautify the corticene on the aft-deck.