"Guns" (Teigne) was one of those gunnery enthusiasts who make you wonder what profession he'd have chosen if no one had discovered gunpowder. He saw the world through telescopic sights, I believe, and is reputed, on first seeing the large hotel that was a prominent landmark near where we were then anchored, to have muttered longingly: "My aunt! What a target!"
Of course, as the time drew near, and we had rehearsed and drilled to the last gasp of preparedness, others were added to the complement. We had a Padre, a bullet-headed athlete, who before the war was the parson of a roaring miners' camp in the North. Not the wife-beater's terror of the Sunday periodicals to look at, though—a quiet, friendly little chap, with a way of blinking when he talked, as though the sun was in his eyes. But one night in the Mess when we were having a scrap to keep our spirits up and help our digestions, he picked me up and threw my twelve stone about like a rag doll.
Jock Macrae was our P.M.O., with two assistants fresh from some hospital. For a man who was no despiser of whisky he had the most iron nerve and steadiest hand of any "butcher" I've met. I have wondered since how many torn and bloody bundles of humanity owe their lives to his imperturbable pluck and skill. He brought a banjo with him, and night after night he would sit cross-legged on the deck, plucking at the catgut with those long surgical fingers of his, and sing old Jacobean ballads to the moon.
The blockships were moored not far away from us, and we organised concerts and dinners that will always remain vivid in my memory as the gayest entertainments of the kind I have ever participated in.
I saw little of Mouldy or Milsom during the training period. The former was coaching his braves in the gentle art of demolishing things ashore at the Base, and the latter was at Headquarters introducing his band of warriors to the inner mysteries of bomb-throwing, flame projecting, and similar cults. Once or twice I went over to confer with them separately, and found that, by a curious succession of accidents, they had never met each other.
"Went over twice to see that Marine bloke," grumbled Mouldy, seated on a case of explosives and measuring off some fuse, "and blowed if he wasn't in Town each time, havin' a frolic; an' here are we sweatin' our guts out..." He launched into a brief description of the activities of his disciples during the past month.
Milsom had a similar grievance. "What's the bird's name—the demobilisation expert?" he inquired. "Jakes? Well, I went over to look him up t'other day; I've never met him, and I thought that, as we were going over the bags together, we might meet and have a chin-wag. Of course, the day I chose to toil over to the Base he had gone afloat to try some experiments somewhere, so I came back none the wiser."
"You'll meet as soon as they transfer the forces on board us," I said.
I saw Milsom once more before they all took up their quarters on board. It was in Town, and I had gone up for the last time to set a few private affairs straight. I don't worry my solicitor much, and I think he was genuinely concerned at my "clewing up" my affairs so thoroughly. Anyhow, when the business was over he insisted on taking me to lunch "somewhere cheerful," as he put it. He thought, I suppose, that I was getting morbid.
We lunched at a large crowded restaurant full of red-tabbed soldiers and pretty women smoking cigarettes. I'd rather have gone to the club, but old Addison was all for this place. "Brighten you up, my boy," he said, pouring out the champagne. It was at that moment I saw Milsom. It wasn't so much seeing him there that surprised me as the glimpse I got of his companion's profile. It was Miss Mayne, and judging by the angle at which Milsom's head was inclined towards her, and the grave intentness with which she was listening to what he had to say, they appeared to know each other pretty well. They had finished luncheon, and she was aimlessly stirring her untasted coffee and answering Milsom in rare monosyllables, her eyes on her cup. Altogether, they didn't appear to be having a particularly gay time, and in a little while they rose and threaded their way side by side out of the babbling overheated room and were lost to view.