(1918)
1
THE GLEANER
The motor-launch chugged to the limit of her beat and wheeled with her bows to a rusty sunset. The wind had been freshening steadily since noon and the steep grey seas were edged with spray, streaked like the flanks of an over-spurred horse. The motor-launch, from a monotonous corkscrew roll, changed to a jerky see-saw that enveloped her in a bitterly cold cascade at every downward plunge.
The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant in command leaned with one broad shoulder against the side of the wheel-shelter, his legs braced far apart and his oilskin flapping wetly against his leather sea-boots. As each successive welter of spray drove past his head he raised a pair of glasses and searched the horizon to the westward where the sombre November sunset was fast fading.
Somewhere below that horizon the homeward-bound convoy was approaching, and his orders were to patrol a given length of the swept channel up the coast on the look-out for floating mines that might have drifted by chance currents from distant mine-fields. Twice since dawn the sweepers had passed over that water and reported the fair-way clear; but with a dozen shiploads of wheat to pass up it in the morning, no one was taking any chances. "Patrol till dark; floating mines to be sunk by gun or rifle fire," said his orders. The R.N.V.R. Lieutenant had been reckoned a good shot with a rifle in the days when he was an Admiralty clerk, and spent his Saturday afternoons on a rifle range at Wormwood Scrubs; he glanced from the bucking deck of his command to the rifle hanging in slings over the Coxswain's head, and smiled rather doubtfully to himself. As if in challenge to that smile, the Signalman on the other side of the Coxswain suddenly extended his telescope and arm in a straight line to seaward.
"Mine awash, sir," he shouted. "Two points on the port bow." The Coxswain raised his eye from the binnacle and moved the wheel through half a turn.
The Lieutenant stared through his glasses. "Umph," he said. The crew of the muffled six-pounder in the bows emerged from the fore hatchway and began to cast off the clips securing the lid of the ammunition box.
In silence they stared at the dull green globular object that bobbed past them in the trough of a sea, the soft lead horns projecting ominously as the waves washed over the rounded surface.
"One of ours," said the Lieutenant, with a swift expert glance. He stepped inboard a pace and studied a chart. "Hell! It's come a long way—must ha' been Tuesday's gale."
The launch held on her course till she had reached the limit of the safety zone of a bursting mine; stopped, and brought the gun to the ready. The gun-layer adjusted his sight, and the tiny gun platform rolled in sickening lurches.