“That’s for being slack. Now the other hand.... That’s for ’nerving’” (modernised = swanking) “with your thumbs in your beckets——”
“Ow!”
“Shut up! Stick your knuckles out properly.”
“I swear I didn’t—ow!... Good night.”
. . . . .
Memories, ah, memories! Haphazard but happy as only the far-off things can seem, half revealed through the mists of years. Grim old cradle of the Eternal Navy, there lies on my desk a blotting-pad hewed from your salt timbers; it may be that some whimsical ghost strayed out of it to provoke these random recollections. Does it, I wonder, ever unite with other ghosts from chiselled garden-seat or carved candle-stick, and there on the moonlit waters of the Dart refashion, rib by rib, keel and strake and stempost, a Shadow Ship?
And what of the Longshoremen Billies that plied for hire between the shore and the after-gangway—Johnnie Farr (whom the Good Lawd durstn’t love), Hannaford of the wooden leg, and all the rest of that shell-backed fraternity? Gone to the haven of all good ships and sailormen: and only the night wind, abroad beneath the stars, whispers to the quiet hills the tales of sharks and pirates and the Chiny seas that once were yours and ours.
But what familiar faces throng once more the old decks and cluster round the empty ports! Is it only to fond memory that you seemed the cheeriest and noblest, or did some beam of the glory to be yours stray out of the Hereafter and paint your boyish faces thus, O best-remembered from those far-off days?
You crowd too quickly now, you whose fair names are legion, so that the splendour of your sacrifices blur and intermingle. The North Sea knows you and the hidden Belgian minefields; the Aurora Borealis was the candle that lit some to bed, and the surf on the beaches of Gallipoli murmurs to others a never-ending lullaby. Ostend and Zeebrugge will not forget you, and the countless tales of your passing shall be the sword hilt on which our children’s children shall cut their teeth.
From out of that Shadow Ship lying at her moorings off the old Mill Creek comes the faint echoes of your boyish voices floating out across the placid tide. Could we but listen hard enough we might catch some message of good hope and encouragement from you who have had your Day: