The sloop that didn’t want to talk had hove a German mine up in her sweep that morning, and brought it under her counter before anyone noticed it was there. She lay rolling in the swell with the horns missing impact by inches; to veer the wire would have probably caused the detonation, and the lieutenant in command ordered his ship’s company to abandon ship, crawled over the stern with a queer grim smile on his face and removed the primer with a spanner. It was an entirely unpleasant quarter of an hour, and he was at that moment giving a lurid summary of his sensations at the time to an assembly of three brother captains in the tiny wardroom of the next ship.
“When I was working on the east coast—” began another sloop.
“Ah!” interrupted the end ship of the line, “that was clearing the trade routes, I suppose? Of course we clear the fleet routes—the path of the battle squadrons!” The east coast sweeper was a new arrival.
“Very useful, no doubt. On the other hand, we fed England. If the trade routes had got foul, England would have starved. They’ve trained trawlers to do the work now, but when I was on that job——”
“East coast?” chipped in another recent addition to the flotilla. “Is there a war there too? I come from the Clyde, myself.”
The Tyne-built sloop snorted. “I’ve seen our East Coast Striking Force go out past us while we were at work and be back again with wounded and prisoners within half a dozen hours of leaving harbour. War, indeed! It’s on our doorstep.”
“That’s because you haven’t got a fleet to keep it away from your doorstep. Our fighting ships have to steam south for a day and a night to find an enemy, while we sweep and wait and sweep again against their home-coming.” The speaker glanced at her neighbour through a rust-streaked hawse-pipe. “’Member Jutland? How they came back that evening all battle-stained——?”
“And didn’t forget to give us a cheer as they passed!” The sloop chuckled. “I had an artist fellow on board the other day. He came out to paint the headlands and the fleet coming back from a sweep south. He was very sick.”
The moon swam into a windy sky from behind the blue-black hills encircling them. The vast anchored fleet that had dropped into obscurity at nightfall became distinct against the shimmer of the water. The wind was full of the voices of ships talking among themselves, and fragrant with salt heather smells from hundreds of spray-drenched islands. You could detect the deep grumbling tones of the battleships in the air, as the Romans might have heard the talk that floated into the night from the gladiators’ barracks. It mingled with the gossip of the light cruisers, whose conversation was largely technical, as they lay floating at their moorings with steam raised: nervous, high-spirited, mettlesome things, spoiling for a fight. Their talk concerned each other’s boiler tubes, turning circles, thrust bearings, and gyro compasses: rather dull to the layman, but interesting to the destroyers in the flotilla anchorage, who were their cousins. One of the T.B.D. flotillas was unmooring, and through a waterway between the islands their lights winked and flickered as they swore and fumed at each other, manœuvring in the narrow waters.
The flotilla leader slipped out into the broader expanse of the bay and slowed down. “Now then,” she called, “who are we hanging on to the slack for? Z.19—you again?”