“I expect they would be better in the ordinary course,” John answered, “if they got more leave clear away from the ship, and weren’t so infernally bored by unbroken routine.”
But the excitement and its excellent effect endured not long. When they arrived at Gibraltar nothing happened. The next day, while they coaled ship, hope waned. “Come on, lads,” cried a petty officer to encourage the grimy workers, “that’s about where Agadir lies.” He pointed a finger towards Africa. But they laughed at him and glanced at the coaling flags that told them how their work progressed. “Six ’undred more to come,” they said; “six ’undred more ton....”
And when they sailed from Gibraltar, their destination was Catalan Bay, their prospect gun-practice. The ship’s company added another memory to their list of war scares, and suffered from the inevitable reaction.
II
The essential element in gun-practice and range keeping exercises is waiting with nothing to do—waiting till the target is ready, waiting till the ship’s turn comes, waiting while a passing merchant ship fouls the range, waiting while the important people in the controls make abstruse calculations with which the men at the guns have no concern. The monotony is varied by gun-drill, but even gun-drill palls. The hours pass slowly. The eyes stare at the expressionless breech of the gun until, tiring of that, they stare at the red wheel above the ammunition hoist. Often they stare at the bugler as he passes the open door of the casemate, and prayers go up that ultimately he may sound the “Secure.” The captain of the gun, sick of the limited topics which can be discussed within the hearing of the officer whose head is in the sighting-hood, produces rags and a tin, and proceeds to polish bright work already immaculate. Then he puts away his rags and tin, and watches the bugler again.
Coming into Gibraltar for a week-end, John played in a cricket match, in which, for lack of training, the batting was poor and the bowling without sting. Gunroom Evolutions had long begun again. Krame had forgotten the incident of the “minor defects,” and the junior midshipmen were Warts without cease. In Tetuan Bay the natives ashore appeared, to those who watched them through telescopes, to be carrying on warfare. There were rifle flashes and smoke, and bodies of men moving hastily hither and thither. No one cared very much. To the midshipmen it meant something to record in the personal log-books they submitted each Sunday morning to the Captain....
It was in Tetuan Bay, too, perhaps during the warfare, perhaps during some other similar week after peace had been declared, that the ship’s company bathed—the officers from the starboard after gangway, the men for’ard from the port lower boom. John, as midshipman of the watch, was on the quarter-deck, watching the clock for the time at which he should recall the men from the water by ordering the bugler to sound the “Retire.” Suddenly, on the port quarter, he caught sight of the unmistakable fin. Sharks were not then to be expected in that part of the world. He looked again, this time through a telescope. “Quartermaster, what do you make of that?”
The Quartermaster borrowed the telescope. “Yessir. Shark, sir.”
John wheeled round. “Bugler! Sound the ‘Retire’ and sound the ‘Double.’ Go on sounding it until you are sure that all men in the water have heard. Sound it first to the officers on the starboard side.... Boatswain’s-mate! Go and pipe by the lower boom: ‘Shark on the port quarter. All hands return to the ship.’ Warn the boat.”
John called for a megaphone and summoned courage to address the Commander, who, in the water, was very much like the rest of mankind. It was bad enough to have sounded the “Retire” at him.