"Huh! A pair of them!" It comes to us that something will have to be said about the way the damned bridge is relieved in this ship!
Into the chart-room, to fumble awkwardly for light ('T'tt! That switch out of order again!') and search for a portent in the jeering glassy face of the aneroid. Tip, tip, whap! The cursed thing is falling still. 'Twenty-nine owe two—half an inch since ten o'clock! Whatever can be behind all this? That damn glass was never right, anyway!'
THE BOWS OF THE KASHMIR DAMAGED BY COLLISION
Drumming of the wireless-cabin telephone sounds out, and we listen to a brief account of Poldhu's war warning. An S.O.S. has been heard, but a shore station has accepted it. (They can identify the ship—might be the harping of a Fritz.) There is a long code message through, and the quartermaster brings it—a jumble of helplessly ugly consonants that looks as though the German Fleet, at last, is out—but resolves (after a wearisome cryptic wrestle) to back-chat that has little of interest for us. Poldhu has the reports of the day—mines and derelicts, wreckage, the patrols, and enemy submarines in the channels. Chart work for a while. The wrecks and the derelicts are figured and placed, and we dally with the subs, plotting and measuring to find a clue to their movements. 'Fifteen hours at six, and ten to come or go! Mmm! That 'll be the same swine working to the nor'east. Hope he makes a good course into the minefield! This one is solo—and that! A ghastly bunch, anyway!' We project a line of our course, but hesitate at position. 'Not one decent observation in the last three days. Only a muggy guess at a horizon. Dead-reckoning? Of course, there is our dead-reckoning, but—but—wonder where the commodore got his position from? Must have added on th' day of th' month, or fingers and toes or something! Damned if we can see how, at twelve knots, we could be where——'
The outspread chart, glaring white under the electric light, with a maze of heights and soundings, grows strangely indistinct, and it calls for an effort to set the counts and figures in their places. We realize that wandering thought and a warm chart-room are not the combination for wakefulness. So, on deck again, to steady up at the doorway and wonder why the night has become suddenly as hellish black as the pit!
The second officer has found his composure at the bottom of a cup of steaming coffee, and seems mildly astonished that we are unable to pick up Neleus in the darkness ahead. "Quite plain, sir, when these squalls pass. A bit murky while they blow over, but—see her clear enough, sir. Reduced two revolutions, and keeping good station on her at that!" Somewhat slowly (for we have been afoot since six yesterday morning) our eyes focus to the gloom and line out the sea and sky in their shaded proportions. Neleus grows out of the sombre opacous curtain—a definite guide with the sea breaking white in her wake. Dark patches of smoke-wrack, around and about, mark bearings on the sea-line where our sisters of the convoy are forging through. The next astern has dropped badly in cleaning fires, and is now throwing a whirl of green smoke in the effort to regain her station. The sea seems to have lessened since last we viewed it. Our hot coffee may have had effect in producing a more impressionable frame of mind, but certainly the weather is no worse. The rain and sleet have beaten out a measure of the toppling sea-crests. We see the forecastle-head, black and upstanding, for longer periods, and only broken spray flies over, where, but a little ago, were green whelming seas. A sign of modest content comes from the boat-deck, where the guards are humming, "Over there, over there, over there! Th' Yanks are coming!"
The duty officer (troops) comes to us to pass the time of the morning. He salutes with punctilio. (He has not yet learned that we are only a damn civilian, camouflaged, and not entitled to such respect.) It is reported to him that one of the ship's boats had been badly damaged by a sea during the night. "In event of—of an accident, is it in orders that the troops allocated [his word] to that boat shall not go in any other?"
Good lad! For all that darkness and the gale, he looks very fine and bold, standing stiffly, if somewhat unsteadily, demanding detail of the Birkenhead Drill! We assure him that there will be no immediate need for regrouping the men, that measures have already been taken to repair the damaged planking, that half an hour of daylight will serve us—and turn the talk to less disquieting affairs. He is very keen. Till now he has never been farther out to sea than the Iron Steamboat Company would take him—to Coney Island or the more subdued delights of the Hook. A New-Yorker, he tempers quite natural vaunts to be the more in keeping with the great and impending trial that awaits. For all that, he is gravely concerned that we should recognize his men as good and true—"the best ever, yessa!" With a good experience of their conduct, under trying conditions, we assent.