Oh, yes, you finally get to know many of these calls and then somehow the discord seems to leave them, and, like the ship that found herself, you begin to find yourself on shipboard and you feel that you are getting on. That bugling ceases to trouble you further.
The pipes of the bos'n also pierce your ears. Always shrill, they all seem to end in a piercing shriek. At first they make you grate your teeth. You feel as if you would prefer that some one would cuss you out, as the naval expression is, rather than give you orders in that mean way. And when you hear these same mates, one of whom is stationed at every place of importance where the men live and sleep, roar out something that seems to be a mixture of the blast of a cyclone, the trumpeting of an elephant and the bray of another animal you think that if you were the sailorman addressed you'd feel like saying to that mate you'd be damned if you'd do it, whatever it was he was ordering you to do. Why, such language as the bos'ns' pipes employ is more calculated to inspire profanity than was the term applied by Daniel O'Connell to the fishwoman when he called her out of her name by saying she was a hypothenuse. But gradually you learn some of these calls too—there are no rhymes or jingles for them—and that worry blows over.
The work on the bridge also soon excites your admiration. When you are in squadron or fleet formation it's a different game from when you are alone. Then all you have to do is to keep your course and go sailing along at the speed set for you, keep your eye on things, receive reports, give this and that order, when you are through set down a record of what has happened in the deck logbook. All that's simple and easy compared with cruising in a fleet. With a fleet you are not on the bridge five minutes before you are aware that a peculiar kind of game is being played. It is "Watch the Flagship." The watch officer, the signal officer, the quartermasters, the signal boys, are all engaged in the work. Let a signal go up from the flagship. There is a hasty peep through glasses and then a hoarse cry for certain flags, a rush for the bunting, a quick bending of it on the halyards and then a mad rush by half a dozen lads across the bridge as the signals are hoisted. Hurry; be the first to answer, is the sentiment inspiring all. After the signal is hoisted you take a hasty look around, and you grin as this or that ship hasn't got hers up yet, and you say to yourself that it was pretty smart work. When the first sign of a flutter comes from the flagship that the pennants are coming down the hoarse yell of "Haul down!" comes like a thunderclap; and woe betide the clumsy signal boy who gets the halyards foul and doesn't have the signals out of sight before the flagship has hers hidden.
Or perhaps it is approaching sunset and the time comes to lower the speed cones for the night and start the masthead and truck lights to glimmering. Intently all hands watch the flagship and at the first tremor of the cone the boy begins to haul down. In a jiffy not a cone is to be seen at the yards on the entire fleet.
Then there is the night signalling with the ardois red and white lights. There flashes from the flagship a row of vertical red lights, four of them. "Cornet!" is the cry. It means that each ship must turn on the same signal as an answer to attention call. Then the flagship talks, with this and that combination of red and white lights, all flashed so fast that before the impression of one combination fades from the eye two or three others have followed and you wonder how on earth any one can make them out. But as each one is flashed a boy calls out the letter and another writes it down the cubbyhole where the navigator's chart is sheltered, and you find that these messages are recorded as fast as a telegrapher could write out his clicks.
Then the semaphore is lighted up and the arms of lights go jiggering this way and that way, just as the gaunt black and white automata do in the daytime, and you find the boys reading off the message as easily as a grown person can spell cat when the letters are big and the print is plain. You sometimes wake up in the night when you are at anchor and look out of your port. Rare is it that you do not see a semaphore or an ardois combination flashing. When you ask about it in the morning the officers will tell you that it probably was the signal boys talking with one another and that it is allowed because it is good practice to let them gossip when there is nothing else going on and the night watches are long and tedious. Invariably one boy will make the signal letter of another ship where he suspects a friend is on duty at the signals and this is what he says:
"How is it for a game of flat?" meaning an unofficial talk.
"All right," comes the answer: "go ahead."
Then those two boys chat over all sorts of things, chaff each other, make appointments for the first liberty, talk of the latest ship gossip, and all that, but there's one feature about it that's peculiar. The messages are always in polite form. It's always, "Will you kindly?" or "Please be good enough," or something in that fashion. No signal boy ever forgets himself or the dignity of his place in a game of talk. Besides, there might be officers observing things and it is never nice to have your name put on the report. You are brought up at the mast and you might get five days in the brig on bread and water or something like that if you exchanged language that was not seemly for use on a warship's signals.
And then in bridge work in cruising there is that difficult job of keeping distances. The favorite cruising formation in this fleet is at 400 yards distance from the preceding ship. The Louisiana was fourth in whatever line was formed. That meant 1,200 yards from the flagship. Now the engines of no two ships move the 16,000 tons of those ships at exactly the same speed through the water. You may know theoretically how many revolutions of the propellers are needed to go at the rate of ten, eleven, twelve or even more knots an hour, but even then one ship will inch up, so to speak, foot up might express it better, and you have got to correct this all the time or you will be crawling up on the quarter deck of the ship in front of you, or lagging so behind that the ship after you will be in danger of crawling up on your own deck.