'Can't help that. You'd better send in your bill to the Kaiser. Anyhow, we can't have all this lumber up here; it's a regular death-trap.'
Mr Chipping scratched his grizzled head. 'I'll land all what I can't strike below, sir,' he grudgingly assented at last.
'Yes, see to it at once, please. If this pile of wood catches fire it'll play Old Harry on the upper deck with the twelve-pounders and their ammunition.'
Pincher listened open-mouthed, for it was quite obvious from the way they talked that things were far more serious than Joshua had led him to believe. Moreover, he, Martin, was in full agreement with the commander as to the expediency of removing the pile of wood from the boat-deck. His station in action was at one of the upper-deck twelve-pounder guns, and he had no wish to emulate Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego of the Old Testament in their blazing, fiery furnace.
The carpenter got busy with his chalk, and before long the whole pile of lumber was ornamented with little noughts and crosses. The noughts, Pincher assumed, meant that the articles so marked were to be retained, and the crosses that those bearing this mark were to be thrown overboard or landed; and when, a little later, he had occasion to go on to the upper deck he found many other things decorated with the same mystic signs. Certain of the smaller boats, spare spars, cabin doors, accommodation ladders, gratings, lockers, anything and everything wooden, inflammable, or likely to make splinters, were apparently to go by the board. It gave him furiously to think.
The ship arrived at her base during the afternoon, and Captain Spencer went on board the flagship to report his arrival. He was away for an hour and a half, and came back with what the officer of the watch called 'a face like a sea-boot,' and the information that the situation was very serious. Beyond that he professed to know nothing, but every one noticed that the commander was closeted with him in his cabin for fully three-quarters of an hour on his return from the flagship. Petty Officer Finnigan, moreover, the captain's coxswain and a great friend of the admiral's cook on board the flagship Tremendous, told his messmates with much gusto that the cook had informed him that the admiral's steward had told him (the cook) that war with Germany was only a matter of hours.
We have heard of yarns emanating from ships' cooks generally being treated with derision, but presumably admirals' cooks are above suspicion in this respect, for the news spread rapidly, and the 'Belligerents,' believing it implicitly, were flung into a state of ill-suppressed excitement in consequence. Most of them had never seen a shot fired in anger; but the prospect of war—the awful prospect of the unknown—did not seem to alarm them. On the contrary, officers and men went about their business with light hearts and smiles on their faces, for, as Tickle had once pointed out when referring to the same subject, 'it's a bit thick if we're doomed to fire our guns at a canvas target all our lives.' Most of them longed for a run for their money, and to all appearances they were going to have it. The graver possibilities of war did not intrude themselves upon their minds until long afterwards. They all felt cocksure that they, individually, were not fated to die violent deaths by the enemy's shell, torpedoes, mines, bombs, or by drowning. If any one was to be killed, it was not they. They merely pictured to themselves a short and triumphant struggle, at the conclusion of which—in six months at the very most—they, having sunk the enemy's navy, would go home on leave with medals on their manly bosoms, to be hailed as the saviours of their country. Alas for their dreams!
The squadron was in a state of feverish activity. Some ships were taking in final supplies of coal and ammunition, working night and day; while others were landing all their superfluous wooden or inflammable fittings and non-necessary stores. The 'Belligerents' themselves started on the job early the next morning. Such a collection there was! Many tons of paint and varnish; some of the smaller boats; quantities of timber for building targets; wooden accommodation ladders; baulks, spars, and planks; chests of drawers from the officers' cabins, and tin cases and trunks containing their personal effects and more treasured possessions; the midshipmen's and chief petty officers' chests; doors of cabins; gratings; even the wardroom pianola, an instrument which was being paid for on the instalment system, were taken ashore and lodged in a place of security. The work took them a full forty-eight hours.
The Belligerent, being a pre-Dreadnought battleship, had to have more done to her to make her ready for battle than a similar vessel of a later class, and Sunday, 2nd August, brought no cessation of labour. If anything, it was a more strenuous day than the previous one, for except for a brief service on the quarterdeck, lasting exactly ten minutes, officers and men alike were hard at work preparing the ship for war. There was plenty to be done. Extra lifts and tackles were put upon the yards on the foremast to prevent them crashing down from aloft if struck by a shell, the rigging was snaked down with hawsers to stop it flying away if severed, and extra protection, in the shape of tightly rolled-up canvas awnings, thick enough to stop a substantial shell-splinter, was improvised round the bridge and fire-control positions up aloft.
Fire, first-aid, and stretcher parties were told off and organised, and everything was done, beyond the final wetting of decks, to make the ship ready for immediate action, and to lessen the chances of damage to vessel or men through fire or fragments of flying débris almost as dangerous as the shell-splinters themselves.