'Can't help that!' roared the N.C.O. 'Get along with the loading of the gun, and hafter the haction don't you forget I takes you both before the officer of the watch for unseemly conduc' and neglec' of dooty in the face of the enemy!'
The malcontents, rather crestfallen, ceased their bickering, and the gun went on firing. But the sergeant, a strict disciplinarian, was as good as his word. Smith and Jones, both good characters, were let off lightly. They each received fourteen days' No. 10 punishment for their misdeeds. The sergeant, a Solomon in his way, appropriated the shell-splinter and presented it to his wife.
III.
There was once a German steam-trawler called the Anna Schrœder. That was not her real name; but as she now flies the White Ensign and is known as the Anita, her original appellation does not matter. Hargreaves, the sub-lieutenant of the Mariner; Joshua Billings, A.B.; Pincher Martin, ordinary seaman; and several more of the destroyer's men, can tell you all about her, for they spent four days on board. They were four unforgettable days, and rumour says that the sub. and his braves are scratching themselves still.
From the Anna Schrœder, too, the 'Mariners,' in exchange for sundry excellent British cigarettes and a pound or so of ship's tobacco, procured some samples of particularly noisome 'war bread' and a small female pig. The bread, they said, was an excellent 'coorio' to send home to their friends; and, having the consistency and appearance of wood, it could, with due diligence, be manufactured into photograph-frames and tobacco-boxes. It took a beautiful polish. The sow, Annie, was retained on board as a mascot, and within a week of changing hands became quite friendly with her new masters. Inside a month she was sleeping in a specially made hammock, wore her own life-belt at sea, and ate her meals off a plate like a proper Christian. It is true that the rest of the menagerie on board—Jane, the monkey; Tiger and Mossyface, the two cats; Pompey, the goat; and Tirpitz, the fox-terrier—at first regarded her with some suspicion, but before long they appeared to have combined forces, and to have formed an alliance for the carrying on of offensive operations against any animal from any other ship which dared to come on board the Mariner. Annie's severest tussle was with the wire-haired terrier of the Monsoon, a plebeian but very conceited dog, who treated all vessels but his own with lordly contempt. She was ably assisted in the struggle by her willing allies, and for some minutes the battle raged furiously, to the accompaniment of barks, growls, squeals, shrill yelps, and much snorting from the fighters. But before much damage had been done on either side the engagement was brought to a sudden and wholly unexpected termination by both the principal combatants falling overboard in their excitement. They were duly rescued in the dinghy; and the contest, since they were both exhausted by swimming, was postponed sine die.
But all this has little to do with the Anna Schrœder. It so happened that at one period of the war the enemy was making himself particularly obnoxious by sinking many of our fishing-vessels in the North Sea. It was no very gallant mode of warfare; and, partly in a spirit of retaliation, and partly because My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty may have conceived a sudden desire for some steam-trawlers for mine-sweeping and other purposes, it was determined to pay the Hun back in his own coin. The authorities were always eager to save money if they possibly could, and acquiring the necessary craft free, gratis, and for nothing from the enemy was obviously far cheaper than chartering them from British owners.
That is how it came about that the Mariner, many more destroyers, and several light cruisers suddenly appeared one early morning in the midst of a German fishing-fleet engaged in its occupation not very far from its own coast. The visit came as a bolt from the blue, and since there was nobody present to protect them, the trawlers had no alternative but to surrender. Twenty-three of them, I think, were captured; while several more, too ancient and too rickety to be worth taking home as prizes, were sunk.
The serene atmosphere of that calm and peaceful summer morn was befouled with Teutonic oaths and much profanity. One could not help having some sympathy for the execrators, snatched off as they were practically within hailing distance of their own coast. But every German male person of a certain age and not a cripple is ipso facto a soldier or a sailor; while every harmless trawler is a potential mine-layer or mine-sweeper. Most of the prisoners were young and lusty, and Fritz, Hans, Adolf, Karl, Heinrich, and many more of them had the not altogether joyful prospect of spending the rest of the war in British hands. Some of them disliked the idea intensely, and their scowling, sullen faces showed as much. Others, after making anxious inquiries as to how they would be treated and fed, expressed the opinion that things were not quite so bad after all, and that being a prisoner was far and away a happier prospect than serving in trenches at the front, whence they might never return.
It was this early morning strafe which accounted for the Mariner's dealings with the Anna Schrœder; the adoption of Annie, the pig; and the adventures of the sub-lieutenant and his merry men.
The prize crew consisted of Hargreaves, one stoker petty officer, Joshua Billings, Pincher Martin, and three others whose names do not matter; and after ten minutes spent in transferring them, their belongings, food, water, weapons, a chart, and sundry other impedimenta to the trawler, and in removing certain of the prisoners to the destroyer, the Mariner steamed off on her business, and left the sub. to his own devices, with orders to make the best of his way to the nearest British port.