"G'wan you homely piece of cheese,
You're talkin' thru' your hat,
I'll betsha just ten plasters,
It was me she was smiling at."
"I'll take that up old-timer,
Why, that's some easy dough,
We'll have another round,
And then we'll have to blow.
"And if I lamp that broad, kid,
And she cottons to me quick,
I'll buy her everything in town,
And make that ten look sick."
They arose and left the Lima,
A gasping in some chairs,
And as they left the room,
He heard them on the stairs.
"Like candy from a baby,
I'll take your coin this day,
And have a high old time and—
Say, how did you get that way?"
The Lima emptied his tankard,
And caught the barmaid's eye,
"I 'eard them Yanks a tarkin',
But what the bloomin' ell'd they seye?"
XXI
THE FLEET
The fleet lay in the Firth of Forth. It was one o'clock in the afternoon, and the little suburban train which leaves and pauses at the Edinburgh Grand Fleet pier had not yet been brought to its platform. The cold sunlight of a northern spring fell upon the vast, empty station, and burnished the lines of rail beyond the entrance arch. Two porters from the adjoining hotel, wearing coats of orange-red with dull brass buttons, stood lackadaisically by a booking office closed for the dinner hour. Presently, after a piercing shriek intensified by the surrounding quiet, the suburban train backed in with a smooth, crawling noise. Various folk began to appear on the platform, a group of young British naval officers, a handful of older sailors, a captain carrying a small leather affair much like a miniature suit-case, a number of civilians, two "Jacks" evidently on furlough, and a young sailor lad with a fine bull terrier bitch on a leash. No one entered to share my compartment. The train left behind the clean, grim town ... rolled on through suburbs and through fields barely awake to the spring ... paused here and there at tidy, little stations ... reached the station above the pier. Somewhat uncertain of my path to the landing, I followed a group of officers. A middle-aged soldier sentry with grey hair and ruddy cheeks held me up for my pass, unfolded and folded it again with extraordinary deliberation, and courteously set me on my way. As yet there was no sign of the sea, nor had it once been visible during the journey. One might have been on the way to play golf at an inland field. The path to the pier descended a great flight of steps and passed a space in which men were playing football.... A turn down a bit of road, and I was looking at the fleet.
It lay in the great firth, in a monstrous estuary enclosed between barren banks rising to no great height. Bare, scattered woodlands were to be seen, a clump of cottages, a castellated house in a solitary spot, a great wharf with a trumpery traveller's bookstall in a wooden shed at its entrance, a huddle of grey roofs at the water's edge on the distant side. Over a spur of land the smoke of a giant dockyard rose in a hazy reek to the obscured and silvery sun. The water in which the squadrons lay was for the moment as calm as a woodland pool; in colour, green-grey.... An incredible number of ships of war lying lengthwise in orderly lines, bows turned to the unseen river of the rising tide, ... row after row, squadron after squadron, fleet after fleet, ships of war, dark, terrible and huge, no more to be counted than the leaves of trees. As far as the eye could reach up and down the firth, ships. One beheld there the mastery of the sea made visible, the mastery of all the highways and the secret paths of the waters of earth. Because of this fleet ships were able to bring grain from distant fields, great hopes were kept aflame, and the life blood of evil ambitions poured upon the ground. A grey haze lay at the mouth of the roads and somewhere in the heart of it was target practice being held, for violent blots of light again and again burst open the dim and veiling fog. Small gulls passed on motionless wings, whistling. Now and then a vessel would run up a tangle of flags. The signal light of a flagship suddenly uttered a message with intermittent flashes of an unnatural violet white glare.