Down in the wardroom, the tension relaxed. The anchor chain rattled out; once more the universe seemed to part asunder. The mail had arrived, joyous event. Somebody put a roll of music into a rather passé player piano, and let loose an avalanche of horribly orderly chords.
And all the time the Olympians were preparing, not the battle of the ages, but the Great Surrender!
XXIV
"SKY PILOTS"
We know him as chaplain, the gobs use the good old term "Sky Pilot," and the British call him "Padre." His task, no light one, is to look after the spiritual and moral welfare of some thousand sailor souls. He is general counsellor, friend in need, mender of broken hearts, counsel for the defence, censor, and show manager. Now he comes to the defence of seaman, first class, Billy Jones, whose frail bark of life has come to grief on the treacherous reef of the installment plan, and for whose misdemeanours a clamouring merchant is on deck threatening to "attach the ship." Now he is assuring the clergyman of the church on the hill that 2nd class petty officer Edgar K. Lee (who is going to marry pretty little Norah Desmond) is not, as far as he knows, committing bigamy. They tell of a chaplain of the destroyer force who, pestered beyond bearing by these demands that the American bridegroom be declared officially and stainlessly single, floored his tormentor by replying: "I've told you that as far as we know the man's unmarried. We can't give you any assurance more official. He may be bigamous, trigamous, quadrugamous, or," here he paused for effect, "pentagamous, but I advise you to risk it." The land sky pilot is said to have collapsed.
Aboard the flagship of the Grand Fleet, the chaplain of the vessel was my guide, counsellor, and friend. In the words of one of the sailors, "Our chaplain is a real feller." And indeed it would have been hard to find a better man for the task than this padre of ours with his young man's idealism, friendliness, and energy. In addition to his welfare work, he had his duties as a de-coder, and his spare time he spent tutoring several of the enlisted personnel who were about to take examinations for higher ratings. It is a great mistake, by the way, to imagine that a violent gulf lies between the commissioned officer and the enlisted man. One finds the higher officer only too glad to help the sailor advance, and many times have they said to me, "Don't write about us, write about the sailors; get to know them; get their story." On this particular ship many of the younger officers were, like the chaplain, giving up their spare time to help the ambitious men along. Correspondence school courses are great favourites in the Navy, and have undoubtedly helped many a sailor on to a responsible rating.
Our flagship chaplain used to make several rounds of the ship every day, "tours of welfare inspection," he used to call them humorously. Everywhere would he go, from wardroom to torpedo station, not neglecting an occasional visit to the boiler room. Friendly grins used to salute him on his passage; as the sailor said he was a "real feller." I often accompanied him on his rounds. When the tour was over, we would go to the chaplain's room for a quiet smoke and a good talk. The chaplain's room was always clean and quiet, and on the bookshelf, instead of weighty books on thermodynamics and navigation, were the pleasant kind of books one found in friendly houses over home.
"Do you know," said the chaplain to me one day, "you have landed here at an interesting time. There's very little shore leave being given because it can't be given, and as a result the life of the ship is thrown back upon itself for all its amusements and social activities. What do you think of the morale here?"
"I think it's very high," I answered. "The men seem very contented and keen. I've talked with a great many of them. How do you keep the morale up?"
"Well, this ship has always been famous as a 'happy ship'" (here I ventured to say that any other condition would be impossible under the captain we had) "and when men get into the habit of working together good-naturedly, that habit is liable to stick. And I find the men sustained by the thought of active service. You may think it calm here, having just arrived from a destroyer base, but think of what it is over on the American coast."