"Our orders were to proceed by way of Suez and to rendezvous with the battle-fleet at Guantánamo, Cuba. We got into Guantánamo the day before the Missalama arrived from the North. The Missalama had orders to proceed to the West Coast. Half a dozen of the officers already in Guantánamo were ordered to her. I was one of them."
"Good night! But that was a jolt!"
"That's what it was. But that's the service."
"And couldn't you do anything about it?"
"What could I do? There were my orders. A couple of the fellows came as near to being politicians then as ever they did in their lives. They tried to reach people in Washington—bureau chiefs, senators, influential congressmen—to have me detached and ordered home. But next day was a holiday and the day after was Sunday, and the ship had to sail by Sunday. And she did, and I with her."
"And how do you account for your being shunted off like that? Somebody have it in for you?"
"No, no—not that. Simply the politicians. I don't suppose the service will ever be free of the near-politicians. The navy has them—fellows who are not good enough officers to depend upon themselves alone, and not good enough politicians to go in for politics altogether. Somebody with a good shore billet somewhere was probably due for sea-duty, and not wanting to let go of a good thing, and having the pull, somebody else went instead. And somebody else for that somebody else, and somebody else again, and so on till at last the somebody else who could be made to serve a turn happened to be me.
"'Hard luck, Dickie,' said the ward-room mess. 'But cheer up—in three months you'll see the Golden Gate, and by then you'll be ready for a little duty on your home coast. Then your lieutenant's straps and shore duty, and your wife and baby to yourself for a while.' I had that thought to cheer me through the night-watches around South America, but at Callao we got orders to proceed to Manila, and after six months out that way it was off to the Island of Guam, and from there to make a survey of some islands in the South Sea. No way I could fix it could I tell my wife to come and meet me at any certain place.
"But no task is endless. We were homeward bound at last. I remember how I used to say at mess that I was never going to believe I was home, till with my own eyes I saw the anchor splash in a home port. But there it was now—the anchor actually splashing in Bayport. I had the bridge making port, and I remember what a look I took around me before I turned the deck over to the executive. From the bridge, with a long glass, I could see above the tree tops the roof of the colonel's old quarters. I pictured him on the veranda below with the baby and Doris waiting for me. I'd sent a wireless ahead for Doris not to risk herself or that baby out in the bay with a fleet of battle-ships coming to anchor. And the baby! I dreamed of him reaching up his little hands and calling, 'Papa, papa!' when he saw me.
"Well, everything was shipshape. We were safe to moorings and I was relieved of the deck and about to step off the bridge when the word was passed that somebody was waiting to see me in the ward-room. And with no more than that—'Somebody to see you, sir'—I knew who it was. The fort boat had come alongside and people had come aboard—officers' wives and families, I knew, but not just who, because the boat had unloaded aft while I was on the bridge forward. But I knew.