The diminutive electric heaters are true to the first part of their name rather than the last: that is to say, while they are undeniably electric, it is equally certain that they do not heat. There is a certain amount of warmth in them, as I discovered the time I scorched my blankets by taking one to bed with me; but that is of use only when you can confine it and apply locally, which is rarely practicable in a small craft at sea, even when you have the time for it.
It will be readily understood, therefore, why on a M.L., at sea in really wintry weather, the only alternative to sitting up and being slowly but surely chilled to the marrow is to doff wet togs as soon as you come off watch, don dry ones, bolt your dinner, and turn in. This is just what we had to do on M.L. —— that night; for, besides the really intense cold, a sea which came through the sky-light of the little dining-cabin early in the afternoon had
drenched cushions and curtains, with enough left over to form an inch or two of swashing swirl upon the deck. Poor ’Arry, with the effects of the “call o’ the sea” still showing in his hollow eyes and pasty cheeks, was not in shape to do much either in the way of “slicking up” or “snugging down”; while the extent of his culinary effort was limited to a kedgeree of half-boiled rice and pale canned salmon, and a platter of eggs fried “straight up,” according to D——’s order, with the yolks glaring fish-eyedly at you from a smooth, waxy expanse of congealed grease. D——, who was still somewhat “introspective” himself, turned down the “straightups” straightaway, bent a look that was more grieved than angry on the forlorn ’Arry, and then, rising shiveringly, started edging along over the sodden divan toward his cabin door.
“As principal medical officer of this ship,” he said through chattering teeth, “I prescribe the only treatment ever found to be efficacious in such circumstances as the present—bunk, blankets, and hot toddy.”
There were two bunks in D——’s narrow cabin, and it was not until we had turned into these—he in the lower, I in the upper—that the mounting glow of soul and body thawed the reserve which had again threatened to grip him in the matter of where he came from, and set his tongue wagging of his life on the old home farm, and from that to a sketchy but vivid recital of things that he had done,
and hoped still to do, as the skipper of a British patrol boat. It is the vision that the memory of that recital conjures up: D——, with a Balaclava helmet pulled low over his ears, gesticulating excitedly up to where I, the unblanketed portion of my anatomy shrouded to the eyes in a wool duffel-coat, leaned out over the edge of the bunk above—that I can never dwell on without laughing outright.
The story of the way in which it happened that D—— came over to get into the game in the first place did not differ greatly from those I have heard from a score or more of young Americans who, partly inspired by a sense of duty and partly lured by the promise of adventure, sought service in the British Army or Navy by passing themselves off as Canadians. He had intended to enlist in the Army at first; but when he found that six months or more might elapse before he would be sent to the other side, he crossed at his own expense on the chance of avoiding the delay. At the end of a disappointing month spent in trying to enlist in some unit that had a reasonable expectation of going into active service at once, the intervention of an old college friend—an able young chemical engineer occupying a prominent post in Munitions—secured him a sub-lieutenant’s commission in the R.N.V.R. Although, as he naïvely put it, the sea was no friend of his, it appears that the M.L. game had proved congenial from the outset: so much so, indeed, that
something like three years of service found him with two decorations and innumerable mentions to his credit, to say nothing of the reputation of being one of the most resourceful, energetic and generally useful men in a service in which all of those qualities are taken more or less as a matter of course. He had gone in as a Canadian for fear that he might be turned down as a Yankee, and then, to use his own words: “By the time the U.S.A. began to take a hand, I had told so many darn lies about hunting and fishing and farming in Alberta and British Columbia that I concluded it would be less trouble to go on telling them than to start in denying them. The boundary between Canada and the U.S.A. is more or less of an imaginary line, anyhow, and so is that between the average Yankee and Canuck. I reckon I’ve made it just as hot for the Hun as the latter as I would have as the former, and that’s really the only thing that counts at this stage of the game.” It was this last observation, I believe, which started D—— talking of his work.
“Generally speaking,” he said, reaching up the match with which he had just lighted a cigarette to rekindle the tobacco in my expiring pipe, “the rôle of the M.L. is very much more defensive than it is offensive. It is supposed to police certain waters, watch for U-boats, report them when sighted, and then carry on as best it can till a destroyer, or sloop, or some craft with a real punch in it, comes up and takes over. Well, my idea from
the first has been to make that ‘defensive’ just as ‘offensive’ as possible, and it’s really astonishing how obnoxious some of us have been able to make ourselves to the Hun. Off-hand, since, with his heavier guns, the average Hun is more than a match for us even on the surface, there wouldn’t seem much that we could do against him beyond running and telling one of our big brothers. The perfecting of the depth-charge gave us one very formidable weapon, however, and that of the lance-bomb another, though the days when Fritz was tame and gullible enough to allow himself to be enticed sufficiently near to permit the use of the latter are long gone by. The most satisfying job I ever did, though, was pulled off with a lance-bomb; and, since there is not one chance in a thousand of our ever getting away with the same kind of stunt again, there ought to be no kick on my telling you just how it happened.