Yet, in a way, he was glad when his leave was up. The call of duty in Britain's time of peril was too urgent. He felt he must be doing something. Even his well-earned leave savoured of "slacking."
On the afternoon of the last day of his holiday Terence received his order from the Admiralty to proceed to Whale Island for a second gunnery course. Somewhat to his mother's and his aunt's consternation he executed a war-dance round the drawing-room, to the imminent peril of Miss Wilson's objects of art, with which the room was certainly overcrowded. "A short gunnery course." He took it that that meant another step to the height of his ambition. If he came through that with flying colours he concluded that he would be sent to either a battleship or a cruiser. There could be, he reasoned, no object in putting a Reserve officer through the mysteries of heavy-gun drill if he were to continue to serve in an armed merchantman, whose heaviest ordnance consisted of the comparatively small 4.7-in. gun or the 6-in. at the very outside.
On the other hand, in spite of his experience as officer of the watch on the "Strongbow" and "Terrier" he would be of little use as watch-keeping officer on a battleship or cruiser in company. He had no training in the delicate art of station-keeping, whereby lines of huge ships keep their respective distances with mathematical nicety, which can only be acquired by years of experience.
Yet that troubled him but little. So long as he had a chance of smelling powder under anything approaching equal conditions he would be content. Rather selfishly he hoped that the German fleet would skulk in Wilhelmshaven Harbour or in the Kiel Canal until the time that he found himself on board one of the battleships or big cruisers of the Grand Fleet.
So with a brand new kit—for he had lost practically all his gear when the "Terrier" made her plunge—Terence reported himself at Whale Island—the principal gunnery establishment of the British Empire, nay, of the whole world—an artificial island, constructed by means of earth excavated from the huge basin of Portsmouth Dockyard.
Officially Whale Island is a ship, appearing in all official naval documents as H.M.S. "Excellent." It boasts of a "Quarter-Deck;" ship routine is carried out almost as faithfully as if the several thousand men were really afloat instead of being quartered in barracks. There are spacious parade grounds, diving-tank for instructing embryo seaman-divers, workshops, and, in the adjoining Portsea Island, a rifle-range; but all these give precedence to the gun-batteries.
Almost the whole of the western side of the island is occupied by a long, low building designated the heavy-gun battery. Here types of guns, from the monstrous 15-in. downwards, are mounted under similar conditions to those on shipboard, and used solely for the instruction of officers and men. Even the "heave" of a ship in a seaway is allowed for, since some of the ordnance are mounted on "rolling platforms" designed to make a seaman gunner in training accustomed to the motion of a vessel under way.
Terence entered into his duties with the keenest zest. His ready mind quickly grasped the points raised by the instructor. Difficulties that proved well-nigh insurmountable to several of the class, he overcame with an ease which astonished both his mentor and himself, and at the end of the period of training he was the proud possessor of a first-class certificate signed by the captain of the ship.
Thus it came as a slight disappointment when Terence received orders to proceed to Rosyth to join H.M. torpedo-boat-destroyer, "Livingstone." Still, it was a step in the right direction, the sub. agreed, and that was something to be thankful for.
The "Livingstone" was a modern craft of 965 tons, carried three 4-in. guns, and was propelled by turbine machinery, steam being raised exclusively by oil fuel. It was one of the flotillas whose duty lay in patrolling the easternmost limits of the North Sea, so as to be in readiness to report the German High Sea Fleet should, in a rash moment, the Kaiser or his minion Tirpitz give the order for it to risk annihilation at the hands of Admiral Jellicoe's waiting seamen.