NOTE III
THE ART OF GUNNERY
Many men will tell you that our ships are under-gunned. So they are—on paper: but on paper a gun merely represents a tube sticking out of the side. One does not see the little group of from three to nine men who work it in action; the ammunition hoist that feeds it; or the pile of live shell and cartridge that would lie beside it. These things take up space, and the more space you supply, the less will the gun be disconcerted by its own or a neighbour’s disaster. Our people do not like to work in crowds. They prefer, as we do ashore, to manage their own little shows alone. The effect of wounded men kicking and hiccoughing in a crowded secondary battery is bad for cool aiming; besides which, idlers, cooks and servants might be jostling the workers in their efforts to get the wounded below. On an open deck, with fair intervals between the guns, the wounded can be moved out of the way at once; and if the gun itself, by any chance, be dismounted, there is a margin of safety for its inboard collapse, and room for a working-party to take charge of it. I am speaking now of light armaments behind shields. The knowledge that one lucky shot might wreck two or three guns together does not make for happiness. This is why our guns are comparatively few in number, but exceedingly handy to work. A ship knows, of course, exactly where the crowd would of necessity be gathered in any craft opposed to her. Two or three shots in a nest of crowded guns, open ammunition-hoists, and piles of ‘ready’ cartridges, will do more moral and intellectual damage than the effacement of one or two guns in a line strung evenly from bow to stern.
NOTE IV
OMDURMAN
You must understand here that the Flagship was not only our central authority, but Reuter’s Agency as well; and that between orders for drills were sandwiched little pieces of news from the world ashore. One peaceful morning the Yeoman of Signals came to the captain’s cabin at the regulation pace, but with heightened colour and an eye something brighter than usual. ‘Signal from the flagship, sir,’ said he, reading off the slate. ‘Omdurman fallen: killed so many, and wounded so many.’ ‘Thank you,’ said the captain. ‘Tell the men.’ On this, I went forward to see how the news would be received. We were busy painting some deck-houses, and the work continued to an accompaniment of subdued voices—the hushed tones of men under the eye of authority. Word was passed to the lower deck and the stokehold: and the hum of talk rose, perhaps, half a note. I halted by the painters. Said one, dipping deep in the white lead: ‘Um, ah! This ought to make the French sickish. Almost ’ear ’em coughin’, can’t you?’ Said another, reaching out for the broadest and slabbiest brush: ‘I say, Alf, lend us that Khartoum brush o’ yours.’ After a long pause, stepping back to catch the effect of a peculiarly juicy stroke—head a little aside and one eye shut: ‘Well, we’ve waited about long enough, ’aven’t we?’ Bosun’s mate with a fine mixture of official severity and human tolerance: ‘What are you cacklin’ for over there! Carry on quiet, can’t you?’ And that was how we took the news of the little skirmish called Omdurman.
NOTE V
BOAT-RACING
Our whaler would go out between lights under pretence of practising, but really for the purpose of insulting other whalers whom she had beaten in inter-ship contests. Boat-racing is to the mariner what horse-racing is to the landsman. The way of it is simple. When your racing crew is in proper condition, you row under the bows of the ship you wish to challenge and throw up an oar. If you are very confident, or have a long string of victories to your credit, you borrow a cock from the hen-coops and make him crow. Then the match arranges itself. A friendly launch tows both of you a couple of miles down the bay, and back you come, digging out for the dear life, to be welcomed by hoarse subdued roars from the crowded foc’sles of the battleships. This deep booming surge of voices is most moving to hear. Some day a waiting fleet will thus cheer a bruised and battered sister staggering in with a prize at her tail—a plugged and splintered wreck of an iron box, her planking brown with what has dried there, and the bright water cascading down her sides. I saw the setting of such a picture one blood-red evening when the hulls of the fleet showed black on olive-green water, and the yellow of the masts turned raw-meat colours in the last light. A couple of racing cutters spun down the fairway, and long after they had disappeared we could hear far-off ships applauding them. It was too dark to catch more than a movement of masses by the bows, and it seemed as though the ships themselves were triumphing all together.
NOTE VI