Chapter X

THE Admiral, it was rumoured, had said,"Let there be Signal Midshipmen."Wherefore the Flag-Lieutenant communed with the Commander, who sent for the Senior Midshipman.

The Senior Midshipman responded to the summons with an alacrity that hinted at a conscience not wholly void of offence.

"Let there be Signal Midshipmen,"said the Commander, or words to that effect,"in four watches."

"Aye, aye, sir,"said the Senior Midshipman. He emerged from the Commander's cabin and breathed deeply, as one who had passed unscathed through a grave crisis. Apparently that small matter of the picket-boat's damaged stem-piece had been overlooked.

Ere he was out of earshot, however, the Commander spoke again."By the way,"added the Arbiter of his little destinies,"I don't want to see your name in the leave-book again until the picket-boat is repaired."

"Aye, aye, sir,"repeated the Senior Midshipman. He descended to the Gunroom, where, it being"make-and-mend"afternoon, his brethren were wrapped in guileless slumber. An ` Inman's Nautical Tables,' lying handy on the table, described a parabola through the air, and, striking a prominent portion of the nearest sleeper's anatomy, ricochetted into his neighbour's face. The two sat up, glowered suspiciously at each other for an instant, and joined battle. The shock of their conflict overturned a form, and two more recumbent figures awoke wrathfully to"life and power and thought."

"'You four,"announced the Senior Midshipman calmly, when the uproar had subsided,"will take on signal duty from to-morrow morning."Then, having satisfactorily discharged the duty imposed upon him, he settled himself to slumber on the settee.

Three of the four to whom this announcement was made gasped and were silent. Signals! Under the very eye of the Admiral! Each one saw himself an embryo Flag-Lieutenant. , . , One even made a little prophetic motion with his left arm, as though irked by the aiguilette that in fancy already encircled it. The fourth alone spoke���

"Crikey !"he muttered,"an' my only decent pair of breeches are in the scran-bag."

[The"scran-bag"is the receptacle for articles of clothing, &c., left lying about at First Lieutenant's rounds in the morning. Gear thus impounded can be redeemed once a week by payment of a bar of soap.]

Men say that with the passing of"Masts and Yards"the romance of the Naval Service died. This is for those to judge who have seen a fleet of modern battleships flung plunging from one complex formation to another at the dip of a"wisp of coloured bunting,"and have watched the stutter of a speck of light, as unseen ships talk across leagues of darkness.

The fascination of a game only partly understood, yet ever hinting vast possibilities, seized upon the minds of the Chosen Four. Morse and semaphore of course they knew, and the crude translations of the flags were also familiar enough. But the inner mysteries of the science (and in these days it is a very science) had not as yet unfolded themselves.

At intervals the Flag-Lieutenant would summon them to his cabin, where, with the aid of the Signal Books and little oblong pieces of brass, he demonstrated the working of a Fleet from the signal point of view, and how a mistake in the position of a flag in the hoist might result in chaos - and worse.

The Chosen Four sat wide-eyed at his feet amid cigarette ash and the shattered fragments of the Third Commandment.

Harbour watch-keeping perfected their semaphore and Morse, till by ceaseless practice they could read general signals flashed at a speed that to the untrained eye is merely a bewildering flicker. As time wore on they began to acquire the almost uncanny powers of observation common to the lynx-eyed men around them on the bridge.

Each ship in a Fleet is addressed hey hoisting that ship's numeral pendants. The ship thus addressed hoists an answering pendant in reply. At intervals all through the day the Signal Yeoman of the Watch would suddenly snap his glass to his eye, pause an instant as the wind unfurled a distant flutter of bunting at some ship's yard-arm, and then jump for the halyard that hoisted the answering pendant. The smartness of a ship's signal-bridge is the smartness of that ship, and in consequence this is a game into which the. stimulus of competition enters, Signal Boatswain. Midshipmen, and Yeomen vying with each other to be the first to give the shout,"Up Answer !"

One night at the Junior Officers' Club one of the Chosen Four encountered another of his ilk from a different ship: and, since at eighteen (if you are ever to become anything) shop is a right and necessary topic of conversation, they fell to discussing their respective bridges.

Presently said he of the other ship, waxing pot-valiant by reason of Marsala,"I'll bet you a dinner ashore we'll show your pendants before the week's up."

Now should a ship fail to see a signal made to her, other ships present can be very offensive by hoisting the pendants of the ship addressed at mast-head and yard-arms. This is to hold the delinquent up as an object of scorn and derision to the Fleet, and is a fate more dreaded by right-minded signalmen than the Plagues of Egypt.

"An' I'll give you fifteen seconds' grace,"added the speaker.

The challenge was accepted, and for five sweltering days - it was summer at Malta, the two ships watched each other from sunrise till dark, the pendants"bent"to the halyards in readiness. On the evening of the sixth day a thunderstorm that had been brewing all the afternoon burst in a torrential down pour over the harbour. At that instant a signal crept to the flagship's yard-arm.

On board the ship addressed the Midshipman had dashed for the shelter of the bridge-house, the Yeoman was struggling into an oilskin, and the Second Hand had stepped into the lee of a search-light.

"Stand by - thirteen, fourteen . . ."counted the small figure standing in the driving rain on the flagship's bridge, watch in hand:"fifteen, Hoist!"Then for the first time in his short career he deserted his post. Clattering pell-melt down the ladders to the Gunroom, where the remainder of the Chosen Four were playing cut-throat whist, he flung back the drab-coloured curtain.

"Got him!"he shouted triumphantly."By the aching stomach, I had him cold!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I have said that of the Chosen Four - three saw visions, while the other bewailed the inaccessibility till the end of the week of his best trousers. Now of the four he alone came to wear the aiguillettes of a Flag-Lieutenant, and to-day the mysteries of Tactics, Fleet Organisation and Formation, are to him as an open book. A Baker Street photographer once had the temerity to display his photograph in the window, in uniform, tinted. Passing by, I heard a woman gush foolishly to her companion,"Oh, isn't he a darling!

The relevancy of this anon.

Another forsook the bunting-draped path of Signals to climb to fame through the smoke of many battle practices. He now adds after his rank the cryptic initial (G). The third married an heiress and her relations, and retired. He has several children and is reported to have lost interest in the Service.

The remaining one, when I saw him last, had also lost interest in the Service. He was lying in a curiously crumpled heap across the stakes of a jungle stockade, his empty revolver dangling by the lanyard round his neck. A handful of his men fought like demons to recover possession of the mutilated body.

"Sure,"said a bearded Petty Officer, half apologetically, wiping his cutlass with a tussock of grass,"we couldn't lave him there - an' himself somewan's darlin', likely . . ,"

Sailors are inveterate sentimentalists

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