Chapter XXI

"Every person subject to this Act who shall strike ... or lift up any weapon against his superior officer in the execution of his office, shall be punished with Death or such other punishment as is hereinafter mentioned."- Sec. 16, Naval Discipline Act.

IN Official eyes - even in eyes anxious to condone -illicit rum and the unreasoning passion of a Celtic temperament were the sole causes of the trouble. Yet a man may fight Destiny in the shape of these evils and still make a very fair show of it. It was the addition of the third factor that in this case overtipped the scales.

Her red, untidy hair was usually screwed into wisps of last night's ` Football Herald.` She had green, provocative eyes that slanted upwards ever so slightly at the corners, and coarse, chapped hands - useful hands, as many an overbold Ordinary Seaman had discovered to his fuddled amazement, but in no wise ornamental. Her speech was partly Lowerdeck, partly Barrack-room, softened withal by the broad West Country burr; her home was an alehouse in an obscure back street near Devonport Dockyard.

She was in no sense of the word a"nice"girl; but she was tall, deep-bosomed, and broad of hip, and appealed inordinately to Ivor Jenkins, Stoker 1st Class of His Majesty's Navy, who was dark and undersized, and had lately developed a troublesome cough.

The recreations of a man who, on a daily rate of pay of 2s. 1d., contrives to support a bed-ridden mother and a consumptive sister, cannot perforce partake of the elaborate. Ivor, denied a wider choice, was therefore content to spend as much of his watch ashore as a jealously eked-out pint would allow, at the"Crossed Killicks."For many weeks past, alternate nights had found the little man perched on a three-legged stool in a corner of the bar, raging inwardly at an unnumbered host of rivals, dumbly grateful for such crumbs of recognition as Arabella, from behind the beer handles, was pleased to fling him.

The sailor-man a-wooing usually conducts his financial affairs with an open-handed generosity calculated to make a ministering angel pensive. In consequence, Ivor, who could not afford to back his protestations by invitations to the Hippodrome, whelk-suppers, and the like, dropped by degrees more and more out of the running. At first the girl gave him encouragement - not the vague, nebulous coquetry Mayfair recognises as such, but an intimate familiarity extended to slaps on the nose (boko), and once a dash of swipes down the back of his neck as Ivor stooped to recover a broken pipe. But nothing came of it - not even a penn'orth of fish-and-chips. Accustomed to tribute tendered with a lavish hand, Arabella decided that this must be a"proper stinge,"- one, moreover, niggardly in his consumption of beer, and (since there was the good of the house to be considered) to be dealt a lesson in due season.

"Bella ! . . . Give us a kiss!"

Save for Ivor and the girl, the squalid bar was deserted. She paused in the act of replacing a bottle on the shelf behind her, and looked over her shoulder, half-surprised, half-contemptuous. A beam of afternoon sunlight slanted through the dusty panes and caught the greenish feline eyes and ruddy hair, innocent for once of curl-papers.

"Wot ? . . . Me-kiss--yu !"She spoke slowly, and flung each word like a whip-lash at the soul of Ivor Jenkins.

"Ah, yus, Bella�..jest one�.. There ain't�."

"Mai dear laife ! Yu ain't 'arf got no neck!"She turned with her hands on her hips and regarded him with a smile on her thin lips, measuring his undersized stature with her eyes."I only kisses men - yu don' even drink laike no man, yu don'. 'Sides, wot've 'ee done for us to kiss 'ee ? Us laikes men wot does things, yu know."

Ivor winced, but never took his smouldering eyes from the girl."I'd do anything for you,"he said tensely,"so I would,"and coughed abruptly.

She, laughed and fell to wiping the sloppy counter."Them as wants mai kisses earns un. Same's Pete Worley: broke out of uns ship, un did, to take I to theatre. An' w'en th' escort commed to fetch un back, Pete un laid un out laike nine -pins! Proper man, un was!"She surveyed Ivor, perched smoking on his stool, and a sudden gleam came into her eyes.

"Yeer ! �.us knows of a kiss goin' beggin' tu-morrow afternoon."She leaned across the counter with a dangerous tenderness in her rather hoarse voice.,"If so be as a man (she laid a slight intonation on the word) as't leave to go to Dockyard Bank for'n hour, an' slipped out, laike ...... . . ."

It was his watch on board, as she knew; but she had also noted the red Good Conduct Badge on his arm, and chose it instead of the accustomed tribute he had denied her. Then her eyes hardened like agates."Simly yu ain't got no money tu bank, though?"

"Aye,"said Ivor slowly;"aye, indeed I have. Three poun'."It was his sheet-anchor, saved (how Heaven and he alone knew) that his mother might eventually be buried with that circumstance which is dearer to the hearts of the Welsh than life itself.

The girl nodded, and laid her hand caressingly on his sleeve."Tha's - right, mai dear. Yu get leave to go to bank, an' slip along 'ere. Tu-morrow afternoon 'bout five-will lee now?"She looked at him from beneath tawny lashes.

Ivor finished his beer and wiped his mouth musingly on the back of his hand. The girl thought he was considering the Good Conduct Badge: as a matter of fact Ivor was wondering how the Police at the Dockyard Gate might be circumvented.

"'Course,"she said indifferently, turning sway,"of yu'm 'feered......... . -".

The man flushed darkly and stood up."You'll see,"he replied, and went out through the swing-doors in a gust of coughing. It had been worrying him a good deal lately, that cough.

II

The short November afternoon was drawing to a close as Ivor left the Dockyard Bank with a shining sovereign gripped tightly in his trousers pocket. Dusk was settling down on the lines of store-houses, and from the Hamoaze below came the hoot of syrens that told of a fog sweeping in from the Channel. Ivor strolled across the cobbles to where the figurehead of a bygone frigate lifted an impassive countenance, and from the shelter of its plinth he surveyed the gateway. The main entrance was closed, and the narrow door, that only admitted the passage of one person at a time, was guarded by a watchful policeman. It seemed as if nothing short of a miracle would get a man in uniform through without a pass.

Presently a bell in some neighbouring tower struck the hour, and the waiting man turned in the direction of the sound. The ships in the lower yard were invisible, only their top masts appeared out of a fog that came slowly swirling in from the sea. Higher and higher it crept; then suddenly the policeman at the gate was blotted out, and the walk became a towering blackness that loomed up through the vapour. Still Ivor waited, holding his sovereign tightly, and wrestling with a cough that threatened every minute to betray him. Some parties of liberty-men going on leave tramped past: he heard the gates open and saw for a moment the glare of the streets beyond. A couple of officers in plain clothes appeared suddenly into the blurred circle of his vision and were swallowed again by the blackness."What a fog!"he heard one say. The other laughed, and grumbled something about being glad he was not Channel groping. Their voices died away, and Ivor emerged to reconnoitre, only to scurry back into shelter as a telegraph boy on a bicycle steered a devious course past him across the cobbles. The little disc of light from his lamp zigzagged to and fro for a minute and was gone. Then Ivor heard the rumble of wheels and the clatter of a horse's hoofs the lights of a four-wheeler passed him and stopped. The policeman was unbolting the gates.

It was Ivor's chance and, realising it, he slipped up beside the cab. Inside was a figure muffled in a greatcoat, above which he caught a glimpse of a clean-shaven, impatient face. Presently the inmate lowered the further window and leant out, effectually interposing his body as a screen between Ivor and the guardian of the gate.

"Hurry up,"he called;"I've got a train to catch."

The gates swung slowly back, the cab rumbled through, and with it passed Ivor Jenkins. Then for the first time he relinquished his grip on his sovereign, and permitted himself the luxury of a fit of unchecked coughing.

"Bilked 'im,"he gasped when he got his breath again, half-awed at the ease with which he found himself in the strangely unfamiliar streets. At the corner of the side-street he turned and looked back at the grim wall. In the signal-tower that loomed above it into the murky sky the yeoman on watch had just tapped the key of the flashing lamp to test the circuit. To Ivor it seemed as if Fate had winked at him, solemnly and portentously.

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

Ivor pushed through the swing-doors of the"Crossed Killicks"and looked hastily round the bar.

"'Ullo ! . . ."he ejaculated blankly. Were's Bella?"

The girl behind the counter, a short, stout woman in a purple plush bodice, tossed her head."'Er a'ternoon orf,"she explained. tartly.

"Aye, but-w'ere's she gorn ?"

"Walkin' out with a Blue Marine. 'Ippodrome, I think, they was goin'."

Ivor sat down and fumbled blindly in the lining of his cap for his pipe. Save for a spot of colour on either cheek-bone, his face was an ugly grey.

"Fine upstanding feller, 'e was too,"added the barmaid, weighing Ivor in the balance of comparison, and finding him somewhat wanting. Ivor nodded dully, and for a while examined with apparently absorbed interest an advertisement on the wall opposite. Passion surged through him in waves that made the skin of his forehead tingle. So she'd bilked him after all: given him the go-by for a Blue Marine! Ivor knew him too, . . . had once even stood him a drink . . . . The Adam's-apple in his throat worked like a piston.

Presently the girl behind the bar looked up from her occupation of drying glasses and eyed him curiously; but all she saw was a small dark man, who sucked hard at an empty pipe, one fist clenched tightly in him trousers pocket, staring hard at an advertisement for somebody's whisky.

At length, out of the chaos of his thoughts, two courses of action took shape and presented themselves for consideration. One was to bash the Blue Marine into irrecognition ; the other was to get mercifully drunk as soon as possible. The Blue Marine, Ivor remembered, scaled a matter of fourteen stone, so he chose the latter alternative, and for thirty-six hours Oblivion, as understood by men of His Majesty's Forces, received him into her arms.

III

"Did remain absen' over leave thirty-six hours, under haggravated circumstances,"declaimed the Master-at-Arms.

It was the first time Ivor had broken his leave for three years. His head ached intolerably: he felt sick, too, and heard as from an infinite distance the cool, crisp tones of the Commander, who spoke sternly of the penalties attached to"not playing the game.". Ivor listened sullenly. It was another and an older game he had tried to play, a game in which Fate seemed to hold most of the trumps. There was a good deal more in the same strain about the abuse of privileges, and it all ended in his being placed in the Captain's Report, to stand over till next day.

At dinner his resentment against the Universe in general swelled into an excited flood of lower-deck jargon. In particular, he poured out invective on the perfidy of Woman, and 43 Mess, with the peculiar understanding vouched in the matter to men who go down to the sea in ships, sucked its teeth in sympathetic encouragement.

"I'd serve 'er to rights,"said a youthful Second-Class Stoker darkly. He removed the point of his, clasp-knife from his mouth, whither it had conveyed a potato, and illustrated with a gesture an argument certain of his feminine acquaintances in the Mile End Road were supposed to have found conclusive.

"Don't you take on, Taff,"said another, pushing over his pannikin of rum'."'Ave a rub at this lot."Ivor finished his sympathiser's tot, and several others that were furtively offered him-for he was a popular little man among his messmates. But spirit -even"three-water"rum-is not the soundest remedy for an alcoholic head. It set him coughing, and deepened the sense of injury that rankled :within him.

"Wot you wants,"said a Leading Stoker,"is to run about an' bite things, like. You go on deck an' 'ave a smoke."He knew the danger-signals of a mess-deck with the intimacy of seventeen years' experience, and Ivor went sullenly. But it was a dangerous man that stopped at the break of the forecastle to light his pipe.

"Well,"he said presently,"what d'you reckon I'll get whateffer ?"His"Raggie"considered the situation."Couldn't rightly say; there's the Jauntie [Master-at-Arms] over by the 'atchway - go 'long an' ask 'im."Ivor smoked in silence for a moment, then nodded, and stepping through the wreaths of tobacco smoke; touched the Master-at-Arms on the shoulder. The latter, who was listening to a story related by the Ship's Steward, was a small man, with a grim vinegary face. He turned sharply

"Well?"he said curtly.

Now Ivor had stepped across the deck, honestly intending to ask the probable extent of the punishment the Captain would award him for breaking his leave. The suddenness with which the Master - at - Arms turned jarred his jangled nerves; the sour face opposite him was the face of the man who, on the Lower Deck, represented Law, Order, and Justice, things Ivor knew to be perverse and monstrous mockeries. His brain swam with the fumes of the thirty-six hour debauch, reawakened by his messmate's rum. A sudden insane rage closed down on him like a mist, leaving him conscious only of the Master-at-Arms' face, as in the centre of a partly fogged negative, very distinct, and for an instant imperturbable and maddening . . . . Yet, as Ivor struck, fair and true between the eyes, he somehow realised that not even now had be got level with Fate.

IV

A man seated in the foremost cell raised an unshaven face from his hands as the sullen report of a gun reached him through the open scuttle. For a while he speculated dully what it was for; then with curious disinterestedness remembered that it was the court-martial gun, and that he, Ivor Jenkins, was that day to be tried for an offence the extreme penalty for which is Death.

They said he'd slogged the Jauntie. For a while he had been dazed and incredulous, but as the testimony of innumerable witnesses seemed to leave no doubt about the matter, Ivor accepted the intelligence with stoical unconcern. Personally he had no recollection of anything save a great uproar and a sea of excited faces appearing suddenly on all sides out of a red mist . . . . However, there were the witnesses, and, moreover, there was still an unexplained tenderness about his knuckles.

"I pleads guilty,"was all the prisoner's friend (a puzzled and genuinely sympathetic Engineer Lieutenant) could get out of him.

"Well, I should have thought you were the last man to have done such a thing the whole of the ship's company."

"Same 'ere, sir,"said Ivor, and fell acoughing.

Subsequent proceedings bewildered and finally bored him. They thrust documents upon him, wherein he found his name coupled to the incomprehensible prefix"For that he,"and his misdemeanour described in a style worthy of the `Police Budget.' The Chaplain visited him and spoke words of reproof in a kindly and mechanical tone. For the rest, he was left to himself throughout the long days; to cough and cough again, to watch the light grow and fade, to count the stars in the barred circle of the scuttle, and to the recollection of green, slanting eyes vexed by dusty sunlight in their depths . . . .

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

"Have you any objection to any members of this Court?"

Ivor started at the question and looked round the cabin. Till then he had not noticed. his surroundings much. A Captain and several Commanders in frock-coats and epaulettes were seated round a baize-covered table; they were enclosed by a rope covered with green cloth, secured breast - high to wooden pillars, also covered with green cloth. It was the Captain's fore-cabin, and the bulkheads were covered with paintings of ships. One of these in particular - a corvette close-hauled - arrested Ivor's attention. The Deputy Judge-Advocate, a Paymaster with a preternaturally grave face and slightly nervous manner, repeated his question.

"Do you object to being tried by any of the Officers present on the Court?"Ivor moistened his lips; why on earth should they expect him to object to them ? An unknown Master-at-Arms standing beside him with a drawn sword nudged him in the ribs.

"No, sir."

The Captains and Commanders then rose with a clank of swords, and swore to administer justice without partiality, favour, or affection, in tones that for a moment brought Ivor visions of a stuffy chapel (Ebenezer, they called it) in far away Glamorganshire. Then the Judge-Advocate turned to him again.

"You need not plead either `Guilty' or `Not Guilty.' But if you wish to plead `Guilty' you may do so now."

At last:"Guilty,"said Ivor Jenkins.

For an instant there was utter silence. The junior Commander stirred slightly and glanced at the clock: he would have time for that round of golf after all.

The Prisoner's Friend then. gave evidence, and Ivor experienced his first sensation of interest at hearing himself described as an excellent working hand, who had never given anything but satisfaction to his superiors. A perspiring. and obviously embarrassed Chief Stoker followed.

"The last man in the ship I'd 'a' thought 'ud do such a thing,"he maintained. Ivor glanced at him indulgently, as one who hears an oft-repeated platitude, and resumed his study of the corvette close-hauled.

"Clear the Court,"said the President briskly. Ivor found himself once more in the lobby, sitting between his escort. One, a kindly man, pressed a small, hard object into his hand. Ivor nodded imperceptible thanks, and under cover of a cough, conveyed it to his mouth. It was a plug of Navy tobacco.

A bell rang overhead, and the prisoner was marched back into Court.

". . . to be imprisoned with hard labour for the term of twelve calendar months."It was over.

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

"Now say 'Ah !' . . . Again ! . . . Raise your arms . . . H'm." The Surgeon disentangled himself from his stethoscope and looked Ivor in the eyes.

"My lad,"he said bluntly,"it's Hospital for you - and too late at that."

In the Wardroom later on he met the Engineer Lieutenant."I'd make a better Prisoner's Friend than ever you will,"he remarked. Pressed for an explanation, he tapped the stethoscope-case in his pocket.

"Consumption - galloping,"he said.

Perhaps Ivor had held the Ace of Trumps after all.

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