H.M.S. –

A HYMN OF DISGUST

THE "SPECIAL."

She was not new, and nobody could call her handsome. She was evidently more accustomed to rough weather than paint, and her sloping forecastle and low freeboard were old-fashioned, to say the least of them. She jogged slowly along, rolling to a short beam sea, with an apologetic air, as if she felt ashamed of being what she was – a pre-war torpedo-boat on local patrol duty.

She steered no particular course, and varied her speed capriciously as she beat up and down. Being in sight of the land – a grey, hard, low line to the westward – there was no need for accurate plotting of courses. On the bridge stood her Captain, a dark, lean, R.N.R. Lieutenant, pipe in mouth and hands in "lammy" pockets. The T.B. was rolling too much for any one to walk the tiny deck of the bridge; in fact, a landsman would have had difficulty in standing at all. He turned his head as his First Lieutenant swung up the little iron ladder behind him.

"What's for lunch?" he asked, carefully knocking out his pipe on the rail before him.

"The same," said his laconic subordinate, who was engaged in a rapid survey of the compass card, revolution indicator, and the horizon astern. The two stood side by side a moment looking out at the sea and sky to windward. "Any pickles?" said the Captain.

"No, only mustard."

The Captain sighed and turned to leave the bridge. The First Lieutenant pivoted suddenly – "It's better'n you and I had off the Horn in the Harvester. You'd 've been glad to get beef then, even if it was in a tin." He snorted, and turned forward again to look ahead. The Captain remained at the foot of the ladder, reading a signal handed to him by a waiting Boy Telegraphist. The argument on the subject of tinned beef had lasted a year already, and could be continued at leisure.

The boy received the signal back and vanished below, while the Captain climbed slowly to the bridge again. He spoke to the man at the wheel, and himself moved the revolution indicator.

"Panic?" said the First Lieutenant (neither of them seemed to use more than one word at a time, unless engaged in an argument).

"Sure," was the reply. "Tell 'em to make that blinkin' stuff into sandwiches and send 'em up."

The First Lieutenant went down the ladder in silence. The matter of the tinned beef was to him, as mess caterer, a continual sore point.

The T.B. started on a more erratic course than before, tacking in long irregular stretches out to seaward. Smoke was showing up against the land astern, and there was a sense of stirring activity in the air.

Two more torpedo-boats appeared suddenly from nowhere, hoists of coloured flags flying at their slender masts. The three hung on one course a moment, conferring, then spread fanwise and separated. The first boat turned back towards harbour and the growing smoke-puffs, which rapidly approached and showed more and more mine-sweepers coming out.

A droning, humming noise made the Captain look up, and he pivoted slowly round, following with his eyes a big seaplane a thousand feet above him.

As the sound of the engines died away, it seemed to start swelling again, as another machine appeared a mile abeam of them, and following the first.

The T.B. swung round ahead of the leading sweepers, and turned back to seaward. Her speed was not great, but half an hour after the turn the sweepers were hull down astern. A small airship slipped out of a low cloud and droned away on the common course. Every type of small craft seemed to be going easterly, and the sea, which an hour ago had been almost blank, was now dotted with patrol ships of every queer kind and rig. From overhead it must have looked like a pack of hounds tumbling out of cover and spreading on a faint line. But, like the hounds, the floating pack was working to an end, and whatever the various courses steered, the whole was moving out to sea.

The Boy Telegraphist hauled himself, panting, on to the bridge, and thrust a crumpled signal before the Captain's eyes. The Captain grunted and spoke shortly, and the boy dashed off below. A moment later the piping of calls sounded along the bare iron deck, and men in heavy sea-boots began to cluster aft and at the guns. The funnels sent out a protesting spout of brown smoke as the T.B. began to work up to her speed, and the choppy sea sent up a steady sheet of spray along her forecastle and over the crouching figures at the bow gun. The rest of the pack appeared to have caught the whimper too, for everything that could raise more than "Tramp's pace" was hurrying due east. A faint dull "boom" came drifting down wind as the First Lieutenant arrived on the bridge, and the two officers looked at each other in silence a moment.

"Bomb, sir?" said the junior, showing an interest which almost made him conversational.

"Sure thing," said the other. "She gave us the tip when she saw him, and that'll be one to put him under."

"How far d'you think it was?"

"Seven-eight mile. You all ready?"

The First Lieutenant nodded and slipped down the ladder again. Three miles astern came a couple of white specks – the bow-waves of big destroyers pushed to their utmost power. The Captain studied them a moment with his binoculars, and gave a grunt which the helmsman rightly interpreted as one of satisfaction. Slow as she was, the old T.B. had a long start, and was going to be on the spot first. The dark was shutting down, and the shapes of the other T.B.'s on either beam were getting dim.

The night was starlit, and with the wind astern the T.B. made easy weather of it. The two officers leaned forward over the rail staring ahead towards the unseen land. Lights showed on either hand, and occasionally they swung past the dark squat shape of a lit trawler, also bound home.

"Are you going to claim?" asked one of the watching figures. The other paused before replying —

"We-ell," he said, "I'll just report. I think we shook him to the bunt, but it's no good claiming unless you can show prisoners, Iron Cross and all." Another ruminative pause. "Your people were smart on it – devilish smart." Another pause. "What's for dinner?"

A dark mass ahead came into view, and turned slowly into a line of great ships coming towards them.

The T.B. swung off to starboard, and slowed her engines. One by one they went past her – huge, silent, and scornful, while the T.B. rocked uneasily in the cross sea made by their wakes. The Captain watched them go, chewing the stem of his unlit pipe. They were the cause of the day's activity, but it was seldom he met them at close range except like this, in the dark on his way home.

The line seemed endless, more and more dark hulls coming into view, and fading quickly into the dark again. As the last swung by the T.B.'s telegraph bells rang cheerfully, and she jogged off westward to where a faint low light flickered at intervals under the land.

BETWEEN TIDES

A stranger, if suddenly transplanted to the spot, would have taken some time after opening his eyes to realise that the boat was submerged. He would probably decide at first that she was anchored in harbour. Far away forward, under an avenue of overhead electric lamps, figures could be seen – all either recumbent or seated – and from them the eye was led on till it lost its sense of distance in a narrowing perspective of wheels, pipes, and gauges. All the while there was a steady buzzing hum from slowly turning motors, and about every half minute there came a faint whir of gear wheels from away aft by the hydroplanes. From the bell-mouths of a cluster of voice-pipes a murmur of voices sounded – the conversation of officers by the periscope; while the ear, if close to the arched steel hull, could catch a bubbling, rippling noise – the voice of the North Sea passing overhead.

The men stationed aft near the motors were not over-clean, and were certainly unshaven; some were asleep or reading (the literature carried and read by the crew would certainly have puzzled a librarian – it varied from 'Titbits' and 'John Bull' to 'Piers Plowman' and 'The Origin of Species'): a few were engaged in a heated discussion as they sat around a big torpedoman – the only man of the group actually on duty at the moment. His duties appeared only to consist in being awake and on the spot if wanted, and he was, as a matter of fact, fully occupied as one of the leading spirits in the argument.

"Well, let's 'ear what you're getting at," he said. "We 'eard a lot of talk, but it don't go anywhere. You say you're a philosopher, but you don't know what you do mean."

"I know blanky well, but you can't understand me," said the engine-room artificer addressed. "Look here, now – you've got to die some time, haven't you?"

"Granted, Professor."

"Well, it's all arranged now how you're to die, I say. It doesn't matter when or how it is, but it's all settled – see? And you don't know, and none of us know anything about it."

"That's all very well – but 'oo is it knows, then? D'you mean God?"

"No, I don't – I'm an atheist, I tell you. There's something that arranges it all, but it ain't God."

"Well, 'oo the 'ell is it, then – the Admiralty?"

The Artificer leaned forward, his dark eyes alight and his face earnest as that of some medieval hermit. "I tell you," he said, "you can believe in God, or Buddha, or anything you like, but it's the same thing. Whatever it is, it doesn't care. It has it all ready and arranged – written out, if you like – and it will have to happen just so. It's pre – pre – "

"Predestination." The deep voice came from the Leading Stoker on the bench beside him.

"Predestination. No amount of praying's any good. It's no use going round crying to gods that aren't there to help you. You've got to go through it as it's written down."

"Prayer's all right," said the Leading Stoker. "If you believe what you pray, you'll get it."

"That's not true. Have you ever had it? Give us an instance now – "

"I don't pray none, thank you. All the same, it's good for women and such that go in for it, like. It ain't the things that alter; it's yourself that does it. Ain't you never 'eard o' Christian Science?"

"Yes; same as the Mormons, ain't it? Is that what you are?"

"No, it ain't – an' I'm a Unitarian, same as you are."

"I'm not – I'm a Baptist, same as my father was; but I don't believe in it."

"Well, if you believe in one God, that's what you are."

"But I'm telling you, I don't. Look here, now. I don't believe there's anything happens at all that wasn't all arranged first, and I know that nothing can alter it."

"Well, 'oo laid it all down first go off, then?" said the Torpedoman.

"Ah! I don't know and you don't know; but I tell you it wasn't God."

"Well, 'e's a bigger man than me then, an' I takes me 'at off to 'im, 'ooever it is. I tell yer, yer talkin' through yer neck. You say if you're going to be shot, there's a bullet about somewhere in some one's pouch with yer name writ on it. Ain't that it? Well, 'oo the 'ell put yer name on it, then?"

"It doesn't matter to me so long's it's there, does it?"

"Well, if that was so, I'd like to know 'oo 'e was, so's I could pass 'im the word not to 'ave the point filed off of it for me, anyway."

"Well, you couldn't – and he couldn't alter it for you if he was there, either."

The Torpedoman moved along the bench and twisted his head round till his ear was against one of the voice-pipes. The others sat silent and watched him with lazy interest.

"We're takin' a dip," he said. "Thought I 'eard 'im say, 'Sixty feet.'" The faint rolling motion that had been noticeable before died away, and the boat seemed to have become even more peaceful and silent. The Leading Stoker leaned back against the hull and rested his head against the steel. From the starboard hand there came a faint murmur, which grew till the regular threshing beat of a propeller could be distinguished. The sound swelled till they could hear in its midst a separate piping, squeaking note. The ship passed on overhead, and the threshing sound passed with her and faded until again the steady purr of motors remained the only reminder of the fact that the boat was diving. They felt her tilt up a little by the bow as she climbed back to regain her patrol depth.

"That's a tramp," said the Torpedoman; "nootral, I reckon."

"Squeaky bearing, too," said the Artificer judicially. "Don't suppose he's looked at his thrust since he left port. What's the skipper want to go under her for?"

"Save trouble, I s'pose; didn't want to alter helm for 'er. What was you talkin' of – yes, Kismet – that's the word I've been wantin' all along. You're a Mohammedan, you are?"

"Aw, don't be a fool; I tell you I'm nothing."

The fourth wakeful figure, another Torpedoman, spoke for the first time. "If you're nothing, and you think you're nothing, what the 'ell d'yer want to make such a fuss about it for?"

"I don't make a fuss. It's all you people who think you're something who make a fuss. You can't alter what's laid down, but you think you can. You fuss and panic to stave things off, but you're like chickens in a coop – you can't get out till your master lets you, and he can't understand what you say, and he wouldn't pay any attention to it if he did."

The big Torpedoman put out a hand like a knotted oak-root and spoke —

"You an' your Kismet," he said scornfully. "Look 'ere, now. This is Gospel, and I'm tellin' of yer. S'pose there is a bullet about with your name on it, but s'posing you shoot the other – first, and there's to 'ell with yer Kismet. Gawd 'elps those that 'elp themselves, I say. S'pose we 'it a Fritz now, under water – 'oo's Kismet is it? Never mind 'oo's arranged it or 'oo's down in the book to go through it, the bloke that gets 'is doors closed first and 'as the best trained crew is goin' to come 'ome and spin the yarn about it. I say it may be written down as you say, but there's Someone 'oldin' the book, an' 'e says: 'Cross off that boat this time,' 'e say. 'They've got the best lot aboard of 'em,' 'e'd say. Is it Kismet if yer thrust collars go? Are you goin' to stop oilin' 'em because it's in the book an' you can't alter it? Yer talkin' through yer neck. Call it luck, if yer like. It's luck if we 'it a mine, and it's luck if we don't; but if we met a Fritz to-night an' poop off the bow gun an' miss – that's goin' to be our blanky fault, an' you can call it any blanky name, but you won't alter it."

"But you don't understand," said the Artificer. "I didn't – "

"Action Stations – Stand by all tubes." The voice rang clearly from the mouth of the voice-pipe, and the group leapt into activity. For sixty seconds there was apparent pandemonium – the purr of the motors rose to a quick hum, and the long tunnel of the hull rang with noises, clatter and clang and hiss. The sounds stopped almost as suddenly as they had begun, and the voices of men reporting "Ready" could be heard beyond the high-pitched note of the motors.

The big Torpedoman stretched across his tube to close a valve, and caught the eye of the fourth participant in the recent debate. "Say, Dusty," he whispered, "'ere's Someone's Kismet – in this blanky tube, an' I reckon I ain't forgot the detonator in 'er nose, neither."

The Captain lowered the periscope, his actions almost reverent in their artificial calm. He looked up at the navigating officer a few feet away and smiled. "Just turning to east," he said. "We'll be in range inside three minutes." He glanced fore and aft the boat and then back at his watch. "By gum," he said, "it's nice to have a good crew. I haven't had to give a single order, and I wouldn't change a man of 'em."