Her small bridge, with its 12-pounder gun, steering wheel, compa.s.s, and engine-room telegraphs, was placed on the top of the turtle-back and about 25 feet from the bows. It acted as a most excellent breakwater and took the brunt of the heavier seas, and how often the _Rapier_ came back into harbour with her bridge rails flattened down and her deck fittings washed overboard, I really do not know. It was a fairly frequent occurrence, for war is war, and they kept the little ship out at sea in practically all weathers.

Even in harbour, when her officers and men were endeavouring to obtain a little well-earned sleep, she sometimes had an exasperating habit of rolling her rails under and slopping the water over her deck, and then it was that Langdon, her lieutenant in command, wedged in the bunk in his little cabin in the stern, and driven nearly frantic by the irregular thump, thump, crash of the loosely hung rudder swinging from side to side as the ship rolled, rose in his wrath and cursed the day he was born.

But whatever he thought in his heart of hearts, he would not hear a bad word against his old _Rapier_ in public. She might be ancient; but then she had done "a jolly sight more steaming" than any other craft of her age and cla.s.s. She might burn coal in her furnaces instead of oil-fuel, and every ounce of coal had to be shovelled on board from a collier by manual labour, whereas, in an oil-driven destroyer, one simply went alongside a jetty or an "oiler," connected up a hose, and went to bed while a pump did all the work. But Langdon never could endure "the ghastly stink" of crude petroleum, while coal, though dirty, was clean dirt. The _Rapier_ might have old-fashioned engines, but with them one ran no chance of developing that affliction of turbine craft: water in the casing, the consequent stripping of blades off the turbine rotors, and a month or so in a dockyard as a natural concomitant. Moreover, everybody knew that destroyers with reciprocating engines were far and away the easiest to handle.

So, from what Langdon said, though it is true that he may have been rather prejudiced by the fact that she was his first independent command, the fifteen-year-old _Rapier_ was a jewel of fair price. The powers that be perhaps did not regard her with such rose-tinted optimism, but for all that, were evidently of the opinion that she was still capable of useful work, and kept her constantly at sea accordingly.

Exactly what her function was I had better not say, but she always seemed to be on the spot when things happened, and had a.s.sisted at the "strafing" of Hun submarines, and had been under fire a great many more times than some of her younger sisters, many of whom were craft at least three times her size, eight knots more speed, and infinitely better armed and more seaworthy.

So it was not to be imagined that the _Rapier_, ancient though she was, suffered from senile decay.

"Curse this weather," the Lieutenant muttered, wrinkling his eyes in a vain endeavour to see through the murk. "We've been forty-eight hours on patrol, and now we're due to go into harbour this beastly fog comes down and delays us. It IS the limit!"

Pettigrew, the Sub-Lieutenant, agreed. "We shall have to coal when we arrive," he observed mournfully. "That'll take us two hours, and by the time we've finished, made fast to the buoy, had our baths, and made ourselves fairly presentable, it'll be two o'clock. I take it we go to sea at the usual time this evening, sir?"

Langdon nodded. "Bet your life!" he said with a sigh. "We shall be off again at eight p.m. I was looking forward to having a decent lunch ash.o.r.e for once," he added regretfully, "but now this beastly fog's gone and put the hat on it. Lord! I'm fed up to the neck with the grub on board!"

"Tinned salmon fish-cakes for breakfast," murmured the Sub. "Curried salmon for lunch, and tinned rabbit pie for dinner. My sainted aunt!

The Ritz and Carlton aren't in it!"

The skipper laughed.

The fog had come down at dawn, and now, halfway through the forenoon, the weather was still as thick as ever; so thick, indeed, that it was barely possible to see more than a hundred yards through the white, cotton-wool-like pall. It was one of those breathless, steamy days in mid-July. The sea was gla.s.sily calm, while the sun, a mere molten blot in the haze overhead, whose heat was unmitigated by the least suspicion of a breeze, was still sufficiently powerful to make it most uncomfortably warm. Altogether the torrid clamminess of the atmosphere, and its distinct earthy flavour, reminded one irresistibly of the interior of a greenhouse.

It was the sun who had been guilty of causing the fog at all. His rays had saturated the earth with warmth the day before, heat which had been given off during the cooler hours of darkness in a ma.s.s of invisible vapour. Impelled slowly seaward during the night, the heat wave, if one can so call it, had eventually come into contact with the colder atmosphere over the water, where, following the invariable law of nature, it had condensed into an infinite number of tiny particles of moisture. These, mingling and coalescing, had formed the dense ma.s.ses of vapour which hung so impalpably over the dangerous, thickly populated sea-areas in the closer vicinity of the coast. Further afield, seven or eight miles away from the sh.o.r.e, there was nothing but a haze. More distant still the sun shone undimmed, and there were no signs of fog at all.

Thick weather at sea is always exasperating, and to avoid the chance of colliding with something they could not possibly avoid at any greater speed, Langdon had been forced to ease to the leisurely speed of eight knots, and eight knots to a T.B.D., even a relic of the _Rapier's_ age, is just about as irritating as being wedged in a narrow lane in a 40-horse power Daimler behind a horse pantechnicon.

They had a man on the forecastle keeping a lookout. The automatic sounding machine was being used at regular intervals to give them some sort of an idea as to their position by a comparison of the depths obtained with those shown on the chart, but even then the eccentricity of the tidal currents and, let it be said, the erratic and most unladylike behaviour of the _Rapier's_ standard compa.s.s, made navigation a matter of some conjecture and a good deal of guesswork.

Somewhere ahead, veiled in its pall of fog, lay the coast. Ahead, and to the right, was a large area of shoal water, portions of which uncovered at low tide. It had already proved the graveyard of many fine ships whose bones still showed when the water fell, and Langdon had no wish to leave his ship there as an everlasting monument to his memory, while he, probably court-martialled, and at any rate having "incurred their Lordships' severe displeasure," left the destroyer service under a cloud which would never disperse.

Added to which there was always the chance of a collision, for the sea seemed full of ships. Time and tide wait for no man, and, Hun submarines or not, mines or no mines, fog or no fog, merchant vessels must run. To-day they seemed to be running in battalions and brigades, judging from the howling, yelping, and snorting of their steam whistles here, there, and everywhere.

But the _Rapier_ managed to avoid them somehow, and, shortly before noon, having heard the explosive fog signal on the end of the breakwater, she slid slowly past the lighthouse at the entrance and groped her way into the harbour. It was still as thick as it possibly could be, but she found the collier, and, after completing with coal, secured to her buoy.

Ten minutes later Langdon and the Sub were talking together in the little wardroom when there came a knock at the door.

"Signal just come through, sir," the signalman announced with a smile on his face. "_Rapier_ will proceed to Portsmouth at daylight to-morrow to refit. She will not be required for patrol to-night."

The ship was long overdue for the dockyard, but the skipper and Pettigrew looked at each other, hardly able to believe their ears.

"Lord!" muttered the former. "That means a week's leave, Sub. D'you realise that?"

"Do I not, sir!" answered the Sub-Lieutenant, as the signalman retired with a grin.

THE TRADERS

We were steaming to the westward, towards the spot where the sun, glowing like a disc of molten copper, was slowly nearing the horizon.

It had been one of those hot, breathless sort of days with no breeze; and now, near sunset, nothing but an occasional cat's-paw stole gently across the sea to ruffle its gla.s.sy surface in irregular-shaped patches. Elsewhere, the water, shining like a mirror, reflected the blazing glory of the sky.

Some distance off lay the coast, its familiar outline dim, purple, and mysterious in the evening mist. But it was neither the sunset, glorious as it was, nor the scenery which held our imagination. It was the shipping.

All manner of craft there were. First came the _Spurt_, of Tromso, a Norwegian tramp of dissolute and chastened appearance, whose deliberate, plodding gait and general air of senility belied her name, or at any rate the English meaning of it. Her rusty black hull was decorated with three large squares painted in her national colours, red, with a vertical white-edged stripe of blue in the centre. Next a bulbous, prosperous-looking Dutchman, who seemed to waddle in her, or his, stride. She was slightly faster than the ancient _Spurt_, but was no flyer, and boasted a canary-yellow hull bearing her name in fifteen-foot letters, and enormous painted tricolours striped horizontally in red, white, and blue.

Then two Swedes with unp.r.o.nounceable names who, by their embellishments, informed the world that they hailed respectively from Goteborg and Helsingborg. They also sported large rectangles, painted in vertical stripes of yellow and blue, while close behind them, a Dane, with an absurdly attenuated funnel and long ventilators sticking at all angles out of her hull like pins from a pincushion, ambled stolidly along like a weary cart-horse. She, scorning other decoration, merely showed the scarlet white-crossed emblem of her country. Some of the neutrals carried signs bearing their names which could be illuminated at night, and all seemed equally determined not to afford any prowling Hun submarine a legitimate excuse for torpedoing them on sight.

But the craft which outnumbered the others by more than four to one were the British. They bore no distinctive marks or colouring on their sides, and their travel-stained and weather-beaten appearance, their rusty hulls, discoloured funnels, and the generally dingy and unpretentious look about them showed that they were kept far too busy to trouble about external appearances. The only token of their nationality was the wisp of tattered red bunting fluttering at the stern of each; the gallant old Red Ensign which, war or no war, still dances triumphantly on practically every sea, except the Baltic.

Many of the pa.s.sing vessels looked out of date and old-fashioned. Some veterans of the 'eighties or 'nineties, fit only to sail under a foreign flag according to pre-war standards, may have been dug out of their obscurity to play their part in the war. And a very important part it is. Ships must run, and, at a time when the Admiralty have levied a heavy toll for war purposes upon all cla.s.ses of ships belonging to the Mercantile Marine, every vessel which will float and can steam can be utilised many times over for the equally important work of carrying cargo. It is not peaceful work, either, in these days of promiscuous mine-laying and enemy submarines armed with guns and torpedoes ready to sink without warning.

The important work of the yachts, pleasure steamers, trawlers, and drifters used for mine-sweeping, patrol work, and other naval purposes need not be entered into here; but the Mercantile Marine proper, what, for want of a better term, we may call "the deep sea service," has supplied the Royal Navy with many thousands of splendid officers and men who are now serving their country in fighting ships as members of the Royal Naval Reserve. Moreover, numbers of its ships of all cla.s.ses are employed for war purposes as armed merchant cruisers, transports, oil fuel vessels, colliers, ammunition ships, storeships, and the like.

But the function of those ships which are left for their legitimate purpose of cargo carrying is of equal importance to the country, of inestimable value, in fact, since we could not exist without them.

Their duty is fraught with constant peril. Submarines may be lurking and mines may have been laid upon the routes they have to traverse, but never have there been the least signs of unreadiness or unwillingness to proceed to sea when ordered to do so.

Most of the officers and men of the Mercantile Marine are not trained to war like their comrades of the Royal Navy. They are not paid, and their ships are not built, to fight; but yet, time and time again, their natural pluck and intrepidity has shown itself in the face of an entirely new danger.

Instances are so numerous that it is impossible to mention them all.

Remember the gallant fight of the Clan MacTavish, with her single gun, against the heavily-armed German raider Moewe. Take the case of the "Blue Funneller" _Laertes_, Captain Probert, which was ordered to stop by an enemy submarine, but, disregarding the summons, proceeded at full speed, steering a zigzag course, and so escaped, Remember the little _Thordis_, Captain Bell, which, after having a torpedo fired at her, actually rammed and sank the submarine which fired it.

Again, there was the transport _Mercian_, Captain Walker, which was attacked by gunfire from a hostile submarine in the Mediterranean.

Some of the troops on board were killed, others were wounded, and n.o.body could have blamed the captain if he had surrendered. But what did he do? He endured a bombardment lasting for an hour and a half, and, thanks to the bravery and skill of all on board, the ship escaped.

There was also Captain Palmer, of the _Blue Jacket_, who, though his ship had actually been torpedoed, stood by her in his boats, reboarded her, and, in spite of her damage, steamed her to a place of safety.

Recollect Captain Clopert, whose vessel, the _Southport_, was captured by a German man-of-war, was taken to the island of Kusaie, and was there disabled by the removal of certain important parts of her machinery. She was evidently to be utilised as a collier, but no sooner had the enemy left than the master, officers, and men set to work to effect repairs. How they did it with the meagre appliances at their disposal only they themselves can say, but the fact remains that the ship escaped.

These cases are only typical. Whole volumes might be written round the warlike deeds of our "peaceful" merchantmen, and from the many instances of gallantry we read of and the still greater number which do not achieve publicity it is evident that on every occasion of encountering the enemy the master of the ship, backed up most n.o.bly by his officers and crew, has not only done everything possible to save his ship from capture in the first instance, but has never hesitated to defend his vessel in accordance with the generally accepted tenets of International Law, which state that a merchant ship can defend herself when attacked.

Courage in the face of the enemy when one can return shot for shot is one thing, but heroism of the same kind in an unarmed ship is on rather a different plane.

The work of the Royal Navy and the Mercantile Marine is largely interdependent. The two great sea services of the country must ever work hand in hand and side by side, and let us never forget what we owe to the latter.

POTVIN OF THE _PUFFIN_

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the first lieutenant, looking up from his breakfast as a barefooted signalman held a slate under his nose.