The Destroyers were not sorry to see the dawn. The night was their task-master: in darkness they worked and in the Shadow of Death. They pa.s.sed within hailing distance of the Sloops, and on board the reeling Destroyers here and there a figure in streaming oilskins raised his arm and waved a salutation to the squat grey craft setting forth in the comfortless dawn to holystone Death's doorstep.

The Mine-sweepers refrained from any such amenity. Anon the darkness would come again, when no man may sweep for mines. Then would be their turn for grins and the waving of arms. In the meanwhile, they preferred to remain grim and restless as their work.

Presently the Destroyers, obedient to a knotted tangle of flags at the yardarm of their leader, altered course a little; they were making for an opening in the wall of rock, on either side of which gaunt promontories thrust their naked shoulders into the surf. The long black, viperish hulls pa.s.sed through under the ever-watchful eyes of the sh.o.r.e batteries, and the hooded figures on the Destroyer bridges threw back their duffle cowls and wiped the night's acc.u.mulation of dried spray and cinders out of the puckers round their tired eyes.

The Commanding Officer of the leading Destroyer leaned across the bridge-rails and stared round at the ring of barren islands encircling the great expanse of water into which they had pa.s.sed, the naked, snow-powdered hills in the background: at the greyness and desolation of earth and sky and sea.

"Home again!" he said in an undertone to the Lieutenant beside him. "It ain't much of a place to look at, but I'm never sorry to see it again after a dusting like we got last night."

The Lieutenant raised the gla.s.ses slung round his neck by a strap and levelled them at a semi-globular object that had appeared on the surface some distance away. "There's old Tirpitz waiting to say good morning as usual."

The Commander laughed. "Rum old devil he is. That's where the Hun has the pull over us. He's got something better than a seal to welcome him back to harbour--when he _does_ get back!"

"When he does, yes." The other chuckled. "Gretchens an' iron crosses an' joy bells. Lord, I'd love to see 'em, wouldn't you? Just for five minutes!"

The Commander moved across to the tiny binnacle. "I'd rather see my own wife for five minutes," he replied. Then, raising his voice, "Starboard ten!"

"Starboard ten, sir," repeated the voice of the helmsman.

The Commander stood with watchful eye on the swinging compa.s.s card.

"Midships ... steady!"

"Steady, sir!" sang the echo at the wheel. The Commander glanced aft through the trail of smoke at the next astern swinging round in the smother of his wake. "Well, we shan't be long now before we tie up to the buoy--curse these fellows! Here come all the drifters with mails and ratings for the Fleet.... Port five!"

"Port five, sir!" The flotilla altered course disdainfully to avoid a steam drifter which wallowed through the wake of the Destroyers in the direction of the distant fleet, still shrouded by the morning mist.

"That's the King's Messenger going off to the Fleet Flagship. There come the others, strung out in a procession, making for the different squadrons. Wake up, you son of Ham!" The speaker stepped to the lanyard of the syren and jerked it savagely. Obedient to the warning wail another drifter altered course in reluctant compliance with the Rule of the Road. "I'd rather take the flotilla through Piccadilly Circus than manoeuvre among these Fleet Messengers! They're bad enough on the high seas in peace-time with their nets out, but booming about inside a harbour they're enough to turn one's hair grey."

If the truth be told, the past had known no great love lost between the Destroyers and the fishing fleet. Herring-nets round a propeller are not calculated to bind hearts together in brotherly affection. Perhaps dim recollections of bygone mishaps of this nature had soured the Destroyer Commander's heart towards the steam-drifter.

On the outbreak of war, however, the steam fishing fleets became an arm of the great Navy itself, far-reaching as its own squadrons. They exchanged their nets for guns and mine-sweeping paraphernalia: they became submarine-hunters, mine-sweepers, fleet-messengers and patrollers of the great commerce sea-ways in the South. They became a little Navy within the Navy, in fact, already boasting their own peculiar traditions, and probably as large a proportion of D.S.C.'s as any other branch of the mother Service.

They are a slow, crab-gaited community that clings to gold earrings and fights in jerseys and thigh boots from which the fish-scales have not altogether departed. Ash.o.r.e, on the other hand (where their women rule), they consent to the peaked cap and bra.s.s b.u.t.tons of His Majesty's uniform, and wear it, moreover, with the coy self-consciousness of a bulldog in a monogrammed coat.

Link by link they have built up a chain of a.s.sociations with the parent Navy that will not be easily broken when the time comes for these little auxiliaries to return to their peaceful calling. They have worked side by side with the dripping Submarine; they have sheltered through storms in the lee of anch.o.r.ed Battleships; they have piloted proud Cruisers through the newly-swept channels of a mine-field, and brought a Battle-cruiser Squadron its Christmas mail in the teeth of a Northern blizzard. In token of these things, babies born in fishing villages from the Orkneys to the Nore have been christened after famous Admirals and men-of-war, that the new generation shall remember.

The drifter that had altered course slowly came round again when the last of the Destroyers swept past, and the three figures in the bows ducked as she shipped a bucket of spray and flung it aft over the tiny wheel-house.

One of the figures turned and stared after the retreating hulls.

"Confound 'em," he said. "Just like the blooming Destroyers, chucking their weight about as if they owned creation, and making us take their beastly wash." He took off his cap and shook the salt water from it.

One of the other two chuckled. "Never 'mind, Mouldy, it will be your turn to laugh next time we go to sea, when you're perched on the forebridge sixty feet above the waterline, and watching our Destroyer-screen shipping it green over their funnels."

Mouldy Jakes shook his head gloomily. "Laugh!" he echoed. "Then I'd get shoved under arrest by the skipper under suspicion of being drunk."

The drifter rounded an outlying promontory of one of the islands, and Thorogood raised his hand. "There you are," he said, "there's our little lot!" He indicated with a nod the Battle-fleet of Britain.

"And very nice too," said the India-rubber Man, staring in the direction of the other's gaze. "Puts me in mind, as they say, of a picture I saw once. 'National Insurance,' I think it was called."

A shaft of sunlight had struggled through a rift in the clouds and fell athwart the dark waters of the harbour. In the far distance, outlined against the sombre hills and lit by the pale sunshine, a thicket of tripod masts rose towering above the grey hulls of the anch.o.r.ed Battle-fleet.

As the drifter drew near the different cla.s.ses of ships became distinguishable. A squadron of Light Cruisers were anch.o.r.ed between them and the main Fleet, with a thin haze of smoke hovering above their raking funnels. Beyond them, line upon line, in a kind of sullen majesty, lay the Battleships. Seen thus in peace-time, a thousand glistening points of burnished metal, the white of the awnings, smooth surfaces of enamel, varnish and gold-leaf would have caught the liquid sunlight and concealed the menace of that stern array.

Now, however, stripped of awnings, with bare decks, stark as gladiators, sombre and terrible, they conveyed a relentless significance heightened by the desolation of their surroundings.

From the offing came the rumble of heavy gunfire.

"Don't be alarmed," said Thorogood to the India-rubber Man, who had turned in the direction of the sound; "we haven't missed the bus!" He looked along the lines with a swift, practised eye. "It's only some of the Battle-cruisers out doing target practice. That's our squadron, there." He pointed ahead. "We're the second ship in that line."

The drifter pa.s.sed up a broad lane, on either side of which towered grey steel walls, unbroken by scuttles or embrasures; above them the muzzles of guns hooded by casemates and turrets, the mighty funnels, piled up bridges and superstructures, frowned down like the battlements of fortresses. Men, dwarfed by the magnitude of their environment to the size of ants, and clad in jerseys and white working-rig, swarmed about the decks and batteries.

"There's the Fleet Flagship," continued Thorogood, pointing. "That ship with the drifters round her, flying the Commander-in-Chief's flag.

That's where Podgie was bound for. Rummy to think he'll be back in London again in a couple of days' time!"

A seaplane that had been riding on the surface near the Fleet Flagship's quarter, rose like a flying gull, circled in wide spirals over the Fleet and sped seawards. Across the lanes of water, armed picket-boats, with preternaturally grave-faced Midshipmen at their wheels, picked their way amongst the traffic of drifters, cutters under sail, hooting store carriers and puffers from the distant base.

Mouldy Jakes contemplated the busy scene without undue enthusiasm.

"Everything seems to be much the same as usual," was his dry comment.

"They seem to have got on all right without me for the last seven days.

We've had a coat of paint, too. Wonder what's up. P'raps the King's coming to pay us a visit. Or else the Commander reckons it's about time to beat up for his promotion."

The skipper of the drifter jerked the miniature telegraph to "Slow," and a h.o.a.ry-headed deck-hand stumped into the bows with a heaving line coiled over his arm. The drifter crept up under the quarter of a Battleship that towered above them into the grey sky.

A tall, thin Lieutenant with a telescope under his arm looked down from the quarterdeck and made a gesture of greeting.

"Hullo, Tweedledum," said Thorogood; and added, "Bless me, Tweedledum's shaved his beard off!"

"Must be the King, then," said Mouldy gloomily. "Means I shall have to order another monkey-jacket." A bull terrier thrust a python-like head between the rails and wagged his tail. The drifter grated her fenders alongside and made fast.

The three officers climbed the swaying ladder to the upper deck, and were greeted in turn by the tall Lieutenant with the telescope. "You're Standish, aren't you?" he asked, turning to the India-rubber Man. "The Commander wants to see you--you're an old shipmate of his, it seems?" He led the way as he spoke towards a door in the after superstructure.

"Yes," was the reply. "He was the First Lieutenant in my last ship--with this Skipper."

"Ah," said the other, "she must have been a good ship then."

They skirted a hatchway in the interior of the superstructure that yawned into the electric-lit interior of the ship, past cabins opening on to the foremost side of them, and stopped at a curtained doorway. A square of polished mahogany was screwed into the bulkhead beside it, with the following inscription in bra.s.s letters:

DON'T KNOCK.

COME IN.

The Officer of the Watch drew back the curtain and motioned to his companion to enter. "Lieutenant Commander Standish, sir," he said.

The Commander, who was writing at a knee-hole table, turned and rose with his grave, slow smile.

"Come in, Bunje," he said, holding out his hand. "Very glad you've got here at last." He laid his left hand for an instant on the India-rubber Man's shoulder and searched his face with kindly grey eyes. "How're the wounds and the wife and all the other things you've collected since I saw you last?"

The India-rubber Man laughed.

"They're all right, sir, thanks." He glanced at the cap, with its gold oak leaves adorning the brim, lying on the desk. "I haven't congratulated you on your promotion yet," he added. "I was awfully glad to hear you had got your 'bra.s.s hat'!"