Chapter XV A Peaceful Month
The day after the Triumph had been torpedoed, and two days before the Majestic met the same fate, the Achates left Mudros for the island of Mytilene, zigzagging all the way, because Mytilene lay at the mouth of the Gulf of Smyrna, and Smyrna harboured several submarines which might possibly be in wait for her.
A grand day it was, the sun shining out of an almost cloudless sky, the sea bluer than the sky, and ruffled pleasantly by a gentle breeze. In the evening she passed through a narrow channel between tree-clad heights, and anchored in the land-locked harbour.
For the last month it had not been possible to go on deck without seeing a gun fired or a shell burst. Down below, in cabin, ward-room, or gun-room, you did escape the sight of them—and the sight of those high explosives bursting among men and horses on the beaches can never be forgotten—but you could not escape the sound of them. Each time the air, coming through scuttle, doorway, skylight, or hatchway, thudded against your ears, the shock, big or little, from far or near, made you wince, and made your mind stop momentarily to picture the actual explosion; your ears tingled, alert and braced, to receive the next shock, until the constant, expectant waiting and wincing became a strain which affected many people, even those who were not then exposed to personal danger. It made them irritable or taciturn, or brought about little alterations of character and disposition, not sufficiently definite, perhaps, to state in words, but real enough to notice at the time. In addition, the constant sight of trawlers and boats full of wounded, passing the Achates on their way to hospital ships, had a constant depressing effect, not perhaps fully realized at the moment.
Later, when there came the more imminent personal danger from submarine attack, culminating in the capsizing of two battleships, torpedoed in broad daylight and in full view of thousands, in circumstances which showed how impossible it was, under those conditions of service, to meet submarine attack successfully, the effect of the strain became more pronounced.
Above all, there lacked the success of the expedition, which alone could act as an antidote to the strain.
When, therefore, the Achates wound her way through the tortuous channel into Ieros harbour, her yards almost touching the thick brushwood which clothed the cliffs, and these cliffs, shutting out all sight of the sea, opened out to give a view of an inland lake surrounded by olive-clad hills fading away in the distance, and glowing at the warm touch of the evening sun, their many-tinted green slopes reflected in its placid waters; of villages, quiet little peaceful villages, with the peasants clustering along the water’s edge as the ship floated past, or white-sailed boats crowded with smiling, gaily-welcoming Greek men and women, it seemed as though a magician’s wand had suddenly guided and wafted her into some fairy harbour, where war and the brutalities of bloodshed could never have been known and would never dare to intrude.
Officers and men stood, drinking in, in their various ways, the beauty, the peace, and the overwhelming quietness of it all.
“Old ‘Gallipoli Bill’ will drop one among those people in a moment; they’re exposing themselves terribly,” the Hun grinned.
“They’ve got ‘dug-outs’ all handy, somewhere close by; you bet they have!” Rawlins said.
“I wonder how our three chaps are getting on at ‘W’ beach;” said the Sub, smacking the open-mouthed and staring China Doll on his back, so that his doll’s eyes nearly fell out. “My jumping Jimmy, what a place! My blessed stars! What a bathe we’ll have when we’ve dropped the ‘killick’. I’ll ask the Commander,” and stalked away to find him, banging every member of the Honourable Mess he met with his fist, with shouts of “My jumping Jupiter, what a place!” The Pimple pointed out to the China Doll one of the boats they passed. Half full of oranges and bananas it was; and their mouths watered and their eyes brightened as they thought of the feast they would have if it came alongside and the ward-room messman did not buy them all.
The ship slowly turned round another bluff, and a collier with two English submarines lying alongside her came into view.
“They rather spoil the picture,” Uncle Podger said, “but we needn’t look at ’em.”
Then the Achates let go her anchor, the cable rattled noisily, stopped, and the ship lay still.
A quarter of an hour later, “hands to bathe” was “piped”, and in less than ten minutes, at least five hundred officers and men were bobbing in the water alongside, and the air was alive with their cheery shouts. The men dived off the booms, the nettings, out of the gangways, or climbed down her sides; the water for’ard was so thick with black heads and white shoulders, that when another man and yet another, a constant stream of them, dived in, one could not help wondering if there was a clear space for them to dive into, though the others always did manage to “open out” and let the newcomer in without accident.
Aft, some of the Honourable Mess were diving off the top of the accommodation ladder; others, the more cautious ones, preferred to drop off the foot of it. The Hun went off the top, so did Rawlins. Uncle Podger walked sedately down the ladder, turned a back somersault, and bobbed up again, in time to see the Pimple make a show of diving off the top, decide that it was too high, and walk down it. The China Doll, trying to attract attention, wouldn’t even dive from the foot of the ladder. “You’ll promise not to duck me, won’t you?” he squeaked, and lowered himself down, holding on to a rope. The Sub, with his gnarled muscles showing under his bathing dress, and disdaining the twenty-foot dive from the ladder top, climbed to the edge of the after bridge with a water polo ball under his arm, threw it far out from the ship, climbed the rails, balanced himself for a moment, roared out “Look out, you jumping shrimps!” and dived forty feet into the water, cutting it like a knife, and coming to the surface some thirty yards farther away. The more sedate ward-room officers, disrobing in their cabins, heard his stentorian, roaring shouts of, “My jumping Jimmies! What a place!” Presently they too appeared on deck, twisting their towels round the quarter-deck rails before they joined the merry splashing throng; the little Padre had his swimming-belt round his chest, and his everlasting pipe in his mouth. The Hun and Uncle Podger, seeing him come down the ladder, winked at each other, and waited to see what would happen when he jumped into the water; but were disappointed, for he lowered himself carefully; the swimming-belt kept his head well above water, and he paddled about, still smoking.
Around and among all these swimmers paddled the Greeks in their quaint, picturesque boats, watching them and smiling with amusement.
The Hun and Rawlins, slightly out of breath, after having disappeared for a few brief moments below the surface of the water in their efforts to decide which had ducked the other, caught hold of the stern of a boat which happened to be near, and drawing themselves half out of the water, grinned happily at a bevy of plump young damsels sitting there. The girls, laughing merrily, gave them each an orange; whereupon they slipped back into the water and proceeded to eat them. But the sight of these two lying placidly on their backs and devouring their oranges was too much for the others. Uncle Podger with his trudgeon stroke reached the unsuspecting Rawlins first, seized his orange, ducked him, and dived, only to come up among the enemy—the Pimple, the Sub, and the outraged Rawlins. The War Baby threw himself into the mêlée; the Hun, swallowing the rest of his orange, joined in too; and the life of Uncle Podger was only saved by a shower of oranges, and peals of girlish laughter from the boat.
Securing their prizes they shouted, “Thanks, awfully! Merci beaucoup!” hoping that they might understand French; and the War Baby, who knew a few words of Spanish, called out, “Gratia! Señoritas!” hoping they could understand that. But language did not matter; they knew what was meant to be expressed, and shrieked with laughter.
The Fleet-Paymaster, puffing along by the side of Dr. Gordon, who looked exactly like a walrus in the water, grunted out: “We’re too old, I suppose, for ’em to chuck oranges at us? Let’s try!”
And they did; and each got his orange, and his shriek of laughter when he tried to eat it without spoiling the taste with sea water.
All this time the China Doll, who could only swim a few strokes, did not venture far from the foot of the ladder, very miserable that everybody seemed to have forgotten him, and knowing that if he did venture out among the others he would certainly be ducked—which he hated—and very probably drowned.
Up on deck, Captain Macfarlane, grimly looking on, met the Gunnery-Lieutenant coming up from performing his trick of tossing a hoop off the top of the ladder, and then diving through it as it lay on the surface of the water—he had done this about ten times already, as if he were carrying out some drill or religious exercise.
“Mr. Gunnery-Lieutenant,” Captain Macfarlane said, tugging thoughtfully at his beard; “the Great War is still on, is it not?” and the startled Gunnery-Lieutenant, the hoop in one hand, the other raised to his dripping hair in wild salute, replied: “Oh! Yes, sir! As far as I know, sir!” and, later on, gave it as his opinion that “the Skipper must be going off his head”.
Presently the bugle sounded the “retire”, and everyone splashed back to the ship, the members of the Honourable Mess going down to the half-deck, chattering like magpies round the Pink Rat’s cot whilst they rubbed themselves down and dressed.
“I never got an orange. I do think you chaps might have brought me one,” the China Doll squeaked, a little upset because no one had taken any notice of him; so they chased him round the half-deck with their wet towels, till he shrieked for mercy and was happy again.
Then they rushed up on deck, because the Hun and Bubbles meant to ask those girls on board to show them the holes made by the Smyrna shells, as some little “return” for the oranges.
The others had “dared” them to do this; and they would have asked them, but were too late—their boat had paddled back to the village.
What a dinner they had that night!
The miserable little messman, for once, had risen to the occasion, and bought potatoes, cabbages, lettuce, and onions, and fruit—oranges and bananas—which of course were “extras”.
“I’m jolly sorry that the other three aren’t here,” Uncle Podger remarked, as he skinned his fourth orange. “Wouldn’t old Bubbles have loved them? Wouldn’t he have been pretty to watch?”
On these occasions, when “extras” had been provided, a comic scene always followed in the pantry. In order that the messman could know who devoured his precious “extras”, and could put the names down in his book, he had to keep a very smart “look-out” through the sliding doors in the pantry bulkhead; and Barnes, who hated him like poison, would block one and then the other with his huge head and shoulders, so that he should not see which of the “young gen’l’men” had taken an orange or banana. As Uncle Podger always said on such occasions: “It was pretty to watch him and Barnes dodging each other backwards and forwards, from side to side.”
Barnes would slide across one of the trap-doors, then block up the other; across would dart the little messman, slide back the one which had just been closed, and peep through it. Bang would go the other, and Barnes would be seen pushing the messman aside, muttering “’Ere you; you’re getting in the way, you are”, reaching through, and making pretence of drawing back any dirty plates or dishes which stood on the sideboard. And so this game went on; whilst the Pimple and the China Doll, keeping their eyes about them, would seize fruit at the most favourable moment, drop the skins on someone else’s plate if possible, and if not, throw them far under the table.
Barnes, afterwards, when he cleared the table and swept up the deck, would do it to a muttered accompaniment of: “That nawsty little beggar, a-countin’ up and a-puttin’ down everythink of ’is beastly hextras. ‘Umph!” (bang would go the broom against a leg of the table). “And who eats ’em? ‘Umph! the nawsty, slimy toad. I’ll learn ’im, me as what ’as a pub of ’is own at ’ome—or ’ad, afore this ’ere war a-started.”
The days which followed were days of real delight, never to be forgotten by the Honourable Mess, who revelled in them and in the noiseless, peaceful nights when they slept on the quarter-deck, and woke to slip off their pyjamas and plunge over the side into the transparent water.
In a week’s time, very early one morning, up the harbour came the grey picket-boat with the Orphan; behind her followed Trawler No. 370 with Bubbles, the Lamp-post, and all that was left of their beach party.
“Come along, you chaps!” called Uncle Podger, waving his towel, when at last they came aboard. “My! but you do look scarecrows! Off with your grubby clothes and flop in. It’s simply splendid!” They did flop in; and that morning’s bathe, when the Honourable Mess was once more united, was a memorable one, especially to the “War Baby”—the officer of the watch—who could not make them come out of the water until long after the regulation time, and until the Commander had twice sent for him to know why he didn’t stop that confounded noise round the foot of the ladder.
They arranged a grand picnic next day, and hired two of the little Greek sailing-boats which ferried people across from one side of the harbour to the other. They bought a basketful of oranges from the Greek boats alongside—it was cheaper to do this than to get them through the messman—they took a kettle of water, tins of jam, milk, and butter, loaves of bread; and away they went, with a merry breeze, the whole crowd of them, the Sub, Uncle Podger, the Orphan, Rawlins, and Bubbles in one, the Lamp-post and the remainder in the other. They raced the two boats to a tiny island at the mouth of the entrance of the harbour, beached them without rubbing off much paint, stripped, and larked in the water and out of it, on the grass under some trees.
Then the China Doll and the Pimple were appointed “cooks of the mess”, and wandered off to collect driftwood to make a fire on the beach, whilst the others stretched themselves on the grass to dry themselves until they were too hot, then plunged in again till they were cool. By the time the fire had begun to crackle famously the Sub, Uncle Podger, and two of the snotties—the Lamp-post and Bubbles, who were over eighteen years old—had found their pipes, lighted them, and were puffing away luxuriously. The Sub, whose heart warmed benevolently within him, called out: “Carry on smoking, my bouncing beauties—every mother’s son of you—so long as you aren’t sick!” So off dashed the others to their clothes, and produced the well-worn pipes which they had brought with them, hoping that the Sub would be in a good temper. Even the China Doll produced a cigarette case, and made a great fuss of lighting a “Virginian”, puffing at it like a girl, then holding it in his fingers because the smoke made his eyes water. “No ‘stinkers’! No ‘gaspers’ here! Phew. What a horrible smell!” the others shouted. The Orphan pretended to faint, Bubbles threw himself down in the grass and groaned.
“I haven’t any ‘Gyppies’,” pleaded the Assistant Clerk. “You smoke ‘stinkers’ yourselves sometimes.
“Only on board, China Doll, to drown the smell of the gun-room, when you’re in it,” Bubbles gurgled. “Get to leeward, you little stink-pot!” The Pimple and Rawlins made a rush for him; he dodged them, and waded into the water.
“Come back!” they shouted as they followed him. “We’re getting wet; we can’t swim a stroke,” and drove him out until only his head and neck were above the water. They made him smoke it there, throwing clods of earth at him whenever he attempted to take it out of his mouth to prevent his eyes watering.
“Nice, quiet, gentlemanly lads,” said Uncle Podger from the grass. “Very pretty to watch, aren’t they?”
But the Pimple—earnestly occupied in keeping the China Doll and the “overpowering” smell of his tiny cigarette from destroying the aroma from nine fairly foul pipes loaded with “ship’s” tobacco—and the China Doll thus engaged, with only his head above water, were neglecting their duty as cooks to the Honourable Mess. The kettle was trying to lift off its lid, and threatened to fall over.
It was saved just in time, and the Pimple, violently seized by the Hun and Rawlins, escorted back to his duties, whilst the China Doll waded out with his cigarette damped and “dead”.
The Sub, Uncle Podger, and the Lamp-post lay and smoked, and watched the others carrying all the paraphernalia of tea from the two boats to a little place under a shady tree, cutting slices of bread, and opening the tins of milk, butter, and jam.
“Isn’t this an extraordinary change from ten days ago?” said Uncle Podger presently, with a great sigh of enjoyment. “The whole place looks as if it had never even heard of such a thing as war.”
“It may look like it, Uncle, but you’d be nearer the mark if you said that it had never really known peace,” the Lamp-post said. “Why, Mytilene, and the other islands round about here, have seen fighting all through history—history was made in these parts—right away from the year one—five hundred years before it, too, and they haven’t known peace—not for any length of time—ever since. The Phoenicians, Athenians, Carthaginians, Romans, Persians, Syrians, Turks, and Greeks—they’ve all had a “go” at it—landed and killed the men, garrisoned the place for a few years, till they were “booted” out or killed by the next little lot to come along.
“I was only asking the Interpreter5 this morning, and he told me that there are villages up there” (and the Lamp-post pointed across the harbour to the slopes of the hills) “which are full of Turks, and they daren’t come down to the Greek villages except in numbers and in the daylight—nor dare the Greeks go up to them—for fear of being killed. He told me that the Greeks and Turks are always fighting on these islands, and on the mainland right along the coast to Smyrna. The Greek chaps get on their nerves; they work hard, are smarter business men, lend money, which makes them very unpopular; and there are so many of them in the coast towns that the Turks are really frightened of them, so they kill them whenever they get a comfortable opportunity and can raise the energy. Hereditary enemies they are, and vendettas go on just as they have done for centuries; but the Turk has generally got an old rifle, of sorts, so it’s the Greek who gets killed in the long run.
“You see,” went on the Lamp-post, “all the Turkish soldiers who used to keep the peace—sometimes—in the villages and small towns have been withdrawn to Smyrna or the Dardanelles, and now they are away the Turks and Greeks are at each other’s throats hammer and tongs. The Interpreter told me that there are more than thirty thousand refugees from the coast in Mytilene alone, and thousands more are trying to escape before they are killed.”
“That’s why the Greeks here are giving the Turks in the hills such a rotten time, I suppose?” the Sub asked.
“It rather spoils the picture,” Uncle Podger said; “I wish you hadn’t told us.”
“Let us go, some day, and see the castle at Mytilene,” the Lamp-post suggested. “The Interpreter says that it was started five hundred years B.C.—by the Phoenicians or someone like them, and has been added on to by everybody else ever since. He says you can see some parts which are Roman and some which the Persians built. I’m frightfully keen on things like that,” he added apologetically:
“Come along, you chaps! Everything’s ready!” the others shouted, carrying up the kettle of boiling water.
A grand tea they had, although the Orphan upset a good deal of the only tin of milk over himself. That did not matter much, for they managed to save most of it with spoons.
“Pass the Orphan, please,” one or other would say, “I want some more milk;” and whoever was sitting next to him, Bubbles or Rawlins, would sing “He’s too heavy,” and pretend to scrape more milk off his bathing-suit.
The China Doll and the Pimple, however, felt that there were two things lacking to make the picnic a complete success—sardines and some tinned sausages to cook over the fire; but, of course—and they sighed heavily—the gun-room store was empty.
The China Doll, presently, blinked and blushed, and suggested that they should ask the War Baby to the next picnic. There was a shout of “He’s all right, but he doesn’t belong to the gun-room—this is a gun-room picnic.”
“But, if he came, he might bring some sardines and ‘bangers’. I know they have some in the ward-room—I asked their messman.”
“You’re a perfect marvel, China Doll; fancy thinking all that out in your noddle!” the Pimple said admiringly. “I votes we do ask him.”
Then the Orphan, catching sight of the wet remains of that “Virginian” cigarette lying in the grass, pretended to faint; and when he’d been revived by a convenient twig twirled round inside his nose, groaned: “I’m awfully sorry, you chaps, but didn’t you notice that awful smell again,” and pointed to that unhappy cigarette end.
“Don’t be silly,” the China Doll kept on saying, blushing and trying to hide it; but they sent him twenty yards along the beach, made him scrape with his hands a hole, a foot deep, in the muddy sand, and bury it there. “You’ve eaten all the oranges,” he almost “blubbed” when he returned. “My back’s all sunburnt, and my feet are tingling. I’ve been treading on something which hurts.”
They threw some oranges at him and made him happy, but he kept on looking at the soles of his feet.
“Well, if you will tread on sea-urchins’ eggs you can’t expect anything else,” the Lamp-post said, having a look at them himself.
“Lend us a knife, somebody; he’s got thirty or forty of the spikes in his feet.” But the pain of having them extracted with a pocket-knife was too much for the Assistant Clerk; he said he’d get Dr. Gordon to take them out when they went back to the ship. He ate his oranges, and looked rather miserable whilst he dressed, slowly.
The others played the newly invented “submarine game”, standing in a ring with the water up to their chins, their legs wide apart, and stones in their hands; whilst the Orphan, who took the part of a submarine, started in the middle, dived, and had not to come to the surface before he had torpedoed somebody by swimming between his legs. If any part of him showed up above the surface, or he came up to breathe, the others threw stones at him; and if he was hit he had lost, and started again. The torpedoed one had to change places with the “submarine”; and when the fat Bubbles was at last torpedoed and had to take this leading part, you can imagine that parts of him showed very often, and he laughed so much that he couldn’t keep his head under for ten seconds at a time.
“Very pretty to watch,” remarked Uncle Podger. Then they all scrambled out, dried themselves in the sun, dressed; stowed away all the tea “gear” in the boats—the kettle, teacups, knives, spoons, and plates; carried the China Doll down to the boat to the tune of “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave”; had a search for a missing spoon; found it; shoved off, and raced back to the ship, the losing boat’s crew to pay for the oranges.
“Off you go to Dr. Gordon,” the Sub told the China Doll, “and just pretend those feet of yours don’t hurt you. If you go limping about looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm, you won’t get the kind of sympathy you want—not from me!”
“That youth behaves like a little girl. He always wants people to take notice of him and pet him. Whatever will he be like when he grows up?” the Sub said afterwards to Uncle Podger.
“A good beating twice a week would make a man of him,” advised the Clerk. “He is a good enough little chap, but he does want beating.”
“I’ll see what can be done,” answered the Sub thoughtfully.
At that time the Greek population was extremely polite, and glad to see British Naval uniforms. Everyone who passed took off his hat, the girls were all smiles, and the children flocked round, holding out flowers, though their homage was slightly diminished by insistent demands for “one pen-ny”. In fact, they became a beastly nuisance after a while.
Now you must understand that the Achates had not been sent to Ieros for the purpose of providing entertainment for the gun-room officers, but to superintend the blockade of Smyrna. To make this blockade effective, she had under her orders two mine-layers, some destroyers, and some submarines. These were always going out or coming in through the picturesque entrance, and the submarine off duty used to make fast alongside the Achates. Naturally she proved a great attraction to the gun-room officers, who used to bother the lives out of the sub-lieutenants—seconds in command—to show them round.
One of these, a cheery sportsman, burst out with: “Oh, hang it all! Come along, every one of you; four at a time, and I’ll work through the whole blooming Mess and get it over and done with.”
He did get it ‘over’, though the last four, the China Doll among them, were rather a trial.
“But if,” bleated the Assistant Clerk, standing on the plates below the open conning-tower, “if you did happen to dive when the lid was open, wouldn’t the water come in?”
There was a roar of laughter from the others (which he wanted); but the second in command, whose patience had not yet quite vanished, said: “Oh, that’s nothing! that often happens. We just stand down here, puff out our cheeks, and blow up through the conning-tower—blow very hard until someone climbs up and puts the lid on again.”
“Is that really true?” gasped the China Doll, not quite certain whether he was being made a fool.
Much as the officers appreciated the change of scene at Ieros, the men appreciated it still more. All except the beach party and the boats’ crews (a very small proportion) had been cooped up in the noisy, crowded mess-decks ever since leaving Port Said. They to could now go ashore occasionally; twice a day they could jump overboard and swim in the glorious, buoyant water alongside, and once a week route marches took place early in the morning, before the sun became too hot. These route marches, however, were not very popular.
You may be certain that the first time Fletcher the stoker went ashore, he took “Kaiser Bill” with him.
“You should have seen him nipping off the bits of grass,” he told the Orphan later on; “he did enjoy himself, sir!”
Whilst here, the wireless press news came each morning, and was not reassuring, for the Germans had commenced their advance through Galicia and into Poland, and nothing seemed able to stop them. News, too, from the Peninsula was bad—nearly a thousand men had been lost when the transport Royal Edward was sunk by a submarine, and another desperate attempt to capture Krithia had failed with heavy losses.
As a set-off against all these dismal tales there were rumours of mysterious monitors on their way out with heavy guns, of reinforcements pouring eastwards, and of the brilliant exploits of our own submarines above the Dardanelles, in the Sea of Marmora.
Notes
5 The Achates had a Syrian interpreter on board.