Pincher Martin, O.D.: A Story of the Inner Life of the Royal Navy

'Lord!' muttered Wooten with a laugh, his eyes glued to his glasses, 'I wonder where all the bits are coming down. We'll have to get under cover if they start loosin' off anywhere near us.'

It was a magnificent sight, quite the best fireworks display most of them had ever seen. The many searchlights made the night as light as day. The heavens were ablaze with the tell-tale sparkling flashes, while the earth seemed to vomit the fiery trails of tracer shell which crossed and recrossed in all directions. Brock's Benefit at the Crystal Palace was not in it.

Then, quite unexpectedly, there came a roaring thud from somewhere far away. Another, another, and yet another! The reports were loud and reverberating, and almost drowned the sound of the guns. They were bomb explosions, and the onlookers held their breath and glanced anxiously round to see how their neighbours were taking it. Nobody seemed unduly anxious, but some of them wondered vaguely what would happen if a missile fell on board the Mariner. Her thin decks offered no protection whatsoever, and if a bomb did hit her —

At last, after what seemed an eternity of waiting, a great, elongated, silvery-looking mass slid rapidly into view at the point of intersection of two of the searchlight-beams. It looked like an enormous hexagonal pencil suspended from the sky, and travelled with awe-inspiring sedateness and solemnity. It was the Zeppelin; but, from her size, she seemed to be at least ten thousand feet up. The searchlights followed her unremittingly. Her great bulk became indistinct and nebulous amidst wreathing eddies of smoke, while the shell-flashes seemed to be bursting out into space all round her.

'Ow!' yelled the excitable, dancing gentleman, as a particularly brilliant gout of flame flashed out immediately in line with the airship's blunt bows; 'that's got 'er! Did yer see 'er waggle?'

But shooting at a rapidly moving object high up in the air and almost immediately overhead is a much more difficult task than people imagine; and though some of the shell may have caused the Hun a certain amount of annoyance, it was tolerably certain that a good many more expended their energy in space.

But whatever the result, the raider evidently received a warmer reception than she had bargained for, for after being in sight for barely a minute she swung off and disappeared from view at a good fifty miles an hour. Whether or not she had been hit remained a mystery. Every anti-aircraft gunner in the place, even the man at the little ·303 Maxim, would have taken his solemn affidavit that missiles from his own particular weapon had hit her not once, but many times; while the Mariner's men, judging from their conversation, were of the same opinion. Some of them were even prepared to swear that they had seen gaping holes in the Zeppelin's bows, stern, and amidships – all over her, in fact; but if their accounts were to be believed their eyesight must have been abnormally abnormal, while the Zep should have come down a mass of punctured fabric and twisted aluminium framework. She had done nothing of the kind.

The guns ceased firing; one by one the searchlights flickered, glowed redly, and went out. All was peace.

The men, chattering like monkeys, sought their hammocks. Their officers repaired to the wardroom and indulged in a nocturnal orgy of sardines, bread-and-butter, and bottled stout. The mixture was hardly a good one to sleep upon, but the sardines of Jean Peneau and the stout of Messrs Guinness were the invariable concomitants to a Zeppelin raid if the Mariner was anywhere in the neighbourhood.

'I hope nobody got strafed by those bombs,' observed the sub. with his mouth full.

'I think they fell clear of the town,' said the skipper, removing the froth from a tumbler with a spoon.

They had. There had been no casualties.

II

Altercations with Hun seaplanes were by no means uncommon, and their novelty soon wore off.

The North Sea is not celebrated for its clear weather, and in it one's horizontal range of vision is frequently restricted to four miles or less. The vertical visibility, when the clouds are lying low, is sometimes a few hundred feet, while in summer the absence of wind and the heat of the sun often bring fog or a luminous low-lying haze. Moreover, when there is any mist it is presumably easier for an aeroplane to see the comparatively large bulk of a ship upon the sea than it is for the ship to spot the slender shape of the aeroplane overhead.

In the earlier days of the war, when the flotilla and a couple or more light cruisers in massed formation were nosing round not far from the German coast, according to their habit, it was disconcerting, to say the least of it, suddenly to see a neat little line of four or five equally spaced upheavals of water close alongside one or other of the ships. It was more disconcerting still to hear the loud thud of the explosions, and to realise that they were caused by bombs dropped from the heavens for one's benefit by an aerial Hun of most immoral character. An aeroplane bomb exploding ashore may quite conceivably do comparatively little damage; but if the same missile descends upon the deck of a small ship the vessel will be severely injured, and may possibly sink. It is not pleasant to get into difficulties and to have one's ship incapable of movement within a short distance of a hostile coast. It is still more unpleasant to have her sink in the same locality.

On seeing the explosions one instinctively looked overhead, and there, flying low and dimly outlined in the haze, was usually the shape of a hostile seaplane, the inevitable black crosses on his wings proclaiming his nationality. In misty weather he often succeeded in approaching unseen, and sometimes dropped his unsavoury eggs before the anti-aircraft guns could get to work and make his life a misery and a burden. No sooner had he done his dirty work, moreover, than he either climbed and vanished in the clouds, or else circled rapidly round and disappeared whence he had come. His departure was always hastened by a burst of fire from every gun which would bear, but one rarely had a real chance of strafing him, for the whole affair was usually all over and done with in a minute or two. It was good luck that his aim was bad and that his bombs invariably missed, though sometimes they missed so close that people on deck were drenched with spray, and spent the rest of the day searching for splinters to keep as mementoes. If one had struck – But what was the good of considering the possibility? At any rate, it was always very comforting to realise that a ship under way presents a very small and difficult target to a seaplane at the best of times; while, however numerous and thickly clustered a fleet, squadron, or flotilla may be, there is always far and away more area of water than there is of ships.

When the weather was really clear the boot was generally on the other foot, for then the seaplanes were usually driven off before they could get overhead. A good lookout was always kept, and at the first sight of a speck like a mosquito on the horizon, a mosquito which presently assumed the shape and proportions of a dragon-fly, the anti-aircraft guns' crews came tumbling up to their stations, and the muzzles of their weapons started twitching ominously. Then, when the Hun arrived within range, they let drive and let him have it.

With the older type of anti-aircraft gun, shooting at an aeroplane reminded one of trying to bring down a snipe with a Webley revolver. But now that we are provided with the best sort of weapon which brains and money can produce, the process of strafing the aerial Hun may be likened to dealing with the aforesaid bird with a 12-bore hammerless ejector loaded with No. 8 shot. The odds, of course, are usually on the snipe or the Hun, as the case may be, but more often than not we succeed in being accurate enough to make him supremely uncomfortable.

So the shooting with the A.A. guns was generally good. Puffs of smoke from the exploding shell darted out into space all round their target. The blue sky speedily became pock-marked with the white, bulbous, cotton-wool-like clusters, each one contributing its share of splinters to the unpleasantness of the upper atmosphere. The Hun as speedily retired. But not always. Sometimes he climbed high to get out of range, and then, at a height of twelve thousand to fourteen thousand feet, when scarcely visible, dropped his bombs. But the higher he went the more erratic became his practice, so really it did not matter much.

Occasionally, in the vicinity of their own coast, he and his friends attacked in coveys of six, seven, or a dozen at a time, and then things became very lively, and the A.A. guns had the time of their lives. Once the Huns attacked continuously from eight A.M. until noon. There were never less than three of them in range at any one time, and each one, after dropping his noisome cargo, hurried back to his base for a fresh consignment, and then returned for another strafe. But the bombs always fell wide, and in course of time people came to treat seaplane attacks with positive indifference. In early days all in the ship who could get away came on deck to watch the fun. They indulged in loud and ribald remarks, and gave the benefit of their advice to the men at the guns, to the Hun or Huns, and to anybody else who cared to listen. They also jeered uproariously when bombs fell a few yards wide and deluged them with water, and fought madly for any splinters which might fall on board. But later on, when they got used to the feeling, the advent of a seaplane or two did not disturb them very much, particularly if it was soon after the midday meal, and they had composed themselves for short naps on the sunny deck before recommencing their labours in the afternoon.

It seems that the British sailor, like his comrade in the trenches, can get used to anything. Moreover, the war seems to have set a new standard of excitement, and what will happen when hostilities cease and the men have to go back to the humdrum life of peace I really do not know. It would seem impossible to raise much real enthusiasm over regattas, boxing competitions, picture-palaces, or football matches after playing the far more thrilling game with men's lives and ships for the stakes.

But bluejackets are always peculiar people, and the most trivial happenings in the midst of the most appalling danger cause them the greatest amusement. In one merry little destroyer action in the North Sea one of the British vessels was having a very hot time, and a bursting shell caused a small fire in the engine-room. It was promptly extinguished by the fire-party under the charge of the chief stoker, and shortly afterwards an officer noticed this worthy coming aft with broad grins all over his face.

'What's the joke?' he wanted to know, for it struck him as rather peculiar that a man should be so much amused at such a time.

'I carn't 'elp larfin', sir!' said the man, bubbling over with glee. 'We 'ad a bit of a bonfire in the hengine-room jest now, sir, an' w'en I 'ears 'em 'ollerin' I runs along with the 'ose-pipe, shoves the end of 'im down the hengine-room 'atch, an' switches the water on.'

'What is there funny about that?' queried the officer.

'Only that we 'arf-drownded the Chief E.R.A., 'oo was standin' at the foot o' the ladder, sir,' gurgled the man. 'Funniest thing I've see'd fur a long time. 'E ain't got a dry stitch on 'im, and 'is langwidge was somethink 'orrid.' He finished with another cackle of amusement, and went off to spin the yarn to some one else.

At the time of the incident, which has the merit of being quite true, the ship was undergoing a very hot fire. Shell were falling all round her, and splinters were whistling through the air in all directions, and for the man to be convulsed with genuine merriment at the wetting of the chief engine-room artificer, at a moment when he himself was in imminent peril of his life, speaks well for his nerve. It rather reminds one of the true story of two marines, the loading numbers at the after-gun of a light cruiser which shall be nameless. She too was in the middle of a strenuous little action when a shell burst on board, and shortly afterwards both men saw a most desirable memento in the shape of a splinter lying on the deck. They made a simultaneous dart to secure the trophy, but Jones got there first.

''Ere!' said Smith, bitterly aggrieved, ''old on. I saw 'im first!'

'I've got 'im first!' chortled Jones, stooping down and picking up the morsel of steel. 'Ow!' he yelled the next instant, dropping it as if it had stung him, and sucking his fingers; 'the bloomin' thing's red-'ot!'

'Serve you ruddy well right,' retorted Smith. 'It ain't yourn, any'ow. You leave it alone!'

'I tell you it is mine,' answered the burnt gentleman. 'I got 'im first!'

'Look 'ere, Jones, if you carn't play fair I'll give you a punch on the jaw; s'welp me I will. I'm bigger'n wot you are, and I tells you I see'd the bloomin' thing first!'

'I got 'old of 'im first, an' don't care wot you says an' does,' exclaimed Jones, putting his foot on the coveted fragment. 'I' —

Further conversation was interrupted by the advance of Smith, and in another instant the quarterdeck of H.M.S. – was the scene of an impromptu battle. It would have been quite a pretty little tussle, for Smith was large, breathless, and bulky, while Jones was thin and wiry; but unfortunately the gunlayer, a sergeant, noticed that something was amiss with his weapon, and removed his eye from the telescopic sight.

'Here, you two,' he shouted, 'behave yourselves, and get on with loading the gun!'

''E's tryin' to pinch my splinter, sargint!' wailed Jones, applying a grimy hand to a rapidly swelling eye. 'I got 'im first!'

'No, sargint, 'e's a liar,' Smith cried with an air of injured innocence; 'I see'd it first!'

'Can't help that!' roared the N.C.O. 'Get along with the loading of the gun, and hafter the haction don't you forget I takes you both before the officer of the watch for unseemly conduc' and neglec' of dooty in the face of the enemy!'

The malcontents, rather crestfallen, ceased their bickering, and the gun went on firing. But the sergeant, a strict disciplinarian, was as good as his word. Smith and Jones, both good characters, were let off lightly. They each received fourteen days' No. 10 punishment for their misdeeds. The sergeant, a Solomon in his way, appropriated the shell-splinter and presented it to his wife.

III

There was once a German steam-trawler called the Anna Schrœder. That was not her real name; but as she now flies the White Ensign and is known as the Anita, her original appellation does not matter. Hargreaves, the sub-lieutenant of the Mariner; Joshua Billings, A.B.; Pincher Martin, ordinary seaman; and several more of the destroyer's men, can tell you all about her, for they spent four days on board. They were four unforgettable days, and rumour says that the sub. and his braves are scratching themselves still.

From the Anna Schrœder, too, the 'Mariners,' in exchange for sundry excellent British cigarettes and a pound or so of ship's tobacco, procured some samples of particularly noisome 'war bread' and a small female pig. The bread, they said, was an excellent 'coorio' to send home to their friends; and, having the consistency and appearance of wood, it could, with due diligence, be manufactured into photograph-frames and tobacco-boxes. It took a beautiful polish. The sow, Annie, was retained on board as a mascot, and within a week of changing hands became quite friendly with her new masters. Inside a month she was sleeping in a specially made hammock, wore her own life-belt at sea, and ate her meals off a plate like a proper Christian. It is true that the rest of the menagerie on board – Jane, the monkey; Tiger and Mossyface, the two cats; Pompey, the goat; and Tirpitz, the fox-terrier – at first regarded her with some suspicion, but before long they appeared to have combined forces, and to have formed an alliance for the carrying on of offensive operations against any animal from any other ship which dared to come on board the Mariner. Annie's severest tussle was with the wire-haired terrier of the Monsoon, a plebeian but very conceited dog, who treated all vessels but his own with lordly contempt. She was ably assisted in the struggle by her willing allies, and for some minutes the battle raged furiously, to the accompaniment of barks, growls, squeals, shrill yelps, and much snorting from the fighters. But before much damage had been done on either side the engagement was brought to a sudden and wholly unexpected termination by both the principal combatants falling overboard in their excitement. They were duly rescued in the dinghy; and the contest, since they were both exhausted by swimming, was postponed sine die.

But all this has little to do with the Anna Schrœder. It so happened that at one period of the war the enemy was making himself particularly obnoxious by sinking many of our fishing-vessels in the North Sea. It was no very gallant mode of warfare; and, partly in a spirit of retaliation, and partly because My Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty may have conceived a sudden desire for some steam-trawlers for mine-sweeping and other purposes, it was determined to pay the Hun back in his own coin. The authorities were always eager to save money if they possibly could, and acquiring the necessary craft free, gratis, and for nothing from the enemy was obviously far cheaper than chartering them from British owners.

That is how it came about that the Mariner, many more destroyers, and several light cruisers suddenly appeared one early morning in the midst of a German fishing-fleet engaged in its occupation not very far from its own coast. The visit came as a bolt from the blue, and since there was nobody present to protect them, the trawlers had no alternative but to surrender. Twenty-three of them, I think, were captured; while several more, too ancient and too rickety to be worth taking home as prizes, were sunk.

The serene atmosphere of that calm and peaceful summer morn was befouled with Teutonic oaths and much profanity. One could not help having some sympathy for the execrators, snatched off as they were practically within hailing distance of their own coast. But every German male person of a certain age and not a cripple is ipso facto a soldier or a sailor; while every harmless trawler is a potential mine-layer or mine-sweeper. Most of the prisoners were young and lusty, and Fritz, Hans, Adolf, Karl, Heinrich, and many more of them had the not altogether joyful prospect of spending the rest of the war in British hands. Some of them disliked the idea intensely, and their scowling, sullen faces showed as much. Others, after making anxious inquiries as to how they would be treated and fed, expressed the opinion that things were not quite so bad after all, and that being a prisoner was far and away a happier prospect than serving in trenches at the front, whence they might never return.

It was this early morning strafe which accounted for the Mariner's dealings with the Anna Schrœder; the adoption of Annie, the pig; and the adventures of the sub-lieutenant and his merry men.

The prize crew consisted of Hargreaves, one stoker petty officer, Joshua Billings, Pincher Martin, and three others whose names do not matter; and after ten minutes spent in transferring them, their belongings, food, water, weapons, a chart, and sundry other impedimenta to the trawler, and in removing certain of the prisoners to the destroyer, the Mariner steamed off on her business, and left the sub. to his own devices, with orders to make the best of his way to the nearest British port.

How he proposed to get there he did not quite know. The deviation of the Anna Schrœder's compass might be anything, and he had no means of checking it; but the fact did not seem to worry him much. He knew that if he steered west or thereabouts he would hit the English coast in time; and, having hit it, he proposed to steam north or south along it, and go into the nearest and most convenient harbour which happened to come into sight. What harbour it was he probably would not find out until after his arrival.

He was intensely proud of his first independent command, and his first care was to commandeer all the German ensigns he could find for trophies, to hoist an enormous White Ensign at the mizzen, and to display his badge of authority in the shape of a long white man-of-war pendant at the masthead. Then, when some one had persuaded the German engineer to raise a full head of steam in the antiquated boiler, and to start the engines, one of the Mariner's men was put at the wheel, armed sentries were posted on deck and in the engine-room, and course was shaped for home. The men, inquisitive as usual, set about exploring the prize. She had on board more than three hundred pounds' worth of fresh-caught fish, but even the thought of this excellent food could not reconcile the bluejackets to certain other things they discovered. The first complaint came from Billings, who, as the eldest A.B. on board, had been selected as a spokesman by the others.

'Beggin' yer pardon, Mister 'Argreaves, sir,' he said, first expectorating over the ship's side, and then approaching the sub. with a very wry face, 'would yer mind 'avin' a look at th' quarters lately hoccupied by them Germans?'

'What's the matter with them?' asked the officer.

'They ain't fit fur 'uman 'abitation, sir; an' we 'as ter sleep there.'

'Why aren't they fit to live in?'

'Crawlin', sir,' said Billings disgustedly. 'Crawlin' wi' li'l hanimals! Cockroaches I don't mind, sir, bein' used to 'em in a manner o' speakin', an' there's plenty on 'em there; but there's hother hanimals present in hinnumerable quantities; creepin' things wi' legs the likes o' which I've never see'd afore.'

'Vermin?' queried the sub. in a whisper.

'Yessir. The beddin' 's one mass on 'em.'

'Well, I'm determined to have the ship clean before I've finished with her,' said Hargreaves, as if he were the commander of the latest Dreadnought, 'so heave all the bedding overboard. When you've done that, collect three of the German deckhands and make 'em scrub the place out. I'll inspect it when it's clean.'

'We ain't got no carbolic, I s'pose, sir?' Joshua queried anxiously. 'I doubts if soap an' water'll shift 'em.'

The sub. laughed. 'We brought none with us, I'm afraid. But find the man who looks after the stores, get what you can, and do your best.'

Joshua saluted and walked off. Five minutes afterwards a long line of blankets and straw mattresses was floating gaily astern.

But their troubles had only started, for a quarter of an hour later Billings reappeared with Pincher Martin, and between them they dragged the resisting figure of one of the prisoners, a small, dark man with a pair of shifty black eyes. Pincher, Hargreaves noticed, was armed with a cutlass and a revolver, and displayed the latter weapon ostentatiously.

'Good Lord!' he muttered; 'what's the matter now?'

'Prisoner an' hescort, 'alt!' bellowed Joshua. – 'I brings this man afore you, sir, fur refoosin' ter scrub art 'is quarters w'en hordered, an' fur hassaultin' me.'

'And I haf von gomplaint to make,' put in the prisoner truculently. 'Von of ze sailors heet me!'

'What happened?' asked the sub. with a sigh.

'Well, sir,' Billings explained, 'it wus like this 'ere. I tells this man – 'e knows Henglish just as well as I does, sir – ter start scrubbin' art, an' ter be smart abart it. 'E sezs 'e won't, 'cos 'e 'as 'is rights as a prisoner o' war, an' ain't goin' ter do no work.'

'Oh! did he?'

'Yessir, 'e did; an' I sez to 'im that if 'e doesn't hobey horders 'e'd best look out; an' wi' that 'e tries ter dot me one in the face.'

Hargreaves, stifling his amusement as best he could, scowled fiercely, and endeavoured to look judicial. 'And what happened then?' he inquired.

'Well, sir, ord'nary seaman Martin sees wot wus 'appenin', an' catches 'im one acrost th' 'ead wi' a broom-'andle.'

Pincher's bosom swelled with pride at the recollection.

'What have you got to say?' demanded the sub., turning to the German.

'My name ees Charrlie Smeeth, an' I haf lif in Englan' many year. I serve in Engleesh sheeps, an' I say to zis man' —