What mystery is there like the mystery of the other
man’s job—or what world so cut off
as that which he enters when he goes to it? The
eminent surgeon is altogether such an one as ourselves,
even till his hand falls on the knob of the theatre
door. After that, in the silence, among the ether
fumes, no man except his acolytes, and they won’t
tell, has ever seen his face. So with the unconsidered
curate. Yet, before the war, he had more experience
of the business and detail of death than any of the
people who contemned him. His face also, as he
stands his bedside-watches—that countenance
with which he shall justify himself to his Maker—none
have ever looked upon. Even the ditcher is a
priest of mysteries at the high moment when he lays
out in his mind his levels and the fall of the water
that he alone can draw off clearly. But catch
any of these men five minutes after they have left
their altars, and you will find the doors are shut.
Chance sent me almost immediately after the Jutland
fight a Lieutenant of one of the destroyers engaged.
Among other matters, I asked him if there was any
particular noise.
“Well, I haven’t been in the trenches,
of course,” he replied, “but I don’t
think there could have been much more noise than there
was.”
This bears out a report of a destroyer who could not
be certain whether an enemy battleship had blown up
or not, saying that, in that particular corner, it
would have been impossible to identify anything less
than the explosion of a whole magazine.
“It wasn’t exactly noise,” he reflected.
“Noise is what you take in from outside.
This was inside you. It seemed to lift
you right out of everything.”
“And how did the light affect one?” I
asked, trying to work out a theory that noise and
light produced beyond known endurance form an unknown
anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to, but infinitely
more potent than, the soothing effect of the smoke-pall
of ancient battles.
“The lights were rather curious,” was
the answer. “I don’t know that one
noticed searchlights particularly, unless they meant
business; but when a lot of big guns loosed off together,
the whole sea was lit up and you could see our destroyers
running about like cockroaches on a tin soup-plate.”
“Then is black the best colour for our destroyers?
Some commanders seem to think we ought to use grey.”
“Blessed if I know,” said young
Dante. “Everything shows black in that
light. Then it all goes out again with a bang.
Trying for the eyes if you are spotting.”
SHIP DOGS
“And how did the dogs take it?” I pursued.
There are several destroyers more or less owned by
pet dogs, who start life as the chance-found property
of a stoker, and end in supreme command of the bridge.
“Most of ’em didn’t like it a bit.
They went below one time, and wanted to be loved.
They knew it wasn’t ordinary practice.”
Copyrights
Sea Warfare from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
