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The Bonds Of Discipline
by
“Yes, an’ Retallick nearly had a fit. What a truthful an’ observin’ little Antonio we ‘ave!”
“‘It is discovered in the hands of a boy who says, and they do not rebuke him, that he has found it by hazard.’ I’m afraid I haven’t translated quite correctly, Mr. Pyecroft, but I’ve done my best.”
“Why, it’s beautiful–you ought to be a Frenchman–you ought. You don’t want anything o’ me. You’ve got it all there.”
“Yes, but I like your side of it. For instance. Here’s a little thing I can’t quite see the end of. Listen! ‘Of the domain which Britannia rules by sufferance, my gross captain, knew nothing, and his Navigator, if possible, less. From the bestial recriminations and the indeterminate chaos of the grand deck, I ascended–always with a whisky-and-soda in my hands–to a scene truly grotesque. Behold my captain in plain sea, at issue with his Navigator! A crisis of nerves due to the enormous quantity of alcohol which he had swallowed up to then, has filled for him the ocean with dangers, imaginary and fantastic. Incapable of judgment, menaced by the phantasms of his brain inflamed, he envisages islands perhaps of the Hesperides beneath his keel–vigias innumerable.’ I don’t know what a vigia is, Mr. Pyecroft. ‘He creates shoals sad and far-reaching of the mid-Atlantic!’ What was that, now?”
“Oh, I see! That come after dinner, when our Navigator threw ‘is cap down an’ danced on it. Danby was quartermaster. They ‘ad a tea-party on the bridge. It was the old man’s contribution. Does he say anything about the leadsmen?”
“Is this it? ‘Overborne by his superior’s causeless suspicion, the Navigator took off the badges of his rank and cast them at the feet of my captain and sobbed. A disgusting and maudlin reconciliation followed. The argument renewed itself, each grasping the wheel, crapulous’ (that means drunk, I think, Mr. Pyecroft), ‘shouting. It appeared that my captain would chenaler’ (I don’t know what that means, Mr. Pyecroft) ‘to the Cape. At the end, he placed a sailor with the sound’ (that’s the lead, I think) ‘in his hand, garnished with suet.’ Was it garnished with suet?”
“He put two leadsmen in the chains, o’ course! He didn’t know that there mightn’t be shoals there, ‘e said. Morgan went an’ armed his lead, to enter into the spirit o’ the thing. They ‘eaved it for twenty minutes, but there wasn’t any suet–only tallow, o’ course.”
“‘Garnished with suet at two thousand metres of profundity. Decidedly the Britannic Navy is well guarded.’ Well, that’s all right, Mr. Pyecroft. Would you mind telling me anything else of interest that happened?”
“There was a good deal, one way an’ another. I’d like to know what this Antonio thought of our sails.”
“He merely says that ‘the engines having broken down, an officer extemporised a mournful and useless parody of sails.’ Oh, yes! he says that some of them looked like ‘bonnets in a needlecase,’ I think.”
“Bonnets in a needlecase! They were stun’sles. That shows the beggar’s no sailor. That trick was really the one thing we did. Pho! I thought he was a sailorman, an’ ‘e hasn’t sense enough to see what extemporisin’ eleven good an’ drawin’ sails out o’ four trys’les an’ a few awnin’s means. ‘E must have been drunk!”
“Never mind, Mr. Pyecroft. I want to hear about your target-practice, and the execution.”
“Oh! We had a special target-practice that afternoon all for Antonio. As I told my crew–me bein’ captain of the port-bow quick-firer, though I’m a torpedo man now–it just showed how you can work your gun under any discomforts. A shell–twenty six-inch shells–burstin’ inboard couldn’t ‘ave begun to make the varicose collection o’ tit-bits which we had spilled on our deck. It was a lather–a rich, creamy lather!
“We took it very easy–that gun-practice. We did it in a complimentary ‘Jenny-‘ave-another-cup-o’ tea’ style, an’ the crew was strictly ordered not to rupture ’emselves with unnecessary exertion. This isn’t our custom in the Navy when we’re in puris naturalibus, as you might say. But we wasn’t so then. We was impromptu. An’ Antonio was busy fetchin’ splits for the old man, and the old man was wastin’ ’em down the ventilators. There must ‘ave been four inches in the bilges, I should think–wardroom whisky- an’-soda.