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Page 11
In one point, indeed, there has been no improvisation. Nothing was
trusted to chance. What is it that alone has secured us the time to make
the effort we have made?
It is now about a month ago that, by permission of the Admiralty, I found
myself driving towards a certain pier in a harbour opening on the North
Sea. The Commodore of a Cruiser Squadron was to send his boat for me, and
I was to lunch with him on board his Flag-ship. I duly passed the
distrustful sentry on the road leading to the pier, arrived at the
pier-head and descended from the motor which had brought me. The morning
was mistily sunny, and the pier strangely deserted. Where was the boat?
Where was my friend who had hoped to come for me himself? No signs of
either. The few old sailors employed about the pier looked at me in
astonishment, and shook their heads when I inquired. Commodore ----'s boat
was not there; no boat had been in that morning from the ships. I took the
Commodore's letter from my hand-bag, to assure myself I had not been
dreaming, and reread it in perplexity. No dates could be clearer--no
directions more precise. Suddenly I perceive one tall naval officer on the
pier. "Can you help me, sir?" And I hand him the Commodore's letter. He
looks at me--and at the letter. His face twinkles with repressed laughter;
and I laugh, too, beginning to understand. "Very sorry," says the charming
young man, "but I think I can assure you there will be no boat, and it is
no use your waiting. Commodore ---- went to sea last night."
I thanked him, and we laughed together. Then I walked up the pier a little
way, seeing a movement in the mist. A sailor came up to me. "They all went
to sea last night," he said in my ear--"and there are the slow ones coming
back!" And out of the mist came the black shapes of war-ships, moving
majestically up the harbour--one might have fancied, with a kind of
injured dignity, because their unreasonable fellows had been faster and
had gone farther afield than they.
I walked back to my motor, disappointed indeed, and yet exulting.
It was good to realise personally through this small incident,
the mobility and ever-readiness of the Fleet--the absolute
insignificance--non-existence even--of any civilian or shore interest, for
the Navy at its work. It was not till a week later that I received an
amusing and mysterious line from Commodore ----, the most courteous of
men.
[Illustration: Marines Drilling on the Quarterdeck of a British
Battleship.]
[Illustration: Fifteen-inch Guns on a British Battleship.]
IV
By the time it reached me, however, I was on the shores of a harbour in
the far north "visiting the Fleet," indeed, and on the invitation of
England's most famous sailor. Let me be quite modest about it. Not for me
the rough waters, or the thunderous gun-practice--
"Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides"--
which I see described in the letters of the Russian or American
journalists who have been allowed to visit the Grand Fleet. There had
been some talk, I understand, of sending me out in a destroyer; it was
mercifully abandoned. All the same, I must firmly put on record that mine
was "a visit to the Fleet," by Admiralty permission, for the purpose of
these letters to you, and through you to the American public, and that I
seem to have been so far the only woman who, for newspaper ends, has been
allowed to penetrate those mysterious northern limits where I spent two
wonderful days.
It was, indeed, a wintry visit. The whole land was covered with snow. The
train could hardly drag itself through the choked Highland defiles; and it
was hours behind its time when we arrived at a long-expected station, and
a Vice-Admiral looking at me with friendly, keen eyes came to the carriage
to greet me. "My boat shall meet you at the pier with my Flag-Lieutenant
to-morrow morning. You will pick me up at the Flag-ship, and I will take
you round the Fleet. You will lunch with me, I hope, afterwards." I tried
to show my grateful sense both of the interest and the humour of the
situation. My kind visitor disappeared, and the train carried me on a few
miles farther to my destination for the night.
And here I take a few words from a journal written at the time:
It is nearly dawn. A red light in the northeast is coming up
over the snowy hills. The water, steely grey--the tide
rising. What strange moving bodies are those, scudding along
over the dim surface, like the ghosts of sea planes? Dense
flocks of duck apparently, rising and falling along the
shallows of the shore. Now they are gone. Nothing moves. The
morning is calm, and the water still. And on it lie, first a
cruiser squadron, and then a line of Dreadnoughts stretching
out of sight. No lights anywhere, except the green lights on
a hospital ship far away. The great ships lie dark and
silent, and I sit and watch them, in the cold dawn, thinking
that but for them, and the multitude of their comrades that
guard these seas and shores, England would be as Belgium or
as Northern France, ravaged and destroyed by a barbarian
enemy. My heart goes out to you, great ships, and you,
gallant unwearied men, who keep your watch upon them! That
watch has been kept for generations. Never has there been
such need for it as now....
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