Complete Works

its various branches the aspect of a nervestraining drudgery. And in that outward aspect there is a proportion of truth. From its very nature it must be work without glamour. No great moments can be expected in it. Yet, rare as drops of rain in a desert, such moments have been vouchsafed to some of the faithful. As I trace these words I have in my mind the most unexpected, the most unforeseen instance of the kind. An enormous drop in a parched and stressful monotony of duty.
    On the morning I heard the tale, the pier at one of our “bases,” with its central line of neat shed-like buildings and the great signal bridge at the end (recalling the superstructure of a battleship), had been for a moment swept clean of all life by a rain squall as effectually as by a point-blank broadside of shrapnel shell.
    My companion and I took cover in the wardroom, a good-sized apartment lined with vanished match-boarding. A heavy table occupied the middle. The officer of the watch, a silent, detached figure, sat at a writing desk reading a note, while a young bluejacket, cap in hand, waited for the answer. Two R.N.R. officers smoking by the fire greeted us. Another sat at some distance on a chair placed against the wall near a window. He took no notice of our arrival.
    But the officer with me murmured with a nod in his direction: “This is ourZeppelin-strafer.”
    I said: “No! Have you that, too, in your lot?”
    “Yes. He’ll tell you all about it.”
    I was introduced with a word or two of comment to “our Zeppelin-strafer.” There was no halo around his head. He was young, so young that he must have belonged to the third generation of those who had gone to sea since my time; one of those who began that life after 1900. A seaman of the twentieth century! And yet he was no stranger to me. The memories of my twenty sea years crowded upon me, memories of faces, of temperaments, of expressions. And looking at him, all I could say to myself was: — How like! We sat down side by side near the window. He was in no haste to begin. He belonged to the shy, silent type — and how like!
    It’s an odious thing to have write in “descriptive” fashion to men with whom one talked like a friend and had found acceptance as one of themselves. If he sees these lines I hope he will forgive me. It’s very likely that my impressions set down truthfully are altogether untrue. We were but half an hour together, and when we parted and he closed the door of that room behind him I felt that he was as utterly gone from me as though he had stepped out in the middle of the Pacific.
    He began to talk to me with a sort of reluctance, hesitatingly, till I mentioned to him that I had been to sea much longer than
    himself, if not so recently. He knew I was some sort of writing man, and was ready to civil, but after that remark of mine his articulation because easier. Not much, though. He looked down on the ground, glancing at me only now and again, and spoke in a low tone with unexpected pauses. The best way in which I can characterize that narrative is by saying that he delivered it to me with the aspect, the bearing of a man who broods over the event in silence.
    He was making his way on a foggy day back to his base after a spell of duty outside. His craft mounted one gun; and without going into unnecessary description I may best give an idea of the size of his command by saying that, when he was reposing, the breech of the gun was within four feet of his head as it lay on his pillow. For reasons that need not be stated, his vessel did not move then more than about three knots through the water — which was smooth. There’s seldom much wind with thick weather. On that occasion there was a very light breeze, enough to help the fog at its usual pranks of thinning and thickening, opening and shutting, lifting in patches and closing down suddenly — quicker than a wink, sometimes.
    He was walking up and down his vast deck when, turning aft, he saw the fore-end of a Zeppelin emerge into misty view out of an apparently thicker layer of fog. From then on for succeeding minutes he moved no more than a ship’s timber. The apparition took him completely unawares because he had not heard any noise in the air before. Directly, however, he caught sight of the Zeppelin he heard the noise of the engine very plainly.
    As soon as he regained the power of speech he uttered the words “Action ... Zeppelin ... Astern,” in a cautious whisper. An unnecessary