Brown on Resolution

Leading Seaman Albert Brown lay dying on Resolution. He was huddled in a cleft in the grey-brown lava of which that desolate island is largely composed, on his back with his knees half-drawn up in his fevered delirium. Sometimes he would mumble a few meaningless words and writhe feebly on to his side, only to fall back again a second later. He was dressed in what had once been a sailor’s suit of tropical white, but now it was so soiled and stained and draggled, so torn and frayed, as literally to be quite unrecognizable⁠—it was now only a few thin, filthy rags feebly held together. His face was swollen and distorted, as were his hands, being quite covered with hideous lumps as a result of the poisoned bites of a myriad of flies⁠—a little cloud of which hung murderously over him as he lay, combining with the shimmering reek of the sun-scorched rock almost to hide him from view. His feet, too, although a few fragments of what were once shoes still clung to them, were horribly swollen and bruised and cut. They were more like sodden lumps of raw horseflesh than human feet. Not the cruellest human being on earth could have contemplated those dreadful feet without a throb of pity.

Yet a very cursory inspection of Albert Brown’s dying body would be enough to show that he was not dying because of the biting flies, nor even because of the hideous condition of his feet.

She liked him, at first sight, and at first sight she knew him for what he was, a naval officer of the best brand of British stupidity. She liked his good clothes and his smooth cheeks (Agatha, as she regarded these last, felt a revulsion of feeling against the fashionable hairiness of 1893) and the way he blushed when she caught him looking at her. She knew he would speak to her soon, and she knew she would answer him.

Agatha’s smile set the coping-stone on Samarez’s unsettledness. He positively jumped in his seat. Automatically his hands fluttered to his pockets.

“Mind if I smoke?” he asked hoarsely;

“Not at all,” said Agatha. “I should like it.”

That, of course, was at least four words more than any lady ought to have said. Samarez feverishly pulled out his silver cigarette-case and matchbox, lit a cigarette with fingers which were nearly trembling, and drew a lungful of smoke deep into himself in an unthinking effort after self-control.

Agatha was still smiling at him, the placid, innocent smile one would expect to see on the face of a nun or a mother. Samarez simply had to go on talking to her, and the Englishman’s invariable opening topic came to his lips like an inspiration.

“Beastly weather,” he said, with a nod through the carriage window, where February sunshine fought a losing battle against February gloom.

“I rather like it, somehow,” said Agatha. She would have liked any weather at the moment. “Of course you find it very different from the tropics,” she went on, to Samarez’s amazement. How on earth could she tell he had been to the tropics?

Charybdis saw a smudge of smoke on the horizon. Charybdis steered towards it. Soon Ziethen’s three tall funnels could be descried. The Captain of Charybdis peered anxiously through his glasses. He ran through his memory to pick out which remembered silhouette was hers.

“That’s Ziethen,” said Captain Holt. “Now where are the others?”

For a few minutes both ships held on slightly divergent courses, each anxious to ascertain whether the other was in the company of others. But no other smoke clouds showed upon the horizon. They were alone upon a waste of water.

“Fight or run?” said the Captain to himself, knowing the answer as he said it.

Run? He must not run. It was his duty to shadow Ziethen if he could not fight her, keep her under observation by virtue of his half-knot superiority in speed until someone came up who could fight her. But shadow a ship of superior force over two thousand miles of dangerous sea with only such a tiny additional speed? The odds would be a hundred to one that he would lose her⁠—and his professional reputation along with her. Leading Seaman Albert Brown, gunlayer of No. 2 4.7 gun, at his action station, paralleled his Captain’s thoughts as they occurred. He must fight then⁠—old 4.7’s against new 5.9’s, four thousand tons against eight thousand. Luck might aid him; a sea fight is always a chancy business. At the worst he might do Ziethen some serious damage before Charybdis sank, and the Ziethen seriously damaged meant the Ziethen rendered useless, for she had no place where she might effect repairs.

He filled the magazine and lay ready for action.

Below him, a scant quarter of a mile away, the Ziethen lay immobile nearly at the centre of the lagoon. The water round her was smooth, glassy, save for the strong ripple which Brown’s powerful eyesight could detect about her stern and her anchor chains when the rapid tide swirled round them. She lay like a ship of the dead; even from her funnels there came only a shimmering hint of internal activity.

Yet as the light improved Brown could see white-clad figures on her deck and upper works, and he fingered his rifle, sighting on them each in turn, while refraining from pulling the trigger. He wanted every cartridge for more important work than casual killings. Later the white flag with the black cross soared upwards; the day was officially begun on board Ziethen. Immediately afterwards there was a stir of activity on the starboard side, and Brown’s keen eyesight could see that the work he was expecting had begun. Two bo’sun’s chairs were lowered down the side, one to each extremity of the hole made by Charybdis’ shell, and a couple of white-clad figures scrambled down Jacob’s ladders on to each of them. The damaged plates were to be unriveted and removed the while the new ones were preparing. Brown laid his rifle to his shoulder and his cheek to the butt.

During the brief while he was taking aim there was time for a myriad thoughts.

The telephone at the bedside rang sharply, and Schmidt started up, blinking himself into rapid wakefulness. Beside him his wife muttered heavily, humped over on her side, and clawed her tangled hair out of her eyes. She switched on the light while Schmidt pulled back the mosquito net and reached for the telephone instrument.

The first sounds to reach his ear were apparently meaningless gibberish, but it seemingly did not disconcert him. He uttered gibberish in reply, and with password and countersign thus exchanged his agent could safely pour forth his news into Herr Schmidt’s receptive ear. The torrent of rapid German was of an import which made Herr Schmidt start in surprise.

“What?” he demanded. “Where are they now?”

“They were going through Gatun when I tried to telephone first, sir,” came the answer. “They must be almost at the Cut now.”

“But why did I not hear of this at once?” demanded Herr Schmidt savagely.

The voice at the receiver fell away into a placatory whine.

“I couldn’t, sir. Really, sir. These two Englishmen here were too closely after us. They’ve taken Schulz. I’m sure they have. I’ve told you about them often before. I simply couldn’t get a line to Panama before this. They were all too busy, sir.”

“Rubbish!” exploded Herr Schmidt. “You Gatun set are a gang of cowards and worse. You say you don’t even know the battle cruiser’s name?”

“No, sir. Couldn’t get it anyway. But it’s a battle cruiser for certain. Twenty thousand tons. And the light cruiser’s the Penzance.”