href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@46460@[email protected]#a-tragedy-of-the-telegraph">A Tragedy of the Telegraph

Illustrations

The "Bunder Abbas" comes upon a large Arab dhow in the very act of landing guns . . . Frontispiece

The four of us tried to haul the yard and sail on board, hauling for all we were worth

Looking through my loophole I saw a tall, fine-looking Arab peering into the chasm beneath

Bowing in the most dignified manner to the prodigal son and ourselves, they squatted in a circle round us

GUNBOAT AND GUN-RUNNER

CHAPTER I

A Splendid Appointment

At the time this yarn commences I was a lieutenant of four years' seniority, a "watchkeeper" aboard H.M.S. Russell, longing earnestly to see the world, but with no probable prospect of my desires being realized.

I had been serving in the Channel and Atlantic Fleets, continuously, for seven years—appointed from one ship to another, from a battleship to a destroyer, from a destroyer to an armoured cruiser, and from her to the Russell. In fact, I began to wonder whether my whole naval career was to be spent plodding round the British Islands, and the limits of my world were to be bounded by an occasional view of the coast of France, and a still more infrequent sight of the rugged headlands of Spain.

Then, by a lucky stroke of good fortune, my chance did at last come.

I happened to be on forty-eight hours' leave in London, and at my club, the "Junior", met a captain under whom I had served a year or two previously.

We talked about our former ship, and I told him how tired I was of sticking at home, and how anxious I was to see some foreign service. He jerked out, in the abrupt way he had: "Why, man, clear out!—get along to the Admiralty!—full speed!—off you go! I was talking to the Second Sea Lord not half an hour ago, and he'd just heard that a lieutenant was wanted for the Persian Gulf. Give him my card. Why, bless my rags, I haven't one!" and he scribbled his name on the back of a club envelope and hustled me out.

I found myself jumping into a hansom (there were no taxis available then as now) and driving to the Admiralty before I fully realized what I was about to do.

"No, the Second Sea Lord won't see nobody," a porter at the Admiralty told me; adding, mysteriously: "The First Lord 'as just a-been an' sent for him. You 'ad better see Mr. Copeland, 'is sec-re-tary."

I always feel overawed at the Admiralty—merely being in the same building with their "Lordships" is enough to overawe any humble lieutenant—so I meekly followed the porter into a waiting-room, pacing up and down restlessly till he came back again, beckoning me with a confidential air. "'E'll see you, if you step this way. 'E is in a middling good temper this morning—ain't 'ad many to worry 'im."

My interview with Mr. Copeland was short and sharp.

"What do you want?" he said curtly, more or less as if I was a pickpocket or a beggar asking for a penny.

"I hear there's a vacancy for a lieutenant in the Persian Gulf. I'm Martin—Paul Reginald Martin of the Russell, four years' seniority next May—and I want to go there. My late captain gave me this for the Second Sea Lord;" and I handed him the envelope with the pencil note: "Give this chap the job if you can", and his signature.

The secretary glanced at it, threw it on his desk, and looked at me suspiciously. "Yes, yes! I don't know how he came to hear of it. Collingwood, of the Bunder Abbas, has died of sunstroke. Quite right! quite right! I'll put your name down for her—if you wish."

"Please!" I said.

"Do you know what the job is?" he asked, as if, did I know, I should not be so keen to go.

"Not in the least," I answered; "and I don't mind, so long as I can get abroad and out of the Channel Fleet."

He smiled unpleasantly. "It's a patrolling job, and a lonely one."

He said this as though—officially—he ought to warn me, though—individually—he didn't care a button whether I went or not.

That gave me some idea of the job.

"The gunner's gone mad too. We'll have to send another out, I suppose—confound him!"

I could not help smiling at the idea of a mad gunner being left there.

He cut my smile short with a sharp: "I'll put your name down. Good morning!"

I backed clumsily out of the door.

"What's the Bunder Abbas?" I asked the porter outside.

"The Bunder Habbas!" he corrected me, repeating the name to give himself time to think.

"Something in the Persian Gulf?" I said, to aid his memory.

But he didn't know—none of the other porters knew; so he rang up some mysterious individual on the telephone.