THE LAW OF THE MEDES. BY "BARTIMEUS," AUTHOR OF 'NAVAL OCCASIONS.' I. COMPULSORY BATHING. IN moments of orisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance. Time and its artificial divisions it acknowledges not. It is concerned with preposterous details: with the ludicrous, and is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere electricity could never attain. Thus with James Thorogood, Lieutenant, Royal Navy, when he, together with his bath, bedding, clothes, and scanty cabin furniture, revolver, firstaid outfit, and all the things that were his, were precipitated through his cabin door across the aft-deck. The ship heeled violently, and the stunning sound of the explosion died away amid the uproar of men's voices along the mess-deck and the tinkle and clatter of broken crockery in the ward-room pantry. "Torpedoed!" said James, and was in his conjecture entirely correct. He emerged from beneath the débris of his possessions shaken and bruised, and was aware that the aftdeck (that spacious vestibule giving admittance on either side to officers' cabins and normally occupied by a solitary Marine sentry) was filled with figures rushing past him to wards the hatchway. It was half-past seven in the morning; the morning watch had been relieved, and were dressing. The middle watch, of which he had been one, were turning out after a brief three hours' spell' of sleep. Officers from the bathroom, girt in towels, wardroom servants who had been laying the table for breakfast, one or two warrant officers in sea-boots and monkey jackets, the watch below, in short, appeared and vanished from his field of vision like figures on a screen. In no sense of the word, however, did the rush resemble a panic. The aft-deck had seen greater haste on all sides in a scramble on deck to cheer a troopship passing the cruiser's escort. But the variety of dress and undress, the expressions of grim anticipation in each man's face as they stumbled over the uneven deck, set Thorogood's reeling mind, as it were, upon its feet. a The Surgeon, pyjama-clad, crimson streak running diagonally across the lather on his cheek, suddenly appeared crawling on all-fours through the doorway of his shattered cabin. "I always said those safety razors were rotten things," he observed ruefully. "I've just carved my initials on my face. And my ankle's broken. Have we been torpedoed, or what, at all? An' what game is it you're playing under that bath, James? Are you pretending to be an oyster?" Thorogood pulled himself together and stood up. "I think one of their submarines must have bagged us." He nodded across the flat to where, beyond the wrecked débris of three cabins, the cruiser's side gaped open to a clear sky and a line of splashing waves. Overhead on deck the 12-pounders were barking out a series of ear-splitting reports, much as & terrier might yap defiance at a cobra, over the stricken body of its master. "I think our number's up, old thing." Thorogood bent and slipped his arms under the Surgeon's body. "Shove your arms round my neck. . . . Steady!-hurt you? Heave Up we go!" A midshipman ascending the hatchway paused and turned back. Then he ran towards them, spattering through the water that had already invaded the flat. "Still! sang a bugle on deck. There was an instant's lull in the stampede of feet overhead. The voices of the officers calling orders were silent. The only sounds were the lapping of the waves along the riven hull and the intermittent reports of the quickfirers. Then came the shrill squeal of the pipes. deck!" The bugle rang out again. Thorogood staggered with his burden across the buckled plating of the flat and reached the hatchway. The midshipman who had turned back passed him, his face white and set. "Here!" called the Lieutenant from the bottom of the ladder. "This way, my son! Fall-in's the order!" For a moment the boy glanced back irresolute across the flat, now ankle-deep in water. The electric light had been extinguished, and in the greenish gloom between decks he looked a small and very forlorn figure. He pointed towards the wreckage of the after-cabin, called something inaudible, and, turning, was lost to view aft. "That's the Pay's cabin," said the Doctor between his teeth. "He was a good friend to that little lad. to that little lad. I suppose the boy's gone to look for him, and the Pay as dead as a haddock, likely as not." Thorogood deposited the Surgeon on the upper deck, fetched a life-buoy, and rammed it over the injured man's shoulders. "God forgive me for taking it," said the latter gratefully, "but my fibula's cracked to blazes, an' I love my wife. . . ." were All round them men working furiously with knives and crowbars, casting off lashings from boats and baulks of timber on the booms, wrenching doors and woodwork from their fastenings, anything capable of floating and supporting a "Fall-in!" roared a voice swimmer. The officers were down the hatchway. "Clear encouraging the men with lower deck! Every soul Every soul on words and example, steadying them with cheery catch-words of their Service, ever with an eye on the fore-bridge, at the extreme end of which the Captain was standing. On the after shelter-deck the Gunner, bare-headed and clad only in a shirt and trousers, was single-handed loading and firing a twelve-pounder as fast as he could snap the breech to and lay the gun. His face was distorted with rage, and his black brows met across his nose in a scowl that at any other time would have suggested acute melodrama. The figure on the fore-bridge made a gesture with his arm. "Fall-in!" shouted the Commander. "Fall-in facing outboard and strip! Stand by to swim for it!" Seven hundred men, bluejackets, stokers, and marines, hurriedly formed up and began to divest themselves of their clothes. They were drawn up regardless of class or rating, and a burly marine artilleryman, wriggling out of his cholera-belt, laughed in the blackened face of a stoker fresh from the furnace door. "Cheer up, mate!" he said encouragingly, "you'll soon 'ave 8 chance to wash your bloomin' face!" The ship gave a sudden lurch, settled deeper in the water, and began to heel slowly over. The Captain, clinging to the bridgerail to maintain his balance, raised the megaphone to his mouth "Carry on!" he shouted. "Every man for himself!" He lowered the megaphone and added between his teeth, "And God for us all!" How he found himself in the water Thorogood had no very clear recollection, but instinotively he struck out through the welter of gasping, bobbing heads till he was clear of the clutching menace of the drowning. The Commander, clad simply in his wrist-watch and uniform cap, was standing on the balsa raft with scores of men hanging to its support. "Get away from the ship!" he was bawling at the full strength of his lungs. "Get clear before she goes!” The stern of the cruiser rose high in the air, and she dived with sickening suddenness into breath. "Child-murder, sir, I reckon that is," was the tense reply. "That's on their slop-ticket i all right. . . . 'Kippers,' I sez, skylarkin' like an' 'e sinks the grey vortex of waters. Piti- tered James, gasping for his ful cries for help sounded on all sides. Two cutters and a few hastily constructed rafts were piled with survivors: others swam to and fro looking for floating débris, or floated, reserving their strength. The cries and shouts grew fewer. Thorogood had long parted with his support, the broken loom of an oar, and was floating on his back, when he found himself in close proximity to two figures clinging to an empty breaker. One he recognised as a Midshipman, the other was a bearded Chief Stoker. The boy's teeth were chattering and his face was blue with cold. "W-w-what were you g-g-going to have for b-b-b-breakfast in your m-m-mess?" he was asking his companion in misfortune. Hang it all, a fellow of fifteen had to show somehow he wasn't afraid of dying. "Kippers," replied the Chief Stoker, recoguising his part, and playing up to it manfully. "I'm partial to a kipper, meself. An' fat 'am." caught The Midshipman sight of Thorogood, and raised an arm in greeting. As he did so, a sudden spasm of cramp twisted his face like a mask. He relaxed his grasp of the breaker and sank instantly. like a stone. . . Among the wave-tops six hundred yards away a slender upright object turned in a wide circle and moved slowly northward. To the south a cluster of smoke spirals appeared above the horizon, growing gradually more distinct. The party in one of the cutters raised a wavering cheer. "Cheer up for Chatham!" shouted a clear voice across the grey waste of water. "Here come the Destroyers!... Stick it, my hearties!" After a month's leave James consulted a specialist. He was a very wise man, and his jerky discourse concerned concerned shocked nerve-centres and reflex ac tions. "That's all right," interrupted the thoroughly startled James (sometime wing three-quarter for the United Services XV). "But what defeats me is not being able to cross a London street without 'coming over all of a tremble'! An' when I try to light a cigarette"-he extended an unsteady hand — “Look! . . . I'm as fit as a fiddle really. Only the Medical Department won't pass me for service afloat. An' I want to get back, d'you see? There's a Super-Dread"It's all chalked up some- nought commissioning soon where, I suppose ! splut-" The two men reappeared half a minute later empty-handed, and clung to the barrel exhausted. The specialist wrote cabalistic signs on a piece of paper. Bracing climate-East Coast for preference. . . . Plenty of exercise. Walk. Fresh air. Early hours. Come and see me again in a fortnight, and get this made up-that's all right" he waved aside James's proffered guineas. "Don't accept fees from Naval or Military. . . . 'Least we can do is to mend you quickly. 'Morning. . . ." James descended the stair case and passed a tall, lean figure in soiled khaki ascending, whom the Public (together with gether with his wife and family) had every reason to suppose was at that moment in the neighbourhood of Ypres. "If it weren't for those fellows I couldn't be here," was his greeting to the specialist. He jerked his grey, closecropped head towards the door through which Thorogood had just passed. II. THE TINKER. A ramshackle covered cart, laden with an assortment of tinware, had stopped on the outskirts of the village. The owner, a bent scarecrow of a fellow, was effecting repairs to his nag's harness with a piece of string. Evening was setting in, and the south-east wind swept a grey haze across the coast road and sombre marshes. The tinker completed first-aid to the harness, and stood at the front of the cart to light his lamps. The first match blew out, and he came closer to the body of the vehicle for shelter from the wind. At that moment a pedestrian passed, humming a little tune to himself, striding along through the November mirk with swinging gait. It may have been that his voice, coming suddenly within range of the mare's ears, conveyed a sound of encouragement. Perhaps the lights of the village twinkling out one by one along the village street suggested stables and a nose-bag. Anyhow, the tinker's nag threw her weight suddenly into the collar, the wheel of the cart passed over the tinker's toe, and the tinker uttered a sudden exclamation. Under the circumstances it was a pardonable enough ebullition of feeling, and ought not to have caused the passing pedestrian to spin round on his heel, astonishment on every line of his face. The next moment, however, he recovered himself. "Did you call out to me?" he shouted. The tinker was nursing his toe, apparently unconscious of having given any one more food for thought than usual. "No," he replied gruffly; "I 'urt myself." The passer-by turned and pursued his way to the village. The tinker lit his lamps and followed. He was a retiring sort of tinker, and employed no flamboyant methods to advertise his wares. He jingled through the village without |