The Secret Service Submarine: A Story of the Present War

"Well, you haven't known him as long as I've known John. What price Johnny, my sweet young sister, and what about the bold, brave Dickson max. and Dickson major?"

They kept it up for a minute or two very well, and then their arms went round each other, and one sister held the other close.

The bell from the adjacent church tolled for evensong. It was a lovely night, cold and clear with a great, round, green moon. Mrs. Murphy mercifully left them alone. They heard the front door close, and saw her rolling up the path towards the church, a long, dark façade with lit windows.

As if in a dream, the girls heard the droning murmur of the Psalms. Their thoughts were far away with a little band of heroes. There was a long pause – it must have been the sermon – and then came a deep, swelling sound. The congregation were singing the last hymn, and it was "for those in peril on the sea."

They clasped hands and went to the window, opening it wide to the moonlight. The simple, familiar music flooded into the room.

Bang! Bang! Bang! The door burst open. It was midnight, and Mrs. Murphy, in an appalling night-cap and a magenta dressing-gown, was standing by the girls' beds.

"Get ye up! Get ye up! – no, don't bother about your hair, it's well enough as it is. The Saints be praised – hush, ye'll not say a word, for I'm a good Protestant here, for Murphy's sake, and an old gazaboo the clergyman is, to be shure! – but there's a gintleman come down in a big automobile to see you. Wirra, phwat news!"

While she was shouting and gesticulating, the old lady had pulled Doris and Marjorie out of their beds, and was wrapping them up in their dressing-gowns with shaking fingers.

"News?" Doris gasped – "news of John?"

"News that'll shake England, aye, and Doblin too, to its foundations."

"Bernard?" Marjorie said unsteadily.

"Ye'll kindly come along with me," said Mrs. Murphy, and a strange procession went down the stairs into the hall.

The three servants of the house were bundled into one corner, and the less said about their attire the better. Lieutenant Murphy, in his uniform, was trying to light candles, and his wrinkled face was brighter than the flaring, smoking lamp which hung from the ceiling. In the centre of the hall was a tall, clean-shaved, youngish-looking man. He held a cocked hat in one hand and wore a uniform of dead black-blue.

Directly the old lady rolled down the stairs, followed by the frightened girls, this new-comer made a step forward. His manners were perfect, and he bowed as if he were at Court.

"Miss Joyce? – Miss Marjorie Joyce?"

"Faith, and they're the same, the very gurrls!" said Mrs. Murphy.

"I am sent by the First Lord, ladies, to give you some news, which I understand will be most welcome. Lieutenant-Commander Bernard Carey, Mr. John Carey, the two young gentlemen named Dickson, and Commander Carey's three sailors, Scarlett, Adams and Bosustow, have covered themselves with glory."

Doris was splendid.

"Ah!" she said, "we were waiting for this, my sister and myself. Are they, are they – ?" She could not go on.

"Madam, they are all safe and sound. Commander Carey is slightly wounded – that is all. They have engaged in action with the great German battleship, Der Friesland, and sunk her. They have sunk a transport. They have evaded a flotilla of German destroyers. In short, they have saved England. Our flotilla came up just in time. The Admiralty have had wireless messages during the whole of the afternoon."

Hitherto, the officer – he looked thirty-five, was really fifty, and the son of a duke – had spoken formally.

"Then?" Marjorie sighed.

"Then, it just amounts to this. No more glorious deed had ever been done in the whole history of our Navy, from the days of Sir Francis Drake down to this moment. I was privileged to be at the Palace a few hours ago when the news was brought. Each member of the crew of the submarine is to receive the Victoria Cross. It is not only by order of the First Lord of the Admiralty, but also by express command of His Majesty that I have motored down here to-night to bring you the news. My instructions are to ask you if you will accompany me to-morrow to Harwich, for we expect and hope that, during the earlier part of the afternoon…"

"They will come back!" Marjorie shouted.

"Precisely," said Lord William, "and, of course, you must be there to meet them!"

"Gurrls, I'll chaperone ye! Now, get back to bed, and sleep – if ye can. Shure, and I'm ashamed of ye appearin' in such dishybayle!" concluded the merry old lady, with a wink.

She stood at the foot of the stairs and hooshed her young charges away.

Then she turned to her guest.

"Ye'll forgive an old woman appearin' like this," she said simply. "Pathrick, take Lord William into the dining-room, and we'll make him some supper in a moment. We're all friends in the Navy."

Her voice changed and became very grave.

"Blessings on you," she said, "that have brought the good news to this house and to those dear gurrls this night!"

Part II. – Return of the Seven Heroes

It was a tall man with black hair, dark eyes and a pinched face. His black, clerical clothes were rather rusty in the bright morning sunlight, though they were his best.

"The young beggars!" he said, "the young beggars!" and there was a catch in his voice. "A commission for both of them and a special allowance, did you say, Lord William?"

"The Admiralty could do no less, Mr. Dickson. We want a thousand lads like yours, if we could only get them. Not that any officer of their age in the Navy wouldn't have done the same, but their names will be for ever glorious in the history of the service. It is a feat that England will never willingly forget. You know that they, as well as the rest, are to have the Victoria Cross?"

Mr. Dickson stared, as if he saw something at a great distance.

"No," he said, "I didn't know that – er – excuse me for a moment."

The clergyman turned away to the window of the Admiral's office, which overlooked Harwich Harbour, and his shoulders were shaking. "Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen —"

"Shure, and they can't be long now, the Admiral says," came from Mrs. Murphy, sitting in the Admiral's chair, at the Admiral's table, with all sorts of confidential documents spread in front of her.

"Pathrick is to have the rank of Captain for the part he's tuk in it, though that was pure luck and him being on the spot. And, bedad, we'll have that motor cyar – and I never did see why a mere Docthor's wife like Mrs. Pestle, and him little better than a vetherinary surgeon, should keep a cyar when an officer in His Majesty's Navy couldn't!"

The Admiral in command at Harwich, a grizzled sailor who had been called up from his peaceful Devon home to leave his pheasants and fat cattle, came into the room, rubbing his hands.

"Well, they'll have the reception of their lives, young ladies," he said beaming; and, with a clank of his sword as he sat down, "Mrs. Murphy, if you attempt to read any of the papers on that table, I shall regretfully be compelled to have you shot, which will mar the festivity of the occasion! My dears, a special train full of journalists has just come down from town. There are thousands of people flocking to the quays in the spaces provided, and what the papers are saying about our friends will astonish you."

He produced a copy of the Daily Wire and opened it, while they all crowded round to look. Modern journalism had secured a triumph. Short as the time had been, there were columns and columns of description of the events at Morstone of which hardly anybody had been allowed to know anything – and the Battle in the North Sea, about which nobody knew but the Admiralty.

There were portraits of the two Dickson boys, each apparently about twelve years of age and in broad Eton collars. There was a truculent, prize-fighting individual, with distinct side-whiskers, labelled, "Mr. John Carey, M.A., the heroic schoolmaster who slew the Master-spy, 'Doctor Upjelly,' with his own hands." A smudge on the top of a uniform represented Lieutenant-Commander Bernard Carey – also "heroic," with sundry other adjectives; and if those excellent Plymouth ladies, Mrs. Bosustow, Mrs. Scarlett and Mrs. Adams, had seen the people represented in the newspaper as their lords and masters walk into Paradise Row, Devonport, they certainly would not have known them.

Doris gasped. "To call that John!" she said; "what a wicked libel! Couldn't the editor be arrested?"

"An editor is one of the people whom nothing can arrest," said the Admiral. "'In rebus desperatis remedia desperata,' which means 'What the public wants, the public must have, however short the time in which to fake it up.'"

There was a knock at the door, and a young officer entered, saluting.

"Destroyers sighted, Sir," he said, not without an appreciative glance at the two pretty girls close by. He handed a piece of paper to the Admiral, adding: "Just come in by wireless from the Arethusa, Sir."

The old gentleman with the pointed beard and clanking sword read it. He chuckled.

"Well," he said, "the public is going to have some fun for its money, for Commander Carey is coming into harbour on board his own boat. Now, then, suppose we all go out to the signalling station at the end of the Mole and get the first sight of them?"