The convoy zig-zagged its way across the tropic sea, three days out of Sierra Leone. Wearied unto death with physical jerks and dry-as-dust lectures on impossible operations delivered by young officers who hadn't been there, talked to the point of exhaustion by youthful M.O.'s just through, their med. course, on the necessity of powdering one's armpits and scraping in between one's toes, the Diggers, half-naked, wiled away the afternoon with "two-up," "crown and anchor," or similar soothing pastime.
On the starboard quarter a Norwegian tramp, lumbering along at six knots or so, was pushing half the South Atlantic in front of her bows.
The ship's officer of the watch was feeling fresh.
"Shall I report you 'all well'?" he flip-flapped, to show off his own craft's 15 knots.
"Please."
An hour later the tramp was a blur of smoke miles astern.
* * *
The siren tooted the alarm.
Listlessness vanished like the audience in a theatre fire. But the convoy had no real cause for alarm. Away astern the tramp was fighting for his life, which, from the flashes one could see, would appear to be menaced by two enemy submarines.
"Poor devil. With his six knots he's got the chance of a snowball in hell."
* * *
The action had ceased. But the tramp appeared to be afloat. Marvellous to relate, he seemed to be gaining on the convoy.
He was gaining.
Half-an-hour later, with funnel belching smoke, he dashed past at a rate of knots.
"H.M.S. X77, proceeding Portsmouth," twinkled the little light from his bridge. "Just sank two Hun submarines." And then maliciously: "Shall I report you 'all well'?"
* * *
It was an "occasion," the O.C. Troops decided, as he chatted it over with the Skipper in the latter's cabin. The "Old Man" was a sport. He lifted his glass:
"God bless the Navy." — E.G.K.
* * *
Source: The Sailors' and Soldiers' Parliament (1920, May 15). Smith's Weekly (Sydney, NSW : 1919 - 1950), p. 23.
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