A STUDY IN SMOKE

All that winter of the war men laboured at furious speed to furnish the guns which the British Government had forgotten to make before the war. Guns were needed imperatively for the navy, and even more for the hapless army bogged in Flanders mud. So the factories and foundries of Woolhurst worked at full pressure. The factories screamed and glittered through day and night, and the foundries drew a muffled roar as an occasional red mist burst out of their chimneys and a gun or part of a gun was cast. It was slow but furious work—furious in the detail of fire and molten metal, slow in the aggregate of fitting and testing each mighty gun. Furious work for the sweltering workers, stokers, and moulders, but slow, infinitely slow, to the waiting officials, and slowest still for the officers and men waiting for gun equipment by land or sea.

To beget a gun on official paper is a different thing from its long generation and growth in the foundries. An order can order but not quicken a gun’s delivery. The most imperious official cannot make the molten metal more malleable to man’s dire need.

Thousands of workers wrought like cogs in a machine, surrendering their thought and strength to the metal. The pay was good and the toil overwhelming. There was no time or strength left to think of anything except the immediate toil. They were fascinated and caught like moths upon the outskirts of that chaotic bonfire for which they were binding iron faggots and filling steel squibs. Cranes, lorries, and trucks picked up their output and disappeared. There was no time to ask a question. The harder and fiercer they worked, the sooner the war would be over. Only madmen and Socialists asked why. The argument stood that the higher and brighter the bonfire was piled, the sooner it would be burnt out to a finish. No one in the Woolhurst factories queried the uselessness and meaninglessness of all their labour except Ben, the local Labour leader. Whatever he was known as to the officials, he was Ben to his fellows, and always had been, in strike and out of strike time. He worked with the rest but he did not think with them. The bitter humours, which a little reading and much agitating had left in his brain, were not dissipated in the burning fires of the foundry. He grew bitter as he grew wearier. He felt careless whether he gave his full power to the work of destroying the workmen of another country. It was only the war of one ant-hill against another. Patriotism had not caught him in the board-school, and less during his apprenticeship to work. His education was what he had given himself out of the Labour Press and from second-hand copies of Marx and Carlyle. As he grew careless, he grew clumsier and earned the curses of the foreman, as far as curses availed against the hot blasts. He hated his work and all around him.... He hated the great gun which they were casting in molten form. He could see the white-hot metal pouring like milk out of the furnace. The sight did not exhilarate him in the way it seemed to inspire the others. His muscles relaxed and his eyes went languidly out of focus. The seething mass of blazing liquid drew his languor into itself. The foreman was still cursing. It needed only a touch to upset his balance. Without a splash or a ripple he passed into the fiery mass ... an accident!

There are times when a ship cannot be stopped for a paltry individual who has fallen overboard, and the foundry could not be held up for one man’s remains. A big gun is worth many human lives. Besides, he had disappeared. Cremation was complete and total.

By the time the glowing liquor had passed into the moulds and entered into the long process of cooling, the human moth was charred to the nothingness of carbon, and every bone and particle was digested by the steel. His tomb not only enclosed but absorbed him. He had become part and ingredient of his own sepulchre.... And there could be no inquest, for there was no relic for a coroner’s inspection. Long before the gun was adjusted with all its minute and meticulous parts, long before it was tested and sent to a naval dockyard, the unfortunate man it contained was forgotten, and had become as nameless and anonymous as the gun itself. Nameless was the six-inch gun that was sent to sea, and nameless let the cruiser remain on which it was hoisted.

For weary weeks H.M.S. —— patrolled the northern mists, with a brighter interval in the Mediterranean. Undeviating drill and perpetual practice brought crews and armament to a stage of perfection bordering on staleness. The chaplain came into the captain’s room with a puzzled look.

“Sick?” queried the skipper.

“No,” said the chaplain, “I have been talking to the men.”

“Not done talking to them yet?” laughed the other, who took a good-natured but perfectly sceptical view about chaplains and their functions.

“Well, I should say,” suggested the chaplain, “that they have been talking to me lately.”

“What about?”

“About spirits!”

The captain shifted his foot and spun round: “I thought it was your business to talk to them about spirits, and what you didn’t know about the spiritual simply wasn’t spirits”—and he laughed outright.

“This is not my kind of spirit.”

“The men will want to be teaching me my job next!” exclaimed the captain.

“These are not the spirits of the Prayer Book so much as ...”

“What?”

“The spirits that are called ghosts.”

“Well, are there no ghosts in the Bible?”

“Yes, but not quite the same kind that the men have come to believe is on board this ship.”

Anything affecting the nerves of the men became a preoccupation of the skipper, and he grew grave.

“Go on.”

“Well, sir, it is very like a hallucination, but I thought you had better know what the men are thinking about, in case it is interfering with their work. They do not like handling one of the starboard six-inch guns.”

“What do you mean? It is brand-new and tested to the ounce.”

“The men think there is a spirit in that gun and that he appears every time they fire the gun.”

“Cannot they blow him out?”

“No, for it is in the smoke after firing that they discern the figure of a man, and they think that he will end by sinking the ship....”

There was a longish silence, for the captain was far too good a sailor not to know the part superstition plays in a sailor’s life. Devoid of religion himself, he was calculating the result of such a fear on the gun’s crew. For months the Grand Fleet had been chafing at anchor, with intervals spent bursting through the fogs or charging the mists. Mysterious performances known as P. Z. exercises, devised by admirals, carried out by captains, and rectified in practice by humble individuals in chart-rooms, occupied most of their seagoing. The exact strategists were learning that accuracy and certainty were more difficult to obtain on the water than on paper. The reckonings of ships varied, and the value of given fire against given armament did not always respond to theory. Even blindfold chess gave more certain results. This was blindfold boxing against an enemy who was as often below as above the waters. Months of phantom-chasing took its effect on men’s minds. Crews became used to being called to action preceding no action. Destroyers reported enemies that melted into mist, and imaginary submarines caused panic in the Firth and the Flow. The invisible enemy preyed more substantially on their minds than would have been the case had action materialised. The strain told, and the sarcastic elements seemed to mimic the thunder of guns whose smoke only curled into the mocking clouds.

The practice day following the conversation of chaplain and captain on H.M.S. —— was fine and clear. The Dreadnoughts were slowly making line to the practice-ground, preceded by the cruisers in formation, while the destroyers ran in and out like bicycles twisting amongst huge motor-buses. The captain of H.M.S. —— took his position on the bridge, and asked the chaplain to stand on the far end to note the firing, while he remained at the other.

“Watch the firing of the forecastle-guns, and especially of the starboard six-inch. I shall be glad to have your detailed report.”

At a signal from the flag-ship the fire-control of the cruisers was tested. They fired in turn at a slow-moving target. The turn came for H.M.S. ——. The port forecastle-gun emitted a cloud of smoke, a great rolling blanket of white vapour. Captain and chaplain pierced it with their glasses, and it had rolled away before the splash of the shell showed where the aim had fallen short. The cruiser swung slowly round, and the brand-new 9·2 fired for the tenth time in its existence. Captain and chaplain watched the smoke without raising their glasses. It slowly melted in the bright breeze, disintegrating and discolouring of itself. It was quite thin before a man’s figure could be discerned struggling in the dissolving smoke. It seemed obvious, matter-of-fact, and chemical, except that it was a figure of smoke. The figure was only comprehensible for a moment or two, for the wind elongated his writhings; and his limbs, as though on the rack, were torn apart with delirious speed. But the impression of human agony remained with every human being who watched the torment of the smoke. Only the officer controlling the fire watched the target and noted how near the shell fell this time. By the time the next shot was fired, not a wisp of the ghostly smoke remained.... And the fear of doom remained in every heart on board that night except with the captain and the chaplain. The chaplain had decided clearly that it was either a fantasy or a divine omen. In the latter case it was for the good, and in the first case it did not matter. As for the captain, he was both puzzled and unafraid.

The chaplain had noted the firing and its results very carefully as directed, and he handed his notes to the captain, who read them in his cabin. They were accurate and corresponded to the official account in the log.

“You make no mention of the smoke,” suggested the captain.

“No.”

“Well, I saw a very distinct outline of a man in the smoke, and I expected you would have recorded it.”

“No,” replied the other. “I particularly left the spook to you. It would have been no evidence for me to have seen and reported it, for I am officially supposed to believe in spirits.”

“Well,” said the captain, “I who do not believe in them have seen this.”

“Blessed rather are those who have not seen and yet have believed,” said the chaplain.

“That is hardly my case,” replied the captain, “for I have most distinctly seen and yet have not believed.”

Both turned then as sensible men to consider the effect of the hallucination, or whatever it was, on the crew of the gun, and incidentally on the whole ship. The men had come to regard it as a bad omen. To them it was worse than carrying round a corpse. They thought the gun was haunted and that, however deadly its firing to the enemy, it would in the end prove more fatal to the ship. They believed they were on a doomed vessel. It was no use changing the crew of the gun, as the whole ship seemed involved.

“Provided I can drop a hit on the enemy with that gun in action, I do not so much mind if the ship sinks under me,” was the captain’s final deliberation....

The long wait of months was broken for some by the instantaneous decision of mine or explosion, for others by change of latitude and ship; for some, indeed, it was never broken; but for a few it was crossed by the magic signal, “action!” On a joyous day for H.M.S. —— issue was joined in the North Sea with a German raider supported in the dim distance by enemy light forces. The captain gathered all the threads of his life and training into his hand, and stood glued to the bridge. The chaplain went down to steady the men, who in the glad glow of coming action forgot all their troubles of body or mind. The moving smoke on the horizon was the sign of retreating enemy, and cruisers with torpedoes were dashing to cut them off. Every heart on board beat in steady throb of unison with the ship’s engines. Precious minutes passed, and the smokes on the horizon were no nearer. The largest smoke was separating from the others. Half an hour passed and a hull was outlined. It corresponded to the raider, one of those sweet prizes which had been dashing in and out of middies’ dreams for months. As the raider drew off from her escort, chancing a northern mist, H.M.S. —— followed into the gathering vapour. Fire was being exchanged between the others, but he reserved the raider to his own. Careless whether she was dropping mines, he pushed into her direct wake. In ten minutes he would open fire. And he did.

The fore-guns flashed in turn and eager glasses picked up the splash of the first shell falling short. The captain groaned, but his groan was choked with relief as he watched the next shell drop with a red flash on the raider’s bridge. He telephoned his congratulations to the gun’s crew, who received them in British silence. The red glare of fire was rising from the raider under the British fire. She was blazing steadily, and the captain no longer kept check of his guns. They were being fired in irregular but enthusiastic salvoes. The German flag was visible, white against the yellow smoke, so good were the captain’s glasses. Another glance and the flag was gone. He immediately gave the signal to cease firing. A destroyer ran in and fired a torpedo, whereat the raider turned quietly over....

Leaving the rescuing to the destroyers, the captain of H.M.S. —— cheerfully inquired if there had been any casualties. The chaplain joined him on the bridge with a list.

“I am afraid there have been a few.”

“I never knew we were hit.”

“No, we were not hit by the enemy, but unfortunately a six-inch gun starboard exploded after firing one shot, the second shot of the action, and the whole crew were killed or wounded.”

The captain buried his face in his hands, forgetful that this was the end of the perfecting day of his career, when years of preparation were tested in action. Action and victory had come and also unlooked-for disaster.

He could return home and report a brilliant and decisive action, but the nature of his casualties necessitated an inquiry. A great deal of evidence was taken as to the explosion of the six-inch breech, and as little as possible was allowed to reach the public. It was proved that the gun had been made with every possible care, being tested and regulated in every way. The metal itself was subjected to a close examination, and found to be of the best. The only flaw was traced to a slight superfluity of carbon, which remained inexplicable amid the alloy, and no blame was attached to the maker, or to the crew or captain who had had charge of her in action. This carbon had undoubtedly brought about a weak point in the gun, and under pressure she had exploded, though in practice she had been successfully fired. It was an explanatory but unsatisfying report....

A month later—“Carbon is a material cause at least,” remarked the captain to the chaplain, “and carbon could have come from a man.”

“That is a possible solution, if you think it likely that some man fell accidentally into the gun when it was cast,” replied the chaplain.

“I know it,” said the captain, “for it was my suspicion, and a private and careful inquiry has placed me in possession of the fact that this gun came from a foundry where a man had been actually lost in the molten metal.”

Both sat in stony silence, and then the captain rose to go.

“Whatever I saw and you saw and the ship’s crew saw, the cause was material and a man.”

“Yes, and as you have had reason to observe, a man is a spirit,” said the chaplain, returning to his duties....