Data Mining Concepts and Techniques 3rd Edition Han Solutions Manual
Data Mining Concepts and Techniques 3rd Edition Han Solutions Manual
Data Mining Concepts and Techniques 3rd Edition Han Solutions Manual
https://testbankfan.com/download/data-mining-concepts-and-techniques-3rd-edition-h
an-solutions-manual/
3rd Edition
Solution Manual
For a rapidly evolving field like data mining, it is difficult to compose “typical” exercises and even more
difficult to work out “standard” answers. Some of the exercises in Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques
are themselves good research topics that may lead to future Master or Ph.D. theses. Therefore, our solution
manual is intended to be used as a guide in answering the exercises of the textbook. You are welcome to
enrich this manual by suggesting additional interesting exercises and/or providing more thorough, or better
alternative solutions.
While we have done our best to ensure the correctness of the solutions, it is possible that some typos or
errors may exist. If you should notice any, please feel free to point them out by sending your suggestions to
hanj@cs.uiuc.edu. We appreciate your suggestions.
To assist the teachers of this book to work out additional homework or exam questions, we have added
one additional section “Supplementary Exercises” to each chapter of this manual. This section includes
additional exercise questions and their suggested answers and thus may substantially enrich the value of this
solution manual. Additional questions and answers will be incrementally added to this section, extracted
from the assignments and exam questions of our own teaching. To this extent, our solution manual will be
incrementally enriched and subsequently released in the future months and years.
Acknowledgements
For each edition of this book, the solutions to the exercises were worked out by different groups of teach
assistants and students. We sincerely express our thanks to all the teaching assistants and participating
students who have worked with us to make and improve the solutions to the questions. In particular, for the
first edition of the book, we would like to thanks Denis M. C. Chai, Meloney H.-Y. Chang, James W. Herdy,
Jason W. Ma, Jiuhong Xu, Chunyan Yu, and Ying Zhou who took the class of CMPT-459: Data Mining and
Data Warehousing at Simon Fraser University in the Fall semester of 2000 and contributed substantially to
the solution manual of the first edition of this book. For those questions that also appear in the first edition,
the answers in this current solution manual are largely based on those worked out in the preparation of the
first edition.
For the solution manual of the second edition of the book, we would like to thank Ph.D. students and
teaching assistants, Deng Cai and Hector Gonzalez, for the course CS412: Introduction to Data Mining and
Data Warehousing, offered in the Fall semester of 2005 in the Department of Computer Science at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They have helped prepare and compile the answers for the new
exercises of the first seven chapters in our second edition. Moreover, our thanks go to several students from
the CS412 class in the Fall semester of 2005 and the CS512: Data Mining: Principles and Algorithms classes
iii
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Navy eternal
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most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
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this eBook.
Author: Bartimeus
Language: English
THE NAVY-THAT-FLOATS
THE NAVY-THAT-FLIES
AND THE NAVY-UNDER-THE-SEA
BY
“BARTIMEUS”
DEDICATED TO
Captain
Royal Navy.
CONTENTS
PAGE
PROLOGUE 17
CHAPTER I
“USQUE AB OVO” 23
CHAPTER II
IN THE TWILIGHT 48
CHAPTER III
THE NAVY-THAT-FLIES 89
CHAPTER IV
“LEST WE FORGET” 118
CHAPTER V
THE FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN 156
CHAPTER VI
GIPSIES OF THE SEA 164
CHAPTER VII
THE DAY--AND THE MORNING AFTER 180
CHAPTER VIII
THE NAVY-UNDER-THE-SEA 190
CHAPTER IX
THE PORT LOOK-OUT 213
CHAPTER X
THE SURVIVOR 220
CHAPTER XI
THE Nth BATTLE SQUADRON 237
CHAPTER XII
MYSTERY 257
CHAPTER XIII
THE SPIRIT OF THE FLEET 273
CHAPTER XIV
THE EPIC OF ST. GEORGE’S DAY, 1918 289
EPILOGUE 308
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“USQUE AB OVO” 23
HEAVY METAL 48
A STRIKING FORCE 55
THE LEFT FLANK 63
THE HUNT 69
OVERDUE 76
“TUPPENCE APIECE” 83
THE NAVY-THAT-FLIES 89
THE DOVER PATROL 143
THE FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN 163
GIPSIES OF THE SEA 164
THE PORT LOOK-OUT 213
THE SURVIVOR 220
THE Nᵀᴴ BATTLE SQUADRON 237
THE SPIRIT OF THE FLEET—“GATE, THERE! GATE!” 273
THE EPIC OF ST. GEORGE’S DAY, 1918 289
EPILOGUE 308
FINIS 331
PROLOGUE
Anyone familiar with the River Dart knows the Mill Creek. The hills on either side
slope steeply down to the edge of the water, oak and beech and elm clustering thick
on the one hand, red plough, green shoots, and golden corn-fields alternating on the
other through all the changing seasons.
The creek is tidal, transformed at half-flood into a fair expanse of shimmering
water; at low tide, however, it dwindles to a score of meagre channels winding
tortuously through whale-backed mudbanks, the haunt of scurrying crabs and
meditative heron.
Here, one afternoon in midsummer some dozen years ago, came a gig (or, in
local parlance, a “blue-boat”) manned by seven flannel-clad cadets from the Naval
College. Six sat on the thwarts pulling lazily against the last of the ebb. The
seventh sat in the stern, with the yoke-lines over his shoulders, refreshing himself
with cherries out of a bag.
As they approached the shelving mudbanks, purple in the afternoon sunlight,
the figure in the bows boated his oar and began to sound cautiously with his
boathook. The remaining five oarsmen glanced back over their shoulders and
continued paddling. The helmsman smiled tolerantly, as a man might smile at the
conceits of childhood, but refrained from speech. They all knew the weakness of
the bowman for dabbling in mud.
“Half a point to port!” said the slim form wielding the dripping boathook. “I can
see the channel now.... Steady as you go!” A minute later the boat slid into the
main channel and the crew drew in their oars, punting their narrow craft between
the banks of ooze. None of them spoke, save the bowman, and he only at rare
intervals, flinging back a curt direction to the helmsman over his shoulder.
For half an hour they navigated the channels winding up the valley, and came at
length to a crumbling stone quay beside the ruin of a mill. Ferns grew in the
interstices of the old brickwork, and a great peace brooded over the silent wood
that towered behind. They made the boat fast there; and because boats and the sea
were things as yet half-unknown and wholly attractive, none of them attempted to
land. Instead, with coats rolled up as pillows and their straw hats tilted over their
eyes, the seven made themselves comfortable as only naval cadets could in such
cramped surroundings, and from under the thwarts each one drew a paper bag and
a bottle of lemonade.
“Dead low water,” said Number 1 (the bow oar) presently. “We shall have a
young flood against us going back; but then there’s no chance of getting stuck on
the mud.” He drew a bunch of keys from his pocket and proceeded to take careful
soundings round the boat, using the keys as a sinker and the lanyard as a lead-line.
“Oh, shut up about your everlasting tides,” said Number 2, “and keep quiet; I
want to sleep.”
“They interest me,” replied Number 1 simply. “I shall be a navigator, I think.”
“You’d better go in for submarines,” said Number 4, applying himself to his
bottle of fizzing beverage. “Plenty of poking about mudbanks in them if it interests
you. One of the first we ever had stuck in the mud one day and never came up
again.”
“P’raps I shall,” admitted the bow. “In fact I shouldn’t be surprised if I did go in
for submarining.”
Number 3 was lying on his back on the thwart, his head resting on the gunwale.
“They’ll never come to anything,” he said. “The submarine’s a failure.” His eyes
followed the flight of a white-winged gull that circled with outstretched wings far
above their heads. “No. It’s going to be in the air, when we have a war. I’m all for
flying machines....” He was silent awhile meditating, then turned his head quickly.
“Bombs!” he said. “Fancy being able to drop bombs all over an enemy’s country.”
“You couldn’t do it,” said Number 2. “You’d go killing women and civilians.
They’d never let you.”
“Who?” demanded the prospective aviator, his enthusiasm rather damped.
“Who’d stop me?”
“International Law,” cut in the coxswain quickly. “Conventions and all that....
Why, there’d be no limit to anything if it weren’t for international law. An enemy
could go off in his beastly submarine and paralyse the trade routes.”
“Paralyse ’em—how?” inquired the bow man.
“Just torpedoing ’em, of course, you ass.”
“What, merchant ships?”
The jurist nodded.
“But no one could do that. I mean you’d never get a naval officer to do that,
international law or no international law. That ’ud be piracy—like those fellows at
Algiers. ’Member the lecture last week?”
“I don’t mean we’d do it,” conceded the coxswain. “But some nations might.”
The idealist shook his head. “No naval officer would,” he repeated stoutly,
“whatever his nationality.”
“The surface of the sea’s good enough for me,” chipped in No. 2. “I don’t want
to bomb women or torpedo merchant ships. I’m going to be captain of a destroyer.”
He raised his head. “Thirty knots at night, my boy!... Upper-deck torpedo tubes and
all that....”
“I’d blow you out of the water with a 12-inch gun,” said Number 5, speaking
for the first time, and laying aside a magazine. “Gunnery is going to save this
country if ever we have a war. That’s why gunnery lieutenants get promoted
quickly—my governor told me so.”
“Did he?” said the stroke oar. “He’s wrong. You can only fire big guns from big
ships, and you know what happened to big ships in the Russo-Japanese war.”
“What?” inquired the visionary coldly.
“Mines. Big ships can’t move when there are mines about.”
“We don’t use mines any longer,” said the coxswain, crumpling up his empty
bag and throwing it over the side. It floated slowly past the boat towards the head
of the valley. “They’re not considered sporting. ’Sides, even if you could, you can
always countermine, and sweep ’em up. My brother went through a course in the
Mediterranean once—place called Platea. I remember him telling me about it.”
The stroke oar sat upright and glanced the length of the boat. “Wouldn’t it be a
rum thing,” he said, “if there was a war some day and we were all in it.” He ticked
off their names on his fingers: “Submarine, aeroplane, destroyer, minelayer,
minesweeper, battleship——” He paused. “I’d like to be in a cruiser,” he said. “A
big cruiser scouting ahead of the Fleet. You’d get more excitement there than
anywhere.” His voice deepened to a sudden note of triumph. “It ’ud be the
forefront of the battle.”
“Then we’d all meet afterwards,” said Number 2, “and have a blow-out
somewhere ashore and talk about our experiences. Wouldn’t that be topping?”
The bow oar sat with his eyes on the crumpled paper bag that floated up-stream,
shading them against the glow of the sun turning all the creeks into molten gold.
“Those of us that were left,” he said dreamily. “Tide’s turned.... We’d better think
about getting back.”
CHAPTER I
“USQUE AB OVO”
Reminiscences
of those days
“in the distance
enchanted”
never come in
an orderly
procession
according to
the original
sequence of
events. Some,
for reasons
quite
inexplicable,
jostle their way
to the fore
readily enough.
Others, dim
and elusive,
hover in the
background,
and only
respond to the
lure of firelight
and tobacco
smoke
ascending
incense-wise
from the depths
of the arm-
chair.
Sooner or
later, though,
they can all be
caught and held for the moment needed to record them. The difficulty is to know
where to start....
Harker is foremost among the “thrusters” in the surging crowd of memories of
the old Britannia days. Harker, with his piercing, rather melancholy eyes, his black
beard and tattooed wrists, and his air of implacable ferocity that for months
succeeded in concealing from his term a heart as tender as a woman’s.
His name was not actually Harker, of course; but he is probably still alive, and
even retired chief petty officers of the Royal Navy have their susceptibilities. He
was a term C.P.O.—mentor, wet-nurse, “sea-daddy,” the outward and visible
embodiment of Naval Discipline to sixty-odd naval cadets who yesterday were raw
schoolboys and to-day wear the King’s uniform and eke brass buttons—a transition
unhinging enough to more matured souls than those of his charges.
How he succeeded in conveying within the space of the first evening the
exceedingly unfamiliar routine of training-ship life, the art of turning into a
hammock, the necessity for keeping their chests locked, the majesty of the term
lieutenant and the omnipotence of the chief cadet captains, to sixty bewildered
fifteen-year-olds, only he knows.
Yet he harried none; they were conscious of him as a flock of disconcerted
sheep are aware of a wise collie. His voice was never still: it was to be presumed
that he slept at some mysterious time during the twenty-four hours, and yet his
square, compact form seemed to be always drifting about at all hours of the day
and night. Even when a hapless wight (in the throes of nightmare) tipped bodily out
of his hammock on to the deck the first night, it was Harker who appeared
noiselessly out of the shadows to tuck him in again.
Their names he had pat within twenty-four hours; this tightened his grip of the
term instantly, but it also caused him to be regarded as scarcely canny. Indeed, it
was disconcerting enough to regard yourself one moment as an insignificant and
unknown unit among 250 others, and in this comfortable reflection to lean in a
dégagé attitude against the white paintwork (one of the seven deadly sins): then to
hear admonition and your name, coupled together like chain-shot, ring out along
the crowded main-deck. Harker had seen you.
There were other C.P.O.’s on board: each term owned one. But they were, by
comparison with Harker, sorry fellows. One was reputed to be given to beating the
big drum at Salvation Army meetings ashore, garbed, moreover, in a scarlet jersey.
Hotly his term denied it, but the story was stamped with the unimpeachable
authority of the boatswain’s mate of the lower-deck: a godless seaman,
conversation with whom, being of a spicy and anecdotal nature, was forbidden.
Another was admittedly of a good enough heart, but a sentimentalist, and
consequently to be despised. On the occasion of the chastisement of an evil-doer,
his was the arm chosen to administer the strokes with all the pomp and
circumstance of an official execution. He laid the strokes on well and truly—that
much the victim himself admitted. But when he turned from his duty his eyes were
observed to have tears in them. His term had in consequence to adopt an apologetic
manner for a considerable time afterwards.
It was a similar scene, but one in which Harker played the Lord High
Executioner, that must here be recorded. The setting alone was sufficient to strike
awe and even terror into the spectator’s hearts. And now, after the lapse of years,
recalling the circumstances of that harrowing quarter of an hour, it is doubtful
whether there was not just some such motive behind the grim circumstance that led
up to the painful consummation.
The scene was the orlop-deck. What light there was came in through the open
gunports, slanting upwards off the water. Not cheering sunlight, you understand,
but a greenish sickly gleam that struggled ineffectually with the shadows clinging
like vampires among the low oak beams overhead.
The victim’s term were fallen-in in a hollow square about the horse—a block of
wood supported on short legs, with ring-bolts and canvas straps hanging from each
corner. Then there came a pause. Possibly the captain had not finished his
breakfast; or perhaps Harker had for once made a mistake and got his term there
too early. But for the space of several minutes (or weeks, or years) the term stood
in shuddering contemplation of this engine.
Then one of the spectators, the victim of either an over-rich imagination or an
acutely sensitive conscience, dramatically fainted and was borne forth. After that
things began to happen. The malefactor appeared, accompanied by Harker. The
captain, the term lieutenant, and (a thrill ran through the on-lookers) the surgeon
followed. It was half-expected that the chaplain would also join the group and
administer ghostly consolation to the culprit, who, it must be reluctantly admitted,
looked rather pleased with himself.
His offence was not one to alienate him from the hearts of his fellows. If
memory serves aright, he had been overheard to refer to his late crammer in terms
that may or may not have been just, but were certainly not the way a little
gentleman should talk. But his term—or most of them—were still smarting under
the recollections of crammers’ methods and were disposed to regard the
delinquent’s lapse rather more as a pardonable ebullition of feeling than a breach of
morality. In short he was a bit of a hero.
“Chief Petty Officer Harker,” said the stern voice of the term lieutenant, “do
your duty.” The harrowing preliminaries completed, Chief Petty Officer Harker did
it, as was to be expected of him, uncommonly well.
The victim took it, as was also to be expected of him, uncommonly well. It was
not long before these lines were written that he was called upon to meet a sterner
and his last ordeal. The pity is that no spectator can bear testimony to the worthier
courage with which he must have met it.
Harker it was who smelt out, like a Zulu witch-doctor, the grass snake and
dormouse that lived a life of communistic ease and reflection in the washing till of
someone’s sea-chest. Harker’s the suspicious mind that led to official “ruxes” of
private tills, and the confiscation of meerschaum pipes, Turkish cigarettes, and
other contraband. Yet all this without any effect of espionage.
The nearest approach to active espionage that Harker permitted himself was
hovering in the vicinity of the gangway when the terms were landed for daily
recreation. The law of the Medes and Persians had it that during cold weather all
cadets not playing games must land wearing a particularly despicable form of
under-garment: a woolly and tucked-into-the-socks abomination that the soul of
every right-minded cadet revolted from. As the procession passed under the low
gangway on its way to the launches alongside, Harker, lurking in the vicinity,
would suddenly pounce upon a suspect.
“ ’Ave we got our DRAWERS on, Mr. So-and-so?” came the merciless query. The
progress of the procession was arrested while Mr. So-and-so racked his brains for
some suitable parry to this very leading question. A damning negative having
eventually been extorted, the underclad one was hauled from the ranks and given
three minutes in which to get to his chest, extract from his wardrobe the garment
that found such high favour in Olympian eyes, put it on, and rejoin the tail of the
procession. Thus a first offender; a second offence resulted in “no landing.” There
was no appeal.
The muddy, tired, ever-hungry throng that returned some three hours later again
passed on board under this lynx-eyed surveillance. This time illicit “stodge” was
the subject of Harker’s unquenchable suspicions.
Smuggling stodge on board (another of the seven deadly sins) required
considerable ingenuity, owing to the ban the authorities thought necessary to
impose on pockets. Regular outfitters pandered to this Olympian whim, and
constructed trousers with an embryonic fob just large enough to hold a few coins.
The unorthodox, who arrived with garments bearing the stamp of provincialism
and pockets, were bidden to surrender them forthwith, and stout fingers ruthlessly
sewed the pockets up.
The jacket had only one, a breast pocket already congested by keys,
handkerchief, letters from home, pet bits of indiarubber, and the like. Remained
therefore the despised garment already alluded to. This, being tucked—by official
decree—into the wearer’s socks, formed an admirable hold-all for a packet of
butterscotch—worked flat—a snack of Turkish Delight, or a peculiar and highly
favoured form of delicacy known as “My Queen.”
With a not too saintly expression, an unflinching eye, and a sufficiently baggy
pair of trousers, the contrabandist might count on a reasonable amount of success.
But Harker’s X-ray glance rarely failed him.
That stern, incisive voice would rivet all eyes upon the culprit just when the
muster by the officer of the day had been completed, and the long ranks awaited
the stentorian dismissal of the chief cadet captain.
“Mr. Z! You’ll step along to the sick-bay when we falls out.”
The blanched smuggler clutched at his momentarily abandoned halo of
rectitude.
“Sick-bay!” he echoed indignantly. “Why the sick-bay? There’s nothing wrong
with me—I swear there isn’t. I never felt better in my life.”
“That there nasty swelling on your shin,” was the pitiless reply, “did ought to be
seen to at once.” A draught, that had fluttered the carefully selected baggy trousers
against their wearer’s legs, had been his undoing. The game was up.
Like all truly great men, Harker could unbend without discipline suffering an
iota. As the months passed and his term of fledgling “News” acquired the modest
dignity of “Threes” (second term cadets), Marker’s methods changed. He was no
longer the detective, inquisitor, encyclopædia of a thousand unfamiliar phrases,
events, and objects. His term were on their feet now, treading in their turn paths
fiercely illumined by the new first term’s gaping admiration and curiosity. They
were an example.
“ ’Ow long ’ave we been in the Britannia?” he would demand reproachfully
when some breach of the laws called for reproof. “ ’Ere we are in our second term,
an’ talkin’ about HUP-STAIRS!”
The scorn in his voice was like a whiplash.
“When you young gentlemen goes to sea you won’t find no STAIRS!”
When they went to sea! That was the gradually increasing burden of his song.
For a while it presented a picture too remote almost for serious contemplation. It
was practically a figure of speech, meaningless. But as time went on, and the
successive dignities of “Sixer” and “Niner” (third and fourth—the last—terms)
loomed up and passed into reality, and at last the Great Wall of the final
examination alone stood between them and the sea-going gunrooms of the Fleet,
the words took on their real significance.
Harker abandoned even sarcasm. He became guide, philosopher, and friend, a
patient mentor always accessible—generally somewhere on the chest-deck—in
leisure hours to thirsters after knowledge. Was one shaky in that branch of nautical
lore known as “Bends and Hitches”? Harker’s blunt fingers tirelessly manipulated
the end of a hammock-lashing until the pupil could make even a “sheep-shank”
with his eyes shut.
Another would bring him, in a welter of grease and ravelled strands, a tortured
mass of hemp-rope.
“It’s meant to be a Long Splice,” was the explanation, “but I don’t seem to get it
right—ever,” and with a despondent sigh it would be thrust into Harker’s hands.
Harker would examine the interwoven strands, twisting it to and fro with jerks
of his powerful wrists, pulling taut here, tucking something in there, and lo! the
thing took shape.
“This is where you goes wrong, Mr. P., every time!” (Recollect there were
sixty-odd in his term.) “Don’t forget what I’m always telling you. You splits the
middle strands, and then an over-’and knot in the opposite ’alves....” It always
looked so easy when Harker did it.
It was during the last night on board that Harker rose to heights truly
magnanimous. The fourth term regarded it as its right and privilege, on the last
night of the term, to hold high carnival until sleep overtook them. Cadet captains
even cast their responsibilities to the winds that night and scampered about, slim,
pyjama-clad figures, in the dim light of the lanterns, ruthlessly cutting down the
prig who yearned for slumber, lashing-up a victim in his hammock and leaving him
upside-down to reflect on certain deeds of the past year that earned him this
retribution, floating about on gratings on the surface of the plunge baths, and
generally celebrating in a fitting manner the eve of the day that was to herald in
new responsibilities and cares.
Harker, who for fifteen months had haunted the shadows on the look-out for
just such a “rux,” whose ear caught every illicit sound—even the crunch of the
nocturnal butterscotch—Harker was for once unseeing and unseen. It needed but
this crowning act of grace to endear him for ever to his departing flock.
Yet he had one more card to play, and played it as he passed in farewell from
carriage to carriage of the departing train. Further, he dealt it with accentuated
emphasis for the benefit of those he thought needed the reminder most.
“Gosh!” ejaculated such a one when Harker passed to the next carriage: he
flopped back on to his seat. “Did you hear? He said ‘sir!’ to each one of us when he
said good-bye!”
So much for Harker. But he brought with him a number of other memories
entangled somehow about his personality, and on these it may be as well to enlarge
a little ere they slip back into the limbo of the forgotten past.
It says much for the vividness of Harker’s personality that he outran in these
reminiscences the memory of “Stodge.” Certainly few interests loomed larger on
the horizon of these days than the contents of the two canteens ashore.
There was one adjacent to the landing-place: a wise forethought of the
authorities, enabling a fellow to stay his stomach during the long climb from the
river to the playing fields, where the principal canteen stood.
“Stodge” was of a surpassing cheapness. That much was essential when the
extent of the weekly pocket-money was limited (if memory is to be trusted) to one
shilling. Further it was of a pleasing variety, certain peculiar combinations,
hallowed by tradition, being alone unchanging.
Of these the most popular was the “Garry Sandwich.” Components: a half-stick
of chocolate cream sandwiched between two “squashed-fly” biscuits; the whole
beaten thin with a cricket-bat, gymnasium shoe, or other implement handy. The
peculiarity of this particular form of dainty was that it sufficed as an unfailing bribe
wherewith to open negotiations with one Dunn, the septuagenarian keeper of the
pleasure boats. The moral atmosphere of the boat-house, in consequence of its
custodian’s sweetness of tooth, came in time to resemble that of a Chinese yamen.
Another delicacy about which legend clustered was the “Ship’s Bun,” split in
half, with a liberal cementing of Devonshire cream and strawberry jam oozing out
at the sides. Concerning the bun itself, the maternal solicitude of the authorities
extended one gratis to each cadet ashore on half-holidays lest the impecunious
should hunger unnecessarily between lunch and tea. The buns were obtainable on
application at the counter, whence the daughter of the proprietor—whom we will
call Maunder—was charged with the duty of issuing them.
How she pretended to remember the two and a half hundred faces that presented
themselves in surging crowds round the counter at 4 p.m. is more than her present
recorder can say. But even as she extended a bun to the outstretched grubby hand
of a suppliant, an expression of vixen-like indignation and cunning would
transform her features.
“You’ve ’ad a bun afore!” she would snap shrilly, withdrawing the bounty in the
nick of time. The hungry petitioner, cheerfully acknowledging defeat in a game of
bluff, would then withdraw, pursued by Miss Maunder’s invective.
All the same she was not infallible, and on occasions hot protestations and even
mutual recrimination rang to and fro across the counter. Appeal, ultimately carried
to Mr. Maunder, was treated in much the same way as it is by croupiers at Monte
Carlo. A gentleman’s word is his word. But it is as well not to be the victim of too
many mistakes.
Maunder, who was occupied with the stern responsibility of catering for the
whim of the rich, had a way of recapitulating the orders from the beginning, adding
up aloud as the count went on, thus:
Cadet: A strawberry ice, please, Maunder.
Maunder: One strawberry ice tuppence.
Cadet: Oh, and a doughnut, while you’re about it.
Maunder: One strawberry ice one doughnut thruppence.
Cadet: That’s just to go on with. Then in a bag I want a stick of cream chocolate
——
Maunder: One strawberry ice one doughnut one stick cream chocolate
fourpence.
Cadet: (breathlessly) And a bottle of barley sugar and a “My Queen” and four
Garry biscuits and half a pound of cherries and a bottle of lemonade and one of
ginger beer and—that’s all, I think.
Maunder: (coming in a little behind, chanting, the general effect being that of a
duet in canon). One strawberry ice one doughnut one stick cream chocolate one
bottle barley sugar one “My Queen,” etc., etc., etc.... And a bag one an thruppence
’a’-penny.... Thank you, sir. Next, please.
On occasion demigods walked among the children of men. The visits of the
Channel Fleet to Torbay usually brought over one or two of a lately departed term,
now midshipmen by the grace of God and magnificent beyond conception.
It was their pleasure, these immaculately clad visitors, to enter the canteen,
greet Maunder with easy familiarity and Miss Maunder with something
approaching gallantry, slap down a sovereign on the counter and cry free stodge all
round. They would even unbend further, dallying with a strawberry ice in token of
their willingness to be as other men, and finally depart in a cloud of cigarette
smoke and hero-worship.
This record is not concerned with the fact that on their return on board their
ship, some hours later, one suffered stripes for having forgotten to lock his chest
before he went ashore, and the other, being the most junior of all the junior
midshipmen, was bidden swiftly to unlace the sub’s boots and fetch his slippers.
To every dog his day.
IN THE TWILIGHT
I. Heavy Metal
It was still dark when the battle cruisers slipped from their moorings and began to
feel their way towards the unseen entrance of the harbour. From the bridge of each
mass of towering indeterminate shadows the stern light of the next ahead could be
discerned dimly through binoculars, and on those pin-points of light they steered.
What the battle cruiser flagship steered by, in the narrow confines of the crowded
harbour and the inky darkness, only the little knot of figures on her forebridge
knew: the admiral and flag captain, the navigator and officer-of-the-watch, muffled
in duffle coats and moving mysteriously about the glow-worm arc of light from the
binnacle and charttable.
One by one the long black shapes slid through the outer defences, ebon
shadows in a world of shades. The voices of the leadsmen in the chains blended
their mournful intermittent chant with the rush of water past the ship’s side; to all
but the ears of the watchful figures on the bridges the sound was swallowed by the
dirge of the funnel stays and halliards in the cold wind heralding the dawn.
The red and green lights on the gate-marking vessels winked and bobbed in the
swell caused by the passage of the grim host. It passed with incredible swiftness;
and before the troubled waters began to quiet, the escorting destroyers came pelting
up astern, heralded by the rush and rattle of spray-thrashed steel, funnels glowing,
and the roar of their fans pouring out from the engine-room exhausts. Night and the
mystery of the darkness enfolded them. The gates closed upon their churning
wakes and the tumult of their passing. Dawn glimmered pale behind the hills and
broadened slowly into day; it found the harbour empty, save for small craft.
Beyond the headlands, beyond the mist-enshrouded horizon, the battle cruisers
were abroad, unleashed.
Once clear of their protecting minefields, the battle cruisers moved south at
high speed, with their smoke trailing astern in broad zig-zags across a grey sky. At
intervals they altered course simultaneously and then swung back to their original
path, flinging the grey seas asunder from each gaunt, axe-headed bow as they
turned.
They scarcely resembled ships, in their remorseless, purposeful rush under the
lowering sky. The screening T.B.D.’s spread fan-wise on their flanks were dwarfed
to insignificance beside these stupendous destroyers with the smoke pouring from
their huge funnels, and nothing to break their stark nakedness of outline but the
hooded guns. Men lived on board them, it is true: under each White Ensign a
thousand souls laboured out each one its insignificant destiny. They were entities
invisible like mites in a cheese; but the ships that bore them were instruments,
visible enough, of the triumphant destiny of an empire.
As far as the eye could reach, the battle cruisers were alone on that grey waste
of water. But swift as was their passage, something swifter overtook them out of
the north as the morning wore on. It was the voice of the battle fleet moving south
in support. “Speed so-and-so, on such-and-such a course,” flickered the curt cipher
messages through sixty miles of space. And south they came in battle array,
battleships, light cruisers, and destroyers, ringed by the misty horizon of the North
Sea, with the calling gulls following the white furrows of their keels like crows
after the plough.
A division of light cruisers, driving through the crested seas at the speed of a
galloping horse, linked the battle fleet with the battle cruisers. Seen from either
force they were but wraiths of smoke on the horizon: but ever and anon a daylight
searchlight winked out of the mist, spanning the leagues with soundless talk.
It was still early afternoon when a trail of bubbles flickered ahead of the
flagship of the battle fleet’s lee line. It crossed at right angles to their course, and a
thousand yards abeam of the third ship in the line something silvery broke the
surface in a cloud of spray. It was a torpedo that had run its course and had missed
the mark. Simultaneously, one of the escorting destroyers, a mile abeam, turned
like a mongoose on a snake, and circled questing for a couple of minutes. Then
suddenly a column of water leaped into the air astern of the destroyer, and the
sound of the explosion was engulfed by the great loneliness of sea and sky. She
remained circling while the battle fleet swept on with swift, bewildering alterations
of course, and later another far-off explosion overtook them.
“Strong smell of oil; air bubbles. No wreckage visible. Consider enemy
submarine sunk. No survivors,” blinked the laconic searchlight, and the avenger,
belching smoke from four raking funnels, came racing up to her appointed station.
As the afternoon wore on, a neutral passenger ship crossed the path of the fleet.
She was steering a westerly course, and altered to pass astern of the battle cruisers.
The captain wiped his glasses and handed them to one of the passengers, an
amiable merchant of the same nationality as himself, and a self-confessed admirer
of all things British.
“Ha!” said the captain. “You see? The clenched fist of Britain! It is being
pushed under the nose of Germany—so!” He laughingly extended a gnarled fist in
the other’s face. The merchant was a frequent passenger of his, and the sort of man
(by reason of his aforesaid proclivities) to appreciate the jest. The merchant
stepped back a pace rather hurriedly: then he laughed loudly. “Exactly!” he said,
“very neat, my friend.” And borrowing his friend’s glasses he studied the far-off
tendrils of smoke in silence awhile.
A quarter of an hour later, a light cruiser altered course from the fleet in the
direction of the neutral steamer. Then it was that the amiable merchant was struck
by a sudden recollection. It was a matter of considerable urgency and concerned an
order for a large number of bolts of calico and a customer’s credit. So pressing was
the business that he obtained the captain’s permission to send a radio telegram to
his firm while the approaching cruiser was still some miles away.
The message was duly dispatched, and, with surprising rapidity, by methods
with which this narrative is not concerned (of which, indeed, the narrator is entirely
ignorant), reached Wilhelmshaven by nightfall. Here four German battle cruisers
were raising steam preparatory to carrying out a bombardment at dawn of a
populous English watering-place. The message that reached them had, however,
nothing to do with calico or credit, but it bade them draw fires and give the usual
leave to officers and men; orders for the bombardment were cancelled. The
German battle cruisers were not unaccustomed to rapid changes of programme of
this sort, and they asked no questions.
At nine o’clock the following morning, a British taxpayer sat down to breakfast
in a house commanding a fine view of the sea from the popular watering-place
already mentioned. It was a large house, and incidentally offered an admirable
target from the sea. The taxpayer unfolded his morning paper, and took a sip of his
tea. Then he put the cup down quickly. “You’ve forgotten the sugar,” he said.
“No, dear,” replied his wife, “I haven’t forgotten it, but there isn’t any.”
“Eh,” said the taxpayer, “why not? why the devil isn’t there any sugar?”
The taxpayer’s wife advanced a number of popular theories to account for the
phenomenon, while the taxpayer gloomily stirred his unsweetened tea.
“Then all I should like to know,” he replied, when she had finished, “is, what
the blazes is our Navy doing?”
“I don’t know, dear,” said the taxpayer’s wife.
The submarine did not attempt to attack with her torpedoes. She retired instead
to where the sand-fog stirs in an endless groundswell, and the North Sea cod hover
about the wrecks of neutral merchantmen. In these unlit depths she lay for an hour,
listening to the chunk of many propellers pass overhead and die away. She knew
nothing of the mysterious chain of events which sent those cruisers venturing
beyond the protection of the far-reaching German minefields. She was as ignorant
of popular clamour in Germany for spectacular naval activity as she was of the
presence of a large convoy of laden freighters a hundred miles away to the
northward, escorted by destroyers and making for a British port. These matters
were not her “pidgin.” On the other hand, having once sighted the German cruisers,
she became very much concerned with getting the information through to quarters
where it would be appreciated. Accordingly, when the last of the water-borne
sounds ceased, the submarine rose to the surface, projected a tiny wireless mast
above the wave-tops, and sent out the Call rippling through space.
It was addressed to a certain light cruiser squadron, lying at its buoys with the
needles of the pressure gauges flickering and the shells fused in the racks beside
each gun, waiting day and night in much the tense preparedness with which the fire
brigade waits.
Within two hours the light cruisers were out, ribands of foam and smoke
unreeling astern of them, with their attendant destroyers bucketing and plunging on
either side of them, flinging the spray abroad in the greeting of a steep easterly
swell. The last destroyer swung into station ere the line of minesweepers, crawling
patiently to and fro about the harbour approaches, were blotted from view in their
smoke astern. Presently the harbour itself faded out of sight; in lodging, cottage,
and villa the women glanced at the clocks as the ships went out, and then turned to
their morning tasks and the counting of the slow hours....
East into the sunlight went the slim grey cruisers, and then north, threading their
swift way through the half-known menace of the minefields, altering course from
time to time to give a wide berth to the horned Death that floated awash among the
waves. At intervals the yard-arm of the leading light cruiser would be flecked with
colour as a signal bellied out against the wind, and each time speed was increased.
Faster and faster they rushed through the yellowish seas, fans and turbines
humming their song of speed, and the wind in the shrouds chiming in on a higher
note as if from an æolian harp.
The spray rattled like hail against the sloping gun-shields and splinter-mats,
behind which men stood huddled in little clusters or leaned peering ahead through
glasses; cinders from the smoke of the next ahead collected in little whorls and
eddies or crunched underfoot about the decks; the guns’ crews jested among
themselves in low voices, while the sight-setters adjusted their head-pieces and the
layer of each slim gun fussed lovingly about the glittering breech mechanism with
a handful of waste....
Then suddenly, above the thunder of the waves and singing of the wind, a clear
hail floated aft from a look-out. Bare feet thudded on the planking of the signal
bridge, bunting whirled amid the funnel smoke, and the hum of men’s voices along
the stripped decks deepened into a growl.
“Smoke on the port bow!”
A daylight searchlight chattered suspiciously—paused—flashed a blinding
question, and was silent.
Orders droned down the voice-pipes. Somewhere a man laughed—a sudden
savage laugh of exultation, that broke a tension none were aware of till that
moment. Then a fire-gong jarred: the muzzle of the foremost gun suddenly vomited
a spurt of flame, and as the wind whipped the yellow smoke into tatters, the
remaining light cruisers opened fire.
Bang!... bang!... bang!... bang!... bang!
On the misty horizon there were answering flashes, and a moment later came a
succession of sounds as of a child beating a tray. The light cruisers wheeled to the
eastward amid scattered columns of foam from falling shells, and as they turned to
cut off the enemy from his base the destroyers went past, their bows buried in
spray, smoke swallowing the frayed white ensigns fluttering aft. In a minute they
had vanished in smoke, out of which guns spat viciously, leaving a tangle of little
creaming wakes to mark the path of their headlong onslaught.
Neck and neck raced the retreating raiders and the avenging Nemesis from the
east coast of Britain. Ahead lay the German minefields and German submarines
and the tardy support of the German High Seas Fleet. Somewhere far astern a
huddle of nervous merchantmen were being hustled westward by their escort, and
midway between the two the hostile destroyer flotillas fought in a desperate death-
grapple under the misty blue sky.
When at length the British light cruisers hauled off and ceased fire on the fringe
of the German minefields, the enemy were hull down over the horizon, leaving two
destroyers sinking amid a swirl of oil and wreckage, and a cruiser on her beam
ends ablaze from bow to stern. The sea was dotted with specks of forlorn humanity
clinging to spars and rafts. Boats from the British destroyers plied to and fro among
them, bent on the quixotic old-fashioned task of succouring a beaten foe. Those not
actively engaged in this work of mercy circled round at high speed to fend off
submarine attack; the light cruisers stayed by to discourage the advances of a pair
of Zeppelins which arrived from the eastward in time to drop bombs on the would-
be rescuers of their gasping countrymen.
The bowman of a destroyer’s whaler disengaged his boathook from the
garments of a water-logged Teuton, grasped his late enemy by the collar and hauled
him spluttering into the boat with a single powerful heave of his right arm.
All about them cutters and whalers rising and falling on the swell were quickly
being laden to the gunwales with scalded, bleeding, half-drowned prisoners. A
midshipman in the stern of a cutter was waving a bedraggled German ensign and
half-tearfully entreating his crew to stop gaping at the Zeppelins and attend to
orders. The barking of the light cruisers’ high-angle guns was punctuated by the
whinny of falling bombs and pieces of shrapnel that whipped the surface of the sea
into spurts of foam. In the background the sinking cruiser blazed sullenly, the shells
in her magazine exploding like gigantic Chinese crackers.
In the bows of the whaler referred to above the able seaman with the boathook
sat regarding the captive of his bow and spear (or rather, boathook). “ ’Ere,
Tirpitz!” he said, and removing his cap he produced the stump of a partly smoked
cigarette. The captive took it with a watery smile and pawed his rescuer’s trousers.
“Kamarad!” he said.
“Not ’arf!” said his captor appreciatively. “Not ’arf you ain’t, you—— —— son
of a—— ——!”
The second bow, labouring at his oar, looked back over his shoulder.
“ ’Ush!” he said reprovingly. “ ’E can’t understand. Wot’s the use o’ wastin’
that on ’im?” He spat contemptuously over the gunwale.