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Updated: May 9, 2025
"Not it," said Peter; "you didn't go because you were brave, but because Bobbie and I aren't skunks. Now where's the nearest house, I wonder? You can't see anything here for the trees." "There's a roof over there," said Phyllis, pointing down the line. "That's the signal-box," said Peter, "and you know you're not allowed to speak to signalmen on duty. It's wrong."
There were thirty days in which during a part, if not the whole, of the twenty-four hours we had out our fog-signal men; that is to say, an additional staff of 300 men, each with his flag and detonating signals, placed within sight, or within sound of one another, to assist the ordinary signalmen in the safe conduct of the traffic.
The Captain told me we would not make the harbour till the following afternoon at four o'clock when the tide was up. We came into the estuary of the Loire and halted, waiting for a pilot. Then the ship began to roll in earnest. I was up on the bridge with the signalmen, and one minute we were up in the air and the next the black sea yawned beneath us. I had my sea legs by this time.
We are by this time out in the wide water of the Bitter Lake, where we can go at a good speed, then the canal itself begins again and we pass one of the little station-houses where the signalmen live; it looks as if it was built out of a child's bricks, and stands on the arid banks with only a few scanty palms near.
The little box of a room filled to a solid mass as policemen, generals and ladies of the old regime threw off their costumes, and, in their working clothes, plain signalmen and engine-drivers, pressed round to listen.
The reserve signalmen for duty on the bridge as well as the fire-control detail took up their positions. One lieutenant climbed hastily up into the military top of the foremast. Two other officers and a few midshipmen followed him as far as the platform above the conning-tower, where the instruments connected with the fire-control were kept. Orderlies came and went with messages.
On either side of us was a rich and highly cultivated country. There were hedgerows as neat as those which separate our English fields; and here and there a fox-hunter would have observed with disgust that barbed wire fences had spread as far as Java. At regular intervals, bamboo cottages with red-tiled roofs had been built for the signalmen.
The latter asked his comrade, Curtis, to take his place at the telephone, but receiving no answer, he looked around, and saw poor Curtis with his face torn off by a piece of shell still bending over his telephone between two dead signalmen.... Lieutenant Meade turned away with a shiver, and, calling a midshipman to take his place, he left the conning-tower, which was being struck continually by hissing splinters from bursting shells.
We signalmen sat around the plotting table waiting for something to happen. Assorted naval petty-officers, Royal Artillery gunners and bombardiers made up an eight-hour shift. As in Bristol one signalman sat with a head-and-breast-set permanently connected to No.11 Fighter Group at Uxbridge and the routine was much the same.
The captain of marines lies dead upon the poop; both his legs have been shot off by a spent shot he is left there, as no surgeon can help him; and there are two signalmen lying dead alongside him. On the hammock-nettings of the quarter-deck stands the acting captain of the ship, erect, and proud in bearing, with an eye of defiance and scorn as he turns towards the enemy.
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