14 
LAND & WATER 
Januaiy lo, 1918 
home photographs, stuck up in or propped against tin- cakes 
and bQX#s of sweets. Most of the tables had " Merry Christ- 
mas " ;iml \arious otlier seasonal mottoes printed with letters 
ingeniously built from cigarettes. 
A running fire of greeting met us at every turn, and at 
each table cigarettes, sweets, or chunks of succulent plum 
pudding were pressed U}»n us. Acceptance for the most part 
was on the ancient " touch and remit " system. I noticed 
that the officers sjxjke to most of the men directly under them 
by name, and tliat the exchange of greetings was invariably 
of unfeigned cordiality on both sides. The tour completed 
the band escorted us "aft where, with a hearty three cheers 
and a " tiger " for the Captain and Commander severally, 
aud the Ward Room officers jointly, it left us and rollicked 
back to serenade the f casters forward. 
Christmas chapel was a simple Church of England service 
without a sermon, followed by Holy Communion for those 
who desired to celebrate it. Luncheon, in order that the 
Ward Koom servants could be free for feasting with their 
mates, was on the buftet plan, each officer serving himself 
from a side table. 
Two or three of the men with whom I had spoken in the 
coQise of the morning round, had used that now faniiUar ex- 
pression about the good fortune of being on a " happy " 
ship, but the climax was capped that evening at dinner (at 
which the Ward Room entertained the Warrant Officers) 
when the Captain employed it in explaining the easy bon 
camaraderie characterising that interesting occasion. I had 
told him how many times I had heard the words in question 
since my arrival, and asked him point blank if I was 
to assume by implication that the other ships of the Fleet 
were only dismal prisons of steel in comparison. 
" Perhaps the men would try to make you believe .something 
to that effect," he laughed, " but so also would those of the 
' ,' and the • ', and the' ' regarding each other, the 
rest of the squadron and the whole of the Grand Fleet. As a 
matter of fact, if you had been on any one of them during the 
last twenty-four hours, you would probably have seen and 
heard and experienced just about what you have seen and 
heard and experienced here. You will not go far wfong if 
\o\\ say we are all " Happy Ships " up here. The " Happy 
Ship " is a tradition of the Kritish Navy, and it's tlie one type 
of craft which does not become out-of-date with the march of 
science and the passage of the years." 
The Skipper 
By Francis Brett young 
AT Algiers, in the early spring of ^914, one lived 
f^k a very pleasant life. Our days were spent 
/ ^ in a Moorish garden of the Frais Vallon, a 
JL .^.valley that has not been idly named, with a bucket 
well of sweet water that one pumped to feed the terraces 
where orange trees and lemons and medlars were growing. 
All the terraced walks were set with stone benches on which 
one could sit in the bright morning and watch the goats 
feeding, and their keepers asleep on the hillside beyond the 
valle\". It was a world of the tender colour of ancient 
Moorish tiles : blue and white and yellow. Blue skies, and 
in the mouth of the valley a bluer sea ; pale lamps of lemon 
and orange fruit and a prodigious growth of the yellow 
flowered weed that the French call vinaigrette. 
White gleamed the square wall? of our villa, and its cool 
courtyard was paved with the same cracked tiles that were so 
old and so cunningly coloured as to seem made for those 
very days and for no others. In the Frais VaUon itself 
there were diversions. A little way down the road there 
lived an old and very bitter Lorrainer with his three sons, 
fine, rugged, red-beaded fellows. In the evening he would 
talk to us of the war that was going to be, and explain 
exactly why the French, with the worst of luck, didn't win 
the battle of Trafalgar. " He thinks of nothing but war," 
said the eldest boy smiling and shaking his head. Indeed, 
M. Schuh (that was his name), dealt in explosive violence, 
being a maker of fireworks. Well, by now he will have had 
enough of fireworks to last him for this life. I often wonder 
what has become of those splendid sons of his . . . . And 
then, if one were tired of M. Schuh and of his idol Deroulede, 
one might descend, at the hour of the aperitif, to the citv 
of Algiers itself, in a little two-horse diligence which Manocl, 
tlie Spaniard, dro\-e, cooing to his horses all the way down. 
Thiis to the centre of the city where all nations meet on the 
terrace of the Grand Cafe TanlonviUc, whose orchestra is 
nearly as loud as the trams which go clanging past it. 
A wonderful place, bright with the uniforms of Zouaves 
and Chasseurs d'Afrique and with the flowing robes of certain 
Arabs, backsliders of Islam, who drank absinthe and posed 
before the eyes of European woman. That night, I remember, 
a Swedish gunboat had put in to port, and her crew moved 
clumsily, being a little fuddled with the wine of the Sahcl. 
between the close-set tables. Tall and fair-haired, so curiously 
northern and remote, they gave me the fancy of a party of 
wondering Goths moving slowly through the markets of ancient 
Alexandria with its noisy Mediterranean crowd. They 
threaded their way between our tables and were gone, and 
behind, them in curious contrast came the skipper and his 
friend Antonio. 
Here, at any rate, there was no chance of a misunderstanding. 
From his dusty bowler hat to his black boots he was English, 
and so, for that matter, was his companion. Antonio had 
been drinking. How much it would be difficult to say, though 
his loose mouth and rather haggard eyes warned one that it 
wasn't for the first time. The skipper wore the blue serge 
reach-me-downs that they sell at little shops in Bute Street, 
Cardiff. Antonio's suit was of a more ambitious cut. They ' 
had given him a waist which went a little to the winds in 
front, a defect in form that his solid gold watch-chain accen- 
tuated that evening for the last time. He was unshaven 
and his collar was dirty. I suppose that a Cardiff collier is 
not a paradise for linen. The skipper's collar was dirty too. 
But that didn't matter in his case. The trouble with the 
other fellow was just that he was too damned pretentious. 
He talked French, bad French, expansively, to the waiter, 
who was Maltese. He ordered brandy, glass after glass of it. 
I counted eight. And the skipper, too, did his bit, drinking 
stolidly, always serious and contained and somehow re- 
sentful. He spoke very little. I couldn't catch his accent. 
.Antonio did enough talking for both of them and to spare. 
A ragged Arab boy came past with a tray of flowers, Parma 
\ iolets, tied up tightly in leaves of the wild arum wiiich were 
unfolding in the hedgerows about that time. The skipper 
bought a bunch and gave the boy a franc. 
" You fool ! " Antonio scoffed. 
'' I can't be worried with their French money," said the 
skipper. He began to pull the bunch to pieces with square 
tipped, clumsy fingers that were grimed with coal dust. He 
found that he had been badly had ; there were only four or 
five blooms cunningly expanded in the green. Antonio 
thought it an excellent joke. He slapped the skipper on the 
back and told him that in future he'd better trust to him. 
" All you want is to talk French," he said. " You listen 
ro me, and then they won't make a damned fool of you." 
I saw the skipper's neck go red. He laid a square hand on 
Antonio's shoulder and whispered to him sharply. 
" English ? " . . . said Antonio, gaping. "■" English ? 
... Go to hell with your English ! " The skipper 
smiled. I have never seen a more uncomfortable smile. 
Then he cleared liis throat, and before I could guess what 
was going to happen, he had turned towards us and was 
presentmg the little bouquet of violets to my wife. He raised 
his hat. " You'll excuse me taking the liberty. Ma'am, 
but they are no use to me, and it is a treat to see an English 
lady among so many of these these people." 
The delicacy of the act was astounding, and it came so 
queerly from this grimy merchant seaman. We thanked 
lum, and he hurried to explain to me that he had been driven 
to this form of introduction by fear for his companion's 
language. Antonio, struggling with the waiter in the toils of 
the trench language, heard nothing, and the skipper hurriedly 
explanied. 
" ^"^P'lio • • • that's my friend here, or rather what 
I call him, because of his telegraphic address ... has 
been at me for the last half-hour saying your lady was not an 
l-.nglishwoman. If you don't mind my saying so, he said 
that no Englishwoman had ankles like that. I warned him. 
1 told hmi that I could tell an English lady in a thousand, 
ankles or no ankles. But he wouldn't stop. Antonio can't 
carry it . , . that's the trouble. And so I had to 
apologise . . . and as far as I could see there was no 
other way but in taking the liberty which I did." 
By this time Antonio had settled to another glass of brandy. 
He sat looking at us solemnly like a decrepit bird. " I shall 
have to introduce him to you if you'll allow me," said the 
skipper. " He'll all right, you know. All right . , 
barnng that. It's a first-cla'ss firm. Very well known in 
coaling circles Anthony Berrett and Co. Cables : " Antonio." 
1 hat's wiiat I call my friend here for short." 
Antonio nulled himself together, began, rather too obviously 
