H.M.S Part 1

H.M.S.

by Klaxon.

"1923."

[The following is the description by Professor J. Scott, F.R.S., of his recent Airs.h.i.+p Journey across the old Bed of the North Sea. July 1, 1923.]

It is perhaps unnecessary for me to state the objects and purpose of my journey of last week, as it would be false modesty in me not to recognise the great interest taken by the geologic and antiquarian worlds in my proposed enterprise. For the benefit, however, of those for whose intelligence the so-called "Popular" geologic works are compiled, I will recapitulate some points which are ancient history to my instructed readers.

The winter of 1922 witnessed the greatest geologic change in the earth's surface since the last of the Glacial epochs. Into the causes and general results of this change I do not propose to enter, beyond mentioning my opinion that the theory propounded by Professor Middleton (a theory designed only for one purpose--that of attempting to throw doubt on the data and reasoning of my first monograph on the subject) is not only childish, but based on a fallacy.

I will confine myself to the results as they affected this country and the continent of Europe, of which it is now a prolongation or headland--not, as the Daily Press erroneously labels it, a peninsula.

The total change in elevation of the land is now calculated at 490 feet 7 inches, but more accurate measurements are still being taken.

This great change brings us back to a geologic age when man and mammoth co-existed in the primeval forest of Cromer, and when the Dogger Bank was a great plain where wild beasts roamed and palaeolithic man left the traces of his industry in the bones and shaped flints which we hope soon to collect in quant.i.ties from the mud and ooze with which thousands of years of sea-action has covered them.

I had little difficulty in obtaining Admiralty permission to accompany the Captain of a Naval Airs.h.i.+p on one of his regular patrol trips across the great expanse of mud which was once the North Sea.

Of course in the six months since the departure of the Ocean from the new lands, the district has been regularly patrolled by the Navy, but the air is as yet the only safe route by which to cross it. It will be some time, perhaps years, before the surface becomes safe to walk on, although the Government is plentifully sprinkling gra.s.s and other seeds from all pa.s.sing aircraft. In the large and powerful airs.h.i.+p in which I was privileged to travel, we had every modern device for enabling a close inspection of the surface to be taken. A trail-rope was used when it was desired to drift slowly or to actually hover over some of the points of interest which we observed on our pa.s.sage.

The day was fine and clear, and I could not have wished for better weather conditions when we rose over Dover and started the main engines on a north-easterly course. As no maps can yet be compiled of the New Lands (as popular clamour has most inaccurately labelled them) owing to their dangerous surface, we navigated by the old Admiralty charts, marked in depths of water, and I was amused at having the Varne and Goodwin "shoals" pointed out to me--the objects indicated being long ridges of sandy hills rising from the s.h.i.+ning surface of the Channel bed. Off Deal and Dover a few of the wrecks are being worked on by enterprising local Salvage Companies--a road being laid out to each composed of gravel, sand, and brushwood. I fear, however, that the speculators will not profit greatly. The roads are good enough over the sand, but where they cross the mud-flats they swallow not only their traffic but the funds of their owners.

As we travelled up the valley with the drone of our engines echoing from the whale-backed ridges on either side, with our gondolas barely a hundred feet from the ground, I discussed our programme with the Captain, whose views and reminiscences I found most entertaining. On general subjects he was like most of his service, almost contemptibly uneducated (I might mention that he did not understand what Magdalenian culture was!), but he was evidently well read in his own trade. He told me several stories which were no doubt excellent, but which were marred to a point of incomprehensibility by a foolish interlarding of technical terms. I gave him a short precis of what is known or deduced of prehistoric life on the New Lands, and spoke of the bones and fossils occasionally found in trawl-nets by the fishermen. His point of view was that the war overshadowed everything.

He seemed to think that that event was one from which all others should date, although it had lasted such a short time. As very little of interest to me could yet be seen owing to the general coating of slime with which the land was covered, I amused myself by listening to his experiences on his weekly air patrols, his conversation being somewhat after this style:--

"Yes, it was a fair snorter while it lasted--that gale,--d.a.m.n lucky we hadn't many s.h.i.+ps out. Yes, most of 'em got in. They either ran down Channel (Lord! the Straits were like opening the caisson gates to a graving-dock!) and made New Queenstown, or else they got into harbour on the East Coast and stranded there. You see, what with mines and wrecks, the North Sea wasn't being used much, and as the navies were taking a rest there wasn't much of value at sea. Some s.h.i.+ps got stuck though--fis.h.i.+ng boats mostly. No, they were all right--it took a week to drain off, and it was calm weather when they grounded. Most of them have wireless now, and they yelped for help, and we took 'em off. Those that hadn't were a bit hungry when we found them, but I don't think we lost many. You see, all nations sent air fleets out. Have you read the U.S.

Magazine? You ought to; there's a d.a.m.n good argument going on as to whether it would have paid us or Germany most if it had happened during the war. I think us, myself. You see, there's only a narrow channel now running past the Norwegian coast, and we could have mined that. Look at that, Professor! How's that for mines? That's Zeebrugge with the houses showing over the sand-hills. Whose? Oh! both sides put 'em there--that hollow to the east is proper stiff with them, isn't it? Port fifteen--Quartermaster! steer east--What? No, just going to show you something. You said it seemed a wicked waste of material; well, look over there--two of them got it. One's a U.C. boat but the other's a big one. They picked them up coming back, and that big chap's nearly in two halves--Starboard twenty, Quartermaster! No, we needn't go closer, you'll see one every half mile between here and Heligoland--some of ours as well as theirs. Yes--that's a Dutchman--torpedoed by the look of him. See the hole in the stern? Oh, b.u.t.ter and bacon and that sort of thing! No, n.o.body in her. Why? Well, look at the davits--they left her before she sank--all the boats are gone.

"Like these gla.s.ses? That's the _Hinder_ over there. Yes, they still live in her, and she's still useful. A fine big lights.h.i.+p, isn't she?

She settled down at her moorings as peacefully as could be, and when we sent a line down to them on our first patrol trip after the show, they sent up a note asking for some 'baccy, and would we post some letters for them? Nothing ever did worry the _Hinder_ in the war, and it won't now. You see, English and German used to fight under her tail every other night, and as she was an international light she just flashed away and looked on. I wonder none of their crew have written a book yet--'Battles round the _Hinder_,' by an Eyewitness. It would be better than most of the truck that has been written in England about it. Yes, she lies in a bit of a hollow, but the light shows up all right, and that's all we want. Here you are; this is what you wanted."

We had reached the first object of interest in my journey. More trail-rope was paid out, and we swung with our engine stopped, downwind, lying twenty feet above a great pit torn in the earth by some tremendous explosion. All around the pit-mouth lay ma.s.ses of earth and rock, and the face of the crater was thick with bone-breccia and fossils of every kind. The explosion had occurred over an old beach on the bank of what had once been the old Channel River. For thousands of years prehistoric men and beasts had lived and died there, and had left their skeletons to enlighten us. And more than bones had been left. Almost the first basket-load that our light electric "grab" produced for us contained among its numerous specimens of surpa.s.sing interest a rough "hand-axe"

of dark flint, possibly of Pre-Ch.e.l.lean culture. However, the whole of my notes and specimens obtained on this visit are now being examined and cla.s.sified, and I will postpone description of them until the meeting of the Society on the 18th.

I would have liked to have descended into the pit by a ladder or other means, but was dissuaded, partly by the motion of the airs.h.i.+p, which swayed to and fro in the light wind, and partly by the blunt negative with which my suggestion was greeted by the Captain. We took only three baskets of specimens from this spot, as we had others to visit, and our carrying capacity was limited. As we slowly hauled in the trail-rope and prepared to continue our journey, I asked the Captain whether this crater had been intentionally formed by the Government for purposes of research, or whether it had been produced accidentally in the late war.

"Accident?" he said. "Well, no, hardly that--but still, I expect he _thought_ he might pull it off without doing himself in." He pointed to one of two big submarines which lay on opposite sides of the crater. The one indicated was the smaller of the two, and the least damaged. She lay upright with a slight tilt up by the bow (which was dented and torn rather badly). The other was in two halves, and lay on her side with a mound of earth, bones, and rock, making a sort of rough junction between the halves. The two submarines looked like great guardians of the pit, and I wondered at the madness of man that makes him revel in war and killing to no purpose. I mentioned something of this thought to the Captain, who was still gazing at the more intact of the two boats, and tapping a flint "Coup de poing" on the side of our gondola.

"Well, Professor," he said, "the man who made this tool didn't make it to clean his nails with, did he?" I observed that it was now generally agreed that most of prehistoric man's weapons were for use against his greatest foes--which were wild beasts, and not men. The Captain jerked the flint implement back into the basket.

"My oath! you've said it," he snapped. "_We've_ been fighting wild beasts, and that chap in the smaller boat was a friend of mine. He took that Fritz fairly amids.h.i.+ps with his stem, but he couldn't get free, and they went down locked. When Fritz hit bottom his mines went, and that blew them apart, and so there's your bone pit, Professor."

I looked back at the pit and the two hulks beside it, now dwindling astern. "How do you know all that?" I asked.

"Read his number on the conning-tower for one thing, and the chap who had that boat would be pretty sure to take a Hun with him when he had to go. The rest? Well, his bows are bashed in, you see, and his lid is still open, so he gave Fritz his bow first on the surface. You may have some relics of curious beasts in that basket, Professor, but I can show you a relic, or a hundred if you like, of a d.a.m.n sight nastier beast.

See the masts over that mudbank? That's a Dutch liner--two torpedoes and no warning. Full of women too. Like to go and look? I thought not. Yes, Professor, I can show you two hundred sunken s.h.i.+ps in a few hours' run here, and they haven't all got their davits empty by a long chalk. Never mind--here's something more amusing."

Our engine slowed and almost stopped while we drifted across a flat, broad, muddy plateau which sloped away to a valley on each side.

"See those lines?" said my abrupt naval friend--"those long straight scores along the mud, I mean. Those are where the submarines--ours and theirs--have been taking bottom for a rest. Taking bottom? Oh! on winter nights, when it's too dark to see or when they're waiting for anything, or got defects or struck fog, you know. They used to take bottom a lot here, because it's good surface and they had twenty fathom of water, too. The marks haven't washed out yet. See this one?

He b.u.mped three times before he settled: he must have had a lot of headway on--his track's all of half a mile. That bed is where he settled for the night. It's soft there, and he worked in over his bilge keel. There's another, fifty yards off him. Of course it was probably made a year before or after he made his, but there must have been cases when our boats and Fritz's lay that much apart all night and didn't know it. Pretty queer idea, isn't it? Perhaps a banjo strumming in one boat and a gramophone going in the other. Oh yes, they used to have concerts on the bottom before turning in! One of our chaps gave me a programme once. There were twenty items in it, and it was headed 'C/o G.P.O.--126 feet.' This was a regular submarine traffic lane for both sides. Some parts of the surface up north aren't marked at all,--it was either too deep water or there were too many mines about. Funny thing is, that some of the areas which both sides seem to have studiously gone round and avoided have no mines at all in them. Just rumour, I suppose. They gave the place a bad name and d.a.m.ned it. Eh? No--that's all right--tip 'em out on the deck--we can scrub the place out when we get in."

He spoke to a sailor, who stepped forward and turned the nearest basket of specimens upside down. As he did so, something rolled from the heap to my feet, and with a thrill which could only be understood by my brother scientists I gazed on the greatest archaeological discovery of the ages. I have already announced my discovery to the press, and the scientists of all nations are now gathering in London to inspect it, so I shall not enter now on a detailed description. I may say that my first thought was that I had in my hands a copy of my confrere Keith's reconstruction of the Piltdown skull, and that my own reconstruction had been to a certain extent false; but on mature reflection I decided that this could not be so, and that I must cla.s.sify my find as belonging to a hitherto unknown branch of the race of h.o.m.o Sapiens--akin to, but yet distinct from, Eoanthropus. This prehistoric man I have called h.o.m.o Scoticanthropus, and my full report and conclusions will be shortly before the Society.

The skull is intact and requires no reconstruction. The lower mandible is of the chimpanzee-like type found with Eoanthropus, and as it was picked up by the same basket, must undoubtedly belong to the skull.

As to the remainder of our voyage, I can only say that I spent the time on the floor of the gondola measuring and inspecting my find. I could not tear myself away from it, and we therefore omitted our visits to other spots where explosions were known to have occurred near the old sea-bed, confining ourselves to a hurried round of the Naval patrol route. Beyond a casual inspection and a remark that it looked like Hindenburg, the airs.h.i.+p captain took no interest in this now famous skull, but confined himself to his duties of navigation and control.

It is unfortunate that the exact depth and geological strata of the skull's position cannot be given. The basket was drawn from the bottom of the pit, but the skull may have been either thrown up by the explosion or rolled down later by the action of the tides.

When the new lands have dried we hope to have a careful inspection of that and other pits, when more and perhaps equally valuable discoveries may be made.

I have perhaps made undue mention of my naval friend in this pamphlet, but to tell the truth his type was new to me. Though, like all his fellow-officers, his limited education had tended to make him narrow-minded, he nevertheless deserves mention here as having a.s.sisted, albeit in a humble way, in the most wonderful discovery in history.

PRIVILEGED.

They called across to Peter at the changing of the Guard, At the red-gold Doors that the Angels keep,-- "Lend us help to the Portal, for they press upon us hard, They are straining at the Gate, many deep."

Then Peter rose and went to the wicket by the Wall, Where the Starlight flashed upon the crowd; And he saw a mighty wave from the Greatest Gale of all Break beneath him with a roar, swelling loud--

_Let us in! Let us in! We have left a load of sin On the battlefield that flashes far below.

From the trenches or the sea--there's a pa.s.s for such as we, For we died with our faces to the foe._

"_We haven't any creed--for we never felt the need,-- And our morals are as ragged as can be; But we finished in a way that has cleared us of the clay, And we're coming to you clean, as you can see._"

Then Peter looked below him with a smile upon his lips, And he answered, "Ye are fighters, as I know By your badges of the air, of the trenches, and the s.h.i.+ps, And the wounds that on your bodies glisten so."

And he looked upon the wounds, that were many and were grim, And his glance was all-embracing--unafraid; And he looked to meet the eyes that were smiling up to him, All a-level as a new-forged blade.

"Ye are savage men and rough--from the fo'c'sle and the tent; Ye have put High Heaven to alarm; But I see it written clear by the road ye went, That ye held by the Fifteenth Psalm."

And they shouted in return, "_'Tis a thing we've never read, But you pa.s.sed our friends inside That won to the end of the road we tread Long ago when the Mons Men died._"

"_Let us in! Let us in! We have fallen for the Right, And the Crown that we listed to win, That we earned by the Somme or the waters of the Bight; You're a fighting man yourself--Let us in!_"

Then Peter gave a sign and the Gates flung wide To the sound of a bugle-call: "Pa.s.s the fighting men to the ranks inside, Who came from the earth or the cold grey tide, With their heads held high and a soldier's stride, To a Friend in the Judgment Hall."

ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS.