Most of us spent our first week on the other side believing the stories we heard. We spent our second week doubting the stories we heard. Thereafter, even a captain’s order had to be sworn to before a notary before we were quite certain it was real. This yarn reached me in my third month, after the soup and lobster and strawberries had been disposed of, and two or three former shipmates and I were eating that peculiar wiggly salad which the hotels in Brest have always on the menu—you remember it, long- curling strings of tender green stuff with plenty of oil. The tale concerned a gunboat which was supposed to be convoying a string of freighters through the Mediterranean, steaming at some seven knots at the head of a single column. One of Fritz’s tin fish look advantage of the formation to torpedo the last ship in line, and the gunboat shook out her reserve two-and-a-half knots and made for the trouble-spot. As she came down the line, Fritz went up the other side and got the leading ship. As the gunboat countermarched', so did the sub, and again got the tailing ship. This game of round the mulberry bush is said to have kept up until Fritz had torpedoed three ships in the rear and two in the van. Then the gunboat saw his wake and fired at him, and he departed, possibly having no more torpedoes. As I say, this tale was told me in my third month “ Over There.” It will require the sworn testimony of two-thirds of that gunboat’s company to induce me to believe it as told ; but the point is, the ship in question was said to be one who was more-or-less my happy home through three uproarious years in the days when “ gun-boating revolutions ” was the most popular out-door sport of the brass-bound young. Old navy fashion, we will call her the U, S. S. Biftick. Herein are set forth some of the adventures at which the Biftick assisted or took a leading part in those imperial days. You may take them with or without a grain of salt, for they occurred nearly fifteen years ago, and have many of them become shrouded in the golden haze of romance. I am quite likely to embroider some of them, but I do not think I shall injure their value as a picture of those times.
We drew less than thirteen feet, and so could get over the bar at the river-mouth. The “flagship” of the Spit-Kid Fleet could not, so we had the job of sitting on the lid at the revoluting capital. We were feeling proud of being the only naval ship who ever carried a president with a broken leg. We had picked him off the beach when his life was supposed to be in danger, and carried him to a haven of safety, before returning to see what his successor intended to do. Incidentally, on boarding us, his first anxiety was to whom be should surrender his gun. His next was “ May I have something to eat ? I have been at the American Legation for three days! ” But that had happened some time ago, and much had been accomplished since. In order to find something to do, our pioneers had knocked down a large section of cliff to fill up a swamp near the coconut tree which served us as anchor. Then we had cleared a baseball field on the top of the cliff, and rolled a tennis court, which was as “ sporty ” as any golf course. We had tucked a target-range under a fold of the bluff, and put up a bathing pavilion on the beach. We had made a wharf for the steam launch to lie to at night, and an old freight car, polished up and labeled “ Hotel de Bum ” in large white letters provided sleeping-quarters for her crew. The landing abreast the ship displayed a sign “ Little Coney Island ” in black and yellow, and the place had grown to such proportions that a gentleman of a ripe yellow color named Pierre had opened an emporium between the target range and the Hotel de Bum, where for small silver one could obtain much ice and a little lemon or tamarind juice. Sometimes he even had tortillas. We were constructing what was to be our magnum opus—a shoot-the-shutes, made of an old narrow- gauge railway down the hill from the sugar factory to the river—when we were unpleasantly reminded that we were junior ship of the eleven around the island. The cable from the flagship’s port was broken. The flagship had remained stationary until she was loath to move, and even the sailing directions were said to read “ Get Fraile Rock in line with the Hagship’s mainmast, then stand in to the harbor.” The S. O. P. wanted a messenger to take his cablegrams to the next port, and we were the goat. We turned over Little Coney Island and its joys to a ship that did not appreciate it, got under way, and thus became the unconscious instrument of Providence, for the cables that we carried during the month contained the seed which eventually grew into the Clean Shirt Revolution.
We got our first surprise when attempting to carry out the above-mentioned sailing directions, for while it was in the right place, the mainmast seemed to have shrunk a great deal. When we got in, we found that the old flagship had gone, and the blue S. O. P. pennant flying from the tender. We found that another- revolution in a neighboring island had called for marines, and the flagship having three hundred of them, had gone to set them ashore. The S. O. P. had packed a suitcase and his pennant and shifted his berth temporarily. By the end of a week, the suitcase became inadequate, and among the first 50 or 60 cables we carried, was one requesting the flagship’s return. At the end of another week, we sent one requesting that she come back long enough to let the S. O. P. remove the balance of his worldly goods from the cabin. Still she did not return, and the next week we burned the cable with the news that “ Revolution is imminent in Puerto Fulano—please return the Dixie, with or without marines.” It was quite true—revolution is always imminent in Puerto Fulano— they hatch three plots before breakfast each day ; but some reporter in Washington got hold of the three cables and applied the Sherlock Holmes method of deduction. The New York papers flared next day with scarehead columns of the revolution whose purpose was to provide a clean shirt for the Admiral. A gust of hilarity started which laughed eight out of eleven ships home to the states for overhaul before it subsided and they found out that there really was a revolution in Puerto Fulano after all. The Biftick was one of those who went home, but not for long. In a few months we were back on the job, the same old job. We really felt a homelike thrill when we wormed in through the narrow break in the reef and located our own old bone pile with the lead.
We grew to that job thoroughly. From end to end of the island, nearly every one of us was known by a nickname applied by the insurgent population, who fought us by day and swapped yarns with us in the cafes by night. It was very friendly warfare, and we were very much annoyed when we got orders to leave our homely island and the ills we knew for the coast of Central America where we would have to keep in hand a totally strange set of politicos. We expressed our disapproval by all shaving our heads and turning our whiskers out to grow, so that we could at once strike terror to our new opponents and charges. We guessed wrong—we were on our way to the supreme experience of our entire cruise ; the revolution in which the gunboats reached the pinnacle of power, authority and bliss. We were too late for the best of it, but there was plenty of joy for all hands.
The revolution in question was complicated by a foreign war, and the gunboat we relieved had heard that an invading army was approaching the port from the hostile power. The commanding officer sent for the local commandant and inquired what would happen when the enemy transport arrived. The commandant saw nothing for him but surrender—his forces and munitions were inadequate to a defence against such overwhelming odds. “Very well.” said the commanding officer, “wait till you hear from me." Out to sea rolled the gunboat, to meet the invading navy. He summoned the commander-in-chief and inquired what were his intentions. “Take the town,” was the answer: and again the commanding officer directed: “Very well, wait till you hear from me.” Back went the gunboat while the invaders rolled outside, hove-to on the bosom of the Caribbean. “ They’re here, the commanding officer told the commandant. “ If you me going, go ahead. 1 will have no fighting in the streets, and no damage to property. Beat it. They will not land till T give the word.” In due time, the local army had fallen back up the railroad, and the invading conquerors landed to find an ensign, seven blue jackets and a Colt gun on the beach to see that there was no looting.
There was something over a hundred men in the invading army, but the ensign was over six feet high and very broad. They decided there would not be any looting just yet, and all hands, even to the “ Cross Red Nurses,” returned aboard the transport. Next day they ambled out and down the coast without warning. Post haste, out went the gunboat after them. The commanding officer was going to have no looting in the next town, either. Around a point, the hostile navy lay snugly hidden waiting to see how her ruse would work, and was soon rewarded by the sight of the gunboat’s yellow funnel rolling 30 degrees on her way down the coast. Under cover of night, the invaders slipped back, and began to spill overboard onto the Fruit Company’s wharf and fall in before charging on the now unprotected town. 1 he commander-in-chief felt proud of himself, lie had tricked the Yankees, and he expected that in the next four hours his men would accumulate sufficient spoil to let them forget an overdue payday. Then a huge, moving shape appeared through the dusk, and into the lantern-light stepped the smiling ensign, mildly interested in the debarkation. A startled look up the wharf, and the commander-in-chief made out seven more white shapes, with a small dark something in their midst which might be a machine, gun. His cry rent the night. “ Carajn, aqili rslan los Americanos todavia! A bordo, todosl ’’ When the deluded gunboat returned next day, the town was not looted, the soldiers were all aboard and anchored well off the beach, and the ensign was entertaining the commander-in-chief al lunch.
That commander-in-chief was an unusual man. His position was difficult, in that his army had consented to leave their country only on promise of four free hours in each captured city; and he owed his position to the fact that his president did not trust him and considered it safer to send him abroad. He succeeded in satisfying his soldiers and the American commander as well, and strangest of all, could see the funny side of the whole performance. Only once was lie in trouble with the Yankee authorities, and the version I give is the one he himself told me two years after between courses at a banquet.
The American commander decided that peace would be more stable if coupled with sobriety. He therefore closed all saloons in the town after the invaders finally landed; and ordered the ensign-chief-of-police to arrest and send out to the ship everyone found under the influence of intoxicants. One day the general got very, very drunk, so drunk that he had fallen once or twice and had become exceedingly muddy. Commander-in-chief though he was, the ensign obeyed his orders, and soon a soiled and hilarious general was wabbling around the gunboat’s quarterdeck. “ Put him in the brig to sober up,” directed the commander. Up spoke. Jimmy Legs, “Captain, we just got the brig painted and look at the guy ! He’ll ruin my paintwork ! ” “ Well, scrub him, scrub him! ” was the captain’s answer, and so it came about that the victorious commander-in-chief, the famous general, sanded and canvassed to a tingling cleanliness, was soon sobering up in a very small and stuffy ship’s brig. And later told the story on himself with many guffaws.
Meanwhile, the invaders had peaceably landed and thought themselves in possession not only of the port, but the towns up the railroad. “ Thought themselves ” is an exact statement, for in each town, living in the municipal mansion, giving dances with the municipal band, and administering justice with the aid of the foreign residents, could be found an ensign on “ hazardous independent duty,” having the time of his life. Down in the port, the gunboat’s steam launch ran into the dock each morning and the bugles of the invaders trilled and snorted turning out the guard. White-gloved and immaculate, the Yankee captain walked the length of the one street, critically inspecting the sanitation and snappily returning the salute when the blue-jeaned lines of soldiers wavered into “ present, arms! ” The gentlemen who had been sent by the conquering foreign power to take over the civil government of the occupied district raged impotent. There was nothing for him to govern. His military backing was comfortably idle and happily powerless in the residence of those large and smiling ensigns. He received no sympathy from the white-gloved American, who informed him that as no stable government of a local nature existed, he, the American, was the Government. The gentleman might frame his credentials if he wished, and preserve them for his grandchildren. There was, however, nothing for him to be busy over in the war-stricken district, and his interference in its peaceable administration was not desired.
As a war, I think we will always look back upon that one as the best training in fishing and tennis that we ever received. There were spurts of activity, as when a malefactor was reported to our captain as having swindled a foreigner out of much money. The established method of procedure at that time was to bring him before a court composed of (he captain and a consul or two, but he refused to be brought. For six days, we had a joyous chase. He was known to be on mule-back, making knots down the coast. He could not leave the coast, as to strike inland would be impossible even for a mule. So we chased him with the ship, hiding behind islands, bursting suddenly into towns in fanwise formation to cover all approaches. He evaded us for a long time, warned by our smoke and doubling on his tracks. Finally we got him, and justice was done.
Then there was a period of leanness, while the Department spruced up the fleet for the Jamestown Fair and sent it forth on the voyage around the world. Gunboats were distinctly “out of luck ” in those days, for requisitions for anything less than a hundred thousand cases of anything were of small moment “ Up Home.” We cleaned the beach of chickens, then of beef. We worked our seine night and day, and combed the hinterland for sweet potatoes. Finally, other methods having failed, the captain sent a classic cable: "No stores, no coal, no money," it read. “ Shall I sell the ship?” The effect was electrical. We were hurried to Key West, after getting a wagonload or two of slate tar and sulphur euphemistically called coal in one of the banana ports, and found everything we had ever asked for awaiting us. Just to make sure we got enough, we went to Guantanamo immediately after and found some more.
We became expert in dispensing justice to mixed peoples. The governor of a province (this was after peace was restored), who during hostilities had become our boon companion, entertained us with a dance and “ supper.” The dance stopped short at 12 o’clock, and we marched upstairs to where the “ supper ” was spread. There were no knives, forks, spoons or plates on the table, and the governor’s band was lined up in one corner of the room. We solemnly took our places around the table and counted up the several sorts of glasses in sight, making hasty mental calculations to insure a dignified end to the party. The governor, glass in hand, welcomed us in a few well-chosen words. We all politely said " Salad," and sipped our glasses. The band broke out into a spirited Central American version of the “ Admiral’s March.” Our best linguist returned thanks in fragmentary Creole Spanish, celebrating the sisterhood of all republics. Everyone said " Salud!" with a bit more spirit, and the band performed again. During the speeches, the band would go below and get a drink, returning in ample time to furnish harmonious applause. After three of four toasts, we found "Salud” pale and colorless and it was changed to "Viva!" The band began to add impromptu variations to the Admiral’s March. At about 2 a. m., while an ensign heretofore guiltless of Spanish was making a beautiful speech in pure Castilian there was an uproar on the stairs, and the large barkeep hoisted a blinking and bewildered bandsman into our midst. “ Governor,” he shouted in accents betraying his nativity, “ dis guy pulled a knife on another of dem musicians! I want youse to know dis is a respectable joint, and dere ain’t goin’ to be no cutting in my place! ” The governor stiffened and looked at the bandsman, who changed to a pale green color and gulped. The governor slowly reached back to his hi]) pocket and then remembered his guests and paused. “ Gentlemen,” he said with exquisite courtesy, “ This rat has disturbed our festivities and has attempted to use a lethal weapon in your honored presence. I leave his fate in your hands. If you want him shot, I will do it myself.” When we got our breath, we recognized the culprit as the clarinet player who had contributed most of the variations. He was strictly sober now, and about as scared as a man can be. Then up spoke an ensign from Texas. “His drawing a knife isn’t near as much disturbance as he’s been creating with that tootle of his. Suppose you punish him by anchoring him and his flute and a jug of water out in (lie bay to-morrow, and let him play and practice till he can do better." hollowed a rapid stream of snappy orders from the governor, and two soldiers removed the almost fainting offender. Next morning when we caught the market boat out to the ship, we heard weird and melancholy sounds. A mile from shore rocked a small dinghy at anchor. Alone with his pipe and a jug of water sat our musician, and the wailful strains of “My Navajo” brought tears to the eyes of the surrounding fishermen.
Depleted by fatigue, desertion and the necessity of finding something besides sugar-cane to eat, the native garrison of a port we were inhabiting needed reinforcement. One day a train pulled in loaded down with a bedraggled lot of soldiers, whose blank, copper faces, stringy hair and uneasy movements marked them as Indians of the wildest from the interior. Their uniforms consisted only of dungaree coat and trousers, but it was plain that to the Indians they were as galling chains. With them came a message from an up-country governor: “I send you herewith a hundred volunteers. Please return the ropes.” For two or three days these innocents padded hopelessly around their barracks in the basement of the Fruit Company’s offices. Then one night, through the velvety blackness of a moonless, tropic evening, there came many stabbing red flames and a crackle of Mauser shots. From the bay we could hear 'much shouting. Lights winked here and there, and the sound of slamming and barring doors arose from end to end of town. We looked at each other in amazement, for we thought we had every possible insurrecto well tabulated and safely distant. We sent an ensign and an ordinary seaman by way of landing party to investigate, and as they walked up the railroad, the seething population scattered before them “ like cockroaches in a dark kitchen,” to use the ensign’s homely phrase. The local commandant, weeping, surrendered his sword and pistol to the ordinary seaman. There was tumult and tears and wailing of women. In an hour the landing force came back. “The Indians want to go home,” lie said, “ and the governor wants 'em to' go home. So I told him to send ’em home, and he will and everybody is happy.” Next morning the volunteers, gloriously drunk and happy, loaded themselves into an up-country train and departed shouting " Viva la Patria y mi madral ” and on counting up the wreck of battle, we found ourselves to be the only sufferers. Stray bullets had smashed two crates of eggs which were to have been our breakfast, as they sat on the wharf. Naturally, this was christened the “ Scrambled Egg Revolution.”
But I think of all the days of joyous excitement, one Fourth of July will be the last to fade from our minds. We planned an all day celebration with a sister gunboat. Boat-races at seven in the morning, boxing and wrestling till noon, a big feed, field sports and swimming during the afternoon, and after dinner the best minstrels that the Caribbean had ever seen. The news flow up and down the coast, into the interior and over the mountains. Days before, isolated Americans, trying to remember what ice tasted like, climbed upon muleback to ride eighty or a hundred miles to the railhead. They came in crowds and swarms. They came in white linen, in blue jeans, in ancient frock coats and one even broke out a plug hat. By 6 a. m. the boats from shore were arriving, and all through the day the two ships were jammed stem to stern with ex-patriates some of whom had not heard a word of English in years. One man asked me seriously who was President of the United States, and in the next breath, “ Is Shoemaker’s Bar still on Pennsylvania Avenue?” They came and went, and every boatman in the harbor made his fortune that day. The minstrel show was on board the Biftick, and she was well down by the stern when the guests were all assembled. It was far into the morning of the fifth before the last wistful reveller departed, and we looked at each other, wearily, the surgeon broke the silence. “If we had got under way tonight and gone to Mobile or New Orleans, I’ll bet the Pinkertons wouldn’t even have stopped to count up. They’d have landed us a million dollars in rewards without a question.”
Like all junior, tropic exiles, we had our full quota of troubadours and bards—perhaps more. Our songs were in a plaintive minor' as regards wording, but the tunes were youthful and exuberant enough. Grave-faced commanding officers, former plank-owners in the Biftick, how long could you preserve your dignity if you heard the old guitar tune up and someone launch into the interminable “ Hymn to Santo Domingo,” to the melody of “Mr. Dooley?” Every village of the island had its celebrating stanza, every politico on the beach ; not even the American Minister, who suffered from gout, escaped our poetic frenzy. We composed roaring choruses to our alleged miserable exile ; “ alleged ” I say, because in our innermost hearts we were having a wonderful time. Neither did we spare ourselves and each other. The thought of the popular ditty ending: “Oh, Ob, the Horse Marines, Johnny and the Purser!” still impels me to look for a cushion to put in my chair; and at least one officer will not soon forget that “the First Luff thought he must be dead, ’cause he didn’t get back that night! ” The crew caught the infection, and not a single catchy tune reached the ship that was not made into a Biftick pibroch inside of 48 hours, to the enormous benefit of our periodical minstrels. “ Nettie’s ” cruel and unusual whiskers, “ Jack’s ” alligator hunt, “ John Calvin’s ” Spanish—all were set forth in deathless rhyme. And I have undying memory of a wailful ballad claiming that there was “ No hardtack and slum in the old cabin home! ”
How many “Mountain Goats” survive at the present day? That hill, the first sight most of us get of the “ Black Man’s Paradise ” was named after a fancied resemblance of its outline to a human profile. After mature deliberation of the vast quantity of evidence adduced, we concluded that cither some revolution had blown the features of the hilltop askew or else there was no General Order 99 in force on the Santa Maria when she named it; for the mountain now resembles nothing so much as a canvas hangar in a number six breeze. However, it had its uses; and one remained a tenderfoot and a “coburger” until he had qualified as a mountain goat, a true, blooded, revolution-chaser, by climbing the mountain’s hot red sides and proving to himself that from that viewpoint the salt pans inshore were indubitably dry and the sea offshore indubitably wet. After qualification, the badge of the order was a facial expression denoting extreme pessimism and a tremendous amount of vocal anarchy.
There was one thing upon which the Biftick prided herself above all others, and that was her superiority in sailing boats. It was as necessary a part of the day as breakfast to call all boats away, explain the course and rules of the day’s race to the coxswains, ensigns, coal-passers, cooks, or whoever happened to be handling the boats that day, and start them out, wind or no wind. The invariable ensuing argument furnished excitement for the rest of the day, and notably the famous races where the coxswain of the gig, oars being barred, put his ship about by throwing out a bucket with a lanyard and hauling his stern around thereby; and that other when an ensign in a dead flat calm, rocked the second cutter home with belayed, slacked sheets and all hands on the gunwales. I he result was apparent, and every ordinary seaman who left us for the Fleet found himself a coxswain overnight— probably coxswain of the gig. At Admiral’s Inspection, the S. O. P. discovered that we allowed nothing to delay us in the matter of getting boats away—he was too close to the first cutter's davits when “ Away all boats ” was sounded, and the rush of her crew tumbled him head over heels. Every trick of every boat we had was known to a nicety, learned by bitter experience. My apprenticeship was served in the 28-foot cutter we vain-gloriously called the “sailing launch,” and I had got to fancy myself as a seaman by the time I was given the gig. My pet trick was a 90-degree come-alongside at full speed, and I was anxious to try it with my newer, faster craft. The Little Gods decreed that the captain himself witnessed my first attempt, as at terrific speed I neared the ship, put my helm down at what seemed to be the proper moment—and stove in the gig’s bow against the ship’s side far abaft the gangway. In fear and trembling I came aboard; but the skipper’s only comment was “ She seems to maneuver wildly at great speed! ” However, I never tried that again until I had spent many hours coining alongside a wharf out of sight of the ship.
Let it not be thought, though; that the Biftick’s cruise was all “ beer and skittles.” We point with pride to the first battle-practice the navy ever had. Fire-control apparatus there was none, so we made gadgets. A crude range-clock, christened by its inventor the “Boom-boom catcher,” was installed and operated by the doctor in defiance of the Geneva convention. A canvas strip on two reels with 25-vard range changes decorated the wing of the bridge with a pay-office yeoman to turn the crank, and above it a wooden clock-face with large white hand for wind deflection. These were in plain sight of the sight-setters on the poop and forecastle, and a hose led from the sight-setter on No 1 gun’s mouth to the ear of the sight-setter on the gun-deck. Our “ brother-ship ”—somehow those two ships were never called “ She ”—had a different lot of inventions. “ Brother ” shot first, and thought lie had done very well; but the Biftick—! Let the cold figures tell the tale. When the Fed Book came out we saw with bursting pride, Biftick, 60 per cent; highest battleship, 38 per cent; highest cruiser, 37 per cent”; and sweetest of all, “Next gunboat, 15 per cent. Such an event could not be allowed to die in the musty files of the executive-navigator-equipment-gunnery officer’s office, and soon we were all singing, with abandon, that
“Paddy, he made just nine hits, not a single one more,
Which was considered by his crew as a pretty good score.
Put when we steamed across the range you could hear our 4-inch roar.
We made two times nine hits, you see,—and a little bit more!”
In looking back it seems that must have been our motto in those days—“And a little bit more!” Work or play, rain or shine, dripping, mosquito-ridden Barahona or sun-baked Guantanamo or rolling the hammock-nettings under in the swell off Bluefields, every job that came, our way was made into a game, was done, complete “ and a little bit more! ”
I see now that the old ship is listed for sale—paid off, her high hey-days a thing of the past. And I’ll wager she dreams at times that the old days are back again and wakes listening for details of the latest outrage planned by her almost juvenile crowd of “ plank-owners.” May she rest in peace!