THE CRUISER COMES HOME

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17245, 11 January 1924, Page 9

THE CRUISER COMES HOME

(By “TAFFRAIL”) The Tight cruiser rolls a little in the following sea as she steams upCh&nnel. Twenty-four hours ago she was quivering and plunging like a mad . thing in a fierce south-westerly gale in the Bay of Biscay. Her funnels are white with the salt of driven spray ; but the 6ea has now gone down and the wind has subsided. The blue sky on the horizon is slowly piling up with masses of cumulus, sure harbingers of fair weather. Ushant was abeam at one o’clock the previous afternoon, and at midnight the triple flash of the Casquets light shone out of the darkness on the starboard beam. Now, at daylight, the Isle of Wight should soon be in sight. On the cruiser’s upper bridge is a little group of officers. The captain was called at dawn and sips gingerly at a cup of steaming cocoa. The navigat-or has his binoculars to his eyes and diligently sweeps the horizon. The officer of the watch, a recently promoted lieutenant bronzed bv Eastern suns, stands by the compass and occasionally passes an order through a voice-pipe to the man at the wheel below. Some of the seamen are on deck outside the galley drinking their morning cocoa before being set to work at scrubbing decks. Below, in engine and boiler rooms, artificers are tending the whirring turbines and stokers the oil-fired boilers. Every ounce of steam generated, every revolution of the twin screws, carries the ship nearer home. Most of the ship’s company are still asleep in their hammocks on the crowded mess-decks, for the day is yet young. But on the forecastle a stout petty officer, swaying to the gentle movement of the ship, walks to and fro smoking his short clay pipe. He has “heard a buzz” that land" should be in eight at- daylight. He is a married man with a wife and Family at Portsmouth, and this is his homecoming. For something over two years he has been in a small ship i Q the Persian Gulf, and at home there is a baby of eighteen months whom he has never seen. The cruiser, indeed, has been on a “trooping trip.” carrying relief crews to Colombo and Singapore for some of the smaller ships in the East Indies and China find bringing home those whose time is up. “Land fine on the port bow sir!” i th l hail t fr ° m the perched above the control-top on the foremast. And sure enough in ten minutes’ time the faint bluish-purple outline of the coast showing up over ~rTT is T Ti . sit, e even from tho up p er deck. It 18 tho Isle of Wight the high land round about St Catheril£f,s ’ the first glimpse of England Ihe news spreads. Forecastle and upper deck become populated -with men m various stages of deshabille. Thev seem very happy and talkative. shinvVt? h ?? e . !ast from the shmj Lik.t With all its glamour and romance Home to England— the place of grey skies, of rain, of impenetrable fogs— nevertheless the best Place m all the world. ‘ And that afternoon the petty officl yenngest child howls lustilv“ in his father’s arms. " s ■' Hi 5 °X,! amb r,-, says the mother. [,)■. , dislikes strange faces Didn’t he know 1,i 3 daddy, then