What mystery is there like the mystery of the other man’s job—­or what world so cut off as that which he enters when he goes to it?  The eminent surgeon is altogether such an one as ourselves, even till his hand falls on the knob of the theatre door.  After that, in the silence, among the ether fumes, no man except his acolytes, and they won’t tell, has ever seen his face.  So with the unconsidered curate.  Yet, before the war, he had more experience of the business and detail of death than any of the people who contemned him.  His face also, as he stands his bedside-watches—­that countenance with which he shall justify himself to his Maker—­none have ever looked upon.  Even the ditcher is a priest of mysteries at the high moment when he lays out in his mind his levels and the fall of the water that he alone can draw off clearly.  But catch any of these men five minutes after they have left their altars, and you will find the doors are shut.

Chance sent me almost immediately after the Jutland fight a Lieutenant of one of the destroyers engaged.  Among other matters, I asked him if there was any particular noise.

“Well, I haven’t been in the trenches, of course,” he replied, “but I don’t think there could have been much more noise than there was.”

This bears out a report of a destroyer who could not be certain whether an enemy battleship had blown up or not, saying that, in that particular corner, it would have been impossible to identify anything less than the explosion of a whole magazine.

“It wasn’t exactly noise,” he reflected.  “Noise is what you take in from outside.  This was inside you.  It seemed to lift you right out of everything.”

“And how did the light affect one?” I asked, trying to work out a theory that noise and light produced beyond known endurance form an unknown anaesthetic and stimulant, comparable to, but infinitely more potent than, the soothing effect of the smoke-pall of ancient battles.

“The lights were rather curious,” was the answer.  “I don’t know that one noticed searchlights particularly, unless they meant business; but when a lot of big guns loosed off together, the whole sea was lit up and you could see our destroyers running about like cockroaches on a tin soup-plate.”

“Then is black the best colour for our destroyers?  Some commanders seem to think we ought to use grey.”

“Blessed if I know,” said young Dante.  “Everything shows black in that light.  Then it all goes out again with a bang.  Trying for the eyes if you are spotting.”

SHIP DOGS

“And how did the dogs take it?” I pursued.  There are several destroyers more or less owned by pet dogs, who start life as the chance-found property of a stoker, and end in supreme command of the bridge.

“Most of ’em didn’t like it a bit.  They went below one time, and wanted to be loved.  They knew it wasn’t ordinary practice.”