that speaker, there sawed the
wireless aerial backwards and forwards across the silver sky. Only
yesterday that aerial had intercepted a stammering signal from far, far
away over the brim of the world. "S.O.S.," it ran, "S.O.S." There
followed half inarticulate fragments of a latitude. That evening about
sundown we ran into the shreds of some ocean conversation about boats'
crews, and about someone who was still absent--just that broken fragment
in the buzz of the wireless conversation which runs around the world. A
big Australian transport, we knew, was some twelve hours away from us
upon the waters. Could it be about her that these personages of the
ocean were calling one to another? Days afterwards we heard that it had
not been an Australian or any other transport.

Somewhere in those dazzling seas there was an eye watching for us too,
just above the water, and always waiting--waiting--waiting--. It would
have been a rich harvest, that crowded deck below one. If the monster
struck just there he could not fail to kill many with the mere
explosion. But I don't believe a man in the crowd gave it a thought. The
strong, tanned, clean-shaven faces under the old slouch hats were all
gazing up in rapt attention at the speaker. For he was telling them the
right thing.

He was not a regular chaplain--there was no regular padre in that ship,
and we were likely to have no church parade until there was discovered
amongst the reinforcement officers one little subaltern who was a padre
in Tasmania, but who was going to the front as a fighting man. We had
heard other padres speak to troops on the eve of their plunging into a
great enterprise, when the sermon had made some of us wish that we only
had the power and gift to seize that wonderful opportunity as it might
be seized, and have done with texts and doctrines and speak to the men
as men. Every man there had his ideals--he was giving his life, as like
as not, because, however crude the exterior, there was an eye within
which saw truly and surely through the mists. And now when they stood on
the brink of the last great sacrifice, could he not seize upon those
truths--?

But this time we simply stood and wondered. For that slip of a figure in
khaki, high up there with one hand on the stanchion and the other
tapping the rail, was telling them a thousand times better than any of
us could ever have put it to himself exactly the things one would have
longed to say.

He told them