Now the course set by the Minotaur, once the Convoy was well clear of the Western Australian coast, was not the ordinary trade route to Colombo. In the first place we steamed farther west, and then shaped a course to pass some 60 or 70 miles to the east of Cocos Islands. This was on the opposite side of that group to the ordinary track of the mail steamers. The reason for the change of route was to ensure protection. Other courses were open to us; for instance, the one which would have led us amongst the Deia Garcia Islands off the Madagascar coast. However, our destinies were guided by information received by wireless on the Flagship from the Admiralty. The troops were not aware of it, but there was a Japanese squadron operating round the coasts of Java and in this distant way protecting our flank. The speed of the Convoy varied from 9½ to 11 knots an hour, though the usual run for a day was about 244 knots. The black sheep of the fleet—if one may call a vessel such—was the Southern, the 4,000-ton vessel which I have already referred to as following the Orvieto, the Flagship of the central line. She became the cynosure of every eye, regarded in turn with interest, mirth, derision, and finally anger and compassion. There was something in the attitude of the steamer with her great heavy bows that suggested she was always doing her best to keep up, and always she seemed to be stoking. One pictures her ghost stalking each night along her confined decks looking with alarm at the terrific pace! (10 knots) and wondering for how long it would continue. Not the least amusing part was that sometimes, gathering speed, she made spurts, and all but "came aboard" the Orvieto, taking this opportunity of hauling her speed cone part way down the mast, Routine on the transports was not a very strenuous affair after the hard days of drill in the training camps and the long marches. To begin with, there was very little marching; only on the Orvieto and ships like the Euripides, where there was a certain length of deck available, did it permit of companies of men being marched round the ship. Many is the time I have sat writing in my cabin listening to the steady tramp of unbooted feet along the decks above, and the bands, stationed amidships, thumping out march after march. Never, however, could I grow accustomed to the distant squeal of the bagpipes, a band of which we were unfortunate enough to have with us. One threw down one's pen and tried to piece together some melody in the panting pipes. A QUIET AFTERNOON ON A TROOP DECK. TATTOOING WITH HOME-MADE ELECTRICAL NEEDLE. To face p. 36. Each day the men roused out at rÉveillÉ, sounded at six o'clock, and did physical jerks (exercises) before breakfast. Then they cleaned ship and prepared for the ten o'clock inspection by the officer in command of the troops, who went round with the Medical Officers and the Captain. The troops by this time would be mustered on deck, gathered in groups, learning all about rifles, machine guns, signalling, listening to lectures by the officers on trenches and the way to take cover, sniping, observation, and even aiming at miniature targets realistically made by enthusiastic leaders. At 11.30 the main work was over for the day. For an hour or two in the afternoon there were more exercises, but as the ships steamed into the tropics this afternoon drill was relaxed. The officers attended classes, and regular schools were formed and an immense amount was done to advance their technical knowledge. Besides all this, there were boat and life-belt drills and occasional night alarms to vary the monotony—but a precaution very necessary indeed. As the Convoy for the greater part of the six weeks' voyage steamed without lights, or only lights very much dimmed, work for the day ceased at dusk. Always there were guards and orderly duties, for the correct running of the ship, which occupied about a hundred men on the largest transport with a definite duty each day. It was on the voyage that the skin sun-tanning process began, to be carried to perfection in Egypt, and later on the Gallipoli Peninsula. A pair of "slacks" (short pants) and a shirt and white hat was enough for the men to wear on deck. They did not put on boots for three weeks, and their feet became as hard as those of the mariners. One heard them stumping round the deck with muffled tramp. But the physical exercises regularly given, the rifle exercises and the earlier training, and high standard demanded on enlistment, made this first contingent into a force of young athletes. It was the raiding Emden that rendered the precautions taken on the first Convoy that left Australia so very essential—a matter which subsequent contingents knew nothing of, with the German commerce and warships swept from the seas. The anxiety of Captain "So we sailed on, drawing nearer and nearer into the middle of the Indian Ocean. Looking at the chart each day, I feel that while we are a large fleet, the largest that has ever crossed this ocean, after all the seas are very broad. There is comfort as well as uneasiness in the thought. It will be as difficult for a foreign ship to find us as for us to run into a foreign ship by some chance. However, the lads are taught to grow accustomed to meet any emergency and to muster on deck with lights out.... It was on the night before we reached Cocos Islands—to be exact, 7th November—shortly after our evening meal, while the troops were How we passed the Emden on this very evening, quite ignorant of our danger and of that daring cruiser's destruction, needs to be related in a separate chapter. |