Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/64

46 Here, following out the instructions of the Navy Department, they were to report to Vice -Admiral Bayly for duty. It is doing no injustice to Sir Lewis to say that our men regarded this first meeting with some misgiving. The Admiral's reputation in the British navy was well known to them. They knew that he was one of the ablest officers in the service ; but they had also heard that he was an extremely exacting man, somewhat taciturn in his manner, and not inclined to be over familiar with his subordinates a man who did not easily give his friendship or his respect, and altogether, in the anxious minds of these ambitious young Americans, he was a somewhat forbidding figure. And the appearance of the Admiral, standing in his doorway awaiting their arrival, rather accentuated these preconceptions. He was a medium-sized man, with somewhat swarthy, weather beaten face and black hair just turning grey; he stood there gazing rather quizzically at the Americans as they came trudging up the hill, his hands behind his back, his bright eyes keenly taking in every detail of the men, his face not showing the slightest trace of a smile. This struck our young men at first as a somewhat grim reception ; the attitude of the Admiral suggested that he was slightly in doubt as to the value of his new recruits, that he was entirely willing to be convinced, but that only deeds and not fine speeches of greeting would convince him. Yet Admiral Bayly welcomed our men with the utmost courtesy and dignity, and his face, as he began shaking hands, broke into a quiet, non-committal smile; there was nothing about his manner that was effusive, there were no unnecessary words, yet there was a real cordiality that put our men at ease and made them feel at home in this strange environment. They knew, of course, that they had come to Ireland, not for social diversions, but for the serious business of fighting the Hun, and that indeed was the only thought which could then find place in Admiral Bayly's mind. Up to this time the welcome to the Americans had taken the form of lofty oratorical flights, with emphasis upon the blood ties of Anglo-Saxondom, and the significance to civilization of America and Great Britain fighting side by side; but this was not the kind of a greeting our men received from Admiral Bayly. The Admiral himself, with his somewhat worn uniform and his lack of ceremony, formed a marked contrast to the official reception by the Lord