Page:Victory at Sea - William Sowden Sims and Burton J. Hendrick.djvu/75

1917] life. Dinners at Admiralty House, therefore, were absolutely "dry," and in perfect keeping with American naval regulations.

Though Admiral Bayly was not athletic his outdoor games being limited to tip-and-run cricket in the Admiralty grounds, which he played with a round bat and a tennis ball he was a man of wiry physique and a tireless walker. Indeed the most active young men in our navy had great difficulty in keeping pace with him. One of his favourite diversions on a Saturday afternoon was to take a group on a long tramp in the beautiful country surrounding Queenstown; by the time the party reached home, the Admiral, though sixty years old, was usually the freshest of the lot. I still vividly remember a long walk which I took with him in a pelting rain; I recall how keenly he enjoyed it and how young and nimble he seemed to be when we reached home, drenched to the skin. A steep hill led from the shore up to Admiralty House; Sir Lewis used to say that this was a valuable military asset it did not matter how angry a man might be with him when he started for headquarters, by the time he arrived, this wearisome climb always had the effect of quieting his antagonism. The Admiral was fond of walking up this hill with our young officers ; he himself usually reached the top as fresh as a daisy, while his juniors were frequently puffing for breath.

He enjoyed testing out our men in other ways; nothing delighted him more than giving them hard jobs to do especially when they accomplished the tasks successfully. One day he ordered one of our officers, Lieutenant-Commander Roger Williams, captain of the Duncan, a recent arrival at Queenstown, to cross the Irish Sea and bring back a ship. The joke lay in the fact that this man's destroyer had just come in with her steering gear completely out of commission a circumstance which Admiral Bayly well understood. Many officers would have promptly asked to be excused on this ground, but not this determined American. He knew that the Admiral was trying to " put something over on him," and he rose to the occasion. The fact that Queenstown Harbour is long and narrow, not wide enough for a destroyer to turn around in, made Commander Williams's problem still more difficult, but by cleverly using his engines, he succeeded