A Ship Must Die (1981) (6 page)

‘Masthead lookout reports that the ship is stopped, sir, and apparently on fire.’

The two officers looked at each other. Just a few days more and safety before the other passage to Britain. There would be U-boats and bombers in plenty for the last part. But in convoy you were with friends, not bloody well alone.

‘What d’you think, sir?’

The master’s eyes vanished into deep crinkles of flesh. ‘Think? Alter course, Mister, but tell Sparks to prepare a signal, just in case. Have the guns manned, and pass the word to all hands.’

He picked up a handset and cranked a handle. ‘Chief? This is the captain. Get ready to shift yourself. There’s a ship on fire. Might be a victim of an attack. I’ll see what I can do.’

Later, as the sun made the ship’s bow-wave gleam like yellow foam, a light stabbed through the smoke.

The first mate read slowly, ‘Radio’s gone, fire in forrard hold. They need medical help.’

The old captain watched the distance falling away. On the poop his ancient four-inch was already manned, and the one below the bridge was trained across the bulwark, its crew standing up to watch as the other vessel took shape through the smoke.

The second mate, whose jaws were still working on the remains of his disturbed breakfast, asked, ‘What ship?’

The master replied, ‘
Mont Everest
, she’s outward bound from –’

The second mate jumped forward. ‘Not on your bloody life, sir! I know that French ship well, this one’s too big, anyway –’ He got no further.

The master yelled, ‘Hard a-starboard, full ahead both engines!’

The first mate stood mesmerized until the old man punched his arm and shouted, ‘Tell Sparks! Send our position!
Now
, for Christ’s sake!’

Telegraphs clanged, and as the quartermaster spun the spokes of the big wheel someone shouted, ‘She’s hoisted her colours, sir! Christ, it’s a Jerry!’

The smoke was thinning away even as the other ship’s
length began to shorten and she turned slowly towards the
Argyll Clansman
.

The master’s lips moved in time with the stabbing light and the fresh hoist of flags at the other ship’s yards.

Stop instantly. Do not use your radio.

Through the door he heard the urgent tap of a morse key, the sudden commotion on the deck below.

‘Shall I call the engineroom, sir?’ The young second mate watched his superior despairingly.

‘No. Tell the guns to open fire. Hit that bastard now!’

Two long orange tongues stabbed through the thinning smoke and the enemy’s shells hit the ship’s side like a fall of rock. A great blast of searing heat burst through the bridge, and where there had been order and determination seconds earlier there was a raging inferno. A few screaming shapes, their bodies in flames, ran through the chaos until they were sucked back again, licked away like so many ashes.

More shells crashed alongside, and the master felt the pressure of the broken screen biting into his chest and knew she had started to turn turtle. Men were shouting and dying, and he heard the old poop gun fire just one shot before it was smashed to fragments by another violent explosion.

There was blood all over the screen’s broken glass, and he knew it was his own, although he could feel nothing.

They would not get their meat after all, he thought vaguely. No rations.

Scalding steam shot up the side of the bridge as the sea burst into the boiler room, in the bright sunlight it looked like a fountain.

Then, like his ship, the old man died.

Fairfax stepped into Blake’s day cabin, his cap tucked beneath one arm, as he said, ‘Ready to proceed, sir.’ He could not contain his eagerness, the excitement of the ship coming to life around him. He should be used to it, able to ignore the routine business of getting under way after all this time. Sarah had pulled his leg on that score often enough.

‘Like a kid with a toy,’ she had said.

Blake smiled. ‘Good.’ He looked round the cabin. He would not see it again until they anchored somewhere. The sea cabin on the bridge was his place, his command post. From where he could reach the fore-bridge in seconds rather than minutes. ‘Has the pilot come aboard?’

Fairfax grimaced. ‘Sorry, sir, I should have told you. Yes, he’s on the bridge now.’ He ticked off the items in his mind as he added, ‘Postman’s aboard, two libertymen still adrift, but the provost-marshal has got them, er, “in his care”.’

‘Very well. Tell the shore party to remove the last brow. I’ll come up.’ He patted his pockets.
A pipe man
. Tobacco and matches, his wallet wrapped in an oilskin folder.

A last look at the cabin and to the sleeping quarters beyond where Moon was busily folding up sheets for the laundry.

The ship gave a tremble. The creature reawakening.

He climbed to the deck above and walked slowly along the port side, past X and Y turrets, the tier of boats, the catapult with its Seafox perched upon it like a delicate bird, the great trunked funnel, smaller guns which had dirtied many a sky with patterns of smoke and tracer. Here was the bridge, dotted at various levels with white caps, intent faces, flags to be lowered or hoisted, gunnery controls, radar, everything which
Andromeda
required to find her way, to seek an enemy, to kill. For if Weir’s roaring domain below the waterline was her heart, then the bridge must surely be her brain.

Blake felt the sun, hot already, through his shirt. He put on his sun-glasses as he ran up the next ladder, conscious of the men watching him, the faces he knew so well, many he did not know at all . . . yet.

He had learned several years back that if he was worried about a ship’s company it was certain
they
were more worried about the man who commanded them.

He reached the upper bridge and glanced around at the figures who filled it. Villar, the navigating officer, standing high on the compass platform taking a test fix on some object in the dockyard. Boatswain’s mates, messengers, a newcomer too, Lieutenant Trevett of the Royal Australian Navy, who was assisting Villar for the moment. Harry Buck, the chief yeoman of signals, portly and red like a toby jug, a marine
bugler, two signalmen, each man an essential part, fitting in or feeling his way.

The harbour pilot touched his cap. ‘Fine day, Cap’n.’ He gestured towards a tug. ‘There’s another waiting downstream.’ He grinned hugely. ‘Not do at all to see a Pom cruiser on the mud, eh?’

Fairfax gritted his teeth. ‘Hell, another comedian.’

A seaman at a voice-pipe called, ‘Brow’s ashore, sir.’

Blake climbed up on to the fore-gratings and glanced briefly at the scrubbed wooden chair which was bolted there. How many days and nights had he sat there, trying to sleep, trying to stay awake? Out here, in the sunlight, it seemed like a dream. A nightmare.

‘Single up to headrope and backspring.’

He ignored the repeated order and the sudden movement on the quarterdeck. To onlookers on the shore and elsewhere it would seem like a shambles. Men cutting away whippings and fighting with coils of greasy, treacherous mooring wire. On the forecastle, the first lieutenant, characteristically hands on hips, stood right in the bows, in the eyes of the ship. Near him a signalman waited to haul down the jack the moment the ship got under way.

‘All gone aft, sir.’

Blake crossed the bridge and leaned over the warm screen. The tug was ready to pull the stern out. There was no wind to help.

‘Stand by.’

He heard the shrill clamour of telegraphs and pictured Couzins, the coxswain, in the dark cool of the wheelhouse with his quartermasters. Unyielding, like the armour-plate which protected the helm, as he had been during every such moment and in action more times than Blake could remember.

A boatswain’s mate called nervously, ‘Beg pardon, sir, but the W/T office has an urgent signal.’

He was speaking to Fairfax but Blake snapped, ‘Read it out, man!’

‘Slow ahead starboard.’ The bridge quivered and then almost imperceptibly
Andromeda
nudged forward, Scovell’s
forecastle party hurrying to slacken off the big spring as it took the strain. ‘Stop starboard.’

The harbour pilot was waving a small flag at the tug master. Froth surged at the tug’s counter and a wire hawser appeared dripping between the two ships as she gently but firmly pulled the cruiser’s elegant stern away from the piles.

Through it all the boatswain’s mate’s voice intruded like a bandsaw.

‘Signal intercepted from ss
Argyll Clansman
, sir.
Position latitude 41 degrees south, longitude 38 east. Am being attacked by German raider
.’

Blake watched the shadowed arrowhead of water expanding steadily between the ship’s side and the berth’s stout piles, the sunlight flooding down to fill it.

‘Let go forrard.’

His mind was like ice.
Frozen
. So that he could see and do all these things and still hang on to the seaman’s words.

The man said huskily, ‘No further transmission, sir.’

‘All clear forrard, sir!’

Fairfax said quickly, ‘Tell the W/T office to let me know if anything else comes.’

He turned and looked up to where Blake stood high on the gratings, his cap tilted over his dark glasses to hold back the fierce glare.

The ship, lean and beautiful, stood out at forty-five degrees from the berth and the line of bowing gantrys. Perfect.

If Blake felt any emotion or surprise at the signal he had not allowed it to interfere with his ship-handling. Even the harbour pilot was watching him with something like awe.

‘Slow astern together. Wheel amidships.’

Blake looked at the funnel with its growing plume of pale smoke. Then down towards the decks again, the white caps of the seamen flowing along either side as if independent of their owners as they hurried to secure the wires and fenders, the strops and lashings, until the next time.

Somewhere a ship had been killed. That last pathetic signal still hung over the bridge like an epitaph.

‘Stop together. Cast off from the tug, if you please. Tell her “thank you”, Yeoman.’

Villar was crouching over his gyro-compass, his eyes slitted in the sunlight.

Blake said, ‘Starboard twenty, slow ahead port.’

He waited for the bows to swing again, saw the land sliding away as if it and not the ship were moving.

‘Midships. Slow ahead together.’ He glanced impassively at the harbour pilot. ‘All yours.’

Blake realized he was staring at the Australian lieutenant and that the man was obviously expecting a reprimand or worse.

Blake asked, ‘Trevett, isn’t it? Well, I’d like you to help the navigating officer to maintain a special chart from now on. Positions, possible sightings, distances, anything which might help us to get the
feel
of the raider’s movements.’

He swung round and added sharply, ‘Tell the engineroom, less revs at present.’ He saw the harbour pilot’s shoulders relax slightly and added, ‘She may be a cruiser, but she reacts like a destroyer.’

The man grinned thankfully. ‘You can say that again, Cap’n. She’s quite a handful.’

Blake raised his glasses and trained them on the shore. On the last jetty he saw a parked car. In the back he recognized the shape of Captain Quintin, but beside it he saw the Wren officer, leaning against the door, her arms folded as she watched the cruiser turning slowly clear of the other shipping and towards the Bay.

Fairfax asked, ‘Shall I fall out harbour stations, sir?’

‘Yes. We will exercise action stations the moment we have dropped the pilot.’ He saw the surprise on Fairfax’s tanned features. ‘Everything. I want the new hands especially to get their confidence, their bearings.’ He gave a sad smile and touched Fairfax’s arm. ‘We’re back in the war, as of now.’

Blake felt a hand on his shoulder and in seconds was awake. For a moment longer he looked around the small sea cabin, getting his bearings, putting his mind in order once again. How different from those other times, he thought wearily, and it was still impossible to accept the vastness of this ocean, the emptiness.

In the Mediterranean there had rarely been an hour, let alone a day, without an aircraft sighting, a bombing attack, a rescue attempt for some poor, battered merchantman.

He turned and looked at Moon’s face, pale in the small light above the bunk. A cup of tea vibrated gently in his hand.

Moon said, ‘Dawn comin’ up, sir. Very quiet. As per usual, as they say, sir.’

The door closed silently behind him, but not before Blake heard the shipboard sounds which were part of his life. Shoes shuffling on deck and at gun sponsons, lookouts feeling the morning chill and their own frailty after hours of watchkeeping.

Blake put his feet on the scrap of carpet and felt
Andromeda
’s heartbeat pulsing up through each deck and flat, magazine and cabin. She was making nearly twenty knots, which after her short refit was asking a lot. If Weir was worried he was careful not to show it. He knew what was required and would speak out if he thought necessary.

Ten days out of Williamstown.
He sipped the scalding tea and thought about it. Just three days after the
Argyll Clansman
made her frantic call for help there had been another. An old Greek freighter named
Kios
, which but for the needs of war would have been in the breaker’s yard long since. She had lost her screw and had forgotten all the rules about security. She had been alone, stopped and helpless. There was not much her skipper could have done but fill the air with his calls for aid.

Then the signal had changed. Blake had been in the W/T office with Fairfax while Lougher, the Australian chief petty officer telegraphist, had tried to hold the feeble contact to the end. It was much like the last one, Blake thought. The
Kios
’s position, she was being attacked, then nothing. He tried not to think about the old freighter’s final moments, the terrible realization that the oncoming ship was not help but an assassin. He concentrated instead on the bare facts. That the Greek’s position was nine hundred miles east of the
Argyll Clansman’s. Nine hundred miles in three days.
That would put the raider’s speed at some fourteen knots. But what was the point of it? The German had no way of knowing if
assistance was already on its way to the Greek, so why the uneconomical dash, the waste and wear which would be alien to any commerce raider?