For Valour (10 page)

Perhaps he should have declined Wishart's eagerness to volunteer. The boy was untried, inexperienced. But this called for the nimble-footed and the quick-witted. The master mariners would have to wait.

He steadied himself as the ship turned more steeply, the sea spurting over the deck by the whaler's davits, looking at the big Carley float which would carry them to the tanker once the Skipper had worked round to offer a lee and to use the wind as an ally.
No heroics.
Just a brief moment, and the rift had gone. They trusted each other. They needed each other.

He cleared his throat. “Once in the float, secure the life-lines provided. We'll use the paddles, but we'll be depending mostly on the drift.”

He peered across one stooping figure and saw the tanker again, a good cable away, although from here it looked right alongside. Water pouring off the low superstructure in rivers, small breakers sweeping across the broad, red-leaded deck as if she was already going down. All that bloody fuel. How did men sail with lethal cargoes like that, time and time again?

Hakka
was altering course once more, making it seem as if the tanker had suddenly gathered way. A tiny figure stood up on her deck and waved jerkily, before ducking again as the sea boiled towards him.

It was little enough, but somebody gave a wild cheer. It was all they needed.

Fairfax jabbed the petty officer's arm. It felt like a piece of timber.

“Right, Buffer, man the tackles. Here we go!”

He tightened the strap of the Schermuly line-throwing pistol to make sure that the rocket was secured and glanced at the two men with the case containing the line. Like a piece of thread against this sea and wind. But it had been done in worse.

One of the men nodded to him. It was Forward. The wheelhouse was fully manned, and he had volunteered with a wry grin. “Might help with my promotion, sir!”

The youth Wishart was with him. An unlikely pair, but it seemed to work.

He thought of the other destroyer, churning back and forth, sweeping for any possible U-boat, although it was unlikely around here these days. Air cover, and the range of the new escort carriers had driven the wolf packs into deeper waters. But you could never be certain.

He tucked the towel more securely inside his upturned collar. He need not have bothered; it was already sodden. He could feel the St Christopher against his skin, the one she had given him after the party when they had sailed off to the Med. A pretty, laughing face, but he could not recall her name.

“Right, lads! Two at a time when I give the signal!”

He saw the line-handling party ready, their oilskins like wet coal in the dim light. Ossie Pike watching the blocks and the tackles, the way each man stood, how he was balanced.

Some wag called out, “Must be cushy enough if Jimmythe-One is goin'!”

That brought more laughs, and a lump to Fairfax's throat. In minutes they could all be drowned, or sucked into
Hakka
's churning screws. It had happened.

Wishart watched the big Carley float being swayed up and over the side. They said it would hold thirty men in an emergency. At least it was something to cling on to if the ship was going down. Against the dark waves it looked like a tiny dinghy.

He heard Forward say, “Once you're in, just hold on. Don't try to do anything! Got it?”

He nodded, his mouth too stiff with cold to form a reply. The Gunner (T) had been goading him again, backed up as usual by Morris, the leading hand of the quarterdeck, Malt's division. Morris was sweating on his next move up, to join a petty officer's course at Portsmouth. Without Malt's backing he stood little chance, and he knew it.

It was always the same. How he talked. How he looked. Even the wristwatch his parents had given him when he had joined up.
Real sailors don't wear pansy little watches now, do they?
Malt was good at it. Relished it.

When he had heard the clamour for volunteers he had not hesitated. He had not thought of danger or death. It was blind, resentful anger. And now he was here.

Eventually he managed to speak.

“Have you done this before, Bob?”

Forward came out of his thoughts and stared at him. Seeing the harm that old prat Malt had done, recognizing the fear.

“'Course. Dozens of times. Piece of cake!” He spat over the side as salt squirted into his face. “Stick with me.” He turned away to watch the first lieutenant, and to hide his surprise. It had worked. Like that day when the Channel guns had begun to fire, and the snotty had almost thrown up.

The Carley float was edging down, and down, until it was bouncing heavily on the broken water surging back from the stem.

Fairfax waited, counting seconds, watching the float rearing about like a mad thing. He could sense rather than hear the changing note of
Hakka
's engines, her flared side heeling to another turn of the wheel. He wanted to lean out and look up at the bridge, but he knew his resolve would shatter like glass if he did.

He could see them anyway, big Bill Spicer on the wheel, his face a mask of concentration, his attention confined to the voicepipe and the ticking gyro tape. The Chief down among his racing machinery, yelling soundlessly to his crew, the fans and shafts joining in like an orchestra gone berserk.

Kidd with his chart and his notes, soundings, tides and currents.
The enemy below.
And the Captain, who carried them all.

“Ready, sir!”

Fairfax felt the deck tilting again. It looked as if he could reach down and touch the sea.

He heard himself yell,
“Now!”
And then he was falling, reddened faces peering after him, the breath suddenly knocked out of his lungs as he hit the curved side of the float. Half-blinded by the spray, once with his head completely submerged, then his fingers fastened on one of the Buffer's lines and locked on to it like claws. The float was rising again, trying to dislodge him, the ship leaning right over him, with just enough speed to hold the tow alongside.

“Next!”
Anonymous figures sprawled beside him, one even managing to yell an obscenity before the fight for survival took charge.

And suddenly they were all there. Packed together, numbed fingers fastening their safety lines, eyes blind with spray, peering around seeking a friend or anything familiar, for that extra strength.

Fairfax jerked a paddle out of its fastening and shouted, “Together, lads!”

The float had been cast off from the destroyer's side but was still attached by another line, which was being paid out rapidly even as he watched.

He tried to peer ahead, to estimate their progress, or if they were moving at all. His breath was rasping, and the paddle weighed a ton. If he looked back he knew that
Hakka
would be out of sight, no matter how far they had come. The raft was rearing up and down, jerking at the remaining line as if to tear itself free and hurl its occupants to the sea.

Someone cried,
“Hold on, Tom! Keep going!”

Tom? Which one was that? But his brain refused to respond any more.

He thought of the photograph which had been found in the Skipper's quarters, recalling a sense of hurt and exclusion because he had not known who she was.

He could not manage more than a few strokes. He raised his head, gulping air, and there right above him was the tanker.

There were faces, too. Not many, but someone was lowering a ladder despite the deluge of sea and spray.

He heard himself shouting,
“Up you go! Chop-bloody-chop!”

Figures scrambled past him, someone even croaking an apology as he trod on Fairfax's hand.

Then, staggering like drunks from a dockside bar, they dragged themselves across the unfamiliar deck with its alien fittings. The float had already drifted away, or was being hauled back to the ship.

A voice shouted, “This way!”

Fairfax ducked beneath some glistening superstructure and made sure that his whole party was present, and felt his jaw crack into a grin.
No heroics.

“They did it!” Kidd could not contain his excitement and relief. “Old Jamie's got his lads aboard!”

“Let me see.” Martineau brushed past him, shielding his glasses from the pellets of spray while he waited for the bridge to level itself. He saw the Carley float swaying across the water, the towline rising and tightening like cheese-wire as the Buffer's party heaved on their tackles.

He managed to train his glasses on the tanker, and thought he saw some of Fairfax's men pulling themselves around the bridge. Several times during the attempt they had lost sight of the float in the deep troughs, as if it had been swallowed up completely.

He wiped the gyro repeater with his sleeve. “Bring her round, Pilot. We'll keep up to wind'rd while we can.” He ignored the terse helm orders, the sudden increase of revolutions, and studied the ill-assorted collection of vessels all drawn together like the lines on Kidd's chart. The tanker, with the small tug still attempting to hold her head on to the sea and wind. And the one rust-streaked corvette which must have been with the convoy when it first set out, as she had doubtless done countless times before. And the massive salvage tug
Goliath.
The contrast was at its greatest there, he thought. The little corvette, one of hundreds built for the Atlantic war and rolling off the stocks every day, was pitching like a toy boat. Lively ships at the best of times, this one was living up to their claim that they could roll on wet grass; he could see down her solitary funnel one moment, and the length of her bilge keel the next. By comparison
Goliath
remained like a reef, the sea surging around her and spray streaming from her derricks and upperworks like powdered snow.

There was not much the corvette could do now. Her depth charge racks were empty, evidence of the convoy's earlier encounters with the enemy. She would be short of fuel, too. But her commanding officer had signalled his determination to remain in company.
To watch my betters at work.

Martineau recalled something he had heard the King say at the Palace, about heroism and its just reward.

All these men were heroes. Someone should tell them.

“Steady on zero-two-zero, sir.” Kidd lowered his glasses. “
Jester
is taking up position to the west of us. If there's anyone nasty hanging about it's likely they'll come from that bearing.”

Lieutenant Arliss said, “Asdic reports back-echoes and interference to the north-east.” It sounded like a question.

Kidd said, “Isolated shallows. No real danger until the Seven Stones, but we should be well clear by then.”

Martineau eased himself into the chair. The light was holding, and even the sea seemed a little easier.
Goliath
would begin to close with the tanker, and Fairfax would be ready to make fast the tow if they managed to get a line across. Always tricky: it was sensible to have several ready to shoot in case of accidents.

He said, “I think we should rustle up something hot to drink,” and Kidd gestured to a messenger.

“Jump about, Tinker!”

He could sense the figures around him relaxing slightly. He gripped the pipe in his pocket again. There was water even in there.
Why can't I let things run on their own?
They were doing all they could. And they might easily have lost Fairfax and his volunteers.

Maybe I was ashore too long. Maybe I lost it, back there in
Firebrand.

There was a dull bang and he saw a puff of smoke from beneath
Goliath
's bridge.

There was a chorus of groans and a few jeers as the first line fell short.
Goliath
was edging round, her bulky shape shortening, her low stern almost lost in a welter of foam from her big screws. The two hulls were overlapping, an illusion perhaps, but time was running out.

Bang.

“I think so!” Kidd was standing on his toes to watch.
“Got it!”

Martineau wiped his glasses and tried again.
Goliath
was moving across the tanker's outline, cutting it in half like a giant gate, but not before he had seen the scurrying figures on the red-leaded plating, and a line rearing over the side like a serpent before being manhandled through a winch. The heavier towing wire would follow immediately. Without Fairfax's party it was unlikely they could have managed it.

Somebody cried out, “Bloody hell! Man overboard!”

Martineau caught the briefest glimpse of a tiny figure flinging out his arms, perhaps trying to regain his balance, before vanishing over the tanker's side.

Kidd said softly, “Poor bastard!”

Cavaye's voice intruded. “
Jester
reports a contact at two-eight-zero.
Investigating.
”