Send a Gunboat (1960) (36 page)

Herridge shook his head, his eye straying to the pale shape of Ursula Laker. Her long legs were directly beneath the lamp and shone with a disembodied brightness, which fascinated him. She was a fine girl, he mused, well built, and she knew it, too. His thoughts were interrupted by Laker’s demanding voice, and he wearily gave the man his attention.

“We’ll have a bit more firing in a minute, I expect, sir.” Charles Masters gripped his wife even closer in the darkness, and Herridge softened his tone. “But the Captain knows what he’s about!”

“Those damned Chinks!” Laker rocked back on his seat with sudden rage. “I’d like to get my hands on some of them!”

Herridge glanced quickly at the two stewards, but their blank faces told him nothing. “Well, try to remember, sir, that two of them have just been killed up top. Fighting for you,” he added mildly.

There was a pregnant silence, and Herridge began to mount the ladder. “By the way,” he spoke across their heads, “if you get the order to come on deck. Do it at the rush! And keep together!” He pushed back the hatch and felt the sun hard on his head.

“There’s no need to throw your weight about!” Laker seemed to be trying to regain his prestige in front of the others.

Herridge glanced at him stonily. “You’ll do yourself a bit of good to obey orders, sir.” He spoke with flat politeness. “You’re next to the magazine!”

He felt childishly pleased with his lie as he climbed out on to the deck. He stood aside as two seamen carried Lane down into the darkness on a stretcher. Stuck-up bugger, he thought. I hope his daughter hasn’t got any of his ways.

Rolfe’s eyes were beginning to dance and burn in their sockets, as he stared from the bridge to the islands, and from the rocks to a small feather of spray, which might be hiding a reef.

He almost jumped as a voice spoke quietly at his elbow.

“Nice mug of iced beer, Captain-sir?” Chao stood respectfully at his side, his dark eyes tired and fearful. He nevertheless smiled as Rolfe lifted the huge mug to his parched lips, and drank deeply. “Sorry about mug. All wardroom crockery smashed!”

Rolfe watched the boy affectionately, wondering if he and Judith had really been marooned on a distant rock with this brown elf. “That’s too bad, Chao. But the beer tastes all the better!”

Chao still waited.

“Well? What’s on your mind?” Rolfe kept his eye on the nearest strip of beach.

“Miss Judith. I think we better get her down to deck, Captain-sir! It not safe up here any more!” He glanced around the shambles and fallen wreckage.

“It’s as safe as the rest of the ship,” he said slowly, “but I am relying on you to keep an eye on her for me!”

Something of the old smile flashed across the round face. “Very good! I stay up here too then!”

“That’s what you really wanted, isn’t it?”

Chao placed the mug carefully on the tray, his features masked in tired gravity. “That is so, Captain-sir.”

“Two fathoms, sir!” The voice was getting weary and cracked, but Rolfe nodded briefly and raised his glasses to study a small fishing boat which had appeared round one of the beaches. It was being sculled by a thin, bearded man in a wide straw hat. He neither looked up nor slackened his stroke with the long sweep-oar, as the gunboat bore down and passed him.

Overhead, a white line of gulls circled watchfully above the tiny boat waiting for the fish to appear. It was so peaceful and so strangely beautiful that he felt a lump in his throat. How could anyone begin to understand China?

Vincent stirred on the other side of the bridge and cleared his throat. “Alter course, sir? I estimate our position to be just to the north-west of the last group. That means we’ve got two more hours of cover to go.” He seemed to be speaking half to himself, and Rolfe watched him thoughtfully.

Vincent seemed to be making an almost superhuman effort to appear calm and natural, and he felt relieved that the man was trying to help him. “Yes, alter course,” he answered distantly.

“Port fifteen!” Vincent peered at the compass. “Midships! Steady!”

The gunboat tugged rebelliously at the rudders, but slowly swung on to the new course.

“Steady, sir! Course One-eight-five!” The helmsman looked as if he was riveted to the wheel. As if he had been there for ever.

“Steer One-eight-six!” Vincent chuckled strangely, amused by his own preciseness.

Rolfe caught his eye and smiled grimly. It did seem rather stupid to imagine that any careful effort of navigation could be of any assistance to them.

“Two more fishing boats!” the look-out reported. The small wooden craft floated motionless on the glassy sea, their sails folded like the tattered wings of sleeping birds.

The machine-guns on the bridge swung menacingly towards them, but the harmless vessels drifted past, and bobbed gaily in the gunboat’s wake.

Food and drink was passed round the ship, the stewards creeping furtively between each group of waiting seamen. Nobody spoke, and few noticed what they had eaten. Their throats became dry almost as soon as they had finished the water, and they knew that, for once, the sun was not solely to blame.

Rolfe examined the pencilled line across the chart. Their escape line from Santu. It was as if a magnet had drawn them closer and closer to the waiting mainland. He cursed aloud, defying his weakness and imagination. The islands were fading away, and he remembered when he had waited for the fog to lift, so long ago, in the North Sea. He had been searching for a crippled U-Boat, which was hiding in the fog, hanging on to the thread of life.

The fog had gone, and they had gone in to the kill.

He stared at the printed shapes of the islands on the chart and realized just how that U-Boat commander must have felt when his cover and protection faded away.

There was one island, quite apart from the remainder, which would be their last barrier against the destroyer. After that, the sea-bottom shelved down and dropped away to a bottomless cavern. The field would be open then.

“Tell the guns to prepare to shoot when we clear this group,” he called wearily. “We shall cross to the last island, and although the water is still shallow, it’s a bit deeper than here, and the target will close in a bit more, I think.”

He heard Vincent passing the instructions and he straightened up, feeling the stiffness in his limbs.

He listened to the empty shell cases rolling across the gun platform as the ship swung heavily into a sullen roller, and dipped her waterlogged bows with tired resignation. Poor old girl, he thought, it’s unfair to you, as much as the rest of us.

The islands began to fall away, and they moved into the open stretch of sea with what appeared to be terrible slowness. Unlike the first time, there were no sharp commands, and few sounds of any kind, but for the muffled hammering in the engine-room. Their uneven shadow twisted across the water, and Rolfe could feel every eye on the distant sea and its threatening emptiness.

“Three fathoms, sir!”

He pulled the creased chart urgently against the rail and studied the tiny figures denoting the various depths and the positions of the nearest rock formations.

The sea ahead of the
Wagtail
was empty and flat, yet the chart showed the continuation of the reef barrier, which seemed to surround most of the islands in grim detail and closely packed profusion.

He cursed himself for not taking it into consideration earlier. The echo sounder would give little warning of a sudden shelf or rocky crag just beneath the surface. The muscle in his jaw began to twitch, and he dashed the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.

Vincent sucked in his breath in a loud gasp. “There she is, sir! Dead astern!”

Rolfe plunged to his side, his glasses already to his eyes. He found that he did not need them. The destroyer, frustrated and angered by his decoy, was charging recklessly along the islands, her guns trained inland, covering every inlet and creek. Her high, raked stem was covered by her powerful bow-wave as it cu savagely through the sea. Less than a mile away she seemed to fill the horizon with her plunging shape, and blot out their chance of even reaching the last island.

The bells rang once more, and the
Wagtail’s
gun barked viciously overhead. It was pointing practically dead astern, and a hot shock-wave forced its way into the bridge and made Rolfe stagger with its intensity.

He saw the four guns swing round towards him, and in no time at all, the sea about the
Wagtail
was a raging torment of boiling water and screaming shells.

The little gunboat halted in her uneven track as a shell struck her dead on the superstructure.

It penetrated the seamen’s messdeck and exploded with a deafening roar inside the small steel compartment. For a few moments the ship vibrated and cracked, as a hail of white-hot splinters whined and banged in every direction, and pieces of heavy equipment were hurled high into the air, with the ease of a boy throwing stones.

Something rolled noisily across the Battery deck and clattered over the side. Rolfe saw that it was the barrel of the Oerlikon gun. It had been directly above the explosion, so it was pointless to look for the gunner.

Chase could still be heard shouting and cursing above the noise of burning woodwork and exploding ammunition, while his men tried vainly to spot the destroyer through the billowing pall of smoke, which was rising above the decks in an impenetrable cloud.

Rolfe heard Herridge, too, as he led a party of seamen with fire extinguishers and axes towards the blaze, and watched their puny figures swallowed up in the smoke.

The helmsman was retching helplessly, but grimly holding to the wheel, his eyes smarting and pouring in the fumes which were rapidly filling the wheelhouse.

“Open all the bridge shutters! Vincent, check with the engine-room and report damage to hull!” He noticed that the destroyer had stopped using her main armament, probably because of the smoke which was masking her target, but his heart felt numb as he heard the rattle of machine-guns and the lashing of steel hail along the gunboat’s hull.

“Hull not making any more water!” Vincent’s eyes rolled as a burst of bullets hammered at the bridge. “But Chief says that the port fuel tank is damaged and we’re leaking fuel behind us all the time!”

Rolfe looked for the last island, but it was as far away as before, jeering at him beneath the sun.

“Very good. Get the passengers on deck. Midships, starboard
side. That’ll give them a bit of cover from the machine-gun fire.”

Vincent faltered at the voice pipe. “Does that mean we’re baling out, sir?”

“It means, do as you’re told!” barked Rolfe, his body tensed as another burst of firing echoed and clanged around them.

Even if we shook her off now, he thought, we’d never make it. They’d just follow our trail. A nice clear track of oil, with the prize at the end of it!

“Herridge has gone to get the people on deck, sir.” Vincent’s voice was a mere whisper.

Rolfe nodded, his slitted eyes watching their remaining mast drag alongside, held only by the trailing mess of stays and halyards. He raised his voice harshly above the din.

“Chao! Get Mr. Fallow in here! See if you can get a lifejacket on him!”

It didn’t really matter if he had a lifejacket or not, he thought, not any more. But Judith would be kept busy until the end. Perhaps too busy to see what had happened.

Herridge fought his way over the twisted plates, feeling their heat through his shoes and marvelling that the ship was still beneath him.

He wrenched back the hatch, ducking, as a bullet whined hotly over his shoulder, like an enraged hornet.

“On deck there! Clear the storeroom at the double!”

He seized their groping hands and steadied their shoulders, as they scrambled over the coaming, and followed the beckoning seamen to the safety of the other deck.

Herridge gripped Ursula’s hand as she stumbled against the torn planks and thrust his face close to hers.

“Keep calm! No need to start falling all over the blessed place!”

She seemed to take hold of her reeling senses and paused to stare at his brown, grinning face.

“I’m trying,” she gasped. “I thought that last bang was the end!”

“We’ve not even started yet!” He squeezed her hand warmly, and pulled her after the others.

Laker slumped against the guardrail, his face ashen. He fumbled blindly with his bright lifejacket, his mouth hanging
loose and wet, and his body jerking to each crash of the gun, and with every nerve-jarring explosion.

“Done for!” His voice was thick and almost inaudible. “Trapped like rats!”

Herridge half listened to him, and kept his eyes on his men, as they hacked at the broken mast with their axes. It fell away and was immediately lost astern in the smoke.

“All right, drop those axes and get below to check the bulkheads! Any new cracks report to me at once!”

The stocky Chinese seamen ran aft, jumping across Lane’s stretcher like nimble rabbits.

Laker closed his eyes and gripped the rail more tightly. “Will it never stop? What will happen to us now?”

Herridge jerked round as the silent figure on the stretcher suddenly bounded to its feet. Edgar Lane, in his pyjamas, and with a sheet still flapping loosely round his thin body, looked like a newly arisen corpse.

He cleared the space between himself and the cringing man at the rails in one bound, and thrust his bandaged head close to Laker’s face, before anyone realized what was happening.

“You cowardly swine!” His voice was like a thin scream. “You’re to blame for all this! You bloody murderer!”

He swung up his arm, and Herridge saw the axe which Lane must have taken from the deck.

Laker bellowed in terror and forced his huge body backwards over the rail.

Herridge’s fist fastened around the man’s wrist like a steel band and, as he forced his knee up into Lane’s back, he saw the blade of the axe falter and fall away harmlessly to his side.

The guardrail, scarred and weakened like the rest of the ship, creaked beneath Laker’s sudden weight and then, with a soft crack, the wire parted and Herridge caught a brief glimpse of Laker’s kicking legs and wide, soundless mouth, before he disappeared into the thrashing foam at the ship’s side.