To Risks Unknown (35 page)

He felt the sweat like ice rime across his forehead. Another minute. Just one more minute and they would have turned away. Or Willis might have left his set for a few seconds and missed those tiny, flickering blobs of light.

Wemyss said, ‘The old girl's getting her head.'

The
Thistle
was certainly moving. Fourteen, fifteen, then sixteen knots, and still the speed mounted. Her builders would have been proud to see her, Crespin thought.

‘Target's range oh-two-oh, sir!' Even Willis sounded vaguely surprised.

‘Stand by star-shell.' Crespin gripped the rail below the shivering glass screen. Surely someone on that escort would see them soon? Two thousand yards was a long way at night, but the
Thistle
's great bow wave must be standing out in the darkness like the crest of an iceberg.

Below the bridge the Oerlikons shifted uneasily, their thin muzzles clearly etched against the frothing water on either beam. The
Thistle
mounted six all told, and at close range their rapid fire was murderous. But it had to be
close
.

‘Tell Porteous to set depth charges at minimum, Number One. Just in case we get a chance to drop them.' He thought suddenly of that other time, when Porteous had been unable to move. But that was a long time back. A hundred years. An eternity.

‘Escort ship is turning, sir!' Willis's voice was shrill with suppressed tension.

‘We don't want to waste time with him.' Crespin saw the faces watching him around the bridge, pale and unreal. ‘The trooper is the one we want.'

He wondered briefly if the troopship's captain had noticed anything. He doubted it. It was said to be an old, three-thousand-ton coaster, and being crammed with troops and their equipment her captain would be too eager to reach port and get rid of his human cargo to care much about the activities of his escorts.

A diamond-bright light flashed across the water, and for an instant Crespin thought the escort had opened fire.

Leading Signalman Griffin said, ‘'E's makin' 'is challenge, sir.'

Crespin nodded. ‘Reply to it.'

Griffin sucked his teeth and cradled the Aldis on his forearm. He was too old a hand to be flustered, and the shutter clicked rapidly on his lamp as if he was indeed replying to a friendly ship.

The other light came again, the escort's signalman probably confused by the meaningless jumble from Griffin's lamp.

He showed his teeth in a grin. ‘Agin, sir?'

Willis called, ‘Troopship's range is now increasing, sir. He must have called for full speed.'

That decided it. Crespin snapped, ‘Open fire!'

The bell jangled briefly before Shannon's gun lurched back on its mounting, the thunderclap of the detonation smashing across the bridge and blotting out every other sound.

Shannon must have heeded Crespin's warning very carefully. The range and bearing was perfect, for as the flare exploded against the low clouds Crespin saw the troopship, almost stern on, less than a mile away. She looked high in the water, and in the brilliant light the smoke from her two funnels writhed above her propeller wash in an unbroken brown fog.

The escort was little more than a converted trawler, high bowed, with a gun mounted right forward above the stem.

Crespin saw the cream of her bow wave as she swung hard over, the glass of her wheelhouse windows glittering in the flare like eyes. Tiny figures were running aft, and he knew that the captain would try to drop smoke floats to shield his ponderous consort.

Shannon's voice was incisive. ‘
Shoot!
'

This time it was no star-shell. Crespin gripped his glasses against his eyes and flinched as the water-spout rose like a ghost in direct line with the escort's bridge.

Shannon snapped, ‘Up two hundred!' An empty shellcase clanged unheeded on the quivering plating. ‘Shoot!'

The shell smashed into the little ship's superstructure and exploded with a bright orange flash. Fragments and jets of escaping steam burst through the smoke, and above it the single funnel swayed and then pitched down like a tree under the axe.

The next shell hit the escort somewhere on the waterline, and there was hardly any flash at all. But the ship stopped instantly, the bow wave falling away to nothing even as the
Thistle
swept out of the smoke, her Oerlikons ripping across the short waves with bright lines of tracer, tossing aside the German gunners who were still struggling to train their weapon towards them, then creeping still further along the escort's listing hull.

Crespin swung his glasses to watch the trooper. She was turning to port, making for the protection of the island.

‘Port ten!' He crossed the bridge, shouting above the rattle of gun-fire, the splintering detonations from the sinking escort. ‘Stand by to shift target!' He pounded the screen with his fist. ‘Midships!' God, the trooper looked damned big in the dipping flare. Big and old.

He heard Shannon yelling, the click of the breech block, and then the ear-probing bang of the four-inch. He saw the shell explode under the trooper's poop. Just a pinprick of glowing light, like an ember from a fire. But below decks, with troops crowded and hemmed in by chaos and awakened crewmen, it would be enough to start a real panic.

‘Shoot!'

Crespin saw a thin line of tracer coming at him from the trooper's bridge. Probably a light machine-gun. Some of the bullets cracked and shrieked against the bridge and others whispered overhead like souls in torment.

Another of Shannon's shells exploded somewhere on the troopship's boatdeck, and instantly fanned into a wall of dancing yellow flames. A paint store or some carelessly stowed cargo had caught alight, and marked the ship's progress better than any flare.

The
Thistle
was overtaking her, steadily and remorselessly, so that as the careering troopship drifted across her port bow the Oerlikons, and then the harsher thump, thump, thump of the pom-pom, joined in the din of battle.

‘Second escort closing, sir! Green two-oh!'

An arc of red tracer lifted from the darkness and floated down across the forecastle.

From aft Crespin heard Sub-Lieutenant Defries calling to his gunners and the sporadic response as the disengaged Oerlikons returned fire.

He felt the bridge shudder, the telltale whine and crash of cannon shells hitting home. A man was screaming, another called desperately, ‘Fred! Help me, Fred, for God's sake!'

Crespin wiped his streaming eyes and peered at the troopship. She was still turning. God, to lose her now, after all this!

‘Port twenty!' He felt the rudder pulling the ship over. ‘Midships!'

Water swept over the rail and surged unheeded along the side deck.

‘Stand by depth-charges!' He craned over the swaying screen as a messenger spoke into the handset. He saw Porteous crouching by the quarterdeck thrower with his small crew, watched him as he lifted his hand to point as the trooper rose out of the dark sea like a cliff.

A young signalman was hanging on to a voice-pipe, his voice cracking with shock. ‘Look! Look at them soljers!'

Crespin steadied the glasses again. What he had taken for deck cargo suddenly blossomed in the lenses in a great seething mass of figures. They were everywhere. On the blazing boatdeck and down on the hold covers. On every ladder and part of the bridge. Like one, undulating, living thing.

A seaman called, ‘Depth-charge crew ready, sir!'

Crespin felt the tracers whipping over the bridge but could not drag his eyes from the scene of terror and desperate confusion. Some of the soldiers were even leaping or falling over the side, small feathers of white spray to be lost and swallowed in the ship's churning propellers.

He held his breath, counting seconds. The
Thistle
surged past the other ship's side, so close that it was possible to hear the crackle of flames and isolated pistol shots, and above all the combined roar of hundreds of voices, like a sea breaking on reefs.

‘Fire!'

The depth-charges jerked away, hardly noticed by the sweating gunners as they fired and reloaded with the fierce intensity of madmen.

The explosions were hollow and metallic, hammers on an oil drum. As the pyramids of water leapt skywards Crespin saw the troopship give one great convulsive shudder and then appear to fall sideways in a welter of falling spray.

Wemyss was yelling, ‘God that was close!'

Crespin realized dully that there was a thin line of surf right across the bows. They were driving headlong for the nearest island with hardly room left to turn.

Another great explosion jarred the hull beneath him and as he ducked over the voice-pipe he saw the troopship sagging on her beam, vehicles and crated equipment thundering across her tilting decks before smashing on and over the rail.

‘Hard astarboard!'

He ran back to the side as the deck tilted wildly and threw the lookouts into a tangled heap of arms and legs.

The troopship had broken her back, and as the bows lifted wearily through the smoke and the pressurised haze of escaping steam he saw the soldiers falling and kicking like animals as they fought to escape the flames.

An Oerlikon fired a long burst from aft, and the low clouds were painted afresh with even brighter colours as the savage tracer ignited some drums of fuel below the troopship's bridge.

Sickened, Crespin watched the fire running like glowing lava down the broken ship's side, spreading across the water, isolating and consuming the screaming men, devouring them and driving them mad in those last few moments of horror.

He pulled himself against the gyro, feeling the bile in his throat, the sick disgust for what they were doing.

‘Midships!' He heard a mumbled reply and knew that it was a quartermaster on the wheel and not Joicey.

He snapped, ‘Is the coxswain all right?'

But it was Joicey's voice again. ‘I'm here, sir! Wheel's amidships!'

Crespin knew Joicey had left the wheel. To see the Germans burn. To watch them die in such a frightful horror.

‘Steer two-four-five!' He left the voice-pipe and crossed to the screen. The flames were already dropping astern, the last half of the broken ship black in their middle like a dying whale. Of the second escort there was no sign, and with a start he realized he had not even seen it when it had first opened fire.

Wemyss was watching him, his face like bronze in the fires. ‘Report damage and casualties, Number One.' Crespin met his gaze and added flatly, ‘Mission accomplished.'

Wemyss nodded. As he moved back to the chattering voice-pipes his shoulders were hunched, so that he looked like an old man.

Crespin leaned his forehead on his arm and swallowed hard. They had died as his men had died. He should have felt nothing but satisfaction.

He heard a man whimpering with pain and the sounds of more cries from aft. There was still a great deal to do before making the dangerous passage to Gradz, and Scarlett.

But he had to wait a little longer. To wait and think. He tried to remember that small moment of peace when he had left Brindisi just two nights ago, but it was gone. It left him sick and empty.

Wemyss was speaking on a voice-pipe and he heard feet clattering up the bridge ladders. Demands and requests for instructions. Casualties or men to be buried. It was no use. The ship could not wait. So nor could he.

He straightened his back and turned to face the others. ‘Very good,' he said. ‘A very successful attack!'

THE
THISTLE
'S ARRIVAL
at the inlet was both impressive and emotional. After the short, savage attack on the convoy and the nerve-racking dash through the remaining darkness, the greeting which awaited the weary sailors was staggering.

From every niche and ledge on the towering sides of the inlet, from headland and half-submerged rocks they were cheered by what seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of men, women and children. Some even waded thigh-deep into the shallows by the village, ignoring the ice-cold water as they stared and waved at the approaching ship.

Next to a torpedo boat, a corvette was just about the smallest warship in commission, but to the Yugoslavs, so long starved of help, isolated and faced by an overwhelming enemy, the little
Thistle
's two hundred feet must have seemed like a battle-cruiser.

Crespin stood high on the gratings as he conned his ship slowly through the narrow entrance and up the side of the overhanging cliffs. Even for the
Thistle
it was a close fit, and as he edged the ship ahead and astern, using the single screw to turn her almost in her own length, he was all the time conscious of the growing sunlight and the need for haste.

Along the Dalmatian coast telephones would be ringing, senior officers would be called from their beds to hear the news of the sunken troopship. The word would be flashed to airfields and coastal patrols alike and begin a massive search. At any second a spotter plane might come down across the inlet and
Thistle
's secret would be out.

He watched narrowly as the entrance swung slowly across the bows once more. It was better to have the ship pointing seaward, just in case.

‘Let go!' He saw Shannon drop his hand and heard the rumbling response from the outgoing cable. It was difficult to concentrate, hard to accept that they had arrived, especially as the ship seemed hemmed in on every side by dinghies, fishing boats and anything else which would stay afloat, while their cheering occupants stared up at the bullet-scarred corvette, heedless or unaware of their own danger from her swinging bow and the urgent thrashing of her screw.

Crespin had already dropped the motor boat as he had entered the inlet, and now as he craned over the screen he could see Petty Officer Dunbar and a small party of men drifting astern, laying out one more anchor to stop the ship from swinging against some projecting rock or into the cliff itself.