by Wilbur Smith
He swivelled his stool and looked back over his stern. The destroyer was visible to the unaided eye now, and von Kleine frowned at it in irritation. She would yap at his heels like a terrier, clinging to him and shouting his course and speed across the ether to the hungry British squadrons, that must even now be closing with him from every direction. For days now he could expect to see her sitting in his wake.
– 43 –
‘Come on! Come on!’ Charles Little slapped his hand impatiently against the padded arm of his stool as he watched Orion.
For a night and a day he had watched her gaining on Blücher but so infinitesimally slowly that it required his range finder to confirm the gain every thirty minutes.
Orion’s bows were unnaturally high, and the waves she lifted with the passage of her hull through the water were the white wings of a seagull in the tropical sunlight; for Manderson, her captain, had pumped out her forward fresh-water tanks and fired away half the shell and explosive propellant from her forward magazines. Every man whose presence in the front half of the ship was not essential to her operation had been ordered aft to stand on the open deck as human ballast – all this in an effort to lift Orion’s bows and to coax another inch of speed from the cruiser.
Now she faced the most dangerous hour of her life, for she was creeping within extreme range of Blücher’s terrible nine-inch armament, and, taking into account the discrepancy in their speeds, it would be another hour before she could bring her own six-inch guns to bear. During that time she would be under fire from Blücher’s after turrets and would have no answer to them.
It was heart-breaking for Charles to watch the chase, for Bloodhound had not once been asked to extend herself. Below there was a reserve of speed that would allow her to close with Blücher in fifty minutes of steaming – always provided she was not smashed into a fiery shambles long before.
Thus the three vessels fled towards the ever-receding northern horizon. The two long shapes of the cruisers flying arrow straight, solid columns of reeking smoke pouring from the triple funnels to besmear the gay, glittering surface of the sea with a long double bank of black that dispersed only slowly on the easterly breeze; while, like a water beetle, the diminutive Bloodhound circled out to the side of Blücher from where, when the time came, she could spot the fall of Orion’s shells more accurately and signal the corrections to her. But always Bloodhound tactfully kept outside the fifteen-mile radius which marked the length of Blücher’s talons.
‘We can expect Blücher to open fire at any moment now, sir,’ the navigating lieutenant commented as he straightened up from the sextant, over which he had been measuring the angle subtended by the two cruisers.
Charles nodded in agreement. ‘Yes. Von Kleine must try for a few lucky hits, even at that range.’
‘This isn’t going to be very pretty to watch.’
‘We’ll just have to sit tight, keep our fingers crossed, and hope old Orion can—’ He stopped abruptly, and then jumped up from his stool. ‘Hello! Blücher’s up to something!’
The silhouette of the German cruiser had altered drastically in the last few seconds. The gap between her funnels widened and now Charles could see the humped menace of her forward turrets.
‘By God, she’s altering course! The bloody bastard is bringing all his turrets to bear!’
Lieutenant Kyller studied his captain’s face. In sleep there was an air of serenity about the man. It reminded Kyller of a painting he had seen in the cathedral at Nümberg, a portrait of Saint Luke by Holbein. The same fine bone structure, the golden-blond beard and moustache that framed the mobile and sensitive lips. He pushed the idea aside and leaned forward. Gently he touched von Kleine’s shoulder.
‘Captain. My Captain,’ and von Kleine opened his eyes. They were smoky blue with sleep but his voice was crisp.
‘What is it, Kyller?’
‘The gunnery officer reports the enemy will be within range in fifteen minutes.’
Von Kleine swivelled his stool and looked quickly about his ship. Above him the smoke poured from every funnel, and from the mouth of each stack a volcano of sparks and shimmering heat blew steadily. The paint had blistered and peeled from the metal of the funnels and they glowed red hot, even in the sunlight. Blücher was straining herself far beyond the limits her makers had set. God alone knew what injury this constant running at full speed was doing her, and von Kleine winced as he felt her tremble in protest beneath him.
He turned his eyes astern. The British cruiser was hull up on the horizon now. The difference in their speeds must be a small fraction of a knot, but Blücher’s superiority in fire power was enormous.
For a moment he allowed himself to ponder the arrogance of a nation that constantly, almost by choice, matched their men and ships against unnatural odds. Always they sent terriers to fight against wolfhounds. Then he smiled, you had to be English or mad, to understand the English.
He glanced out to starboard. The British destroyer had worked out on to his flank. It could do little harm from there.
‘Very well, Kyller …’ He stood as he spoke.
‘Bridge – Engine Room,’ the voice-tube squealed.
‘Engine Room – Bridge.’ Kyller turned to it.
‘Our port main bearing is running red hot. I must shut down our port engine!’
The words struck von Kleine like a bucket of iced water thrown down his back. He leaped to the voice-tube.
‘This is the Captain. I must have full power for another hour!’
‘I can’t do it, sir. Another fifteen minutes and the main drive shaft will seize up. God knows what damage it will do.’
For five seconds von Kleine hunched silently over the voice-tube. His mind raced. On one engine Blücher would lose ten knots on her speed. The enemy would be able to manoeuvre about him freely – possibly hold off until nightfall and then … He must attack immediately; turn on them and press his attack home with all his armament.
‘Give me full power for as long as you can,’ he snapped, and then turning to the gunnery officer’s tube, ‘This is the Captain. I am turning four points to starboard, and will keep the enemy directly on our starboard beam for the next fifteen minutes. After that I will be forced to reduce speed. Open fire when you bear.’ Von Kleine snapped the cover closed and turned to his yeoman of signals. ‘Hoist the battle ensign!’
He spoke softly, without heat, but there were lights in his eyes like those in a blue sapphire.
– 44 –
‘There she goes!’ whispered Charles Little without lowering his glasses. Upon the black turrets of Blücher the gun-fire gleamed and sparkled without sound. Quickly he traversed his glasses across the surface of the sea until he found Orion. She was plunging in eagerly, narrowing the gap very rapidly between herself and Blücher. In another seven minutes she would be able to return the German’s fire.
Suddenly, a quarter of a mile ahead of her, there rose from the sea a series of tall columns, stately as the columns of a Greek temple, slender and beautiful, shining like white marble in the sun. Then slowly they dropped back.
‘Short,’ grunted the navigating lieutenant.
‘Her guns are still cold,’ Charles commented. ‘Please God let old Orion get within range.’
Again Blücher’s shells fell short, and short again, but each time they were closer to the low bulk of Orion, and the next broadside dropped all around her, partially screening her with spray, and Orion started to zigzag.
‘Another three minutes,’ the navigating lieutenant spoke with tension making his voice husky.
At regular intervals of fifteen seconds the German salvos fell around Orion – once within fifty feet of her bows so that as she tore into the standing columns of spray, they blew back over her and mingled with the black smoke of her funnels.
‘Come on, old girl! Go in and get her. Go on! Go on!’ Charles was gripping the rail in front of him and cheering like a maniac, all the dignity of his rank and his thirty-five years gone in t
he tense excitement of the battle. It had infected all of them on the bridge of the destroyer, and they capered and shouted with him.
‘There she blows!’ howled the lieutenant.
‘She’s opened fire!’
‘Go it, Orion, go it!’
On Orion’s forward turrets gun-fire sparkled, then again and again. The harsh roll of the broadsides carried to them against the light wind.
‘Short,’ groaned Charles. ‘She’s still out of range.’
‘Short again!’
‘Still short.’
Each time the call of shot was signalled by the chief yeoman at the Aldis lamp, and briefly acknowledged from Orion’s bridge-works.
‘Oh my God,’ moaned Charles.
‘She’s hit!’ echoed his lieutenant.
A flat yellow glare, like sheet lightning on a summer’s day, lit Orion’s afterdeck, and almost immediately a ball of yellowish grey smoke enveloped her. Through it Charles saw her after-funnel sag drunkenly and hang back at an unnatural angle.
‘She’s holding on!’
Orion emerged from the shell smoke and dragged it after her like a funeral cloak, but her speed seemed unabated, and the regular salvos burned briefly and brightly on her forward turrets.
‘Now she’s hitting,’ exulted the lieutenant, and Charles turned quickly to see shell-fire burst on Blücher, and his wide grin split his face.
‘Kill her! Kill her!’ he roared; knowing that though Blücher was better armed yet she was as vulnerable as Orion. Her plating was egg-shell thin and the six-inch shells that crashed through it would be doing her terrible damage.
Now the two cruisers were pounding each other. The range was closing so rapidly that soon they must hit with every broadside. This was a contest from which only one ship, or neither of them, would emerge.
Charles was trying to estimate the damage that had been inflicted upon Blücher during the last few minutes. She was on fire forward. Sulphur-yellow flames poured from her, her upperworks were riven into a grotesque sculpture of destruction, and a pall of smoke enveloped her, so her profile was shadowy and vague, yet every fifteen seconds her turrets lit with those deadly little flashes.
Charles turned to assess the relative damage that Orion had suffered. He found and held her with his binoculars – and at that moment Orion ceased to exist.
Her boilers, pierced by high explosive shell, burst and tore her in half. A cloud of white steam spurted five hundred feet into the air, completely blanketing her. The steam hung for thirty seconds, then sagged wearily, and rolled aside. Orion was gone. A wide circle of oil slick and floating debris marked her grave. The speed of her charge had run her clean under.
On the bridge of Bloodhound, the cheering strangled into deathly silence. The silence was not spoiled but rather accentuated by the mournful note of the wind in her rigging and the muted throb of her engines.
– 45 –
For eight long hours Charles Little had ridden his anger and his hatred, using the curb to hold it on the right side of madness, resisting the consuming and suicidal urge to hurl his ship at the German cruiser and die as Orion had died.
Immediately after the sinking of Orion, the Blücher had reduced speed sharply and turned due south. With her fires still raging, she had limped along like a gun-shot lion. The battle ensigns at her masthead were tattered by shrapnel and blackened by smoke.
As soon as she had passed, Bloodhound altered course and cruised slowly over the area of water that was still rainbowed by floating oil and speckled with wreckage. There were no survivors from Orion; all of them had died with her.
Bloohound turned and trailed after the crippled German cruiser, and the hatred that emanated from the destroyer was of such strength that it should have reached out across the sea as a physical force and destroyed Blücher.
But as Charles Little stood at the rail of his bridge, he saw the smoke and flame upon Blücher’s decks reduce perceptibly every minute as her damage control teams fought it to a standstill. The last wisp of smoke from her shrivelled.
‘Fire’s out,’ said the pilot, and Charles made no answer. He had hoped that the flames would eat their way into one of Blücher’s magazines and blow her into the same oblivion into which she had sent Orion.
‘But she isn’t making more than six knots. Orion must have hit her in the engine room.’ Hopefully the navigating lieutenant went on, ‘My bet is that she’s got major damage below. At this speed we can expect Pegasus and Renounce to catch up with us by midday tomorrow. The Blücher will stand no chance!’
‘Yes,’ agreed Charles softly.
Summoned by Bloodhound’s frantic radio transmissions, Pegasus and Renounce, the two heavy cruisers of the northern squadron, were racing down the East African coast, cutting through the five hundred miles of water that separated them.
– 46 –
‘Kyller. Ask the chief how he’s making out.’ Von Kleine was fretting beneath the calm set of his features. Night was closing, and in the darkness, even the frail little English destroyer was a danger to him. There was danger all around, danger must each minute be approaching from every quarter of the sea. He must have power on his port side engine before nightfall; it was a matter of survival; he must have speed to carry him south through the hunting packs of the British – south to where Esther waited to give him succour, to replace the shell he had fired away, to replenish his coal bunkers which were now dangerously depleted. Then once more Blücher would be a force to reckon with. But first he must have speed.
‘Captain.’ Kyller was beside him again. ‘Commander Lochtkamper reports they have cleared the oil line to the main bearing. They have stripped the bearing and there is no damage to the shaft. He is fitting new half shells. The work is well advanced, sir.’
The words conjured up for von Kleine a picture of half-naked men, smeared to the elbows with black grease, sweating in the confined heat of the drive shaft tunnel as they worked. ‘How much longer?’ he asked.
‘He promised full power on both engines within two hours, sir.’
Von Kleine sighed with relief, and glanced over his stern at the British destroyer that was shadowing him. He began to smile.
‘I hope, my friend, that you are a brave man. I hope that when you see me increase speed, you will not be able to control your disappointment. I hope tonight you will try with your torpedoes, so that I can crush you, for your eyes always on me are a dangerous embarrassment.’ He spoke so softly that his lips barely moved, then he turned back to Kyller. ‘I want all the battle lights checked and reported.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Von Kleine crossed to the voice-tubes. ‘Gunnery officer,’ he said. ‘I want “X” turret guns loaded with star shell and trained to maximum elevation …’ He went on listing his preparations for night action and then he ended, ‘ … stand all your gun crews down. Let them eat and rest. From dusk action stations onwards they will be held in the first degree of readiness.’
‘Commander, sir!’
The urgent call startled Commander Charles Little, and he spilled his mug of cocoa. This was the first period of rest he had allowed himself all day, and now it was interrupted within ten minutes. ‘What is it?’ He flung open the door of the chart room, and ran out on to the bridge.
‘Blücher is increasing speed rapidly.’
‘No!’ It was too cruel a blow, and the exclamation of protest was wrung from Charles. He darted to the voice-pipe.
‘Gunnery officer. Report your target.’
A moment’s delay, and then the reply. ‘Bearing mark, green oh-oh. Range, one-five-oh-five-oh. Speed, seventeen knots.’
It was true. Blücher was under full power again, with all her guns still operable. Orion had died in vain.
Charles wiped his mouth with the open palm of his hand, and felt the brittle stubble of his new beard rasp under his fingers. Beneath the tan, his face was sickly pale with strain and fatigue. There were smears of dark blue beneath his eyes, and in their corners
were tiny lumps of yellow mucus. His eyes were bloodshot, and the wisp of hair that escaped from under the brim of his cap was matted on to his forehead by the salt spray, as he peered into the gathering dusk.
The fighting madness which had threatened all that day to overwhelm him, rose slowly from the depth of his belly and his loins. He no longer struggled to suppress it.
‘Turn two points to starboard, pilot. All engines full ahead together.’ The engine telegraph clanged, and Bloodhound pivoted like a polo pony. It would take her thirty minutes to work up to full speed, and by that time it would be dark.
‘Sound action stations.’ Charles wanted to attack in the hour of darkness before the moon came up. Through the ship the alarm bells thrilled, and without taking his eyes from the dark dot on the darkening horizon, Charles listened to-the reports coming into the bridge, until the one for which he waited, ‘Torpedo party closed up, sir!’
Now he turned and went to the voice-tube. ‘Torps,’ he said, ‘I hope to give you a chance at Blücher with both port and starboard tubes. I am going to take you in as close as possible.’
The men grouped around Charles on the bridge listened to him say ‘as close as possible’, and knew that he had pronounced sentence of death upon them.
Henry Sargent, the navigating lieutenant, was afraid. Stealthily he groped in the pocket of his overcoat until he found the little silver crucifix that Lynette had given him. It was warm from his own body heat. He held it tightly.
He remembered it hanging between her breasts on its silver chain, and the way she had lifted both hands to the back of her neck as she unclasped it. The chain had caught in the shiny cascade of hair as she had tried to free it, kneeling on the bed facing him. He had leaned forward to help her, and she had clung to him, pressing the warm smooth bulge of her pregnant stomach against him.