She was swinging now, shuddering as McGuire gave her power as quickly as he dared, and still no guns had opened at them. A full minute had passed since her discovery-the sleepiest gun-crew could have got off one round in that time.
Then Bentley realised that this island was like the other one-it needed no defensive guns. Its bombers were its guns. And he had no doubts about what would be happening on the airfield. "God!" said Randall, his voice sharp on the tense bridge, "just one pattern of depth-charges... "
Bentley stared at him.
For two seconds his eyes were fastened on the big lieutenant's face, and in that time the whole plan of what he would do flicked into his brain, was studied, and was accepted.
"Pilot!" he snapped into the voice-pipe, "give me a depth every five seconds! Torps? That thing's ready to fire?"
It was the automatic response of long training which brought the torpedo-officer's instant reply-seconds before he appreciated the significance of the captain's question.
"Yes, sir. The cordite charge is fitted."
"Then jump aft and stand by to fire."
Discipline and training are magical qualities.
"What depth, sir?" Torps asked in a calm voice.
"A hundred feet. Fire to port."
"Fire to port, sir." Then Torps was gone down the ladder.
Randall was staring at his captain, but he did not speak. He knew, as every man on the bridge knew, what was in Bentley's mind; as they knew that the time was so short, and the space so limited, that the leader of this mad and desperate enterprise must not be distracted in the slightest from what he was about to do.
"Director?" Bentley snapped. "Cease firing! I want that light."
The guns had got off one broadside, and the jungle close to the right of the searchlight had offered back its ugly red bursts. Now the order went down and the firing interceptors were whipped open.
"Starb'd thirty!" ordered Bentley. "Full ahead port, half astern starb'd!"
She had been swinging to face the open sea. Now her sharp snout began turning to the right, towards the dim and distant line of jungle on the north side of the bay.
Bentley's plan was crystal clear in his mind. Just as was his awareness of the hideous danger he was in both from the bombers and the bay's possible shoals. The thought of these things he discarded. Backing his decision to use McQueen's untried weapon, though not consciously thought of, was the knowledge that the future safety of the Fleet depended on the success of what he hoped to achieve.
Pilot's reports came regularly up the voice-pipe. Bentley listened not so much to the actual depths as for a change in the note of the navigator's voice. He was not surprised that the harbour remained safely deep-the gods remain tolerant of those they are about to destroy...
He took her as far as he dared, knowing it was not half far enough if McQueen's estimates were correct, and then with screws and rudder swung her fiercely round again. And all this time his mind was conscious of the minutes which had passed, seeing with its mental projection the aircraft being hurried out of their redoubts, then taxiing to the end of the runway.
She was round, and in the searchlight's helpful reflection he could see the mass of drums which marked the submergence of the pipes, and the position of the tanks. He leaned and he spoke into the wheelhouse voice-pipe, and his voice was calm, and deliberate, and brittle with emphasis:
"Full power both engines!"
Then he came upright and steered his ship for a point fifty feet to the right of the mass of drums.
Full speed in a destroyer is a set, regulated number of revolutions of the propellers. It is fast, but it is not the speed of what she is actually capable. Full power means precisely what it says: the complete strength of 40,000 horsepower unleashed on to the turbine blades.
But 2,000 tons of steel is a heavy mass. Bentley knew that he would in that short run get nowhere near the safe 30 knots. He would be lucky if she raised 20.
"Clear the quarterdeck," he ordered, "close all watertight doors." And to Randall, waiting quiet near the wind-break: "Take the torpedo-control phone."
"Aye, aye, sir," answered the first lieutenant
There was something in the formality of that reply which rugged at Bentley's attention. He thought about it afterwards, and the realisation came to him that the three traditional words, spoken like they had been, carried to him his friend's respect and understanding.
But he had no time or inclination for analysis now. They were halfway there, and though the ship was shuddering as he had never felt her before, the knot indicator showed nothing higher than the figure 17.
Randall said:
"Tube ready, sir."
Bentley nodded. The whole ship was still outlined in the revealing light. Eighteen, nineteen knots...
"Director-take the searchlight."
Half a minute. He would need no light now.
"Stand by, cox'n."
"Standing by, sir."
The guns roared and the searchlight beam flung abruptly skyward and went out. Darkness rushed in over the bay.
Twenty knots, twenty-one... Now!
"Fire!" Bentley snapped. "Hard-a-starb'd!"
Rennie's repeat of the order had come back before the sound reached them from down amidships. Even through the tension coiling in his guts Bentley was surprised-the whoof of discharge of McQueen's weapon seemed not much louder than a normal torpedo's firing.
He was looking for the splash, and he saw it. Again, not much larger than the entry of a torpedo. ThenWind Rode was round, surging for the open sea, and the point of submergence of the new weapon receded into the night.
His glance flicked to the speed dial. Twenty-two knots. The sharp turn had slowed her. But in this unfamiliar bay he had had no alternative but to swing her seawards.
His hands clutched the binnacle, and he waited. He knew the rate of descent of 300-pound depth-charges, and McQueen had given him the relative figures for his monster, but he had forgotten them. He guessed that it would sink more quickly.
He thought of stopping his propellers. But if the explosion were to reach out for them, it would meet the screws, stopped or spinning. And he could rely on McGuire, standing now by his throttles, to take the power off her instantly if anything went wrong. If... ? Clear in his memory came McQueen's slow voice:
"I cannot stress strongly enough that the ship must be travelling at no less than 30 knots when we fire. You appreciate that?"
Instinctively Bentley's eyes went again to the speed dial. And some enormous force slammed his chest hard up against the compass-ring.
He was gasping, but his eyesight was unaffected. With complete clarity he saw the foc's'le tilt down until the sea creamed past level with the gunwale. The sea, not the bow-wave. He jerked his head round to stare aft.
He saw first the quarterdeck slanted upward, as though a child in a bath had placed his hand under the stern of a toy boat and lifted it; as though the 2,000-ton ship were a surfboat riding in on the face of a huge wave. Then he saw the white, back in the bay.
For four years the sight of depth-charges exploding had been as familiar to Bentley as the sight of fried eggs on the breakfast plate. But this was nothing remotely like anything he had seen before There was a mountain of water back there. Its swelling dome reached up higher than the surrounding island. For a moment as he watched, awed, the dome hung in the sky in dreadful and perfect symmetry Then the frightful force which had raised it flung the mountain apart in what looked like skyscrapers of white spray.
Wind Rode's stern smacked down again into the water and the blast of the explosion slammed against his ears.
"Stop both!" Bentley ordered.
It was a needless order. McGuire had felt the stern lift and his bellow had the throttles spinning back. But she was still racing when the two engine-room artificers were flung to the deck. McGuire had hauled himself up first and shut her power off. Not before the horrible shuddering had communicated its meaning to his dazed mind.
/> A minute later, while the bridge team were hauling themselves to their feet, be got through to the bridge.
"Captain? You've done it all right! The port screw sounds like a concrete mixer."
"Is that all?"
"Is that all! You'll be lucky if you get 12 knots!"
It was because the ship was still in such deadly danger, and he could do nothing about it, that Bentley's beaten brain relaxed at the outraged expostulation in the Chiefs voice. He smiled into the phone.
"Fine. She seems to be steering all right. Can you work the port screw at all?"
"Sure I can! If you don't mind the A-bracket falling off!"
"We'll buy you another one." Bentley, who knew the idiosyncracies of engineers, knew that the port screw must be capable of almost half speed for McGuire to even admit it turned at all. He said:
"Nice work, Chief. We're on the way home now."
That was the understatement of the year, and they both knew it. McGuire's answer was to slam the pipe cover shut.
"Revolutions for 12 knots," Bentley ordered,' and Randall said:
"D'you think we did it?"
"One way to find out." Bentley smiled, but his tone was grim. He picked up the director phone. "Light me a match, please, Mr. Lasenby. Direct-action, I think."
"One match coming up, sir," Lasenby returned, and spoke into his own phone. The mountings swung, and the guns belched.
At a velocity of three thousand feet per second the surface of water offers to a direct-action shell a surface as resistant as concrete. The shells hit, the fuses in the noses were jolted into instantaneous action, the shells burst. The result was spectacular.
No one knew how many thousands of gallons of petrol those tanks had held. What was obvious was that McQueen's baby had in its first combat trial efficiently covered the whole of the bay with volatile fluid. In a few fierce seconds acres of water were alight. Eager flames ran along the pipe line and even from Wind Rode's position out to sea they could see the shore-line, then the jungle, burning. "Phew!" breathed Randall, and that seemed to sum up the feelings of all of them.
"I can't understand," said Sir Sidney Granville, "how you managed to last through the night."
"If I may say so, sir," answered Commander Bentley, "that makes two of us. We were attacked shortly after the balloon went up, and many times after that, but never by more than a couple of aircraft. My only explanation is that the fire must have reached right inland to some fuelling-point and the Japs were too busy fighting it to get more aircraft off."
He tapped the ash from his cigarette into the polished container which had once been a four-inch cartridge.
"What I do know is that I'll never forget the sight the Fleet made, come the dawn."
The admiral smiled.
"Your signal was plain enough. I've never heard a louder scream for help..."
"I hope never to make one, sir. Ah-Sabang, sir?"
"Sabang? As I said, your signal was plain enough, I turned back at once."
"Thank God you did!" the destroyerman said fervently. He remembered himself. "As you know, sir, we pressed on out of it at our full 12 knots. I didn't see much of the fight at all..."
The admiral was not averse to accepting the suggestion implied. He was thinking that it might be a good thing if young destroyer commanders realised that admirals weren't totally devoid of tactical skill.
"The fight? It was short, and quite sharp Two destroyers this time. But once I knew where the airfield was-we could see them taking-off-I despatched three cruisers close inshore. They bombarded. Very handy ships for bombardment, cruisers. Twenty-four guns, seven rounds a minute per gun."
He looked at Bentley quizzically.
"That was a clever move, sir," the destroyerman said sincerely. "With the airstrip cratered they knew they couldn't land. And if they couldn't land they had to make sure they could get to Sabang, Which considerably reduced their time in the air over the Fleet."
He forebore to mention that he had earned out the identical strategy in his bombardment of the Louisiade strip.
"Quite so, Bentley." The admiral picked out another cigarette. "And now to your personal part in this affair."
The intent eyes were laid on Bentley's face. If the Australian had shown the least smugness Granville would have terminated the interview with a "Let me have your report." But Bentley's expression was certainly not smug-it was, Granville realised with some surprise, worried.
"Yes, sir. I'm afraid the ship will be out of commission for some weeks. The port screw is badly damaged, and the A-bracket is loose. Also, due to the strain put on it during the trip back, the rudder is out of alignment." He looked up. "I'm sorry, sir, but I could think of no other way out."
Granville's piercing eyes had never left his face, But he was still not sure that this concern was genuine. He decided to find out.
"You had my express orders, as well as McQueen's advice, not to fire the weapon under a speed of 30 knots?"
"Yes. sir."
"Yet you did just that"
"Yes, sir."
"Did it not occur to you that a signal would have brought the Fleet to take care of that submerged fuelling-point? Without risking your ship and your men in a confined bay within a few yards of an alerted enemy?"
"It did occur to me, sir. But I had no justification for believing that my signal would have brought you. Not until I was certain there were aircraft on the island. And I did not know that until the first bomb fell. Then I made the signal."
Worry, genuine worry, Granville decided-and a little justifiable anger. This had gone on long enough.
"Good heavens, Bentley!" he said, smiling, shaking his head, "d'you really think I'd reprimand you for what you've done?"
I'm not so damned sure about that, at all! Bentley thought. Women, and admirals...
"Ah-no, sir."
"I should think not! Now. You'll have a gin?"
"Thank you, sir. But I'm due to take her into the floating dock in half an hour. If you don't mind..."
"Very well. Let me have your report when you've settled down. And convey my congratulations to your ship's company. For the second time."
"Thank you, sir."
He stood up and placed his cap under his arm. Granville smiled genially up at him.
"There is more than one admiral who can turn a blind eye towards an order, Bentley."
Of course, Bentley thought behind his respectful expression- so long as the disobeyed order results in a successful action!
"Yes, sir," he said, "thank you."
He left the cabin and hurried towards the battleship's gangway. He wanted a gin, badly. In a mess where he owned the blind eye...
The End
J. E. MacDonnell - 025 Page 15