To Risks Unknown

by Douglas Reeman

  There were more internal detonations, and flames darted out of the torn plating to mingle with smoke and escaping steam as with tired dignity she began to heel over towards the watching corvette, machinery tearing loose and crashing through the inferno between decks.

  Just when it seemed as if she would turn right over, one great explosion sent a wall of flame shooting a hundred feet above the listing bridge, and as Crespin clung to the screen he could feel the heat across his face, could imagine the horror of that final moment.

  In his wheelhouse Joicey gripped the spokes and listened to the roar of the last explosion, and knew it was the end of the Nashorn. It was strange, but this time he had no desire to leave the wheel and watch. Even if he had been able to. He stared wearily around the shuttered compartment. It was almost as light as if the scuttles had been wide open. Smoky sunlight made fine yellow bars through a dozen splinter holes and played across the telegraphsman, a messenger and a bosun’s mate, all of whom lay in the various attitudes of sudden death. One other man appeared to be sleeping. He was lucky, Joicey thought. Brought in badly wounded, he had been too drugged to feel the final pain when it burst in on him.

  Joicey did not know how he had survived. Throughout the action he had stayed at the wheel, shouting at his companions, cursing and responding to Crespin’s constant demands, and all the time holding to his trade with the tenacity and fury of a wild animal at bay.

  Magot heard the explosion, too, and ran his fingers over his controls with something like love. Across the pounding machinery he saw his stokers watching him, red-eyed and soaked with oil and water from leaks in the hull and several severed pipes. Magot had been so long in the noisy world of an engine room that he had little use for words, and when he tried to shout what he wanted to say to the men he had so often chased and cursed, he could not find any at all.

  The little ginger stoker, the bane of Magot’s existence, held up a small bundle and grinned.

  ‘Yer teeth, Chiefy!’

  Magot seized them and looked away. The stoker hurried back to his demanding dials, proud of what he had endured, but ashamed at seeing the tears in Magot’s eyes. It was like stealing someone’s secret, he thought.

  The bells clanged and the needle of the dial swung round once more to ‘Full Ahead’.

  Magot turned and glared up at it. ‘All right, you impatient sods! Here we go again!’ He threw his spindly body across the throttle wheel, cursing and muttering into the din of his racing machinery.

  The stokers looked at each other and grinned. The old Magot was back again.

  Shannon did not hear the explosion. As he had released his grip on the trigger a splinter from the Nashorn’s final shell had hit him squarely in the chest, killing him instantly. His dark features were still twisted with anger and disappointment when Lennox and his stretcher bearers arrived, possibly because the last thing he saw on earth was the apparent failure of his shot.

  Lennox looked around at the spread-eagled corpses and then dropped on his knees beside Shannon. Something had fallen out of the lieutenant’s pocket and lay glinting brightly in the widening pool of blood beside him.

  One of the seamen said, ‘A crucifix? Didn’t know ’e was a Catholic!’

  Lennox picked it up and turned it over in his hands. Then he looked at the dead men by the splinter-torn gun, at the battered bridge beyond, with its tattered ensign still jaunty and clean above all this horror. ‘Well, it didn’t do him any bloody good, did it?’ Almost savagely he hurled the cross over the rail and picked up his bag. ‘Come on then! Spare a thought for the living!’

  Crespin climbed on to the bridge chair and leaned forward to watch the mounting bow wave.

  He heard Wemyss say quietly, ‘Just as if she knew!’ He laughed shakily. ‘She was even pointing in the right direction for home!’

  Crespin did not trust himself to reply. The anguish of battle was fading with the smoke astern, all that was left to mark where Nashorn had finally vanished. Now as he gripped the rail below the broken screen he could feel his limbs beginning to shake, the pain in his chest and side coming back, as if he was emerging from a drugged sleep.

  Feet crunched on the glass behind him and he heard Leading Telegraphist Christian speaking urgently with Porteous. One more man who had somehow survived.

  Wemyss joined him by the screen and studied him anxiously. ‘I think you should go to the chartroom, sir. You’ve done enough for ten men this morning.’

  Morning? Crespin stared listlessly at the clear sky. Was it still only that? The same sky and sun, the same glittering water.

  Porteous’s face swam across his vision. ‘Well?’ How small his voice seemed.

  Wemyss took a sheet of paper from Porteous’s hand and said slowly, ‘Signal, sir. Thistle will return to base forthwith. Air cover will be provided immediately.’ He touched Crespin’s arm and added quietly, ‘It says to cancel the last signal, sir. Aircraft recovered. Rear-Admiral Oldenshaw and party safe.’

  Crespin looked up slowly, fearful in case he was drifting back again into unconsciousness. He saw Wemyss and Porteous staring at each other and grinning, and beyond them Griffin and the telegraphist, who still did not realize the importance of his message.

  Then he said, ‘Thank you.’ He reached out and touched the smoke-stained steel by his side. He could have been speaking to the ship. ‘Thank you very much.’

  Christian asked, ‘Any reply, sir?’ He sounded tired.

  Wemyss took his arm and guided him clear of the gratings. There was still a long way to go and there were a hundred things to do in the next hour or so. But as he looked around the riddled bridge he no longer had any doubt in his mind that she would get them there. His eyes fell on the figure in the chair. Crespin was lolling in time with the ship’s easy roll, and he guessed that he had at last given in to sleep and total exhaustion. When he awakened he would remember. And he would know that life had again something to offer.

  He said, ‘As soon as we meet with our escort you can make this signal.’ He paused, conscious of the moment, for himself, and for the little ship around him.

  ‘Thistle will enter harbour as ordered. Enemy destroyed.’

  Epilogue

  IT WAS A cold February morning, and although the rain had all but stopped the low clouds above Portsmouth harbour showed that there was plenty more to come. The harbour was crowded, and the sleek grey frigate which had just passed through the entrance picked up a berth on the outside of two other ships, the oilskinned seamen pausing at the mooring wires only to whistle at two perky Wrens who were already climbing aboard with the ship’s mail.

  Then, as the rain came back again the seamen dispersed to their quarters to read letters from home, to change into shoregoing rig, to enjoy themselves once more and forget the last patrol.

  In the captain’s day cabin Commander John Crespin unslung his binoculars and handed them to his steward before sitting down at his desk and stretching his legs. Both cabin scuttles were uncovered, but because of the ship alongside the place was in semi-darkness. Crespin yawned and switched on the desk light, then after a slight hesitation picked up a newspaper which with several official letters had just been left by the mail boat.

  The headlines were glaring and optimistic, as they always seemed to be these days. The Allies were across the Rhine and smashing deep into Germany. Everywhere the enemy front was collapsing, and what had once seemed like a hopeless dream was now becoming a reality.

  He heard the steward whistling to himself and the clatter of crockery. The coffee would be very welcome just now, he thought. With the war so nearly finished it was more necessary than ever not to relax and take unnecessary chances. Like the last patrol, for instance. Dull and almost without incident. But the danger was always there just the same. He froze in his chair and leaned forward, imagining for a moment that his tiredness was playing tricks on him.

  It was just a small paragraph, a few lines right at the foot of the second page.

  ‘Yesterda
y the Secretary of the Admiralty announced the loss of the corvette H.M.S. Thistle (Lieutenant-Commander Douglas Wemyss, D.S.C., R.N.R.). The announcement was delayed for two weeks in the hope that some further information might be made available. It is understood that the Thistle was one of the escorts of an Atlantic convoy en route for America and was detached to search for survivors from another ship. She was never seen again. Next of kin have been informed.’

  Crespin sat back in the chair, the brief announcement moving through his mind, as if he was hearing it spoken aloud.

  He had last seen the Thistle in Brindisi sixteen months ago, since when so much had happened, and yet as he read the paragraph once more it felt as if it was yesterday. Now she was gone, taken by the Atlantic which she had fought for so long and with only one pause. And that pause, her efforts and disappointments, her final victory over the Nashorn had not even been mentioned. Perhaps, like all the other acts and sacrifices, hers was just a brief episode after all. An episode which he had shared, and now, would never forget.

  He stood up and walked unseeingly round the cabin, his mind filled with pictures and memories, of faces and names, of all the things which had made that one battered little ship so different.

  Perhaps she had never really recovered from the wounds she had received, and when she had again challenged her common enemy, the Atlantic had triumphed.

  He thought, too, of Wemyss and Porteous, Magot and Joicey, and all the others. She was in good company wherever she was, and would keep her last secret forever.

  He realized that someone had knocked at the door, and when he turned he saw his first lieutenant framed in the entrance.

  ‘Just wanted to discuss arrangements for leave and so forth, sir.’ He saw Crespin’s eyes and added, ‘I’m sorry, sir. Is something wrong?’

  Crespin looked away from the lieutenant’s sleeve with its interwoven gold lace. Like Wemyss. Wemyss who had loved the ship, perhaps more than any of them.

  He said, ‘Nothing wrong.’ He had even replied to Wemyss like that when he had received Penny’s letter. Now Penny was over there in the hotel with their child, waiting for him, as she always did. He recalled too how Wemyss had tried to comfort him when the aircraft had been reported missing. Perhaps in his own way he had wanted to share his grief.

  He picked up his cap and looked slowly round the cabin. ‘I just read something in the paper. About an old friend.’ He broke off. Who did he really mean? ‘I’ll tell you about it one day.’

  Then he brushed past him and walked out into the rain.

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  Epub ISBN: 9781448106134

  Version 1.0

  Published by Arrow Books 1969

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  Copyright © Douglas Reeman, 1969

  Douglas Reeman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in Great Britain in 1969 by Hutchinson

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9780091801199