‘Steady as you go.’ Mortimer slowly straightened. ‘Good God, look at that!’
A ship’s tall grey funnels had been lit suddenly in an enormous gout of white flame: a second column, also white, shot up close by it. Her foremast showed black against it for a moment: and then it vanished, all of it extinguished as neatly as doused candles, and there was only a peculiar glow left, pinkish and showing through smoke like a picture-postcard sunset by a rotten artist. A moment ago searchlights had been blazing: now they’d gone out with a suddenness that left sea and sky black, empty. And the guns had all ceased fire.
Hastings said to Mortimer, ‘Someone met a sudden end there, sir.’
‘You could be right. Are we on the top line with our recognitions signals? Because with all this lot barging around the North Sea we’d damn well better be!’
‘I have the current signal letters, sir, and Garret has too I think.’
‘Yessir.’ Garret spoke from the far side of the searchlight mounting, ‘Got ’em in mind and wrote down too, sir.’
‘What about you, Everard?’
‘Well sir, if Garret—’
‘Look here ‒ suppose we were to get blown up. You’re left in charge. Garret’s knocked out too. Now you’re challenged by – Southampton, say. She’d have a broadside of five six-inch guns trained on you before she made the challenge, ready to blow you out of the water if you don’t give the right answer immediately. Well, what are going to do about it?’
There really wasn’t any answer.
‘Everard, you’re dead, by now! So’s every man of your ship’s company!’
‘I ‒ I’ll make sure I do know the signals that are in force in future, sir.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll—’ He didn’t want to say ‘I’ll ask someone’… ‘I’ll look it up, sir.’
‘D’you know how to? Sure you can do it accurately? It’s not a thing you can allow yourself a mistake in, you know!’
The book was in the chartroom. But nobody had ever shown him how to check a recognition signal. In the ships he’d served in before they’d always been chalked up on a board: he’d never given much thought to how they got there. And that book might not be simple to work from without instruction.
‘I know where the book is, sir. I imagine it’s fairly easy to look up the—’
‘Now we approach the truth…’ Mortimer looked round, a quick check that Lanyard’s surroundings were still all peaceful. He turned back, and pointed.
‘Leading Signalman Garret ‒ do you know how to extract the recognition signal of the watch from the appropriate CB?’
‘I do that, sir.’
‘Then go down to the chartroom with Sub-Lieutenant Everard, and show him how to.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
To have him instructed by a leading signalman was intended, no doubt, as a small humiliation, to serve him right for not knowing such a simple procedure. He should have made it his business to find out, long ago. There were quite a number of things which he should have done, in the past eighteen months, and hadn’t done; such as putting in some study and practice of the taking and working-out of sun- and star-sights. He was cack-handed with a sextant, and invariably got muddled with the figures. But he could, with a bit of effort, teach himself to do it properly. And he would, now.
He swung himself on to the ladder, and climbed down, using the ladder’s sides, not its rungs, as handholds, for fear of Garret’s knuckle-crushing boots coming down close above him.
* * *
Hastings, sweeping the sea and horizon with his binoculars, was working to a system. From right ahead he’d sweep down the port side to right astern; then at about twice the speed he’d sweep back up to the bow. He’d do the same thing then on the starboard side, but in between he’d give extra attention right for’ard, about two points to port and two to starboard. That was the way the ship was travelling, where an enemy would appear most suddenly, be most likely to appear.
He heard Nick and Garret leave the bridge behind him, just as he paused with his glasses trained right ahead. He murmured to the Captain, ‘With respect, sir, it was always Lieutenant Reynolds’s job. None of the rest of us ever looked it up.’
‘I know.’ Mortimer was wiping sea-dew from the lenses of his binoculars. ‘Matter of keeping Everard on his toes. If we push him a bit. I believe we could make a useful—’
Hastings choked; his body jerked as if he’d had an electric shock: ‘Ships, starboard bow, sir! They’re ‒ not British!’
Mortimer whipped up his glasses…
A light cruiser; two of them. The twin searchlights on their foremasts above the spotting tops was a distinctive German feature and it was plain to see against the sky.
‘Port ten!’
Port ten, sir!’
‘Tell Pilkington stand by to fire to starboard, target the leading cruiser!’
‘Ten o’ port wheel on, sir!’
Lanyard had begun a swing to starboard. Mortimer’s intention was to slip in towards the enemy, close the range enough to ensure a hit, and then come round to port, firing on that turn-away.
‘Midships!’
Hastings had alerted Pilkington.
If Lanyard could get in there undetected, and get the fish away before they woke up and blasted her into scrap, she’d have a good chance of a kill. She was well up on the Germans’ bow ‒ a perfect situation, and no need even to increase speed. Not until after she’d fired: then there’d be the little matter of getting away from two angry cruisers’ guns… For the moment, all one had to think about was getting in there and firing.
There was every chance she’d make it. Low speed, very little bow-wave, no risk of the glow which at full power showed at funnel-tops. They certainly hadn’t seen her yet: and she was low, and black-painted to match the night, and at this moment almost bow-on to them, presenting very little silhouette.
Mortimer said quietly, tensely. ‘Tell Pilkington I’m about to turn to the firing course.’
Hastings passed the stand-by message. Raising his head from the voicepipe, he happened to glance out on the starboard bow.
For a split second, while he confirmed that he wasn’t imagining what he was staring at, he froze…
‘Starboard bow ‒ battleship ‒ about to ram!’
Mortimer had sprung round, and seen it. Too late. A third ship ‒ a dreadnought battleship following astern of those cruisers: she’d swung out to port, her vast bulk was rushing at them out of the dark, and she’d take Lanyard on her ram with as little trouble as it might take a rhinoceros to horn a dog.
‘Hard a-port! Full ahead together!’
If he’d attempted to evade by turning to port ‒ which would have allowed him to fire his torpedo on the way round ‒ the German would only have needed to adjust his course by a few degrees and he’d still have got her. But a turn to starboard ‒ turning inside the dreadnought’s own swing to port, and probably scraping paint off her as they scraped by ‒ that was just ‒ might be ‒ possible…
Fifty-fifty chance? No. Two to one against.
‘Helm’s hard a-port, sir, both telegraphs full ahead!
The turbine’s whine rose to a scream, the vast shape of the oncoming ship loomed bigger, closer, towering overwhelm-ing… And Lanyard’s bow seemed to be coming round so slowly!
‘Stop starboard!’
He’d needed speed; now he needed swing. The sea might have been treacle, she was turning so sluggishly… They were finished. In seconds they’d be smashed, ridden under, ploughed into the sea. But she was getting round: with the starboard screw stopped she was fairly whistling round! Her stem pointed at the German’s foc’sl ‒ at his bridge super-structure ‒ amidships ‒ round, round… You could have touched the bastard with a boathook!
The night split. The world exploded in their faces.
* * *
Hugh Everard lowered his binoculars. Mowbray had sent the midshipman of the watch to him, and he’d come out to see the latest
of several flare-ups which had lit the blackness astern of the battle squadrons. This one had ended almost before it had started.
‘Short and sweet.’ He thought about that: he added ‘Though perhaps not for everyone.’
Destroyer actions, probably. Something bigger, possibly.
Having no wireless, one could only guess. Reports might well be flooding in to Jellicoe in Iron Duke; it might be quite plain to the commander-in-chief, and to subordinate admirals and captains whose ships still had wireless equipment in working order, what was happening astern.
The ‘something bigger’ possibility wasn’t a comfortable thought to entertain. If the Germans were not where they were believed to be; if Scheer was attempting to break through astern of the Grand Fleet and run for the minefield-gap at Horns Reef…
One could only dismiss the thought. Jellicoe must know where Scheer was, and where he’d find him in the morning. And Jellicoe would be able to see that fighting astern just as easily as he, Hugh Everard could.
‘I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep now, Mowbray. Shake me if you need to, otherwise at one forty- five.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
He found Bates waiting in the sea-cabin.
‘Afraid your kye’d get cold, sir.’
‘Doesn’t look like it.’ The mug of cocoa was steaming; he reached for it. ‘Hot, all right.’ He put it down again, and asked Bates. ‘Where’s the stuff you salvaged?’
‘In ’ere, sir.’ Bates dragged a suitcase up on to the bunk. ‘Not much, sir. Just odds an’ ends, this is. But there’s some shirts as’ll want dhobyin’ ‒ an’ your best suit o’ number fives, an’ our other pair of ’alf-boots ‒ that’s in the commander’s day-cabin, sir.’ He saw Hugh’s quick glance, and added. ‘I did ask ’im, sir.’
‘Good.’ Hugh opened the case. He found a litter of correspondence, bank-books, ornaments, a silver cigarette-box, the case he kept his cufflinks and studs in; and one leather folding photograph frame.
Hugh looked at his coxswain, ‘Your own personal selection. Bates…’
‘Yessir. Lot o’ stuff was spoiled, sir. An’ I only ’ad the one case ’andy, for these bits.’
When Bates wanted to look blank, he knew how to. Hugh surrendered. ‘I’m ‒ much obliged to you.’
‘No need, sir.’ With his hands on the case, to put it back on the deck, he looked at the frame in Hugh’s hand. ‘Keepin’ that out, sir?’
Hugh nodded. He watched Bates stow the suitcase away. ‘Tell me. What made you go aft when you did? When I’d told you to wait in the sea-cabin?’
Bates straightened.
‘Sorry about that, sir. Didn’t ’ave time to think, not really. I felt them ’its aft, an’ I looks out and there’s smoke comin’ out where our quarters is, so I says to meself, that’s us, that is, best takee look-see, sort ’o thing.’
‘As well you did, in view of what happened to the sea-cabin in your absence.’
Bates nodded phlegmatically. ‘One way o’ lookin’ at it, sir… Be getting’ your ’ead down now, sir, will you?’
‘Yes.’ He’d finished the cocoa. Bates stooped, pulled out one of the bunk drawers. ‘I borrowed some gear for you to be goin’ on with, sir. Sweater, scarf, pair o’ gloves ‒ well, this ’ere, sir, spare socks ’n—’
‘You’ve done well, Bates. Thank you.’ Someone knocked on the door. ‘Come in!’
Tom Crick peered in. Bates said quickly, tapping that drawer with the toe of his boot. ‘Commander’s gear, sir.’
‘Oh is it.’ He saw enquiry in Crick’s face. ‘All right, Bates, I shan’t need you for a couple of hours. Get some sleep.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Bates slid out. Hugh nodded to Crick. ‘Kind of you to lend me your things, Tom. I hear there’s some junk of mine in your day-cabin too?’
Crick pulled the door shut. ‘That’s so, sir. Your coxswain has what one might call a persuasive manner.’
‘You don’t like him, do you, Tom?’
‘Only hoping he won’t let you down one day, sir.’
‘If you’d care to bet on it, I’ll take your money.’
Crick smiled and shook his head. Then he cleared his throat, ‘I’ve come to report we’re in reasonably good shape below decks now, sir. We’ll need a couple of weeks in the dockyard, of course, but there’s nothing need concern us for the moment. The PMO asked me to tell you he’ll have a detailed casualty list ready in the morning: looks like four officers and thirty-one men killed, and two plus twenty-eight wounded.’ His eyebrows rose. ‘Might’ve been a lot worse, sir.’
‘Considering the chance I took.’
‘You saved hundreds in Warspite, sir.’
When Crick had gone, Hugh took his reefer and half-boots off, loosened his tie and collar and stretched out on the bunk. He pulled a blanket up over himself. Then he opened the leather frame that Bates had had the remarkable percipience to rescue.
Sarah smiled at him from her photograph. A gentle rather wistful, lonely smile. Hugh had picked this one ‒ stolen it ‒ from a bunch of prints which a photographer had sent to brother John so he could choose one for mounting.
The puzzling thing was, there’d been quite a number of framed portraits displayed openly in the day-cabin; but this one he’d kept more discreetly in a drawer. Had Bates reasoned that it made Sarah’s portrait more important than the others or did he have second sight, in those monkey eyes of his?
Hugh closed the frame and pushed it under the pillow. He thought, with his hand out to the light switch, that he had two stories now for Sarah. This indication of his coxswain’s intelligence would make one, and the other was the incident of the sailing barque which, caught between the embattled fleets, had made him think of her.
If he told her of those two things, wouldn’t he be telling her everything there was to tell?
He hoped he’d have the nerve to. To let her know how he felt. Not to funk it as he had the other day.
Chapter 10
He was alive. Mortimer and Hastings were dead.
Lanyard was still afloat, and for the time being, so far as one could tell, out of any immediate danger.
So far as one could tell: the qualification was a real one. Uncertainty, a sense of detachment and confusion, was the residue of shock, upheaval. It had to be fought against. It was as if one’s mind had been switched off for several seconds, or minutes ‒ a period of indeterminate length during which one had seemed to be struggling to retain awareness of one’s surroundings, and making no headway. Now the struggle was for renewed power of thought, judgement, decision.
He was in command!
‘Four hundred revolutions.’
‘Four hundred—’ MacIver gulped — ‘revolutions, sir.’ MacIver’s mouth was open, and his breath whistled through the gap of a missing tooth. He looked dazed still.
‘Port ten.’
‘Port ten, sir.’ CPO Glennie, the chief bosun’s mate, span the wheel. After Cuthbertson’s death earlier in the day Glennie had become the destroyer’s senior rating. Steady as a rock: he was built like one, too. Nick told him, ‘Ease to five, and steady on south.’
Lanyard’s sudden lurch to starboard had sent Nick and Garret flying across the chartroom. Nick had hauled himself up the slanting deck to the starboard-side door, got out through it and started climbing the ladder to the bridge. He’d been some of the way up when the German dreadnought’s port batteries – her secondary armament of six-inch guns ‒ had crashed out a broadside at point-blank range and maximum depression. For him and Garret the blast had been an incredible volume of sound and a great sheet of flame which swept across above their heads as the ship lurched back against the natural heel of her swing. For about two seconds a scorching heat radiated downwards. Then she’d heeled back again, and she’d still been turning; he’d climbed a few more rungs, and stopped again when he’d discovered that Lanyard no longer had an upper bridge. The top part of it ‒ with binnacle, railings, flag-lockers, everything ‒ had been shorn off.
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The steering position ‒ lower bridge ‒ was roofless but otherwise intact and operable as a wheelhouse. The search-light had gone ‒ simply wiped off. So had the for’ard gun, both boats, and several feet of the already damaged top of the for’ard funnel. The roof of the galley, the superstructure between the boats, had been stove in. Mr Pilkington, who’d arrived in the steering-position a minute ago, had told him about the funnels and the boats, and apparently that was as far aft as the area of damage extended.
Nick and Garret owed their lives first to Mortimer having sent them down to the chartroom, and second to their having been below the reach of the guns’ blast, and sheltered from it by the superstructure. Otherwise they would have been dead, blown away in that blast of flame ‒ like Mortimer, Hastings, Blewitt and the entire crew of the for’ard four-inch.
The only shell to have hit Lanyard had sheered through her foremast without exploding, and passed on. The foremast had toppled, snapped, and crashed overboard. All the other projectiles had passed overhead too; the battleship’s six-inch guns hadn’t been able to depress far enough to reach her. According to Pilkington, the two ships had been almost alongside each other at that moment.
There’d been only that one broadside. The Germans must have thought they’d finished her; she’d reeled away, and they’d steamed on into the night.
Nick’s first question to Chief Petty Officer Glennie, when he’d reached the steering-position ‒ climbing into it, through the now completely open corner where Lanyard had been hit during the torpedo attack in the afternoon ‒ had been. ‘Does she answer her helm?’
‘Aye, sir, she does.’ Glennie had shown considerable initiative in the seconds after the cataclysm. He and MacIver, the telegraphman, had been lifted off their feet and thrown at the starboard bulkhead. Recovering, with his head ringing from the explosions and from being bounced off a steel wall, the chief buffer had put the starboard telegraph to full ahead and then grabbed the wheel to steady the ship on a north-easterly course. Finding himself on his own, with nobody up there to direct him, it had seemed sensible to steer her away from the source of trouble.
The Blooding of the Guns Page 23