The torch came from hand to hand. Ships, weapons, tactics changed. Nothing else did. Oh, conditions, certainly. One could remember Fisher’s own account of joining his first ship, at the age of thirteen, in that year 1854. On the day he joined, he saw eight men flogged, and he fainted. Hugh could still hear the gruff, disjointed reminiscences emerging from that ugly, even brutish face: Midshipman of four-foot nothing ‒ keeping night watches, and always hungry. No baths ‒ belly always empty… He’d remembered a quartermaster of the watch once giving him a maggoty biscuit, and a lieutenant of the watch who’d sometimes let him have a sardine, or an onion, or a glass of rum…
* * *
‘Spot o’ breakfast, sir?’
Hugh nodded to his coxswain.
‘Thank you. Bates. I’m ready for it.’
* * *
Lanyard drifted; silent, inert, misshapen, wreck-like.
The gun’s crew, and others with weapons in their hands, lay motionless, almost held their breaths as they watched the German cruiser approaching steadily across the dawn-lit sea.
She’d closed to about a thousand yards, half a sea mile, off Lanyard’s quarter. She still slid closer at the same slow speed; she’d pass about two cables’ lengths to starboard.
Pass ‒ or stop.
If she saw no sign of life, and sent a boat across. Lanyard might have a hope? If one let the boarding party come aboard, and then captured them, would a German captain fire on his own men?
No. He’d probably send more men.
It was the tension of this waiting, and the fact of being so utterly at that ship’s mercy, that made one clutch at straws.
Nick put his glasses on her again. She might have been a ghost-ship creeping up, slipping closer through a silvery-greenish sea with a feather of white at her stem and only ripples spreading where she’d passed. There was no sound at all from her; all that could be heard here was the slap of water against Lanyard’s sides and the creak of loose gear shifting as she moved to the sea’s own movement. But nothing shifted or even seemed to live on that cruiser’s bridge or about her decks; she only came on steadily with her air of purpose and those twin crab’s-eyes up above her bridge as if she herself was some kind of monster watching them. He shook the fantasy out of his mind. He wondered whether there might in fact be men in that bridge who were invisible from here but who’d have binoculars trained on Lanyard ‒ German optical instruments being far better than British ones ‒ revealing these men lying doggo around the gun. If so, this would be their point of aim when they opened fire; and since Hooper had built up a large reserve of cartridges and projectiles handy to the gun, it wouldn’t be a healthy place to be.
In about a minute the cruiser would be abeam. About then, one might expect the ordeal to begin.
‘Layer ‒ you there, ’Oops?’
Hooper looked to his left without moving his head.
‘What’s up, Pratt?’
‘I been thinkin’.’ Pratt sounded like a Londoner. ‘I never did learn to play the ’arp. Teach you when you reports aboard do they?’
‘They’ll give you a shovel, mate, where you re goin’. Now be a good boy’n shurrup, eh?’
Nick glanced aft, at the ensign drooping from the mainmast. Wet from the night’s mist, in the almost windless air it hung straight down, limp as a dead bird hanging in a tree. The gamekeepers at Mullbergh hung vermin like that… But it would be visible and identifiable, he thought, from the cruiser, and it would be all the justification they’d need to open fire.
Hooper hissed suddenly. ‘Sir ‒ she listin’, would you say?’
Nick raised his glasses and focused on her again. He couldn’t see any list.
But she was very nearly abeam now. The range was about six or seven hundred yards ‒ farther than he’d expected. And she was moving more slowly than he’d reckoned earlier. He told Hooper, ‘Deflection three left.’
‘Three left ‒ aye aye, sir… Look there!’
‘What?’
‘She – just sort o’ leaned over, sir—’
She’d lurched to port: a definite movement, which he’d seen quite clearly. He strained his eyesight now: the lenses of his binoculars were slightly fogged and he couldn’t spare the time to clean them… ‘Layer ‒ am I dreaming, or is she down by the bow?’
Hooper laughed shortly. ‘Don’t reckon you’re the dreamin’ sort, sir.’
The cruiser’s stern was rising as her bow dug lower in the sea, and she was listing so far to port now that one could see right into her bridge. It was empty. He thought, They’ve abandoned her… But ‒ left her engines going?
Perhaps they left a few hands aboard, and they’d left her bridge now because they’d realised she was about to sink? It was all theory ‒ and not counting chickens: he thought suddenly, there could still be a torpedo coming…
They could have struggled this far with that intention; in such a condition wasn’t it exactly what one would do?
She was going, though. Her screws were out of water, reflecting the light of sunrise as their blades turned slowly, lazily in the air.
Nick stood up. He told the gun’s crew, ‘All right. She’s done for. Pratt give ’em a shout below, tell ’em all to come up and see this.’
The cruiser was standing on her nose, with nearly half her length ‒ including bridge and foremast and the first of her four funnels ‒ buried in the sea. A German ensign hung vertically downwards, banner-like, from her mainmast which was now parallel to the sea’s surface. Nick heard cheering and whoops of joy as Lanyard’s ship’s company came pouring up on deck. He put one hand out, leant against the gun, and at that moment the enemy cruiser seemed to lift a little in the water and then slip down into it.
She’d gone. Quietly, with no fuss at all. And Lanyard was alone again.
Through the pandemonium of sailors cheering, dancing, going mad, one had to take this in, take stock of an entirely new situation, the abrupt removal of what had seemed like certain doom.
He realised that since he’d stood up he’d been feeling wind on his face. He looked at the sea, and saw a flurry spreading across its surface, a sort of graining with white flecks in it. He looked at the ensign, and saw that stirring too.
Coming up so suddenly out of the dawn calm, one could expect a blow. With three hundred miles of sea to cross, and Lanyard with only two boilers and a hole in her side.
One enemy removed itself, and another took its place.
‘Sub!’
He looked down at the upper deck. He saw Worsfold, the engineer, peering up at him. Worsfold looked as if he’d spent the night working at a coal-face.
‘You can take us all home now, Sub. But listen ‒ no more ’n five knots, d’you hear?’
Chapter 12
The gig’s oars swept to and fro in the lazy-looking ceremonial stroke in which Bates had trained his crew, and the waters of the Firth of Forth hissed and gurgled under the boat’s stern as she gathered way towards the northern shore. It was a bright, sparkling summer day: a month had passed since the battle which people in Britain were calling ‘Jutland’ but which the Germans in natural perversity were referring to as the Skagerrakschlacht.
Hugh Everard, in his gig’s sternsheets, looked back at Nile. She was showing no signs of rough treatment now. He’d brought her into Rosyth on the day after the battle, and since then taken her down to Portsmouth for dockyard repairs. Now this return to Rosyth was just a twenty-four hour call to replenish ammunition, stores and fuel on the way north to Scapa.
Jellicoe was being blamed for the escape of the High Seas Fleet. Beatty was being lauded as the intrepid young seadog who’d have scuppered Hipper, Scheer ‒ done for Kaiser Willy himself, if he’d been in charge! Jellicoe, being the man he was, was declining to defend himself in public, while Beatty’s stock soared without his having to say a word. He uttered no word on Jellicoe’s behalf either; while Jellicoe had nothing but praise for all his subordinates, including Beatty.
In a minor capacity,
Hugh was coming in for a share of the limelight; his action in turning out of the line to save Warspite had found glowing approval in all quarters. So one’s star was rising once again… But for the next hour or two he intended to forget the Navy: he was on his way to see Sarah, at her father’s house at Aberdour. He’d spoken to Buchanan this morning on the telephone, and the old man had told him that Sarah had returned from Mullbergh a few days ago.
She’d been at Aberdour when Nile had docked on the morning of 2 June, but he’d had no chance of attending to any private business or pleasure with such a maelstrom of work on hand. A few days later when he did try to contact her, he was told she’d left for Mullbergh.
He glanced astern again, across the Firth to the blueish haze over Edinburgh. Like many others in the Grand Fleet, he had mixed feelings now about that town. In the early days of June, there might even have been some satisfaction in turning the fleet’s guns on it!
The Rosyth ships – including Beatty’s Lion, badly damaged and full of wounded ‒ had been boo’d by dockyard workers as they’d limped into their berths. Then ‒ incredibly ‒ wounded sailors on their way to hospital had been jeered at by civilians in the streets.
Bates had turned his guns on Edinburgh…
Hugh had sent him ashore to buy a few essentials ‒ having almost no personal possessions left he’d hardly known where to start ‒ but Able Seaman Bates got no further than the Caledonian Street station. Some lounging porters hooted at him; one of them shouted. ‘Thank the Lord we’ve an army tae defend us!’ A few minutes later, by which time Bates had laid him and his mate out cold and thrown a railway official through the window of the ticket office, considerably enlarging the window in the process, he was arrested. A magistrate fined him for assault and damage to property, and he’d then been handed over to the naval patrol and returned aboard Nile, where finally he’d been hauled up in front of Crick as a defaulter. There were several charges against him under the Naval Discipline Act, and the police sergeant who’d arrested him was brought on board as a witness.
Hugh heard all about it afterwards; it was still a pleasure to visualise the scene that morning on his ship’s quarterdeck. Bates at attention with his cap off, brown monkey-eyes fixed on the commander while the charges were read out. Crick, taller than anyone else present, ramrod stiff behind a small table that had been placed beside ‘X’ turret, listening to Lieutenant Knox-Wilson’s formal report of earlier proceedings. Knox-Wilson had been officer-of-the-day when Bates had been brought back by the patrol: he’d heard the charges read out there and then, and had no choice but to pass the case on to ‘commander’s report’. The regulating petty officer who’d been on duty then was here now at Crick’s defaulter’s session: so was the master-at-arms, Nile’s chief of police.
The police sergeant described what had taken place at the Caledonian Street station. When he’d finished and snapped his notebook shut. Crick stared down his nose at Bates.
Bates’s eyes didn’t waver. He was ready for more punishment, well aware that the commander was not one of his admirers.
‘What’s your story, Bates?’
Bates told it, not wasting words, but not missing anything out either.
‘Nothing else to say?’
‘No, sir.’ Crick turned to the policeman. ‘D’you wish to contradict anything this man has told me?’
‘I couldn’ae, sir. I wasn’ae present, not when he started bashing ’em aboot.’
Crick’s eyes returned to the defaulter. ‘How much did they fine you did you say? Thirteen poun’ twelve an’ six, sir. They gimme time to pay though, sir.’
Crick asked the policeman, ‘That’s a great deal of money?’
‘It were a great deal o’ damage, sir.’
The commander nodded slowly, staring at him.
‘Would you happen to know, sergeant, how many men we lost in the recent battle?’
‘No, sir, I would not.’
‘More than six thousand, sergeant.’
Crick’s tone had hardened. The policeman looked down at his boots, and shook his head. Crick had turned back to Bates.
‘I shall pay your fine myself.’ He cleared his throat. ‘No. On second thoughts, I believe the wardroom officers may wish to take a share in it. If you’d permit that, Bates?’
Bates blinked, twice. He nodded. Crick snapped. ‘Case dismissed!’
* * *
Hugh returned his coxswain’s salute as he stepped from the gig to the pier steps.
‘Carry on, Cox’n. Be here at five, please. And you know I’ll be needing you later as well.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Bates knew what for, too. He’d have his crew working on the gig now, back at the boom; for this evening’s trip she’d be as ‘tiddly’ as any boat that ever crossed the Firth of Forth.
Hugh climbed the steps, and walked up the wooden pier.
Sarah was in his thoughts now.
* * *
She was ‒ hardly the same person.
‘So you’re the conquering hero now Hugh!’
‘Oh, that s all rubbish…’
He felt as if he was talking to her through glass, a defensive barrier. He’d had things to tell her: and he knew ‒ he’d assembled his thoughts, for about the thousandth time, during the short train journey out to Aberdour – precisely what he wanted to establish. He wanted an understanding: an indication would have been enough. More than that, in present circumstances, would have been too much to ask for. He wanted her to understand his own feelings for her, and accept them. Beyond that, time could be left to look after everything.
All right, so he’d be asking to have his cake and eat it too. But as much for her sake as for his own. And it made sense. One couldn’t ignore this morning’s front-page news ‒ of the great offensive on the Somme, the long-heralded attack aimed at prising the Huns’ strangle-hold off Verdun. Brother John had told Sarah months ago that when the balloon went up he’d be there: all this time his division had been training for it.
One couldn’t ignore facts or discount probabilities. The war had been going on too long and the casualty lists had stretched too far for anyone to stay blind, or pretend blindness, about such things.
Sarah had greeted him effusively: that had been the first wrong sign. She’d been like a hostess receiving a visitor whom she might not have wanted to entertain. Buchanan had told him on the telephone that regrettably he wouldn’t be at home himself he was off to London that afternoon but Sarah would be, and he, Buchanan, had been worried about leaving her alone. She’d be delighted to see him.
Less delighted, Hugh realised, than on edge. Twice she’d glanced anxiously at the clock.
‘So sad about David.’ He told her. ‘I wrote to John, of course.’
He’d been called on down in Portsmouth by Bantry’s padre, a man called Pickering. Pickering and a number of wounded survivors in his care had been picked up soon after dawn on 1 June by a destroyer; they’d been on make-shift rafts, apparently. He’d spoken warmly of David’s courage and steadiness below decks during the ship’s last hours. Conditions must have been appalling… So much, Hugh had thought, for one’s doubts of David.
Sarah preferred to talk about young Nick.
‘Isn’t it wonderful, what he did?’ She added. ‘And that was your doing, Hugh. If you hadn’t arranged for him to be moved to that destroyer—’
‘Yes, well…’
She rattled on about Nick. Hugh found himself surrendering; it was impossible to switch the conversation to the personal level that he’d wanted. In any case, she was so different in her manner that it was like chatting to someone one hardly knew
She said, ‘I hope it won’t change him too much.’
‘Would you expect it to?’
There was a sort of gloss on her. Her natural prettiness had become what he’d have called a London Prettiness.
‘Well, it’s highly dramatic for him, isn’t it. Recommended for ‒ “accelerated promotion”, is it?’
Hugh nodded. ‘He’s in for a DSC as well.’
She smiled, brightly. ‘What are you in for?’
He shook his head. ‘You needn’t fear too great a change in him. He’s now back up to his neck in hot water.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘He sent a man on leave. He’d no business to and he knew it, he did it surreptitiously, even got him a travel warrant and an advance of pay. The fellow wasn’t entitled to leave or pay, and he and his wife left their home address and couldn’t be traced so he has either to be allowed to stay on leave until he chooses to come back, or it’s a matter of alerting police- stations all over the country to pick him up. Nick’s not in great favour. I can tell you.’
Sarah had giggled. ‘I remember. He was a bit worried, when he came to Mullbergh.’
‘Indeed.’
‘But compared to what he did—’
‘He can thank his stars he has something on the credit side. But if he’s going to let a bit of success go to his head—’
‘Oh. Nick’s not like that!’
He felt better suddenly; she’d looked and sounded like her old self, then. That vehemence: her love for Nick: this was Sarah!
He tried to take advantage of the moment…
‘Are you ‒ you yourself, Sarah ‒ all right?’
‘I hardly know what you mean.’
Her guard was up again. And she’d allowed herself another glance at the clock.
‘I meant, are you happy. Because ‒ Sarah, my dear, I’ve had a lot of time for thinking, lately. About you, and how I—’
‘Hugh.’
He waited. She forced a smile. ‘I do, to be truthful, have rather a dreadful headache. I think I’ll go and lie down, when you’ve—’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ He got up, quickly. ‘If you’d said so before, I’d—’
‘It’s nothing in the least serious, just—’
The Blooding of the Guns Page 28