J. E. MacDonnell - 070

by Under Sealed Orders(lit)

  It was getting on towards a cloud-accelerated dusk when Dutchy's masthead order paid its first dividends.

  So high, the lookout could see much further than the bridge. Dutchy himself answered the voice-pipe's buzz.

  "Bridge. What is it?"

  It would take more than a length of vertical pipe to disguise that gravelly rasp. The lookout made himself speak deliberately.

  "Ships in sight bearing fine on the port bow, sir. Moving from right to left, to the southward. About a dozen, sir."

  Dutchy did not bother to try with his binoculars. With him on deck the bridge lookouts had been searching assiduously, and they had made no sighting report.

  "What d'you make of `em? Moving fast?"

  "There's only the masts, sir, but I'd say they were merchant ships. Hard to judge at the speed."

  Dutchy did not press him, A man needed bow-waves or a wake for an estimate of speed.

  "No alteration of course?"

  "No, sir, steady to the south."

  "Good. Keep your eyes peeled."

  There was no answer to that automatic injunction, and none expected. Dutchy came up from the voice-pipe.

  "Convoy," he said to Matheson. "That means escorts. Alter three points to starb'd, go on to thirty knots. Tell the engine-room I want no smoke."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  Matheson's acknowledgement was the only comment on those orders, private or vocal. They knew their mission. They were fighters, but shrewd fighters-like tigers who have more sense than to go in against odds. Or more like jackals, perhaps-after pickings, but without pointless risks. They had enough ahead of them without asking for trouble.

  Yet there was comment passed, if on a different subject. Bludger Bent was on his pom-pom with Olaf Jackson, checking without orders that the, eight-barrelled weapon was ready to engage if anything should come at them from the night. This was unlikely, but at war at sea at night you were likely not to have any more earthly worries if you disregarded the unlikely.

  Bludger came upright from his examination of a firing lock mechanism as he felt her heel and heard the rising voice of the blowers. He had no knowledge of the distant convoy, and Bludger's was of that happy nature which does not worry about what it does not know. He could see Jackal's movements, and this was enough to spark his comment.

  "Look at the bastard go," he said, nodding in appreciation of the piled-up wake.

  "That's not the point," Olaf rejoined sombrely.

  "That so? You got another point?"

  "Sure have. She can go all right, but the main thing is she can keep on goin'. That, I like. No worry about flamin' fuel pumps or bearin's. Not like before.

  "You gotta point," Bludger said sagely. He grinned. "Nice feelin', ain't it?"

  It was a very nice feeling, and it was universal throughout the ship. Pride in an old bomb of a ship was all very well, but there was no harm in having that pride in a ship whose machinery was barely, comparatively, run-in. Nice, indeed.

  "This is the first-lieutenant," the voice quietened them throughout the ship. "We have sighted an enemy convoy well clear to the westward. We're getting further clear. That's all."

  It was not quite all, before the night enfolded them.

  An hour later, with the convoy's masts long since vanished and nothing else in sight, Dutchy brought her back to her northerly course. She would dawdle through the night, which would bring her off the southern coast of Mindanao, near the entrance of Davao Gulf, at first light.

  But the time for dawdling was not quite yet.

  Directly ahead of them as she moved into the dimming light was a brilliant natural phenomenon. The sun was low, but some property of high reflection was allowing its light down through an oval-shaped hole in the clouds. The light poured through. It fell between cloud and sea in dusky triangular shafts with silvered edges, and made a sheeny patch of silver in the otherwise dark sea.

  "Like light in a cathedral," Matheson murmured.

  Dutchy was less romantically inclined. So close to enemy ground, so close to safe night, he could have done without that light. The gleaming patch was right ahead of the bow, and if the sun did not sink in time, or the oval hole close up, he would have to go round it.

  But the human eye, naturally, is drawn to light. He cursed the patch but he looked at it. Not carefully, not warily, simply with exasperation. And in the next second he was very wary indeed.

  There was a flash. The sea was not flashing. It was oily, without wind; it was simply gleaming reflectively. Yet there was the flash, and again. Low-down, brief, definite.

  "Hard-a-starb'd!" Dutchy roared. "Full ahead together!"

  This is the sort of time an admiral should carry out his inspection of a ship's competence. At a time like this he would learn infinitely more about a ship than her brightwork and boats and messdeck cleanliness could tell him.

  Dutchy's orders exploded on the bridge utterly without preparation. They were completely surprised. And they acted with an instant, disciplined, automatic swiftness.

  Nearest, Pilot bellowed down the wheelhouse voice-pipe. The telegraphsmen rang the change on the engine-room telegraphs. The helmsman leaned sideways a little and then with all the galvanised force of his arm whirled the spokes of the wheel. The engine-room artificer spun the throttles. The rudder heaved over, the turbines sang. Jackal heeled, and shook.

  And from the crow's nest, scorning the voice-pipe, high and urgent, came the lookout's cry: "Right ahead! Torpedo!"

  They could see now, every eye on the alerted bridge, even without glasses; springing from the base of those cathedral shafts came the three smooth tracks, racing, converging, heading at forty knots straight for her reeling guts.

  She had been at an easy fifteen knots. She was powerful, designed for swift movement, but time is required to shift seventeen hundred tons from fifteen to full speed. The torpedoes were faster than that. Only her captain's quickness, and their quick obedience, might save them.

  There was no time for another alteration of course, to turn and try to comb the triple tracks. She was committed. It was her great heart now, pumping and thrashing, and the thoroughness of Rear-admiral Truman; and, of course, the British workmen who had built her.

  Old Pelican or Utmost would never have made it. This was a strain only young sinews could bear. And they held, and thrust her, and took her ten yards clear of the right-hand track.

  "Jesus," Matheson breathed. He stared astern, after the racing points of smoothness which prolonged themselves on into the gloom.

  But Dutchy could spare time neither for relief nor sightseeing. Not this time could they run for their lives. They had been seen. The lives depended on their staying, and killing.

  "Midships," he rasped, "hard-a-port. You got that bearing, Pilot? Take her down it. Stand-by depth-charges."

  For the first time since he had sighted the periscope flash Dutchy stared at its point of origin. The oval of light had gone. The cloud had sutured its wound. Now the sky was an overall grey. No flashes, no black stick of a periscope. But he was still there, angry perhaps at his failure, perhaps apprehensive, but still deadly. For the Jap knew, and he had wireless.

  But now Truman's cunning old fox was a bull, eager to gore. Time was the only equation, not subtlety. The Jap knew of their presence but they knew where he was, right beneath the origin of those telltale tracks, and they had to get there fast before he could move any distance away. Asdic dome up, the log needle quivering on 34, Jackal rushed down the line of bearing. She was moving almost four times as fast as the enemy's maximum dived speed.

  As they waited on the bridge and at the guns and depth-charges on the quarterdeck, and felt her shaking power, once again they felt how good it was to have a young ship like this; good to know that all they had to do was find him and that Jackal's sustained strength would do the rest. There was no need to worry about a steering-engine packing up on a tight turn, or engines failing as she leaped in to attack again.

  Dutchy slowed her speed
well before the point of torpedo discharge and ordered the dome down. His experience was rewarded almost at once. The peep of contact came strong and clear. The Jap, cunning, was aiming to sneak away beneath them; he was coming towards, knowing that the destroyer would be at high speed with her dome up. Another few minutes and his plan would have succeeded.

  He was met instead with a diamond-shaped pattern which exploded all about him. Like a reined horse Dutchy wheeled her round. The men on her quarterdeck were shabbily and improperly dressed, without shirts and without caps, but they wore heavy protective boots and they knew their business. The deck heeled, but the charges were swayed up into the throwers so quickly that by the time she had straightened from the turn and the call came again they were ready. Dutchy spoke.

  Whoof, whoof. The sound was dull, not loud. The propelling charge did not need to be large. The canisters shot out only a few yards, joined by others from the stern rails. Jackal slid on, and then behind her the sea burst up.

  They did not see their enemy again. They did not need to. "Breaking-up noises" came from the speaker, then they heard the vindication of that report. Snaps, cracks, whistles. Bulkheads going, water rushing in and forcing air out. Up swelled the oil, to spread with faint but definite iridescence in the lingering light. They could smell it. Too much," Matheson said, his young face set with hard satisfaction.

  Dutchy nodded. Oil could be discharged to dupe an attacker, but not this quantity. This was an involuntary release. And no submarine could fake those breaking-up noises. Dutchy made a circling motion with his hand.

  "Bring her round," he said to Pilot.

  For ten minutes they circled, waiting not very hopefully for survivors. Large bubbles came up, which burst quietly, and then they ceased, and there was only the spreading evidence of the pungent oil.

  "We're wasting time," Matheson smiled, "and that oil is fouling my paint."

  Dutchy was not deceived by the smile or the words. They indicated only a reactive defensiveness; it is not pleasant to know seventy men have been engulfed by black death. But he answered in the same falsely jocular tone:

  "You're right, Bertie. Put her back on course, Pilot. Fallout action-stations."

  The night gathered fully about her and Jackal moved on into its helpful obscurity, darkened and quiet and still safe. Hands went to supper, their appetites unimpaired. The initial sickness had passed quickly; this is easy when you remember that the men you've killed had been devoted to your own destruction.

  Except for a broad stern poked out from the chart-table Matheson was alone on the bridge with the bosun's mate. The rain had held off. He hoped it would till he was relieved at eight o'clock. The sea was calm. Asdic was echoless and above his head the search radar whirred comfortingly. There was little to occupy him. Matheson took a look at the gyro compass and then walked over to the chart-table in the port forrard corner.

  He pressed in under the shielding canvas beside Dutchy. A dim blue light glowed over the chart. But Matheson saw that Dutchy was not concerned with the chart.

  "What are you up to?" he asked, looking at the photographs.

  Dutchy tapped a page with his finger. The recognition book was thick, with foolscap-sized pages.

  "Look at `em," he said. "Kagero-class, Sigure." He flipped a page. "Kamikaze-class, Uduki, Hubuki... what's common to all those destroyers?"

  Matheson's examination of the Japanese ships was brief; he was trained to snap recognition, especially of aircraft, when seconds could mean the difference.

  "They all have two funnels. That what you mean?"

  "That's exactly what I mean." Dutchy turned back a bunch of pages. "Look at our lot. How many classes of destroyers have one funnel? Javelin, Onslow, Hunt, Zambesi-damn near all of `em except the Tribals and Heros. We have one funnel. A Jap sub. sights a single-funnel job out here and that's all he has to worry about. He knows she's hostile."

  "So all we want is another funnel," Matheson jibed.

  "That's right."

  "Pity you hadn't thought of this bright idea at Garden Island. They have a dockyard there, y'know. Though I'd like to see the requisition chit... `Please supply and fit H.M.A.S. Jackal with one extra funnel. Never mind about connecting it to the furnaces.'"

  "You're killing me," Dutchy sneered. "Lucky that German skipper didn't rate such a funny bastard for a second-dickey."

  "Eh?"

  "The Emden's captain."

  "Come again?"

  "Don't they teach you young swabs naval history in college? Emden rigged a dummy funnel."

  "Oh, come on," Matheson grinned. "That was back in the bow and arrow days."

  Dutchy nodded. "Like the commandos."

  "Eh?"

  "Forget it. Get the Buffer up here. Better have the cox'n, too."

  "You're serious?"

  "No," Dutchy snarled. "I just want to see they get enough bloody fresh air! Smack it about."

  "Yessir. Bosun's mate!"

  The Buffer was the oldest man in the ship. He had been in on the last stages of the Great War-the one to end all wars-and had been within six days of his retirement when history and Hitler made liars of the pundits. He had also been with Dutchy since the beginning of this one.

  Like Viscount Trelawney, Chief Petty-officer Herbert John Wallace was tall and thin, though there similarity finished. The Buffer had neither lineage nor medals-he had only an equable nature which showed in his spare face, a hatred of serving in big ships, and a vast experience in small ones. He'd been in one cruiser, and would go to inordinate and immoral lengths to stay out of another.

  "Yes, sir?" he said now to the dim figure on the stool, and waited beside the dully-shining baldness of Verril's head. Neither man saluted, for they were capless-which says something for the discipline, or lack of it, on this bridge.

  Dutchy swung on the stool. "I want," he said, "another funnel."

  "Yessir," the Buffer answered automatically. Then he scratched his head. "A dummy funnel? Can do."

  Dutchy shot a malicious glance at Matheson. "That's what I like," he grinned. "Optimism."

  "Did that in the first stoush," the Buffer said. "I was in an old D-class cruiser at the time, off the Dogger Bank. We rigged a dummy chimney that made us look something like the present County-class. I remember there was a lot of Jerry torpedo-boat destroyers about at the time. Matter of fact, I was loading number of one of the forrard six-inch. No turrets, of course, just a gunshield open at the rear. A man copped the salt, I can tell..."

  "Oh, my Gawd," the Coxswain groaned. "He's off again."

  "Very interesting, Buffer," Dutchy said quickly. "But this funnel, now. Here's the picture."

  "I'm in it, sir," the Buffer nodded. "We change to a Jap destroyer."

  Matheson leaned forward. "How the devil did you get on to that?"

  "Elementary, ain't it, sir? Man's only got to look at the silhouettes. They all have two stacks, most of us rate one. We're headin' for Jap country, so..." The Buffer shrugged his bony shoulders.

  Dutchy looked at the invisible clouds. "It's a pity," he said gently, "more people aboard here don't study their recognition books."

  "All right," Matheson said viciously. "Just how do you propose to duplicate a steel bloody funnel?"

  A staccato voice jumped in. Verril was not to be outsmarted by his messmate and longtime friend.

  "I wasn't in the first war," he jerked, "not being a shellbacked barnacle. But all you need is canvas, painted grey, and wooden slats to keep it stretched at the top. She don't have to be round like a real funnel-just hang her up there like a curtain. From a few miles you couldn't tell the difference."

  "And how are you going to hang it up?" Matheson asked.

  "Easy. Run a wire, a sort of triadic stay, between the fore and mainmast. Couple of blocks on the stay, heave-oh and there you are."

  "Wonderful," said the Buffer, "bloody marvellous. There's only one small objection."

  "Yeah?" said his friend, suspiciously. "What?"

  "
This ship don't carry a mainmast."

  Matheson burst out laughing. Dutchy chuckled, sensing if not seeing in the dark the expression on the coxswain's face.

  "He's got you there, Swain," he said.

  Verril thought for a moment. Then:

  "Like hell he has. What are the aerials secured to aft? A flamin' licorice stick?"

  Easily, triumphant, the Buffer countered: "Too low. The top of that thing's below the top of the funnel."

  "So what?" Verril snapped. "We can bloody well..."

  "All right," Dutchy said, and slipped from the stool. They were instantly quiet, capless heads withal. "The aerial mast is steel. We could fish a spar to it, then run the triadic stay."