A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Callison, Brian

  ‘Bombardier, Sir,’ he muttered, sniffing.

  I felt my jaw tightening. ‘Bombardier ... I want to know who fired this gun a few minutes ago, and I want to know now! I want the man whose bloody criminal stupidity caused that ...’ I waved my hand, ‘to happen aboard Athenian.’

  The rounded cheeks quivered. ‘I dunno, Sir. We was all in our kips downstairs when it happened.’

  I blinked. ‘You saying you were all below? None of you were up here on the poop?’

  He shook his head positively. ‘None of us, Sir. Like I said, we was all sleeping when we heard the shot over our ’eads. We tumbled out pretty sharpish but, when we got up ’ere, Phyllis was pokin’ her nose at that ship there and there wasn’t a soul near her. Mind, it was pretty dark at that time, an’ all.’

  ‘Phyllis?’ I queried, trying desperately to think.

  ‘The gun. Sir. We call it Phyllis ... after my old woman.’

  I tilted my cap back, feeling the sun’s rays starting to beat down on my shoulder blades. One or two of the sailors were clustered inquisitively round the top of the ladder but, when they saw me glancing towards them, they quickly disappeared in case I remembered day-work men turned to at four bells and it was now well past that. I didn’t bother right then, though—I had another problem to solve before I concentrated on the domestic running of the ship.

  I gazed suspiciously at the little bombardier. It didn’t make sense. No one else aboard would want to play around with the gun on their own, and certainly not in what was damned near the middle of the night, and in pitch darkness.

  Allen went over to the after end of the 4.7 and pulled a lever. The shining brass cartridge case slid out through a puff curl of spent smoke and fell with a clang on to the freshly caulked wooden deck sheathing. An acrid whiff of burnt powder caught my throat as we bent forward to inspect the softly gleaming shell case.

  ‘Check the ready-use locker, Ewing,’ said the bombardier, with surprising authority in his voice. He nodded at the spent case and looked up at me. ‘Fixed H.E., Sir. Looks like our usual ammo.’

  One of the big gunners turned from the locker where the immediate supply of ammunition for the gun was kept. ‘One round missing, Bomb.’

  Allen seemed to have regained his confidence now, and shrugged as he caught my eye. ‘That’s it then, Sir. Some bastard’s been interferin’ with Phyllis, and it weren’t none of my blokes. I’d swear to it.’

  The way he said it gave me the impression that he wouldn’t have been half so upset if the Phyllis in question had been the real one and not the mechanical monster sitting so oddly out of place on our stern. I started to get a tight feeling in my belly as I got up and walked slowly aft to the taffrail, stopping under the big Red Ensign that stirred restlessly above me. Leaning on the rail, I stared moodily into the boiling tumult of white foam under our counter, trying desperately to figure out who could possibly have wanted to commit such a bloody stupid act in the first place, and that raised yet another frightening thought. If it wasn’t the army crew—then it must have been one of the ship’s complement!

  A tinny, rattling sound made me look down and I realised that the metal band of my watch strap was vibrating against the metal of the rail. I became aware of the tremendous shudder caused by the threshing of the twin screws underneath me as they twisted against the water pressure at what was, for us, excessively high revolutions. We were still on emergency speed and running away ... but from what? The whole voyage was turning out to be a succession of nightmare mysteries, of effects without apparent causes, of ships sinking so quickly that they didn’t have time to get off more than an indication of their positions, and of Brock’s benefit displays in the middle of the night in an area where even a cigarette glowing in the dark could invite, a sudden, choking death. And now ... our gun.

  A bloody silly gun called Phyllis.

  I swung to meet the little bombardier’s eyes fixed defiantly on me as the other two soldiers hovered almost protectively behind him, and I knew Allen was telling the truth. Whoever had fired that gun hadn’t come from the D.E.M.S. crowd. The Old Man wasn’t even going to have that slender crumb of comfort to sustain him.

  ‘It wasn’t us,’ the bombardier repeated earnestly.

  I nodded and saw the look of relief in his eyes. ‘I know, Bombardier. But I’m damned if I know who else would want to play silly buggers up here in the middle of the night.’

  He glanced at me strangely. ‘How d’you know they was ... well - playin’, Sir?’

  I stared back, feeling the knot in my belly tighten even more. ‘What do you mean?’

  He shrugged again and the I.D. discs clinked faintly. ‘I dunno that I mean anything, Sir. But these guns ain’t easy to fire by accident. The drill’s pretty complicated, if you see what I’m gettin’ at?’

  ‘You’re suggesting that the gun was loaded and fired intentionally?’

  He swallowed nervously. ‘I know it was, Sir. But I can’t see no reason for anyone to do it, mind.’

  Neither could I. But if ... if ... the shot had been fired deliberately, then the second question was obvious—had it been fired AT Athenian, or ...?

  I jerked my chin at the long barrel. ‘How accurate is it, Bombardier?’

  ‘Theoretical range, ’bout ten thousand yards, Sir. But I wouldn’t like to bet on hittin’ anythin’ at much over half that.’

  I glanced over at Athenian, noting at the same time that the smoke had almost completely ceased to issue from her wounds. The hoses still snaked over her decks like long white tapeworms, but her crowd were now busy rolling them up and stowing them away. Several figures seemed to be moving into the burnt-out wireless room. I was glad I wasn’t one of them. Mentally I estimated the distance between us ... still about five cables—roughly one thousand yards. She was so near in sea room terms, we could have damaged her with spit.

  I pointed. ‘How close could you place a shell on Athenian, Bombardier? Could you be fairly sure of hitting, say, an area the size of her wheelhouse with reasonable accuracy?’

  He spat contemptuously to windward, then brushed the khaki vest vigorously as he found there was more to seamanship than a vague knowledge of how to tie knots.

  ‘At this range, Sir? An’ without the boat goin’ up an’ down ...? I could put a shot through one of them little round windows on one side, then out the other without scratchin’ the paint.’

  I nodded. It was a reassuring thought, if it were true, for when we ever met a U-boat but, at the same time, it told me something else. Demolishing Athenian’s radio room hadn’t been a pure mischance. I thought back to the big, black silhouette steaming close abeam of us during the night, every detail picked out against the stars behind: the acute angle of the after end of her centrecastle standing out as stark and clear cut as any naval gunnery target, and less than one-fifth of the distance away. Always assuming the unknown marksman knew how to fire the gun, of course.

  The docking telephone secured to the rail behind me buzzed angrily like a captive wasp. Conway quickly opened the door of its protective cabinet and answered. I could hear the Donald Duck bellow even from where I stood. The cadet went a bit whiter and, standing back, pushed the receiver anxiously at me.

  ‘The Captain, Sir,’ he said, unnecessarily.

  I lifted the phone gingerly. ‘Chief Officer, Sir.’

  The chipped metal receiver spat back at me immediately. ‘Have you got the bloody madman that did it yet, Mister? I’ve just had a signal from Mallard and another one from Bert Samson over there. Now you just bring the murderin’ bugger up to the bridge this minute, d'you hear? Right away, Mister Kent!’

  I winced. ‘I’ll come right up, Sir.’

  As I hung the phone back inside its box I caught a glimpse of young Conway watching me with a comical, almost understanding expression on his face. Maybe, now, he was beginning to find that bucko mates weren’t the only anti­social bullies aboard ship.

  *

  It took quite a time to convinc
e Evans that the R.A. gunners weren’t the people responsible for what had happened. Finally, he quietened down enough to listen to me and looked pretty disappointed and shaken about it too. I read the signals he handed me with an even sicker knot expanding in my belly. The first was from Athenian ... BOTH RADIO OFFICERS ALSO CADET SIMPSON D KILLED TWO RATINGS SERIOUSLY WOUNDED ALL WT EQUIP DESTROYED ... WHAT HAPPENED QUERY SIGNED SAMSON END.

  The second message was from Braid. COMESCORT TO MASTER CYCLOPS ... No fancy titles this time! ... PLEASE INVESTIGATE CAUSE OF MISFIRE YOUR VESSEL SUGGEST YOU USE APPROPRIATE PRACTICE BLANK SHOT FOR FURTHER DRILLS SIGNED BRAID END.

  I bit my lip and looked up at the Captain. He’d got over his blood-lust it seemed, or maybe he wasn’t so keen on finding the anonymous culprit now that he knew it wasn’t the army personnel? But no—I was being unfair to Evans. I recognised his problem, but didn’t know what advice to proffer either. If the guilty party was one of the crew, then how did we even start to find out who? Did we hold a full-scale investigation into the movements of every man on board and break out a list of those without an alibi? If that was the way to go about it, then we could start with the Old Man himself because he fitted into that category—and so did at least another thirty men. So what did we do?

  ‘We could ask every member of the crew if they saw anyone about on the poop at the time the gun was fired, Sir?’ I suggested, searching desperately for inspiration.

  He looked at me and I could see the tiredness and strain in his eyes. ‘Do you really think it’s likely that someone saw something but hasn’t reported it yet, John?’

  I shook my head. He was dead right and, apart from that, the shot had been fired while it was still pitch dark. The crew’s quarters were aft, apart from the officers’, and anyone wanting to make himself scarce quickly just needed to slide down the ladder and back into the poop housing. He could have been back in his cabin before the boom of the shot had died away and, with most of the sailors bunked only two to a cabin in a modern ship like Cyclops, the chances were he would have planned it for when his oppo was on watch anyway.

  I hesitated before asking myself the next obvious question. What if it had been one of the officers? But, even then, all they had to do was nip forward along the well deck and lose themselves in the shadowy anonymity of the centrecastle accommodation. Again no one would have been likely to have seen them in the darkness.

  Oh, Hell! Supposing an officer had been seen, then—what’s so suspicious about a ship’s officer being seen aboard a ship? I’d even seen one myself—Larabee, outside his W.T. Room. No, wait ...! I’d overlooked the Third Mate, Curtis. He'd been even further aft, even closer to the gun platform, and he'd looked like a man under severe stress. Could it have been symptomatic of just having caused the deaths of three men by remote control ...?

  I struggled to get a grip on my imagination and looked at Evans helplessly.

  Why? That was the question that was haunting both of us.

  Why in God’s name should any man aboard want to fire at our sister ship ...?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Cadet Breedie bumped into me as I was leaving the saloon after another coffee-and-nothing-else breakfast. He skidded to a halt and waved an apologetic hand. ‘Sorry, Sir! The Old Ma ... er - the Captain would like to see you at the radio room soon as you can manage, Sir.’

  I hauled my cap down over my eyes and nodded savagely. Everything seemed to be revolving round the radio officers right then, what with Foley’s disappearance and now the recent—I shrank from the word ‘Murder’—the recent deaths of Athenian’s Chief and Second Sparks in particular. What else could have happened since then? The only slim consolation I could cling to was the hope that, if anything had gone wrong, then it had gone wrong with Larabee.

  When I arrived at the after end of the boat deck the Second Operator looked pretty well as per normal, which meant still moody and sardonic. The Old Man was engaged in deep conversation with him and I noticed with a feeling of shock the tired creases seaming the normally smooth, ruddy face. He’d had a bad time of it in the past few months, like all of us, but on top of that was the fact that ship’s masters carried a deeper responsibility which, with most of them anyway, seemed to erode their physical health even while they were snatching a few hours of precious sleep below. This current voyage wasn’t being made any easier by the added burden of knowing what would happen should our three crucial secret bags fall into the wrong hands.

  The door to the radio room was open behind them and the air was full of the hiss of static with the occasional twitter of rapid morse from some distant transmitter. Almost subconsciously my ears tuned to the signals and I felt an inordinate sense of pride when I found I could distinguish the major part of the traffic, even from the nimble fingers of the professionals. I wondered how Larabee could possibly sleep through the jumble of noise yet remain alert to the slightest rattle of our own ship’s call sign; but then, I could be fast asleep below yet be instantly wide awake and listening at any unexpected alteration of course. Our oil- hungry Chief Engineer was the same—any variation in the even throb of his giant diesels and he was out of his bunk and down below before the watch keeper himself realised it. We were, all of us, in some strange inexplicable way, tuned to the heartbeats and pulse of the ship. All of us like specialists round the bedside of a patient, each one alive to the faintest irregularity in his own field of responsibility. This facility could at times even be anticipatory. I remember once, several years ago aboard one of our old coal burners, the venerable ‘Lamps’, a hoary old seadog of a lamptrimmer, had actually appeared on deck during the middle watch and climbed the foremast just in time to replace the masthead light bulb as it went out.

  Evans looked up as I approached. ‘Mister Larabee seems to feel there may be some danger to him in his capacity as wireless operator, Mister Kent.’

  I looked inquiringly at Larabee, who nodded, almost apologetically. ‘Yeah, Mate,’ he muttered. ‘I reckon there’s something going on aboard this ship that we don’t understand, and I’m not happy with it. Not now the Sparks over on Athenian have parted their cables.’

  ‘That could have been an accident, Larabee,’ I said, not very convincingly.

  He shook his head for a change. ‘And Alf Foley going over the wall? Was that an accident? In my book, Mate, two accidents make a conclusion ... and my conclusion is that some bastard’s out to clobber all the wireless ops for some reason.’

  ‘What reason, Mister Larabee?’ Evans asked sharply. Larabee shrugged. ‘I dunno, Sir. But I don’t plan on finding out the hard way, if you see what I’m getting at?’

  I lifted my chin at him. ‘Then what, precisely, do you expect us to do, Larabee? You’ve already turned down the offer of a replacement for Alf. What else can we do—even admitting you may be right, that is?’

  The Second Sparks touched the door behind him. ‘I want a man stationed outside this door twenty-four hours a day, Mister Mate. And armed. Like I said before, I don’t need no one to help me do my job, but I’m bloody sure I’m not goin’ to sit around waitin’ for some crazy bastard to shove me over the side in the middle of the night. No thanks.’

  ‘I’m not arming any seaman aboard this vessel, Mister,’ Evans grunted. ‘If Mister Kent feels it advisable, then we shall post a man up here, but he won’t be carrying any weapons except his marlinespike and his own two fists!’

  He raised a fierce eyebrow to challenge me but I nodded in agreement. It was going to look bad enough to the crew anyway, but start issuing them with weapons and they’d think there were Nazi spies round every corner. The ship’s morale would plummet like an anchor on the run.

  ‘OK, Sparks,’ I said. ‘You’ll get your bodyguard. But I don’t want any scaremongering, understand. If I put a seaman on the door, we’ll say he’s there as a messenger—not as a strong arm. I don’t want you saying anything about our real reasons, imagined or otherwise.’

  Larabee nodded doubtfully but I wasn’t prepared to make
any further concessions to his seemingly out-of-character hysteria. In fact, as we walked away, I couldn’t resist the childish impulse to turn back. ‘Just hope, Larabee, that the man outside your door isn’t the same bloke who put old Alf over the wall in the first place. or didn’t you think about that?’

  To my dissatisfaction he grinned. ‘Strictly between you an’ me, Kent ... Maybe it’s not the Jerrys I’m wantin’ protection from so much as a certain bucko mate that’s too bloody quick with his hands!’

  I glared hard at him. There wasn’t any humour in the smile, just a promise of something indefinable. It gave me an uncomfortable feeling, but I couldn’t take it up with him right then, not with the Old Man waiting, and anyway, I’d asked for it with my snide remark. I hesitated another moment, trying to think of some cutting repartee, but nothing came.

  Swinging abruptly, I followed the Captain along the boat deck.

  *

  Twenty minutes later I was nearly running out of words again.

  ‘Five million quid?’ I exploded.

  The Old Man nodded slowly. ‘Five million pounds Australian, John. That’s not as much as its equivalent in Sterling at the current rate of exchange, of course.’

  ‘Five million quid Australian, then,’ I said again. ‘That, Sir, is big money in any national currency.’

  Evans leaned forward and poured himself another cup from the big silver coffee pot on his dayroom table. The engraved Company crest flashed briefly as he replaced it on the tray and added condensed milk. We had repaired to his cabin for a long overdue discussion on the normal work of the ship, a problem which was proving only too easy to ignore under current conditions. Somehow I had this bad feeling about what was going to happen and that, in itself, made me want to postpone making decisions about mundane jobs like replacing wire ropes, paintwork and the thousand and one duties and responsibilities of a chief officer. It’s funny how you can get an idea into your head and, subconsciously, it affects your whole attitude, although, at the time, you may not even be aware of it yourself. All I knew was that I felt a deep weariness, a sort of apathy which was slowly undermining my ability to plan ahead.