A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Callison, Brian

  I beckoned to the hovering Brannigan. ‘Aye, aye, Sir. We’ll sing out if we see it first. Very loudly!’

  Sliding down the ladder with the Fourth Mate at my heels, I saw Charlie Shell and his crowd aft at their stand-by stations on the poop. The army bombardier, Allen, and his gun crew, looking commendably spruce now in khaki shirts and shorts, stood jealously round the long-snouted Phyllis, almost as if they half expected Charlie to steal it when they weren’t looking. He probably would've done, too, if the damned thing hadn’t been bolted to the deck.

  The Old Man leaned over the after-end of the bridge. ‘Ask the Bosun to call the soundings as soon as he can, please, Mister Kent.’

  I noticed how the Red Ensign drooped listlessly from our stern as the telegraphs jangled for ‘Dead slow ahead.’

  *

  Quintanilha de Almeida Island looked even more soulless when seen at close range.

  From my station up in the bow, thirty feet above the slowly moving water, I watched apprehensively as the black cliffs loomed closer. The entrance was plain now, just a jagged slash in the rocks, veering slightly to port at first, then with a gradual sheer to starboard, almost like the opening to a small Norwegian fiord. Approximately one hundred feet wide at what appeared to be its narrowest point some two hundred and fifty feet ahead ... so far, so good. Our beam was sixty-two so we didn’t run any risk of jamming like a wedge in a crack. All we had to worry about was the depth of water under our keel. Brannigan and I craned over, staring tautly down into the still dark-green water. Below me the huge starboard anchor hung, almost brushing the surface, ready to let go at the first shout from the bridge.

  The Bosun had started to find bottom almost as soon as our bow nosed into the space between the two seaward promontories. I could hear his throaty bellow calling the sounding every few moments as he leaned well out against the chains and, with a gracefully controlled swing of the heavy lead, sent it snaking out to splash in the water well ahead of his perch. As the ship passed the point where the line stood vertically, he dunked it up and down to make sure it was bottoming properly and started to haul it in, coiling it in his horny left hand as he went.

  It was a piece of white linen just touching the surface this time and, ‘By the mark ... fifteen,’ sang the Bosun, reading the sounding from the material spliced into the line—cabalistic symbols of leather with a hole in it, or a twist of red bunting or blue serge or white linen, identical in every respect to that ritual tool used by the sealers visiting this island so long ago.

  Then another mighty swing, the flutter of white farther above the surface this time, and the gravelly voice booming, ‘And a half ... thirteen.’ Thirteen and a half fathoms, just about eighty feet of water, say fifty actually below our keel, but shoaling fast and with the narrowest point still a good two hundred feet ahead of our bow.

  And still green, frightening water under the forefoot.

  Suddenly, without warning, the scene darkened as though a shutter had been drawn. I looked up, startled, to see that the high black cliffs had blanked off the sun completely. I saw Brannigan shiver and rub his forearms—when a deep sea sailorman gets that close to land, then it’s time to pray.

  None of us spoke, standing there nervously on the foc’sle head. I could see the sailors staring apprehensively up at the hanging, guano-layered rocks above us. Once, when I risked a sharp glance too, I registered an unsettling vision of myriads of cold, beady eyes glowering back as the seabirds resentfully watched us sliding below their domain. Ahead, a tempting glimpse of blue water and clear sun-slashed sky framed in the macabre irregularity of the channel buttresses.

  We were hugging the left-hand side now, keeping so close to the slime-covered rocks you felt you could almost stretch out a hand and pick yourself a bunch of seaweed. A glint from the high bridge made me turn in time to see the braided cap of the Old Man as he stood isolated on the port wing.

  ‘By the mark - seven!’

  God! Forty-two feet, and we were drawing twenty-eight.

  What kind of bottom was it? Maybe there were massive spikes of rock projecting upwards through the green water, reaching hungrily for our double bottoms this very second —lethal weapons undetectable by the Bosun’s lead before the deck leaped and we swung broadside to smash finally and irrevocably against those vast clubs of stone that awaited us.

  The jangle of the telegraphs seemed very loud, even at this distance, funnelled as it was down to us through the gorge. ‘Stop engines!’ Almost immediately the faint tremor under the deck faded and we slid, now completely silent, towards the blessed light ahead.

  ‘By the deep ... SIX.’

  ‘Jesus!’ Brannigan whispered.

  I couldn’t even whisper, my mouth was too dry. Six fathoms ... we needed nearly five to float us.

  What was THAT ...? Yes, there were dark, dim shapes moving slowly aft under our bow. The bottom! Oh, please God, make them go away, make them sink back down into the anonymity of deep water. I felt flakes of rust spear under my fingernails as I clenched convulsively at the black-painted rail, swinging aft to scream at the unmoving white cap on the bridge. To warn him .

  ‘And a quarter ... seven.’

  Forty-four feet? Wait! The shapes had receded ... and only seventy feet to the beckoning sunlight. I wanted to look ahead, to see what we were about to come out to, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the still water under our slicing foot.

  ‘By the deep ... six.’

  Shoalling again, but not too fast. We were nearly through. Forty feet to go. I glanced up momentarily. Sparkling, twinkling blue water and, behind, sandy beaches - yellow warm sand. Please ...?

  ‘And a quarter less ... seven.’

  Only a spit now to that big, black rock that appeared to mark the inner extremity of the entrance ... and then we were looking down on it as bright sunlight burst, dazzling, across the foc’slehead again. Sunlight. Beautiful sunlight. A quick vision of a wide, welcoming sea loch surrounded by high, sheltering land, then the Old Man’s shout booming down from the bridge.

  ‘Mister Kent!’

  I waved my arms back, relishing the warm kiss of sun to ease my tensed shoulders. The voice echoed again. ‘Remember the rock shelf, Mister Kent!’

  I swung round. Hell, I’d nearly forgotten the anticipated swing to starboard. Or was it to port? Keep looking, Resume staring desperately into the suddenly clear water below. Brannigan was hanging over beside me, with most of the crowd displaying a row of tight, blue-jeaned backsides as they, too, craned breathlessly over the rails.

  We were hardly moving at all now. Just drifting forward through the water fast enough to raise a little splurge of flashing glass round the rust-streaked and battered stem - battered where we’d knifed into, and through, the unsuspecting Mallard a million years ago. What was it the book had said? A sharp turn just as the after-end of the long-dead survey-ship’s counter had cleared the innermost periphery of the entrance? But Evans had said she could only have been about three hundred feet long at the most. We wouldn’t have more than two-thirds of Cyclops's length clear at that.

  The forward break of the centrecastle was sliding past the big rock now, the shadow of the bridge cutting across the water towards it. We must be two hundred feet into the lagoon already. A sudden dark shape to port. The shelf? I felt the sweat trickling down the side of my nose as the shadow—distorted and wavering under the crystal clarity of the water—drew frenetically away. A giant Atlantic Manta ray. So that was the end of any ideas I might have coveted about a quick swim off that golden beach.

  ‘By the deep ... eight.’

  More depth under us. Good, maybe the book was wrong. Slow, very slow ... Still nothing ahead. We were almost stopped now, have to give her a turn on the screws or we’ll lose steerage way completely, but Evans was being careful, very careful. I couldn’t even see the giant rock now, it must have slid well aft. Thank you for being good to ...

  ‘Good God Almighty!’ Brannigan suddenly shouted,
drawing back involuntarily.

  Then I drew back too as I saw deep down into the water twenty feet from our already splintered forefoot. A great, black, evil wall of stone rising sheer to a point just below the surface ... a solid, impenetrable barrier of nightmare outcrops, the whole mass seeming to weave gently under its obscene growth of marine plants.

  I whirled round with frantically cupped hands, retaining a never-to-be-forgotten mental imprint of tiny, gaily coloured fish nosing in and out of the floating fronds. ‘Shelf dead AHEAD! The SHELF ...!’

  The Old Man’s hand raised in almost casual acknowledgement, then immediately I heard the telegraphs jangle from the wheelhouse. Through the open windows I could see the quartermaster bending over the spinning wheel as he gave her full helm, then the steel deck started to bounce and throb under the power of our twin screws. I knew right away what Evans was doing, the shaking judder under my feet told me. Slow ahead port engine, slow astern starboard. The shuddering grew more and more violent as, terribly slowly, we started to revolve around our own axis.

  Was our stern clear aft, or would the flashing screws strike the tail end of the submarine hazards of the entrance and disintegrate into spinning shards of phosphor-bronze scrap?

  ‘By the mark ... seven.’ Oh, that bloody, phlegmatic old Bosun.

  It was all rock and blackness under us now ... Christ, we were ON to it! The bow jumped under our feet and we braced ourselves for the shock. Almost stopped though. The already impacted plating below us screamed as our great bows ground into the weed-skirted stone, crushing and boring. I closed my eyes and listened to the ship’s agony, while Brannigan kept on thumping at the steel rail, on and on and on, as Evans had done that time we ran the corvette down.

  The water round the bows was cloudy now, its crystal purity contaminated by tons of ground pumice as we slowly swung to starboard. I ventured a glance aft. Evans still stood out there on the wing, unmoving and unflustered. The swing increased and the submarine grinding and splintering faltered - then stopped.

  Brannigan and I leaned well out. Yes! The flared steel below was broadsiding into clear, deep water. The Fourth Mate grinned idiotically at me in excited relief, while the sailors at the rail slapped each other on the back and swore as if they’d just unearthed some new lexicon of seagoing ribaldry. I forced myself to walk nonchalantly aft to the break of the foc’sle, feeling my legs tremble under me, and waved again to the solitary little figure above.

  ‘All clear forr’ad, Sir!’ I yelled, then, turning on the crowd, made like a bucko mate again. ‘Stop that bloody ROW there ...! Chippie, stand by to let go starboard. All hands abaft the windlass.’

  From the bridge came the jangle of the telegraphs again. ‘Stop starboard engine.’ The shuddering cut immediately, then the bells again, ‘Dead slow ahead both engines,’ and we steadied on a heading for the far end of the lake.

  The Third Mate came out of the wheelhouse. I heard a soft cough and a red flare soared high into the royal blue sky to burst with a distant plop and a fuzzy puff of grey smoke. Then another went up to hang beside it.

  And we’d arrived at Quintanilha de Almeida.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Bill Henderson met me at the top of Athenian’s accommoda­tion ladder as I ran up from the waiting motor lifeboat we’d lowered to act as a ship-to-ship tender for the next three days.

  We shook hands, then simply gazed at each other for a few moments, grinning like idiots. He looked as sun-bronzed and fit as ever, did Bill; standing there in immaculate whites with his cap shoved jauntily on the back of his head and the three tarnished gold straps of his epaulettes sitting saltily on the broad shoulders.

  Then he pretended to punch me and said, ‘Come over for a few lessons in ship-keeping then, John?’

  I glanced round the spotless decks with an exaggerated expression of distaste. ‘Nope! Just thought maybe you’d have some problems you’d be too embarrassed to ask me to solve for you.’

  We laughed and climbed the ladders, identical in every respect to those of Cyclops, to the boat deck and master’s quarters below the bridge. As we climbed I glanced around at the island of Quintanilha de Almeida again. Probably about four miles long by some two and a half wide it wasn’t really so much an island as a natural funk hole from our viewpoint, situated as we were at the extreme western end of the deep-water lake, well away from the entrance. Behind us black cliffs dropped sheer to the water, as they did on our adjacent sides but, almost two miles distant on the other side of the channel, the sun glinted on the warm sand of the beach which I’d noticed as we performed our gate-crashing pirouette. I’d rather fancied dropping the hook there but the Old Man had said ‘No.’ He wanted to stay as far from the shallow ground as possible in case the wind got up and backed farther to the left as is normal in the southern hemisphere.

  We planned to land a lookout party the next morning to watch for any sign of seaward activity, enemy or otherwise—not that we could have done much about it, penned in as we were by the protective - or might that more properly be described as captive? - natural breakwaters around. The thought reinforced that uncomfortable sensation I'd felt earlier ... that now we were doubly in affinity with the remote islanders of Tristan da Cunha: that this place was also the freak result of some long-forgotten underwater disturbance, and that we were actually anchored in the maw of an enormous submarine volcano thrust to the surface some millions of years before.

  I hesitated a moment before the burnt-out carcase of the radio room, and Bill gestured to where our own gun's shell had penetrated; a great jagged gash in the thick steel plating. ‘Who in God’s name would want to do a hellish thing like that, John?’

  I shook my head bitterly and told him as much as I knew. I could see he was as baffled as we were but he didn’t look disapproving as he might have done under the circumstances. Just glanced at the mess of tortured steel and incinerated wireless equipment and said softly, ‘Poor sods never knew what hit them.’

  I bit my lip, imagining what it must have been like. One minute everything quiet and dark with the ship ploughing steadily on its track, then a banshee scream out of the blackness and a holocaust of super-heated steel shards exploding through jetting white flames and frying, disintegrating corpses.

  ‘What about the cadet who was killed, Bill? How come he was around this part of the ship at that time in the morning?’

  ‘Mike Simpson,’ Bill stubbed viciously at a blob of molten metal with the toe of his deck shoe, and I could see my question had shaken him badly. ‘He was in my watch, John. I thought he looked kind of peaky so I was a good bloke and sent him down to the half-deck for an extra smoke. The fuckin’ bastard shot took his bloody head clean off as he walked aft, past here.’

  I gazed at the rusty smears on the charred wooden deck and felt sick. I’d tried to be decent like that to young Conway so I could imagine what Bill must be thinking. He moved away forward and I followed as he spoke over his shoulder. ‘It was Mike’s first trip. He was an only son. Doesn’t the name ring a bell with you?’

  I frowned. ‘Simpson? No, should it?’

  He stopped and turned in front of the cabin door that proclaimed ‘Master’ on a little brass plate. ‘His dad was chief engineer of Hesperia.’

  Hesperia? Eric Clint’s dead ship ... Oh, Christ, the bloody war again, breaking up the happy family. Now a mother with both husband and son in the Company service, and both gone along with Big Eric and old Tom Everett. This bloody, bloody war!

  *

  Little Bert Samson had risen and held out his hand as we went in, taking our caps off. The hard little eyes weighed me up from under eyebrows that could have been a twin set with Evans’s bushy growths. As soon as I stepped forward I could feel the dynamic personality exuding from the skinny, diminutive frame. The gruff, contrasting voice was exactly as I’d remembered it. ‘Well, Mister Kent, and how are things aboard Cyclops?’

  The hand gripped mine firmly as we shook. ‘Very well, thank you, Sir. Captain Ev
ans sends his compliments and apologies for not visiting himself, but he feels he should stay aboard the ship under the circumstances. He’s sure you’ll understand.’

  Bert waved to a chair behind me and smiled, which meant he allowed the withered skin to crinkle sourly round the corners of an obstinate mouth. ‘Aye? I can’t say I’m really surprised after him bringing us into a bloody rat trap like this.’

  I shrugged deferentially. ‘The only alternative was to run the risk of chasing each other’s tails for the next three days, Captain. If there are U-boats in this area they’d have thought it was Christmas.’

  ‘And if they see us in here, or watched us squeeze through the entrance, then we’re already gift-boxed and ready for collection, Mister.’

  The bushy protrusions rose again. I could see that, despite first impressions, he was in one of his bloody-minded moods, so I tried to duck out gracefully. ‘The Admiralty signal did advise us to attempt an entrance if at all possible ... Sir.’

  ‘Did you query it?’ Sharp and cutting.

  Bill shifted uncomfortably next to me as I answered, ‘No, Sir. We wanted to keep radio transmissions to a minimum. The more we emit traffic the better chance the enemy has of getting a D.F. fix on us.’

  ‘You still should’ve queried it. Three bloody days without an escort ... it’s unreasonable.’

  I could maybe have added that the whole goddam war was unreasonable, but I was over here to explain the details, not get involved in an inter-master debate on the rights and wrongs of conforming to what were, in Samson’s opinion anyway, ill-advised instructions. So I just nodded and said, ‘Yessir.’

  But he wasn’t going to be pacified that easily. The withered old mouth turned down petulantly. ‘No, Sir, Mister Kent! I just about lost my bloody screws with that goddamned sheer to starboard as we came in. And how the hell do we get out, anyway? One touch of the props on that shelf and we’re here till the brass goes rusty.’