A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Callison, Brian

  The last detonation passed, echoing round the black, overhanging cliffs, and we lay for a moment like dead men. Then Brannigan started screaming dreadfully from his bed of scalpels inside the caved-in wheelhouse while we climbed numbly to our feet, still reeling with the shock of it. I wanted to go straight to Brannigan, to try and stop him screaming like that, but I couldn’t—not till I’d looked to see if both U-boats had died along with Athenian. To discover if her suicide had meant something after all.

  God, but how I yearned to see that bloody white peaked cap floating in the oil-fouled water ...

  But no. She was still there, still cruising off our beam, slightly headed away from us now but with that big, black gun already being manned again by her dazed sailors. They must have taken a beating too, though, and I could see a rope being thrown down over the bulge of her tanks to a man struggling in the water. One more minute, however, and she’d be on an attack course again, with us as helpless as before despite all the bloodshed and agony.

  Larabee said ‘Jesus Christ!’ in a shocked voice from inside the wheelhouse, and Evans bellowed ‘Mister KENT!’ above the crackling of ground glass. I turned unthinkingly, sick with despair, and stepped through the shattered door, then froze abruptly. I retained one brief image of a gleaming white skull from which nearly every shred of flesh had been stripped but in which the black hole of a mouth still opened and bubbled, then I was back outside again on the wing, retching into the still agitated water far below.

  And I didn’t stop heaving my guts out until the bloody silly gun on our poop slammed deafeningly and a tall column of water rose less than thirty feet from the U-boat’s hull.

  Which meant WE were fighting now. Whether Evans liked it or not!

  CHAPTER NINE

  Looking back I suppose it was a chance worth taking. Had the Old Man suspected the way events were to turn out, we would have fought as well and as suicidally as the gallant Athenian. It would have been better that way in the long run, as at least every man but one on the ship would have died in the knowledge that he had done so honourably, as so many had done before us.

  But, then again ... does a man in a Board of Trade lifejacket and no top to his head, or maybe with his intestines floating beside him—does he really care whether or not he was ‘honourably’ eviscerated?

  Either way, I just stayed doubled over the rail for several stunned moments while I watched the sea tumble back aboard the U-boat and heard the fat little Bombardier’s voice from aft screaming, ‘Reload ...! Up fifty ...! On...! ON ...! ’ then the U-boat’s gun was swinging round too, already loaded, as the German sailors moved feverishly in a deadly race against our own gun crew like in some Hollywood Dodge City shoot-out where the first man to draw won the day— except we were competing with four-inch diameter bullets.

  Behind me Brannigan had stopped screaming and, above the scrunch of broken glass, I heard Larabee say, ‘The poor sod’s gone, Captain.’

  And Evans’s voice, the abysmally sad tone in strange contrast to the text, answered, ‘Thank God for that, Mister Larabee.’

  Then the German’s 4.1 had stopped traversing while Bombardier Allen was still screaming desperately, ‘On ...! On ... ON, f'r Chrissake ...!’

  I heard the staccato Teutonic bark slash across the intervening water, ‘... FEUER!’ cut short by the whiplash slam of their gun and, in the milli-seconds of eternity that followed I knew already that we’d lost the race. The baddies had drawn first and the Sheriff was already dead.

  I registered one last image of Charlie Shell on the poop, standing out from the soldiers like a shining white knight in his tropical stockings and shorts, then the hurricane blast of the hit knocked me down for a second time while smoking-hot splinters of jagged steel whirred and spanged against the after-end of the bridge, wheelhouse and funnel, ripping through ventilators and boats with savage contempt.

  I dragged myself to my knees and peered fearfully over the rail, even then praying that I would hear the answering boom from the long-snouted Phyllis. But, as my eyes focused through the haze of cordite fumes, I realised I never would— at least, not through the hand of any man on that gun deck.

  Oh, the gun was still there all right, with the coat of 1940 paint covering the antiquated 1914 silhouette—but the indescribable grue of blood and flayed men scattered around it symbolised the end of our last hope of leaving Quintanilha de Almeida aboard Cyclops.

  I wanted to take my eyes from those torn obscenities but I couldn’t move a muscle. I just sat there behind the doubtful concealment of the bridge wing, sensing the tears rolling down my cheeks, and watched as the once trim form that had been Charlie Shell dragged itself agonisingly slowly towards the loaded gun, and with infinite care, groped with the one arm it had left past the black-charred, tubby shape incinerated in the gunlayer’s seat, feeling blindly for the firing lever ... a slow-worm of barely flickering organs and part-limbs, like the little half-man on the sinking U-boat’s deck that time so long ago. Would that Kapitan-Leutnant paint a half-Charlie on the side of his conning tower in retaliation? A Second Mate with only one arm and stumps of legs severed at the knees ...?

  The cremated mess of the dead Bombardier slowly keeled over and slopped to the deck as the blind hand continued to tremble and feel towards the trigger. I suddenly hunched in terror as someone started screaming and shouting behind me.

  Breedie ...! What the hell was Cadet Breedie doing up here on this morgue of a bridge? He should have been sheltering along with the rest of the crowd in the starboard alleyway.

  ‘Charlie? Is that you, Charlie? Oh, for Jesus’ sake, Charlie, I’ll come for you. Don’t move, Charlie ...!’

  Then the Spandau mounted on the U-boat’s conning tower opened up and a line of white-lashed foam approached across the green water. Up and up our steel sides it climbed, directly under the gun and its zombie part-gunlayer, then Breedie was screaming hysterically as Charlie Shell twitched and rolled over and over with the machine-gun shells sparkling and slamming all around and into him until, mercifully, the Thing disintegrated under what was left of the port side taffrail and disappeared over the counter for ever.

  And the silence of Quintanilha de Almeida blanketed down again with an almost physical impact.

  For a moment.

  A very brief moment.

  *

  They’d even got a Tannoy hailer on that submersible killing-machine of theirs.

  The metallic, emotionless voice of the man in the white cap cut across to us before the full horror of Charlie Shell’s gallant, mutinous death had had time to clear from our frozen brains. ‘Achtung, Cyclops! Achtung! That was your final warning. Any further resistance will force me to commence firing indiscriminately. I will not stop until every man of your crew is dead - Kaput!’

  I registered the scrunch of broken glass and glanced round to see the Old Man watching over my shoulder, ashen-faced. In the background, under the shade of the darkened wheelhouse, Larabee still hovered but I couldn’t see the expression on his thin features. Maybe now he wasn’t so damned keen to be a hero.

  The disembodied voice floated across the water again. ‘If your master is still alive he will answer, please.’

  There fell a momentary silence as we looked tensely at one another, then Evans moved forward to pick up the megaphone. I cut in front of him and took it out of his hand, pulling him aside into the cover of the riddled starboard master’s ventilator. He glared at me angrily and the white pallor was replaced by a crimson flush. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Mister? I intend to stop this madness immediately. Or would you rather go aft and take a good, close look at Mister Shell?’

  I was already dragging at the rank-bearing epaulettes on my shoulders. ‘Get yours off too, Captain,’ I said urgently. ‘That bastard’s liable to take you aboard as a prisoner, same as Henry McKenzie. Remember the Altmark last year? Hatches full of M.N. senior officers.’

  I threw down my three gold bars and watched as his four follo
wed reluctantly a few moments later, then stepped out to the wing and lifted the megger to my mouth. I had time to notice with a nasty churn in my stomach that the 4.1 was now trained right at me, as well as her four bow-tubes, before I shouted back with all the control I could maintain.

  ‘The Captain has already been murdered. This is Kent—Chief Officer. I protest at the massacre of certain members of my crew and warn you I shall report you to the Board of Trade as soon as possible.’

  It sounded even sillier when I actually said it but the flat voice from the U-boat betrayed no sign of emotion, amused or otherwise. ‘I note your protest, Herr Kent, and have no doubt that your British Board of Trade will take the matter up with my superiors when we have won the war. Until then you will refrain from contacting either them or anyone else by means of your wireless. Do you hear me well, Chief Officer?’

  ‘Bugger YOU!’ I screamed back in childish frustration.

  The loud-hailer ignored me completely. ‘You have ten minutes in which to abandon, Herr Kent. When those ten minutes have elapsed my First Lieutenant will board you with a search party. Any man found remaining aboard will be shot out of hand.’

  A bulky black object was being hauled from a deck hatch on the U-boat’s after-casing and I realised that it was an inflatable rubber raft. Grouped round the base of the conning tower we could see several heavily armed sailors, each wearing those peculiarly old-fashioned looking, fork-tailed ‘Barnacle Bill’ sailor hats that the German Navy favoured.

  I made one more half-hearted attempt to argue against the inevitable. ‘You have shot up my bloody boats. I have several seriously wounded men aboard an' I’ll be damned if I will ...’

  The white cap moved sharply in the conning tower and the Spandau racketed immediately, cutting a line of foam three feet away from our side and directly under the bridge where I stood. It very efficiently underlined the message that followed. ‘... and you will most certainly be damned if you don’t, Herr Kent. You now have nine and a half minutes left and, if you find it necessary to utilise your port boats, I will expect them to come round to your starboard side where I can see them. I will allow two extra minutes for that operation. Any wounded you have will be attended to as soon as your ship is abandoned.’

  I turned and looked back at Evans inquiringly. I suppose we all did, right then. The Old Man closed his eyes for a moment and I watched his right hand gently, almost tenderly, caress the sanded teak rail, then suddenly the hand clenched into a fist and the grey eyes were staring back at us defiantly. ‘Have the boats lowered, Mister Kent ... any that are still serviceable. Mister Breedie.’

  The young kid jumped. ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mister Breedie, but I must ask you to go aft and ascertain that none of the gun’s crew are still alive. We have no time to do anything with the bodies at the moment but I will attempt to return to the ship later and perform the necessary functions - Mister Larabee!’

  Larabee stepped forward into the sunlight and looked queryingly at Evans. His expression was impassive but there was an understandably tense, excited glint at the back of his eyes.

  ‘Aye, Captain?’

  ‘Please be good enough to remove any parts of your W.T. equipment you think fit in order to render it inoperative without actually destroying it. You will conceal them in the hope that we may be able to return and send a signal after the enemy have left.’

  The Sparks looked cynical. ‘Aye, aye, Sir. Bearing in mind that gear doesn’t work so hot under water.’

  Evans spoke as he turned back to me, ‘They will undoubtedly sink the ship, Mister Larabee, but there is insufficient water under our keel to do more than cover the main deck levels. Please be good enough to do as I ask. And now, John. The boats are well provisioned and watered, I trust?’

  I blinked at the change in him. It was like going back three days to before this had all started. He smiled slightly as the suddenly much older Breedie and Larabee clattered away down the ladder. ‘Action, no matter how distasteful, John, is infinitely preferable to standing by helplessly and watching men die. I have at least the relief of knowing that the blood has stopped flowing.’

  As I turned away to the ladder I heard him arguing placidly with old McKenzie on the engine-room phone, then he hooked it carefully back in its rest and grasped the shiny brass telegraphs for the last time.

  The answering clang from deep down below, ‘Finished with Engines,’ seemed very sad. And irredeemably final.

  *

  We were still able to use numbers one and three boats, the after lifeboats having taken the brunt of the searching splinters from the Nazi shell. Number one was, of course, already in the water while three port, being already swung out and unbridled, took only half our remaining minutes of grace to lower away.

  I leaned over the wing as the crew scrambled down the swaying boat ladders after first carefully lowering the wounded; watching them go in blue jeans or white engineer’s boiler suits under the gaudy yellow and blue lifejackets. Two of the deck hands still wore bizarre, bright silk pyjamas, though God knows how long it had been since any of us had been in our bunks. Most of them clutched pitiful little bundles of personal belongings and I swallowed hard when I saw the quiet dignity and courage shown by even the toughest, hardest A.B.s. I don’t think I’ve ever felt prouder to be a merchant navy man than I did right then.

  Breedie came hurrying along the boat deck and stood beside me, looking sick and dazed. I remembered he’d been aft to the gun and was glad it hadn’t been me. Now he was an eighteen-year-old kid with a old man's stare. I lifted an eyebrow and he shrugged helplessly.

  ‘All dead. The whole bloody lot!’ Then he seemed to get angry and his fists clenched. ‘That fuckin’ gun. It’s still like brand new except ... except there’s someone’s foot caught in the ... just their foot, Sir.’

  His strained voice faded away and his shoulders heaved. I spoke as gently as I could, ‘You take number three boat away yourself, son. Get her forward round the bows to the starboard side as soon as you can before those bastards start getting impatient. I’ll collect the Captain from the bridge and join you as soon as possible; he’ll probably want to take number one with young Conway and the Chief. Pecker up and chop-chop, son.’

  I tried to smile reassuringly but failed and turned awkwardly away to check out the deserted decks while Breedie swung over the rail on to the ladder. We couldn’t have long left now. Everyone gone except the Captain. I started to sweat gently as I imagined what was promised to happen to any man fool enough to try and hide aboard after we left. But would they really shoot them in cold blood? This was the twentieth century, wasn’t it ...? Then I remembered the Spandau shells smashing into the already-dead Charlie Shell and I knew that the man in the white cap meant every word he said.

  Hurrying forward, I climbed the splintered ladder to the bridge.

  *

  Evans was standing motionless in the shattered wheelhouse when I pulled myself to the top. I stepped through the doors, feeling the glass shards crunching as I moved and trying not to look at the Fourth Mate’s body lying contorted in a still-glittering pool of blood and jagged crystals. Then a glint of red and white made me look down anyway to see, with a surge of relief, that someone had covered Brannigan's shiny bone face with one of the flags from the signal locker on the after bulkhead.

  The flag was the red and white cubed ‘U’: the International Code signal for ‘You are standing into danger.’

  Evans half turned as I approached.

  ‘Well, John?’

  I saluted awkwardly, it was a thing we didn’t normally do but, then again, we didn’t abandon ship every day either. ‘Numbers one and three lifeboats lowered and manned, Sir. The other two could be patched up but we don’t really need them. All hands away in them to the best of my knowledge. We don’t have time to search the ship properly.’

  He nodded. ‘Young Breedie went up on the poop?’

  ‘All dead. The gun seems still to be functioning thoug
h. Their shell must’ve struck around the emergency steering position. Heat, blast and shrapnel did the rest.’

  ‘It’s cost a lot of lives, that gun. A lot of lives and bugger all to show for them.’

  I glanced anxiously at my watch. We were due to hear a high-explosive alarm clock in about ten seconds unless White Cap accepted our two packed boats as sufficient assurance that we had surrendered. I tapped my wrist watch to encourage the Old Man. ‘Sir—it’s time to go.’

  The Teutonic voice cut across to us again, the syllables even harsher and more guttural under the distortion of the amplifier. ‘Cyclops ... ACHTUNG! You will leave the bridge immediately, Herr Kent, and bring the other man with you also. My boarding party are under the strictest orders to shoot. I can assure you this is not an idle threat. You have thirty seconds to leave.’

  Evans took one last, long look around his bridge. ‘They’ll sink her, John,’ he said, with immeasurable pain in his voice. ‘She was such a bloody lovely ship.’

  I swallowed nervously. ‘Captain, we have to go.’

  He turned without another word and walked down the ladder and along the port side of the boat deck, masked temporarily from the U-boat’s searching eyes. I suppose if we hadn’t met the Chief coming from aft, towards the bridge, things would have been a lot different and I wouldn’t have been writing this now.

  McKenzie ground to a halt in front of us and glowered ferociously with arms akimbo. I noticed he still wore his red dragon carpet-slippers as he grumbled, ‘Bluidy square-heided bastards! Ah’ve shut down everything but the main generators, Captain. Maybe we’ll get back aboard after they U-boat lads leave and in that case we’ll be needin’ the power again.’

  Evans smiled very slightly. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Chief. But you should have been in the boats five minutes ago. I trust there's no one else left below?’

  ‘No. Och aye, and another thing, if they buggers think they’ll be topping up their bunkers wi’ my fuel oil I’ll be wantin’ a formal receipt for it, so ye’ll mind and tell them.’