by Alan Evans
* * *
Aboard Sparrow Sanders came up to Smith and reported, “The wounded are on deck. All clear below.” And warned: “She’s making water fast, sir.”
Smith could feel it in the way she listed under him, see it in the way the sea was reaching up on her. “No boats, Sub?”
“No, sir.”
“Rafts, then. Wounded first.”
There were few rafts intact on that shattered deck and it was hell’s own job to clear them, but they got enough over the side to take the wounded and passed them down. The ship was still, lying lifeless in the sea. The big destroyers were moving now, slowly edging away, the one that Sparrow had rammed being towed by the other. Smith could still hear firing and saw that Siegfried had steamed on and left the two destroyers to their own devices. It was the battlecruiser firing and the remainder of her destroyer screen were increasing speed as if to concentrate ahead of her.
He helped the last of the wounded down to a raft and Sanders at his elbow said, “Here, sir.” And thrust a lifebelt at him. “She’s going, sir.”
Smith held the lifebelt but turned away and started to scramble painfully up to the wrecked bridge again. Sanders shouted after him. “Sir! She’ll go any minute, sir!” But Smith ignored him. He reached the bridge and climbed up on to the searchlight platform at the back of it. The light was shattered and the mounting twisted so he could not get on to the platform. He climbed carefully up on to the lamp itself and slowly straightened, balanced there. The glasses still swung on his chest from their strap and he set them to his eyes. Siegfried was easy to find, plunging along with guns blazing. He brought the lenses creeping down, searching the sea — and caught the flying CMB as it hurtled in on the battlecruiser, close and closer until it spun away and raced past Siegfried’s stern. Smith held his breath.
* * *
Curtis steered with one hand and one eye past the battlecruiser’s stern, starting to tear away to safety but still half-turned in the cockpit watching for the torpedo. And because she was steaming at nearly thirty knots and starting to turn, Siegfried almost drew clear of the torpedo and left it astern.
Almost.
But Curtis had gone in to ram it down their throats.
He saw the sea heave at Siegfried’s stern and saw the stern, twenty-eight thousand tons or no, lifted out of the sea by the burst of the torpedo. Johnson was capering like a monkey in the torpedo bay, yelling and waving his arms. The destroyer astern of Siegfried was firing, the shells falling close as the CMB swerved and ran away but no one aboard her noticed. Curtis’s leading hand was hammering him on the back and bawling something about “bloody marvellous.” Curtis was numb. The CMB flew over the sea to the south-west and soon the guns ceased firing.
* * *
Smith saw the sea spout at Siegfried’s stern and seconds later the thump! came dully across the sea. He saw her speed fall away, she slewed off course and the screening destroyers turned to her. That was all he saw but it was enough.
He turned and found Buckley on the bridge below him and realised Buckley was bellowing at him, had been bellowing for some time, “For Gawd’s sake, sir! She’s near awash!”
He looked and saw that Buckley was right and Sparrow was settling under them. He started down, slipped and fell but Buckley caught him. The burly seaman was muttering under his breath and scowling, for once out of patience with his wayward officer. But he got Smith down to the deck and into his lifejacket. With Sanders, they jumped.
The rafts were crowded but they found hand-holds on the lines of one of them and hung there watching as Sparrow sank, slowly at first but then at the last with a rush as if to get it over with.
McGraw said, “Puir auld cow.”
* * *
Siegfried and her escorts had made off to the north-east, were small with distance when Curtis came seeking Sparrow’s survivors, the CMB riding high and fast ‘on the step’ and sweeping in wide, lazy arcs until someone aboard her spotted the rafts in the sea. Then she straightened out to point at them and the bow dropped, her speed fell away as the engines’ snarl faded to a low grumbling and she slipped slowly down on them, gently probing her way through the litter of flotsam that was all that was left of Sparrow. Curtis took all of the survivors aboard, cramming them in the torpedo bay, taking them on the deck, anywhere they could hold on. There were thirty-four survivors and of that number fifteen were wounded, one of them, a stoker, severely. Him they settled in the cockpit by Curtis’s legs.
The CMB sat low in the water under its heaped human load, but Curtis said. “Won’t be for long, sir. I made a signal to Marshall Marmont to tell ’em I was going to look for you an’ I asked if there was anything I could do for them. They said, ‘This ship will cope.’”
Smith saw one or two grins on the faces of Sparrow’s survivors. They remembered that signal.
Curtis went on, “So I suppose she’s floating and I can transfer your crew when we come up with her.”
Smith nodded. He sat on top of the cockpit so Curtis was speaking in his ear. Buckley crouched on the deck by his shoulder. As the CMB got cautiously under way and her bow swung around he looked ahead and saw the smoke that marked Marshall Marmont. He watched all through the long minutes as the CMB cruised steadily towards her.
* * *
There was no billowing cloud of smoke now though a blue haze still hung around her. Smith could see no flames. It was impossible to tell whether she lay lower in the water; she was always low. Her silhouette was changed because the tall mast and control top had gone and the bridge was a heap of wreckage. The turret was there but twisted at a crazy angle, the long barrels of the guns pointing at the sky. He said huskily, “Ask her condition.”
Johnson found himself room to stand on the deck and worked the hand signal lamp. They waited.
Smith’s eyes drifted around the horizon, seeing the smoke far off and the tiny specks of ships beneath that were the limping battlecruiser and her escort. Closer, much closer and inshore was the tug Lively Lady, bustling up and making plenty of smoke about it.
Eleanor Hurst…
A light winked rapidly from the monitor’s deck and Johnson spelled it out: “Fires out. Stopped making water. Ready for tow as usual. Ingram in command.”
Smith sat in silence a moment. ‘Ready for tow as usual.’ ‘As usual!’ Ingram had a sense of humour. But he was in command? Whatever had happened to Garrick, there were two other officers senior to Ingram who should have taken command. What had happened to them? And Garrick? Smith had to know. He said, “Ask condition of captain.”
And waited for an eternity until the light winked again from Marshall Marmont that was closer now so he could see a great hole torn in her, right forward of the bow, and the men working on her deck in that blue haze.
Johnson reported, “Multiple wounds. Condition fair.”
That explained the delay. Ingram had sent a messenger scurrying down to the surgeon for a report on Garrick. He felt not relief, but hope. Garrick was alive at any rate.
They were closing Marshall Marmont. He had lost his glasses but he reached for those of Curtis that he saw hanging in the cockpit, stood up and carefully swept a full circle of the sea around them. The battlecruiser was hull-down. She would get home but she would never attack the convoy, crippled as she was. There was smoke to the south-east and that meant that help was racing towards them from Dunkerque and Dover. He lowered the glasses wearily, the sun hot on his shoulders, and saw the clothes of the men crowded on the CMB were steaming. He was aware of cheering and that the motorboat was sliding gently, slowly in alongside Marshall Marmont.
He stepped over the gap to grab at the dangling ladder and climbed slowly to the deck to stand and stare at the destruction he found there. Everything on the monitor’s deck was smashed down so she looked more like a battered pontoon than a ship. But the men on her deck were cheering. So were those in the CMB and those climbing aboard from it. He saw Buckley at their head. He saw Curtis with his cap in his up-stretched h
and leading the cheering and yelling himself hoarse.
The tug Lively Lady was passing close alongside with Victoria Baines on her deck but Victoria was stooped now and suddenly a very old woman. He saw Eleanor Hurst…
They were bringing the wounded aboard. There was a man they had sat in the cockpit by Curtis’s knees. He was naked to the waist and his chest was swathed in bandages. His face was deathly white, his eyes closed, his lips moved as he mumbled in delirium and his chest heaved as he fought for each breath. He was dying as another man had died aboard Sparrow a hundred years ago.
Eleanor Hurst stared into Smith’s face, into his eyes. She knew that she could never hold him, that he would leave her as he left her before but she accepted that. He needed her now and she wanted him back if only for now.
He stood lonely on the torn deck as the cheering beat about him, with the sun, he was sure it was the sun, setting his eyes to blinking.