In Danger's Hour

by Douglas Reeman

  'What's up?' Moncrieff lurched heavily across the bridge. He looked as if he had just woken up.

  'Wreckage, sir.' Ransome looked at him as if expecting an argument. Dryaden was better suited for these tasks. The point of her being here at all.

  But Moncrieff merely said, 'Right-oh.'

  Boyes dodged aside as Sherwood crouched over the gyro repeater.

  'Port ten. Steady. Steer one-six-five!'

  Up the voicepipe came Beckett's harsh acknowledgement. 'Course one-six-five, sir.' He had taken the wheel without being called.

  Boyes made himself small in case anyone ordered him from the bridge. Another drama. And he was part of it.

  Ransome said, 'Full revolutions.'

  Boyes saw Sherwood glance at the captain's back, the slightest rise of one eyebrow. But that was all.

  As the revolutions mounted the ship headed slightly away from her consorts so that Boyes was able to see them from a different angle. Third in line, Fawn's sister-ship Firebrand, an old Smokey Joe, was puffing out black clouds against the clear sky. It had caused quite a lot of friction with the convoy's escort commander, until Moncrieff had seized the loud hailer and had told him to mind his bloody manners.

  Hargrave had appeared on the bridge now, and raised his glasses to peer over the screen at the drifting spread of flotsam. Remnants from another convoy perhaps?

  Ransome tried to lean back in the chair and relax his mind and body. Why had he taken Rob Roy from the formation when the trawler could have managed? Moncrieff would have been justified to question his decision.

  It was a distraction. Anything better than the brooding, the regrets, the pain. He knew it was getting into him more deeply, had noticed how careful the others had been to make themselves scarce or busy when he was near. It wasn't their fault, as he had tried to tell the first lieutenant. But it still didn't help. He felt himself leaning forward again, the old dryness at the back of his throat.

  'Half ahead together.' Would anyone ever be able to sum up the cost of the war at sea? Ships and men, material and hopes, the very balance of fate for friend and enemy alike.

  Hargrave asked, 'What do you think, sir?'

  Ransome raised his powerful glasses again. It was all too familiar. Drifting timbers and odd fragments of canvas, packing-crates, an upended lifeboat, the whole sea littered with it. He trained his glasses on the capsized boat. He could just make out the port registry, Liverpool, painted on the hull. There was a lot of scum around the planking. It had been wandering with the aimless currents for a long time, probably weeks, the last reminder of a ship, perhaps a whole convoy which had fallen foul of a U-boat pack.

  He heard a look-out remark, 'Not much left in that lot!'

  He snapped, 'Well, keep looking! Any clue might be useful later on!'

  He turned away, sick inside, angry with his inability to stay calm.

  Sherwood said, 'There's a raft, sir. Red four-five.'

  Ransome found it, his glasses taking in the scene as if he had actually been there. The roar of a torpedo, perhaps more, the sudden confusion, a shock of despair as the ship went over. This vessel may have been carrying explosives, and had been blown apart before the boats could be got away. Just the one raft. Low in the water, barely rising up to challenge each roller or trough. There were three figures on board. Spreadeagled across it, tied there like some grisly warning to those who risked the Western Ocean.

  'Slow ahead together.' Ransome slipped from the chair and stood on the gently vibrating gratings. 'Send the sea-boat away, Number One.' Their eyes met. 'Tell the doctor to go too.'

  'What is it, sir?'

  Ransome wiped his glasses with a piece of tissue. 'Nothing. You go across with the boat, will you?'

  Hargrave walked away and soon the tannoy barked, 'Away seaboat's crew!' Then, 'Slip the gripes, stand by for lowering!'

  Ransome turned back to watch the little raft. Must have been quite a big ship to carry some naval personnel. He held the glasses fixed on the sprawled shape of the officer whose outthrust arm splashed in the sea alongside. Strained and sodden, but the single gold wavy stripe on the sleeve told its own story. The other two were seamen; one had lost a leg, and appeared to have been lashed to the raft by his companions.

  'Out pins! Slip!' The whaler dropped smartly on to Rob Roy's falling bow wave and veered away from the side on the boatrope. As it was cast free, the oars dipped and sliced into the water, and Ransome saw Hargrave standing upright in the swaying sternsheets while Surgeon Lieutenant Cusack crouched beside the coxswain, the sunlight touching the scarlet cloth between his stripes like blood.

  It would not be a pretty sight. Ransome glanced around at the others and saw the new sub, Tritton, fingering his own sleeve, as if he had seen himself lying there. Leading Signalman Mackay too, his expression a mixture of pity and hate. He had served in the Atlantic and knew the score well enough. Sherwood, eyes partly hidden by his pale lashes, his jaw very rigid as he watched the compass. And the youngster Boyes, who had been staring at the flotsam until he felt his eyes on him. Ransome nodded to him. It was all he could offer. And yet Boyes seemed to symbolise everything as clearly as a bursting starshell. They all expected him, their captain, no matter bow young and unprepared, to hold every answer.

  Moncrieff said thickly, 'Not a nice job at any time.'

  Ransome watched the whaler's oars still, the bowman reaching out warily with his boathook as the raft lifted sluggishly, then surged against the hull. They would hold their breath, pretend it wasn't really happening, while someone reached over and cut away the identity discs from those poor, broken corpses who had once been like Mackay and Tritton. Like me.

  Someone, somewhere would have received a telegram, Missing, presumed killed. The three discs would wipe away any last hope for those who still believed in such things.

  He said angrily, 'Signal the whaler to tow the raft alongside!' He knew he was speaking harshly, but could not contain it. 'At least we can remember them properly, for God's sake!'

  And so it was to be.

  It was the first time Ransome had been off the bridge for days. It felt like an eternity as he climbed down the two ladders, past the new Oerlikon mounting and grim-faced look-outs, and then along the side-deck past the whaler, now hoisted snugly in the davits again, the wetness of its recent excursion already dried in the sunshine. How different it all looked from down here, he thought. The men off-watch, clinging to stanchions and life-rafts similar to the one they had cast adrift to remain with all the other flotsam of war. Faces watched him, some sad, some stony, all familiar to him like his own family.

  It was the same as all the other times, and yet not the same at all. The three shapes by the break in the guardrails, no longer without privacy or dignity, but safe under the clean flags. He heard a snapping sound and saw Cusack pulling off some rubber gloves. Leading Seaman Hoggan was standing with the burial party, the snake tattoo very obvious around one thick wrist as he whistled silently to himself. Two faces by the engine-room hatch, Campbell the Chief, and Nobby Clarke, his petty officer, who knew all about losing a ship. Sub-Lieutenant Fallows, his mouth a thin line as he took charge of the party. He never wore his woolly rabbit any more, Ransome had observed. He was like a different person who was trying to find himself.

  Ransome looked first to seaward where Dryaden, which oddly enough had the most modern Asdic in the group, ploughed around them protectively, the sunlight flashing on levelled glasses on her superstructure. Then he glanced up to Rob Roy's bridge and saw Hargrave craning over the side to watch him, silhouetted against the sky.

  Ransome removed his cap and opened the little book. It was so creased and worn he wondered why he had not obtained a new one. The three identity discs seemed to stare up at him.

  That was why it was different. They were some of their own. Probably part of a naval gun-crew carried aboard a big merchantman. This was for all of them. For us. He made himself face it. For Tony. As he read the familiar prayer he glanced up occa
sionally as if to test his own strength, his own resolve.

  He saw Able Seaman Nunn who had lost everyone in his family gripping the lines by the open guardrail, his face expressionless. Only his eyes told it all. Young Boyes sent down from the bridge with an extra flag, his face screwed up while he held on to the new knife which hung from his belt; beside him the tough seaman Jardine with an arm around the boy's shoulder.

  No, he could not let any one of them down. Especially not now.

  He glanced up at the bridge and instantly the last tremble of power began to die away.

  Ransome read the last part from memory.

  'We commend unto thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the souls of these our brothers departed, and we commit their bodies to the deep . . .'

  The rest was blurred, wiped away. As he replaced his cap he saw that the deck was cleared, the flags being folded again. There was the clang of telegraphs, and as if emerging from a brief rest, Rob Roy's screws beat the sea into an impatient froth once more.

  While Ransome made his way forward to the bridge ladder he pictured the three little bundles sinking slowly into eternal darkness. The sea was two and a half thousand fathoms hereabouts. Undisturbed.

  When he reached the upper bridge he walked to the chart-table and saw that Hargrave had marked the burial for future reference.

  Moncrieff was slouched in his chair. He watched him thoughtfully.

  'Feel better now, Ian?'

  Ransome faced him. 'Much.'

  He was the captain again.

  Gateway

  Ian Ransome gripped the rim of the motorboat's canvas dodger as the little hull bucked wildly over another craft's wash. The spray across his face was surprisingly cold despite the full, hazy sunshine, and it helped to drive away the strain of marshalling the minesweeping flotilla to their various buoys.

  The whole anchorage appeared to be filled with ships, moored, anchored, or tied alongside one another at the mole, so that it gave the impression they might never be able to move again. Above it all, the towering bulk of Gibraltar made even the capital ships appear almost insignificant.

  Ransome glanced at the ships as the boat tore between them. Famous names, battleships and cruisers he had read about as a boy, some he had even served aboard in the peacetime RNVR days during his annual training. He thought it unlikely that there had been such a gathering of naval force before. The troopships and ungainly landing-craft too, all bedecked with lines of khaki washing hung out to dry like drab bunting.

  This was naval power, the machinery it took to sustain an invasion.

  A long barge crossed the motorboat's bows and he heard Able Seaman Suggit, the skimming-dish's coxswain, swear between his teeth. The launch bore the markings of a rear-admiral. Nothing must stand in his path. No wonder leaders who held the real authority could not afford to consider men as individuals. Ashore they were flags on a map. At sea just a marker with your ship's name on it. To show that you were at least still afloat.

  Like sweeping mines, he thought. You never knew what effect you were having on the whole panorama of war. You worked at it, you mourned when a friend blew up and men burned before your eyes. And yet in the front line you could still afford pity.

  The coxswain said, 'There she is, sir!'

  Ransome saw the anchored destroyer immediately. HMS Bedworth, one of the small, speedy Hunt Class destroyers which had been created at the outbreak of war to fill the gaps left by peacetime neglect and reductions. They carried no torpedoes and were used mainly for escort and patrol work. For their size they were heavily armed with four-inch and multi-barrelled weapons, and the Bedworth even mounted a single pom-pom right in the eyes of the ship, a bow-chaser which could singe the whiskers of even the fastest E-boat. The little Hunts had an impressive speed of thirty-two knots. She would run rings around her brood of minesweepers, he thought, but then who didn't?

  'Bows!'

  The bowman raised his boathook and held it above his head as the Rob Roy's only motor boat scudded round and headed towards an Accommodation ladder.

  He wondered if Moncrieff was still aboard, or, as in Plymouth, if he had already left without a word.

  A flight of Hurricanes roared low overhead and Ransome imagined the Spaniards across the water in Algeciras watching every movement, using a one-sided neutrality to keep their German friends fully informed.

  Gib in peacetime had been a favourite calling-place for the fleet. A sailors' port then, today it would seem like Aladdin's Cave to the youngsters who made up most of the ships' companies that came here.

  Ransome thought of his own company. Hardly any of them had been out of home waters before. Gibraltar never changed, with its blazing lights and garish cafes, its tiny shops and stalls filled as always with junk. To these young sailors it would seem like the treasures of the Orient.

  It would be packed with servicemen now more than ever before. Like the Great War when the troopships had assembled here before the bloody carnage of Gallipoli. The Rock. Who held it, commanded the gateway to the Mediterranean.

  The motor boat's engine coughed and went astern as the hook swept down on to the accommodation ladder to bring them together.

  Ransome ran lightly up the side, feeling sweaty and out of place when he was confronted by the white-clad side-party, the O.O.D. in shorts that looked as if they had just been washed and ironed.

  The lieutenant saluted. 'Welcome aboard, sir. We watched you enter harbour. Yours is a job I'd prefer to see from a distance.'

  Ransome followed him to the quartermaster's lobby. Just a small hard-worked destroyer, some forty feet longer than Rob Roy. And yet in a strange way she felt twice as big.

  He heard Moncrieff's voice before they even reached the door marked Captain.

  'I don't give a bloody toss what they say, whoever they are, I think it's a damn stupid —' The rest was cut off as the lieutenant tapped on the door.

  Another voice spoke. 'Come!'

  The lieutenant grimaced at Ransome. 'Good luck, sir.'

  Ransome knew a fair amount about the new S.N.O. A bit of a goer, everyone said, an officer who had seen most of his service in destroyers, and latterly working with Combined Operations right here in the Med.

  Ransome adjusted his expression and stepped into the cabin.

  Commander Peregrine Bliss, DSO, Royal Navy, was young for his rank. He had a square, eager face and dark curly hair which with his deeply tanned skin made his eyes stand out like chips of blue glass. He thrust out his hand, his eyes crinkling as he gave a wide grin. 'At last, Ransome. Been dying to meet up with you. Take a pew.'

  He glanced at Moncrieff. 'We've been having a discussion.' Like the man, his speech was lively, like a sea breeze. Ransome could picture him without any difficulty at all, conning his destroyer through some hazard or other, his men hanging on his every word.

  Ransome sat. 'I came immediately, sir. I have all the reports you asked -'

  Bliss waved a sunburned arm. 'Hell, that can wait. We're on the move right now. Can't you feel it in the air?'

  Moncrieff exclaimed angrily, 'I think it stinks!'

  Ransome noticed for the first time that Moncrieff held a large tumbler in his good hand; it was almost empty.

  Ransome looked away. God, what was the matter with him? It was only nine in the morning!

  Bliss saw his glance and beamed. 'What about a Horse's Neck, eh?'

  Ransome forced a smile. 'Not for me, sir. The sun isn't over my yard-arm at this hour, I'm afraid.'

  Bliss nodded, his eyes amused. 'Good show.'

  Ransome tried to stay calm. Bliss had no glass, nor had he any intention of joining Moncrieff or anyone else for a drink. What was the point? A little test to see if the new boy was up to it?

  Ransome tried again. His nerves were worse than he had imagined.

  He said, 'My people have been working hard together, sir. By August we shall have it off to a fine art.'

  Moncrieff opened his mouth but Bliss snapped, 'My turn, I think!
' "

  To Ransome he continued, 'There's been an advance of plans. The invasion of Sicily, Operation Husky as it is codenamed, will begin on July 10th.' The smile expanded into a confident grin, it will succeed.'

  Ransome said, 'Two weeks' time?' He watched the grin and recalled when he had read to Tony about the Cheshire Cat in Alice.

  Bliss nodded. 'This flotilla, and all other inshore forces involved, must ensure that the heavy supporting squadrons are on station to offer covering fire before the first landing-craft drops its ramp!'

  A hundred details seemed to scramble through Ransome's mind. He sensed that Moncrieff had been protesting on their behalf; he also had the strong feeling that this was the original date as planned. The high command may have thought that security and the shortest notice possible to risk the news leaking out, was of more value than preparing the ships for what lay ahead.

  Ransome said, 'We'll just have to manage.'

  Bliss regarded him with some amusement. 'I like it, Ian. May I call you that?' He hurried on, 'Just two days on dry land, and we'll have the Krauts by the short and curlies!'

  Ransome relaxed slightly. He had noticed that Bliss rarely appeared to wait for, even to expect an answer. But he was a live wire, right enough. He was disturbed to find that his sadness for Moncrieff was changing to pity. Where would his Phoenix fit in now?

  There was a tap at the door and a sub-lieutenant glanced in at them. Like the O.O.D., he was an RNVR officer, so Bliss had no prejudice there at least.

  'I beg your pardon, sir, but the commander's boat is already alongside.'

  Bliss nodded. 'Very well.' He thrust out his hand to Moncrieff. i do hope we meet again, old chap.'

  Ransome stared. Quite apart from the obvious insincerity he could scarcely believe what he had heard.

  'You're not leaving now, sir?'

  Bliss explained smoothly, 'There is apparently a shortage of places in available aircraft. Their lordships are keen for Commander Moncrieff to take over his new appointment without any delay.'