by Alan Evans
‘Excellent relations.’ He was using Devereux’s words, had obviously been primed by him. They were two of a kind. Smith answered shortly, ‘Yes, sir.’
Pickett said, ‘Captain Devereux will clear this reconnaissance of yours with them.’
He glanced at Devereux who nodded his sleek head, then added coldly, ‘I’ll send the latest intelligence I have of Trieste down to you in Hercules. The Italians make reconnaissance flights every day but they haven’t seen much lately because of fog over Trieste. Still, nothing of importance will have changed in a few days.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Smith, fuming with rage and frustration, climbed to the quarter-deck of the destroyer. He saw Buckley lurking in the background and told him curtly: ‘We’ve got orders for a ship.’
‘What now, sir?’
‘In five minutes. Fetch your kit and mine.’
Buckley looked at Smith’s set face and said only, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ He saluted and hurried away to explain his errand to the officer of watch, went down the ladder to be rowed across to Harrier.
Smith found a space where he could stand alone at the quarter-deck rail without meeting curious eyes and stared out over the lagoon, breathing deeply, the wind and rain on his face. For a minute he swore softly, at Pickett, at Devereux, at himself because his temper had made a bad situation worse. Pickett and Devereux were thick as thieves. He should have played them diplomatically, agreed with them all along the line, criticised Winter’s plans and laughed at Zacco’s idea — then pleaded his orders so as to wheedle some help from them. But then came revulsion. He knew he could not have done that. He should have avoided a row but now it had happened, and he would not take back a single word. He would have to go on from here.
He remembered Pickett’s news of the war, that the German Fourteenth Army had broken through the line at Caporetto and the Italians were in retreat. But surely they would be able to stand — Pickett’s pessimism was simply the result of his own bile and his anger with Smith.
Already Voss had scored a victory over him. He would not know it but when Salzburg’s shells had killed Winter so Smith had lost the only man he could turn to for help. He had expected an independent command but this was isolation. Even the girl, the Contessa, who according to Zacco talked and laughed with everyone, had made it plain that he was not welcome.
‘Beg pardon, sir.’ Smith looked round and saw a boy at his side, offering an envelope. ‘From Captain Pickett, sir.’
‘Thank you.’ Smith’s orders for Hercules. He did not know what kind of ship she was but he took the envelope and thrust it into his pocket unopened because the side-party was scurrying into place. It became a white-gloved, rigid line as Pickett appeared, bull-like and confident, scowling about him as men working on the quarter-deck jumped out of his way. He was enjoying every moment of this, his new command, but he gave Smith a frigid glare in passing. Devereux, following a pace behind with walking-stick in his gloved hand, ignored Smith completely.
Smith stood at the salute as the pipes of the side-party shrilled and Pickett went down into his boat with Devereux. Then he set out to look for his own new command.
She took some finding.
The destroyer’s signal yeoman could tell him roughly where she lay and pointed to the crowded shipping shrouded in the rain. ‘Course, sir, you can’t actually pick her out from here.’ He finished tactfully, ‘She’s not very big, sir.’
Smith was rowed to the quay, found Buckley waiting there and somehow he had procured a barrow. It held Smith’s valise, Buckley’s kit-bag and a box on which was painted: Midshipman E. F. Menzies. Menzies stood by the barrow, hand at the salute. He was small, snub-nosed, wide-mouthed, and his ears stuck out from under the cap. He stared patiently to his front. Smith thought he looked like a monkey with a philosophical turn of mind. He returned the salute and grunted, ‘Come on!’
He started off along the quay, Menzies hurrying one pace behind and Buckley bringing up the rear, pushing the barrow. Smith was curious to know why Menzies had been sent to Hercules, and asked him point blank.
The midshipman hesitated. ‘Captain Pickett’s orders, sir.’
‘Don’t waste my time with evasive or stupid answers. He could have chosen any of a dozen midshipmen. Why you? I doubt that you were the biggest or the most senior, so why?’
‘I... I think it was because I got into a bit of trouble, sir.’ Smith looked at him coldly and Menzies hurried on: ‘I mean, I was giving an impersonation for some of the chaps — midshipmen, sir — and Captain Pickett saw me.’
‘Impersonation?’ Smith saw light. But: ‘You mean a comic song? Marie Lloyd, perhaps?’
Menzies was looking straight ahead and confessed, ‘No, sir. An impersonation of Captain Pickett.’
‘Ah! And the — chaps — thought it was funny.’
Menzies said sadly, ‘They laughed a lot. I suppose the captain heard them.’
‘Giving funny impersonations of a Flag Captain! You were lucky he didn’t have you shot!’
‘Yes, sir,’ Menzies answered meekly but his monkey face was stubborn.
‘You don’t take it too hardly.’
Menzies explained simply, ‘I’ll be leaving the navy when the war finishes anyway, sir.’
‘You don’t like the Service? Why?’
Menzies frowned. ‘It’s fine sometimes, but a lot of the time it’s just patrols or sweeps or exercising in harbour just — boring.’ Then Menzies added quickly: ‘Sir!’ He was startled to realise he had been betrayed into talking to this senior officer as if to an equal.
Smith grunted. He could understand how Menzies felt, knew only too well the long periods of waiting, the deadening routine. But leave the Service? To Smith it was unthinkable, but he could not put his feelings into words and said only, ‘I’ll try to see you’re not too bored, Mr. Menzies.’ He lapsed into silence.
Buckley shoving at the barrow, grinned to himself. Let the lad just wait a while!
Smith strode on along the quay, eyes searching for his ship. Far across the lagoon he could see above the other shipping the masts of the Saint Bon and the two other old Italian battleships stationed at Venice. Salzburg could annihilate them. With no other deep water base in all the long Adriatic coast, the bulk and the best and newest of Italy’s capital ships were far to the south of Brindisi and Taranto. The Austrians were in Pola and Trieste in the north and the days when a blockading squadron could cruise off a port were long past: any attempt to blockade Pola and Trieste would invite attack by U-boats — and disaster. So the Italians sowed mines before the enemy ports which the Austrians swept up — then laid their own mines outside Venice, to be swept in their turn.
There was a trot of three minesweepers lying here off the quay and beyond them a pair of Italian destroyers. Rain swept in from the sea, a fine drizzle that set him blinking against it.
He halted so suddenly that Buckley had to throw his weight back to stop the barrow and still it nudged Smith. ‘Sorry, sir.’
But Smith had not noticed the bump. They had almost missed Hercules where she lay tucked in between the minesweepers and destroyers. Her name was lettered on her stern and below it her port of registration: Yarmouth. In days of peace she had sailed out of there to fish round the coast of Britain. Now she was in the northern Adriatic. She had come a long way.
Hercules was a drifter, a little wooden ship, black-painted. She measured just ninety feet from stubby bow to stern and twenty across her fat waist where stood the wheelhouse and narrow funnel. Aft of them was a single mast and right forward in the bow a six-pounder gun.
Smith asked, ‘Well, what do you think of her?’
He spoke to Buckley, who peered out at the drifter, then at Smith, thinking this must be a joke. He saw Smith was in earnest and answered morosely, ‘Well, they say any ship’s better than no ship, but I’m not sure about this one.’ He stepped to the edge of the quay and bellowed, ‘Hercules!’
A man appeared at the door of the whe
elhouse and looked across at the three of them on the quay. His grizzled hair was cut short above a square, leathery face with a fringe of grey beard.
‘Ullo!’
Buckley shouted, ‘Send a boat for the captain!’
‘What captain?’
Buckley said disgustedly, ‘Jesus wept!’ He bawled, ‘Your captain! Your new captain!’
‘Bloody’ell! A Commander?’ The greybeard shoved out of the wheelhouse, turned forward and shouted, ‘Ginger!... Ginger!’
A red head appeared on the drifter’s foredeck, poking out of a hatch. The old man rasped, ‘Get yer cap an’ into the boat an’ fetch the new skipper aboard!’
‘Aye!’ The red head vanished to reappear seconds later with a bluejacket’s cap clapped on it. Their owner trotted aft to where a boat trailed by its painter from the stern, hauled it alongside and climbed down, unshipped the oars and pulled across to the quay.
Buckley passed down the kit and followed them. His mutter came up to Smith and Menzies, ‘Put your hat on straight, son. You’re supposed to be under it, not in front of it.’ The young sailor’s cap was hastily crammed forward in the regulation fashion above the eyes but it still had an irregular list to starboard.
Smith, last to enter the boat, sat in the sternsheets by Menzies. Buckley shoved off and the seaman bent to the oars. Smith asked him, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Gates, sir.’
‘You’re not regular navy.’
‘Nossir. I’m one o’ the old hands. Fred Archbold, he’s the mate but he was her skipper afore the war, he’s my uncle.’
Many of these drifters had been hired by the Admiralty for the duration of the war and their peacetime crews stayed in them. Ginger Gates, ‘one of the old hands’, was possibly twenty, but Smith reflected that he had probably been to sea since he left school at the age of thirteen or fourteen. He told Menzies, ‘We’ll have some fine seamen, that’s one good thing.’
He climbed aboard Hercules and found her crew drawn up on her deck forward. He saluted and it was returned by the greybeard, now dressed in blue jacket and cap. Smith said, ‘I am Commander Smith.’
‘Fred Archbold, sir. Mate.’ He was around sixty years of age but straight in the back, set solidly on his feet in shiny black leather boots. His grey eyes were clear and if he had been startled by Smith’s sudden arrival he didn’t show it now. Smith decided that after a lifetime at sea Fred Archbold would neither be easily upset nor for very long.
He walked forward and Fred Archbold followed, the shiny boots creaking. Smith read out the orders that gave him command of Hercules then looked at her ship’s company, seventeen including Archbold. They had all turned out in a hurry and were dressed haphazardly, only their caps being uniform. But Smith remembered they had only entered harbour a few hours ago and before that had been in action — their former captain was in hospital now. They would have been short of sleep and snatched the chance of it. More faces and names to learn — and quickly.
He asked, ‘Engineer?’
Fred Archbold answered, ‘Geordie Hogg, sir.’
The engineer stepped forward, fat and filling out his boilersuit, pale and sweating.
Smith said, ‘Raise steam.’
‘Right y’are —’ Geordie Hogg corrected himself: ‘Aye, aye, sir! C’mon you!’ He waddled away, his stoker trudging after him.
Smith looked at the rest of the ship’s company. ‘More than I expected.’
‘The five to starboard are the hands, sir,’ Archbold explained. ‘T’other nine are the crew o’ the six-inch gun.’
One of the nine wore the badge of a leading seaman gunner on the sleeve of his jumper and Smith asked him ‘Name?’
‘Davies, sir’. He was a squat, bull-terrier of a man with a hard eye and a hoarse voice.
‘Where’s the gun?’ It was obviously not aboard. A six-inch gun weighed six tons and fired a hundred-pound shell.
‘Dockyard, sir. It’s an Italian gun but they were short of crews so they loaned it to us. It’s mounted on a pontoon. We towed it up the coast to give supporting fire for the Eyeties — Italian Army, sir. This last trip we came under fire and the captain was wounded. The pontoon was holed and we only just got it back, so it’s gone to the dockyard for repair.’
Smith looked at the gunners and asked, ‘Are they a good crew?’
‘Not bad, sir,’ answered Davies. ‘And they’ll get better.’ That sounded both promise and threat; they would get better, or else…
Smith spoke to every man, briefly but assessing, putting names to faces and committing them to memory. Then he inspected the ship with Archbold and Davies. It did not take long. She was not smart, a work-horse, but she was clean and showed the signs of care. He saw the little six-pounder gun forward that was Davies’s charge, the wheelhouse and the cramped and steamy galley. He descended a companion aft to the mess-deck where a dozen of the crew lived, and Buckley would bunk, then down another companion forward that led to the quarters of the rest. Here he also found the cabin shared by Fred Archbold and Geordie Hogg, the engineer — and the tiny cabin that was his own.
A strapped valise lay on the deck of the cabin, the kit of the last Captain of Hercules, waiting to be taken ashore. Fred Archbold picked it up. ‘I’ll see to this, sir. It’s a mortal shame. He’s a real man, a good skipper. I just hope he’ll be all right.’
‘So do I.’ Smith looked around the cabin, crowded already with its small table, bunk and one sagging, old easy chair. He would have to squeeze his kit in here, but where would Menzies go?
The mate said hesitantly, ‘She’s a good little boat, sir, though not what you were used to in your last ship, I suppose?’
‘She was a light cruiser,’ Smith recalled the spacious cabin aboard Dauntless but as he had last seen it, blasted into tangled wreckage by an eight-inch shell, the torn bodies of a gun’s crew amongst it. He sighed. ‘I’ll be more comfortable here.’
He pushed past Archbold and Davies where they stood outside the cabin and left them exchanging puzzled glances as he went on deck. He was satisfied with Hercules and that she was ready for sea, ready for what he planned. She would do, had to because Pickett would give him nothing else and Smith would not ask. He knew he had only got Hercules so that Pickett could claim he had given all assistance possible.
Smith found a strip of deck aft on the port side, away from the thickening smoke that poured from Hercules’s funnel as Geordie Hogg raised steam. Here he could pace up and down between the steel covers hiding the coal-chutes to the bunkers below, and the bitts in the stern to which the drifter’s little boat was secured alongside. Eight long, quick strides forward, eight strides aft, his face set and expressionless but inside him the frustration boiling. He was worried by the news of the German advance and an Italian retreat. His task was daunting enough but Winter who had set him that task was now dead. His orders came from Admiralty but Pickett and Devereux were against him, and he was alone here. Winter must have had some plan in mind when he asked for Smith, surely? More than just to lend him three MAS boats and leave him to get on with it.
He turned again and strode aft, eyes shooting swift glances about the ship, taking in the details of her while his mind worked. He was aware of Menzies standing stiffly right aft, saw the youngster’s eyes flick away; he had been watching Smith covertly. Menzies’s cap was crammed down onto his stuck-out ears. He was a funny, stocky little lad, standing there so straight. Pickett had sent him to Smith as a punishment and Smith suspected the boy felt it, despite his attitude of not caring. And the MAS captains had lost the draw — but he thought he was lucky getting them. Then the face of Helen Blair rose in his mind, his memory of it when they first exchanged glances.
A boat was coming alongside and the rating sitting in the sternsheets had the gold star of a Writer on his sleeve: probably one of the clerks from Devereux’s office. He called up to Menzies ‘Signal for the captain, sir!’
He stood up and held out a package. Menzies took it, signed a re
ceipt and brought the package to Smith as the boat pulled away Smith ripped open the seal. As he had expected, the package was sent by Devereux, and contained the intelligence information on Trieste.
He strode forward to the companion and climbed down to his cabin. There he spread the papers out on his desk and found the information was dated four days before. He remembered that Devereux had said fog had hidden. Trieste these last few days. Besides a map there was an aerial photograph, and a damned good one, he thought, showing the ships that had been in the harbour four days ago, one of them neatly lettered: SALZBURG. The length of her made her stand out from the others. It seemed Trieste was her base — so far. The photograph also showed the booms stretched between the moles. A sheaf of typed papers clipped together, a brief, described the three moles spaced across the mouth of the harbour as breakwaters of stone, high, thick and solid. The booms connecting them were affairs of buoys joined together by wire hawsers and supporting anti-submarine nets. In the photograph they looked fragile, lines stretched like thread between the moles. That was deceptive; they were probably an inch thick and would certainly stop a ship trying to force an entrance. But if they could be cut as Zacco suggested, then…
He had to see for himself. And he had to see Zacco about those cutters. He looked at his watch. There was time enough and he could not waste it. Voss would not.
He swung away from the desk, his anger and frustration forgotten, eager now. He climbed the ladder but paused with his head still inside the companion. Menzies appeared from behind the superstructure, pacing the deck on the port side with ludicrously long, restless strides. His hands were clasped behind him and his head thrust forward. He halted, paused to scowl from under his brows at some distant part of the ship and then turned and strode aft, was lost behind the superstructure.
Smith recognised himself. It was for an act like this that Pickett had banished Menzies to Hercules, but Smith was not Pickett. He grinned and stepped out on deck to stand in the shadow of the superstructure. Menzies came striding, halted to peer again, his back to Smith, then turned and stiffened to attention as he met Smith’s glare, awaited the blasting. But Smith only growled, ‘Don’t keep looking for trouble, Mr. Menzies. You’ll find it’ll come of its own and fast enough. Now call Mr. Archbold. We’re going out to the MAS boats and we need a meal first.’