North Strike

by John Harris

  They waited for Seago, arguing in a mixture of English, French, German, Norwegian, Finnish, Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian. There was still no sign of him an hour later when the Finns, all of whom had bottles in their pockets, were becoming noisy and had started to teach Willie John a song in Finnish that made Magnusson blush at the shattering vulgarity of the words.

  With the launch owner growing plaintive and angry by turns, it seemed to be time to get the Finns back aboard Oulu before the police shoved them all in clink.

  ‘Seago’ll be able to get back aboard,’ Willie John said, deep in drunken gloom. ‘He iss Navy, boy, iss he not? Real Navy.’

  In the end they decided to risk Seago’s wrath and set off to the small boat basin. Though the Finns were now embarrassingly drunk, at least they were showing no signs of bolting. At the top of the steps; Astermann missed his footing and went head over heels to the bottom. The pumpkin rolled after him and plunked neatly into the water alongside the jetty and, while they were picking up its owner, drifted out of sight beneath the piles.

  Convinced he’d been attacked and his precious pumpkin stolen from him, Astermann began to spar a few brisk rounds with himself to show what he intended to do to the thief, given the chance. In the end, Yervy tired of his performance and hit him over the head with a fist like a maul so that he collapsed on to the timbers of the jetty. Almost indifferently, Yervy scooped him into the launch and they cast off.

  The moon was up and the tide was just beginning to make as they set out for Oulu, and the smell coming off the sea was strong, damp and exciting with the scent of adventure. Willie John was singing softly to himself:

  ‘Spare, oh, spare, ma baby’s chair,

  the chair I love sae well.

  You can sell ma grandfather’s fiddle

  but spare me the chair wi’ the hole in the middle…’

  The flat calm sea and the moon made Magnusson itch to be off. Then, halfway out to the ship, Astermann recovered consciousness and, still convinced he’d allowed himself to be attacked and have his pumpkin stolen, began in fury to bang his head on the engine cover.

  ‘He’ll fracture his skull,’ Willie John said.

  ‘Nez.’ Yervy squeezed his knee with a huge hand. ‘He drunk. If he fall off topmast he still all right.’

  Astermann was again lying in a huddle at the bottom of the boat by the time they reached the ship. As they bumped alongside, a few heads appeared over the taffrail. One of them belonged to Campbell.

  ‘Is he drunk?’ he asked coldly.

  ‘No, boy,’ Willie John said. ‘He was run over by a train. There was a lot of ’em aboot in Falmouth the night.’

  Yervy clambered to the deck with an ease that spoke of years of practice and a line rattled down to the launch. Neither he nor Worinen spoke, and Worinen lashed the rope round the unconscious man’s ankle. As Yervy hauled him up, all flapping arms and dangling legs, his head hit the side of the ship with a solid thunk, then it hit the rail and, as they dragged him over the rail and on to the deck, it thudded once more against the planking.

  By the time Magnusson had clambered to the deck, Yervy was dragging Astermann by his feet towards the forecastle, his head appearing to clang against every ringbolt they passed. Sliding back the hatchway, with a yank of his great arm Yervy flung him into the black patch of shadow. There was a distinct pause before they heard him hit the deck below.

  ‘Ye’ve killed him, I expect,’ Willie John said.

  Much to Magnusson’s surprise, Astermann was on deck the following morning when they roused the watch. He had eyes like knotholes, a bruise on his forehead, a cut on his cheek and a patch of dried blood in his hair, but apart from a scowl that spoke of a heavy headache, he seemed none the worse for his treatment.

  There was still no sign of Seago, and Magnusson began to grow worried. Then at midday a naval launch came alongside, and he was startled to see that the figure in the bridge coat sitting by the engine was not Seago but Admiral Cockayne.

  ‘I’m afraid Commander Seago’s not aboard, sir,’ he announced as Cockayne heaved himself over the side.

  ‘I know,’ Cockayne said, his face grim.

  For a moment, Magnusson wondered wildly if Seago had deserted and was being chased along the south coast by the Regulating Branch, to be dragged back in chains like some drunken matelot.

  ‘We’ll go below,’ Cockayne said, and headed for the saloon as if he’d known the way all his life.

  Campbell was correcting charts on the saloon table. His shoes off, Willie John was reading Men Only, and opening and shutting his jaws as if his tongue was clove to the roof of his mouth and refused to come adrift. They leapt to their feet, Willie John trying to stuff his feet into his shoes as he did so.

  ‘Sit down,’ Cockayne barked. ‘All of you! Things have changed a bit. Commander Seago had a heart attack in the SNO’s office last night. They’ve shoved him in hospital. It looks as though it’ll be up to you, Magnusson.’

  Magnusson gave him a nervous glance, rather like a colt shying away from a backfiring motorcar.

  ‘Me, sir?’

  Suddenly, he suspected that it had been Cockayne’s intention all along that he should run the show. He’d never shown a lot of enthusiasm for Seago, as if he’d suspected he was a bit past it and that in the end they’d have to fall back on the younger man.

  ‘Me, sir?’ he said again.

  Cockayne glared. With his grey whiskers, he looked like something out of the last century, because the saloon was an Edwardian mixture of red plush, brass and banquettes. ‘Yes, dammit,’ he snapped. ‘You!’

  Magnusson wanted to protest that he was only a reservist and not a real naval man, that he wasn’t even very efficient at his job that he was terrified of responsibility, a bit idle, and far too young to die. He managed to hold his tongue.

  ‘Think you can do it?’

  To his horror, Magnusson found himself saying he thought he could. He was surprised at the confidence in his voice.

  ‘Good! You’ve got Campbell, who’s Regular Navy.’ Cockayne made it sound as if Magnusson’s training had been done on nothing more arduous than the Serpentine and he needed someone to keep an eye on him.

  ‘Two of you should be enough,’ he went on and Magnusson frowned. Watch and watch about, he was thinking, with him responsible for everything. It was going to be bloody awful.

  ‘You’ll also have Marques and this chap, Yervy, to help,’ Cockayne was saying now. ‘Marques understands navigation and Campbell’s an expert. Yervy’ll give sailing advice if you need it.’

  If he wasn’t drunk, wanting a fight, or just disinclined, Magnusson thought.

  ‘We’d call it off if we could,’ Cockayne said. ‘Or at least find somebody else. But there aren’t that many sailing masters about.’

  ‘Commander Snaith’s one,’ Magnusson suggested desperately.

  ‘Commander Snaith has other responsibilities.’ Cockayne cut him short. ‘Besides, we haven’t time to find a relief for him. Things are happening.’

  He tapped the chart Campbell produced and stared at it, frowning, while he packed his pipe. Then he struck a match, blew out smoke and gestured.

  ‘Despite the fact,’ he began, ‘that there’s no sign of life in France and that the Prime Minister and several of our more purblind newspapers are still firmly of the belief that the Germans have lost their nerve and won’t fight, a few intelligent people at the Admiralty have guessed that they’re only biding their time, and they’re wondering where the blow’s going to fall. We suspect it’ll be Norway in the spring, and arrangements are in hand to prevent them by going in first. We’ve also decided to make the running by denying the use of Norwegian territorial waters to vessels carrying contraband of war to Germany, and plans are being made to lay mines in the Leads to push shipping into the open sea.’

  He tapped the chart again. ‘When the time comes, we shall inform the Norwegian government of our intentions, and I imagine they’ll be hopping mad. For
your information, the mines’ll be here and here in Vestfjord. We expect the Germans will react strongly and a plan’s been prepared to deal with any attempt to seize Norwegian ports in retaliation. Stavanger, Bergen, Trondheim and Narvik are all to be occupied as soon as any such intention becomes clear.’ He looked at Magnusson. ‘There’s another thing,’ he added. ‘Narvik’s a strange port. Come to that, all neutral ports are bloody strange these days, with both British and German ships in them, their crews eyeball-to-eyeball, each watching the other like mad. But Narvik’s a bit different. There, all the advantages seem to be with the Germans because we suspect the military commandant has Nazi sympathies. And there’s the fact that the Germans can get to the Baltic through the Leads whereas our ships have to cross the North Sea, where too damn many of them are being torpedoed.’

  Magnusson waited and Cockayne went on angrily. ‘Somebody in Narvik’s been passing information by radio,’ he said.

  It occurred to Magnusson that, since they were proposing to do exactly the same thing, there was little ground for complaint.

  ‘There are a lot of German ships in there,’ Cockayne went on, ‘and it could be any of them. But we suspect a ship called Cuxhaven, which has been lying there for some time. Since she’s been there the sinkings have increased.’ He glanced at Willie John, who managed with a struggle to look sober and intelligent. ‘You will listen out for her and if she is the one, you’re to follow her when she leaves and signal her position. The Navy will then attend to her.’

  ‘Sir.’ Magnusson frowned. ‘How do we follow anything in a sailing ship? We’re rather at the mercy of the wind.’

  ‘So’s Cuxhaven,’ Cockayne said grimly. ‘She’s a four-masted barque and, since she was a training ship for a while, we know she’s fitted with radio. We suspect she’s in contact with submarines. We want her.’

  ‘I see, sir,’ Magnusson gave a nervous smile. ‘There’ll be rather a lot of sailing ships in that neck of the woods when we arrive.’

  ‘More than you think,’ Cockayne snapped. ‘The Polish training ship, Kosciuszko’s up there, too. You probably know her. Built by Blohm and Voss. Full-rigged with an auxiliary and a radio like most sail-trainers. They were at the end of a round-the-world voyage and had to put in with storm damage just before the Germans went into their country. They’ve been there ever since. I’m glad I’m not a Pole.’

  He puffed at his pipe for a while before continuing. ‘The Egge woman will brief you,’ he said. ‘We have a feeling – and so does she – that her usefulness is coming to an end, because the Germans are growing suspicious. One last thing, if there’s any sign of the Germans going into Norway, you’ll come home. At once.’ Cockayne allowed himself a grim smile. ‘And you’d better make sure you do,’ he added, ‘because ten to one the Norwegians will have cottoned on by then to what’s happening and they’ll be looking for you, too.’

  He rose and headed for the gangway. On deck, he paused with one leg over the side. ‘Oh, by the way–’ he tossed the final titbit across as if it were a lump of sugar to a well-trained poodle ‘–you’ve been upped to lieutenant-commander. You can put your half-stripe up. It’s to give you some muscle over those other two clots you’ve got aboard.’

  Five

  They watched Cockayne’s launch leave. The admiral didn’t look back.

  ‘Think we can do it?’ Campbell asked. It was the first indication he’d given that he had any doubts.

  Magnusson shrugged. ‘Shouldn’t think so for a minute,’ he said. ‘But I suppose we’ve got to try. We can always bolt for Sweden if it doesn’t come off. It wouldn’t be too bad spending the war in comfort in a neutral country.’

  Campbell gave him a cold look, as if what he’d said was blasphemy, but Willie John seemed to consider it a good idea.

  ‘I’ve heard that Swedish girls are no’ bad.’ He grinned at Campbell. ‘There iss nothin’ tae worry apout, boy. At least, not tae a MacDonald. I cannae speak for a bluidy Campbell, o’ course, who’re a lily-livered lot by all accounts.’

  As he disappeared, shabby, shaggy and unwholesome, Campbell stared after him disgustedly. ‘The bloody man doesn’t even speak King’s English,’ he said.

  ‘So long as they can write it,’ Magnusson said, ‘radio operators don’t have to.’

  ‘Well, all that bloody rot about the Campbells and the MacDonalds!’

  ‘For God’s sake, man,’ Magnusson said, ‘he doesn’t give a damn about the Campbells and the MacDonalds, and if you just once stopped taking him seriously and smiled, he’d have no excuse for it. He does it to irritate you.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Because you irritate him.’

  ‘Then I think he should be bloody well put in his place!’

  Magnusson turned angrily, losing his patience. There was only one way to deal with people like Campbell and that was to be more naval than they were. ‘Nobody’s asking you what you think, Mister,’ he snapped. ‘And since you want to know, I’ll tell you why you irritate him. Because you irritate me, too! So I’ll thank you to think about it and not argue. I’m running this ship and I’ll have neither discord nor disagreement.’ He stared after the disappearing launch and drew a deep breath. The sky was a pale saffron with long banks of grey cloud lying across it like sword strokes.

  ‘And now,’ he said sharply, ‘we’d better get on with it! Rouse everybody out.’

  As Campbell began to shout orders, staysails and jibs crawled, fluttering, up between the masts and from the jib-boom, to be steadied by their sheets. The spanker was hauled out and the ship began to heel over to the weight of the wind in them.

  ‘Loose the topsails!’

  As the gaskets were thrown off the rolled sails, they fell in folds. The lower topsails were sheeted home and the upper topsails hoisted.

  ‘Foresail!’

  With the foresail and mainsail set, the naked spars became clothed.

  ‘Topgallants and royals!’

  As they grabbed for the thick halyards, Magnusson gave the order – ‘Tramp på däck’ – and they all stamped along the deck to begin a fifteen-minute chore of muscle-cracking heaving. Under a dark cloud of canvas, the ship, with every stitch set to a beam wind and leaning well over, stood down-Channel, her side lights showing the direction of her ghostly progress. As the hands began to flake down the braces for running and to straighten the tangle of ropes that lay about the decks, Oulu surged forward, lifting her bow to the waves and moving before the soft southerly wind.

  ‘Better shove the Finnish flag up,’ Magnusson said, and the white flag with its square pale blue cross broke out at the stern.

  ‘Keep it there,’ Magnusson ordered. ‘And let’s have another one at the masthead, so there can be no mistake. We shall be sailing with lights at night like any other neutral.’

  Everybody was at work in the hold, trimming and securing the sacks of grain to prevent them shifting – Herzogin Cecilie had once been laid over at an angle of seventy degrees with her hatch coamings under water because of shifting cargo – and there was a great deal of complaining from the Finns who hastened to point out that they weren’t ‘focking farmers’.

  As they rounded the Lizard in the dusk and left the lee of the land, the wind freshened and changed direction, and the slots of grey cloud that lay across the pale night sky grew thicker, banded together and became a broken mass carried swiftly overhead. The ship, moving along now with the wind four points on the quarter, was leaning over until the water gurgled in through the scupper holes and set the deck awash. Aloft, everything was cracking, the canvas standing out as if carved from ebony, and the sea was getting up, the wave crests curling at the barque and breaking against her weather side to lash spray into the rigging.

  They passed several ships, destroyers moving swiftly about their business, a large tanker slipping along the coast in the safety of darkness, and one or two small coasters, from one of which as it slipped past within yards of them an angry voice came, ‘Your bloo
dy port light’s screened by your foresail, you stupid bastards!’

  The moon lifted over the horizon, laying a narrow glittering reflection towards the ship as they headed northwards round Land’s End towards the Irish Sea, but the sky had changed and the wind had backed again and was now beginning to push black cliffs of cumulus before it, knocking up a stiff sea against the tide that made the passage lumpy and ugly. They were still close enough to the shore to see the line of the land against the water, dark, lightless and empty.

  They had picked up the weather forecast with its advice of increasing wind, and there were a few misgivings in Magnusson’s mind as he stood on the poop; not of his ability to sail the ship but of what awaited them. He knew how much his skill was worth, all the same, and preferred to play safe with the putting on or taking off of canvas until he had the feel of the ship. As the sky darkened, he was aware of loneliness and nervousness.

  The ship seemed to be rolling rather more than she ought to be and he wondered if they were sufficiently weighted. Wandering forward to make sure everything was in its right place he felt a few stinging needles of rain in the wind. The barometer was falling, he noticed, but the moon was still there and he could see its cold reflection on the spars above them.

  As the first big Atlantic rollers lifted the ship, a slash of spray came over the bows and rattled on the deck. Climbing into the hold, Magnusson listened. He could no longer hear the howl of the wind, but caught the swish and gurgle of the bilge water; it sounded as though the ship were sinking. The place was alive with creaks and groans where the timbers chafed as she rolled, and he noticed it was beginning to grow cold.

  It was the wind that woke Magnusson to the realisation that his bunk was at such an angle he had been holding on unconsciously in his sleep with feet and elbows, to avoid rolling out. As his eyes opened, he heard the roar of the growing gale and the clatter of the sea along the hull.

  Leaping out of the bunk and dragging on his clothes, he went on deck. The wind had backed now to north-westerly and the ship was carrying too much canvas, staggering along hard over, beating into a high sea, with all round her a sky which gave every sign of a stormy twenty-four hours ahead.