by Alan Evans
He turned as the window was thrust open and he saw a burly, grizzled man in overalls swinging a leg across the sill. Another half-dozen crowded behind him. Phizackerly said, startled, “’Ere! What’s all this?”
Farmer Bates said placidly, “All right, Fizzy, me old son. It’s the Navy claiming its own.” The others climbed in after him except one who stood on watch.
Phizackerly blew out his cheeks. “Cripes! I’m glad to see you.” And as Burton crossed to the door, opened it a crack and peered out, “Don’t worry. Nobody’ll bother us. You won’t have no trouble.”
Burton closed the door and grinned at him. “Good. We don’t want no trouble.”
Phizackerly knew a tough bunch when he saw them but he was a much relieved man. It was going to be all right.
*
When the pinnace reached Thunder Smith said, “Stay alongside, Mr. Manton. I’ll want the picket-boat in ten minutes.” He ran up the ladder, returned Garrick’s salute, went to his cabin and shifted out of his dress suit and into his shabby old uniform. He snatched his binoculars and as he stepped into the pinnace he asked Manton, “You’ve got the boat lead?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. Take her to sea, Mr. Manton. I’m curious to see our friends outside.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The pinnace swung away and headed out of the pool and downriver. Once more they ran down the broad deep-water channel with its steep, forest-clad walls, down to where Stillwater Cove opened up to port and opposite, to starboard, a bare quarter-mile beyond the old channel, stood the signalling station on its little hill. Smith saw light wink there as a telescope or binoculars was trained on them. They would be reported by telephone. He shrugged and lifted the glasses to his eyes. The cruisers were in sight.
One lay close outside Chilean waters and the gunboat was alongside her. The limit of Chilean waters was clearly defined because the Chilean destroyer Tocopilla was steaming slowly back and forth along a line outside the mouth of the river, marking that limit as if with a rule and chalk. That was a deadly monotonous business, patrolling that line like a sentry pacing his beat and they would be at it till morning. Smith thought the Chilean Captain probably consoled himself with the thought that he would have a grandstand seat when the morning came.
The pinnace plugged on out to sea against the flowing tide, lifting and falling now as it met that sea but the weather of recent days was only a bad memory. True, the sky was totally overcast but the sea was near calm and the pinnace rode it easily.
He picked out the other cruiser, standing a mile or two further out to sea, hove to. Saving her coal. She was running on a short rein that got shorter with every minute. Smith had seen to that when he sank the colliers.
He lowered the glasses and rubbed at his eyes. They were still a threat. They could still get coal after they had settled with Thunder. Some. They could coal in the port of a neutral country once in three months. Ringing the changes on the neutral countries that lined this coast, they might survive some little time. And they might, if they were very lucky, capture an Allied collier. But every time they put in for coal their position would be known. They had lost the element of surprise; Smith had wrested that from them, too, with the sinking of the colliers. Now there would be no quick, easy pickings and there would be almost immediate and increasing pursuit, starting with that battle-cruiser.
Theoretically they could well have entered Guaya at Thunder’s heels and coaled there. That would have put the Chileans in a dilemma with their refusal to supply Smith. They had not done so because of the twenty-four hours rule. If the cruisers had entered Guaya, and then Thunder had sailed, they would have had to give her twenty-four hours start. That was international law.
So they waited outside, for Thunder, and an annihilating victory that would shake the world with the length of the German Navy’s arm, and its strength.
Manton said nervously, “Chilean destroyer’s signalling, sir.”
Smith realised he was glaring sightlessly out to sea and cracked his stiff face in a smile. “No doubt.” They were close to Tocopilla now and she was heading, still on that rigid line, to pass close across the bow of the pinnace. She was warning them to keep clear, that they were close to leaving the sanctuary of neutral waters.
Smith said, “Hard a’starboard. Copy her course, Mr. Manton. Half ahead.”
The pinnace slowed and came around to run parallel with Tocopilla. The officers looked down on them curiously from the bridge of the destroyer as she forged past then left them tossing in her wake. Smith lifted the glasses again as the destroyer’s smoke rolled away. He could see the nearer cruiser and the gunboat alongside her, clearly now. He watched for a minute then handed the glasses to Manton and took the wheel himself. “Take a look.” He waited until Manton lowered the glasses and then asked him, “Well?”
“It looked like ammunition they were loading on the Leopard, sir.”
Smith said, noncommitally, “Yes.” He had been quite certain of what he had seen but it had also been what he expected to see so he had wanted confirmation. Now he had it. It was one more point to be home in mind, that now the gunboat had teeth.
But she was no threat set beside the cruisers. He turned over the wheel to Manton and reclaimed the glasses. The further cruiser was too far away to be seen in detail, but the nearer — he thought the fore-turret looked very odd, one gun of the pair bent at an angle. He let Manton see. “As Mr. Aitkyne put it, we gave her a bloody nose.”
“By Jove, yes, sir!” Manton stared a long time and yielded the glasses only when Smith said, “We’ll return to the ship.”
They did not return directly. Having run in under the signalling station and its watchful glass, Smith said, “Steer four points to starboard. Slow ahead.” The engine of the pinnace slowed until she slipped through the water at a walking pace. They crept into Stillwater Cove and on Smith’s order Buckley took station in the bow with the boat lead. They took soundings for the length of the cove and proved deep water, or near as deep as the main channel. They chugged back to the centre of the cove and anchored and the engine expired in a sigh of steam. Smith stood over the compass, checking bearings. The pinnace scarcely moved where she lay, his bearings showed him that, despite the flowing tide that thrust at her, rippling around her bow. She did not swing at all.
Smith stared for a minute or two at the forest wall that climbed sheer from the water of the cove, then across the channel to where the signalling station was just visible around the right-turning curve of the main channel. As he was visible to them. They could not see this stretch of the channel but they could see the cove and himself. Just.
He cast one last look around at the cove, the forest, the channel, then smiled at Manton. “Home, James.”
They ran back up the channel.
As they opened up the pool his eyes went first, of course, to Thunder, appraising the work done and finding himself well content. She was grimy still but a sight cleaner than that morning. He would have to give some orders on trim. Terribly light with near empty bunkers, she rode high in the water. Then his eyes drifted across to Kansas, lying massive, ugly in her menace but lovely in the clean lines of her.
Manton said, “She’s enormous.”
Smith smiled thinly. The cruisers could set a steel trap across the mouth of the river and he could act out defiance here but the argument was between themselves. There was no argument as to where sea-power on this coast ultimately rested, whenever she chose to take it. Kansas seemed to doze in the late afternoon.
Five minutes later he faced Garrick and Bates. A look at Bates’s face was enough but he asked, “All well?”
“Took a lot longer getting back, sir, but all well.”
Garrick added, “In the cells.”
One look at Garrick’s unhappy face was also enough but Smith only said, “Very good.”
When Bates had gone Smith stood lost in thought, smiling faintly. That was one worry out of the way. As for the rest �
� He turned the smile on Garrick. “Now, about this bun-fight. Mr. Wakely will be in charge of the gramophone. All officers, except for watch-keepers, will be present and I want it understood that this is a party. Anyone who does not enjoy himself will answer to me.” He grinned. “And a word to the Paymaster. I have no doubt at all that the recent action will have destroyed some of his canteen stock, notably beer and probably of the order of two bottles per man, and I will expect to sign a certificate to that effect.” That he would do with a clear conscience. The canteen stock would be a total loss inside twenty-four hours.
As Garrick knew perfectly well, but he returned Smith’s grin; it was infectious.
They discussed the trim of the ship and Smith said what he wanted done. He told Garrick about the Leopard and how she had been armed by the cruiser. “Kondor, I think.”
He said how she had been hit. He told him of the soundings in the cove and that he wanted steam for sunset. And then he gave one last order that startled Garrick, that would have to be passed to the Chiefs and Petty Officers and would mean more work for the men — after they had their beer.
He had half an hour to sluice himself down, change into clean clothes and then sit quietly in his cabin. Far below in the stokehold they would be starting already on the long job of trimming and getting up steam with the grate and clang of the shovels. They were busy. But most of the other hands were fallen out below, cooks piped to the galley for the evening meal and there would be beer as well. It was quiet.
He could hear the tick of the clock. It was a background to his thoughts as he re-examined his plans. He was not smiling now.
It might have seemed that he had at least a limited number of courses he could pursue. In fact he knew, as he had known from the beginning, that he would have to fight. They had hunted him down though he had gone half across the world and he could see them …
The rap at the door snapped his eyes open and the word from him in a savage bark: “Yes?”
Vincent’s voice came nervously, “Boat putting off from Ariadne, sir.”
“Thank you.”
He thought that when there was only one course you could take it became terribly simple. He was smiling as he went to join his officers where they waited in a well-scrubbed, shining group, neat in their best dress.
*
The mess-decks were crowded. Mess-decks are always crowded, even on a ship as short-handed as Thunder, but this day it was made worse by the damage to the ship, some parts being too badly burned to be inhabited. They stank. So Thunder’s crew jammed in together in a grousing matiness, sweated, talked, and wondered.
Chalky White ate furiously, nervously, shovelling the food into his mouth. Through it he mumbled, “What can ’e do? What I ask yer! Too slow to run away. That’s been proved. They ’aven’t got better than a knot or two over us but that’s enough. Too much. Either one o’ them’s got twice the big guns we have. So what can he do? I asks you!”
Farmer Bates said placidly, “Why don’t you shut up?” He had drawn Gibb’s beer besides his own; Gibb was in the cells.
“I just want to know.” Chalky tapped his chest. “I’m on this bleeder same as him. What happens to ’er ’appens ter me. I just want to know. Blimey, what beats me is what that Gibb came back for.” He stood up. “I’m going to draw me beer.”
At that moment Daddy Horsfall hobbled through in his best boots that were crippling him and a starched white mess-jacket that threatened to choke him, on his way aft to the wardroom.
Chalky seized on opportunity. “Hey! Daddy!”
Daddy glanced around, saw him.
Farmer Bates said, “Don’t ask him.”
Chalky whispered, “Not ask him? He’s the skipper’s servant, right alongside of him. If anybody knows —”
“Don’t ask him.”
Daddy called, “What d’yer want, Chalky? I’m supposed to be waiting on, man.”
Chalky asked, “What’s he goin’ to do? The skipper, I mean.”
“Do?”
“Do! About — this! He’s got to have a plan, ain’t he?”
“Ah! Plan.” Daddy nodded, understanding now. “Well, that’s simple enough. He’s made no secret of it.”
“What?”
Daddy said, “Get them to drop one on us.”
Chalky gaped at him. “What?”
Daddy nodded. “An’ when the bloody great cloud of rust goes up we can sneak away through it like it was a smoke screen.” He hobbled away through the guffaws.
Farmer said, “I told you not to ask the old bastard.” But Chalky went off, muttering.
Burton squeezed in beside Farmer and glanced at the bottles of beer. “You’re not going to drink all that at your age?”
Farmer said amiably, “You’re a scrounging bastard.” He shoved along a bottle.
Burton took it. “Always was.”
They drank. Farmer said, “That was a bit of a lark ashore.” They grinned. Farmer asked, “What do you think?”
“Smith? Deep, that one. Dunno what he can do but he won’t back down.”
Farmer nodded agreement. “Just have to wait and see.”
They had talked to Rattray, who said indifferently, “All right, I’ll leave the little bleeder alone if they ever let him out. Don’t matter now, does it? Not with what’s coming off tomorrow.”
Farmer and Burton sat in companionable silence in the midst of the teeming life around them. The moments of comparative peace would not, could not, last much longer. They would not waste them.
*
No bugle nor pipe sounded but the crew of Thunder had finished their brief breathing space, and their beer, and now turned to under the Petty Officers and Chiefs. They swarmed below deck like a disturbed ants’ nest, destructive ants, and the din they created built on itself until it came in bedlam waves and went on and on.
In the wardroom the Chilean Admiral and Encalada were stiffly polite but their ladies openly excited. Neither officer mentioned Smith’s request for more time but Cherry sought him out and whispered, “They’ve agreed. You have until six tomorrow morning but not a minute longer.”
“Well done!”
“And here!” Cherry handed him a telegram.
It was a signal from Admiralty. Cherry was to inform the Thunder’s commander that a sighting of the cruisers had been reported in error, and if the cruisers arrived in the Pacific he was to avoid action until joined by a stronger force.
Cherry said bitterly, “They’re a little late.”
Smith shrugged. “Thank you, anyway.” He put the signal carefully away in his pocket.
Ballard was openly elated by Thunder’s performance and Smith’s handling of her but after Smith spoke briefly and quietly with him he became preoccupied.
Donoghue and Corrigan, his Flag-Captain, were easy and friendly looking frankly at the damage, appraising it and the work done but saying nothing. The ship was tolerably clean; for a coal-burning ship that had recently passed through heavy weather and hostile action she was remarkably clean. She still stank of burnt cordite and smoke.
The party was complete. It had an air of unreality as Smith had suspected when he issued the invitation but now he was glad that he had done so. It had been issued as an act of bravado, a gesture, but the party was useful for several reasons. For one thing his officers were readily obeying his orders, they were enjoying themselves. For another, Sarah Benson was here.
The white-jacketed stewards served tea, cake and wafer-thin sandwiches. Wakely’s gramophone rag-timed away, decorously muted by one of Wakely’s socks stuffed down its horn. Wakely himself scurried between his gramophone and the group of officers who surrounded Sarah Benson. She had come aboard with Jim Bradley, who was pale and bandaged and told Smith, “The Doc’s allowed me up for one hour. I wasn’t going to miss this!”
Sarah looked anything but a survivor now. During the day she had made demands of Mrs. Cherry and that lady had met them nobly so that Sarah’s hair was piled and shone and her dress was exp
ensive and — well, fitted. She was polite and quiet with Smith when she came aboard but she had come alive in the wardroom. Bradley watched the officers clustered around her with tolerant amusement.
Smith thought Bradley could grin like a Cheshire cat because he would be taking the girl away.
Smith laboured at small talk. He was a poor hand at it and with the Chileans it was hard work. They all avoided mention of the war and Smith knew little of Chile. He talked a little of London but London was hard to recall.
Encalada finally noticed the racket below deck. “Your men are still working very hard.”
Smith nodded. “Yes.”
“Below? I understood you were hit fore and aft and your wireless destroyed — but not below.”
“That is correct.”
That stopped the conversation and Smith could have left it there but he said disarmingly, “It sounds as though someone’s trying to steal the engines! In fact we have a small engine repair, not connected with the action. And of course, we are trimming bunkers. But we will sail on time and shift our anchorage to Stillwater Cove tonight.”
Encalada nodded, but Ballard blurted out eagerly, “Captain, there’s a mist at dawn —” He bit his tongue.
Smith said quickly, “You came aboard in more comfortable style this evening, Miss Benson.”
“But no more eagerly.”
They all laughed at that.
Smith said wickedly, “It is a pleasure to open our doors to you.”
“Now.” And her lips twitched.
“Always.”
“Distance lending enchantment to the view?”
“I was — preoccupied at that time.”
“I know, and understand.”
He had apologised and she had accepted. He was pleased at that and he felt like a tight-rope walker, was enjoying it and tried his hand again. “Normally I would hope to see more of you but in the circumstances —”
“More? In the circumstances that would be difficult.” And she looked him straight in the eye and laughed.
*
When the party ended and the guests departed Ballard stood at the head of the ladder, his hand in Smith’s, and muttered, “Was that all right?”