Sunset

by Douglas Reeman

  Calvert must be thinking of it too. From Stringbag to destroyer. But the same, bloody war.

  He snapped down the button. ‘This is the Captain. In a moment we are altering course to port. It may be slightly uncomfortable.’ The signalman bared his teeth in a grin, and down on the messdeck they would be chuckling or cursing the bridge in equal portions. ‘There is a vessel in distress. This is a ship of war, but the other rule is older and as important.’

  He hung up the instrument and said, ‘Carry on, Pilot.’

  Calvert crouched by the gyro-repeater and then spoke into the bell-mouthed voicepipe.

  ‘Port twenty!’

  ‘Coxswain on the wheel, sir! Twenty of port wheel on!’

  Brooke gripped the chair as the helm went over. Pike always knew. Like the Chief, and Onslow, and the Buffer, the foxy-faced petty officer who was already gathering rescue gear and the men to handle it.

  Kipling muttered, ‘Whoops!’

  Calvert felt his shoes slipping on the wet gratings.

  ‘Steady! Meet her! Steer two-one-five!’ He wiped the ticking gyro-repeater with his bare arm as he watched the luminous figures come to rest.

  Pike reported calmly, ‘Course two-one-five, sir!’

  Brooke nodded, pleased. The ex-Swordfish pilot had handled her like a veteran.

  ‘One-one-zero revolutions!’

  Onslow came in at the bridge gate, but paused to watch the surge of sea and foam against the weather side.

  Brooke said, ‘Find out anything, Yeo?’

  Onslow nodded. Out of breath. He was proud too that the captain had allowed him to go to his hutch and look at his confidential log.

  ‘The Kiang Chen is registered at Hong Kong, sir. A coaster, two thousand tons. Built in the Great War.’

  Brooke touched his skin again. The same feeling. ‘So was this lady, Yeo.’

  It must have been something in his tone. Onslow said, ‘Nothing much else, sir.’

  He asked, ‘Who owns her?’ He had to repeat the question before the yeoman heard him. He already knew.

  ‘Coutts Steamship Packet Company.’

  Brooke could hear his brother’s voice again, telling him about Charles Yeung’s many interests. This elderly coaster was one of them.

  To the bridge at large he said, ‘We’re on our way.’

  But later Calvert thought he had been speaking to his ship.

  ‘Blue Watch closed up at cruising stations, sir!’

  Brooke heard Calvert acknowledge the report. Confident, his earlier wariness apparently gone.

  He watched the bows rising again, higher this time, before smashing down into a cruising roller like a giant axe. He thought of what Kerr had told him when he had carried out another tour of the lower deck. Some of the messes were in chaos with shattered crockery scattered everywhere and gear coming adrift. Even the fiddles and lashings could not cope with these wild plunges.

  In the heads it was far worse as gasping men tried to find a space to vomit, while the confined stench had affected the others. Even Kerr, who was a good sailor, had admitted to being queasy.

  The middle watch. Brooke had hoped to find something by now, a flare perhaps, a drifting boat. There was nothing. Worse, they had lost precious time by reducing revolutions to avoid unnecessary strain on the shafts. Before doing so the whole ship had shaken herself like a wet dog when the screws had been lifted almost to the surface.

  The vessel in distress had probably gone down. It happened often enough out here, according to the reports. Old, unseaworthy vessels, sometimes overloaded, or those whose cargoes began to shift when the sea showed its temper.

  Beyond the glass screen it was black but for the leaping spectres of ragged waves. Even the cosy red glow below Brooke’s side of the bridge had gone: he had ordered all lights out, including the navigation lights. Right or wrong, who was to say? This was not described as a war zone. But the Serpent was at war. Whatever happened Brooke was in no doubt of the outcome. If you did right, others would take the credit; make a mistake, and it would end in a court martial. It was a tongue-in-the-cheek joke amongst most commanding officers. Until it happened.

  ‘Bridge, sir?’

  Calvert swayed to the voicepipe. ‘Officer-of-the-Watch!’

  ‘The interpreter requests permission to come up, sir.’

  Brooke turned. ‘Affirmative, Pilot!’

  The interpreter, Mr John Chau, was the new addition to their company. A serious-faced, eager little man, he was a bank official by profession but also a member of the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. During his peacetime training he had acted as a boarding-officer in one of Hong Kong’s auxiliary patrol vessels, where his knowledge of both Mandarin and Cantonese had been extremely useful. He would make the chance of a mistake when stopping and searching a suspicious vessel less likely. Graded as an acting warrant-officer, he was permitted to share the wardroom, and he slept on a camp-bed in Calvert’s chart-packed cabin. In any night emergency it would be likely that Mr Chau would be trampled to death before he could get up.

  It took him an age to reach the forebridge. Groaning and retching, he was eventually hauled through the gate by one of the signalmen.

  ‘So sorry, sir!’ He gripped the compass platform’s safety rail and stared despairingly at the sea while the bows lifted once again.

  Brooke said, ‘Keep your eyes outboard, dead ahead if you can.’

  Calvert said, ‘Like a roller-coaster, you know.’

  Brooke smiled. ‘Give him a break, Pilot.’

  Under his breath Onslow, the yeoman, who had remained on the bridge since the distress call, muttered, ‘Just keep a bloody bucket handy!’

  Brooke asked, ‘Settled in, Mr Chau?’

  ‘Very much, sir, thank you.’

  Brooke thought of Charles Yeung’s valet, Robert Tan. Chau spoke like a younger version of the man.

  Calvert said, ‘Come and look at the chart, John. You might learn something.’

  Brooke settled down in his tall chair and smiled to himself. Calvert was making up for his comment in the midst of Chau’s seasickness.

  Under the cover of the canvas hood Calvert tapped the chart with his pencil. ‘The sea shoals to starboard. Although in home waters we’d still think it was deep!’

  ‘What about here, sir?’

  ‘Different matter entirely. A few more miles and we shall have fourteen hundred fathoms under where you’re standing.’

  Chau was neither impressed nor surprised.

  He said softly, ‘A place unknown to any man. All-time darkness, fish and creatures so terrible that the gods keep them where they can harm no one.’

  Calvert grinned. ‘I expect you’re right.’ Across the interpreter’s slight shoulders he called to Brooke, ‘Shall I work out a boxsearch, sir?’

  ‘I think not. Another fifteen minutes. Then I’m turning back.’ He was still thinking of the interpreter’s seriousness. As she had been, when he had believed she was making fun of him. Chau was not speaking of superstition or fable. To him it was simply fact.

  Brooke said to Onslow, ‘Have some men uncover the big searchlight. Men who know what they’re doing.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ He touched the seaman beside him. ‘Get your mate and report when you’ve cleared away the searchlight, right?’

  The young seaman grinned. ‘Sure thing, Yeo!’

  The old lower-deck magic, Brooke thought. The seaman was the same one that Onslow had sworn at so despairingly when the dead woman and her child had been found under the overturned lifeboat.

  They had obviously put it behind them. A solemn handshake, and probably sippers or gulpers from their respective tots of rum, but each man knowing he would react the same way if it happened again.

  Kerr reappeared on the bridge. Nobody was sleeping tonight.

  Brooke put him in the picture. He added, ‘I’m not too hopeful, Number One. How is it below?’

  Kerr thought of the sprawled bodies trying to rest, huddled or lying on the t
ilting deck amidst a confusion of broken plates, scattered food and vomit.

  He replied with a grin, ‘Just fine, sir.’

  ‘I’ll bet.’

  ‘Oh, one thing, sir. I visited the Asdic cabinet. They’re having a spot of bother with the set. Leading Seaman Aller is convinced it’s something the dockyard did wrong.’

  ‘I’ll get on to the yard when we get in. Not that it’s much use anyway out here.’

  ‘It wasn’t that, sir. The new Asdic chap, Ordinary Seaman Kellock – he only joined a few months back.’ Even in the darkness he knew Brooke was frowning. ‘Ginger hair,’ he prompted. ‘Nice lad to all accounts.’

  The round freckled face appeared in his mind as if on a screen.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I think he’s going to put in a request to see you in private, sir. The Cox’n has had his ear to the ground.’

  ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘He wants to get married, sir.’

  Brooke tried to see his expression. ‘God, he’s only a child!’

  ‘We all were once.’

  ‘You see him, Number One. Welfare. It’s out of the question.’

  Kerr had saved the best part for last. ‘She’s a Chinese girl from Wanchai.’

  Calvert called, ‘Better ask Paul Kipling about Wanchai. I think he knows the area!’

  Kerr persisted, ‘Kellock has the right to see you, sir.’

  Brooke grinned. ‘Tell me about it!’

  ‘Flare, sir! Starboard bow!’

  Several pairs of binoculars braved the drifting spray to find the look-out’s flare.

  Like a guttering candle, low down, or so it appeared. Instinct, or had some poor wretch been able to make out Serpent’s great ragged bow-wave as she plunged through each successive roller?

  Brooke said, ‘Pass the word to the Buffer.’ He wiped his face with his forearm. ‘Stand by with the searchlight. Give them a rough guide to sweep from the bow to abeam!’

  He leaned forward in his chair, and realised that his ribs were sore where its arms had been scraping into him every time the ship rolled.

  Kerr said, ‘I’ll get down there, sir.’

  Brooke turned towards him. ‘Ordinary Seaman Kellock indeed!’

  The youth in question was hunched over beside the Asdic set trying to keep out of everyone’s way. The small cabinet was crowded. Leading Seaman Aller was on his knees passing wire to a torpedoman who was stretched out on his back beneath the steel mounting. The sides of the place were streaming with condensation, and more dropped from the deckhead like tropical rain.

  The torpedoman, Usher, nicknamed Pop because of his premature baldness, croaked, ‘Nearly done, me old mate – just a tick longer.’

  Nobody questioned him. He was known as a crack wireman.

  Ginger Kellock tried again. ‘Look, Hookey, it can’t do any harm if I just see the Skipper, now can it?’

  Aller glared at him. ‘Just stow it, will you! I’ve had just about a jugful of you an’ your Chinese bird! She’s probably a bloody tom for all you know, after your money-belt!’

  Pop Usher grinned up at them, sweat mingling with grease on his tanned face.

  ‘All set, gents! Here we bloody well go!’

  It purred into life and Aller thought of all those other times in the Western Ocean.

  ‘Tell the bridge, Ginger. We’ve got our white stick again!’

  They all suddenly froze and stared at one another with shock and disbelief.

  Aller moved swiftly. ‘Shift your arse, Ginger!’ The others watched as he took the controls very carefully until the tell-tale echo pinged back into the receivers.

  His voice was quite calm as he spoke into the voicepipe to the bridge.

  ‘Strong echo, sir, bearing one-one-zero. Stationary!’

  Pop Usher muttered, ‘That’ll stop them farting in church!’

  At that moment, the alarm bells began to ring.

  ‘Ship at action stations, sir!’

  Brooke acknowledged. If only there was light.

  Calvert asked, ‘Could it be a wreck, sir?’

  Brooke recalled his earlier remarks about the depth hereabouts, and Chau’s thoughtful reply.

  ‘Who’s on the Asdic?’ He already knew. He was merely fighting for time. Had he known earlier that this might happen? He seemed to feel the hair rise on his neck in spite of the damp heat. Suppose this was the Atlantic? They would be sitting ducks.

  Kerr said, ‘Aller, sir. A moaner, but he’s a good operator.’

  Brooke moved to the voicepipe. ‘Asdic, this is the Captain. What do you make of it, Aller?’

  ‘Strong echo, sir. No change.’

  Brooke returned to his chair and used it as a crutch while the ship lifted and dipped beneath him.

  Suppose it was a wreck? It was a common enough mistake in the Atlantic. But not here, surely?

  ‘Another flare, sir! Fine on the starboard bow! Damn – it’s gone out!’

  ‘Slow ahead both engines!’ It would make the motion worse, but there would be less risk of a collision.

  ‘Scrambling nets ready. In case we can’t get alongside.’ He felt the chill on his spine and could sense the presence out there in the darkness. Like a hunter. An assassin.

  He made up his mind. ‘Searchlight!’

  Like a long bar of ice the big searchlight hissed out across the water, somehow magnifying the troughs and the breakers into moving glass valleys.

  The beam settled on the vessel and held it. The light must be blinding to them, Brooke thought.

  A familiar sight. He found he could study it through his glasses, his mind detached, even callous. The coaster was drifting without power or lights; he could see her rust-dappled bilge, the extent of her crippling list. Shifting cargo? It didn’t much matter now.

  He said, ‘We must take off her crew, Number One. A tow is out of the question in this sea. I don’t want to risk our chaps’ lives.’ He had seen the small huddle of crouching figures below the solitary, spindly funnel.

  The interpreter had forgotten his seasickness completely. ‘Know ship, sir! I have seen her many times!’

  ‘Switch on all navigation lights!’

  He recalled his own words to Serpent’s company. A ship of war.

  ‘Asdic – Bridge! Contact on same bearing but moving left!’ Even Aller sounded shocked.

  Brooke snapped, ‘Make a signal to C-in-C. Am in contact with submarine, position so-and-so . . .’

  ‘Bridge! Torpedo running to starboard!’

  The explosion when it came was so loud and violent that the stokers and artificers down in their world of noise and steam must have thought for a split second that they were the target. Fragments of metal splashed down between the bows and the place where the crippled coaster had been; some scraped across the forecastle deck like bomb splinters.

  Brooke said, ‘Am attacking! Now send it off!’

  He gripped a rail. ‘Starboard twenty! Steady! Steer one-one-zero!’

  ‘Asdic – Bridge.’ Aller sounded subdued. ‘Ship breaking up.’

  Brooke imagined the blasted and broken hull dropping so slowly into that great yawning valley of perpetual darkness.

  ‘Stand by depth charges!’

  ‘Asdic – Bridge. Lost contact.’

  ‘Keep on with the sweep.’ He heard the hardness in his voice. The Atlantic had not released its grip after all.

  There was no further contact. A signal was received from the C-in-C. Discontinue action. Return to Sector Charlie Zebra immediately.

  Kerr watched as Brooke listened to the curt signal.

  ‘What are you going to do, sir?’

  Brooke slumped in his chair and realised that the motion and the violence of the sea were easing. They had missed the worst of it.

  He shrugged. ‘I’m going back to find out if anyone survived. There’s always a chance.’ He sounded drained.

  Calvert said, ‘It might have hit us, the bastards!’

  Brooke looked towards
his head, framed against the sky.

  ‘It was meant to.’ How easily it came out. Then he said, ‘Fall out action stations but remain at defence stations.’

  Through the mouth of an open voicepipe he could hear the regular ping of the Asdic. He knew the attacker had gone. Somehow, he simply felt it.

  It had probably been the sudden and unexpected blinding glare of the big searchlight. The eyes at the hidden periscope had been momentarily shocked, blacked-out.

  He glanced around the pale figures of the watchkeepers. Unsteady on their feet as if they were too stunned to adjust to the ship’s movements. They did not even know what they had interrupted merely by responding to the S.O.S. They only knew that they had nearly died.

  At first light they discovered some small charred fragments of flotsam spread over a large area, like spent matches in a pond. They also found an elderly survivor, clinging half-dead to a hold-cover which must have been hurled clear from the coaster by the explosion.

  The man was so badly burned that when he was hauled aboard and carried carefully to the sickbay he looked more dead than alive. The Petty Officer S.B.A., Twiss, did what he could with the ointment which was issued for extreme burns; he had used it many other times when a merchantman had been torpedoed.

  Brooke handed over the bridge to Kerr and went down to the sickbay. ‘Sister’ Twiss’s expression was like stone as he worked with each piece of dressing. It was doing more harm than good.

  John Chau was bent over the old man’s body, his face so close to him that some burned skin was sticking to his immaculate white tunic.

  The dying survivor was in fact the vessel’s master. He probably did not even know what had happened. It was usual under such circumstances.

  Twiss said quietly, ‘He’s gone, sir.’

  Brooke took the burned and sodden identity card from the interpreter. ‘You did well, Mr Chau.’

  He saw the deep hint of pleasure in his dark eyes.

  ‘Have him sewn up. We shall bury him in the forenoon.’ He glanced at the interpreter. ‘Perhaps you would help me by reading something for him?’

  ‘Of course, sir. An honour.’

  He climbed the ladders to the swaying bridge, each step an effort.