Orphans of the Storm (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Where was Captain David Cochrane Smith now?

  Chapter Sixteen – HMS Mary Ellen

  Smith used the little dynamite that remained to make a small charge and set this against the hull in the saloon of the Mary Ellen so it was a foot below the waterline. He carried two of the sandbags down from the deck and used them to cover the charge so as to concentrate the blast against the hull. The fuse he led up to the wheelhouse through a hole he drilled in the deck. There were twelve feet of fuse. He told Jake, who was labouring at building the sandbags around the wheelhouse, “That should give us about six and a half minutes.”

  Jake panted, resting on the wall of sandbags, “Let me know when to start counting.” But he hated the thought of the charge so close to him.

  Smith knew it, knew the fear himself. He said, “I’m going to look at Brandenburg again. I’ll be back before dark.” There were two hours of daylight left. The shadows were lengthening but the sun had not lost its heat. Buckley and Garrity were sweating rivers where they filled the sandbags. More accurately, they were mudbags, Garrity holding the neck of a sack open while Buckley shovelled in the semiliquid earth at the edge of the side channel.

  They looked up at Smith and Buckley said worriedly, “Watch out they don’t see you, sir.” Jake had told him how he had been shelled by Brandenburg and dragged to safety by Smith. The tall young man had confessed to Buckley, “He was right and I was wrong. And he risked his neck to haul me out.”

  Smith had not forgotten the barrage either, and told Buckley now, “I’ll take good care they don’t spot me.”

  “Can’t one of us go with you, sir?”

  Smith shook his head. “This job will need to be done by the time I get back and it will take all three of you.”

  Véronique was again on watch after a spell standing knee-deep in the mud and filling the bags.

  The route was familiar now and Smith moved quickly, though still warily scanning the terrain ahead. He found another observation post at the edge of the tall timber where he was looking down on the pool and the cruiser. He could see her bow where the damage had been done and now he lifted the binoculars he had brought from the lighter.

  His lips tightened. The men swarming along Brandenburg’s side now were recovering the staging. The ship still listed so that the new plates both showed above the waterline but it would not take Moehle long to correct her trim. Despite the blast of the previous night and the half-hour delay gained by Jake almost at the cost of his life, the work was done. Moehle and his crew had achieved a near miracle. Brandenburg would sail soon after dark and be at sea by the early hours of the morning. She would be in time to join forces with Graf Spee on the evening of the following day. And then God help the British squadron off the Plate.

  And Robert Hurst.

  Smith pushed back into the shelter of the trees, got to his feet and made his way back to the lighter. He came to the Mary Ellen in the dusk and found Buckley and Jake lifting a sandbag between them to set it on the roof of the wheelhouse. Garrity, watching them, turned as Smith climbed aboard and told him, “That’s the last. She’s as ready as she’ll ever be.”

  Smith looked the lighter over and nodded agreement. All that part of her cargo that might have added to her buoyancy if she took in water, timber and the like, had been cast over the side. Buckley said, “Open her bottom with that charge you set, sir, and she’ll go down like a brick.” It was vital that when she sank, she sank quickly. Garrity winced.

  The wheelhouse was roofed and walled in with sandbags, only narrow slits left on each side, rear and front, that last for the man at the wheel to see ahead. Garrity said, “Just one more thing, sir.” He had a rolled cloth tucked under one arm but now he shook it and it opened out into a White Ensign. Garrity said, “I had the little Jack already but the rest I sewed up meself.” That was obvious, though it was neatly done, the red cross stitched onto a white sheet with the Union Jack in the corner. “I want her to be dressed proper.”

  Smith said, “So do I. Hoist it, please.”

  Garrity passed the Ensign up to Jake, squatting on top of the wheelhouse. He took it and turned to the stumpy mast just aft and within arm’s reach of him, then paused. There were no halyards on the mast. Smith said, “Pass him a hammer and nails.”

  So Jake nailed the Ensign to the mast.

  Smith said, “We go now.” He dared wait no longer or Brandenburg might escape him.

  He did not need to elaborate. Early that day he had told them his plan and they had mulled it over, talked it over, ever since. So now Buckley and Jake stripped away the camouflage of awning and branches, tossed it all into the shallows and splashed in after it. Garrity launched the little dinghy over the stern and then joined them. Smith moved towards the engine — and the tins jangled madly at the end of the string from the hide.

  They all stood for a moment, frozen, wondering if the slight rocking of the lighter as they tramped about her deck had caused the tins to shake. But then they kept on rattling and clinking to the jerking of the string — the men could see it tightening like a fiddle-string, relaxing, then snapping taut again.

  Jake grabbed the rifle and plunged away from the lighter’s side, heading downstream towards the hide and Véronique. Smith shouted after him, “Fetch her back!” And to the other two, “Shove her off!” He started the engine as Buckley and Garrity thrust against the black hull and slowly but steadily the Mary Ellen eased away from her muddy bed and out into the stream where she had deeper water under her bottom.

  Smith was in the wheelhouse now, peering forward over the hold and the bow. He saw Jake returning with the girl, the pair of them hand in hand, appearing where the stream bent away to the left. Spray lifted around them as they ran high-stepping through the low water at the side of the channel, two shadows dancing together in a world full of shadows now. Then they were splashing back towards him and the lighter.

  He waited for them then saw the top of the head of the tall young American show over the lighter’s side. Jake swung himself aboard and Smith heard Buckley’s bellow of: “Ready, sir!” So Smith knew that the big man, Garrity and Véronique were in the dinghy.

  Jake edged into the wheelhouse through the narrow doorway left in the sandbags at the rear, the rifle swinging from one hand. He panted from the run and told Smith, “A launch. Otto Bergmann and some of his friends, searching by the look of it, and they’re pushing through into this channel.”

  Smith shoved the throttle lever open and asked, “How did they find it? Was that girl in the hide?” He wondered if she had strolled out into the open, bored with the hours pent up and watching an empty stream.

  Jake said, “I asked her and she said she never moved out of it. Seems Bergmann stopped right opposite the mouth of this channel and real close, squinted at it then started to shove in.” Then he added, “Tell you this, though, coming back I could see the last of the light sparking off the water. Maybe they spotted that through the branches we rigged up when it wouldn’t show any other time. The guys in that boat from Brandenburg yesterday, they were out in the middle.”

  Smith thought he could be right, but it did not matter. The bend was just ahead and the lighter working up a little speed now, water foaming under the bow. The dinghy she towed would be bobbing along at the end of its painter. If Bergmann had entered this side channel they would meet him—

  He was there! As Smith spun the wheel to take the Mary Ellen around the curve in the channel he opened up the next reach. The launch was barely fifty yards ahead, cruising slowly up the side channel, hardly any white water at her stem. A man knelt in her bow and peered down into the stream, presumably watching in case the bottom shelved suddenly. There were men in the well aft of the cabin lifting in the waist but dusk was fast turning into night and they were no more than blurred silhouettes.

  There was room for the lighter to pass the launch and Smith only had to hold his course. Instead he put the wheel over and the Mary Ellen’s blunt bow swung around to point at the la
unch. The men aboard it had seen the lighter and the one in the bow was on his feet now, scurrying back to join the others in the well. Another was standing on a thwart and waving, clearly signalling to the lighter to stop. He held a rifle in the other, uplifted hand, a threat or a warning.

  Smith ignored both and the Mary Ellen bore down on the launch. Jake asked, “Should I let him have it?” He was ready with his rifle but reluctant, talking now not of a faceless killer but of a man he knew, had passed in the street.

  Smith answered, “No. Save the ammunition.” The man had jumped down from the thwart and Bergmann, or whoever was at the wheel, had realised the lighter’s intention and put his helm hard over. The launch began to turn away but the manoeuvre had been left too late. The Mary Ellen was still working up speed and the gap between her and the launch closed rapidly. Smith and Jake were suddenly looking down on the launch and now they were so close they could make out Bergmann’s bulky figure at the wheel.

  Then Smith spun the wheel again, bringing the bow around further still so it hid the launch from sight, and a second later they struck. The Mary Ellen checked, shuddered, then drove on. Smith caught a glimpse of the fore part of the launch, bow and cabin, sliding past the lighter. Men clung to the listing wreckage, mouths wide as they shouted in rage or fear. Then it was past.

  Jake shouted, peering out through the doorway at the rear of the wheelhouse, “Her stern’s gone, smashed away! She’s sinking!”

  Smith brought the lighter back onto her course downstream and said, “Never mind her.” The survivors would suffer no more than a wetting. A man could walk across the stream with the water only up to his chest. “Can you see the dinghy?”

  Jake confirmed, “She’s there and so are they.” He was talking of Véronique and the two men. “Bouncing about a bit, that’s all.”

  Smith thought that the dinghy would, riding in the lighter’s wake. But now he could see ahead of them the screen of branches across the entrance to the main stream. Bergmann had cut his way through it and Smith aimed the bow of the lighter at the gap he had left. The Mary Ellen slid past the hide, through the gap and out into the main stream. When the broad expanse of the river came in sight he told Jake, “Slip the dinghy now.”

  Jake put down the rifle and left to do his bidding. Smith glanced back through the doorway and saw the tall young man straighten after casting off the painter. The dinghy appeared astern. A slender figure sat in the bow and a short one hunched in the sternsheets while a big man pulled at the oars. Their three faces, pale and featureless in the night, were turned towards the lighter. Jake lifted a hand and Véronique waved back to him. Smith knew that Buckley would be wishing him luck and bitterly sorry at being left behind. But this was no task for him.

  The young man came back into the wheelhouse and picked up the rifle without speaking, his thoughts still on that last glimpse of the girl. Smith turned the wheel of the Mary Ellen, out on the river now, turned her bow into the current and headed upstream. They were out of the shelter of the stream, there was a breeze on the river and the lighter was shoving into it. Smith could hear the Ensign flapping and banging as the wind spread it out.

  Jake took down from a hook two of the lifejackets Smith, Buckley and Véronique had used when escaping from Brandenburg. Jake put one on and took the wheel while Smith tied on the other. Smith claimed the wheel again. Now the night was upon them and it was beautiful, the river running wide and black, flecked with the silvery grey of phosphorescence. On either side the stunted brush and tall trees of the forest lifted in walls of deeper darkness. Ahead and in the middle distance was Brandenburg, silhouetted against the shaking silver curtain that was the falls and now their thunder came above the engine’s thumping to the two in the wheelhouse.

  When Jake spoke he put his mouth to Smith’s ear so he did not have to shout: “There are the buoys.” Smith followed the line of his pointing finger, still could not pick out the buoys in the night but then, squinting, found them. He nodded and turned the wheel so the lighter’s bow swung slowly around to the centre of the entrance of the pool. He guessed: A half-mile away?

  But now Jake was shouting: “The guardboat!”

  Smith snatched a glance out of the slit in the sandbags on the starboard side and saw Brandenburg’s launch charging out from the shore with a big white bow wave like a moustache. The guardboat itself was a blurred grey shape riding the bow wave but even as he watched the machine-gun in its bow opened fire. There was a flickering of orange flame that went on for two or three seconds and he heard the smack of the bullets when they hit the steel side of the lighter. They would be drilling into the sandbags too.

  Smith’s gaze was directed forward now, holding the Mary Ellen to her course, but from the corner of his eye he could see that Jake was braced against the sandbags with his rifle thrust out of the slit. Smith heard the crack of the report as Jake fired, the rattle as he worked the bolt, another crack. The harsh chatter of the machine-gun ceased and did not start again but Jake’s firing went on rapidly. Then he was standing back, working the bolt again but this time to thumb another clip of cartridges into the breach. He closed the bolt, leaned forward into the side slit once more then swore, “The bastard’s too far ahead now for me to see him from here!”

  He shoved up alongside Smith, who craned forward and saw the guardboat come into view, nearly level with the lighter’s bow, close now and headed in to meet her. The guardboat had twice the speed of the plodding Mary Ellen, would be able to range alongside so her boarding party could leap across the gap into the waist of the lighter. But Smith had reckoned on the launch attempting to board and that was why Jake was in the Mary Ellen’s wheelhouse now.

  Jake fired rapidly then suddenly yelled in triumph, “Got him!” And Smith saw the launch veer off course, swinging away from the lighter. The man at the helm had been hit. Jake opened fire again, working the bolt quickly. The guardboat had turned her stern to him and he could see directly into the black hole of her well. There the men aboard her would be milling about in the darkness, their gunner and helmsman hit while their own fire had no effect and now the slugs were howling around them.

  The launch was turning still … Now she was straightening out again but her course was taking her away from the lighter and the terrible rifle fire that had killed, hurt or demoralised. Her crew would lick their wounds, reorganise and come again, but not yet, not for a while. That was sufficient. Smith and the Mary Ellen could go about their business undisturbed. That business would be difficult enough without the distraction of the guardboat.

  Smith took a breath and a firmer grip on the spokes of the wheel. He had told Jake that this action could be the death of both of them: “You were under fire from that ship today so you know what I mean.”

  Jake had said, “Suppose I say ‘no’?”

  “Then I’ll ask one of the others.”

  “Why ask me first?”

  “You’re the best man for the job.” A good shot, keen-eyed and with fast reactions, young and very fit.

  And Jake had done all that was asked of him but Smith thought that he was too young to die and was bitterly sorry that he had needed to bring this man barely out of his teens. Now the real danger would begin. They were nearly there.

  The buoys marking the entrance to the pool were only a hundred yards ahead but now the searchlight on Brandenburg’s superstructure poked out a long white finger that found the Mary Ellen and lit her up.

  *

  Kurt Larsen was red-eyed and weary as his men struck the staging from the ship’s side and hauled it inboard, but like every other man aboard he was also elated and triumphant because they had done it. They had rendered Brandenburg fully efficient again, ready to cross the North Atlantic in winter or to fight at the side of Graf Spee — and she was in time to do that. The latest reports were that the pocket battleship showed no sign of leaving Montevideo before the deadline at 8 p.m. on the next day. Brandenburg, about to get under way now, would be off the mouth of the River
Plate a few hours before the deadline.

  He was on the cruiser’s bridge after night had wrapped her around and she was making ready to sail, engines throbbing and the ship buzzing with life. His captain, Gustav Moehle, had called Larsen there as he had called others, to congratulate them personally on their achievement. It was then that the look-outs reported, “Firing on the river, sir!”

  From the bridge Moehle and his staff could see the winks of flame from the machine-gun, which they correctly concluded was that mounted on the guardboat — and from a rifle on another craft. When Moehle called for the searchlight to illuminate the scene he saw the nature of that craft. He remembered what the pilot had said about a lighter. And the pilot, standing at his side, said incredulously, “That’s the Mary Ellen!”

  Moehle did not hesitate. He could not guess the lighter’s intentions but he knew she was hostile. That was emphasised when Kurt Larsen burst out, “She’s flying a White Ensign!” Moehle saw it hoisted on her stump of a mast abaft her wheelhouse and laid out flat as a board as she steamed into wind. His ship was ready for sea and his comrades in Montevideo needed his help. Nothing must prevent her sailing. The lighter had to be destroyed. He ordered, “Open fire!”

  The searchlight’s beam washed over the low length of the Mary Ellen and flooded into the wheelhouse through the slits left in the stacked sandbags. Smith swallowed and said from a dry mouth, “Here it comes.”

  Jake knew what he meant, now. They both hunched, half-crouched, in expectation of the blow, though Smith told himself that would serve no purpose. The barrage of that morning was horribly fresh in his memory. This time he was inside the thick protection of the sandbags and not out in the open but they would not save him for long. The Mary Ellen, Garrity’s pride and joy, his living and his life’s savings, would be lost in a few minutes.

  The cruiser’s tall hull was hidden somewhere in the blackness beyond the glare of the searchlight. Smith could see only the river ahead lit by the beam, all else was pitch darkness now. But then a rash of muzzle flashes sprouted around the source of the beam and the Mary Ellen was hit.