by Alan Evans
Could Robertson’s courier contact the Russian plotters and stop them? There might be a slender chance of saving that much from the wreck of the mission, though they would never get the gold back.
Smith made his decision. ‘Port ten.’
‘Port ten, sir.’
‘Mr. McLeod!’ And as the navigator slid down the ladder from the flying bridge: ‘A course for Kirkko.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Smith knew that, even at fifteen knots, it would be dark long before Audacity entered Kirkko. Then he would have to find Robertson in the little town that swarmed with German troops.
*
Audacity was five miles north of Kurgala Point and running north-westward at her full speed. The mist had thickened and closed in again, visibility was barely a mile and sometimes much less, but Smith ordered no reduction in revolutions. He could not waste a minute in finding Robertson to pass the warning to Admiralty, and to send his courier to try to reach the Russians.
Nerves were strung tight by Audacity’s headlong rush. Smith stood immobile, silent, while McLeod shifted from one wing of the bridge to the other and Ross repeated, ‘Bloody fog! Can’t see a damn thing!’ Smith told himself that a collision was a million to one against. There would be few ships trading in the Baltic this early in the year and so soon after the ending of the war with Russia. They had not seen another ship since leaving Kirkko. Still, he had an extra lookout right forward in the bow because if they did come on a fishing-boat, that split second of advance warning might save running her down.
It was the man in the bow who yelled the report: ‘Ship on the starboard bow one mile!’
Smith’s head snapped around and his hand grabbed for the glasses hanging against his chest. Even with their help the other vessel out there was insubstantial in the mist. It was hard to make out what she was, but certainly a ship and not a fishing-boat. She was a long, low shape—not a tramp like Audacity pretended to be—and Smith heard Ross curse softly as he reached the same conclusion. Moments later their fears were confirmed as the ship came out of the mist and her lines hardened, became clear.
Robertson had spoken of an old destroyer that patrolled out of Reval, along the Finnish coast then back across the Gulf. Audacity had met her not long before entering Kirkko. But this was a different destroyer. The Germans had probably added an extra vessel to their patrols because of their involvement in Finland. She would be on the lookout for ships from Russia and bound for Finland because, whether neutrals or no, they might carry contraband, supplies or reinforcements for the Red Guards fighting Von Goltz’s troops. Smoke streamed from her two funnels and she was making around ten knots. She was older than the destroyer met off Kirkko, and weaker. Too old to serve with the Fleet, they had ripped the torpedo tubes out of her, and two of her three guns. Only one remained, right aft. As Smith studied her through his glasses he suspected that, while they had drawn most of her teeth, they had probably given her more bunkerage space for coal to extend her range for this task of patrolling. The aerials strung between her masts were connected to a superstructure abaft the bridge—that would be the wireless office: she was a pair of eyes—and a voice.
A light stabbed out from her bridge, stuttering a signal. McLeod said, ‘She’s ordering us to stop, sir.’
Smith judged she was less than a mile ahead off the starboard bow on a course almost parallel with Audacity’s but closing on her slowly. The gap between was narrowing fast, as Audacity overhauled her. The destroyer would probably have called on her to stop anyway, but the German captain would have added suspicions because Audacity’s speed was both out of character for the tramp she pretended to be, and out of reason in this mist.
There were men manning the German’s gun now and others gathering around a boat. Her captain was not going to be content with howling questions across a neck of sea. When Audacity stopped, the boat would bring a boarding-party.
On the other hand, Smith could order an emergency turn to port and Audacity might escape in the mist. But the hunt would be up, and she might not get away.
He stepped into the wheelhouse, pushed the button below the screen and the buzzers sounded through the ship. He heard the trample of boots as the men ran to the guns, listened to the ‘Ready’ reports as they came in through the voice-pipes, watched the destroyer ahead. The lamp was flickering again from her open bridge, insistent. McLeod read it: ‘Stop or I fire.’
The smoke from the destroyer’s funnels was thickening. She was barely half a mile ahead, her skipper demanding more speed from his engine room so that this strange Swedish tramp would not get away.
Smith ordered, ‘Port ten,’ to bring Audacity around so the after twelve-pounder would bear as well as the other guns. He told McLeod, ‘Ensign.’ The navigator lifted a hand. Men crouching below the bulwarks let shutters drop down over the boards painted in the Swedish colours, covering them. Another on the poop snapped the Swedish flag from the jack and ran up the White Ensign. Smith rapped into the voice-pipe: ‘Ship starboard bow eight hundred! Midships and waterline! Fire!’ Midships and waterline because he had to sink her. In exercises the guns had uncovered and got into action quick enough—but would they now?
Smoke jetted from the gun in the destroyer’s stern. The flat thump of its report followed a second later and with it the shriek of the shell. It passed overhead, or more likely across the bow, where the forward twelve-pounder was swinging up on its revolving mounting from its concealment under the deck of the fo’c’sle. Then the gun locked into place and the crew jumped in on it, training it round.
The breech was knocked open and the shell loaded. Smith heard behind him the clatter as the housing around the four-inch collapsed to the deck.
Audacity’s head was turning. ‘Meet her…steady!’ She was broadside to the destroyer, and fore and aft the twelve-pounders fired almost as one; crack!—crack! Then a second later the four-inch banged. Flame bit on the destroyer as the rounds struck, smoke drifted to match the wisping mist, and a hole showed in one of her funnels, another in the superstructure. The gun on the destroyer spurted smoke once more but Smith never heard the shell nor saw where it went. Heavier smoke drifted along the old destroyer’s length as she was hit again and again. She pushed out of it and now her gun was cocked at the sky and no men stood near it. Audacity’s guns were firing faster and more accurately than ever they had done in practice.
McLeod bawled exultantly, ‘I haven’t seen one round go over yet!’
The German had been pounded from stem to stern and every time she came out of the smoke she showed more wreckage. Both masts were cut and collapsed, the foremast a jumble of steel crushing the superstructure abaft the bridge—that took yet another hit as Smith watched. The bridge itself was empty, mangled. But she had not stopped, and if anything was cutting faster through the flat sea, so that while Audacity had worked up abeam, she was not head reaching on her, no longer had the edge in speed.
The destroyer turned away. Smith had been half-expecting it: ‘Hard astarboard!’ he shouted, to bring Audacity around after her. Was the destroyer out of control? Not yet. She turned more quickly, more tightly than Audacity could manage with her bigger turning circle, then steadied to run back along her own wake. Audacity was still under helm so the range was opening. Her guns weren’t firing so rapidly nor hitting so regularly. The heel of the ship in the turn, and the changing relative positions of guns and target, accounted for that. There were splashes of near misses astern of and alongside the destroyer.
‘Meet her… steady!’ Audacity straightened out, racing after the destroyer. It was a stern chase now. The four-inch and the after twelve-pounder had ceased firing, no longer able to bear. Was the range still opening? Smith was not sure, but Audacity had lost ground in that turn and the destroyer was now a mile ahead. Smith used his glasses, and saw that everything along her deck—masts, superstructure, bridge—was smashed flat.
McLeod shouted, ‘She’s on fire, sir!’
She was. Smoke
streamed from her that was not from her funnels, and Smith glimpsed a yellow glow under it. But she was not slowing. Then her smoke and the mist veiled everything and she was as insubstantial as when they first sighted her, smoke and mist drawing a gauzy curtain.
The twelve-pounder in the bow ceased firing, the layer no longer able to see the target. Now there was only the mist, banks of it lying a mile away or in places less than half that distance. The guns waited, breeches open but empty, the ammunition numbers breathing hard as they stood by, cradling the shells snatched from the magazine hoists. The tang of cordite still hung about the ship.
The men on the twelve-pounder were grinning. A burst of laughter came from the crew of the four-inch, only ten yards from where Smith stood outside the wheelhouse. They had fought and punished the enemy, seen him run, were still in the grip of that excitement, a mixture of fear, tension and exhilaration. They had not thought the situation through yet, but they would. They weren’t stupid.
Ross had. And McLeod. No grins or laughter there. Audacity’s chief protection had not been her guns or her disguises but the fact that the enemy did not know, had no reason even to suspect, that she was in the Baltic. And now that protection was gone.
Smith said, ‘A course for Reval, Pilot.’ Because that was where the destroyer would be headed. Audacity hunted along that course, in the hope that the destroyer might have broken down, or at least been forced to slow by the hammering she had received.
McLeod reported: ‘Sparks doesn’t think she sent a wireless signal.’ The wireless operator was keeping his listening watch. ‘The only traffic he heard was weak and distant.’
Smith nodded. ‘Thank you.’ If the destroyer’s wireless had been wrecked before she could send out a warning then Audacity had a few hours’ grace, at least. But if the destroyer reached Reval she’d raise the alarm soon enough.
At one point they thought they heard distant gunfire, but no one could be sure of its bearing. It lasted only a second. They searched until the mist became dusk and did not find her.
Smith spoke to Ross: ‘Pass the word to the men that it was good shooting, better than ever they did in exercise.’ That was true and the praise well-deserved but even so the shooting had not been quite good enough. The destroyer had got away.
There was something else these men deserved. Soon they would realise they were under imminent sentence of death—or a prison camp if they were very lucky. His mind went back to before he had set out on this cruise, the determination formed then: ‘And you can tell them I am now taking this ship and her crew back to Rosyth.’
‘Aye, aye, sir.’ Ross looked startled, relieved—then unconvinced.
Smith could understand that. The intention was one thing, the achievement another. One decision at least had been taken, that getting a message directly to Robertson was out of the question. But the length of the Baltic still lay between Audacity and the Sound, six hundred miles of sea that the enemy controlled, and once the damaged destroyer reached port they would be hunted throughout that length. Then there was the passage of the Sound—and before they ever reached it there would be the patrolling Zeppelin…
McLeod was waiting, expecting to be asked for a new course. What should it be? Audacity was dawdling along at eight knots while Smith made up his mind. He paced the bridge rapidly, his thoughts churning. The length of the Baltic…run for it, fast and straight? Or hug the northern, neutral shores…? Change the identity of the ship with a fresh disguise? But then there was still the Sound. He had to pass through it in the night but to have time for the passage he must make his approach before then, in the light of day. And now the Zeppelin would suspect every merchantman, neutral or no, reporting to the destroyer which would intercept, board and search. The Zeppelin was the key to the door—
He halted suddenly as the pieces clicked into place, turned and stared at McLeod. ‘Let’s look at the chart, Pilot.’
Buckley, at the back of the bridge, thought, Here we go!
Then Smith turned to him and spoke abruptly: ‘Ask Mr. Gallagher to come up, please.’
7—‘Sink her!’
The night was still and a low covering of cloud hid all but an occasional star. Smith stood on the flying bridge above the wheelhouse with McLeod and Gallagher. The navigator crouched knees-bent by the compass, taking bearings. Gallagher waited silently. He had known about the mysterious boxes transferred to the Anna at Kirkko and had been privy to the guesses of the rest of Audacity’s crew as to their contents. That was inevitable in a ship with the gossip circulating. Now he had been told the part he must play in their escape. Smith, glasses to his eyes and looking out over the port side, knew that Gallagher would have plenty to think about; he could be landing on the enemy coast very soon. The shore was a low, ragged black line set in silhouette against the night sky, and, less than a mile distant, a tall rectangular tower stood up from that line.
Audacity crept through these shallow inshore waters with a man at the lead. Smith passed the glasses to Gallagher, who trained them on the land. McLeod straightened and said, ‘It looks right from the chart, sir.’
Smith nodded. ‘Yes, it does.’ And it had to be right. They must not put Gallagher ashore miles from his destination, lost at the outset.
McLeod went on, certain now: ‘That’s Kunda Bay opening ahead of us.’ Beyond the tower landmark the shore fell away, a receding blackness.
Gallagher returned the glasses to Smith and said positively, ‘That’s the tower. And that’s the bay; God knows, I’ve flown over it and walked along it often enough.’
Smith slipped the strap of the glasses back over his head and let them hang on his chest. ‘That’s a fine piece of work, Pilot. A good landfall.’ And it was, considering McLeod’s last sighting had been off Kurgala and they had then fought the destroyer and searched for her, fruitlessly.
McLeod answered honestly, ‘Bit of luck, sir.’ Some parts of his calculations had been by guesswork, guided by instinct.
Smith went down to the wheelhouse with Gallagher and stood by Ross as Audacity edged cautiously into the bay. The man at the lead softly called the depth under her. ‘By the mark, four!… By the mark…’ The guns were hidden but their crews stood ready to bring them into action. Outside the wheelhouse were three of Gallagher’s groundcrew: a petty officer, a fitter and a rigger. Each carried a haversack holding the minimum of the tools of his trade. And like Gallagher, each man had food for a day and a water-bottle, a pistol belted around his waist, and a rolled blanket slung over one shoulder and fastened at the belt. The pulling boat on the starboard side was swung out, hung in its davits ready to be lowered and a party stood by at the falls. The motor-boat would have done the job faster, but the noise of its engine would have alerted any enemy on the shore.
Smith stared out over the bow at the low, black outline of the shore, underlined by a thread of silver where the sea gently washed the beach. There was no ice here, nor fog, but the night was dark enough for the job. No light showed on Audacity bar the glow from the compass. The man at the lead read its markers by the touch of his fingers.
The lookout in the starboard wing of the bridge called, ‘Light! Starboard bow!’
Smith saw it, then it was gone. Broad on the bow. A mile away? More? On the shore? He was outside the wheelhouse now, using his glasses, ordering, ‘Stop her.’
The lookout said, ‘Hard to tell against the land—but it looks like a ship o’ some sort. Think I can see a funnel. And maybe a mast.’
Smith thought so, too. There was a low, lumpy outline, but that might be a funnel. And a mast. For a moment he wondered if this was the destroyer they had sought. Then he discarded that idea. She would have been showing more light, would have been a hive of activity as her captain tried to repair some of his damage and looked to his dead and wounded. So—a fisherman, perhaps? But whatever it was…
He turned to Gallagher. ‘Go now.’ He’d intended to creep in nearer the shore, but: ‘I don’t think that ship’s seen us, or will se
e us, but we won’t risk going further in. Make a wide circle round her. We’ll take you off tomorrow night.’
Gallagher nodded; they had been through his plans and Smith’s orders to him. ‘If you don’t come, I use my initiative.’ He paused, then added sardonically, ‘Bloody long walk home, though.’
Smith had said, hours ago, stooped over the chart, ‘I’ll let you go after your Camel, on certain conditions.’ And Gallagher had seized on the offer, not even asking what the conditions were, accepting them with a shrug when Smith told him.
The boat was lowered. Then its crew, with Gallagher and his men, climbed down to it and it pulled away. Buckley was at the tiller because he had landed on an enemy coast—and more than once before…
Smith saw young Danby on Audacity’s deck forward of the bridge, watching the boat disappear into the night. Should he invite that lonely young man on to the bridge? It was surprising that Danby had turned out to see Gallagher go—the older man’s treatment of him verged on contempt. Or was it hatred?
Smith checked the thought, wondering if he was exaggerating what could be no more than two officers of differing personalities getting on each other’s nerves. That was common enough. But he had problems of his own and he did not want company, so he left Danby where he was.
He paced the starboard wing as he waited. Gallagher should be all right. He had been confident this coast would be thinly held by the Germans—with probably not one posted for miles—and Smith had agreed. Now he went over in his mind the plans he had made so rapidly, examining, seeking to improve them, looking for faults. All the time he listened to the cast of the lead, a monotonously repeated,
‘By the mark, three!’ Audacity lay like a log on the water; McLeod, up on the flying bridge checking his bearings to marks on the shore, confirmed that by not reporting any change, any drift. There was virtually neither current nor tide here.