by Alan Evans
‘Meet her!… Steady!… Steer that!’ He bawled it through the din and heard the order acknowledged. Audacity straightened out of the turn to run across behind the convoy.
‘Ship—port bow—two—cables!’
The high and piercing shriek from the port side lookout jerked Smith around. A ship, not a merchantman? She was bearing down on Audacity, narrow and low, looking to be another destroyer, but old like the guard-boat at the mouth of the Gulf. He shouted, ‘“B” and “Y” engage to port!’ He heard the order repeated by McLeod, saw the four-inch and the after twelve-pounder start to swing. Flame licked out of the night from the second destroyer, from the little four-pounder she carried forward of her bridge, and again she was so close that the crash of the hit came immediately after the flash. The shell exploded somewhere on Audacity’s superstructure. Smith saw the orange burst light up the port wing of the bridge in a blink of flame that was instantly gone, and felt the jar of it through the deck.
The old destroyer was coming on, would pass astern of Audacity. She fired again and Smith heard the howl of the shell hurtling past the bridge. The after twelve-pounder flamed, the four-inch slammed and the crack of the forward twelve-pounder came like an echo as it engaged a fresh target, the rear ship in the port column of the convoy.
‘Starboard twenty!’
The coxswain did not hear him but McLeod did, repeated the order into his ear and the helm went over. McLeod yelled, ‘Twenty of starboard on, sir!’
Smith was turning to run up the other side of the convoy and the old destroyer was passing astern now, Audacity’s after twelve-pounder swinging to follow her but silent, unable to depress far enough to hit her. The four-inch was silent too, for that same reason and because if it fired it would hit the mast or blow off the heads of the twelve-pounder’s crew. But the destroyer was turning away, her gun wasn’t firing either and there was the glow of a fire aboard her.
‘Ease to ten!…Midships!…Steady!’
Again McLeod passed on Smith’s orders. He realised there were other fires; one aboard the first ship they had engaged, a pulsing glare amidships; another on the second that had steamed past the first now lying still, and that was a bigger blaze just aft of the superstructure. He could not see the destroyer that had led the convoy and thought she must be beyond those blazing ships by now, would be hastening around after him.
Audacity was hauling up on the rear ship in this port column, passing close again but more slowly, at only the six or seven knots’ difference in their speeds. So now all guns, trained to starboard, were pumping shells into the merchantman. She was already turning away so most of the hits were amidships or aft. She too carried a gun on her poop that fired now, but the shell must have passed high overhead because Smith did not even hear it. She was slowly falling astern and ahead was the leading ship of the port column, but she had already turned away, was half a mile distant and opening the range. She was still a good target. At Smith’s order the guns shifted their aim to her as Audacity held on the course that would take her back to the mouth of the Gulf. Smith watched the orange winking as the shells burst. There was a red glow covering the whole of the convoy now, lighting them so that Smith could see the two ships running away, the one that was stopped and burning, and the fourth that still had way on her, although most of the red light was cast by her fire.
Suddenly the fire became a soaring pillar of light that hurt the eyes. Smith’s cap was snatched from his head and he was hurled back by the blast to slam against the side of the wheelhouse. Then the thunderclap of the explosion reached him, numbed him. For seconds he was blinded. Then, as his sight returned, he saw the black humps that were ships under a sky that was still tinged red by fire, but the main source of that furnace glow had gone.
His ears rang. The lookout, thrown sprawling by the blast, climbed to his feet. McLeod came to the wheelhouse door and mouthed at Smith who could not hear him but saw McLeod’s lips forming those words that were in his own mind: ‘Ammunition! She’s blown up!’ Audacity’s guns were not firing. Doubtless the layers could not yet focus on their target. Smith pushed past McLeod into the wheelhouse, stooped over the voice-pipe to the guns and ordered, ‘Check! Check! Check!’ He heard his own words, though distantly, and the acknowledgment from each gun, the reports that no gun was loaded. ‘Port ten! Steer two-two-oh!’ That was a course that would take Audacity away from the shipping lane and heading in towards the coast.
He went out to the starboard wing again and used his glasses to search the sea astern. There was the red wash under the clouds. He counted the scattered ships slowly as he found each one, steadily sweeping an arc. He was sure but he asked, ‘How many do you see?’
The lookout answered, ‘I make it five, sir.’
Smith heard that more clearly, his hearing returning as the ringing subsided. He lowered his glasses. ‘Yes.’ The two escorts and the three surviving merchantmen, though one or more might not survive for long. One was certainly stopped and on fire. The captain of the destroyer would yearn to hunt for the stranger come out of the night to tear his convoy apart, but she had gone into the darkness and with only the other old destroyer to help him, and she damaged, it would be like hunting a black cat in a very big, very dark room. And at the same time the ships of his convoy were in desperate straits and needing his aid. Suppose another sank with loss of life while he was off on a wild-goose chase, when he might at least have saved her crew?
Smith was prepared to bet that the German captain would stay with his charges. Just the same, he ordered or reminded both the lookouts to keep a sharp watch for any pursuit.
*
Audacity showed no light now, was silent but for an occasional quiet voice, the steady beat of her engines as she ran along off the coast at eight knots, and the banging of hammers as Bennett, the carpenter, and his mates reassembled the sides of the ‘box’ forward of the bridge. The red glow still lit the sky astern. When the guns ceased firing there had been a release of tension, loud laughter, shouted talk because ears rang and some men were excited, others relieved. Smith had cut it short: ‘I want silence, Mr. Ross! We’re not out of the wood yet!’
He stood outside the wheelhouse, hands jammed in pockets. He did not think they would shake but still did not want to risk it so kept them hidden. ‘How long since we left the tug?’
McLeod answered, ‘The hour’s nearly up, sir. She should be ahead of us now.’
Smith nodded. Gallagher was somewhere in the darkness ahead. He should show a green light—if he was still able to, if a party from the shore had not surprised him before he could bring the gun into action, overrun the tug and killed him and his men.
Were there guns sited on the coast here? It was unlikely, and Smith wondered if he should take Audacity close inshore to creep through the shallows searching—
‘Green light, port bow, sir!’ The lookout bawled his report as McLeod’s mouth opened, as Smith himself saw the pin-prick green glow.
‘Port ten!’ Audacity came around so she headed for the light. ‘Slow ahead.’ She closed the tug and Smith stopped her only yards away. He saw a cable running out from the tug’s stern to disappear in the sea and that would lead to the anchor Gallagher had used as a kedge. Had he got her off the bank and afloat?
Smith called, ‘Mr. Gallagher?’
‘Sir!’ He stood in the stern of the tug. His voice came up to Smith: ‘We’re very glad to see you! And surprised, to tell the truth! That was quite a fireworks display!’
Smith was in no mood for chatter. ‘I trust you didn’t spend your time watching it!’
Gallagher answered, ‘No, sir! We used the tug’s derrick to get…everything out of the boat. The cargo is forrard by the wheelhouse, on gratings and netted, ready to load. We raised steam on her, used the kedge and she’s afloat—just. I can feel her bumping still as the current takes her. I didn’t haul her off altogether because she’s holed forrard where she went on the putty. There’s two feet or more of water in her now and it’l
l be up to the stokehold fires before long; the pumps can’t hold it.’
‘Any sign of activity ashore?’
‘Not a cheep.’
‘We’re coming alongside. Stand by to load the Camel.’
Ross was on the deck forward of the bridge, his party gathered behind him, a man at the winch. As Audacity nuzzled alongside the fishing-boat the winch hammered and the wire from the derrick wriggled down to be hooked on to wire strops looped around the Camel, while the men with it cast off the lashings. Gallagher lifted a hand, signalling, and the Camel swung up, then inboard, to be guided down to rest on the staging the carpenter had erected in the hold just forward of Audacity’s bridge. The undercarriage and the rear half of the fuselage were below the level of the deck, the cockpit and the engine above it.
Thus only six feet of its nine feet of height stood above the deck but even these were still below the top of the ‘box’. The wings followed, to be slotted into the wooden supports Bennett had prepared on Gallagher’s instructions, inside the ‘box’. They rested on their leading edges, well padded with canvas.
Minutes later the gold was also aboard and being packed away, with sweating and swearing at the weight of it, back under Smith’s bunk. Audacity went astern. Gallagher jettisoned the anchor and its cable, eased the tug clear of the bank, then turned her and followed Audacity out to deeper water. There he stopped her and left her sinking, the engine-room plates already awash.
Audacity took the fishing-boat in tow while Gallagher came aboard with his men, the German prisoners, the three Russians—and Elizabeth Ramsay. Smith glimpsed only fleetingly her slim figure among the bulky men. Then McLeod, speaking of the ship far astern that had burned since Audacity’s attack, said, ‘She’s gone!’ The red glow on the horizon had suddenly ebbed and was snuffed out. The sea had claimed her. Two merchantmen sunk out of the four.
Smith ordered, ‘Mr. McLeod! Half ahead. I want a man at the lead and a course as near as we dare to this southern shore. Mr. Gallagher! Dismiss your men below and take Mrs. Ramsay and the Russians to the wardroom. See to their comfort. And, Mr. Gallagher!’
‘Sir?’
‘Have a drink on my bill. You’ve all earned it.’
‘Aye, aye, sir. Thank you.’
‘Mr. Ross! Lock those prisoners away under guard below. The master on his own.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’
A problem for Ross, but that was what first lieutenants were for. Smith had his own problems. He believed the destroyer would stay shepherding the remnants of the convoy, but he could not be certain. She might be hunting him, or her captain might have taken her at full speed to the Irbensky Strait, to close the door in the hope that his attacker was still in the Gulf of Riga. Smith did not want to run into him there without the advantage of surprise. Audacity would come off worst in that kind of action. So he conned his ship through the shallows off the southern shore, one ear cocked for the low call of the man at the lead, the other for McLeod’s murmured promptings: ‘The chart shows a bank running out about here, sir, and the soundings confirm it. We’ll need to ease a point or two to starboard.’
So they felt their way cautiously out of the Gulf and through the narrow neck of the Strait, with no light showing and the guns manned. The guard-boat was of course gone, scuttled, and they saw no destroyer. When they were out in the deeper water of the Baltic again, Smith told McLeod, ‘A course to take us northabout around Gotland, Pilot. We’ll make for the Swedish coast.’ Not heading directly for the Sound because they could expect to meet enemy patrols on that course. This northabout way, he hoped, would steer them clear of patrols for a time, and once off the Swedish coast they could take shelter in those neutral waters—if they had to.
Then he sent for Elizabeth Ramsay and the three Russians. When they crowded into his tiny cabin the latter looked exactly what they purported to be: bearded fishermen in heavy coats and sea-boots. They stood in an awkward row in front of the leather couch near the door. Elizabeth Ramsay had dark circles around her eyes but her face was scrubbed and, despite the lines of strain and weariness, she looked younger. This was a tired girl, not the hard, painted woman with the bold eyes.
Smith said, ‘I’m glad to see you, Mrs. Ramsay. Please be seated.’ She sank into the single chair and smoothed out her dress. He gestured the Russians down on to the couch, and turned back to the girl. ‘I gather you had a rough passage. Will you tell me about it?’
She shrugged. ‘I heard McLeod tell you most of it. The tug intercepted us off Kurgala and called on us to stop. The Germans had never stopped fishing-boats before. Maybe they thought we’d been running supplies to the Red Guards in Finland. We made a run for it, of course, but she fired her gun and killed two, one of them our captain, and wounded another. He died soon afterwards.’ Her hands twitched in her lap and she laced her fingers firmly together. ‘They took us aboard the tug and questioned us. The Russians claimed they were fishermen and I said I was the wife of one of those killed. The captain of the tug only had a few words of Russian and I didn’t let on I knew German. He wasn’t satisfied, told his crew we were up to something and he was taking us back to be interrogated by an interpreter. Then a man came along with a piece of paper, a wireless message. The captain was surprised. He said they were orders to go to some place and load an aeroplane. They locked us up; I was on my own in a little cabin. I had plenty of time to think. I knew once they got the fishing-boat into port and unloaded it they would find the gold. And then—’ She broke off there.
Smith thought: then the interrogation, the story told by each checked against the others and its discrepancies challenged over and over until someone virtually talking in his sleep let slip the truth.
The girl looked up at Smith with a half-smile. ‘I was going to try to escape but I couldn’t see how. I’m very grateful to you. We all are.’ She pointed to the Russians, spoke to them and they answered with smiles, nodding their heads. ‘They know how close they were to being shot as spies—if not by the Germans, then by the Bolsheviks, because the Germans would have handed them over.’
And with them the details of the plot to sink the Russian Fleet. Smith nodded. Now for it. ‘I want you to tell them the plot is finished. I had orders from the Admiralty to cancel it and return with the gold.’
For a moment she stared, disbelieving, then: ‘You mean you’re giving up, you’re not going to try again?’
Smith explained patiently: ‘My new orders came just after you left Kirkko. I was trying to find you when the tug captured you. Those orders are clear: I take the gold back and the plot is finished. Please tell them that, Mrs. Ramsay.’
She pushed at her hair with one hand, dazed, but complied, speaking slowly, heavily. When she had done the Russians muttered among themselves. It was difficult to tell whether they were cast down or relieved. Smith could understand that, after their experience of the last few days, and now that their leader was dead the risks must have loomed larger than the rewards. Or was their reaction just Russian stoicism?
He said, ‘If they stay aboard this ship they will land up in England—if they’re not killed, or captured again. On the other hand, they can take their boat and go home. She’s been damaged but she’s seaworthy and I’ll give them the tools and timber to make the damage good. They can sail her.’ He had got Gallagher’s word for that. ‘They stand a good chance of getting there.’
Again the girl passed on his words. And again the Russians muttered among themselves, then came to a nodding agreement.
Elizabeth Ramsay translated wearily, ‘They’ll take the boat. They have families in Russia, and what money they have is there.’ Then, with bitterness, ‘They say they would be beggars in England. I can understand that.’
Smith heaved an inward sigh of relief: three fewer bodies to squeeze into his ship. ‘It will be in their own interest to keep silent about the plot. I want their word that they will say nothing about this ship; they don’t even know it exists. In return I will keep silent about their part
.’
They agreed. He thought they would probably keep their word: they had nothing to gain by breaking it. Audacity stopped, the Anna was hauled in and the Russians went down into her with the tools and timber, water and supplies. The boat had a compass and McLeod gave them a course. Smith, through Elizabeth Ramsay, had hammered into them that they should use the fishing tackle they had aboard. ‘If they’re stopped, there’s no need for them to try to run again. There’s nothing aboard now to incriminate them. They’re just fishermen—a long way from home, admittedly, but they can cook up a story for that.’
They had shaken hands before they went down into the boat. Elizabeth Ramsay stood a yard away now. He watched the Anna fall astern as Audacity’s screws turned, saw them start to hoist the sail. Then they were lost in the night.
He turned and came face to face with the girl, thought he saw tears on her cheeks. She said huskily, ‘Damn you to hell, Smith! You and the bloody Admiralty! Damn you all to hell!’ Then she walked away quickly, her head down.
Smith went to his cabin, sank down into the chair at the little knee-hole desk behind the door and stared at his hands spread flat on the top of the desk, at the grime on them and the broken nails, watched the fingers tremble. He tried to stop that shaking but he knew he would not. It always came after an action, the visible manifestation of the shuddering inside him now that the danger was past.
It was over—for now; they were clean away. They lived on a knife-edge of risk, might run into a powerful enemy at any moment but for now that was only an outside possibility and there were long odds against it. But tomorrow…
Ross and McLeod had clearly thought the attack on the convoy suicidally dangerous but they had underestimated the twin advantages of surprise and the confusion of a night action. Smith had cold-bloodedly assessed that an attack was possible, at small risk and at disproportionately great gain.
There would not be another convoy with just a pair of escorts, let alone unescorted, after tonight. Smith suspected that the damage wreaked by Audacity would have left the Germans, fighting in darkness and dazzled by muzzle-flashes, with an exaggerated estimate of their enemy’s firepower. He could imagine the German naval reaction: this must not happen again. So that meant more convoy escorts and fewer ships free to engage in the hunt for Audacity. And he had drawn attention forcefully to this area, had again laid the false trail that this ship was a White Russian raider with a safe base not far away. That should seem logical to German eyes since it would be unthinkable that a solitary British ship could somehow enter the Baltic without detection and then commit the lunacy of attacking German naval forces on their doorstep. So the risks taken were not only acceptable, but justifiable.