All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3

by Alexander Fullerton

  Gant went for’ard, round the side of the bridge superstructure, to number two gun. Haskins was there, talking to his colour sergeant.

  “How are the old donkeys, sir?”

  The engines, he meant. Gant told him, “We should have half speed any minute now … You chaps all right here?”

  “Satisfactory, sir … Any gen on the skipper, sir?”

  “Not yet. PMO won’t even guess.”

  “Let’s ’ope it’s a case of no news is good news, sir.”

  Colour Sergeant Bruce had a voice to match his build. A very large man, taller and wider than Haskins, who was himself no lightweight. Bruce was the marine detachment’s senior NCO, and as Haskins had no subaltern this made him second-in-command. He looked a bit like a Saint Bernard, Gant thought.

  “Soon as I hear, I’ll pass the word.”

  How marvellous it would be, he thought as he went aft, to be number two again, to have Everard on his feet and making the decisions. Second-in-command was the best job of them all: you had as much responsibility and authority as any reasonable man could want, without carrying that ultimate burden. As a number two, one should have been more consciously aware of one’s good fortune. If he got out of this and had that kind of job again, he’d revel in it! If …

  Number four gun: he’d passed number three and the for’ard torpedotube mounting, and under the raised platform that carried a four-inch AA gun on each of its wings, and now he stopped at the gun with the non-functioning ammunition hoist. He leaned with one hand on the edge of the gunshield and the other fist pressed into the small of his back, where the pain was.

  “Who’s in charge here?”

  “I am, sir. Petty Officer Longland, sir.”

  “Any progress on the hoist, GM?”

  “ERAs are still at it, sir.”

  “Meanwhile you’ve a good stock of ready-use charges and projectiles, have you?”

  “Enough to be getting on with, sir. Wouldn’t want too much layin’ in the open, like.”

  Inevitably, then, came the question about Everard. The question, and the unsatisfactory answer. Gant was providing it when a whistle shrilled from number three gun and CPO Hughes bawled “All quarters alert! Alarm port, bearing red two-oh!”

  Mr North, at the for’ard tubes, was yelling to his team at the after ones to get them turned out. From the guns, Gant heard the clangs of loading-trays slamming over, breeches thudding shut, the calls of “Ready!” He was back at three gun, taking over the headset. The gun was loaded, trained on the alarm bearing … “Commander here. What is it, Greenleaf?”

  “Two ships, sir, look like cruisers, coming straight towards. They’re in line abreast but they could be Perth and Houston, I can’t—”

  “All right.” He passed the headset into the sightsetter’s hands, and ran aft, passing over the tops of the out-turned torpedo-tubes. “Yeoman!” He’d reached the ladder to the ACP. “Stand by to challenge on bearing red two-oh!”

  “Searchlight, sir, or—”

  “Aldis.”The searchlight would show too far. Even if the ships approaching were Perth and Houston, there could still be Jap ships around. And after that damage aloft and most electrical circuits out of commission you could be sure the yardarm challenge-and-reply system, the coloured lights, weren’t working.

  “Port bow, ship challenging, sir!”

  They’d got in first, then. Two red lights and a green: it had flashed on, off again: on-off—“Correct challenge, sir!”

  “Give him the correct answer, then. By Aldis.” There was a challenge and reply using morse letters as well. It changed every few hours, just as the masthead lights system did. “Pinner, tell three gun to tell the tower they’re friendly.”

  It could only be Perth and Houston. Anything else afloat now in this sea would be Japanese. Petty Officer Morris was clashing out the letters ZS, ZS, ZS. The other ship acknowledged, and then began again: “Defiant from Perth: How are you fixed?”

  Gant had read the morse for himself. He told Morris, “Make to him: Have action damage to boiler room and bridge. Am about to get under way with maximum speed probably ten knots and steering from aft. Hope to reach Surabaya before daylight.”

  That said it all, he thought. All that needed to be said, anyway. The yeoman was scribbling it down, inside where a dim light glowed on Chevening’s chart. Still scribbling, Morris told Leading Signalman Tomsett, “Call ’im up, an’ I’ll give it you word by word.”

  “Commander, sir?”

  “Who’s that—Pinner?”

  “Yes, sir. Message from the surgeon commander that the captain’s still in coma, sir. Still can’t say more, sir.”

  Sibbold was scared to make guesses, Gant thought, for fear of guessing wrongly. Surely by this time he’d have some notion … Pinner added, “Petty Officer Ruddle’s died, sir.”

  So now there were twenty dead. Gant had expected Nick Everard to become the twentieth. And he hadn’t: so perhaps there was hope? But even if he survived, he couldn’t possibly take command … The telephone squeaked: there was a whole bank of them but the only one working was the line to the engine-room. Gant said into it, “ACP, commander speaking.”

  “We can move now, Bob. Sorry about the delay.”

  “Wait a minute.” That signal was still being passed to Perth. Then he thought, Why wait, for God’s sake? He told Sandilands, “All right. Half ahead together. Or slow ahead if you like, but I must have a minimum of ten knots within five minutes.”

  “We’ll do our best. But I don’t suppose you’d particularly want me to blow the—”

  “I don’t suppose you want to be caught out here and blown out of the water, either. Get on with it, John!”

  “From Perth, sir: Agree Surabaya is your best bet. I am continuing with Houston to Batavia. See you at the—word we’re not sure of here, sir—Galleface?”

  “It’s a pub in Colombo.”

  A couple of thousand miles away …

  Captains Everard and Waller were old friends, of course. Gant was glad, for a moment, that he hadn’t said anything about Everard. Then he wondered if he had any right to withhold the information from a senior officer who, however informally, had asked for a report on Defiant’s present state. He decided he did not have, that it was a vital part of the whole picture: and secondly, that he’d continue to withhold it. The message still formed itself in his mind: Captain Everard seriously wounded and principal medical officer is in doubt whether he will recover consciousness. Commander R. Gant Royal Navy acting in command. It was more an instinct than a decision not to make such a signal, and he couldn’t have explained, at that moment, what the reasons were for it. Defiant began to tremble as her engines and screws turned. The important thing was that they should continue turning, and turn faster—much, much faster … He checked the ship’s head by magnetic and called to Pinner on the ladder, “Starboard twenty!” The order was repeated first by Pinner and then by a sailor ten yards farther aft; and again, more faintly as one heard it here, by a man on a downward-leading ladder: to ensure there was no slip-up he’d got Flynn, one of the watchkeeping lieutenants, back there to monitor the passage of the orders. When he’d let that first one get a certain distance, he thought probably to its destination by this time, he sent another after it: “Steer south forty-eight west.”

  “Signal from Houston, sir: Good luck.”

  Houston was commanded by a Captain Rooks USN. Gant had met him once, when he and some other captains had come aboard for a meal with Everard. He told PO Morris, who was now the senior surviving signal rating, “Reply: Thanks and the same to you.” About as banal as one could get, he realized; and phrased as if it might have been Nick Everard answering, not a man one rank junior to the American. Once you embarked on a deception, you had to stick to it. And having kept one’s mouth shut, a deception was what it had now become.

  Chevening cleared his throat. “Should we not—er—do you think we should tell Perth about the captain, sir?”

  “What?�
�

  Defiant was making five or six knots, and the quartermaster in that very cramped space down aft and below the waterline was steadying her on the ordered course. The other two cruisers, steering west, had already crossed astern. And there were quite a few things to be seen to now … Gant poked his head out of the port-side hatch, and found his “doggie” still there on the ladder.

  “Pinner, go and find Lieutenant-Commander Rowley for me. Tell him I’d like a word.”

  Chevening tried again: “Sir, d’you think we ought to report that—”

  “That the captain’s wounded? No, I don’t … Are you sure you’re quite all right now, pilot?”

  “Absolutely, sir. Full working order. But I just wondered whether—”

  “Is that rev counter working?”

  Chevening stooped, mantis-like, to check it.

  “Yes, sir. Revs on now for—seven to eight knots.”

  “Let me know how we’re doing in five minutes’ time.”

  With Perth and Houston heading for Batavia, Exeter badly damaged in Surabaya, Java and de Ruyter sunk and Defiant crippled, the so-called Combined Striking Force no longer existed. All that survived was a ragbag of ships in various states of disrepair scattered about the archipelago and waiting to be finished off. Or to attempt escape. Nothing had been achieved, because nothing had been achievable. He’d suspected this from the outset, and he thought Everard had probably seen it too. So had the American, the captain of USS Sloan. Sloan’s captain had come near to stating it out loud, and at the time Gant had felt shocked. It had been in his own mind, but at that stage only as a private thought which he’d been trying to dismiss.

  Now the proof of the pudding was in the eating, and the results were in his—Gant’s—lap. Whether Everard lived or died, that was the plain fact of it: this ship was in an entirely hopeless position, and it was up to him, Bob Gant, to—

  To do what, for Christ’s sake?

  Well. Get the boiler room mended, then run for the Sunda Strait, or the Lombok Strait. A lot would depend on what sort of a job Sandilands would make of it.

  “Commander, sir?”

  Charles Rowley’s head and shoulders were framed in the open hatchway. Rowley looked as if he’d been down a coalmine. “Bloody awful about the skipper, sir.” “Yes. But he may pull through.”

  “PMO thinks it’s unlikely, sir.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “Ten minutes ago. I was passing—”

  “Did you see the captain?”

  “No, just Sibbold, but—”

  “Did he say if he was still unconscious?”

  Rowley nodded. “Also that he’s weaker. Loss of blood and something about his heartbeat.”

  “Well.” Gant took a deep breath, as if he needed more air than he was getting. “Listen, Charles. First, you are now executive officer of this ship, and you’re to act as such … I take it the damage control picture’s satisfactory?”

  “Everything’s under control, sir.”

  “Well, what the ship’s company must have immediately is a meal. Soup and sandwiches, something of that sort, and action-messing routine.” “The galley’s working on it now, sir.”

  “Excellent. Second thing is to relieve Greenleaf in the tower. Any of the watchkeepers—it’s simply a lookout job now, with a telephone link to number three gun, and that’s all. But I want lookouts for’ard, and on the four-inch gundecks too. Also, stand down one gun’s crew at a time, give them each a half-hour stand-easy. Then the PMO—I want a casualty list from him, as well as a report on the outlook for the captain. And finally—for the moment, that is—the dead have got to be buried, and it must be done now, before we’re much closer inshore. Tell Mr Nye to organize a burial party, put someone else as OOQ on five and six guns and ask the padre to come and see me … Where is he, d’you know?”

  “He was—er—ministering to the wounded, sir.”

  “Tell him to come and see me, anyway.”

  “Aye aye, sir. We’re going into Surabaya, sir, is that right?”

  “Yes. ETA about dawn. And that’s another thing: we can expect air attacks, when we get there, and Haskins had better sort out his AA

  control system. The ADP’s out of action, same as the tower, and the TS isn’t operating, so it’ll be local control … Greenleaf can work out a system, with Haskins.”

  “Right.” Rowley waited in case there was more to come. Then he asked, “After we make Surabaya, sir, what’ll the programme be?”

  “We’ll get orders. Probably to make emergency repairs and then leg it to Ceylon.”

  “From what I’m told, sir, there’s at least a week’s hard work to be done in that boiler room. And if the Japs are about to invade?”

  “The Dutch are confident of holding out, Charles.” He thought, hearing his own voice say it, What a stupid bloody statement … He was annoyed at being faced with a question he couldn’t answer, when it had become his job to produce answers and there was no one else who could provide them. And he’d let Charles Rowley see both the dilemma and the irritation … Anyway, to call it a week’s work was ludicrous: in much less time than that, Java would be Japanese.

  “That’s the lot, Charles. Get on to it, will you?”

  He asked Chevening, “How are the revs?”

  “Coming up steadily, sir. We must be making nearly ten knots now.” “We shan’t be in the anchorage before daylight, though, would you say?”

  “I’d guess we’ll be in the Strait, sir.”

  And it mightn’t be such a bad thing, to have some daylight to help them through that quite tricky passage. He’d leave the pilotage to Chevening, anyway … He asked him, “Will you be all right on your own here, pilot, for about ten minutes?”

  He was sick of getting no answers out of Sibbold. He’d decided to go and see for himself.

  Chevening said, smiling, “Oh, I believe so, sir.”

  The navigator had a good opinion of himself, Gant had noticed. He hoped it might be justified, at that, because he was going to have to depend on him quite a lot. He told him, “I’ll leave Pinner here. If you need me you can send him to get me. I’m going to the sickbay.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “And when there’s a spare moment, pilot, you’d better ask the PMO to check you over.”

  On the way for’ard he stopped to chat to the tubes’ crews: his last tour of the upper deck had been interrupted by the arrival of the other cruisers. He visited the two port-side mountings first, then crossed over to starboard where he also paused for a word with shipwrights working on repairs to the thirty-foot cutter. The boat’s stern, rudder and transom had been damaged by flying splinters from the shell-burst further aft … And that hit aft, the same one that had taken the lives of four torpedomen, had saved his own life. If he hadn’t been hurrying aft he’d have been in the bridge … The whole thing was a toss-up, and you had no control over it at all. He went on for’ard, in through the door at the foc’sl break and past the seamen’s galley. Bacon was frying appetizingly in enormous pans. He asked one of the cooks—a skinny man with anchors tattooed on both forearms—“Is that for sandwiches, Gresham?”

  “It is, sir. Care for a bite?”

  “Not just now, thank you.”

  “Cap’n be all right, sir, will he?”

  “I’m on my way to find out.”

  The sickbay was a large compartment with a curtain across the centre of it. In normal times the curtain divided the area that had cots in it from the outer section where medicines were issued and minor ailments treated, but now there were camp beds in this half too. There was a reek of ether and disinfectant. One SBA was working at a desk, another was winding bloodstained bandage round a stoker’s torso, and Padre Forbes, who was young and fair-haired, boyish looking, was squatting beside another of the beds. He stood up when he saw Gant.

  “Hello, sir.”

  “Padre.” He was looking at the men in the camp beds, and they were mostly looking back at him. “Johnson, y
ou swinging the lead again?” “Seems so, sir.” Johnson was an Asdic rating. The SBA got up from the desk and came over. He said, “Broken ribs, sir. And there’s some metal in ’is back. Mr Sibbold’ll be ’aving a go at him in a minute.” He glanced round as a messenger came in: he was a writer whose action job was in one of Rowley’s damage control parties. He looked taken aback when he saw Gant; he said, “I was to tell Mr Forbes the commander wanted a word with him.”

  “Yes. All right.” Gant explained to Forbes that he’d asked Rowley to send a message, before he’d decided to come along himself. He said, “I’ll see you in a few minutes, padre.”

  Burial arrangements might be better discussed elsewhere than in the presence of wounded men, he felt. The messenger said, “I was to ask for a casualty list too.” He’d nodded towards Gant. “For—”

  The SBA said, “I was just making it out, sir.” Then Sibbold came out, parting the blue curtain. He said, “Come through, sir.”

  All six berths, three double tiers, were occupied. Nick Everard was in a lower bunk, flat on his back and dressed in a sickberth nightgown. He looked like a corpse in a shroud, Gant thought: there was no difference between the colour of his face and of that garment. His left arm, splinted above and below the elbow, was strapped to his chest; his head was wrapped in bandages and a thick surgical dressing had been plastered to the left side of his face.

  Sibbold told Gant, “He was practically scalped. Concussion’s his main problem, if he does come out of it. The arm would be all right. Whether or not he will emerge from coma I simply cannot say.” The doctor looked challengingly at Gant. “I may add I’ve been asked at least a hundred times.”

  Gant nodded.