That didn’t tell him much. He didn’t even know what the time was here in Java.
Harkness had gone to the door. “Shan’t be gone a minute, sir.”
Nick lifted his free hand and held the forefinger in front of his eyes, like Sibbold’s thermometer. He saw two fingers instead of one. Annoyed, he let the hand flop. It was called double vision, Sibbold had said, and the odds were that it would disappear in a few days.
That wasn’t good enough. It was now, today, he needed all his faculties. Somehow or other, the process of recovery would have to be speeded up. Better talk to Sibbold again. Perhaps aspirin, or some such thing. Or just keep one eye shut. And use a telescope instead of binoculars …
But now, before Bob Gant arrived, he set himself to remembering what Sibbold had told him about the action—last night’s, or the night before that—and the damage to the ship. There’d been—three hits. One under the bridge, in the wheelhouse or plot: and a mental note here, See Leading Seaman Williams as soon as possible … Second hit—back here, near the starboard after tubes. Holed the upper deck and started a fire, and cut most communications from the ACP. Work in that area would account for much of the noise that he could hear now … Third hit had been—
Blank.
Damn.
Well, force yourself, stretch your brain … Boiler room!
He relaxed again, sweating from the effort. Major damage in number two boiler room, which had cut the speed to about ten knots. And as speed was of the essence if Defiant was to have the faintest chance of getting away from this place, Sandilands had teams of his best men working on it flat out.
Twenty-two dead, and fourteen wounded.
Java and de Ruyter had blown up and sunk. Sibbold thought they’d been hit by torpedoes from Jap cruisers. Exeter badly damaged. Electra and Jupiter sunk.
If ever there’d been a time when a man needed to have his brain in working order …
“Well, sir! Delighted to hear you’re so much better!” Nick raised the movable hand.
“Pull up a chair, Bob. Light that foul pipe of yours if you want to.” Gant murmured as he sat down, “D’you know, sir, we all thought you were a goner?”
“So Palliser’s leaving?”
“On Helfrich’s orders. Soon as the rest of us have cleared out. But they hadn’t foreseen this delay to ourselves and Sloan, so in fact he’ll be away before us. By air to Australia.”
Rear-Admiral Palliser was the senior British naval officer in Java. As long as he was here he was under the orders of the Dutch admiral, Helfrich, who was at Batavia and who had been Doorman’s boss.
Gant said, “I was asked whether it would be practicable for you to be flown to Australia with him, sir.”
Australia. Kate was in Australia … He caught himself thinking about Kate, and pulled himself together. Keeping the mind drifting off on its own was one of the things he was going to have to work hard at. He told Gant, “There’s no question of it, of course. I imagine you told them so?”
“I said I thought you were too groggy to be moved, sir. Frankly, it never occurred to me you’d come out of it so quickly. I said I’d have a word with the PMO, then confirm it one way or the other.”
“You can forget all that. By tomorrow I’ll be on my feet and compos mentis. Even if there’s still a touch of this bloody double vision.”
“Truly, sir?”
Nick nodded. “I’ll be up and about, and you’ll be out of a job again, you poor chap!”
“Well, my God, if you could be—”
“You’d like that?”
Gant smiled. “I most certainly would, sir!”
Nick wondered about him. Why he’d be so eager to relinquish the responsibilities of command … If he, Nick, had been in Gant’s shoes he’d have welcomed the opportunity to take over, he’d have grabbed at it and he’d have been bitterly disappointed, privately, to be done out of the chance once he’d thought he’d got it.
Gant wasn’t feeling any disappointment, though. And it wasn’t concern for Nick Everard, either. He was genuinely anxious to get “out from under.” Looking at him intently, interestedly, seeing two of him, Nick realized that his second-in-command was very much a background figure, self-effacing, thoroughly reliable at putting someone else’s orders into effect, but—scared of the idea of command? Distrustful of his own abilities?
If the job was forced on him, he’d probably have set his teeth and eventually grown into it. But crisis-time was now: and a second-in-command ought to be ready, eager to step up.
“Hard luck, Bob.”
“What d’you mean, sir?”
“Weren’t you looking forward to becoming your own boss?” Gant shook his head. “Straight answer to a straight question—no, sir. If you’re fit enough, I’m as pleased as Punch!”
“You can start celebrating, then.”
Even if he wasn’t as fit as he hoped he’d be, tomorrow, he’d have to pretend he was, make himself be so. It would be better for the ship to have a captain who was slightly boss-eyed and occasionally dizzy than one who was scared of the job.
Gant was studying him, now. Wondering whether he was up to it probably. That answer had been an honest one, all right. Gant had probably reconciled himself to the idea of command, stiffened his dicky spine to it. But he was relieved now—at least, hopeful.
“Tell the admiral, Bob, that I’m much better and intend to reassume command before we sail. In the meantime I have to rest, and therefore hope he’ll excuse me from calling on him. And thank him for that very kind offer.”
Gant nodded. “I’ll tell the ship’s company too, sir. Should have the Tannoy working soon, and I was intending to give them a pep-talk. This’ll cheer them up no end … I’ve called a heads-of-departments meeting for 1800, by the way.”
“Like me to attend it?”
“Wouldn’t it be better to rest, sir, as you say?”
“What?”
He’d begun to think of something else: Gant had to say it again. It was embarrassing … He agreed: “You’re right, of course … Now—thinking of future plans … By tomorrow morning we and Sloan will be the sole occupants of Surabaya?”
“Except for the Yank destroyer in dock, sir. They’re going to blow her up and wreck the dock as well.”
“Tell me about the other sailings.”
“Well. Four American destroyers will leave as soon as it’s dark tonight. Eastward—via Madura and the Bali Strait.” “Good luck to them.”
“Yes. Indeed … Exeter will leave about the same time, with Encounter and the USS Pope. Exeter draws too much water to leave by the eastern exit, of course, and Palliser’s routing the three of them northward and then west. The idea is to get well clear of the coast—to avoid Jap invasion forces—and then make for the Sunda Strait.”
Sunda was at the western end of Java, between Java and Sumatra. Five hundred miles away.
“Has Exeter made good her damage?”
Gant shook his head. “Sixteen knots, sir.”
“Long way, at that speed.”
“Yes.” But there weren’t any soft options. Gant took his pipe out, looked at it and put it away again. Nick said, “I don’t mind if you smoke.”
“Thanks. Trying to cut down a bit.”
“Now, about ourselves, Bob. The idea ashore is we should sail tomorrow night, and it’s up to us to decide which way we go?”
“Yes, sir. Point being that the situation could change dramatically between now and then. And we’ll have heard how the others have got on. The admiral’s arranging for Bandoeng to keep us informed.”
That was good. And the freedom of action—within limits which would be established by geography, ships’ speed and the enemy’s deployments—was very welcome. In recent weeks there’d been no such latitude, and every move they’d made had been not only disastrous but foreseeably so. He muttered, “Yes …” Tiring, losing the track again, and Bob Gant obviously worrying that he might not be up to it … Nick got hold of his powers of
concentration again. “I think we might have a council of war tonight, Bob. Here. I’ll send an RPC to Jim Jordan—well, you do that for me, will you? Make it 1900 for 2000, and tell Harkness I’ve a guest for supper. Two guests—you’ve got to be in on all of it, in case I keel over again. All right?”
“With much pleasure, sir.”
As a signal, that would have been sent out as WMP. The RPC to Jim Jordan stood for “Request the pleasure of your company.”
“And have Chevening standing by with some charts … Chevening was damn lucky, wasn’t he, getting off without a scratch?”
“Very lucky indeed.”
“You did a good job, bringing the ship back.”
“That wasn’t difficult, sir. But we did truly think you were dead, at first. I suppose because there was so much blood …”
Blood. Thoughts wandered. Nick’s right hand came up, and his fingers touched the dressing on the left side of his face. Sibbold had admitted he’d have a scar from that eye to the corner of his mouth; there were a lot of stitches in it, apparently. Nick wondered whether Kate would be revolted by it: but probably not, she was a nurse, she—
Now stop that … He asked Gant, “Has Sandilands said what speed we’re going to be capable of?”
“He reckons twenty-three knots, sir. Maximum twenty-four.”
“And Sloan?”
“They hope twenty-five.”
Gant told him—he’d meant to earlier—that Jim Jordan of Sloan had sent a personal message, enquiring about Nick’s progress.
“Very kind of him.” Nick was thinking Twenty-three or twenty-four … Even after a crack on the head he knew that engineers could invariably do better than they promised. Then they got congratulated instead of cursed. And if Jim Jordan’s destroyer could make twenty-five knots, he wasn’t going to ask him to make less than that for Defiant’s sake. Getting out of this hole was going to require a lot of luck, a lot of nerve and every knot that anyone could squeeze out.
He interrupted Gant.
“Sandilands is always a bit over-cautious. And we can’t use the Madura Channel either. Sloan might: she wouldn’t draw more than nine or ten feet, I’d guess?”
Sloan was one of the Selfridge class: not much under two thousand tons, with five-inch guns, and launched in about 1935. Those ships had been designed for thirty-seven knots, and on trials some of them had knocked up nearly forty. So Jim Jordan, who was proud of his ship, had told Nick that evening in Batavia, the evening they’d drunk Laphroaigh. A week ago? Something like that … But this question of speed: he covered his eyes with his free hand. His brain felt heavy, he had to drive it hard to make it work. He knew, too, that he was thinking in the dark, at this stage. Without a chart in front of you, all the distances and depths and tides, the whole thing was guesswork. But the fact remained, you’d still need every ounce of steam you could get.
“Bob, listen. If Sloan’s likely to make twenty-five knots, that’s what I want for Defiant too. Tell Sandilands, will you—twenty-five, at least.”
“Well, sir, I’m not sure—”
“Make sure. Just make sure, Bob.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“He’ll have to do better than he thinks possible, that’s all. Twenty-five, tell him.”
Gant nodded. He was looking at Nick as if he thought he mightn’t be thinking straight yet.
“Perth and Houston—did you tell me they have got to Batavia?”
“Yes, sir. The signal arrived when I was there, ashore. They got in at 1400 hours, and Admiral Helfrich has ordered them to sail at 2100, via Sunda to Tjilatjap.”
“Why not tell them to clear out altogether, I wonder?”
“I gather there are some small ships at Tjilatjap, sir, and refugees to be evacuated. He may be putting a convoy together.”
Nick’s thoughts had jumped back to the speed question. He told Gant, “If there’s any argument from Sandilands about giving us twenty-five knots, bring him here to see me.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The commander looked relieved: he had someone to fall back on … Nick told himself, I was right … Then he’d lost that train of thought and he was wondering what the chances were—for Perth and Houston, for Exeter and the two destroyers going with her, or for the four American destroyers who’d be making a dash for the Bali Strait tonight. The Bali Strait was a lot closer than any of the other gaps—and as those destroyers could slip out over the Madura shallows, the short cut eastward, it was closer still—but it was less than two miles wide and Bali was swarming with Japanese invaders now. They had an airstrip working too, on Bali … There was one fact, anyway, that was beyond dispute: however slim any of those ships’ chances might be tonight, Defiant’s and Sloan’s twenty-four hours later would be slimmer. It had all been so obvious, so inevitable …
“Of course, we don’t have all the information that Helfrich must have.”
Gant was stuffing his pipe, at last. While out of memory like a dream Nick was re-reading a signal which Admiral Doorman had shown him: about Jap aircraft carriers operating to the south of Java, across all the lines of retreat to Australia or Ceylon.
Australia, where Kate was …
Think about the carriers, not Kate!
He’d muttered something, angrily. Gant, thumbing loose tobacco off the top of the pipe’s bowl, had glanced up and was now embarrassed, pretending he hadn’t heard. Nick told himself, Better still, don’t think about the bloody carriers either … What he had to coerce his wobbly mind into concentrating on was how to get this ship and Jordan’s out through the straits. Through either Lombok, Bali or Alas. If you made it that far, then you could start worrying about Jap carrier groups. Reaching this conclusion, he nodded to himself: and at the same moment realized that he and Gant had been staring at each other … Gant had looked down at his pipe, obviously embarrassed again, for the second time in a minute, doubtful of Nick’s fitness. And he had good reason to be doubtful, too …
But he could still do the job, Nick thought, better than Bob Gant would do it. Because however technically competent Gant was, he lacked confidence, lacked trust in himself at least as much as he lacked it—at this moment—in Nick Everard.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A freighter in column four was on fire. Junkers 88s had come in from the bow, flown down the port side of the convoy and then circled round astern; then they’d turned inward and passed over high from the other quarter, releasing their bombs as they flew homeward, northeastward. The ship that had been hit was still in her station, but she was leaking a trail of smoke. One bomber had been shot down by gunfire from the warships astern, and the last attackers, when last seen from the Montgovern’s bridge, had had Fleet Air Arm fighters on their tails.
Wind and sea were on the port bow, and the ships had quite a bit of movement on them. And stage two of this assault was developing now ahead: something new, by courtesy of Superaereo.
Mackeson said, using binoculars and trying to make out what was happening, “Mines, of some sort.” He had his glasses on parachutes that were drifting down ahead of the convoy, out ahead of the destroyer screen. Italian bombers, s84s, had approached from ahead during the last stages of the Junkers’ bombing run, and until the parachutes blossomed it had looked from here as if they were dropping huge bombs on the destroyers. Now, through binoculars, Mackeson could see that the objects were barrel-shaped, rather like depth charges, and that they were going into the sea well ahead, beyond and not on the fleet destroyers. The destroyers had engaged the bombers first, but now they’d shifted target to the dangling secret weapons: and to add to their problems fighter-bombers had just appeared. Small, stubby-shaped biplanes, diving on them.
“Commodore’s flying forty-five degree emergency turn port, sir!”
Turning his ships to steer them clear of the mines—or whatever those things might be. Mackeson’s signalman had reported it through the window from the bridge wing; part of his job was to watch the Blackadder’s yardarms for signals. There
were attackers coming in from other directions as well but it was this unidentified threat ahead that had to be taken care of first. Siren, now, a hoarse screaming to implement the flag-signal for the turn. Straight told his quartermaster, in a flat tone as if the whole thing disgusted him, “Port fifteen degrees.”
An Italian bomber was flaming down into the sea. It wasn’t anywhere near any of the ships, and it looked like a kill for the Fleet Air Arm, who were making interceptions at longer range, clear of the convoy’s guns. The guns were as bad for the Sea Hurricanes as they were for Junkers or Savoias, but in any case the fighter pilots’ object was to break up attacking formations long before they reached the convoy.
The Montgovern was under helm now, her motion changing as she turned head-on to wind and sea, the whole convoy swinging round to avoid the unknown danger in its path. Devenish said to Mackeson, “Something new, strange but true.” Quoting something, presumably. Mackeson murmured, “Secret Woppery.” Bomb-splashes near destroyers in the screen ahead seemed to be small ones, and those aircraft which had been acting like fighter-bombers—they were already invisible in the haze thrown up by the destroyers’ AA barrage—had looked old-fashioned, like First War fighters.
Ships’ guns were getting noisy in other sectors now.
“Midships the wheel.”
Devenish, back from a visit to the starboard wing, told Straight, “That was the Neotsfield caught one. Fire’ll take some putting out, I’d say.”
With the amount of smoke that was coming out of her, any U-boat waiting for this convoy would see them coming from fifty miles away. And there’d be some U-boats waiting, all right.
Torpedo-bombers had begun an approach from the quarter—which because of the turn to port had now become the beam—but they’d split up now. It had seemed at first that the destroyers’ barrage-fire in the sector had broken up the attack, but in fact they’d divided into several groups each of five or six aircraft and then begun to circle outside the range of the destroyers’ guns, before long the separate groups would make simultaneous attacks from different directions. The battleship on the convoy’s port quarter opened up at some of them now, using her sixteen-inch guns: the percussions were so enormous that you just about felt them as well as heard them, even from this distance. The splashes looked as high as Nelson’s Column, rising grandly somewhere inside the radius of the circling Italians. Another flight was ahead of that one, had passed round astern and would now be moving up on the other quarter; groups who’d turned the other way were hanging around on the port beam and bow. And all turning inwards …
All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3 Page 15