“Stop together.”
“Stop together, sir … Both telegraphs to stop, sir!”
Wiley had done an excellent job, Nick thought. So had Ormrod and Brown and their boats’ crews. Now, apart from some back-breaking work ashore, the kingpins of the mooring effort would be Rowley and Greenleaf, with Gant looking over their shoulders.
Gant. Nick had been doing some thinking about Bob Gant. Not now, though … He glanced round as Flynn reported, “Commander says all’s ready aft, sir. He’s on his way to the foc’sl.”
Dawn. With binoculars he could make out—just—the darker area that could only be the indentation in the wall of mangroves. There was a whaler halfway out, pulling towards the ship, a glistening of water flying from the dipping oars. Brown’s. Behind the flat coastal mangrove area the hillside rose quite steeply: it was still in shadow and would be for some time yet, but he could make out the shapes of palms where they grew thinly or on their own. In about ten minutes it would be more or less daylight. What was needed now, he thought, was half an hour without any Jap aircraft over. She’d be hidden, by that time; in an hour, she’d be invisible.
By the afternoon it was very hot indeed. Nick had slept for an hour, after an early lunch, and he’d been woken by PO Harkness with a message about a Jap seaplane circling over the islands. He’d turned out and come for’ard, up to the director tower, to see it for himself. As he heaved himself up through the lubber’s hole entrance—it was awkward, with only one arm in use—Charles Rowley turned a surprised but genial smile on him.
“Give you a hand, sir?”
He shook his head. “This seaplane—”
“Gone, sir.” Rowley could have done with a haircut. His shaggy, gin-gerish head gave him the appearance of an Airedale, Nick thought. Fortunately he rather liked Airedales. Rowley gestured, encompassing a steamy area of reef-broken, shimmery sea: “Circled round and went down low over the eastern end there, then climbed and bumbled off that way.”
Towards Kangean …
Rowley, as senior watchkeeping officer, had reserved this lookout job for himself. It was the only place in the ship you could see anything from, but also, slight as the breeze was, you were out of the clammy stillness of the swamp below.
The seaplane pilot would have needed hawk’s eyes to have spotted them, Nick thought. Branches of mangrove festooned this tower, masts, yards, upperworks and upper deck. After the ship had been secured Gant had mustered all hands and sent them ashore in teams to cut and bring back the foliage. To be sure, you’d need to fly over her yourself, but she had to be pretty well invisible. Meanwhile the marines were in control of the villages of Tanjung Kiau and Mandan, three sections were patrolling in the palms behind the long southern beach and another manned a lookout station on the hill. A field telephone had been rigged from there to a guard-post in the trees abreast the ship. This was the landing-place. Both cutters, side by side, supported a gangway which ran from the ship’s side to the mudbank, and all of that brow and the boats had been strewn with foliage.
The view from the lookout hatches (one each side of the mainmast) in the after bulkhead of this tower was restricted by the shoreline to a quadrant between northwest and northeast. Blue sea, reefs and islands in the distance, shimmery in the heat-haze as if you were looking at it all through rising steam. Above the land to the left, just about exactly northwest, a bluish hump trembled in the sky. It was the hill he’d used to take bearings on during the early stages of the approach. Rowley asked him what it was.
“Island called Paliat. That’s a hill, four hundred and twenty feet high. It’s—roughly—fifteen miles from us.”
“Would any sea routes pass close to us here, sir?”
“Close to the islands.” He nodded. “Anything coming down to the Lombok Strait from the Macassar Strait up north—or from Borneo or the Celebes—would pass to the east here. Fifteen or twenty miles clear, probably, because of reefs to the northeast. So we wouldn’t see them—or vice versa.”
“What if they took it into their heads to land on the big island, Kangean?”
“I’d guess their hands are a bit full, at the moment. But they’d go for Ketapang Bay, on the west coast, and that’s a good forty miles away.”
“So we’re pretty safe from being stumbled on.”
He nodded, reaching for a cigarette. It was quite pleasant up here. He said, “Except for aircraft. And with any luck—”
A face—head, shoulders—appeared in the open hatch, the lubber’s hole entrance in the deck. The face was reddish—brown, and seamed. Able Seaman Bentley. Gant had produced him this morning as a replacement for Gladwill.
“Sorry, sir, I didn’t know you was on the move. Else I’d ’ve—”
“It’s all right, Bentley. I don’t need you.” He checked the time. “I’ll be going down to turn in again in a minute, and I suggest you get your head down too. We’ll be up all night and there’ll be no rest tomorrow.”
A nod. A very solid, seasoned three-badger, was Bentley. “Seen them monkeys, have you, sir?”
“Monkeys?”
Rowley pointed. The monkeys were on the cable that ran to the ship’s bow from a palm-tree ashore. There were three of them, swinging around and doing acrobatics on it, hanging upside-down. Bentley said, “I got nippers just like them.”
Rowley asked him, “D’you mean they look like that, or behave like it?”
“Both, sir.” The AB slid feet-first into the tower and into the rate-clock operator’s seat. “Spittin’ image. I could take two o’ them home and switch ’em with the little ’uns and the missus’d never know no difference.” He looked at Nick: “Wanted to say, sir, off-duty like, I’m happy to get this job, sir.”
“Fond of cage-birds, are you?”
“Ah.” He frowned. “If I got to take them birds on—”
“Find another home for them, if you like, sell them and send the money to Gladwill’s widow.”
“Wasn’t never married, sir.”
“Nor he was … His mother, then.”
“Orphan, I b’lieve he was, sir.”
“There’ll be a next-of-kin on record, Bentley.”
“Ah. That’s a thought, sir.”
“I’m told you were cox’n to the C-in-C on the China Station at one time.”
“I was, sir. In thirty-six, that was. But I got in a spot of bother in Shanghai, and they drafted me up the perishin’ Yangtze. In the old Aphis. We was at Chinkiang when the Japs started bombing the Chinks in thirty-seven …” He pointed suddenly, squinting round over his shoulder, out through the lookout hatch: “See there, sir!”
Floatplane: it was coming from the direction of Kangean, and it looked as if it would pass over Tanjung Kiau. Rowley said, with his glasses on it, “Looks like the same one, sir.”
“Very likely. Been snooping round the big island, I expect.” He told Bentley, “Aphis is in the Med, now.”
“Turning towards us, sir.”
It was over the islet called Seridi. It was banking, making a slow turn to starboard … And steadying now, heading directly towards the inlet and the ship. Nick put his glasses down, and motioned to Rowley to do the same. One flash of sunlight on a lens would be enough to invite inspection … He asked Bentley, “What kind of bother, in Shanghai?”
“Russian woman, sir. Holy terror, she was.”
He nodded. That expression might have described his own ex-wife Ilyana very aptly. He said, “You have my sympathy.” He recognized surprise in the first lieutenant’s quick glance at him. But you could hear the drone of the seaplane’s engine now. Nick looked down through the starboard-side embrasure, down at his mangrove-smothered ship. Nobody was in sight, nothing moved. But if one man, one white cap appeared now among that greenery … The noise was growing as the floatplane bore in towards them.
“Think he could have spotted us, sir?”
“Unlikely.”
It might be just shaping course to pass over the centre of the island. It had looked at the
other islands, so it was reasonable that it should have a look at Sepanjang as well. That it was heading for this inlet could be coincidental: and the flight-path would be about right for Bali, if that was where it was now returning. On the other hand—he woke up to this point suddenly—it was flying at only a couple of hundred feet, which would barely clear the hill at this point … He suggested to Bentley, “Chief and petty officers might like to have those canaries in their mess. So might the warrant officers, come to think of it.”
“I wouldn’t let the WOs have ’em, sir.” The creases deepened in the sailor’s face. “Serve ’em up for breakfast, soon as look at ’em.”
Rowley chuckled. With an anxious eye on the sky, though, as the engine-noise still increased. Nick said, “No looking out, now.”
Deafening racket. They sat or squatted with their faces turned downward, as if the steel roof with its burden of branches might be transparent. The noise lifted to a peak: the machine couldn’t have been even as much as two hundred feet up. But sound was falling away again, pulsing back from the hillside. Nick suspected that it had been losing height, actually coming down as it approached. Rowley was looking out through the for’ard observation slit that ran from beam to beam in that side of the DCT’s armour. He said, “Circling to the left now.”
“If it didn’t, it’d be flying into the hill.”
Waiting …
Rowley shifted his position, to keep the seaplane in sight. “Still circling. Might be coming round for another look.”
If the pilot had seen the ship, he’d be using his radio to call up an air strike. Vals, probably, from Bali: and they could be here in about as long as it would take to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Meanwhile the seaplane would hang around, and show the bombers their target when they arrived.
If it came over for another check—shoot it down? Close up a pompom crew? But then, if you failed to knock it down—and if you were wrong and it hadn’t seen the ship, or used its radio … He heard Greenleaf mutter, “Still circling.” So it was hanging round.
Bentley growled, “Prob’ly only takin’ a bit of a look-see, sir.”
This had been the only way to get the ship out. But he’d had a pretty good run of luck. There’d been at least as much luck as good judgement. It could have run out: it could be that this was as far as they were going to get.
On the other hand …
Forget the pompoms, he decided.
“Turning the other way. Going round to starboard.”
He joined Rowley at the hatch. The floatplane was out over the reefs to the north and banking to the right, to fly eastward. Rowley said, “I don’t believe he can have seen anything.”
“One section of marines is at the village where he’s heading now. You said he came in over that point, didn’t you?”
If Haskins’s men had allowed themselves to be seen? Going back for another look at them, now?
But there were leatherneck sections at Mandar in the southeast, and on Sasul, and along the south coast as well. Wherever that thing flew you could imagine the worst, give it unpleasant reasons to be there.
“Turned south, sir.”
“To fly over the island where it’s lower. Home to Bali.”
Or to swing back this way. The Vals would be lifting from their airstrip about now. Rowley told the pilot through that aperture in the armour, “Go on home, you disgusting object.”
Able Seaman Bentley stirred. “Well, seein’ you don’t need me, sir … What time we turnin’ to, sir?”
“Sunset, or about then.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Bentley let himself down through the lubber’s hole. A ladder from it led into the HACP—high angle control position—and from another manhole in the deck of that a longer ladder ran down the foremast to the rear end of the bridge.
“Can’t have seen us, sir. He’s gone.”
For a few minutes, things hadn’t looked at all promising. Nick told Charles Rowley, “I’m going down. If anything worries you, just let me know.”
With just one arm, the climb really was quite difficult. But you had to manage, get used to it. Much worse was the fact that his nerve wasn’t as steady as it had been before he’d been wounded. When that seaplane had passed over and then begun to circle round again, he’d really thought they’d had it. It wouldn’t do. He needed to pull himself together, get back to normal quickly: in fact immediately, because tonight wasn’t going to be without its problems.
Thinking of wounds, though, reminded him that he had to visit the sickbay and get his dressings changed. Now might be as good a time as any.
“Captain, sir!”
He was on the third down-ladder from the bridge level, and the sickbay flat was close to the bottom of it. But the yeoman of signals, Morris, was rattling down the ladder after him. “Signal to us, sir. Us and the Sloan.”
Nick took the clipboard one-handed, and leant against the steel handrail. “Who deciphered this?”
“Sub-lieutenant Carey, sir.”
Carey was a paymaster. Schooly Hobbs had been in charge of decoding, but Hobbs was dead. Nick saw that the signal, addressed to him and to Jim Jordan, was an Intelligence report from Bandoeng. It read: “Enemy naval movements southward through Lombok Strait are now heavy and continuous. Units passing through are deploying westward along south coast towards Tjilatjap. A destroyer guardship is reported to have been anchored in the Alas Strait since first light this morning.”
Destroyer guardship in Alas. The cork was in that bottle, then.
No question of fighting your way through, either. If you fired a shot, they’d have you on toast at dawn, if not before.
Take a chance on Lombok? Trust to the dummy funnel, try to slip through without being challenged?
He took the signal off the log.
“I’ll hang on to this, yeoman.”
He wanted time to think about it, before he had to discuss it with Gant or Chevening.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Next time I’m sunk, Paul thought, I’ll drown.
Brill had made it at the first attempt. And Mackeson had gone with him. The Montgovern had sunk, and Paul was on board Ainsty, the Hunt-class destroyer: he hadn’t even got his feet wet. And at Narvik, two years ago, he’d been sunk in Hoste, and lived: so next time would be the third time unlucky … It was reasonable to suppose a man’s personal luck couldn’t last for ever; in fact it was a thought which had bothered him a few times when he’d been thinking about his father, when he’d got the feeling that that worst-of-all news was, in the long run, inevitable … Paul was standing, looking down at Beale, and Beale had made a remark about Withinshaw. Withinshaw’s stout, dead body had been in the sea for two or three hours now, and it had been through remembering how it had looked when he’d last seen it that had triggered the presentiment, virtual certainty of his own turn coming—let alone his father’s. It was logical to expect it: you couldn’t go through this sort of experience often and expect to stay alive. To be alive as he was now, on board the destroyer, was something to be surprised at and grateful for. His last sight of Withinshaw’s body had been after it had slithered down to the starboard side of the foc’sl-head. The sea had already been lapping across the scuppers although the ship seemed to have halted her long slide over and to be hanging, hesitating … The pause would be temporary, of course, and at any moment she’d decide to move again. Paul and Beale, clinging to the rail and stanchions on the high side—knowing by this time that the ship with the searchlight illuminating them was the Hunt and that she was closing in, coming to take them off the sinking freighter—had both been looking at the body, each thinking his own thoughts about it, and then happened to meet each other’s eyes. Beale had shrugged, and Paul had understood him to be saying that it wasn’t worth trying to do anything about it, that Withinshaw was dead and what happened to his corpse didn’t really matter. Paul had been considering sliding down there after it and trying to drag it up: for what purpose, what good, he couldn’t remember.
Wh
at Beale had just said was, “Soft as butter, was old Art.”
“Is it a fact he had two wives?”
Beale nodded. They were on the port side of Ainsty’s iron deck, abreast the pompom, which was perched up on a raised mounting abaft the funnel. It was about midnight. Ainsty’s wardroom, which was below the bridge, in the forepart of the ship, was stuffy with the crowd of survivors in it, and he’d come up for air; he’d walked aft down the starboard side of the ship to the quarterdeck, then back up the port side, and found Beale sitting here with Short and the Glaswegian and some other DEMS men from the Montgovern. Beale told him, in answer to the question about Withinshaw’s marital complications, “On account of bein’ so soft. Couldn’t say no to ’em, poor old sod.”
Paul put one hand up to the stem of the whaler in its davits, to steady himself. There wasn’t all that much motion on the sea, but it was getting livelier. The Santa Eulalia was on the quarter, a dark bulk with white foam along its waterline. She’d sunk one of the E-boats, and the destroyer had bagged the other—which was cheering news, but no swap for the Montgovern. A ship became a home, and you grew fond of her without realizing it, and in this case the feeling of deprivation concerned people too—Brill in particular, and Mackeson as well. They’d been inside the ship when she’d slipped under. They and the wounded gunners, and four engine-room hands who’d been killed when the torpedo hit, and little Gosling who’d been shot through the throat, were the only non-survivors.
They’d known it was Ainsty floodlighting them, because after that first inspection she’d begun signalling. He’d read the flashing light: When my boats are in the water I intend putting my foc’sl alongside yours. Boats will pick up swimmers. Boats had to be careful about getting too close to a ship that was about to sink and might roll over on them. The Hunt had slipped hers, then manoeuvred her bow up beside the freighter’s stem. By that time other men were crowding for’ard, and among them was Thornton, the cipher expert. He’d told Paul that the order had been passed to abandon ship, and Mackeson had sent him up here to make them leave her quickly; the destroyer’s captain had been issuing similar instructions through a loud-hailer. Ainsty’s foc’sl was higher now than the Montgovern’s partly submerged forepart. They let two jumping-ladders down, and the survivors began to swarm up them, destroyer sailors reaching down to help. Paul shouted to Thornton, while they were waiting for the others to go first, “What about the doc and his patients?”
All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3 Page 26