HORWITZ PUBLICATIONS
"Speed in attack is the only hope of success against odds... "We are up against tremendous odds, therefore we must act quickly." His voice burred up to a commanding rasp. "Pilot, bring her round to come up astern of the enemy. Torps, prepare all tubes for firing starb'd side. Number One, do not open fire until we're sighted. When you do, concentrate the whole main armament on her side midway between the flight-deck and water-level, using armour piercing shell," Spindrift was already leaning on the turn towards.
Of its small ships the Navy has always expected -and as regularly received -service given regardless of the sacrifice involved. Captain S.W. Roskill, D.S.C., R.N., Official Naval Historian.
Lieutenant-Commander “Buster” Crewe, an executive officer in a cruiser, mentor to Sub-Lieutenant Sainsbury, on seamanship and some other requirements of successful command at sea:“It’s no bloody good my saying, ‘That ship there. Article 19. She’s on our starb’d hand. We have to give way.’ Let’s paint the picture. “She’s crossing from starb’d to port. . . but you know the Rules. She’s about 15,000 tons. Takes a hell of a lot of stopping. In a destroyer once, fog. Didn’t see the bastard. Caught us twenty feet back from the starb’d bow. Ripped the nose almost clean off. Think of that, young ‘un! What watertight doors you’d close, where the collision mat is, what watch is on deck, who your petty-officers are. Practice assuming she’s going to collide. Do you go astern or do you swing her to port? How much? Where is the Old Man? Keep always in mind your turning circle and how long it’ll take to stop her at the speed she’s doing. Remember - if there is a balls-up, you’ve got to think of all those things at once. There’ll be no time for sliderule calculations. All right? “And don’t forget the siren. Signal him your intentions. Now — assume that ship is about to hit... “Hmmm. Not bad. But you took three times too long. And you forgot the siren. There could be other ships astern of you. They want to know what the hell’s going on. They’re not mind readers. Now there’s a fire in the engineer’s workshop. You don’t know where that is, do you? Find out as soon as you go off watch. Remember, the first thing some bright boy will do is phone the bridge, and he’ll expect you to take over from then on. It’ll be very helpful if you don’t know where to send the fire party. Everything unusual happens - who do they think of first? Officer of the watch. You’re the boy, remember that. There may not be time to run yelling for the Old Man or Commander. And no time to send for the ship’s plans and specifications. Every watch I’ll give you three compartments. You’ll hop down and find ‘em. Don’t be afraid to ask an able-seaman. He’ll think more, not less, of your commonsense. He’ll talk of that pitiful slob Sainsbury in his mess, but he and his messmates will know that the pitiful slob Sainsbury is on the ball, or at least trying to get there. All right? “Sailors, now. You’ve got to understand ‘em. Forget about this discipline business. They’ll do what they’re told, sure they will. But there’s a hell of a lot more to it than that. One day you’ll get your command, and you’ll know what I mean. An officer, especially in wartime, has the privilege of holding their lives in his hands. They want to know that those hands deserve the privilege. They’re a good bunch, matloes, don’t you forget it. You’ll find that they’ll try and put something over you. But there’s a reason. They want to know - if only subconsciously - your calibre. They respect a man who’s awake up to them. But way and above all else they respect good seamanship. Gunnery’s important, of course, and torpedoes and asdic, but seamanship comes first, last and in-between. A gunnery officer’s not worth a frankfurt if he can land a salvo on a target but can’t handle the ship or lower a seaboat in a rough sea. And believe me, the matloes know it! “You’re an officer. If they stop to think, they’d concede that you can’t be expected to tie a Turk’s head or a wall-knot as well or as quickly as a captain of the top, who’s doing that sort of thing all day. Okay. But they don’t stop to think. You’re an officer, you get higher pay, you live in the wardroom on what to them is superlative food. And you can order them around. Therefore you pay for those privileges - and they expect you to be better than they are, in everything. And by God they’re right! “I’m talking, you understand, about an officer fitting himself for command of two hundred or six hundred men. Not a slob who’ll still be wearing two and a half rings when he’s thrown on to the beach after thirty years’ service. It’s easy to say: ‘I’m an officer, I’ve more important things to learn and do than try and better a sailor at his job. I’ll tell him what to do, and there are leading-hands and pettyofficers paid to see that he does it.’ In a way that’s all right. But not if you’re to have a happy and efficient command. Especially if that command’s a destroyer, which it will be before you graduate to bigger -but not necessarily better - things. And it’s so easy to get their confidence. Your brain and your training is superior to theirs. I don’t mean you have to chip bloody rust better than they can, or paint the funnel. But in the important things - pulling an oar in a rough sea, lowering the seaboat on top of a wave, not jolting it down into the trough and breaking a leg or two, tying vital knots and hitches - it’s so easy to gain proficiency. “Listen to this. It happened in this cruiser, and with this Commander. The Black Wolf they call him, and heknows it - and loves it. Remember, it’s a pretty sorry commander who doesn’t get a nickname from the troops. And they call our bloke the Black Wolf because, in the first place, he’s dark, and in the second place he knows what sailors are up to before they do it. They curse him, and they’d go through hell for him. That’s what I call leadership, Sainsbury. All right? “Let’s make sure you know. It happened about six months ago. We were on evolutions, and for the purpose of the drill a heavy fog-buoy had to be hoisted inboard on the quarterdeck. The bosun’s party had rigged sheer-legs - nothing so simple as using a derrick. The buoy had been hauled up close under the counter, and a rope passed over the towing wire. That rope had to be secured, not through the sheave of the block on the sheer-legs, but to one of the spars itself. It was a sort of preventer rope to ensure that the buoy didn’t drop back and its wire foul the screws. Got it? Now there would be considerable weight on that rope if the buoy slipped, and it had to be knotted securely. And quickly, for this was an evolution, remember, and there were three other ships battling to hoist their own evolution-completed pendant first. “It was amusing to watch - fifty men on the quarterdeck should have been able to tie that knot, but the commander and the bosun were there, watching, and so volunteers were conspicuous by their absence. Seconds passed, and no one moved. The Black Wolf could have ordered a man up there. But what did he do? He shoved his telescope into the hands of an ordinary-seaman and leaped up on the guard-rails. In a few seconds that preventer rope was secured with as pretty and taut a rolling hitch as ever you saw. Fifty matloes saw it. Then the cunning old bugger ordered ‘Heave in’ and the buoy came up sweet as a whistle. You see?” Young Sainsbury had seen. His eyes had gleamed as he viewed the scene Crewe had re-created. “It would seem to me,” he had suggested tentatively, “that a commander needs to be a bit of an actor.”
Much water had washed by Lieutenant- Commander Bruce Thornton Sainsbury’s bridges since that lesson, and of course not even his agile mind could remember every word of Buster Crewe’s crisp advice. But now, as the work boat took him across the bright blue waters of Port Moresby harbour, he was thinking about it.
Idly, he wondered why. Certainly Spindrift up ahead was not his first command - and that had been corvette Seamew, ripped open by a torpedo in the Atlantic on the third day after he’d assumed command - but every one of her 150 men were unknown to him, so far as he knew. Maybe that was the subconscious reason for his nostalgic recall of Crewe’s words, for old Buster had been pretty strong on the importance of getting to know your sailors. Sainsbury hoped - for he was a somewhat superstitious man, inclined to heed his hunches that he was not headed for trouble with Spindrift’s crew. But then, logic helped him, why should he be? He had heard nothing derogatory about her, while such important things as a ship with a crew of misfits tended to get themselves talked about.
He cleared his mind of preconceived notions and studied his new command.
Covertly, the work boat’s bowman studied him.
A work boat is a vessel attached to a port’s headquarters ashore; it operates as its name implies, running all sorts of errands like delivering mail and messages to units to a fleet or flotilla, and even new commanding-officers. But the bowman of this one rated two good-conduct badges, which meant at least eight years in, and the face of their passenger fascinated him. In his time he had come across all sorts of captains: tall, short and middling, most of them fit-looking and some of them pudgy; but all of them owning the same type of face - hard, weathered, and looking like captains. But this bloke...
Prim, was the bowman’s best word for it. Not mealy-faced, not that exactly... But looking, damn it all, more like a parson; maybe a senior bank clerk, or a school master the bowman remembered, from his State school way, way down, and way back, in Ballarat. Looking nothing at all like a destroyer driver. That mouth, pursed in concentration like that... He had it, by God: like his aged Aunt Myrtle, knitting her interminable balaclavas and socks for the boys overseas!
The bowman smiled a little to himself. He might have grinned if he’d known how close his diagnosis; that the nickname of Spindrift’s new captain actually was Aunty.
Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury had noted the bowman’s covert interest in him, as he noted most things happening about him, but he was used to it, and from long practice ignored it. His interest was for his ship. Long and lean she was, like all destroyers: but not aged, thank God, judging by the streamlined face of the bridge, and the gunnery director jutting above it. Four guns: though he could not be sure of their exact calibre, for she was the first of her Intrepid-class he had come across. But only five torpedo tubes? Yes, his squinted eyes told him, he could be sure of that: one bank of five tubes. Ah well, five tin fish could fix a battleship, he smiled thinly to himself, while at the same time he smiled at the speciousness of the thought; God forbid that he should find himself in the position of being able to find out his new ship’s anti-battleship qualifications!
Then the boat’s cox’n was ringing down for slow ahead and she bumped gently against the destroyer’s gangway.
“Thank you, Cox’n,” said the passenger - primarily, noted the bowman - and jumped nimbly enough on to the platform and climbed the gangway’s steps.
But Sainsbury was uncaring of his voice or mode of debarkation; he was waiting for something, and if it did not come then the omission would tell him a great deal about his new berth, all of it worrying. Then, piercingly clear, the piping shrilled out above his head, that welcome reserved for a ship’s commanding-officer, and one of his worries was laid to rest.
He stepped on to the quarterdeck, with a surprisingly smart salute - but then his other science, apart from seamanship, was gunnery. The corners of his vision saw, without specifically noticing, the quartermaster and bosun’s mate of the piping party, drawn up at right-angles to the ship’s side, and the officer of the day directly in front of him, but his sight went directly and deliberately to the officer standing beside the OOD; for this man would be his deputy, responsible for the general efficiency or otherwise of the ship, and thus, greatly, for the captain’s peace of mind.
My God, he thought, but though he was yet to win his V.C. and command a cruiser, his self-control had been long enough practised to have him maintaining nothing more than expected interest in his face and the normal crisp courtesy in his voice:
“Good morning. Number One, I presume? My name is Sainsbury.”
“Welcome aboard, sir. I’m Caswell, Gordon Caswell.” Having saluted, Caswell took the captain’s proffered hand. “This is Lieutenant Binder, sir, navigating officer.”
“Pilot.” Sainsbury shook hands with an officer of average height, average pleasantness of face, but rather more than normally keen of eye. But then, for a navigating officer, that was average too.
“I’ll have your gear brought inboard, sir,” Pilot said.
“Thank you.” Sainsbury, instead of moving forward to his cabin, turned aft for the quarterdeck. Caswell had to follow him, as if he’d received a shouted order. So did several dozen pairs of eyes. Primly -sorry about that word, but there is none better - Sainsbury paced along the quarterdeck, aft along the starboard side, forward along the port side, and then back again right to the stern; and as he went his feet, and sometimes his hands, went out to test the lashings of the scores of depth charges awaiting there, while his eyes ran over the depth-charge throwers, and finally the rails right on the stern, filled with their quiet grey canisters of amatol, for though he was gunnery, his forte was anti-submarine warfare; loathing the underwater snakes. And at the end of his extempore inspection, vividly and wholly verbatim, his words to Crewe surfaced in his mind: It would seem to me that a commander needs to be a bit of an actor...
“Sir?” said Caswell quickly.
“Yes, Number One, what is it?”
“Nothing... But you... seemed to be smiling at something.”
“Just a memory, Number One.” He waved his hand. “The quarterdeck seems taut enough.”
“Thank you, sir. But then...” Caswell smiled a bit diffidently. “Well, it’s my special province, sort of. I have a pet hate, you see.”
“Oh?” Sainsbury’s mind was suddenly rolling with suspicion; but at once he realised that neither he nor Caswell had heard of each other, so how could the lieutenant be aware of his feelings in the matter? “You mean submarines?” he said softly.
“I hate the bastards,” Caswell said with quiet and vehement savagery.
“Well now,” Sainsbury said after a moment, “it seems you and I might get on together.”
“I’m sure we will.”
This in itself was somewhat of an odd remark for a first lieutenant to offer his just-met captain, yet there was something else, the tone of it, that had Sainsbury glancing sharply at him. He saw the hardness still in Caswell’s face, yet the gleam of humour in his eyes.
“You see, sir,” Caswell answered his look, “you noticed, but you didn’t comment. That makes our first meeting just about unique. I get awfully tired of it... the witty remarks... Witty. My God!”
Sainsbury smiled; that is to say, his purse-string mouth stretched a trifle. “I imagine it could become somewhat irritating. However, now we’re on the subject you might as well let me have the vital statistics and then we can forget it.”
“Six feet four,” Caswell obliged, “weight eleven stone. I have, believe it or not, a nickname.”
“It wouldn’t be, by any chance, Splinter?”
“Spot on, sir.”
Sainsbury offered that smile again, but Caswell would never know that it had its origin in Crewe’s contention: It’s a pretty sorry commander who doesn’t get a nickname from the troops.
“I’ll see my cabin now, Number One,” Sainsbury said, while he was thinking that this might turn out a happy berth, pierhead jump and all.
They went forward along the iron-deck together; Sainsbury moving, with his short steps, his head up and eyes looking down his pinched nose, like a man walking down a steep and invisible hill - as a colleague had once rather unkindly said of him.
“That is all, thank you,” he said in his cabin. “I should like to meet the rest of the officers in the wardroom in an hour.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Caswell withdrew and shut the door. He’d been gone only a minute when a knock sounded on it. The trip up by plane had been uncomfortable; Sainsbury was in his underpants, and about to shower.
He stifled the jolt of irritation and called:
“Who is it?”
“Chief bosun’s mate, sir.”
Now he felt more than a jolt. The Buffer was the first lieutenant’s man, there should be no reason for him to approach his captain like this, apart from an emergency, and patently that was not the case. Sainsbury turned his back to the door, pulled on his shorts and growled: “Come in.”
He heard the door open, and started at once. “I do not know what previous routine you have been used to, Chief Bosun’s Mate, but from now on you will approach me only through the first lieutenant. Is that clear?”
“Clear, sir. Sorry. Maybe I should have given the password first.”
This was incredible. Sainsbury started to turn. “What!”
“Skeleton Park, sir,”
“What the devil...” Sainsbury started, and then - maybe it was because he had been thinking of Buster Crewe, with his mind back in that cruiser - whatever the reason, he knew who his visitor was even before he turned fully and saw his grinning face. “Good... Lord,” he said softly, “You!”
“In the flesh, sir,” answered Hooky Walker; though at this time he had yet to be fitted with that steel hook in lieu of his right hand; this was reserved for the violent future, with the venue thousands of miles from here, in a French harbour.
Sainsbury forgot about properly buttoning his shorts. “Come in, man, come in!” He shook Hooky’s hand; in fact, so far forgetting his captainly dignity as to take that leg-of-mutton fist in both of his own somewhat more delicate hands. “This is... splendid, old chap.”
He meant that, by the Lord. To meet Hooky Walker again at any time, but to have him as his chief bosun’s mate, in a ship he was new to! The crew of Spindrift might know nothing of his seamanship, but by all the bends and hitches in the Book he now knew the condition of theirs.
They were staring at each other, affection and pleasure lighting their faces - like a damn pair of moonstruck lovers, Sainsbury suddenly realised. He coughed, breaking the spell. “I had no idea you were here.”
“I did. You, I mean. Been waiting ever since yesterday, when I saw your name on the signal. Thought we might have to sail before you could make it.”
Sainsbury frowned. “Sailing, so soon?”
“Dunno about that, sir,” Hooky hastened to assure him. “It’s just that we’re in and out like a flamin’ yo-yo up here. Patrols and convoys, mostly patrols.” He saw the captain glance at his watch. “Well, sir, I’ll be off. Just wanted to...”
“Be damned to that.” And be damned to his shower; plenty of time later. “Take a pew.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hooky, sitting down. “Do up your fly.” He grinned. “Looks like I’ll have to look after you. Remember?” Sainsbury’s mind was swarming with memories. The main one concerned Skeleton Park; more correctly, an old and reverenced cemetery behind one of Hobart’s better-known churches, and in which he, Sub-Lieutenant Sainsbury, had inexcusably caroused with a dozen bottles of beer and Hooky Walker and two of his petty-officer shipmates. From that same cruiser. ..
“Do you know who I was thinking of in the work boat? This really is quite extraordinary. First him, then you. Extraordinary.”
“Who, sir?” asked Hooky reasonably.
“Buster Crewe.”
“Well, I’m buggered.”
“Yes.’
“I bet he doesn’t know about Skeleton Park. I hope.”
“He does not. Nor does anyone else. Understand?”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Blackmail?”
“Yes, sir. Where’ve you been lately?”
Now that was a long story, a couple of books in fact. Like the shower, it would have to wait. “I remember. . .yes, it was you,” Sainsbury said reminiscently, “who first told me the meaning of the expression ‘pierhead jump’.”
Hooky didn’t remember, but he nodded, for in those early days he had told his present captain most of what he now knew about sailor’s language; and a deal besides, not all of it presentable.
“So now you really know,” Hooky stated.
“There I was in Sydney one minute, having a nice rest as first lieutenant of an eight-inch cruiser, and the next I was on the pier with my gear packed.”
“Headed for command of a destroyer. It’s terrible,” Hooky said poker-faced, “the things they can do to a man these days.”
Sainsbury hesitated; his question was one for the first lieutenant. But then he knew Hooky Walker - backwards, and inwards and outwards.
“What happened to your other captain?” he asked.
And waited, even now not sure if he’d done the right thing, for when a captain leaves a ship suddenly, it could be for all sorts of delicate reasons. Like drunkenness, or proven incompetence - even cowardice.
Hooky might have read his mind; certainly he could have got nothing from his mask of a face. “Simple, sir,” he smiled. “He was a good bloke, name of Evans. No?” in answer to the shake of Sainsbury’s head. “Bit before your time, probably. Anyway, we were coming into harbour, pretty rough, everything wet, and the captain just turned to speak to the Jimmy. That’s all, just turned. But the grating round the binnacle was wet and slippery, and he stepped on the side of it with one foot. Slipped off and down he went, thump, on his right side. Broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder. Our Doc did his best, but, you know, a broken wing in a bloody destroyer. . . They flew him out to Townsville yesterday afternoon. And look what we...” But this officer was no longer a sub-lieutenant. “Who we got to replace him,” Hooky amended. “Just like old times, sir.”
Sainsbury nodded, while his mind was at its usual machinations. Hooky would spread the word about the new captain. But could he, on the mess-decks? Certainly he would amongst his own messmates, but the Buffer of a destroyer, second only to the coxswain in seniority, couldn’t go round buttonholing able-seamen or even leading-hands, telling them what a good Joe the new Old Man was. It just wasn’t right. To the great majority of the crew, he still had to prove himself. And by God, he thought, suddenly but briefly hard, so did they.
“Anybody else we know around here?” he asked. “Lieutenant Bentley, for instance?”
Hooky shook his head. “Haven’t seen him for ages.” It was about six months, actually, but in a war like this that can be a hell of a long time; with scores of ships sunk and hundreds of men killed. In six days, let alone months. “Not Lieutenant Randall, neither,” Hooky went on, adding: “Dave Hobden’s still in a cruiser, and Pop Barr’s gunner’s mate of a sloop.” These last two had been of the party in Skeleton Park. No mention was made of a gentleman named Dutchy Holland, for at this date neither of them had met him.
“Any fowls on board?” Sainsbury asked; this being a legitimate query of a chief bosun’s mate, and referring to skulkers, messdeck lawyers, malingerers, pleasant types like that.
“A few, but nothing to worry about,’ Hooky said, and was to remember it as the understatement of the war.
“Good,” nodded Sainsbury, for a ship’s company without at least one fowl to foul things up would be unnatural. “Well, old chap, I have to meet the officers presently.” No questioning here, absolutely not, of even such a man as Hooky Walker. A captain can be pleasant, even affable, with a certain rating, but a ship’s company is divided by discipline and authority into rigid compartments, and into certain of these no rating may penetrate.
“Yes, sir,” Hooky said, and rose at once. “When would you like to meet the Cox’n?”
Now here was a man, as important in his way as the first lieutenant; but still a rating. “I’ll send for him when I’m ready.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Hooky opened the door and very nearly said, “I’ll be seeing you. . .” In a ship three hundred feet long. He smiled instead and went out.
Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury was the captain of this ship: which means to say - to be brief, but in no way inexact - that in it he was God. Just the same by virtue of the wisdom of my Lords of the Admiralty and of the Australian Commonwealth Naval Board, sailors have certain rights. Most of these are disciplinary - for instance, a captain may not strike the lowliest of his ordinary-seamen - and a few of them are social. Thus, if he were to walk through a messdeck where men lived, Sainsbury would remove his cap while doing so. And thus - though of all men, unquestioning obedience was required most from his officers - before entering the mess where they lived, the wardroom, Sainsbury knocked. Admittedly a sharpish, perfunctory knock, then he pulled the brown curtain back and entered. As one man they rose to their feet.
They were surprised: Caswell the first lieutenant was astonished, and visibly discomfited. He darted a look at the clock on the bulkhead, but what he read there didn’t help much, not in the face of this fait accompli. For it was his duty to have gone to the captain, informed him of the officers’ presence in the wardroom, and then led him down.
“I’m sorry, sir,” he blurted, “I thought you said in an...” He pulled himself up, a fact which pleased Sainsbury: No midshipman’s excuses; good. “Gentlemen,” Caswell went on, recovering his wits, “this is the captain, Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury. Sir, our asdic...”
But Sainsbury was holding up his hand. “In an hour, Number One? You are quite right, and my watch, damn it...” glancing at the wall clock, “is ten minutes fast.” He corrected it. “My apologies, gentlemen. Now, Number One?”
And so they met him, this captain whose name had not yet become the legend it was to be, and right off - accidentally, for he had not planned this, his watch had really been fast - he made a favourable impression by his ready and unstinting apology to Caswell. What they thought of his appearance was not voiced until later; and some time later than that they learned things about him which made them realise a homely truth - that in some cases appearances are not only deceptive, they don’t really matter a pinch of dog crap.
“The asdic officer, Barry Cramer.”
Sainsbury received only brief impressions right now: of a chubby lieutenant reaching somewhere below Caswell’s second shirt button; respectful of men, naturally, one of those faces that never sunburn properly, covered with large freckles.
“The torpedo officer, sir, Ken Brown.” As stolid looking and honest as his name: good, strong face, handy for one in his job.
“The sub, sir, Henry Rowley.” Young, diffident -he’d better be! but well-built and extraordinarily handsome. Not always diffident, Sainsbury thought; hiding, he hoped, his envy.
“The torpedo-gunner, sir, Mr Meeking.” The oldest of them, about forty; up from the lower deck, a wise old face, as weathered as Hooky’s, and blocky body.
“Pilot you’ve met, sir. Last but not least, anyway in his opinion, the engineer officer, Tom Minnett.”
Sainsbury felt surprise. Minnett had not the liveliest of expressions on his pallid face, but then all engineers were by trade and nature the unhappiest of men, at least according to seamen. “Chief stoker” was even the nickname for a seagull: seagulls being said to embody the souls of dead chief stokers, because they “laughed” like one. Yet the cause of Sainsbury’s surprise lay not in the Chief’s face, but on the rings of his shoulder straps. These were well enough weathered, indeed as much as his own, but where his were straight, Minnett’s were wavy. He was a Reserve officer. In a fully-commissioned Fleet destroyer, the only officer of his branch? This was sufficiently unusual for Sainsbury to make a valid comment in it.
“Reserve, Chief,” he said, making a statement of it, and careful not to sound in the slightest derogatory. “You’re the first I’ve come across, in a Fleet destroyer.”
“Is that so, sir?”
Hmmm. Not too promising. It might be better if he made his questions direct and official; again, a valid approach from a new captain.
“I assume you didn’t join yesterday?”
“The Navy?”
“No, your first engine-room.”
Minnett answered him directly enough. “In case you’re worried, sir, I’ve had ten years in the Naval Reserve, and twenty afloat in the Merchant Marine. I’ve been torpedoed twice, once off Tobruk and once off Borneo. I’ve been in this ship for a year and a half. Up till now, the bridge has got every revolution they asked for. Anything else, sir?”
Sainsbury judged him to be self-defensive, not insubordinate like Caswell about his walking-stick appearance.
“That’s enough information, Chief,” he answered, keeping his tone formal, making it appear as if Minnett had simply answered formally. “But for your further information, I was not in the least worried, but simply curious. However,” looking about their tensed faces, “I do have a worry. It concerns in this heat and at this time of day, the state of my gullet. In short, Chief, my bearings are running hot.”
There was Minnett’s out. He took it, even without Caswell’s glare.
“Then you’d better lubricate ‘em, sir,” he said, and leaned sideways to press the pantry buzzer.
And so Bruce Thornton Sainsbury took his first glass of beer aboard his new ship, pleasantly amongst his new officers. He enjoyed it and its followers immensely, which, considering the future state of things, was just as well.
* * *
Sainsbury stayed only an hour in the wardroom. He wanted that shower and he wanted his lunch. He’d had the one and was halfway through the other when the knock came at his door. Sailing orders? He wouldn’t be surprised. After all, destroyers were maids of all work, as the newspapers said. He said: “Come.”
The door opened and a man stepped in over the coaming. Sainsbury noticed two things simultaneously. He was young, in his early twenties - nothing noteworthy about that, war being a young man’s business, at least in the junior ranks of its fighters - and he was wholly bald. Not thinning, not with a fringe over his ears: bald, as in billiard ball.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he greeted crisply. Sainsbury noted that, too.
“Good afternoon,” he replied. “Who are you?” The newcomer smiled, easily. “I’m your doctor, sir.” “No you’re not,” Sainsbury answered at once, and even more crisply.
“Sir.. . ? Oh, I see. The ship’s doctor, then.” “No you’re not,” Sainsbury repeated: he disliked cockiness in anyone, but especially so in a member of a branch about which he knew little. “You are the ship’s surgeon. The Navy does not carry doctors.”
“Oh well, if you want to be pedantic about it.”
“Pedantry does not concern me. Accuracy of nomenclature does. Sit down.” As the surgeon, face reddening, took the chair opposite him at the table, Sainsbury had a momentary vision of Buster Crewe: Here he was, performing the same function as his mentor had, though, he conceded, Crewe had been more pleasant about it. But then his pupil hadn’t been so cocky.
“In a Service like the Navy,” Sainsbury said levelly, “accuracy of nomenclature is vital. An object, a bearing, anything, must be called by its correct and known name. You think I exaggerate? There was a time, in a cruiser. A man fell overboard. The bosun’s mate piped “Away seaboat’s crew.” He should have piped, and was told to pipe, “Away lifeboat’s crew.” No difference? A considerable difference. A seaboat is manned by its correct, detailed crew; they could be anywhere, in a turret, in the bathroom. They take time to man the boat. But a lifeboat... that means any man who is close to the boat jumps into it, a stoker, a signalman, anyone. It is an emergency. In this case, the use of the wrong term cost a man his sight. Minutes were wasted before the officer of the watch corrected the bosun’s mate’s error. By the time the lifeboat got up to the man who’d fallen overboard a bunch of big seabirds had pecked his eyes out. He was hurt and shocked, you see, he could not defend himself. Now he’s blind.”
“Yes, sir,” the surgeon said after a moment. “I can understand the difference in those terms. But doctor. . . surgeon?”
“The principle,” Sainsbury said, “is precisely the same. If you use a wrong term in one regard, you will use it in another. In the Navy, with an emergency waiting to jump on you without warning, we cannot afford to be slipshod. Apart from which,” he said, leaning back with his hands still on the table, “the term ‘doctor’ is not seamanlike, it is not shipshape. In short, it brands the user as green. Now Surgeon-Lieutenant, are you green?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I am delighted to hear that. May I ask how long you’ve been qualified?”
The surgeon hesitated. “Three years.” Then he blurted, “But damnitall, I don’t claim to be a professor of surgery!”
“Quite so.” The surgeon was to learn that it took more than a burst of anger to ruffle this pedant’s prim pose. “However, I understand that you operated on the previous captain quite successfully.” This was taking a bit of liberty with Hooky’s brief and wholly unqualified disclosure, but Sainsbury decided it was time to get off the surgeon’s subject and back to his own.
“Well, yes, I suppose I did,” sounding somewhat mollified.
“Good. Now you might be kind enough to tell me why you were not in the wardroom with the rest of the officers when I met them.” And Caswell, he thought, had something to explain about that.
“I was ashore replenishing medical supplies.”
“A sound reason. What is your name?”
“Doherty.”
Sainsbury kept his eyes on him. “Surgeon-Lieutenant Doherty. In a situation like this, tete-a-tete, you might say, I do not expect an officer constantly to use the title ‘sir’. However, its use is customary every, shall we say, third or fourth sentence. I would be obliged if you could bring yourself to abide by that custom.”
Doherty breathed in, deep. My God, he was thinking, what have we got here? Not the attitude so much, or even that purse-mouthed face - but the bloody diction, that pedagogue’s phrasing... He also had his new captain here.
“Very well, sir. I’m sorry; guess I just wasn’t thinking.”
But Crewe-Sainsbury hadn’t quite finished with him. “In the Navy,” he said, “the term ‘Very well’ is used only by a senior officer to a junior. When acknowledging an order, or in your case, a suggestion, shall we say, the correct answer is ‘Aye aye, sir’ or ‘Yes, sir’. You follow?”
“Yes, sir!”
“Splendid. Now, Doc, be good enough to ask the first lieutenant to step up here.”
Doherty shoved himself up. “Doc! After all that...!”
Sainsbury held up a hand with fingers like pencils. “Now you bring us to the subject of sea-language, or colloquialisms, or catchphrases, as opposed to more formal naval nomenclature. In the first category, officers of your branch are known variously, and with varying degrees of humour, or contempt, as Sawbones, Chemist and Quack. But amongst the gentlemen of the wardroom the usual appellation is Doc. Yet surely you have been so addressed? Or is it,” Sainsbury asked, his face a mask, “that you have a more personal nickname?”
Doherty compressed his lips; then he said, “You’ll hear it anyway. . .sir. They call me - or that bloody engineer does - Hairy.”
Showing no surprise, Sainsbury said, “I am surprised to find he is capable of such levity. Hairy... Hmmm. Like most naval nicknames, it is the opposite of fact. A huge man, for instance, is usually Tiny, a tall man, Shorty. There is even my own case. For some reason which I confess quite escapes me, my nickname is Aunty.”
Doherty stared at him. The tone was the same, the face just as acridulous, but there, somewhere way in the back of those pinched grey eyes, a glint of amusement? He couldn’t be sure. He didn’t dare chuckle, even dutifully. He said, “Yes, sir, is that all?” and at Sainsbury’s nod he went out.
Caswell came quickly, armed by Doherty’s warning about his absence.
“Yes, sir?”
“Why didn’t you mention the surgeon’s absence from the wardroom meeting?”
“Sorry, sir, my fault entirely.”
“I know that. Number One. I’m asking why.”
“Well, sir,” Caswell answered truthfully, “I was a bit worried, or thought you might be, about Chiefs attitude. I clean forgot the Doc was ashore.”
Sainsbury nodded his acceptance. “We had an interesting discussion on Service nomenclature. Hairy...” he murmured, “not a kind name, James. But, unlike you nickname, one strictly related to the situation.”
“I thought you said you’d forget about that.”
“So I did, Splinter, so I did. Well now, perhaps we can have a look over the ship.”
“Certainly, sir. Have you... ah...”
“Yes, James?” (This name, for some reason which quite escapes me, is not a nickname, but the generic term applied to all first lieutenants; along with Number One, Jimmy the One, One, The Bloke and other unprintables.)
“Well, I was wondering if you’re familiar with destroyers?”
“To some degree, yes,” answered this old destroyerman, and pushed his chair back.
That was as far as he got in the inspection of his new ship. The knock was short and sharp. “Come.”
The man who came in carried a cap in his hand and a badge on his arm. The badge comprised a pair of crossed flags, with one star above their junction and two below it; the mark of a yeoman of signals. His other hand held a piece of paper.
“Yeoman Dean, sir,” Caswell introduced.
“Yeoman,” Sainsbury nodded, and took the signal. The first four words gave him the salient fact. “Being in all respects ready for sea,Spindrift is to proceed at 1400 and patrol...”
The position could be charted later. Sainsbury looked at his watch then at Caswell. “We’re secured?”
“Yes, sir, all but the motor-cutter.”
“Have it hoisted at once. We sail in half an hour.”
“Fourteen hundred, sir,” Pilot called from the binnacle.
“Very well,” Sainsbury said, “heave in.”
He took a final look at the chart and the course lines Pilot had pencilled on it. Spindrift was to proceed through Jomard Passage, round the south-eastern toe of New Guinea, and then patrol up and down on a north-south course between Trobriand Island and the coast of New Britain, each leg being about 150 miles long. The object of the exercise was to report any Jap aircraft heading towards Moresby; and, of course, to deal with any submarines she might contact. Fifty miles south of Trobriand she was to rendezvous with an American destroyer named, oddly enough, Mack. But then U.S. destroyers are named after officers and enlisted men of the Navy and Marine Corps, Secretaries of the Navy, Members of Congress, and inventors. Sainsbury wondered just who Mr Mack was - probably some enlisted man who had performed a spunky deed and was now immortalised in the pages of the identification book. Anyhow, the Mack he was interested in was something like Spindrift in appearance, with her two funnels and four guns. But Sainsbury remembered she mounted twelve torpedo tubes; the most he had known in a destroyer.
But Mack was a long way away, while he had a job right on hand. He stepped on to the grating round the binnacle and took the ship. Everything looked normal on the foc’s’le - the iron anchor cable grinding in through its hawsepipe, men with hoses and long-handled scrubbers urging the mud off it before the cable flaked itself down in the locker below - that dark glutinous stuff, especially in the tropics, could stink worse than a Chinese prawning boat - and the cable officer, Rowley the sub, leaning over the guard-rail watching the cable. A normal scene; until his glance happened to fall on B-mounting just below the bridge. He coughed, that rather high, barking sound they would get to know as part of the man, like his pursed mouth. Caswell turned casually, then became alert as he saw the captain looking at him.
“Sir?”
“A small detail, Number One. Here I am taking the ship to sea, and I do not know her armament. Those are 4.7-inch guns, by the look of them?”
“Yes, sir,” Caswell smiled. Odd how you got used to that pedantic but precise phrasing. “Good ones, too. Mark Twelve’s, power-rammed, muzzle velocity three thousand feet per second.”
“Hmmm.” Sainsbury had a more relevant interest. “And their rate of fire?”
Caswell noted the salient query with an inward smile. “Fifteen rounds a minute. B-gun got up to seventeen once, but conditions were ideal.”
“I see. B-gun, then, would be the starshell mounting?”
You’ve been around, Caswell thought, and said, “Yes, sir.”
Sainsbury nodded and the sub called “Cable’s up and down, sir,” then a moment later, “Anchor’s aweigh.” And now, for Caswell and all of them, came what they’d been waiting for.
The tone was quiet but crisp. “Starb’d thirty. Half-ahead port engine, slow-astern starb’d.”
Her two propellers were outward-turning, normally; that is, in opposite directions. Now the port screw spun to the left, normally, but the starb’d one also turned that way, and the result was that both screws clawed her stern to the left, and, of course, her bow to the right. She swung slow at first, then smooth and quick, with almost no forward movement. It was a neat economical manoeuvre, though nothing to boast about for an experienced destroyer driver. Then Sainsbury put his starboard engine half-ahead as well, gave another wheel order, and Spindrift’s sharp snout was aimed for the gap in the reef.
“I think you’ve done this before,” Caswell said.
There were several answers to that, in varying tones of jibing, or pleasure, or mock modesty. Sainsbury said, “Thank you, Number One,” as if he’d been handed a cup of tea. “Please have the ship closed-up for action when clear of the reef.”
* * *
He was favourably, though not greatly, impressed with the short time they took to man their action stations. Wise as wolves, the sailors would have stacked on a turn for this first time for their new captain. He would be impressed, or otherwise, only after seeing them handling their weapons, against an enemy. Now his object was to see his ship, and be seen by her men.
It was like a Royal progress; the bosun’s mate leading, then the captain, followed by the first lieutenant, with the chief bosun’s mate, ready to answer any queries on boats or life-saving rafts or other upper-deck equipment, bringing up the rear. Hooky Walker was not asked a question, though this did not surprise him. The captain asked plenty.
At A-gun on the foc’s’le: “Your name?”
“Beckett, sir,” answered the gun trainer.
“Why have you got your life-jacket half blown up?”
“Well... to be ready, sir, just in case.”
“You jump over the side with air in your jacket like that and your neck is ready to be snapped by the jacket being forced up under your chin by the water. Not theory, Able-seaman Beckett, I’ve seen it happen.”
“Yes, sir,” said Beckett, fiddling with his life-jacket, while Caswell thought: So you’ve been sunk, or seen a sinking. As Sainsbury, the actor, knew he would.
On B-gun deck, to the gun captain: “Petty-Officer...?”
“Logan, sir.” Tall and hard-bodied, back as straight as a gun barrel, obviously gunnery to the core.
“Are all these shells armour-piercing?” Sainsbury asked, walking along the steel ready-use racks near the guard-rails.
“No, sir. Armour-piercing here, semi-armour-piercing on the starb’d side.”
“Starshell?”
“In that left-hand locker there, sir. I keep them under cover.”
“Because of spray and rain on the fuses,” Sainsbury nodded. “Why, yes, sir.” Captains weren’t supposed to be aware of such small local details at the guns.
“You must have been in the Atlantic, Petty-Officer Logan?”
“No, sir.” And then, because he was a senior man, a captain of one of the tops, or parts of ship, and this new bloke seemed a bit odd-looking, but no ogre: “Thank God,” Logan added.
“You may as well thank God,” Sainsbury nodded agreement. “In the Atlantic, especially in winter, even B-gun here would be more awash than not.” While Caswell and Logan were registering this indirect revelation on their captain’s experience, he said: “Why is that man wearing sandshoes?”
Caswell started to speak but Sainsbury said, “Logan?”
“Well, sir, we’re in a destroyer. Most of the time we wear sandals. It’s, well, not like a cruiser, strict...”
“Quite. And I have no intention of turning Spindrift into another Bounty, if you follow me?” Logan nodded, wondering what the hell was coming next. “However, in this destroyer we are at action stations. This man should be in heavy boots, like these fellows.”
“Yes, sir. But...”
“Well, Petty-Officer Logan? My name is Sainsbury, not Bligh.”
“Fair enough, sir. Spencer here is the phone-number and fuse-setter. He’s not a loading number like these others.”
“As I can see. And what if we go into action and one or two, or even four of your nicely-booted loading numbers get killed or wounded? You have not drilled the crew in changing round, in having each man know at least something of his mates’ duties?”
“Of course I have, sir. That’s just normal...” Logan woke up.
“Of course,” Sainsbury’s lips stretched. “In the event I have mentioned, your fuse-setter would take over loading number, and not being fully practiced in that art he might drop one of those fifty-pound shells or a brass cordite cylinder on one of his sandshoes, and then he would have one very crushed foot, and what would happen then to your seventeen rounds a minute rate of fire?”
“Seventeen? How the. . .Yes, sir, you’re quite right.”
“Thank you, Petty-Officer Logan. See to it, please.”
As they went down the ladder and aft they heard Logan seeing to it.
“Spencer, if you ever wear those bloody sandshoes up here again I’ll have your guts for garters! Right?”
“But Chief, you never bothered...”
“Silence!”
“A traditional and fascinating aspect of the Service, Number One,” Sainsbury murmured.
“Sir?”
“The passing of the buck - ever downwards.”
“Oh. Yes, sir.” Caswell loosed a large grin, and suddenly realised that it didn’t matter if the captain saw it. It was about this time, also, that he started to stop thinking about the new captain’s appearance... “The multiple pom-pom’s next, sir.”
And so it went on, with each question at each mounting designed not to gain information, but to subtly proffer it - about himself. Buster Crewe would have been proud of him.
There was only one weapon in which Sainsbury was genuinely interested; having seen all the others before. This was a three-inch anti-aircraft quick-firing gun sited between the tubes and X-mounting, aft. Here, his questions were many and to the point, while to Caswell it didn’t seem to bother him at all that he was obviously betraying his lack of familiarity with this type of weapon. Then Sainsbury asked the rate of fire, and raised his eyebrows at the answer; for the 3inch’s ammunition was fixed, like a rifle bullet, not separate like that on the bigger guns, and she could get them off very quickly indeed.
“Barrage,” Sainsbury said suddenly, with decision. “Aircraft coming in, preferably one in particular, say a fighter or dive bomber. The 4.7s get off only two or three salvoes in barrage firing, but this fellow can do much better than that. What do you think?”
“Seems sound enough, sir.” Caswell almost said “obvious”, which it was - now.
“From now on when closing-up for drill have this 3-inch concentrate on barrage firing. It just might work, against the right target.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“That will do for now. The magazine crews and suchlike will have to hang on the slack for the pleasure of sighting me. Thank you, Number One. It seems you run a tight ship. Secure action stations.”
They returned to the bridge, with Hooky diving into the chief’s mess for coffee. As the crew fell out, most of them were talking about the new bloke, and the consensus of opinion was, “Well, I’m buggered...” This was somewhat indecisive, even dubious, but the crystallising of their opinion would have to wait; on the Jap.
It never occurred to them that the captain was similarly waiting for the same opinion of them.
Sainsbury’s opinion, at least about one member of his company, was to be decided shortly.
From Moresby, south-east to Jomard Passage, is about 300 miles. Spindrift had been steaming easily, at an economical twenty knots, for almost four hours, so that plenty of light still lingered in the cobalt sky. A lot of men were on deck, yarning and smoking and dhobying. The sea when Leading-Stoker Graham went overboard was so calm, and so many people saw him go, that Leading-Seaman Carella, layer of the pom-pom and a third generation Aussie, guffawed, and said with heavy-handed humour:
“Trust a bloody black-ganger. Shouldn’t be allowed up on deck without a rein on him.”
From which it may be construed that the stoker was in no danger. He had been doing something mysterious to the circular plug which sealed a fuelling inlet on the foc’s’le deck immediately below the bridge - stokers are always doing mysterious things on that foreign field, the upper-deck.
He had a two-pronged steel wrench, with which he was either tightening or loosening the plug. You were never worried to find out precisely what stokers were doing - just cursed them pleasantly and told them not to spill any of their blasted black oil on your clean decks.
Whatever it was Leading-Stoker Graham was doing, he had to put considerable pressure on his tool. The wrench slipped from the sockets in the plug and slithered quickly across the deck, which was only about six feet wide at that restricted point. It was prevented from dropping overboard by two inches of sharp-edged steel, which was the distance the ship’s side plates rose above deck-level.
Graham was a big man, tending to obesity, brought about mainly by his craving for cups of thick hot cocoa, or kai, of which a watch of stokers will drink gallons. So, instead of bending down and retrieving his wrench from under the lowest guard-rail, he saved his stomach and his breath by leaning over the top rail and stretching his arm down, outside the rails.
Unknown to the stoker - how could he be expected to know the mysterious workings of upper-deck swabs? - two seaman of the foc’s’le division had been wire-scrubbing and greasing the pins which, inserted at the base of each guard-rail stanchion, allowed them to be dropped flat with the deck when the ship went into action. And the two seamen, their main attention focused on a discussion of their new captain, had failed to replace two pins as they finished with them.
So that the guard-rails, at a certain point, afforded about as much protection as three lines of spider web.
Graham stretched himself upward to draw in his stomach, leaned forward, grunted, and laid his large belly full on the top rail at the same time as he reached outwards and downwards.
To his understandable surprise he kept on going outwards and downwards - for a length of about twenty feet the stanchions and the rails laid themselves flat under his weight. He fell, arms whirling, too shocked to shout, and his left leg, just below the knee, hit the sharp-edged steel of the deck edge, with the full weight of his sixteen stone upon it.
Just for a moment the leg was squashed against the ridge of steel, and then Graham was in the water.
Leading-Seaman Carella, though not yet proved on his pom-pom, was no slouch when it came to seamanship. He saw the stoker go, and before he’d hit the water Carella’s gunnery-trained bellow had reached the bridge.
“Man overboard! Port side!”
Several things happened at once. Sainsbury, enjoying the cool of the bridge before going down for an early dinner, reacted automatically and with instant certainty.
“Hard-a-port! Stop both engines! Away lifeboat’s crew!”
Further aft, on the raised deck around X-mounting, the lifebuoy sentry blew a vehement blast on his whistle, grabbed a lifebuoy from its hook on the guardrail, rushed to the port side and heaved it over.
A group of men nearest the whaler hurried to man it.
The bridge orders took Spindrift’s propellered stern clear of the involuntary swimmer, at the same time as they ensured that the screws, if they did meet him, would not mince him into small pieces.
It was then, as he clambered into the lifeboat, that Leading-Seaman Carella made his unepic remark on the stupidity of unchaperoned stokers loose on the upper-deck. As there seemed to be no danger they could see Graham clearly, waving his arm energetically a few hundred yards astern - the sailors who had rushed for the whaler went to work with a will, enjoying this break from routine. Under Hooky Walker’s supervision the lifeboat was in the water in one-one-two, as the saying goes, and under Carella’s practised steering and urging, leapt to the rescue.
Carella manoeuvred his boat easily enough in the calm sea, so that Graham had only to reach his big paw out, grab the gunnel and heave himself inboard: they couldn’t understand why he didn’t.
“Come on, Stokes,” Carella grumbled, “we ain’t got all fuckin’ day, y’know. There could be a sub about.”
Even that had no effect. Graham’s face was set in a grimace, but they thought that was because of the salt in his eyes and mouth.
“Give us a hand, will you?” he grunted.
Carella made another of his witticisms re stokers which made the crew grin dutifully, leaned over and hooked his hand beneath Graham’s stern. He heaved, and Graham snarled: “Go easy, blast you!”
Carella simply put the other’s moroseness down to the fact that he was a stoker. It was only when Graham had been hauled inboard and laid spluttering and soaking on the bottom-boards in the stern that he understood the real reason. Through the skin of Graham’s shin the tibia bone thrust in a sharp splintered point.
They tried not to look at the yellowish-white bones, bared through the brown skin, as they pulled, urgently now, back to the ship. It would be hard to find a more efficient inducer to bleeding that warm sea-water, and before they had pulled two hundred yards the white bottom-boards had turned a wet, gleaming red. Carella left the tiller long enough to tie a clumsy tourniquet with his belt around Graham’s leg above the knee, but the blood still flowed.
The stroke oar, nearest Graham, could see it extruding in three or four well-defined streams, running down until it met the ankle and then dripping on to the boards. But the splintered bone was clear, and stuck out white, naked and bloodless. And horribly novel.
Surgeon-Lieutenant Doherty had automatically come on deck as soon as he heard the pipe “Away lifeboat’s crew.” At first, the order was so apposite to his recent conversation with the captain, that he thought it might be an evolution carried out for his benefit. This was a foolish idea, as he realised when he saw the hands pointing and saw the black head bobbing astern. Just the same, he had to be on hand; even if a man was uninjured by his fall into the water, there was a good possibility he might be suffering from shock.
A few minutes later Doherty saw, with a pleasant tingle of anticipation, that there was work for him and his first-aid party. He could see plainly the state of Graham’s leg, and he stepped forward to the guard-rail. But the surgeon’s time was not yet.
Caswell and Hooky Walter were busy with the big rope scrambling net; until they saw that Graham could not use it. Caswell’s eye swung to the torpedo-hoisting derrick nearby. Hooky interpreted the look and grunted:
“I’ll fix him, sir.”
Hooky dropped a rope down into the boat, now alongside beneath them.
“Bowline on the bight under his arms,” he ordered Carella. Doherty turned to his sick-berth attendant and gave him an order.
Carella passed the line round Graham’s chest, under his arms. His fingers worked swiftly, expert at this. Then he looked up at Hooky and nodded.
“Keep him clear of the side,” Hooky warned. He tested the top guard-rail, then leaned over. It seemed almost without effort he drew the heavy stoker out of the boat, while Carella steadied him with a hand on his good leg; Hooky braced himself and lifted. Hand over hand Graham was drawn upwards, while the watching seamen stared with appreciation at this evidence of Hooky’s oaken strength.
He came up smoothly, but his legs dangled, and from the ruptured blood vessels two small drains of dark red fluid dripped back into the boat, fouling its cleanliness. Doherty leaned over the guard-rail. His anticipation had been replaced by worry.
Willing hands took hold as soon as Graham reached the top rail, and the surgeon himself held the injured leg, keeping it straight. His
S.B.A. slid forward the stretcher he’d been sent for and they laid Graham gently upon it. Made of long cane laths and canvas, it was more like a strait-jacket. They folded it around him, then strapped it tight with the leather bands. Graham could not move - there was even a band around his forehead - and now he could be lowered with ease and safety through the hatch and carried along to the little sickbay.
As he was about to pass into the passageway at the break of the foc’s’le Doherty saw the captain leaning over the bridge above him. He stopped, his head craned up.
“You’re going to operate?” Sainsbury asked.
“Yes, sir. Compound fracture. I’ll have to set it.”
“Want any help?”
“No. I’ll have the first-aid party. But I might need blood, he’s lost a fair bit.”
“What’s his group?”
Doherty had already checked Graham’s dog-tag, or identification disc, hung around his neck. “Type 0, sir.”
“Right, you’ve got it. I’ll come down to ten knots.”
Sainsbury drew back from the edge. It was all he could, or needed to do. The water was smooth. Spindrift’s movement was negligible. Meteorological conditions, at least, were ideal for surgery.
“Two men with blood-type 0, Number One. Have them standing-by near the sickbay.”
“Wilco, sir.”
Doherty’s theatre conditions were not so rosy. Instead of the air-conditioned and sterile atmosphere of a hospital theatre he had a small operating table bolted to the deck, a portable anaesthetic machine, and one professional assistant.
Warned by the S.B.A., the first-aid party was now in the sickbay
-a stoker petty-officer who had come up from the boiler room, two officers’ stewards, and a petty-officer cook, their faces white beneath their tans as they involuntarily glanced at the leg. These men constituted Doherty’s theatre sister, his trained nurse and assistant surgeon - had he been in any sort of hospital ashore. Underneath his sterile white cape the boiler-room man wore a clean pair of overalls; the cook followed the surgeon at the sink, washing flour from his hands.
His own hands dripping and held level with his chest before him, Doherty came back to the table and looked down; his mind was a moil of procedure. This was worse than the captain’s arm, and the loss of blood worried him: gangrene.
While a steward washed the sea lice from Graham’s body, and the blood from a small wound on his forehead where he had been pecked by an albatross - Doherty noted that, and remembered the man who’d had his eyes pecked out - the surgeon’s swift hands had a sterile dressing over the wound, then the temporary splints were applied.
The S.B.A. was busy with a small, compact machine from which came a corrugated rubber tube with a mouthpiece and a rubber container like a football bladder. This was an Oxford vaporiser, their anaesthetic machine, and it had a small plate attached, with the legend: “Presented by Lord Nuffield.” Every destroyer and below in the British and Commonwealth Navies had one of these machines, provided free; not all rich men should fail to get through the eye of that needle. . .
Graham’s pain-squinted eyes followed the preparations; then he pursed his lips. One of them lit the cigarette and held it there; Graham drew deeply.
The S.B.A. took up a pair of bone forceps, then quickly laid them below the level of the patient’s eyes. But he had seen - and guessed. He grinned, weakly, at the other’s dissembling.
Now they were ready. Doherty eased himself along the bulkhead and placed the mouthpiece on Graham’s face. In a little while his clenched finger - they, not his smile, were the actual indication of his mind - opened, slowly, just a little. Doherty beckoned his anaesthetist, the stoker petty-officer, to the machine. His voice came muffled through his mask.
“Keep the level between ten and twelve.”
A properly trained anaesthetist would have been horrified. But Lord Nuffield, born William Richard Morris - he actually wanted to be a doctor, but his father couldn’t afford the fees - went on to become an engineer, and designed and built the first Morris car, in his backyard garage; so this chap, since then becoming a multimillionaire, knew a bit about working under adverse conditions and made sure that the anaesthetic machines he presented to the Navy were capable of being used in just about any conditions, and by just about any man.
Thus, at the surgeon’s instructions, the stoker petty-officer nodded his understanding. The S.B.A. petty-officer nodded his understanding. The S.B.A. handed a case of instruments each to the stewards - there was not room enough on the operating table, which, in any case, was more normally used for captain’s requestmen and defaulters. Scalpels, forceps, muscle retractors, bone saws gleamed silver in the late sunlight coming in through the scuttles.
Doherty moved to the right side of the table.
Like a breath of wind it went through the mess-decks and up to the bridge. The bosun’s mate came up to Sainsbury and said, “He’s under, sir.”
Sainsbury spoke to pilot: “Come down to nine-oh revolutions. Cox’n on the wheel.”
A calm sea is never that, on a watery plain so vast. A slight swell came rolling up from astern, like the tentative rippling of the ocean’s muscles; the wind’s voice in the rigging was a whispered monotone, and Spindrift slipped on, rolling just a little, a rhythmical movement that to practised feet made her as level as a billiard table; but which now made itself noticed by men under the influence of that most mystical science, surgery.
Less impressed, for he had other things on his mind besides Graham, Sainsbury looked round the sharply defined horizon, at the gently breathing sea, and up at the deep wells of the blue sky, and while he was thankful that they seemed to have no unfriendly company, he was glad for the stoker’s and the surgeon’s sakes that the weather was so co-operative.
Down in the sickbay Doherty worked methodically, correcting the slight roll easily and automatically, for all his seatime had been in destroyers, and in this type of ship you get your sealegs fast, or you get them broken. He was not much worried about the surgical requirements of the job; but still his forehead above the mask was furrowed into a troubled frown. Gangrene. There was no smell yet, too early for that, nor any blackness of tissue.
He reminded himself of the sulpha drugs he could inject, and the transfused blood, and forced his mind to concentrate on the first job in hand.
The wound was shaved, then cleaned with ether soap. The scalpel moved swiftly and surely, and the broken skin came away, still coloured grey with paint from the ship’s side. But the wound was too small to allow a satisfactory examination. From one inch it grew to two, three. Doherty looked into his assisant’s eyes and pointed to the dead, bruised muscle flanking the bone The S.B.A. looked, mentally noted, and nodded.
One hand braced against Graham’s thigh, Doherty took up a pair of long forceps and carefully withdrew the bits of splintered bone. When the small area of useless muscle had been resected they were ready to set the bone. The stewards laid their trays on the deck and moved to the patient’s shoulders. The S.B.A. took a firm hold of the foot. Beside the vaporiser the stoker petty-officer kept the fluctuating lever between ten and twelve.
Doherty stood abreast the break and nodded. Gently at first, they pulled. The two ends of yellow-white bone drew apart as the reluctant muscles stretched further, until the lower spear-shaped point lay an inch below the V which Doherty had made in the upper part. He nodded again. His gloved hands guiding, the two bones, point and V, came together perfectly.
It did not take long for the wound to be dusted with sulphanilamide powder, filled with vaseline gauze, and the plaster of paris splint applied. Then the gear was stowed away. Graham was covered up warmly, still unconscious; the stoker petty-officer climbed back down to A boiler-room; the cook finished off his batch of bread in the galley; and to the S.B.A. Doherty said:
“We’ll start the blood transfusion. Bring in the first man, then send someone up to tell the captain the operation’s over.”
Not only the captain was glad to hear that news, and not only for Graham’s sake. The range of Spindrift’s asdic was only about one mile, while a torpedo’s range was many times that, and a destroyer at ten knots in a sea like this made a beautiful target, for it would be difficult to swing away in time from a forty-knot torpedo.
“Increase to twenty knots,” Sainsbury ordered, and in a moment all hands felt thankfully the shaking as she worked up. When the needle of the electric speed log rested on the ordered 20, Sainsbury said, “Have the Cox’n relieved.”
The relieving quartermaster was already standing-by in the wheelhouse. Presently there came on to the bridge a man. On his cap he wore the badge, with oak leaves, of a chief petty-officer; on the upper left sleeve of his khaki shirt he wore another, small, simple badge; just a crown. Yet somehow its very smallness and simplicity were impressive, and rightly so. This man held the most powerful rank below that of officer.
He stepped towards Caswell, officer of the dogwatches. Sainsbury had already turned, and with no attempt at concealment he studied him. He saw a man of something the same shape as Logan, the captain of B-gun - tall and straight-backed, and straight-eyed as he looked at Caswell. His face was hard and lean with weathering, and it wore an expression of hard authority.
“Cox’n relieved at the wheel, sir,” he said to Caswell. “Course one-two-four, speed twenty knots.”
“Very well, Cox’n. Over here a moment.” They stepped to the starboard side of the bridge. Sainsbury slipped from his stool, with some relief, for the hard wooden top was not kind to his sparsely-padded buttocks.
“Captain, sir, this is the Cox’n - Chief Petty-Officer Smith.”
“A good old Patagonian name,” Sainsbury said easily, returning the salute. “I’m glad to meet you Swain.” They shook hands.
“Me too, sir -at last,” Smith smiled; a face-lightening gesture.
“Oh?” Sainsbury felt some small surprise, though no suspicion; a coxswain of a Fleet destroyer might have faults, but fawning was not one of them.
“I shipped with Lieutenant Bentley, sir, for a while.” His hand tapped his badge. “Before this. He, well, talked about you somewhat.”
Sainsbury successfully hid his satisfaction; if Smith was the sort of man Bentley talked to, then he himself had no worries about him. He said:
“Being aware of young Bentley’s lack of reticence, I think your use of the word ‘somewhat’ is less than adequate.”
By hell, Smith thought behind his smile, young Bentley’s description of your speech was adequate enough.
“Dunno about that, sir,” he said, “but I do know he said nothing derogatory.”
“Oh, I’m quite sure of that. I know too many things about him.” But this had gone far enough. “Thank you, Swain.”
Smith saluted again and rattled down the ladder. Sainsbury turned back to his stool. His face was thoughtful as he stared out over the bow at the onrushingblue, now beginning to darken. It was stupid, but he didn’t like it. This was just too good to be true. First Hooky Walker in his strange new ship, then an obviously taut officer like Caswell for his deputy, and now, for coxswain, that most important of senior ratings, a man whom Bentley liked, and therefore, by implication, strongly recommended. It all looked too easy, too nice and pat. With men like these, he might never have left his last beloved destroyer. It was just too good.
Then there slipped into his memory a phrase Hooky Walker, that erstwhile instructor in the ways and manners of sailors, had revealed to him long ago. He’d whinge if a man was up him.Crude and succinct and expressive; said of a man who was never satisfied, who’d sniff suspiciously at the best of good fortune, who tried to find some ulterior motive behind his being drafted to the cushiest of safe shore jobs; a fellow who would. . . well, whinge if a man was up him.
Which was precisely what he was doing right now. Damnit all, was there anything so odd about finding in a new ship a respected and friendly old face? Or an efficient lieutenant, for God’s sake, or a coxswain who’d happened to ship with Bentley in some ship or other? Don’t be such a bloody old curmudgeon, he castigated himself; accept your good luck and be glad of it. War wasn’t all hell, not all the time.
He still didn’t feel as happy as he told himself he should feel. And this feeling, searingly, he was to remember.
The ladder shook. It did this often, day and night at sea; yet this time, possibly because of his worrying thoughts, Sainsbury turned to see who it was. Doherty, wearing a face that was not alight with happiness.
“Well, Doc,” Sainsbury said, calmly, “all well? Operation a success?”
“Yes, sir. The patient’s doing fine - surgically.”
At once, but without haste, Sainsbury slipped from the stool, nodded once to Doherty, and went down to the chart room. The navigator’s yeoman was in there; at a flick of the captain’s finger he departed.
“Now then, Doc. What’s the problem?”
“I’m not sure we have one.”
That plural “we”. How many times has a captain heard that, even in regard to a subject quite beyond his province? “Let’s have it,” Sainsbury said curtly.
Doherty gave it to him. “Gangrene.”
“My God!”
Doherty held up one hand, his smile placating. “I’m not sure, sir. He lost a lot of blood, which is the main cause of gangrene, but he’s been transfused and he’s had sulphanilamide. He should be all right, but it’s too early to tell for sure. I just wanted to put you in the picture.”
“The picture being that you want me to make the decision as to whether we turn back and put him into hospital in Moresby.”
It was harsh, but Sainsbury wasn’t feeling amiable. He knew the reason - this wasn’t a seamanship or gunnery or tactical problem, things he was familiar with - but knowing didn’t help.
Doherty’s face had tightened. “It’s not that at all. It’s just that I wanted... well, your advice.”
“I’m sorry, Doc, but this is an occasion when I want your advice.”
“Of course, I understand that.”
“Then let me have it.”
“My God, you’re not being exactly helpful!”
Sainsbury didn’t want to be helpful; except insofar as helping this officer to make up his own mind about a problem which was peculiarly his own. He looked at Doherty, a level steady gaze, and suddenly the surgeon seemed to get the message.
He nodded, slowly as to himself. “All right,” he said. “There is a possibility of gangrene setting in - there’s always that in such a case
- but I think the patient will recover normally.” Sainsbury kept his eyes on Doherty. “You appreciate the significance of what you have just said.” It was a statement.
“Yes, sir.”
“I could turn back - now. Tommorrow, no. Whatever I do, I am acting on your advice, on your professional competence and judgement. And I am not, Surgeon-Lieutenant Doherty, thinking of any possible consequences to myself. In short, I am not suggesting that you will take the can. I know you will.”
Doherty breathed in. “You’re a hard man... sir.”
“Destroyers are not usually commanded by marshmallow types. Well?”
Doherty smiled. A real normal smile. It broke suddenly upon a face that had been hard and acerbic, like sunshine breaking suddenly from a grey sky. It made his face oddly attractive. Only one or two women, and a few men, had seen that transforming smile.
“Good man,” he said, and as he went past Doherty he slapped the surgeon’s arm with the back of his hand.
Doherty looked after him, then heard the rattle of the ladder chains. He thought, slowly and with emphasis: Well, I’m buggered. Only well afterwards, down in the sickbay and listening to Graham’s cheerful chit-chat with the S.B.A., did he think about how that skinny old maiden aunt of a captain had made a man of him.
They reached the rendezvous point halfway through a hot, still afternoon. The U.S. destroyer Mack was nowhere in sight.
“This is the time, Pilot?” Sainsbury asked.
“Right on, sir. But the Yanks don’t worry about an hour or two either way.”
This was not wholly true, but as Sainsbury had spent most of his war so far in the Atlantic and Mediterranean, his knowledge of American navigation was meagre. Yet there was nothing deficient about his knowledge of discipline and proper procedure.
“I should prefer our Allies to be called American, Pilot, at least in public. The word Yank seems to me a somewhat derogatory term.”
They were used to him now. “Yes, sir,” Pilot answered unsmilingly. “Sorry.”
“And any one of a dozen reasons could have caused Mack’s lateness. We are here to report on aircraft. Mack may have found some. Similarly, they may have found her, and for all we know, done for her.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Pilot, truthfully, and just as he finished a phone sounded. Sainsbury, leaning against the fore windbreak, took it out himself.
“Bridge, captain speaking.”
“We have a surface radar contact, sir, right ahead, range fifteen miles.”
“Very well.”
Sainsbury looked at the far northern horizon. Where yesterday the meeting of sea and sky had been sharply defined, now up there was hazy with low cloud. Above them also clouds hung, but his attention remained ahead. Presently radar amplified its first report:
“Contact coming directly at thirty knots.”
“Well, Pilot?”
“Looks like I owe ‘em an apology, sir,” Binder grinned.
“Yes. Has anyone got her visual yet?”
“I...” The signal yeoman hesitated, then went on surely. “Just the bow-waves through the haze, sir, but I’d say she’s a destroyer.”
“Jap cruisers can make big bow-waves,” said Caswell helpfully.
“Number One,” Sainsbury said, “you are not, I fervently trust, one of those funny first lieutenants?”
“No, sir, just practical. A Jap cruiser squadron could be over this far, on its way down to bombard Guadalcanal.”
“Hmmm. I prefer you to be funny, Number One. Ready with the challenge, Yeoman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make it.”
The yeoman used the big ten-inch signalling light at that range. The challenge was answered quickly, and correctly.
“Ah well,” grinned Caswell, “a man can’t be right all the time.”
“Number One, in my recently stated preference for your alleged humour, I was being funny.”
They all grinned at that, but there was relief in their gestures. This was very unfriendly country.
In half an hour the racing newcomer had curved round and eased up close alongside. They saw that she looked much the same as Spindrift - two funnels, four single-gun mountings, similar in her weight and length. But 5-inch guns instead of 4-inch, and those twelve torpedo tubes.
“Welcome stranger,” Sainsbury said through the radio-telephone, surprising them with his unwonted levity. “My ship is Spindrift, my name is Sainsbury, lieutenant-commander. Over.”
“Hi, there,” came back a cheerful voice, which may have come from Pennsylvania or California, though certainly not Prussia.“Mack, Lieutenant-Commander Bledsoe, with an ‘e’. I kinda hate to ask this in public, but seeing as we’ll be working together... What is the date of your command?”
“Two days ago.”
“Well I’ll.. . Hmmm. Looks like I’m senior. Please take station...” There was a pause, while Caswell and Co. looked unhappy, and almost accusingly at their captain. Then: “Say, this is your first command?”
“Actually, no. My third, in fact.”
“Jesus... Sorry, Commander. Looks like I’m the junior boy - way down. Where do you want me?”
“Astern, please,” said Sainsbury, poker-faced, “distant four cables.” That was eight hundred yards. “We shall patrol at twenty knots 150 miles to the north, then back on a reciprocal course. Object of the exercise is to sight and report on any aircraft heading for Port Moresby. Those are my orders. I presume yours are somewhat similar?”
“Exactly similar. But then - I presume - they originated from the one source.”
“He’s feeling a bit touchy about his seniority foul-up,” Caswell smiled. Sainsbury gestured him to silence.
“From your Admiral, yes,” Sainsbury gave him his out. “Now, Commander, if you will kindly take station we can commence our patrol.”
“I’m on my way!” And so he was, ringing on flank speed and reining Mack round like a race horse. Then another swiping turn, then straightening her up and settling in position dead astern, distance 800 yards.
“Seems to know his stuff,” Caswell conceded grudgingly. “And wants us to know it.”
“Now, now, Splinter,” Sainsbury admonished, “hands across the Pacific and all that, remember?”
“Yes, sir, I’ll remember,” Caswell said darkly. “Just so long as he fights his guns as well as he drives his ship.”
“At the risk of sounding defeatist,” Sainsbury said, “it is my hope that we don’t have to find out.”
“Well now,” Caswell grinned. “I’ll drink to that.”
* * *
It took until the next day for them to find out. Though under the horribly unlucky circumstances, what happened could be no true indication of Mack’s gunnery efficiency.
Towards noon a bank of thick white clouds came sailing over from the invisible coast of New Guinea to the westward. The two destroyers were on a southward leg, steaming now at fifteen knots to conserve fuel. Well over to port, the eastward, the sky was clear, a vast blue empty dome; but directly above them the clouds hung. Mr Meeking, the torpedo-gunner, glanced idly up at their mass. They looked hot, almost, and electric. Probably foul up our radar, he thought
-temperature inversion. The thought made him take his binoculars from where they hung by the binnacle. He had them almost to his eyes when he thought he heard a sound. He paused, his head on one side; all ears. Then he dropped the glasses and in two strides was at the captain’s buzzer. Before Sainsbury answered the imperative ring the sound came again - from almost directly above, through the clouds, a distinct, though filtered, drone.
By the time Sainsbury made the bridge the ship was stirring under the harsh summons of the action alarm.
“Fighter-bomber,” Meeking enlightened him tersely. “High on the port bow. Alone, I think.”
“That’s unlikely,” Sainsbury muttered, and took the glasses the other handed him. He spoke as he searched the clouds. “Radar in contact?”
“They have been, yes. But that’s a hell of a pile of muck up there. Inversion’s playing up with the sets.”
“Then they should be on him now,” Sainsbury said, “for there he is. Yeoman, warn Mack.”
The gunner craned his head up. The aircraft was small, a black speck against the high clouds. It was moving very fast, crossing in front of their bow and then wheeling back again.
“He’s waiting for a friend,” Sainsbury decided, and swung his head up to stare at the director. That master-sight of all the guns was already on the target, moving as it moved. Caswell was on the bridge now and the captain turned to him impatiently. “Closed-Up yet?”
“Not quite, sir. The three-inch still to come.” He paused, listened to a report from a seaman on a telephone, then swung back to Sainsbury. “Ship closed-up for action, sir.”
“Right. Let that fellow see what we’re made of.” And let me, too, was his unspoken thought.
Caswell picked up the director phone.
This moment - in maybe weeks of monotonous patrol, or of convoying, or days of fruitless and equally boring searching for a submarine - this, now, was what they really had been trained for, since first they had seen a naval gun far down in Flinders Naval Depot. Already, even before Caswell’s order to the director, the system swung into action - ranges from the radar sets had been fed into the fire-control table, protectively deep inside her; the table had received them, digested them, and fed them out again to the four 4.7 inch guns in elements of training and elevation; and with fuse-settings to explode the time-fused shells at the correct height and future position of the plane - where it would be after the time of flight of the shells. The guns were following director, their long grey barrels sniffing to the sky, almost vertical; behind them the loading numbers waited, the yellow-nosed shells in their arms, waiting to feed those noses into the fuse-setting machine and then drop them into the loading trays.
Sainsbury snapped a look astern, to where Mack, fully alerted, was swinging to take up her ordered station out on the starb’d beam
- two ships one behind the other offered too good a target for a misdirected bomb at the leading one. His head came back and he ordered quietly:
“All right, Number One, open fire.”
The Director Control Officer said into his phones, not quietly:
“Commence, commence, commence!”
The executive order ran through every gunnery compartment in the now shuddering ship. The aircraft, joined by its mate, had reached the end of its circling. It had begun to bank, to return on the other leg, when Spindrift exploded into flame and smoke. Four shells streaked skyward and burst all about the aircraft in black blossoms of turbulence and flung steel.
Not bad at all, Sainsbury was thinking, when the aircraft put its nose down and fell headlong out of the sky upon them.
He was closing range at something like 400 miles per hour: too fast for the 4.7s to get their fuses changed in time. Down aft, behind the second funnel, Carella was waiting with his four-barrelled pompom. The ship was swinging so that, he knew, he could bring his gun to bear on the plummeting target ahead of her. Further aft from him the 3-inch was already barrage firing,wham wham wham, much faster than the main armament.
But the speed of that initial high dive was too much. Both the pom-pom and the 3-inch missed him. There came suddenly a wild banshee scream. The plane pulled out twenty feet above the sea, a streak of menace, the leading edges of her wings broke into slabs of yellow and brown and a crash of cannon shells slashed a powdery path across the sea. Close, but not inboard. The Jap whipped over in a tight turn and came driving in again, from the beam, almost at rightangles to her length, firing again.
But this time he had only his engine, lacking the speed of that power dive. He gave them only a few extra seconds, but that was all they needed. Carella’s lines of red tracer reached out and nailed him; the fighter’s smooth streamline erupted in many vicious little explosions. It wasn’t enough, he still came on. The 3-inch shifted from long to short barrage. Now its shells were fused to burst at 1500 feet. She could get off only three, but one got him, and one was enough. The Jap’s nose jerked up, then down. Shredding pieces of his body he hit the water in a slewing rush, sprayed a wall of water fanwise before his nose, and dug under. No fire or explosion; just no more plane.
His eyes squinted and his mouth puckered, Sainsbury swivelled his head from the ulcer of froth on the blue sea at Caswell’s shout: “The other bloke’s diving on Mack, sir!”
They watched. Their show was over. They could do nothing to help. He was dropping too fast for the big guns to follow him, and if the pom-pom or other close-range weapons opened fire, tracking him down, they could punch their shells and bullets into Mack herself. The American ship was on her own.
Engine note a rising snarl of supercharged sound, the fighter-bomber bore in. Clearly they saw the black blob of his bomb under his belly; clearly they saw it detach, falling with apparent slowness at first, and then in a streak too fast to follow as it neared the water.
Mack was firing desperately with every close-range gun she had; her engaged side looked like one unbroken line of flame. She was hitting her target, but the Jap had unloaded. Bledsoe swung her. His first command, insufficient time in it, overall inexperience? Whatever the reason, she swung too late.
Superheated steam is a marvellously efficient servant but a frightful master; its hot blast can peel human skin like a cooked beetroot. Mack took that bomb in her forward boiler-room. The disciplined force of steam at a pressure of 350 pounds per square inch, at a temperature of 600 degrees superheat, was unleashed abruptly in a blast that lifted the little ship’s midship deck in huge leaves of steel twisting in the air, and burst her sides and bilges open to the sea. Sliding with the enemy, her own strength had ruptured her as though she had stopped a battleship’s broadside.
A few of her crew had time to abandon her before, still making way and vomiting plumes of white into the blue sky, she staggered under. The snarl of the wounded but triumphant aircraft beat away to silence.
It was a swift and stunning blow. Sainsbury’s voice broke the shocked quiet on Spindrift’s bridge; the order bringing to their horrified minds a realisation; at first dimly appreciated, that their own world was still ordered - as it had been, regulated, normal, safe.
“Get the whaler lowered, Number One, and be quick about it. Now that we’re sighted I don’t want to hang about here.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Caswell muttered. He fumbled at the PA mike. Seeing him, Sainsbury was aware of his own sense of horror and shock, and forced himself to keep it from showing on his face. He set his face rigidly and walked over to the voice pipe.
“Starb’d twenty,” he ordered, and swung her round to come up alongside the frothing ulcer of black and scummy water that marked the destroyer’s grave.
Sainsbury saw him first, as the blobbing, oil-plastered head slipped down the ship’s side. He must have been blown right out of the boiler-room to have got that far from where the ship sank. Instinctively Sainsbury opened his mouth, as he had with the other stoker, Graham, to order the engine stopped - the floating body was heading straight for the whirling screws. Then he shut his mouth. The man, of course, would be dead. Nevertheless, with a horrible and compulsive fascination - as you stare at a racing car hurtling end over end - they craned over the side, and watched the stern draw swiftly towards him. He was almost level with the screws when they saw his head come up. For one frightful instant every man on the bridge felt the look on that torn face bore into his brain. Then he feebly lifted one arm.
“Christ!” burst from Sainsbury. “Stop both engines!”
It was too late; no chance at all. The man, from being a static weight, was transformed suddenly into violent movement, as though a giant’s hand from below had grasped his leg and was twirling him round in a fantastic catherine-wheel dance. Then he was sucked under.
Then the engines stopped. The ship coasted on. Sickness in their guts, they waited. The wake stretched behind her, clean and white. A hundred yards astern it was suddenly fouled by a black object; then another. Small objects, only as big as part of a man.
“Number One!” Sainsbury’s voice snapped out, harsh, defensively abrupt. “What the hell’s holding up that lifeboat? Get on to it, man!”
“Aye aye, sir,” Caswell answered stupidly. He left the bridge.
By the time Spindrift drew level with the vapour wall of Mack’s agony, there was nothing on the surface of the sea but a widening circle of splintered debris and scum. The swell rose and lowered sluggishly, smothered under the tenacious covering of fuel oil. Pieces of wooden wreckage - boats, spars, carley floats - bobbed and curtsied under the shadow of the smoke. And they smelled the stench.
“My God,” whispered Cramer the asdic officer. His hair was ruffled by the anti-flash helmet now in his hand. Of her 1500 tons and 150 men there was left intact her motorboat, either blown clear by some freak of the explosion or cut clear by some thinking seaman. And in it Caswell could see, in the moment before he jumped into the whaler, human forms. There might be a chance for them - Doherty was standing-by.
The boat splashed into the water; the oars rattled out and were jammed into the rowlocks. Caswell shouted the stroke:
“Heave!... Heave!... Heave!”
Suddenly, in the intervening strip of water between them and Mack’s motorboat, Caswell, standing and shouting, sighted a head and an arm. He steered the whaler up to his find; leaned far out from the stern, both hands extended eagerly, and got hold of the man. It had been a stoker from the boiler-room. Even as he held him, Caswell’s hands instinctively opened to let him go. The stoker’s head was denuded completely of hair, and the flesh of his skull and face had turned a strange, parboiled white. His nose was bulged out of shape, and the white arch of his collar-bone showed with grisly clarity through the stripped tendons of his shoulder. His dead eyes, shorn of eyelids, stared with fixed and terrible intensity at the sky. Caswell’s hands fully opened and the horrible thing slipped from his grasp and sank beneath the sea.
Caswell came upright. His face distorted.
“Lay on those oars, damn you!” he yelled.
The rowers’ faces were red and dripping sweat. Their teeth were clenched. They heaved at each stroke in the burning heat as if it were the last act of their lives. Caswell fixed his eyes with an agony of intensity on the motorboat ahead, dreading what he would find in it. They were almost on the boat, when Caswell was astonished to see the craft suddenly get under way. Someone in it had crawled aft, started the engine, and then, too weak to grasp the tiller, had collapsed across the engine-housing. Now the motorboat was careering erratically around in an unguided circle.
Turn this way, Caswell thought, for God’s sake turn this way so I can get a man aboard on that tiller.
He tried to direct his whaler across the other’s course, but in the very moment he thought he was intercepting her she changed direction once more. His crew were tiring; sailors don’t do much boat-pulling except at regatta times, and already they’d had a long pull from the ship. The motorboat was getting farther and farther away. Yet there was some life aboard it. He had to reach it. If only he could get a man at that tiller!
As if the intensity of the wish he shot along his gaze at that swinging tiller handle had a power too strong for fate to resist, an apparition, a long distorted object of blood and rags and flesh that looked unreal in the sunlight, rose from the bottom of the motorboat and crawled fumblingly on all fours to the tiller. Grasping the handle, it pulled itself upright, a horrible creature sharply outlined against the luminous background of the sky.
“No!” Caswell breathed in wonderment. “Bledsoe, the captain!” His voice rose in a shout, a shout right from the depth of his feelings. “Stay with her, Skipper... stay with her!”
Lieutenant-Commander Bledsoe did stay with her. He stayed there at that tiller, a tall, gaunt figure, stiff and appalling, and steered his vessel past the whaler and straight at the waiting length of Spindrift. The crowd of watchers lining her rails gasped when the motorboat finally crashed bow-on into the ship, gasped as they had been a single individual struck violently in the stomach. Then, for an instant, the rush of a rescue party was checked by the stench, acrid, fleshy, nauseating, that poured up in hot waves from that boat. In that instant Lieutenant-Commander Bledsoe turned, holding on to the tiller behind him with one claw of a hand, and said to the seamen above him, speaking as a man speaks who has fought to hold his breath for a long time:
“Bomb.. . boiler-room. . . get my men out, please.” Then he swung slowly about and faced in the direction of the bridge, where Sainsbury’s head was visible above the windbreak. It seemed for a moment as if he were about to walk straight over and up to his fellow-captain; but instead he sank to his knees, then on to his side, and pillowed his head on the odious thing that had been his arm.
Sainsbury’s face was lined and austere, his eyes stony, as he turned to Pilot.
“Put her on the northward leg, original course and speed.”
The navigator had been in since the age of thirteen; his hesitation was fractional. “Aye aye, sir.”
Spindrift swung away from that charnel area and headed for the northern horizon. When Caswell came up to the bridge he had changed into clean clothes; they smelled the scent of soap on his hands. But he couldn’t wash his mind clear; it showed on his face. Sainsbury looked his query.
“They’re all dead, sir, lasted only a few minutes after we got them out. Seven altogether, including the captain. I’ve got the Buffer and half a dozen hands sewing them up in canvas. What’s left...Oh Christ...” He turned away, biting his lip.
“Good work, Number One,” Sainsbury said at once, professionally crisp. “We’ll have the burial service as soon as the Buffer’s finished, with me handling it. I’d like you to take the ship.”
“Yes, sir.” Caswell turned back, more in control of himself, and looked about him; longing for the discovery of some dereliction of duty he could jump on, something to occupy his mind. He saw nothing of that nature; but he became aware of one thing that easily took his mind off the horror down below. For this, he had only to glance at the lowering sun - to port.
“We’re heading north, sir.” He just stopped his words from being exclamatory.
“That’s right. Original course and speed.”
“But we’ve been sighted. I thought you said you weren’t gong to hang about here?”
“So I did, Number One.” How could he speak to Caswell, to any man, of that last look? That poor, pitiful, proud stare from Bledsoe’s lidless eyes, directed at him before he fell back and died? As clearly as if he’d spoken, Bledsoe had said: / did my best. And so, by God, would he!
“However, Number One,” Sainsbury went on evenly, showing none of his mental turmoil, “that second aircraft was damaged, and might not reach its base. So far, at least, we have intercepted no transmissions from it. In any case,” his voice hardening against his will, “it doesn’t matter a damn about being sighted. We’re here for a purpose, and we owe it...” His head turned, aft to where those pitiful bodies had been hauled aboard, “...to them.”
Slowly, Caswell nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Sainsbury looked at his watch. It showed twenty minutes to four; twenty minutes before Caswell was due to take over the first dogwatch.
“Go below and have your afternoon tea.”
It was unusual for a captain to be so solicitous; after all, the first lieutenant knew something of the ship’s routine, being responsible for it. Caswell looked into a pair of eyes that, surprisingly, showed him compassion, and understanding. “Thank you, sir.” he said, and hurried off. Inside twenty minutes he would have full control of himself.
And inside that time Sainsbury had done his organising. He told Mr Meeking, officer of the afternoon watch, to have the main armament crews and all close-range weapons closed-up when the time came; it would be stupid to have the whole ship’s company gathered on the quarterdeck; a beautiful target for just one bomb. The tube and depth-charge crews would suffice for the service, he told Meeking.
“Aye aye, sir. Officers?”
“Just me.”
Meeking nodded his understanding. The captain had to be there, but Bledsoe and his men would agree it was pointless risking any other officers.
Then Caswell returned to take the watch, Hooky Walker reported that all was ready, and Sainsbury, after a final look round that smiling, terrible sky, went down to his cabin for his prayer-book.
Hooky Walker was in charge on the quarterdeck; Coxswain Smith was at the wheel. He called the score or so men to attention, then stood them at ease at the captain’s nod. Sainsbury glanced at the seven canvas-covered shapes laid out side by side near the ship’s side. Some of the shrouds looked odd, as if they were not fully filled by normally straight bodies, and his mind sheered away from thinking about the reasons.
“The men we are burying today,” he started, his voice sombre, like their faces, “are all that remains of a very gallant ship’s company. They were beaten by a determined and skilful enemy, but they did their best, and that is what counts, not the end result. They did their best,” he repeated, then opened his prayer book.
“We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, looking for the resurrection of the body (when the sea shall give up her dead), and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; who at his coming shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things to himself!”
Sainsbury lifted his head. Caswell caught the gesture and said to Pilot behind him, “Stop both engines.”
“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.”
He nodded at Hooky, who raised his hand. Seven strong men lifted the seven mess stools, until, resting on the top guard-rail, they were level. Then Hooky glanced at the quartermaster, a man skilled in the use of his bosun’s pipe, and as the long piercing call shrilled out the stools lifted higher and the bodies slid off them and dropped into the sea. Quite deliberately - it would be intolerable to leave any of them floating - Sainsbury looked aft. But Hooky had weighted each shroud well with heavy practice shot, and as Spindrift moved forward with the way still on her, the seven bodies sank straight down through the blue.
Sainsbury looked again at Caswell. As the burial party fell-out Spindrift’s quarterdeck began to shake, and in a few minutes she was back to fifteen knots. The mess stools went back down below, and the quarterdeck returned to its normal state: quiet, ordered, and menacing with its scores of depth charges.
* * *
So now they knew, Caswell, thought, watching the thin, almost frail-looking figure coming forward with those short steps. The face, the attitude, the pedantic delivery; the endless talk in the wardroom about the hell they had here... It was all resolved. They had a captain who’d forgotten more than any of them knew about ship handling that turn to allow the pom-pom and the 3-inch to bear on the fight-bomber had been ordered at precisely the right time, with precisely the right amount of rudder - a captain who’d remained calmly steadfast and in command of his senses when the whole bridge team had been stunned by Mack’s tragedy, and a captain with common guts.
Nothing unusual about that, Caswell conceded in his mental admiration of the captain - but there wouldhave been nothing unusual, either, if Sainsbury had ordered a course set for home after being sighted, alone on such an unfriendly sea. It might be bravado, but he didn’t think so; not after the way Sainsbury had said, “We owe it to them.” To Caswell it sounded like nothing more or less than a simple declaration of determined intention.
Already he liked their new captain. Now, as he heard the light, deliberate steps on the bridge ladder, his liking was deepening to something stronger. But then, as he might learn if he lived long enough and met certain other men, he was not alone in that.
“Thank God that’s over,” Sainsbury said as he came to the binnacle. “A woman once told me - she’s the wife of an Admiral - that burial at sea was most touching. She’d seen a fictional one on film. In actuality I find them unbearably depressing. It is... so lonely back there.”
Caswell nodded, but he was thinking of that word “them”. So this wasn’t the first time Sainsbury had officiated at a burial. He must have got around a hell of a lot. But then, in the Atlantic, a week could more than equal in savagery a year in the Indian Ocean, or in parts of the Pacific for that matter.
“There’s one consolation, sir,” he said, seeing the pain in Sainsbury’s eyes, “those seven are beyond caring.”
“Like their hundred and forty-odd shipmates. Yes, Number One, I suppose that is the attitude to take.”
Caswell knew he hadn’t helped much, and he changed the subject. “The drill on the 3-inch paid off. The pom-pom was hitting, but the gun got him.”
Sainsbury nodded. “You might pass on my compliments to the crew.”
“Will do, sir.”
“I’m going below for tea. Keep an eye on that cloud ahead. If they send anything out from Rabaul, it will come from that direction. Warn radar and the lookouts.” “Aye aye, sir.”
In his cabin Sainsbury had a cup of tea and five coconut biscuits, for which he had a fondness. This stemmed from years ago, when as a boy - the son of a postmaster at Cottesloe, near Perth - his mother used to send him down to the grocer’s to pay the monthly bill - which in those post-Depression days was never large - and the grocer, being a kindly man, would take pity on his thin, fragile frame - which, actually, was wiry, having been fed nothing but good plain food and in a twist of brown paper he would drop a couple of handfuls of broken coconut biscuits. To Sainsbury these were caviar, and the comparative richness of their taste stayed with him. But coconut biscuits were not normal Navy fodder; those he was eating now he’d brought from Townsville on the way up, a couple of pounds of them. In relation to the face and frame and attitude of his new lord, the captain’s steward had thought the provision of coconut biscuits perfectly normal. He had since been instructed to keep a supply on hand, by means fair or foul. In Moresby this was a pretty tall order, but there were always American ships about, veritable cornucopias compared to the British or Australian, and stewards, especially captain’s stewards, are renowned for scrounging; that art being a basic requirement of their trade, at least in a destroyer.
Sainsbury looked at the biscuit jar - it had started life as a big pickle bottle - then resolutely screwed the top on. He went to the little desk bolted to the deck and began writing his report of the recent action in longhand; he didn’t rate a secretary, but one of the supply-assistants could type it up later. The report took only a few minutes, as he was as precise on paper as he was by nature, and it had been somewhat less than a Fleet action. But after that was finished he had another task, and this one he found much harder. He could not, of course, write to the next-of-kin of every man who had died with Mack, but that last heroic gesture of Bledsoe’s remained vividly in his mind, and he felt a compulsion to make contact with the valiant American’s wife, or mother or father; Bledsoe’s senior officer would know who to send the letter to. But it had to start with Somebody Bledsoe, whether wife or parent - again, the senior officer would know and could insert the title - and it had to be hand-written.
Sainsbury’s remembering mind was a composition of anger and pity for the destroyer’s crew as he pulled out a sheet of paper and began to write. He wrote the letter rapidly, almost mechanically; to the tempo, as it were, of the current of thoughts running below those concerned with the letter... he had lost half his force... he was going on with the mission... he might be leading his own ship and men to a death as ghastly as the Americans’.
He made a restless error with his fountain pen, spoiling the letter. When he had read what he had written, he realised he would have to write an entirely different letter.
What he had put down was true enough; but what the bereaved wife in the States would want to know was something definite and comforting about the way her husband had died. (He envisaged Bledsoe’s next-of-kin as his wife: it was too difficult for him to think of a mother and father, or brothers and sisters.) He could make the letter definite enough, he thought grimly, but there was nothing comforting about Bledsoe’s horrible death.
He strove to imagine the wife reading this letter, or the next, better one if he could manage to write it; but he could not see a wife in his mind’s eye, because he had none himself. He crumpled the first sheet and took up another.
“Dear...Bledsoe:
This is a hard letter I have to write to you. By the time you receive it the Navy will have informed you of Lieutenant-Commander Bledsoe’s death out here on duty. As the senior officer of the force, and his colleague, I thought you would like to know something more personal about it, and that we did the best we could for him.”
As he poised the fountain pen for the next paragraph, he shifted his body with dissatisfaction, shoved the butt of the pen through the unruly area of his hair. He was no good at this sort of thing.. . What he was writing was as dry as dust... that burned officer was the hope of her life...
Yet if he tried too hard he would make it odiously obvious. He bent to the paper. “Lieutenant-Commander Bledsoe was assigned to an operation with my ship. While we were carrying it out his ship was attacked by an enemy aircraft. The ship blew up. He...”
In his mind was the phrase ‘blown out”, which was true enough. It was also harsh. “He got into the water,” (he wrote) “and was picked up by one of the ship’s lifeboats. Lieutenant-Commander Bledsoe steered that boat, picking up survivors round the ship. Then he brought the boat back to us before he died.
“It is small comfort to you, who have lost a loved one, to say that the manner of his passing on has aroused the greatest admiration in all of us. I wish there was something I could say to comfort you. All I can say is that you have the deepest sympathy of the officers and men of this ship, with whom he served and fought.”
The captain read the letter over. It occurred to him to show it to Caswell; but almost immediately he rejected this impulse.
He read it over again, and with a kind of finality laid the letter down on the desk. Then he folded the page into an envelope and addressed it.
His face a mask, his eyes hard, he opened the cabin door and stepped out into the passage.
The destroyer’s death had cut hard to the core of each man aboard Spindrift. The episode had hardened the respect they already held for the efficiency of the Jap; secondly, every man in the ship was filled with a deep and sombre hatred for the enemy who had done this thing: not one man left from an entire ship’s company.
Sainsbury sensed this feeling as he stood on the bridge, with Spindrift moving steadily through the calm sea. The bridge lookouts were staring through their binoculars, grimly alert; on B-gun below him there was no laughter, no chiacking amongst the crew; they went about their cleaning duties silently, and every few moments each man would stare up and search the sky. From these two representative indications he knew that now he had more than a ship’s company - he had a team of fighters.
It would be bad - through evil luck, or mistiming; some tiny vital error in judgement or skill - through whatever reason, it would be bad if he failed them.
He was given the unwanted chance to prove his competence just before dusk.
The time was getting on for seven. There was still plenty of light for this was only seven degrees of latitude below the Equator. And those clouds ahead, as if eaten up by brassy sun, had vanished. The weather change was both good and bad: good for sighting formations of aircraft on their way to blast Moresby, but bad for a ship that wanted herself to remain unsighted.
Radar made the first contact.
Still on watch, Caswell spoke down the captain’s voice pipe; the lid was never closed in fine weather. Sainsbury had eaten most of his dinner of tinned sausages and tinned tomatoes, anticipating a long watchful night on the bridge. He had not expected to be called so soon.
“Looks like an early night raid on Moresby,” Caswell said as he made the bridge. “It will be fully dark, but moonlit, when they get there.”
“So they’re headed for Moresby, Number One?” Sainsbury’s tone was steady, which was more than could be said of his stomach. “It is a large formation? Not aiming for Guadalcanal, by any chance?”
Caswell still had the radar office phone at his ear. He said, “Yes?” and a moment later looked at Sainsbury. “Enemy course is southwest.”
“Moresby,” the captain nodded, and took up his glasses. “And the formation?”
“Looks like a fairly big one, sir, plenty of echoes.”
“Mmmm. Now we have the problem...” Sainsbury stopped, then spoke down the wheelhouse voice pipe. “Nine-oh revolutions.” That was ten knots. “No point in having a large white wake shouting up at them. Now we have the problem,” he went on, “of just when to break wireless silence.”
Caswell seemed to think there was no problem, for he answered at once: “Right away, sir. The more warning we can give the Fighter Sector in Moresby the better. They have to scramble Kittyhawks and Lightnings, and there are the 3.7 inch batteries.”
“Yes,” Sainsbury mused. “But I’m thinking that not only the Fighter Sector will pick up our transmissions.”
“Ah...”
“Yes, Splinter. If we were to wait a little, until the formation has flown past us ahead, then even if the Japs do intercept our message they might fail to sight us. And even if they do, they might not think we’re worth diverting any of their strength to deal with us.”
“Good thinking, sir.”
“Thank you, Number One. In the meantime, please close the ship up for action.”
It was done; the hurried bustling, the sharp orders from around the gun mountings, and then the quiet again. The only difference was that where before she had been alert, now she was tense.
A lookout called his report. Sainsbury raised his glasses. He had them almost at once: high and distant off the starboard bow, remote-seeming, but quite distinct against the paling blue of the north-east sky. He could not tell their number, but it was obvious they had come from Rabaul, and just as plainly they were heading to cross the Owen Stanley Mountains to get at Port Moresby.
Instinct urged him to transmit immediately a warning of that menacing flotilla up there, sailing with bomb-bays packed. He looked about him. The sea seemed to be alive with light. Damn those treacherous clouds! If the Japs had intercepted his signal - not if, but when - then they had only to look down for the origin of it and Spindrift must stand out on this shining sea like a fish laid on a silver plate. He thought of reducing speed still further, but that would leave him no manoeuvrability, and there was that other, more hated enemy - the skulking submarine, liable to come up about this time for a look around; and what a juicy target one of those swine would find, a destroyer at five knots...
No, he thought: a few more minutes wouldn’t make all that much difference to the port’s defences, while in that time the Jap formation would have crossed ahead of him. He felt almost certain that, having passed him, the leader would not turn any of his planes back.
In less than a few minutes, in fact only a few seconds after he had made up his mind to delay, the decision was taken out of his hands.
“Yes?” Caswell said again. He listened, then turned a sober face to Sainsbury. “Radar reports two contacts have broken away from the main body, probably fighters. Whatever they are, they’re heading straight for us.”
“Warn all gun positions,” Sainsbury said, and again raised his glasses. And from under them: “Yeoman, get off that sighting signal, at the rush.”
Against the mass of the main formation it was not yet possible to distinguish the two breakaways by eye. Sainsbury lowered his binoculars and wiped impatiently at his eyes. Surprising him, his fingers came away wet. He pulled out a handerkerchief, for his whole face was perspiring. But then the air clung like a warm face cloth. And yet - analysing himself as he always did - he had not felt so sweaty a few minutes ago. Before the sighting of those planes? Honest with himself - this above all - he knew that he should have turned back after the loss of Mack; that now he might very well be leading his men into the same total annihilation. He had found an enemy bomber formation. But giving Moresby’s defences an hour or so extra warning . . . was that worth the death of his ship and all his men? The top brass apparently thought so, else why had they sent him to patrol here? But the top brass, God knows, had been wrong before. And he, too - hideously wrong?
“I’ve got ‘em now,” Caswell said suddenly. “Two Zeros, angle of sight six-oh.”
He felt thankful for the first lieutenant’s words; their practicality returned the ferment of his mind to hard tactical considerations. He resurrected a mental image of the chart. They were about 100 miles north of Trobriand Island, which was clear of Japs. No point in running on towards New Britain, which was occupied by Japs. Running? He was at ten knots!
“Pilot! Increase to thirty knots. Come round on to the southern leg.”
No point, either, in telling Pilot why he wanted to get close to land, and with the bridge listening in. The yeoman called:
“The main formation are twin-engined bombers, sir, almost certainly Betty’s.”
“Very well. Keep on them, Yeoman. You will be able to detect any change in course before radar.”
“Aye aye, sir,” answered the yeoman, who had every intention of doing just that.
“As soon as those fighters are in range, Number One, open in controlled firing. You never know, we might be lucky enough to bring one down.”
“It’s been done before.” Caswell’s tone was hard, like his lean face. I don’t have to worry about you, Sainsbury thought. It gave him some small comfort. But Caswell was speaking again. “Just before we open fire, sir, you’ll alter course to bring all four guns on the bearing?”
To such an elementary suggestion Sainsbury very nearly replied, “Do you really think I should do that, Number One?” He desisted, realising that Caswell was wire-taut, and had known his captain only a few days. He said: “I shall alter to port, away from Rothwell Bank.” And then, sharply, seeing the look of surprise on Caswell’s face: “Well?”
Caswell looked embarrassed. “Sorry, sir. I’d forgotten about Rothwell Bank.” His eyes added: “Thank God you hadn’t.” For Rothwell Bank was a deadly shoal, and it lay only a few miles to starboard of Spindrift’s present course.
“Mmmm. What is the range now?”
“Twenty miles, sir.”
Both gunnery and navigation are essentially mathematical sciences. Used to quick calculations, Sainsbury had no trouble with this one. Give the Zeros three hundred knots, then they’d be up to them in four minutes.
“How many aircraft, Yeoman?”
“At least fifty, sir.”
“Make that to the Fighter Sector - fifty Betty’s, escorted by Zeros.” He stepped to the mike of the PA system. “D’you hear there. This is the captain. We have sighted a formation of fifty Betty’s heading for Moresby. Two Zeros are heading for us. We shall be opening fire in about two minutes. We got that fighter-bomber and we’ll get these bastards. That’s all.”
Quickly, Caswell turned his face away. It held shock. Like hearing a parson swear. His face came back, but this time he was less successful with its expression.
“Something funny, Number One? Please let me in on it.”
Caswell widened his grin; it was disproportionately pleasing to be able to do that, right now. “Not really, sir. Just that I hadn’t, well, heard you swear before.”
“I do hope I have not offended you. Unfortunately, in something like twenty years’ service, I am afraid one tends to pick up certain coarse expressions. Not from officers, of course. But I happened to ship before with our chief bosun’s mate.”
“Ah,” from Caswell, “all is explained.”
It was not really funny, it could hardly have had the Tivoli or Palladium in an uproar; but it did lay a calming hand over the minds of the bridge team, and in the ship’s tense quiet the crew of B-gun just below heard it, and so Sainsbury’s deliberate little speech just may have had a hand in what happened next.
“In range, sir,” Caswell said, and Sainsbury said, “Port ten,” and a moment later, with Spindrift steady on the new course, “Open fire.”
Now, steaming at right-angles to her former course, she had her four 4.7s bearing on the Zeros. Their combined rate of fire was about sixty rounds per minute, and each shell weighed fifty pounds. The director-layer pressed his electric trigger. Spindrift jerked; she spat flame and smoke and two hundred pounds of steel and high-explosive sheared into the sky at a velocity of 3,000 feet per second. Then again, and again and again and again, until the bridge was covered with the biting stink of cordite and her lean flanks were wreathed in brown smoke.
The pair of Zeros came on; straight and steady and high. They should not have maintained such a direct approach, especially with their manoeuvrability. Perhaps the pilots had been used only to American ships, whose radar and fire-control systems were not the equal of the British.
Spindrift’s radar and fire-control table were British, like those of every warship in the Australian Navy.
Her opening salvoes were well aimed, bursting in black blossoms of smoke and red licks of flame all about the targets. But not close enough and the Zeros still came on. Then the sixth salvo screamed upward.
Three of those shells burst like the others; close. The fourth shell changed into a blast of ripping splinters a few feet in front of the nose of the right-hand Zero.
“That must have got him!” Caswell shouted.
It had. Like a badly-burning pine torch, trailing dark smoke instead of bright flame, the fighter dipped its nose and headed in a long straight slant for the sea. The pilot was still alive. When a hundred feet up the plane’s nose lifted a little; up, further, until it flew almost level, and level with Spindrift’s bow. But the effort was too much. The nose dipped again, the fuselage tilted until they could see the whole top of both wings. Then one wingtip brushed the sea and the plane was clutched form the sky; it spun nose over tail in a swift series of giant cartwheels; and then the hungry sea finally had it, and opened in a white-flashed gash and took it under.
“Shift target!” Sainsbury shouted. Not anger but apprehension coloured the command blood red.
It shocked them. Caswell jerked his sight from the evidence of their first victory and saw what might well be their knell of doom. Quick-witted, that second pilot. Taking advantage of their interest in his colleague, he had got close in. His slanted approach was also long and straight, but powered, and completely under control.
“Barrage short, short, short!” Caswell yelled.
But it took seconds to get an order up to the director, and with an aircraft attacking at 400 knots you don’t have even seconds to spare. The Zero’s wings mounted twenty-millimetre cannon, of the same size as Oerlikons, firing explosive shells instead of solid bullets. It was through the main armament’s first barrage salvo before the shells had burst; now there were only the pom-pom and the machineguns.
But the crews of these, too, had been fascinated by the first Zero’s death plunge. They opened fire, with desperate haste, but haste is the enemy of accuracy. The pom-pom’s shells tracered above the target and the machineguns’ bullets fled below it. The Zero’s cannon, aimed steadily and at a much bigger target, brought about better results.
A stream of twenty millimetre shells struck the base of the bridge; luckily below the compass platform, holding the captain and officers, and just as luckily below the wheelhouse, for Sainsbury had ordered the wheel hard-over, and Coxswain Smith had just got her swinging.
It was this sharp and sudden alteration of course that saved her
-possibly from total destruction, for those shells might have punched through her thin side into a magazine filled with cordite, and certainly from the loss of many men of her close-range weapons on the upperdeck. Spindrift heaved her straining body clear of the lethal flail and the Zero rocketed overhead in a bellow of power.
The guns ceased firing; it was a waste of ammunition to fire at a target opening the range so fast. The note of the fighter’s supercharged engine dwindled to a receding whine. The ship was quiet again. Sainsbury’s amplified voice sprang through the ship.
“That was shockingly bad drill on the part of the ship’s gunnery personnel. Are you green amateurs?” he flared at them. “You do not watch an enemy die. Once you have hit him and he is on the way down you have finished with him. Your attention and your guns must shift at once to the next target. At once. We still have a target up there on the starb’d beam, and it is turning for a second run. Get your fingers out for God’s sake. Main armament open in long barrage.
Silence again. No man on the bridge dared look at the tightly angered face of what had been their maiden-aunt captain. One first look had been enough, and the memory of the change would stay with them all a very long time. Caswell felt the urge to apologise - he was the gunnery officer in action, his was the duty of spotting and designating targets - but his urge was easily overcome by the sight of Sainsbury’s face, as tight and threatening as a clenched first. Irrelevant things like apologies would have to wait. Spindrift was still running to the east, almost at right-angles to her original course so that all 4.7s could bear. The Zero had completed its tight bank and was coming in on the starb’d beam; at right-angles to Spindrift’s body. This relative position between ship and aircraft opened her whole length to attack, but she could not be swung to present a narrower target without masking the fire of her two after guns. So she made a big target, but she could use all her big guns. The Jap presented little but his nose; yet, coming straight in like this, he gave the Australian gunners the advantage of not having to aim-off. Thus he lost much of the benefit of his high speed.
Yet, though valid, all these equations of presentation, fire-power, speed and aim-off, surrendered second place to the over-riding dictates of training, and above all, steadiness. There was, of course, the matter of human courage, but this factor, being present in both ship and plane, was thus cancelled out.
The 4.7s were firing at their maximum rate, striving to place a wall of blast and steel before the enemy. This they were doing efficiently enough, but there were about four seconds between each quadruple burst, and in that time a speeding fighter travels a long way. This one was approaching the long-barrage wall now; if it got through safely, there was the short-barrage hazard, and after that only the close-range weapons.
“Captain, sir!” the yeoman shouted. “Wireless-office has picked up a close transmission, almost certainly from the Zero!”
Sainsbury nodded. “He’s telling his friends that he’s now alone.” He clicked a glance towards the bomber formation. It was now off Spindrift’s port quarter, still plainly visible in the sun’s westering light, and still heading for the New Guinea coast. Only its position relative to the ship’s present course had changed, for not much time had passed since the first attack.
“He’s through,” Caswell said, and more sharply: “Barrage short, short, short.”
Quick to learn, as well as quick-witted, that pilot. He came speeding towards the new, closer barrier of exploding shells and with a movement of his control column he shot up and over it. Then down again; but instead of maintaining his previous line of approach he banked sharply to his left.
“He’s aiming to come in directly astern,” said Caswell, eager to remedy his earlier remissness. “Cutting our fire-power in half.”
“Let’s see about that,” Sainsbury said, and leaning down he spoke a few quick words to Smith on the wheel.
Almost at once, so fast was she moving, Spindrift started to swing to starboard, to keep her length and her four big guns still presented to the enemy. The course alteration showed plainly in the curve of her wake. At once Zero altered back, the intention being to negative the destroyer’s manoeuvre. And now, without seeing the plane, without further order from Sainsbury, Smith obeyed his captain’s earlier instruction and swung Spindrift back towards her original course.
The range was too close. Both ship and aircraft were committed: with the ship’s four big guns bearing.
“Bloody lovely” Caswell muttered, but if he heard the admiring words Sainsbury gave no sign.
He stood on the wooden grating near the wheelhouse voice pipe: this was Pilot’s normal position, but now he could not afford seconds to be lost by having his orders passed through a middleman. He was leaning down with his mouth close to the pipe’s open mouth, but with his head craned sideways and up, so that not for a moment did he lose sight of the Zero. Caswell had never seen a captain in that position, and while his guts churned under the menacing snarl of the approaching fighter his mind admired the captain’s odd but wholly practical gesture. This bloke had been around!
So had Leading-Seaman Carella. You get to travel quite a bit in a circus. Now layer of the pom-pom, Carella had been born in a shooting gallery; quite literally. There had been no time, that rainy night in Bendigo, to get his mother to the hospital, and so the tattooed lady and the lady motorbike rider of the Wall of Death had done their midwifery task behind the racks of moving ducks in the show tent. Luckily rain had cancelled the show for the night, and thus there had been no curious rubber-neckers to hear young Carella’s squalling entry into a wet world.
For years afterward he had travelled with his mother and father wherever there were shows, from Ballarat in Victoria to Barcaldine in Queensland, and many many places in between. And at every opportunity, before and after the show, he practised with a .22 rifle on the ducks. A natural talent made him into an expert. When his mother died of food poisoning - once again she could not be got to hospital in time — and his father developed a penchant for wandering on his own, young Carella developed his expertise with the rifle into a professional act in a circus; shooting, night after night, cigarettes from the mouth of a blossomy blonde and apples from the top of her peroxided head.
Then a man named Hitler pulled the biggest firing lanyard of all, and set the world on fire.
Carella, of course, should have joined the Army, which his peculiar skills would have been most useful in the desert round Tobruk and the jungle of New Guinea. But he had had more than enough of living hard, and carrying his food and equipment and weapons on his back seemed to him to be the hardest life of all. So he settled for the King’s Navy, which carries you as well as your weapons. Lovely. To say, as some Servicemen do, that a man who in civilian life made radio sets would in the Services automatically be made a cook, is not true. Well, not wholly. On the firing range at Flinders Naval Depot Ordinary-Seaman Carella achieved a “possible”. That is, for you non-gunnery types, a mark of one hundred per cent. Instead of being made a supply-assistant or a torpedoman he was awarded his marksman’s badge - being one of the very few ordinary seaman to achieve this distinction - and marked down for the gunnery branch.
Now, on the bland warm face of the Solomon Sea, he was layer, and firer, of a four-barrelled pom-pom firing two pounder shells; and within seconds of having to fire for his life.
Like his shipmates, Carella had been fascinated by that Zero’s death; but he had not needed the captain’s castigation to make him understand why he had missed the second Zero. Nor, with his target coming straight at him, did he have to worry about his trainer allowing for the correct aim-off. Carella knew he would get this bastard.
Of course he would. With his background - born within arm-reach of a rifle - and training and proven skill, why not?
Trouble was, the Zero pilot also knew more than a little about guns.
So far on this run nothing from the ship’s close-range armament had opened at him; he was still a few seconds of time beyond their maximum effective range. But his guns, and the shells waiting in them, already possessed an initial velocity of four hundred miles per hour. He knew he had nothing to fear from her big guns, being too close even for the 3-inch, and so this time he aimed for her midships section instead of the bridge, for it was from there that the challenging fire would come.
Engine pounding, nose steady on the destroyer’s deck amidships, he pressed the button on his control column.
The plane shuddered; satisfyingly. Unseen, a stream of empty cartridge cases cascaded from the rear edges of the wings. Unseen, and now uncared about, the destroyer’s wake started to curve as she began her avoiding swing. Brightly seen, a pattern of vivid red splashes sprang into life around the base of the target’s funnels.
Carella saw, through the concentric rings of his webbed sight, the leading edges of the Zero’s wings break into flame and smoke.
Too soon, he exulted quietly, he’s lost his nerve. Just a few seconds more. Let him in real close. With almost 500 rounds a minute from four barrels you can’t miss. Wait . . . wait . . And then, Now, his mind silently screamed, and his fingers squeezed the big brass trigger.
At least, that’s what his mind told his finger muscles to do. They never made it. There was a sound, barely heard above the clamour, heard only because it was so close to his ear - a sodden sort of sound, like an axe going into wood. In the sectioned parts of a second his upper left arm was jerked abruptly backward, and then the upper part of his body, which took the fingers of his right had away from the trigger.
Christ...
He felt no pain. It was just as if some invisible force had twisted his body round. But it was round, away from the gun, so that he was staring at the rear platform. And there his eyes, widened in shock, saw a man on the deck, struggling like a headless hen. It was one of his ammunition supply numbers. Bill Walters, his mind registered numbly. He saw the man stagger to his feet, and the mess of bloodied pulp that had been his chest; then Walters fell sideways, striking his temple on the ready-use locker, and then he tumbled to the deck in a lifeless heap.
“Ernie . . . Ernie . . . For Christ’s sake, Ernie, what’s up?”
With the hammering of the shells finished and the plane’s noise dying, Carella heard that urgent shout clearly. It came from his trainer. Involuntarily he put his left hand up to wipe at his dry mouth and suddenly his mouth was wet - horribly, stickily wet. He spat, and stared at the redness of his hand. Then, like a plumber tracing the source of a leak, his eyes went up his arm and saw the welling gash near his shoulder. Jesus, he’d caught one! But still, no pain, not even weakness.
“I’m right, Ernie,” he croaked, then coughed his throat clear. “I’m right! Where’s the Jap?”
“On the port beam,” the trainer shouted back over the gun, “coming in for another run.”
And so he was. A quick close-range run this time, to catch those close-range weapon crews while they were still bemused, striving to reload their guns.
“Then get on to the bastard!” Carella yelled.
Being mounted on the middle of the ship, the pompom could train to both port and starboard. The trainer whirled his wheel and she came round swiftly. And she was fully loaded.
“Trainer on!”
Carella could see he was. Staring through his sight he forced himself to forget his arm; forced calmness on the riot of his mind; forced everything out of his head but the need to keep the winged shape of the Zero in the centre of his sight, like a fly in a web. His left hand moved the laying wheel slightly, depressing the four silent barrels just a little as the range shortened, while his right hand curled round the smooth brass of the trigger.
Now, now, shouted his fear, but Wait... wait... cautioned his skill and experience. And then the Zero was firing, and the whole of him screamed NOW, and this time his fingers squeezed.
The four barrels coughed and spat.
He saw the tracer of lesser guns, and ignored it. He knew his own, larger red meteors streaked out, and depressed a fraction to bring the fiery stream into contact. Now he was hitting; some sparks shooting off at an angle, ricochets, but others winking out as they hit the Zero, and these he knew had penetrated inside.
There was not much time, but with 480 explosive shells a minute converging into a cone, and that cone laid on the target, you don’t need all day. The two-pounder shells hit and exploded and ripped the Zero’s unarmoured body apart. It came on, out of control - yet still a fuel-laden menace, a bomb.
Sainsbury had already ordered the wheel hard-over.
The plane came hurtling in with a rush and a roar and Spindrift leaned her slender body over and slipped her stern clear by about five yards. The plane hit the water in a flaming streak and exploded. It was this harsh sound that told Carella he’d won, for his target had flashed out of his sight. Then the trainer yelled, “Got the bastard!” and Carella got up from his seat. He stepped off the mounting, smiling. He meant to smile, he thought he was smiling, but what the loading numbers saw was a blood-caked grimace of his upper lip through which his teeth looked out. He started to walk round the rear of the gun to share congratulations with his trainer. But suddenly he couldn’t see; understandably, for loss of blood had brought unconsciousness. Luckily one of the ammunition supply numbers was quick, and caught him on his crashing way to the deck.
Long range naval action, firing perhaps over ten or fifteen miles of sea, with more than a minute between the despatch and arrival of shells, is somewhat of a slow motion affair. There is fear, of course, even in such relatively languid activity - - the atomising of battlecruiser Hood by one shell from Bismarck will forever linger in the memories of naval men. But that was a devilishly evil strike, penetrating to a magazine, and normally a long-distance battle imposes no great physical hardship; warships that can fire so far mount big guns, which are loaded mechanically, by the movements of levers.
But the action between fighters and a ship, even if she be a battleship, but especially a destroyer, has nothing to equal it in the matter of ferocity, intensity, and harsh immediacy. This comes close to being man-to-man fighting. You sweat your guts out to load and fire the guns by hand, over ranges that can come down to a matter of yards instead of miles, and you sweat with fear. There may be a threat more menacing than a dive-bomber or fighter screaming in at you, but I have yet to meet it. This sort of attack is the personification of malevolence: intimate, direct, and medically shocking. That shell-blasting bat out of hell is coming straight for you. Here is no projectile rising from almost below the earth’s curve and lifting into the stratosphere before coming down... where? Here is that snarling bastard of a fighter, right here in full and horrible view, and it’s you and him. Of course, that pilot’s not too happy about your muzzle flaring at him, or the other dozen or so doing their best to claw him out of the sky, but you’d never bloody well know it! And you don’t think overmuch about his feelings...
Though the men on Spindrift’s bridge had in no way exerted themselves physically, like the men at the guns and in the magazines, they had still been drained by the close ferocity of the attacks; for unlike the actual gunners, these men had been free to see it all, from the commencement of the attack to its near-disastrous end, and thus were more mentally affected than the men busy at their weapons.
And so there was no cheering or throwing-up of caps on the bridge, nor even exultation. Just quiet and private thankfulness that they still lived. And, gradually growing, hatred against an enemy who had tried so viciously to kill them, and who had caused them such fear.
Perhaps half a minute passed before Sainsbury, who had saved the ship and borne most of the responsibility for the whole action, let out a long slow breath and turned to his navigating officer.
“Come down to twenty-five knots, Pilot, put her on-course for Jomard Passage.” “Aye aye, sir.”
“Damage report, Number One.” Now, with the spell broken, it was time for just a small joke. “Luckily he hit the starb’d side of the bridge. My cabin should still be intact.” Caswell smiled dutifully. “I think there was at least one man killed on the pom-pom. Check that, please, and let me know how the layer is.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Caswell went off and Sainsbury took out the director phone. “What’s happening with the main bomber formation?”
“They’re almost out of range, sir, still heading for the coast.”
“Excellent. Keep tracking them. We’ll remain closed-up until you lose them.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
And that was that. There was nothing more he could do. The ship was on-course, at a fast clip for home. Caswell was checking the damage, which should be slight. Below him at both gun mountings men were busy clearing away the empty cordite cylinders and restocking the ready-use lockers. Spindrift had fulfilled her function of reporting an enemy attack. She was still alive. What he really wanted to do was to get down to his cabin for a couple of headache tablets; the continuous roar of guns, the continuous tension, had given him a beauty. But other men seemed to be unaffected - youth, he supposed - and while those bombers were still in radar range he must remain on the bridge. The power and the privilege... Pilot said:
“It’ll be moonlight tonight, sir. Do you think they’ll have a crack at us on the way back?”
“I doubt it. First, they’ll have to fly quite some way to the south of their homeward course, and second, they should have expended their bomb loads.”
“Let’s hope so.”
Pilot started to turn away. As he did so Sainsbury noticed him squeezing his eyes shut. On impulse, he said: “Anything wrong, Pilot?”
“Ah... not really, sir. Just a bit of a headache. In fact, a bugger of a one. Those damn guns...”
“Well, now, we have a deal of foul ground ahead of us. Can’t have my navigating officer squinting at chart soundings, eh? Send the bosun’s mate down to the sickbay for a couple of headache tablets.”
“Thank you, sir. Bosun’s mate!”
Sainsbury hesitated. Then, Damnit, he thought. What good was the power without some of the privilege? “Bosun’s mate.”
“Sir?”
“Bring me a couple, too.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Captain and navigator looked at each other; a smile from eye to eye. Sainsbury’s pain seemed to easing already; Pilot must be a good eight years younger than him.
* * *
Unusually, but thankfully, the weather had stayed calm for the whole of the mission. Spindrift slipped through the jaws of the reef entrance and came to her anchor. The town itself seemed to have suffered no special damage - probably concentrated on Jackson Strip and the other landing areas, Sainsbury thought - but at Pilot’s gesture he saw that some attention had been paid to the harbour. Over to their left the merchantman was resting on the bottom, masts and upperworks showing.
“The old MacDhui,” Pilot said. “She used to bring our supplies up. Our early warning didn’t do her much good.”
Sainsbury tensed a littled, before he recognised that Pilot had simply made a truthful observation; he wouldn’t make so crass a comment on the captain’s decision to continue with the patrol after Mack’s loss. Yet this suspicion, even so momentary, had Sainsbury reflecting that he was still nervy. Why? came the automatic self-analysis. It wasn’t the action, nor the natural fear it had surfaced: he’d had plenty of both, without this residual tautness of mind. It was the ship, he knew. He had just taken her, and he’d almost lost her. Like Seamew... He had to stop this nonsense. “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” President Roosevelt had said on his election. Spot on.
“On the bearing,” Pilot said, and Sainsbury returned his mind to its proper job.
“Let go starb’d anchor.”
A hammer swung, the cable slip fell free, the anchor plumetted down, the ship moved slowly on and laid out her cable along the harbour bottom. Sainsbury put her gently astern, to take the way off, and presently the Sub reported form the foc’s’le, “Ship has her cable, sir.”
Spindrift was stopped, lying into the wind - wind-rode - with her sharp nose pointing over the reef towards the sea.
“Finished with main engines,” Sainsbury said, which was the definitive end of the mission, his first in her. “Fall-out special seadutymen. Usual leave, Number One.” “Aye aye, sir.”
He went down the ladder and turned into the passage leading to his cabin. But outside the wheelhouse door he halted. The special sea-dutymen coming out halted too. They saw his thin face, mouth puckered in thought, and they wondered what the hell they had done wrong. Then he swung abruptly and went down the next ladder to the irondeck.
“Jeez, that look,’ said the telegraphman of the port engine, “I thought we were in, boots and all.’
“He wasn’t looking at you, but through you,” said Smith the coxswain. “If you’re in, you’ll know about it. I’ll see to that. Come on, get the lead out.”
Sainsbury turned in under the break of the foc’sle and walked along the passage to the sickbay door. As he opened it he took off his cap. Doherty looked up from his little desk, frowning, then he jumped up. Apart from on Saturday rounds, this was the first time he’d seen a captain in the sickbay.
“Sir?”
“No panic, Doc,” Sainsbury said easily. “All well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fine.” He stopped beside the double bunk, looking at the patient in the top one. “Well, Stoker Graham, how’s the leg?”
“Hundred per cent, sir.” Graham sat up, unaccountably pleased that the new captain knew his name, and without reference to the surgeon. “I, er. . .”
“Yes?”
“Should be up and about soon, sir. No, ah, need to go into hospital ashore.”
Sainsbury was well aware of sailors’, which included stokers’, aversion to being transferred from their ship in a forsaken port like Moresby. Had if been Sydney or Melbourne they might have overcome their aversion.
“Well now, that depends on the surgeon.”
“We can look after him, sir,” Doherty smiled, glad that Sainsbury had not mentioned gangrene. As with all hospitals, what a patient doesn’t know about what might have been doesn’t hurt him.
“Good.” Sainsbury bent down to the lower bunk. “And you, Leading-Seaman Carella. Ready for a nice soft spell ashore, eh?”
“Like hell! Ah . . . She’ll be apples, sir. Just a scratch.”
“Doc?”
“Rather extensive laceration of the deltoid muscle, sir, and some damage to the long head of the triceps.”
“Mmmm,” murmured Sainsbury.
“Christ!” jerked Carella. “Look, sir, I don’t feel no pain at all! Felt worse when that leopard got at me, and I didn’t have to go into no hospital for that, even.”
“Leopard?” Sainsbury said, as did Doherty’s frown.
“Well, I used to be in a circus, see, and this cat got out and I tried to stop him.”
“Which he didn’t like, apparently,” Sainsbury said deadpan. Sailors, Buster Crewe had advised, you’ve got to understand them. “What on earth were you doing in a circus?”
‘I was the sharpshooter, sir. Used to shoot fags and things out of Barbarella’s mouth.”
“Barbarella...?”
“Me partner. Blonde, blossomy, y’know? Her real name was Ethel, so we made the other up. St. Barbara being the patron saint of gunners.”
“Oh. I see.”
“I never hit her once, neither.”
“Thank heavens for that. And so, oddly enough, you were made layer of the pom-pom?”
“That’s it, sir,” Carella said eagerly. “I got me marksman’s badge, y’see, and the pom-pom o’course is a pretty important gun...”
“It is indeed.” Remembering that Zero. “Well, Doc?”
Funny, Doherty was thinking, how remote this bloke can seem, and yet at the same time draw you in; let you know his thoughts, make you an accomplice. He made his face and voice solemn.
“Well, sir, I managed to suture the affected parts all right. So long as he doesn’t have to climb the mast or pull a... lifeboat, he should be on deck in a few days.”
“I think we can rely on Leading-Seaman Carella performing the minimum amount of exercise. Eh, Carella?”
“Sure thing, sir! Well...”
“Then he can remain on board.” Looking at Doherty, but speaking to Carella, he ended: “He didn’t do a bad job on that Zero. I wouldn’t like to lose him.”
Sainsbury left the sickbay a happier place than when he’d entered it. Which, as Buster Crewe might nod, is all part of the ploy.
Spindrift was granted six days in harbour. After the loss of Mack, authority ashore had decided that Moresby’s own radar, and its spotters up in the Owen Stanley Mountains, must suffice to give warning of approaching bombers. She was not given patrol, or even convoy duty. This, coupled with other evidence, gave Sainsbury much ammunition for reflection. As he said to Caswell, enjoying a four o’clock beer in the captain’s cabin:
“This morning makes the tenth destroyer to come in here for fuel and supplies.”
“Not to mention those three heavy cruisers,” Caswell nodded.
“All American,” Sainsbury mused. “Is this normal procedure?”
“Not here, sir, no way. I’ve been based on Moresby for about six months now, and have never seen more than the occasional destroyer in for something or other; slight damage, fuel shortage due to bad weather, things like that.”
“Well, Splinter?” By now, the nickname sounded natural.
Caswell took a pull at his beer and laid the glass down. “I think there’s something big building up. Bloody big, if you ask me.”
“Agreed.”
“There are only two questions - when, and where.”
“Three. Are we to be included?”
“You’ve got me there, sir.”
“Mmmm. There have been some convoys, and there is always the need for patrols. Yet we’ve been kept here.”
“Ah...”said Caswell.
“Exactly,” said the boss, “Have the other half?”
* * *
They were finishing the second bottle, and their pleasant little chat, when a knock came at the door. It was opened before Sainsbury had closed his mouth on the usual “Come.”
“Yes, Yeoman? Sailing orders for Sydney?”
The yeoman offered the very briefest smile. “There’s a big American cruiser coming in, sir.”
“Oh?” Sainsbury’s eyebrows added: And why should this require your presence here? The yeoman told him.
“She’s still well out, sir. As soon as she was in visual she flashed us. Asked our name. When I gave it, she requested the commanding-officer’s presence on board as soon as she’s anchored.”
That was reason enough for the yeoman’s presence. The officers glanced at each other. Sainsbury said, “Thank you, Yeoman,” and to Caswell, “We’re ready for sea?”
“Except for libertymen.”
“How many?”
“Twelve, sir.”
“Some recommendation for Moresby as a tourist paradise.” The tone was light but his eyes were gleaming. “They’ll probably all be in the pub. You’d better recall them, Number One.”
The use of Caswell’s title changed the atmosphere.
“Aye aye, sir,” he acknowledge crisply, and hurried out.
Sainsbury took a quick shower and changed into fresh khakis. For the first time, holding his shirt and looking at the shoulder pads, he wished he carried heavier weight there. Two rings with a thin one in between seemed pitifully junior compared to four big ones. Ah well, he thought, that American captain had been a lieutenant-commander once. Maybe he’d remember his junior days. Then Sainsbury remembered that they were both commanding-officers, size of ships and rank regardless, and that naturally brought him to his next thought: why in hell was he worrying about his reception?
When he went on deck and walked aft to the gangway, the cruiser was shaping-up for the reef entrance.
Sainsbury checked that the piping party and signalman were ready, then he raised his binoculars. Their lenses brought the American on to the quarterdeck. She was big, indeed. One of the latest, probably Baltimore-class he judged. Two triple-gunned turrets on the forepart, with a third invisible to him abaft her superstructure. Nine 8-inch guns; with batteries of 5-inch and anti-aircraft quick-firers sited both sides amidships. He knew all her relevant details, for five minutes earlier he had studied the identification book. She displaced 16,000 tons full load, and could raise thirty-three knots, damn near as fast as Spindrift. And as heavy as a German pocketbattleship. No doubt about the Yanks - nothing but the biggest. But he refused to be over-awed. This dark-grey brute had nothing like the radar and fire-control system of a British 10,000-ton cruiser. Again, at once, he wondered about his defensive attitude. National pride, he supposed, then put it from his mind, for Caswell had said, “Pipe”.
The pipes of the quarterdeck party, including Hooky Walker, shrilled out their respect to this senior member of an Allied Navy, and the signalman lowered Spindrift’s ensign. With a sudden, unreasoned and unanalysed surge of pride, Sainsbury thought: no bloody Jap or German could cause that flag to be lowered! Then he was saluting, with all hands on the upper-deck standing to attention, while across the water came the cruiser’s piped acknowledgement of the little ship’s salute. They waited, for the senior ship must give the carry-on order first; it came, whereupon Hooky’s party blew the carryon and the ensign was hoisted again.
“Have the boat alongside, please, Number One.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
There was time enough - a cruiser does not come to her anchor like a destroyer - but Sainsbury was more used to the Royal Navy, and for all he knew this American captain might order him on board, up a Jacob’s ladder, even before the cruiser was anchored. So he waited, with the boat at the gangway, but no order came.
“Big bugger,” Caswell commented, looking now at the cruiser’s stern. “Good Lord, she’s got two catapults, one either side of the quarterdeck.” His eyes squinted. “But I see no planes.”
“They’re stowed in a hangar below the quarterdeck,” Sainsbury said casually, whereupon Caswell squinted at him. But before the source of his knowledge could be questioned Sainsbury said:
“What’s the position with the libertymen?”
“The motor-cutter’s inshore, sir, and I saw a group of them coming on to the pier. Shouldn’t be long now.”
Sainsbury nodded. At that moment there came an iron rumbling of thunder from the cruiser as she let go her anchor. A few minutes later she lowered her port-side gangway. The sight of this resolved a small dilemma for Sainsbury: as a captain, in actual position if not in rank, he would normally be entitled to use the starboard gangway, which was reserved for the use of senior officers. It seemed as if the cruiser would not be in port long, and therefore was not bothering with two gangways. Fair enough. As he went down into the boat he saw a fuelling lighter heading for the American. Topping-up her bunkers and then off - where? A swirl of excitement began to move in Sainsbury’s guts.
“There’s no starb’d gangway down, sir,” said the boat coxswain.
“That’s all right. Port side.”
“Aye aye, sir. Bear off forrard.”
Port or starboard, the gangway led up to the quarterdeck. As he stepped on to it, saluting the pipes’ salute for a commanding-officer, Sainsbury felt surprise at the apparent smallness of the quarterdeck; until he realised that what in other cruisers was mostly empty space, here was crammed with catapults and cranes, with 8-inch and 5-inch guns, and with nests of Bofors and Oerlikons. Her fire-power must be tremendous. And accurate? He put that from his mind easily enough, for another surprise hit him.
“Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury, sir?” said the smart officer of the day, and Sainsbury just managed to bite back his natural question. Obviously they had been given the name of his ship - and her commander’s name as well.
“Yes.”
“Follow me, please.”
Instead of being led to a cabin below the quarterdeck - he should have remembered that hangar down there he’d been so clever about
-Sainsbury followed the O.O.D. along what seemed a mile of deck and up into the towering bridge structure. His guide knocked on a steel door. Sainsbury heard something that sounded more like a grunt than “Come”. The O.O.D. opened the door, said “Lieutenant-Commander Sainsbury, sir,” and then withdrew with what seemed unseemly haste.
Sainsbury stepped into the cabin, and in that precise moment knew that O.O.D.’s haste was actual.
He disliked the face at once. It was heavy, with bulbous lips, and set on a bull neck above a body and broad as a bear’s. Hairy with it; more like a seven o’clock shadow on his face, hair sprouting up above the top button of his shirt, hair thick on the backs of his hands. And a dark glowering look bent on the visitor.
“Good afternoon, sir,” said Sainsbury.
“Good God,” said the captain.
“I beg your pardon, sir.”
A waved paw ended that conversation. “I don’t have much time, Sainsbury. We sail in an hour.”
“Aye aye, sir. I’m ready in all respects for sea.”
“Christ...” He looked at Sainsbury as though he were moronic. “We. My ship and I. Not you, damnit.”
“I see.” Never in his career had Sainsbury been addressed like that. His head went back and his eyes looked coldly and steadily down his long nose at the American captain, still seated. “May I ask who I have the pleasure of addressing, sir?”
In that thin acidulous voice, the words cut across the cabin with the chill of a knife blade. The captain’s fists thumped on the table. Anger flared in his eyes. “Who in hell do you think you’re talking to?”
“I don’t know, sir. That was the purpose of my question.” And be damned to you, said Sainsbury’s eyes, still cold and steady. For a moment he thought the captain would jump him; then the American visibly forced the rage back under his face and jolted back in his chair.
“My name is Budensky, Captain, United States Navy. Happy now?”
“Thank you, sir. You wished to see me?”
“I had to see you.” Sainsbury decided to ignore the covert insult. “My orders, you understand?”
“Perfectly, sir. You mentioned the shortage of time. My orders, sir?”
It seemed that Captain Budensky might never have been addressed by someone like this, either. It was some time before he spoke again; his voice a slurring growl with the control he forced upon it.
“There is a large Japanese force out, including a carrier. We figure it’s heading for Guadalcanal. Can you figure why?”
Also with some degree of control, Sainsbury kept his voice even.
“They possibly mean to carry out a ship and aerial bombardment of American forces on the island, sir.”
“Brilliant. American forces is right. There aren’t any other forces on the goddam island. Or didn’t you know that?”
“Yes, sir. I also know that British and Australian forces happen to be somewhat heavily engaged in other parts of the world.”
“Goddamnit! That’s insolence!”
“It was not meant to be, sir. Nothing but a simple matter of national pride.”
“Christ on a crutch! Jamieson, get this tin-can driver the hell out of here! Brief him in the chart room.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Sainsbury swivelled. He had not noticed the man who had been at a book case to the right of the door, and who now came towards him; his lean face neutral but his eyes friendly.
“Commander Jamieson,” he introduced himself, and held out his hand. “Please come with me, Commander.” He turned his head a little. “I’ll bring the charts in later, Captain?”
Budensky hand-waved them out. Jamieson led the way, without a word, up several ladders and into a large chart room in rear of the bridge. He slid the door shut and turned.
“My God,” he said wonderingly. “You’ve got balls, Commander, I’ll say that for you.” He waited, expectantly. Sainsbury read his look accurately.
“Here, perhaps,” he said, and gave his vinegary smile. “But if he’d been a captain in my Navy - perhaps not so much.”
The answer seemed to please Jamieson. “He’s not all bullshit and bluster. He does know his job.”
“To be given a beautiful brute of a ship like this? I’m quite sure he does.”
That pleased the American, too. “Well, now, I guess you want to know what this is all about, huh? We’re part of a task force which is scheduled to patrol north-east of Bougainville, the most northerly island of the Solomons.”
Sainsbury nodded his understanding. Budensky still rankled, but most of his mind now was concerned with a mental picture of the seven main islands of the Solomons chain, near the bottom of which lay Guadalcanal.
“We think the Jap force will come down from Rabaul or the Admiralty Islands - anyway, to the north or north-west of our patrol area. Trouble is, we can’t be one hundred per cent sure. The Jap is a cunning bastard, and he just might come in at Guadalcanal from the eastward. If so, we want to know about it. You will patrol to the south of us and east of the Solomons - I’ll give you the exact area later - and report anything you find. Simple, eh?” Jamieson smiled. “Any questions?”
“Apart from codes and radio frequencies, only one.”
“Shoot.”
“Why were we selected for this possibly important, but certainly lonely, duty?”
“That one’s easy. The Admiral’s had your report about Mack. He also knows that you remained on patrol there instead of hightailing it for home. He plumped for Spindrift. Having seen you front up to the Old Man, I agree with his choice.”
“You are too kind, Commander,” said the visitor primly, and Jamieson’s immediate thought was, You’re putting me on. Then he took a closer look at the destroyer man’s face, which he had barely seen in the captain’s cabin, and he decided that this was for real; seeing more in that face and its eyes than primness.
They talked some more, professional business, then Jamieson escorted him back to the gangway. Sainsbury was in his boat before he remembered that he hadn’t asked the American how big the U.S. task force was, or its composition. But he did remember his intuitive feelings about the cruiser captain, and how uncannily they had been proved right. A superstitious man, Sainsbury, like most of his breed; he was mildly concerned at what seemed some sort of clairvoyance. But by the time his own gangway loomed close his analytical mind was laughing at itself: the truth was that he had simply, and naturally, felt a sense of inferiority at meeting a strange officer of such relative eminence, hence his worry before the meeting. As for the rest of it, Budensky was simply, and naturally, a bastard of a man. He might just as easily have been one of nature’s gentlemen. Intuition? Nonsense!
Just the same, he felt an odd relief that a few patters of rain met him as he made Spindrift’s quarterdeck. The weather had been fine for too long, and sailors distrust that sort of benevolence. They would, he grinned to himself, whinge if a man was up ‘em. He said: “Libertymen, Number One?” “All aboard, sir. Ship ready in all respects for sea. Anchor at short stay.” That meant the cable had been heaved in until it was up-and-down, with the anchor just holding the bottom, ready to be broken clear.
“Intuition, Number One?” said Sainsbury, with his puckering smile. Caswell frowned slightly. “No, sir, just an educated guess.” “Exactly!” said Sainsbury, at which Caswell’s frown deepened, but his captain had neither the time nor inclination to enlighten him. “Hoist the boat. We sail at once.”
As they ran down along the underside of New Guinea’s long toe, retracing the course of Sainsbury’s first mission in Spindrift, the patters increased to a light steady rain. Looking like an aged pixie in his sou’wester hat, Sainsbury asked:
“Anything from the met. boys, Pilot?”
“Plenty, sir. There’s a front in from eastward of the Solomons. Looks like we’ll be running into some really heavy stuff. If, of course,” Pilot said casually, “we’re heading anywhere near the Solomons.”
Intuition . . . “What makes you pick on the Solomons?”
Pilot smiled. “Well, sir, there’s obviously been a build-up of American forces. Just as obviously, considering your visit to that cruiser, we have something to do with it. But as it’s unlikely that the Japs will be wasting their time to the southward, off the Queensland coast, and as the Yanks have landed in parts of the Solomons, my guess is we’ll be heading that way, or else north up towards Rabaul.”
“Q.E.D., eh? Your first... Educated guess is right. Chart table, please.”
They bent in over the chart together. Sainsbury’s thin forefinger whispered over the white parchment: not up through Jomard Passage, their earlier route, but down to and round Rossel Island, which is the last island of the Louisiade Archipelago, off the tip of New Guinea’s toe, and then almost due eastward towards San Cristobal Island, which is the lowest of the Solomon Islands chain.
His finger, having traced this route to possible violence, or death, or even boring monotony, circled an area to the east of Malaita, the next island above San Cristobal, and lying directly opposite Guadalcanal.
“This is where we patrol. The American task force is looking for a Jap force, including at least one carrier, which they believe is coming down from the northward. However, it may circle out and come in at Guadalcanl from the east. If so, we will be there to spoil their little game. Simple, eh?”
“Nothing to it, sir. Presuming that we just have to sight and report...”
“Pilot,” Sainsbury said, “there are several things in life I am after, but death and glory are not amongst them.”
“Delighted to hear it, sir.”
“Yes. Lay off the necessary courses, please.”
Sainsbury backed away from the chart table and took out the PA mike. Precisely and briefly he told the ship’s company their job. “That’s all,” he ended.
“That’s all,” echoed Hooky Walker in the chiefs’ mess. “Just a sighting patrol. Like the last bastard?”
“Not to worry,” said Smith the coxswain, part of whose job was the maintaining of morale; not that it was needed in this seasoned mess. “The Yanks must have pretty sound Intelligence to think the Japs are coming down from up north, otherwise they’d have their fleet where we’re going.”
“Spot on,” nodded the gunner’s mate. “You can’t argue against that, Hooky.”
“I don’t want to,” Hooky smiled grimly. “There’s only one little fly in the Swain’s ointment: just how good is the Yank’s Intelligence?”
“Well now,” said Smith, “that’s beyond the scope of this tactical discussion. It’s my bet we’re headed for nothing but a boring patrol, with all the action miles away.”
He should not have said that, and he knew he shouldn’t, even without the evidence of their accusing faces. For sailors are even more superstitious than captains: they believe that big troubles, like big waves, come in threes. First there was Mack; second there was the near-successful attack by those two Zeros; and third.?
“Oh for God’s sake!” growled Smith, “grow up, will you? Pass the canned cow.”
Silently the gunner’s mate slid the tin of condensed milk along the table.
On the bridge Pilot said, “Courses are laid, sir.”
“Very well.” Sainsbury stepped across. It took his eye only a few seconds to check that Pilot’s courses, representing a distance of hundreds of miles, ran through safe water. There was plenty of foul ground - reefs and banks and shoals - down to Rossel Island, but after that they had a fairly clear run across to San Cristobal. Sainsbury made to straighten up, then paused. His finger tapped the chart. Pilot looked, then frowned: the point in apparent question lay well south of San Cristobal, more than a hundred miles clear of their course.
“Sir?”
“Indispensable Reefs,” Sainsbury read the chart musingly. His finger moved. “We have Torres Island and Banks Island, Mellish Reef and Bellona Reef. All right. But a reef called Indispensable? Of all things a seaman can dispense with... I wonder what’s behind that name?”
Pilot was smiling: it is not unknown, but certainly unpleasant, for a navigating officer to have his courses questioned. “Yes, I see what you mean. Maybe a group of seamen, shipwrecked somewhere else, managed to land on that reef. They’d find it indispensable.”
“Perhaps you’re right. Let’s hope we don’t find it. All right, Pilot, sea-cabin.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
For several minutes after the captain had left Pilot stood frowning down at the chart. For months he had been using these charts, and he must have seen that odd name a score of times. But the Old Man had noticed it. And he was right. How could any bloody reef be called Indispensable? And why hadn’t he noticed the oddity? Smiling slightly, Pilot returned to the binnacle. Just a little, Sainsbury’s stature had grown in his mind.
* * *
The meteorological people had been right. For hour after hour Spindrift ran steadily on, and steadily the rain increased. It was nothing to seriously incommode her - she had more than enough visibility to avoid a collision - but these weather conditions hardly augured well for her scouting mission, which required all the visibility she could get. A few miles to port or starboard, a whole fleet could pass by her unseen. In a case like that she would have to rely on her search radar making contact with such a large steel mass. There was one consolation: if she did make contact with such a group where she was headed, then there could be no doubt that the strange ships were enemy.
Spindrift reached her assigned patrol area at a few minutes past noon of a weeping day. The sea had been logged as moderate, with a wind speed of 18 knots. A battleship would have snored through this; Spindrift bucked into the ascend of the seas, coming down at her from the northward. Invisibly far to her left lay the narrow-gutted island of Malaita, while beyond that again was Guadalcanal; on her right, to starboard, reached the grey immensity of the Pacific, empty for a thousand miles right out to the Gilbert and Ellice Islands - and they were only specks on the map.
Up and down the distant length of Malaita she coursed, pitching on the northerly leg, rolling with the seas astern on the southerly, and for all she heard or saw she might have been the only ship left in the world.
But the four copper aerials strung between her tail foremast and her stumpy mainmast aft - these heard, and told her that she was alone only here.
The chief telegraphist himself came up to the bridge. Sainsbury listened with masked eagerness, then he took the signal and marked a position on a large-scale chart which included all the Solomon Islands and New Britain further north; and then he sent for Caswell.
“Good news, sir?”
“News, certainly, Number One, but whether good or bad it’s too early to tell. The American task force has contacted and is engaging a sizeable Japanese force here.” His finger indicated Choiseul Island, the second from the top of the Solomons chain. “That is two hundred miles north-west of our present position.”
“Thank God for that,” Caswell grinned nervily.
“Hmmm. Do I detect a lack of patriotic fervour, Number One?”
“Good heavens no, sir! Nothing like that, at all. I wish we were up there.”
“Then your giving thanks to the Deity simply referred to the fact the American Admiral and his Intelligence were correct in their assumptions of the enemy’s movements?”
“Of course, sir. What else, sir?”
“You lie like a cow in a bog, Number One.”
“Yes, sir. Can we go home now?”
“I wish to hell we could,” Sainsbury said, peering at the murk about them. “We’re wasting our time here.” He had spoken lowly, but now lifted his voice to normal. “However, we must remain on station until cancelling orders are received. There are staff officers in Moresby,” pre-empting Caswell’s objection, “who know where we are. They don’t forget destroyers, Splinter, even one as lonely as us.”
“I suppose you’re right, sir.”
“I think I am. Just the same, warn the wireless-office to keep a strict listening watch on Moresby’s frequency.”
“Will do, sir,” Caswell grinned. “I’ll bet a bee to a bull’s bum we’re on our way back inside a couple of hours.”
Caswell lost his bet. They were on their way, in less time than that, but not back to Moresby.
The time was almost exactly 4 p.m. - Sainsbury knew this because idly he had noted Mr. Meeking, the torpedo-gunner, mark their dead-reckoning position on the chart before being relieved of the afternoon watch by Caswell - when the phone howled and the voice spoke those dreaded words in his ear:
“Radar office, sir. Surface contact right ahead.”
That was all. Sainsbury had not yet come to know his radar operators well, and so there was an edge of harshness to his demand:
“Can’t you give me more than that? Who is speaking?”
“Petty-Officer Sanderson, sir. I’m sorry, but we have a fair bit of grass on the tube.”
Sainsbury was sorry too - a little. Sanderson must know his job.
“Understood,” he said. “But can’t you make a stab at it? Big or small, just one contact?”
“I... wanted to be more certain, sir.”
Sainsbury understood that, too. A possibly vital report to a new captain. He said:
“Let your head go, Sanderson, give it a whirl.” Caswell blinked at him. “You’re the only man in the ship who can.”
That did it. “Yessir. I’d say she’s a big ship - she must be to show up through this grass. Range, about ten miles. That’s only approximate...”
“I don’t want it to the nearest inch. Ten miles is fine. Now take a stab at her course.”
“I’d say she’s coming directly towards, sir.”
She would be, Sainsbury thought, his mind a mesh of calculations. They had been lucky to contact her right ahead; but now that she was, she would be on a course opposite to their own; rushing to get down the length of Malaita and then to alter round to the westward for Guadalcanal. But what was she? Cruiser, battleship, or - good God! - a carrier? Sanderson broke into his mind’s whirl.
“Got her on the plot now, sir. Definitely coming towards, speed twenty-five knots.”
“Good man. Try and pick up any escorts.”
Sainsbury pressed the phone back. Caswell was facing him, staring his questions.
“Big ship coming towards,” he told him. “Range ten miles, speed twenty-five knots.”
“Jesus. Cruiser or battleship!”
“I don’t think so. They’d have escorts, and Sanderson hasn’t found any. But a carrier,” Sainsbury said distantly, “carries her own escorts. Sixty or more of them.”
Caswell tried to make his tone normal; through the clenching in his guts. “But the Jap is up north. How come this big bastard’s down here?”
“The Jap’s cunning,” Sainsbury said, unconsciously echoing Commander Jamieson. “This fellow steamed well out to the eastward, then turned to come in here - which is precisely why we’re here. While the main force is engaging the Americans off Choiseul, this bloke comes in for an unobstructed attack on Guadalcanal.
Simple - like all brilliant plans.”
Caswell nodded, his face grim. “And the only thing in front of him is us.”
“Top of the class, Splinter. But thanks to this weather there are no aircraft up.”
“If she is a carrier.”
“Exactly. Pilot, take her out five miles then resume our present course. We must make visual contact.”
“Aye aye, sir. Speed?”
Sainsbury did not hesitate, which Caswell was to remember. “What will she do in this, Splinter? Twenty-five? Maybe thirty?”
“It’ll be bloody rough, sir, but she might take thirty.”
“Revolutions for thirty knots,” Sainsbury ordered crisply. “Warn all hands, and clear the foc’s’le.”
A warm feeling moved in Caswell at this instant acceptance of his opinion, but it was short-lived. Already at twenty knots, Spindrift felt the increased thrust of her two great screws almost at once. She was a destroyer, all power and guts, with 34,000 superheated horses in her boilers. Light of body, lean of flank, she dug her sharp stem into the side of an advancing liquid hill, sprayed whiteness widely on both sides, lifted her forepart and then plunged down into the following trough. She shook from stem to stern. On the bridge they held on with both hands, so fierce and wild was her thrust; an unwary man flung back or forward would have a limb snapped like a rotten stick.
Ten minutes of this beserk progress and the range was down to five miles. The port lookout was first with his report; held snugly in his seat he was the only man who could use his binoculars properly. His voice, young and scared, pitched shrilly across the bucking bridge.
“Bridge! Bearing Red three-oh... aircraft carrier!”
Sainsbury wedged his skinny hips between one of the soft-iron spheres and the binnacle. Red three-oh was thirty degrees off the port bow. He tensed his body, forcing it into the narrow gap, and raised his glasses. Given the bearing, he had the target at once. No question whatever - long line of flat deck, the bridge and funnel, or “island”, rearing up from the far side amidships. And no planes on her deck. But plenty of time for that - Guadalcanal was almost two hundred miles away.
A squall of rain swept the Jap from sight. And Spindrift... He had to get out of this visual range fast.
“Stab’d fifteen. Come down to twenty knots.”
She had performed magnificently; there was no point in risking further strain on her rudder or screws with a high-speed, reeling turn. Even so, she lurched far over as Smith whirled the wheel on, taking the seas bodily inboard along her low iron-deck amidships. From everywhere on the messdecks there came the crash of crockery, and men hung on for their lives.
Then she was round, and Smith slipped the fifteen degree angle off her rudder, and now with wind and seas astern she rolled instead of pitching into them; a regular roll that could be anticipated and countered by legs trained to do so.
“Twenty-five knots,” Sainsbury said, then took out the radar phone. “Captain. You still have her?”
“The biggest blip I’ve ever had, sir! Range is only six miles.”
Sainsbury’s smile was a tight slitting of his lips. “I’ll try not to decrease that.” He replaced the phone. “Yeoman, take a signal. Carrier heading Guadalcanal. Spindrift.’ That’s all.”
Both the yeoman and Caswell stared at him. “You’ve forgotten the position, course and speed, sir,” Caswell said.
Even through his wire-taut tenseness Sainsburyenjoyed his brief moment: they didn’t know he had formed this signal long ago, in the event of its having to be used. “The message has to be kept to an absolute minimum, Number One, so they can’t get a fix on us. Agreed? Good. ‘Spindrift’ will tell all. The Admiral knows where we are, and so of course will know where that carrier is. He will assume that she’s not loitering, and an elementary exercise in navigation will give him her course to make Guadalcanal.”
“Well I’ll be buggered,” said Caswell.
“Probably. In fact, Yeoman, you can delete that word ‘heading’. Just make ‘Carrier Guadalcanal. Spindrift.’ Unless the Admiral is a complete moron, which I doubt, the very brevity of the message will carry its own implications. Yeoman?”
“Sure thing, sir,” nodded the yeoman, while he thought: You’re the queerest skipper I’ve shipped with - and the bloody cleverest. “In code, sir?”
“Most certainly. They’ll intercept, if they do intercept, only a short jumble of letters. They might guess there’s someone on to them. No point in telling them there is. Quick with it, man.”
“Aye aye, sir!”
The chief petty-officer telegraphist had been in the Service twenty-two years. He knew that the recipient of his message, in an Admiral’s battleship, would be hardly less experienced. His fingers moved on the transmitting key with a supple blur of swiftness. The electronic dots and dashes sped out at speed of 186,000 miles per hour; they had to travel two hundred miles.
It took several minutes - due to the physical distance between the battleship’s radio-room and its bridge - before the yeoman came up from the wireless-office voice piped and called across to Sainsbury:
“Message received and understood, sir.”
“Thank God for that,” Caswell said fervently, for all of them. Then he grinned widely at his captain. “In a following sea she’ll take thirty-five knots!”
But the yeoman had not finished. His next words were short and apparently innocuous, yet that lowered an icy chill upon the bridge.
“More to follow, sir,” said the yeoman.
“Christ,” muttered Caswell, again for all of them.
Each man, as he waited, formed his own thoughts about what that cryptic message could mean. Congratulations? That was the bosun’s mate, the least experienced. Continue tracking the bastard? This was the consensus amongst most of the officers. Sainsbury deliberately kept his mind blank, so that it would be instantly ready to absorb whatever might come; he also kept his glasses on the starboard beam, where the enemy was, and gained some satisfaction from his inability to see her through the curtain of rain. He tried not to think of how quickly that curtain could part.
But not even he, even if he had been trying like the others to forecast the Admiral’s signal, could have guessed within a mile what it turned out to be.
“From the flagship, sir,” said the yeoman in a voice that was too controlled. “Can you slow her down? Guadalcanal’s airstrip presently unusable. Cruiser squadron heading to intercept at maximum speed, but will take at least seven hours to gain your present position. Act at your own discretion, but imperative that carrier’s speed is reduced.” The yeoman looked up from the signal sheet. “End of message, sir,” he said huskily.
“Holy Mother of God,” whispered Mr. Meeking, who was a Catholic.
None of the others spoke; they were stunned to silence. At those first words of the signal Sainsbury’s spine had tightened; now rage boiled like lava inside him. Act at your own discretion. What sort of puling crap was that! A let-out for the apology of a man who had made it? A straight-out order to attack would have been preferable. Sainsbury felt his anger sliding out of control. He clamped a fierce rein upon it. He turned away from their faces, forced himself to think. It was the hardest thing he had tried in his life, but within a short minute training and discipline, and the iron in the man, came up with a rational conclusion.
The Admiralty up there had a Jap task force, as well as the responsibility for the possible loss of Guadalcanal, on his plate. It was natural, elementary, that he should want the carrier slowed down. Was it so unnatural, then, that he should use the only weapon available to him for that purpose?
Sainsbury’s mind had cleared itself of the redness. As had so many captains of the Navy’s small ships before him, he came to his decision.
“Gentlemen,” he said, his eyes patrolling round their waiting faces, “I forgot who wrote them, but the words remain clear in my memory. They are these: ‘Speed in attack is the only hope of success against odds.’ We are up against tremendous odds, therefore we must act quickly.” His voice burred up to a commanding rasp. “Pilot, bring her round to come up astern of the enemy. Torps, prepare all tubes for firing starb’d side. Number One, do not open fire until we’re sighted. When you do, concentrate the whole main armament on her side midway between the flight-deck and water-level, using armourpiercing shell.”
Spindrift was already leaning on the turn towards. Caswell still felt shocked at what they were in for, but he had been given orders, and these jolted his professionalism into action.
“The side, sir? What about taking her guns?”
“She’ll have at least four batteries along each side. You can’t hope to take them all. In any case we’ll be flashing past her, the bearing will be changing extremely fast, and we’re a small target. They might not hit us, but we cannot miss hitting her side. If armourpiercing stuff gets in there amongst her planes and fuel, we’ll have done our job. No more argument, please,” Sainsbury said, and Caswell saw the fear and the huge weight of responsibility in the tightness of his face.
“Right, sir,” he said, ‘I’ll clobber the bastard.” And wished to God he’d said that in the first place.
“We’re almost astern of her,” Pilot called from the viewing position above the radar plot. “Shall I come round now?”
“Do that. Torps, how close in can I get without having your tin-fish running beneath her belly?”
“Been thinking about that, sir,” said Torps, almost brilliantly. It was mostly like that with the younger men, those with no responsibility other than their own weapon. “She’ll have a draught of at least twenty feet. My fish don’t dive much deeper than that anyway, and they regain their depth-setting quickly, so you could take her into, well, half a mile.”
There was a stretching moment of silence, while Torps was allowed to feel the unfunny idiocy of his remark. Sainsbury’s mind worked with heightened clarity, as usually happened when he was fearing and tense. They were covertly watching him, fearing too, waiting for the dreaded orders. But when they came he surprised them.
“Get Stoker Graham up on deck. Secure him on the deck port side abreast the bridge.”
Carella was already back on duty. My God, Caswell thought, he can think of a wounded man at a time like this! But he gave his orders quickly, and when he’d finished he heard the captain talking to Torps.
“We’ll be coming up on her port quarter. How’s that for a firing angle?”
“Not the best...” Torps started, and then, as if he had suddenly matured, “That’ll be fine, sir. How many do you want fired?”
The lot, Sainsbury’s mind screamed. “Just one,” he said. ‘With this muck it will be dark in an hour, and we’ll need some for later. It would be nice if you could get her screws or rudder.”
“Been thinking about that, sir,” Torps repeated himself, though not brightly. “But that means a much reduced target area. I could miss astern.”
Sainsbury nodded. “Do what you can, lad. Range, Pilot?”
“Three miles, sir.”
“Her radar’s not much,” Caswell said, “if she’s got any.”
“She’s got a thousand eyes . . . Bearing?”
“Green two-five, sir.”
Twenty-five degrees off the starboard bow. He was coming up nicely. He just might bring it off, if the Japs weren’t bothered about searching astern. But any minute now he must come into...
“Enemy in sight!” the yeoman called, but lowly, as if he might be heard over three miles of sea.
“Thirty-five knots,” Sainsbury snapped. “Standby to engage.”
He raised his binoculars, along with a dozen others. Now that he could see her his mind, after its initial shock, was running as fast and smooth as a flywheel. There was no time for fear, time only to see and judge. Twenty-five knots is fast for a vessel of 30,000 tons: the carrier spawned a boil of white from her broad stern, and from her port bow, the one visible to him, a huge fan of arching water. There were still no planes on her flight-deck, thank God, and in this rain there seemed to be no men. But she would have lookouts closed-up, and surely some gun mountings. But he was overhauling her rapidly, and even now . . . The thought thrilled him, as if an electric current had shot along his nerves. Even now, if she sighted him, he was in position and range to get of his torpedo. And each few seconds of immunity increased the chances of a hit. Of a hit against him, too - but his mind, now nothing but a lightning calculating machine, easily blocked off that nastiness.
She’ll turn, he thought. As soon as she sees the torpedo... no, as soon as she sights the ship she’ll swing away under hard-over rudder. Even a few degrees of turn will present her stem instead of her length. He should have warned Torps about that. But he was a torpedo-officer, he must be aware of all this.
“Range?”
“Just over a mile, sir.”
How long for a 40-knot torpedo to travel one mile? One and a half minutes. She could still get her wheel on and swing far enough...
“Enemy’s opened fire!” the yeoman shouted.
As his head started to turn Sainsbury saw the eyes flickering at him; but small and fast - some close-range weapon. Then he had shouted “Torps!” and Torps said into his phone, “Fire one!”
Sainsbury heard the whoosh of compressed air as the torpedo was spat out of its tube, then a multiple roar as Spindrift’s four guns fired together.
Haul off, his instinct urged him. He had engaged the giant, he had loosed a torpedo, he had performed his duty and salved his conscience. And, by God, he didn’t want to lose her, not Spindrift. So haul her clear.
But his guns had fired again. The first broadside had hit, bright red gouts from her looming side, and nothing big had come in return. Yet. He had maybe a minute before the Japs closed-up their main armament. Keep her here, on this steady course, give the guns time for another few broadsides. He might be able to do the job this time; just this once, instead of having to worry at the big bastard all night.
The second broadside hit. He saw it, plain and bright. Then realisation rushed in on him. He saw those hits because the shells had failed to penetrate her side. She must be armoured. Of course she would be, outside her tanks holding thousands of gallons of high-octane fuel. Fool! He should have aimed at the bridge, maybe got the captain and a bunch of senior officers. But Christ, she hadn’t started to turn yet!
She started to fire. From three separate mountings just below the level of the flight-deck much bigger stabs of flame lashed at him, yellow and ugly. Not forty knots, but two thousand miles per hour, those shells. The air ripped open above his head and just beyond her straining body the sea gouted whitely. Now instinct and professionalism combined.
“Hard-a-port!”
At thirty-five knots she answered Smith’s wheel like a racing car. The rushing sea met the angled rudder-face and shoved her stern round with rude force. Her slim bow swiped to the left and her body leaned far over to the right. In a moment she presented only her stern to the enemy, and into the wide white wake the Japs’s next salvo spouted. Then, at almost the same instant, beyond that cluster of columns there leaped another - much wider and higher, just one, rising with swift upthrust force up level with the top of the carrier’s bridge.
“Got the bastard!” jerked Caswell, and hard on his voice came the drumming beat of thunder.
Sainsbury felt no exultation, only a mixture of relief and worry.
“Midships, starb’d twenty,” he ordered automatically, to throw the Jap gunners off, then stared through his glasses. The lenses proved his fears. That wake at the stern still boiled, the bow-waves still arched high. One hit, against a length of almost a thousand feet, had slowed her little, if at all. He should have let his five torpedoes go. But he hadn’t, so forget that.
Shells spouted again, a full broadside of eight guns this time, but well clear to port. “Midships, steady as she goes.” Spindrift ran straight away from her giant enemy, straight into a rain squall.
Sainsbury walked quickly to the chart table and pulled out the identification book. God knows he’d seen her close and plain enough, and he had her in a moment. Thirty thousand tons, sixty aircraft, speed twenty eight knots; sixteen 5-inch guns, many 47 and 25 millimetre close-range weapons. He came back.
“Good work, Torps. Yeoman, make this: ‘Hayataka class carrier. Hit with one torpedo but no apparent slowing effect. Present speed twenty-five knots. Visibility failing. Will track ail night and make periodic attacks with my remaining nine torpedoes. Expect to meet cruiser squadron shortly.’ That’s all. Make it in plain language.”
Still scribbling, the yeoman hurried off.
“Nine torpedoes. You’re a fibber.” Caswell’s grin was tight with nerviness.
“They might not fall for the cruiser bit, but we’re a Fleet destroyer and most of them mount ten tubes. He’ll have to believe we do. In any case, they’ll be kept awake all night. Pilots too, I shouldn’t wonder, expecting to be blown open any time. Would you tuck yourself in, way down between decks?”
“Not with a mad destroyer loose...”
“War is mad, Splinter. But if we can keep them awake and nervy all night they won’t be so hot in the morning.”
“Like us.”
“Quite. However, we don’t have the responsibility of taking Guadalcanal out as an effective base, do we? Range, Pilot?”
“Four miles, sir.”
“That will do nicely. Put the ship on a parallel course to the enemy.” Sainsbury placed his skinny hands together before his chest, like a cardinal praying. His thoughts were somewhat harsher. “Now, Splinter, what do we do about this fellow tonight, eh?”
“You’ve just said it. Keep ‘em awake with the threat of an attack.”
“Ah, yes, but that is hardly good enough. The Admiral wants her slowed down.”
“If I weren’t an officer and a gentleman, in the presence of my captain, I’d say fuck the Admiral.”
“I have already thought along those lines, Splinter. Unfortunately we are, at least, officers. I saw a film once,” Sainsbury said with apparent irrelevance.
It was much easier out here, covered by the rain. “Did you now?” smiled Caswell, with heavy humour.
“The film concerned a grizzly bear, trying to get at a she-wolf with her new-born cubs.” Sainsbury paused, his forehead ridged in thought.
“What happened?” Caswell asked dutifully.
“The she-wolfs mate, the father of the cubs, did something about it. He went for the bear, snapping and snarling, time and time again. He had no hope of killing the big fellow, of course, but he certainly occupied him; turned him away from his intended course, as it were.”
“Ah...” said Caswell, soberly now.
“Yes. After some time at this, darting in and snapping and springing out again, the she-wolf managed to get well clear with her cubs. Are you with me, Splinter?”
“I think so. For bear and wolf and she-wolf, read carrier, us and, hopefully, Guadalcanal.”
“Bright, bright. There’s more than one way of killing a cat, or slowing a carrier. If we get ahead of him, then come in fast and fine on his bow, in a position where all his 5-inch guns can’t bear, then he simply must turn away, even if we don’t actually fire torpedoes. He cannot afford not to.”
Caswell rubbed his hands together. “Of course! And he’d have to turn away, not just a few degrees - a full torpedo-avoiding turn. Then he’d have to swing back. And in we come again. We’d be like a... a... bloody cattle dog, shepherding cows!”
“Your metaphor is somewhat mixed, but, yes, that is the idea.”
“But not till darkness, for God’s sake?”
“Not till darkness, Splinter. Now I think we and the ship’s company should get something to eat. It looks like being a long long night.”
At seven o’clock, with full darkness and with his men fed, Sainsbury took Spindrift well up ahead of his huge enemy, swung her, steadied her, and drove her in on the first of her white-knuckled dashes to hell.
Nothing had changed; except that the Jap was fifty miles closer to his objective. The sagging clouds still wept, the wind and sea were at the same strength, and on this northerly course made her pitch and screw like a thing demented.
There were several things in her favour, and God knows she needed them. No planes were launched: even if they had been in the darkness, the lack of visiblity would have prevented them from finding her, and thus bombing her to death. Apart from B-mounting, she would not need her guns, and so her motion did not come into it. Even the tubes were unaffected by her bucking, for the remaining four were already loaded, and it needed only the pulling of a lever to empty them.
These things, and her speed, she had. Everything else was against her.
Over a dinner which he’d had to force down, Sainsbury had perfected his attack tactics. This information had been passed not only to the officers but to all hands. Only a few of them would be directly concerned with what he meant to do, but the lives of all of them were hideously at stake, and men in that situation are helped if they know what is happening.
He wouldn’t have had a hope without radar; but Petty-Officer Sanderson on his set kept him precisely informed of the enemy’s position and range, so that Sainsbury knew the right moment to order:
“Fire starshell.”
B-mounting was ready. Swept by lashing spray the loading numbers had their shells fused and then rammed them in the gun. It bellowed, a brief sharp sound that the wind carried instantly away. But those shearing starshell laughed at the wind; high up they rose, then burst into white incandescence above the carrier. The flares came swinging slowly down, revealing their enemy in all her mindstunning hugeness.
“Yeoman,” Sainsbury said, in a flat quiet voice.
The signalman was already at his ten-inch signalling lamp, with the carbon arcs switched on and burning. He pressed a lever and a sword of light leaped out to fix itself on the Jap’s bridge. Not to blind them - they had filtered night glasses against that - but to let them know where their enemy was. Close; in perfect position for firing torpedoes.
It worked.
“There!” Pilot shouted, uselessly pointing. “She’s turning away.”
“Some bear,” Caswell said through his tight slit of a grin. Sainsbury heard him, but his words were for Smith.
“Port twenty.”
This, too, was part of his tactics. If he turned to starboard he would take Spindrift down past the carrier’s port-side guns. But as she was swinging to starboard, his turn to port kept him more or less ahead of her bow, and so clear of her guns’ bearing. Only a few minutes, but at her speed that was all she needed.
The carrier kept on her swing away; she could not know that no torpedoes had been fired; she did have to assume they had been. Now, instead of heading southeast to get round the bottom of Malaita, her course was almost due west, straight for the coast of Malaita. She was losing time and distance, and must lose more as she turned to regain her original course.
If Spindrift could keep this up long enough, without being blown out of the water, then the American squadron, rushing south at maximum speed, should come up in time.
If...
“It worked, by God,” Caswell exulted. “And not a shot in return! Y’know, sir, we might have got her with a torpedo that time.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Sainsbury, who had certain ideas about the use of his king-hitters. “Steady her up, Pilot, take her out again to five miles.”
Out she went, with Sanderson keeping his electronic fingers on the target, telling the captain that she was beginning her turn back, and in she went again.
The tactics were the same as before, simply because the main equation, the position of the enemy’s guns, had not changed, and could not be changed. A gun can elevate or depress, it can fire shorter or longer, and the carrier’s could fire at both aircraft and surface ships. But a gun is fixed in a mounting, and the length of its training arc is fixed; in fact, limited by strong metal stops on its training rack. Otherwise, in the heat of action, a gun might be trained right round forward or aft and blow part of its own ship to pieces. Thus, as long as Spindrift came in from ahead, before the carrier could engage her with guns she would have to shift her bulk bodily round to allow the guns to bear. There was nothing, of course, to stop her doing precisely that. She had only to sight her enemy, and position herself accordingly. If she’d carried radar, Spindrift by now would be split open on the bottom of the Pacific.
“You’ll still come in on her port bow, sir?” Pilot asked.
“He’ll expect us to starb’d - I hope,” Sainsbury answered. “Yes, same as before.”
And it was. She came bucketting in, forepart awash with spray and her White Ensign stiff as a board at the mainmast; snapping like a wolf at her bear with starshell and the ten-inch light, alarming the Jap with his sudden nakedness, which was Sainsbury’s calculated intention, and then swinging as before to port as the brute altered desperately to starboard. And out again, running for her life into the welcoming darkness, while the carrier headed again almost at rightangles to her proper course.
“Jesus,” breathed Caswell, “this can’t last. It’s just a matter of the law of averages. I wish you’d never seen that bloody film.”
Sainsbury was wishing he had never seen that bloody carrier. But he kept the dread and worry out of his voice.
“Speaking of averages, gentlemen . . . Pilot, would you say the Jap expects us to come in on the starb’d bow this time?”
“The third time? Yes, sir.”
“Number One?”
“Definitely.”
“How about you, Torps?”
“Hell, only a... Yes, sir.”
“You were about to say only a fool would try the identical manoeuvre three times running. I think the Jap would agree with you. Pilot take her in as before, on the port bow.”
“Jes... Aye aye, sir.”
Pilot gave his wheel orders. The bridge was tautly silent. Sainsbury said:
“I agree with you, Number One, this can’t last forever. Three times on the one bearing is asking a lot of even the kindliest fate. However, God helps those who help themselves, so this time, Torps, you can add your quota of assistance to the cause. Instead of altering away to port, we shall turn to starb’d. This will allow their guns to open fire, but it will also allow you to loose one fish. And maybe our altering away in a different direction will confuse their gunners.”
He looked round their grim silent faces, and for a moment he thought What right have I to risk you all smashed to pieces? He said, quietly:
“We have to fire a torpedo this time, you see? We’ve bluffed him twice...”
Caswell started to speak, but had to cough his throat clear.
“Understood, sir. We might even hit the bastard.”
“Thank you, Number One.” The remark sounded formal, yet Sainsbury meant it. “Standby for torpedo attack.”
Spindrift rushed into range. The starshell flared, the light shot out - and then there happened something which not even Sainsbury had anticipated.
“She’s not turning!” Pilot yelled from above his bearing sight on the compass. “She’s keeping a steady course!”
Christ. Galvanised, Sainsbury’s mind had the answer in a flash of understanding. They had bluffed too well; so well that the Jap had caught on. He would not swing, he would maintain his ship steady, giving his gunners a steady instead of a reeling platform from which to fire! And Spindrift was rushing to cross those hungry muzzles...
“Quick, Torps!” Sainsbury shouted. Not impatience but a curdling fear for his ship gave the command a raw-edged rasp.
Yet Torps waited, his arse stuck out and his eye pressed to his torpedo sight. A second, two, four, while their flesh cringed. Then:
“Fire one!”
He might have spoken to the Jap gunners. They were not confused as Sainsbury had hoped. A full broadside of eight 5-inch roared at them in close blasts of yellow flame. A shell landed just under her port bow and exploded with hammering violence against the side. She shuddered as though she’d run her forefoot onto a reef. Another shell hit the base of A-gun on foc’s’le. It wiped out the crew and sent splinters over the bridge.
Spindrift was already on her turn away. With a jolting shock Sainsbury realised that his manoeuvre would take her directly away from the Jap guns - giving them no need for aim-off; increasing the accuracy of their fire.
“Midships!” he shouted. “Hard-a-port!”
Tortured, straining in every plate, the valiant little ship heaved herself upright from the starboard turn and then leaned far over on the port swing. A broadside whipped close overhead with a demoniac scream. But now she was running straight down the carrier’s length at 35 knots, making a rate of change of bearing much too fast for the guns to follow.
“Douse that bloody...” Sainsbury started, and a deep wham of sound rode vehemently over his voice.
His head swivelled; his strained eyes saw the wall of water climbing beside her. “Torps, you bloody little beauty!” shouted Caswell, and Sainsbury said, “Douse that light, please, Yeoman.”
The yeoman closed his shutters and the last starshell hissed into the sea. Darkness rushed in, and silence. Not total. Somebody over near the chart table was coughing convulsively, or vomiting. He was left alone; nobody felt like wet-nursing.
“Starb’d twenty, Pilot, take her out again. Let me have a damage report, Number One. Nice shooting, Torps - for a moment there I thought you’d become tongue-tied. Come down to twenty-five knots.”
But all this was professional, automatic, and it was obeyed like that. All of them were waiting for the vital report. This, too, would come automatically, without orders, for that torpedo blast had shivered its evidence right through the ship, even down to the engine-room; more so there, being below water-level, and water being such a good conductor.
Then the phone howled. Already there, Sainsbury plucked it out.
“Captain speaking.”
“Enemy speed, sir,” Sanderson, “twenty knots.”
Oh God... He wanted to shout, Are you sure? but knew that was stupid with a man like Sanderson on the set. He said, “Very well,” and then told the bridge team.
“Sorry, sir,” said Torps - as if it were his fault! “But along her sides she’s probably got oil bunkers and anti-torpedo bilges. It’ll take more than two to stop her.”
Two was all they had left. And they had to be placed against the same, port, side. And this meant the same, expected approach. God Almighty, he thought, how much more is a man expected to do? Quietly, insistently, implacably, his training gave him the answer: Everything you possibly can do -regardless of the cost.
So Sainsbury went about doing it.
He took her in and out again and again, aiming always for the carrier’s port side, where she was wounded. And always the Jap turned away, unable to risk the chance that this time, or this time, the venomous little ship might be bluffing. So much their courage and skill had gained. But it was not enough. The American cruisers would be coming at maybe thirty knots, yet that meant a gain of only ten miles every hour, for the Jap was maintaining a steady twenty knots. Not altogether steady, considering her turns away, but it was sufficient to place her in position for flying-off her aircraft at dawn. She could launch all right, for Sainsbury’s inspection on each run-in had detected no tilting of her flight-deck, therefore his torpedo strikes had given her no list. And certainly, due to his inability to get inside with his shells, she still had her full complement of sixty aircraft.
“If I had just one other destroyer,” he said wearily to Caswell, “coming in on her blind side, catching her wide open as she turned.”
“Yes, sir,” was all Caswell could say.
There was something else, but this he dare not allow himself even to think of, let alone voice. He guessed, no he knew, that the captain must also have thought of ramming, but this action was so extreme that Sainsbury had not even mentioned it. Ramming should stop or slow the Jap. It also meant suicide, for to succeed she would be clutched by the big ship’s steely grip, and then every close-range weapon would blast down and lacerate them to death.
“Time?” Sainsbury said suddenly.
Caswell shook his thoughts clear. “Repeat, sir?”
“What’s the time, damnit!”
“Sorry.” Caswell peered at his rain-spotted watch. “Just on three o’clock.”
“Good Lord,” Sainsbury said, and Caswell agreed with him. Their attacks had been so desperately fast and furious that he had lost track of the hours.
“It’ll be dawn in an hour, sir.”
They both knew what that meant. Just a couple of dive-bombers or fighters would do; the rain wasn’t nearly heavy enough to hide them from low-flying aircraft.
Sainsbury shoved himself back from the binnacle; he had never felt so tired or drained in his life, not even in the Atlantic; but then he had never fought all night before. He hoped to God the Japs felt the same.
“All right, chaps, once more unto the breach,” he said, and at once, “Sorry. One more time. Let him have both fish, Torps. Bring her round, Pilot.”
She was tired, too, her body strained to the utmost by the enormous pressures that had been put upon it. But her great heart kept its strong steady beat, forcing her in against the forceful seas.
It may have been Sainsbury himself, wearied almost beyond endurance; or Torps, younger but not necessarily tougher, similarly drained. Or even Smith the Coxswain, getting his wheel on a shade later than normal, his remissness unnoticed in the general physical and mental weakness of the bridge team.
Whatever the reason, she missed. She plunged in as before and Torps croaked, “Fire one, fire two,” and the last pair of missiles streaked into the water and went - God knows where. There came no thunder, no wall of upthrust water. The silence shouted of their defeat.
“Port thirty,” Sainsbury ordered for the forgotten number of times, and again she heeled round to cross ahead of the enemy’s bow.
“The bastard didn’t even turn,” Caswell said.
Sainsbury nodded numbly. That was the most telling cut of all. Even with torpedoes fired she hadn’t turned. Maybe she hadn’t seen them, or the starshell had burst too high in the clouds, or perhaps... What the hell did it matter why, he thought with fierce and sudden bitterness: only the fact counted, and the fact was that he’d run out of bluff.
“We’re directly away, sir,” Pilot said. “Straighten her up now?”
He’d said that how many times before during this endless night, and always Sainsbury had acknowledged and agreed with a lift of his hand; so why now did he hold his hand, delay his agreement with the correct procedure? Why was he letting her remain on her fast turn, circling like this so that if he didn’t do something about it she would be right round and coming in again?
Pilot knew he had been heard. He waited, seeing the expression of strained thought in Sainsbury’s face, its planes tight and hard in the dim upward glow from the binnacle. Sainsbury was thinking, striving to get hold of some fact or memory that was scratching at the back of his mind.
It came: even now, almost verbatim, so impressed had he been at the time by its logic. In whatever tactical decision you have to make, Buster Crewe had told him, you should judge the risk of it not by what you might win but by what you stand to lose.
If he persisted in this idiocy, if he did not straighten her up, then he would lose everything - his ship, his life and the lives of every man in her. Everything.
At this speed she was turning very fast. Pilot could wait no longer. “We’ll be right round shortly, sir.”
This time Sainsbury raised his hand. Queerly, a sense of relief moved in him. In an hour she would have planes up, and they would be finished anyway. So by going in now he was simply grasping the nettle, hideous though it was, and though he would lose so much, at least there would be something gained.
Then his relief was swamped by a following thought. Christ, you fool! In an hour, if he turned to the north instead of going in, then their combined opening speeds would place him more than fifty miles away by dawn, and running towards the cruisers. Once he’d cleared out, the Jap wouldn’t bother about him; she’d keep all her planes for their devil’s work ahead.
He was back where he’d started. The decision had to be made all over again. Yet this time it was easier.
“Straighten her up,” he told Pilot, “aim her for the enemy. Clear all hands from the forepart, above decks and below, including B-mounting.” He paused, while they waited; knowing but not wanting to believe what they knew. When he spoke again his voice had all the iron of hell in it.
“Standby to ram.”
* * *
Pilot steadied her up with automatic and unconscious ease, his obeying of the orders as involuntary as breathing. With the seas on her starboard beam Spindrift screwed in for the carrier at thirty-five knots; the sound of her engine-room blowers a hungry roar and her sharp forefoot tearing the water apart, arching bow-waves up level with the deck. She fired no starshell nor sword of light from the ten-inch; she must remain, as long as possible, invisible, for now she herself was the weapon.
Like a javelin she hurled herself at the enemy.
She was a mile away when the rain stopped. As if the fates had tired of succouring her, after so long a tolerance, the clouds ahead opened and through the gap the westering moon shafted down a pale but telling radiance. It picked out her wet-shining superstructure and the lofty betrayal of her bow-waves.
“She’s opened,” Caswell said, needlessly, for all hands saw the carrier’s port side break from dark-grey dimness into bright yellow light.
“Zig-zag, sir?” Pilot shouted, but Sainsbury simply shook his head. Though long in itself, the target was too short for him to heave his ship all over the sea, when his ship was the weapon, and had to be kept aimed for the target.
Splashes, a group of eight, erupting whitely directly ahead; roar of explosions, loud and menacing. And abruptly the clouds closed up again and she was in darkness. We’ll do it, he thought; and suddenly anger, not exultation or fear, burst from the control of his mind and exploded into him. After all this night, after all the fright and tension, we’ll get this bastard!
No.
The first shell caught the bow and bent its steel plates up and back like tinfoil. Another of that broadside, fired at an angle from the carrier’s forward battery, hit the base of the second funnel. From being almost invisible, Spindrift changed abruptly into a flaring torch. The furnace flames, white with heat, were beaten aft by the gale-force wind of her rush and wrapped themselves round Carella and the pom-pom’s crew. They took one fiery breath and died. The ammunition on the guns, in the ready-use lockers nearby, went up in a meteor shower of hurled shells.
She might as well have opened all scuttles and switched on all lights.
The four 5-inch guns directly ahead of her aimed for the bow, and they got it. Two shells ripped her open at the waterline. The sea surged in with cataract force and laid a watertight bulkhead flat as if it had been cardboard. More and more water poured in, until her foc’s’le deck was a few feet clear. But still her screws drove her and still she wallowed on, her bow taking the seas over it like a half-tide rock; and from the truck, the very top of her formast, her huge battle ensign whipped its valorous, determined, and hopeless challenge.
Now she was down to fifteen knots, and labouring mightily to get that. Not only was her bow down, but her stern had come up, raising the screws and reducing their grip. They raced. The engineer phoned the bridge. His plea to reduce revolutions was shouted to Sainsbury where he stood, as taut as an over-wound watch spring, against the fore windbreak.
“Maintain order revolutions,” he flung back over his shoulder. She was dying, but if he could just force her against the Jap’s side, then maybe her underwater body would meet the carrier’s port screws and bend them.
No.
Two shells, aimed downward at this little, close enemy, hit her side amidships and penetrated into the engine-room before bursting. Hurtling slivers of steel ruptured one of the main steam lines. In an instant the engine-room was filled with white wreathing death. The steam, heated to 600 degrees superheat, was as terrible an enemy as the flames from the funnel. One inhalation, and the lungs of the engine-room crew were seared to uselessness; even before their skin started to peel off.
But still she had steam left for the starboard screw, and still, with the throttles wide open and unattended, she struggled on to get at her enemy. It was hopeless, even before a shell exploded amongst the packed depth charges on the quarterdeck and, thus cruelly aided, blew half her stern off.
Spindrift wallowed at last to a stop, shaking her head in the seas like a punch-drunk boxer. The carrier, so close now that she loomed like a block of flats, moved with triumphant steadiness across her battered bow. She had ceased firing, the final sneer.
Sainsbury watched her go. He did not shake his fist at her, did not even feel the urge for such a pointless gesture; all he felt, searing and savage, was the ultimate bitterness of defeat. Tears of weak, impotent rage dimmed his sight.
So that he did not see them arrive.
The bosuns’s mate, aged eighteen, he who been vomiting with tensioned fright earlier in the night, he was the one first to see. Youth, perhaps, or lack of responsibility, or even relief that their long battle was finally over; whatever the reason, it was his eyes that first saw the quiet dim sea off the carrier’s receding port side suddenly leap into jetting life.
“Captain!” he shouted hoarsely, “captain!” and his arm stretched out rigid like a sign post.
Sainsbury shook his eyes and his senses clear. But a half-blind man could have seen the evidence of that next multiple broadside. Not only did the sea spurt whitely, but the carrier’s flight-deck burst into red life. For she had planes ranged on deck now, ready for the launching, and 8-inch shells found eager allies in those filled fuel tanks and bombs.
“Oh Jesus, oh Jesus,” Caswell mumbled over and over.
Sainsbury rowelled at his beaten senses. “Yeoman, the light! For God’s sake burn your light at the cruisers!”
It was a valid and vital order, but not obeyed. “I can’t sir, all power’s off!” yelled back the yeoman.
And once again the bosun’s mate saw what the bridge officers had missed. “There’s no need, sir,” he shouted, amazed at his own temerity, “they can see the flames from the funnel!”
Sainsbury stared at him stupidly; it had been a terrible night. Then:
“Good lad,” he said, almost calmly, “good lad.”
But even if minds wearied almost to exhaustion missed obvious things, bodies were still awake. Caswell felt the sudden lurch. “She’s going, sir, any minute now.”
“Yes. Abandon ship. Pass that through the PA...” But there was no power. “Bosun’s mate, pipe abandon ship. And for God’s sake don’t get trapped down below.”
“Yessir!”
He hurried off, handling himself along the tilted decks, piping that most forlorn of all naval orders. Spindrift lurched again, this time over to port. “Boats and rafts, Number One, smack it about.”
Sainsbury was last to leave the bridge. For a moment he hesitated about leaving Torps and Pilot there, looking down at their bodies butchered by splinters. But they’d think he was a fool, to bother about them now, with the ship ready to go. He half-raised one hand in an odd little gesture of respect and gratitude and farewell, then he was hurrying down the ladder.
He came out on the foc’s’le deck, and heard a sound like someone cursing. Frowning, for this part of the ship seemed deserted, he went forward a few paces.
“About bloody time,” a voice said hoarsely. “For Chrissake get me outa here.”
“Good Lord,” Sainsbury exclaimed. “You haven’t... not all night!”
“Yes, sir,” said Stoker Graham, “and I’ve had it - if you don’t mind.”
“Sorry about this, but I’m afraid we must have forgotten you,” said Sainsbury, casting off the lashings, trying not to grin like an idiot, for Graham looked so put out. “Here put one arm round my shoulder.”
And that was how Caswell found him as he came worriedly forward to search; staggering along the canted deck with a man twice his size with one leg in a plaster cast.
“Well I’m damned,” said Caswell, and took over.
* * *
They were all in the boats and rafts - that is to say, about half of the ship’s company - when the yeoman said from beside Sainsbury in the sternsheets of the whaler:
“Here’s the first of ‘em, sir.” He had, wonder of wonders, his telescope. “Well I’ll be buggered.” Then, more formally, “That’s Number 133, sir, the cruiser you went aboard in Moresby.”
And so it was. They could see clearly in the dawnlight: the lofty white-washed bow rushing towards them, the two triple-gunned turrets belching from the forepart, and beyond them the rearing bridge structure.
“I think she’s slowing,” Caswell said.
And so she was. The tonnage of steel eased its headlong rush and slid close by them. The voice was magnified through an electric bullhorn, but Sainsbury easily recognised Budensky’s undulcet tones.
“Is your captain alive?”
He stood up in the boat, one hand on Caswell’s shoulder, and waved.
“Thank God for that,” Budensky said surprisingly. “We got your signals about what you were doing. You held her for us just long enough. Now we’ll blast the hell out of her. Tremendous job you did, Sainsbury. Hang on there, you’ll be picked up shortly.”