He could almost hear the limping procession to the edge of the pit. The bark of orders, the slamming crack of a machine-pistol.
It happens,
they said. Why then did you always expect it to happen to others and not to your own kind?
Captain Farleigh, his helmet dripping with water, saluted smartly. ‘Ready, sir.’
Blake nodded and walked slowly through his men, aware of the sadness and the hate, the way they gripped their spades like foot soldiers at Agincourt.
The chaplain stood very upright by the grave, his surplice blowing in the wet breeze, his wispy hair plastered across his forehead while he waited to begin.
What was he thinking? Blake wondered. Sickened by all of it, like Hugh Grenfell had been after the Dardanelles disaster, or still holding on, believing and hoping? They had been through a lot together. Death came in all shapes and guises. But this was different. This was part of hell.
Beveridge’s thin voice cut through the swishing rain. ‘They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters –’
One of the firing party was swaying slightly against his rifle, his boots squeaking in the sand. Most of the original landing party were present, even young Digby, red-eyed but strangely determined as the chaplain’s voice droned on.
Chief Petty Officer Flint looked across at his ship as she moved so very slowly past the island yet again. There was home. Mates. Something he understood. He sighed and glanced at the chaplain, poor old Horlicks, as he struggled on with the service. It would soon be over now.
‘We commend unto Thy hands of mercy, most merciful Father, the souls of these our brothers –’
Flint felt the rain running down his neck and chest. Did God really care? he wondered. Did anyone?
Somewhere a man was sobbing quietly, as if he had known one of those graceless bundles.
Farleigh snapped, ‘Royal Marines,
ready! Present!
’
The rifles rose towards the bleak sky.
Blake saw Flint’s expression across the grave and guessed
what he was thinking. He had known him quite a long time. Had seen him promoted, had watched him enjoying himself as well as when he had been fighting mad. Now he was watching the marines’ rifles and probably wishing they were a firing squad for the men who had done this bloody murder.
‘Fire!’
The volley crashed out and sent a cloud of screaming sea-birds wheeling from their hiding places.
Blake saluted and turned his back as Flint’s burial party moved in with their spades.
In the Mediterranean and the Atlantic he had always known exactly what he had been fighting, what to expect. Until he had stepped ashore here he had not found it easy to understand his involvement with the German raider. Now he knew.
He saw the boats rising and falling on the swell while they idled near the tiny beach to lift off the burial party. They shone with blown spray like glass.
Blake quickened his pace down the slippery sand and would have fallen but for the surgeon’s hand on his elbow.
He looked at him. ‘Thanks, Doc. I almost broke the rules and showed my true feelings.’
The surgeon nodded. ‘You’ll forget, sir.’
Blake turned and looked up the beach. A small file of marines coming down to the boats, the slap of spades on sand as the seamen tamped down the grave. Old Horlicks standing above it all like a spectre. The last to leave.
‘Not this time, Doc. Not until I’ve put that bastard down.’
He was shocked by the tone of his own voice. More so that he meant each word.
The motion of the dinghy was getting worse, and try as he might he could not rouse the girl or make her aware of the mounting danger, the insane clatter of machine-guns.
Blake awoke gasping and fighting in the gloom of his sea cabin, his mind reeling from the fantasy while he grappled with reality. He gave a violent start as the telephone buzzed above his bunk, and as he struggled to drag it from its rack he
realized it must have been ringing earlier and the sound had filtered into his nightmare.
‘Captain speaking!’ He made himself control his voice. ‘What is it?’
‘Officer of the watch, sir.’ It was Palliser. ‘Radar reports a ship, almost dead ahead. Range about eight miles.’ He sounded wary, as if astonished by the captain’s tone.
‘I’ll come up.’
Blake rolled off the bunk and lost precious seconds while he adjusted to the steep roll and plunge of the deck. The islands lay two days astern, and after making a brief signal of their findings there, Blake had turned his ship towards Australia once more, the worsening weather doing much to keep his men too busy to brood on what they had discovered.
He peered at the bulkhead clock. Four o’clock in the afternoon. It would be early dark in the foul visibility. What was a ship doing out here, miles from anywhere?
He hurried to the bridge, feeling the wind sweeping over the glass screen as he crossed to the chart table. Warm and wet, a sickening motion and the pungent smell of funnel smoke as a quarter wind forced it down over the sodden watchkeepers.
Palliser said, ‘Radar say that they are getting a poor reading, sir. The conditions are bad and –’
Villar emerged dripping from beneath the chart table’s hood.
‘Ready to turn on to new course, sir.’ He saw Blake’s expression and added, ‘Unless you intend to chase after that ship.’
‘Who have you got on radar?’ Blake was thinking aloud, seeing the ocean, two ships moving on an invisible thread.
Villar said, ‘Gibbons, sir. He’s good.’
Blake crossed to the rack of telephones and lifted one from its case.
‘Gibbons? This is the captain. What do you make of it?’
‘The range is about the same, sir, but I’m almost certain she had altered course. We’re getting a lot of interference.’ He sounded apologetic. As if it was his fault. ‘But I’m pretty sure she was steering south-east. Now we’re on the same track.’
‘Good work, Gibbons.’ He put down the handset. ‘Sound off action stations, if you please. Tell the engineroom to increase revolutions for twenty knots.’
Villar glanced at the surging crests alongside as if to say,
in this?
Seconds later the alarm bells jangled throughout the ship and men surged towards their stations, their movements automatic, even if their minds were still below in their messes.
Palliser left to go to his director control tower, and Blake said to Villar, ‘Muster your plotting team, Pilot. I want every move, every
thought
put on paper!’
‘Ship at action stations, sir.’
‘Very well.’
Blake jammed his cap in the signal locker to allow the spray to soak his hair and face until his mind was clear again.
‘Alter course. Steer zero-eight-zero. Tell radar to keep watching for any change of course by the other ship.’ He had almost said
enemy
.
‘Aye-aye, sir.’
The bridge groaned and rocked as the mounting revolutions reached up through the glistening steel.
Blake heard the gunnery speaker click on and then Palliser’s voice from the director.
‘Ship bears Green oh-five. Range one-five-five.’
The right gun of B turret rose a few degrees and then dipped again, as if it, not the contents of the turret, was coming to life.
Villar came back banging his wet hands together. ‘Hell, look at it!’ He glared through the screen at the low, angry clouds. The sea was violent and in disorder as it mounted under the cruiser’s stern and then smashed over the side in solid sheets.
Sub-Lieutenant Walker staggered to Villar’s side. ‘Will we make a signal to base, sir?’
Villar grinned through the falling spray. ‘Why, Sub? There’s nothing between us and the nearest land but sixteen hundred miles of bloody ocean and that ship!’
‘The ship is still on course, sir.’
Blake moved restlessly about the bridge, his shoes slipping on the wooden gratings. The other vessel was not equipped with radar, otherwise they would have detected it by now. She must have been keeping a damn good lookout to spot
Andromeda
’s upper works in this visibility, even with the sun behind her. That was unusual for the run-of-the-mill merchantman, especially in these waters.
He thrust his hands into his pockets and examined his reactions like a surgeon at the operating table.
Was he over-reacting because of what had happened?
He said, ‘Yeoman, write this down and pass it to the W/T office.
Am investigating strange ship in position so and so
.’ He heard the Toby Jug’s pencil pause over his pad, then added, ‘
I will transmit my amended ETA when satisfied
.’
He strode to the chart, beckoning Villar to follow. Beneath the canvas hood they peered at the stained chart, their own pencilled track, the neat procession of crosses where Villar had recorded the other ship’s positions.
Blake said, ‘Give the yeoman a position about
here
.’ He pointed to the north of their intended course. ‘A nice easy one, about a hundred miles away. If that other ship is an enemy, he’ll think we’re in company and our consort has made a contact further north. We’ll see what he does about it.’
They ducked out into the wind and Villar handed his scribbled latitude and longitude of the mythical sighting report to the yeoman of signals before asking, ‘What then, sir?’
‘He’ll get the hell out of it, thankful that we were stupid enough to go after the wrong ship. If he’s on the level, he’ll not only fail to comprehend our signal, but will remain thankfully on his lawful occasions.’
The yeoman said thickly, ‘W/T informed, sir.’
‘Alter course. Steer due north. Tell radar and DCT what we’re doing.’
Beam on to the big rollers,
Andromeda
heaved and swayed to a sickening angle. Her lee side was buried several times beneath tons of water, and Blake pitied the damage control
parties throughout the hull who were trying to keep equipment and vital machinery from tearing itself adrift.
The minutes ticked past, and Blake could sense the disappointment around him. Wrong again. A waste of time, as Scovell would soon be saying.
‘Radar . . . bridge!’
Villar had the telephone to his ear in a second. ‘
Fore-bridge!
’
‘The ship
is
altering course, sir. Turning to starboard.’
To confirm this, Palliser’s voice came through the speaker again. ‘Ship now bears one-three-zero. Range one-six-oh.’
Villar exclaimed, ‘The bastard’s heading away, sir. He swallowed it, the whole bloody bit!’
Blake stared at him, his mind like ice. ‘Bring her round, Pilot. Course to overhaul and intercept. Twenty-five knots.’
A boatswain’s mate looked at his friend and grinned. ‘Tally-bloody-ho!’
Like an avenging beast,
Andromeda
swung steeply to starboard, her guard-rails buried in spray as she pointed her stem towards her invisible quarry.
Down in his brightly lit corridor of roaring machinery, Weir looked at his subordinate and then shook a gloved fist at the telegraphs.
He mouthed the words through the din. ‘They’re going bloody mad up top!’
The second engineer nodded agreement and then turned back to his gauges.
Weir stared at his stokers and ERAs bowing and lurching through the oily mist like phantoms. One slip and you were mincemeat. He wished Blake would ease up. But from what he had heard, the skipper had his reasons.
The second engineer patted his shoulder. ‘You okay, Chief?’
‘An’ why shouldn’t I be, man?’
Weir swung away before the lieutenant could see his face. It often hit him like that. Remembering his wife and two children, buried in a common grave after the air raid.
He thought of the islands they had left astern, what the returning landing party had said. He ran his hand along the
polished rail of his catwalk and said softly, ‘Come on, my lass, let’s be having you, an’ none of your tricks now!’
The second engineer glanced at him curiously. It was as if the Chief was speaking to the ship.
WHILE
ANDROMEDA
POUNDED
after the unknown ship, low cloud and a heavy downpour reduced visibility to less than a mile. Only the radar’s invisible eye and the gunnery control’s blurred glimpses of the other ship told them they were not alone or charging after a phantom.
‘The ship is resuming course, sir. Range now down to five miles.’
Blake wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It was hard to think with the rain sweeping across the bridge like pellets, the ship lifting and surging forward in great sickening swoops.
‘Warn Guns. Be ready to open fire instantly.’
He tried to picture the other ship. She had seen them at last. Or had already picked up
Andromeda
’s radar on a detector. Only another warship would turn and fight. A merchantman would stand no chance against the cruiser’s speed, which at this moment was over twenty-five knots, with a few more in hand if required.
The stranger would appear on
Andromeda
’s starboard bow, unless she made some last effort to wriggle away as darkness closed in for the night.
Blake thrust an empty pipe into his mouth and bit on the stem. There was no sense in prolonging it.
‘Fire star-shell. Yeoman, use your big light and signal her to heave to. You know the drill.’
As if the signalmen had been waiting for the order, the biggest searchlight clattered into life, the glacier beam probing through the oncoming rain with quick, irregular flashes.
Stop instantly. This is a British warship. Do not attempt to scuttle
.
Someone gave a yelp of pain as a four-inch gun crashed out, and seconds later the low cloud exploded into life from the star-shell.
It was all there. The other ship, almost end on, her high stern glistening in spray and the glare from the drifting flare.
Villar said, ‘Christ, he’s switched on his navigation lights, the crafty bastard!’
More lights appeared through the rain, and Blake saw the Spanish colours painted on the vessel’s side, the urgent flash of a morse lamp from her bridge.
The Toby Jug growled, ‘Says she’s the
Jacinto Verdaguer,
sir.’ Even his clumsy pronunciation failed to disguise his contempt, his anger.