‘She’s not stopping, sir.’
Blake picked up a handset but kept his eyes on the fading shape of the other ship as the flare began to die.
‘Guns? One round. Close as you like.’
The violent crash and recoil of B turret’s right gun made the bridge jump as if kicked.
Blake watched for the fall of shot, saw the blurred flash of the explosion and a leaping column of water, which had it been any nearer would have exploded inside her hull.
‘She’s stopping, sir.’ A seaman strapped in his Oerlikon gun gave an ironic cheer.
Like a chanting monk, one of Palliser’s gunnery ratings was repeating, ‘B gun reload, semi-armour-piercing.’
Sub-Lieutenant Walker shouted, ‘From W/T, sir! That ship’s transmitting!’ He sounded confused. ‘Says she’s being fired on by British warship, it’s an SOS, sir!’
Scovell appeared on the bridge, his boots skidding in the slopping water.
‘Shall I send off a boarding party, sir?’
Blake levelled his glasses again. He was not mistaken. One of the other ship’s boats was beginning to jerk down the falls towards the waves alongside as the ship began to drift downwind.
He said, ‘Signal her again!
Do not scuttle! Do not abandon! Stand by to receive my boarding party!
’
He heard Palliser’s voice again, calm and detached, as he
trained the two forward turrets on the drifting ship.
It might be a ruse, a last attempt to lure
Andromeda
near enough to loose off torpedoes or open fire with some concealed guns.
The swift change of events, the other ship’s sudden call for help seemed totally at odds with her previous movements.
Scovell said, ‘We’ll have to get closer if we’re to send a boat across, sir.’
Blake glanced at him. ‘If we don’t put some hands aboard, every scrap of evidence will go over the side before dawn, you can bank on that!’
Walker yelled, ‘That was an explosion, sir!’
A dull, metallic thud rolled against
Andromeda
’s hull, as if she had charged across a submerged wreck.
Smoke belched through the other ship’s forward deck, to be driven instantly downwind.
Scovell rasped, ‘Bloody hell! They’ve fired a scuttling charge!’
Blake looked across at the ship. In his imagination he could already detect a list.
‘Make to her once more.
Do not abandon
.’
Villar staggered across the gratings. ‘Tell ’em we’ll leave every mother’s son to drown if they do!’ He looked helplessly at Blake. ‘Why not, sir? They’d do it to us.’
The lamp clattered and the yeoman said, ‘No acknowledgement, sir,
and
they’re lowering another boat.’
The ship had begun to list. She was obviously well loaded, and her cargo was lending its weight to her execution.
‘Slow ahead together. Pilot, alter course to make a lee for those boats.’ He could not disguise his bitterness as he added, ‘Maybe
they
would, Pilot. But they obviously know us better than we do ourselves.’
Villar strode to the compass platform muttering, ‘If it was my decision I’d –’
Scovell snapped, ‘Well, it’s not, so stop bloody well moaning about it!’
Another bang echoed across the water, a scuttling charge or some internal explosion, it was impossible to tell.
‘She’s settling down.’
Able Seaman ‘Shiner’ Wright, the navigator’s yeoman, peered through the rain.
‘I’ve checked her on the list, sir. The name’s genuine anyway. Spanish ship under charter to a company in South America, Buenos Aires, to be exact.’
He withdrew hurriedly as Villar glared at him.
Scovell said softly, ‘Well, there’s a thing.’
The tannoy bellowed, ‘Stand by to take on survivors. Scrambling nets, lower away!’
Lieutenant Trevett, Villar’s assistant, said savagely, ‘Survivors my ass!’
Blake looked at him. A newcomer to the ship, and an Australian from another way of life. But already he was sharing it. Could feel the same bitterness as himself.
He said, ‘Number One, I want every man from that ship put under guard. Nobody is to converse, nothing is to be discarded.’
Scovell’s eyes were in shadow. ‘You still believe it was an enemy –’ He broke off as the ship heeled over and plunged beneath the surface in a welter of boiling foam and steam. ‘A supply vessel of sorts?’ Without waiting for an answer he left the bridge, calling for some armed marines to receive the floundering boats alongside.
Blake said, ‘Fall out action stations. Lay off a new course for base, Pilot.’
Villar looked across the ticking gyro-compass. ‘Well,
I
think she was a bandit, sir.’
The speaker intoned, ‘Fall out action stations. Port watch to defence stations. Hands to supper.’
Blake climbed on to his seat again, going over the fast-moving chain of events. Villar shared his views. Why had the ship displayed no lights nor an indication of her neutrality? How had an ordinary merchantman under charter managed to detect
Andromeda
’s approach and her sudden alteration of course?
But suppose he was wrong. Palliser would be the first to deny that a single shell from one of his guns could have sunk the merchant ship. But the evidence now lay on the sea-bed, and at a court of enquiry the facts of the present moment
would be flimsy to say the least.
‘Course to steer is zero-seven-zero, sir.’
‘Very well. Revolutions for fifteen knots until the Chief says otherwise. When you’ve done all that, have a signal coded up for our correct ETA.’
Villar watched him as he walked aft to the ladder which would lead him to his sea cabin, his prison.
To Lieutenant Trevett he said, ‘Command? You can have it, man! The way the top brass make the rules for skippers you’d think we were on the wrong side!’
In his sea cabin, the sides of which were running with condensation despite the fans, Blake threw his oilskin on the deck and lay on the bunk.
It was no longer a matter of luck. You had to be right, and to go on believing you were right, no matter what. The Spanish merchantman had been a supply ship for the raider. No other explanation fitted. Her captain had obeyed his masters very well. No evidence, but more than that, he had used attack as the best form of defence.
The German high command had chosen its people with extreme care. They knew how to drag a red-herring, how to make every Allied warship so troubled about sinking an innocent vessel that he would have to think twice before attacking. Except it was unlikely he would get a second chance.
He thought, too, about the tiny island and the hastily dug grave. Thirty-three dead men. Even one would have been too many under those conditions.
He rolled on to his side hoping the dream would return. But, like the sleep he so badly needed, it stayed away.
Commander (E) Robert Weir stood on the opposite side of Blake’s littered desk and said firmly, ‘I understand all that you’re doing and trying to do. Lord, we’ve been in each other’s pockets long enough for me to know that. But the engines are my responsibility, and I’ll not be able to answer for them if we go on like we have been of late.’
Blake stared past him, his eyes sore from strain and lack of
sleep, and from long hours on the upper bridge. And yet it was as if nothing had happened. He recalled the girl, right here in the cabin, when she had first come aboard. Her surprise, which he could have taken for doubt, at the stillness and order so soon after a savage battle.
Through an open scuttle he could see a tall gantry, drifting smoke from some dockyard machinery. Williamstown again, their new refuge.
They had docked in the early morning, to be met by a fully armed escort for the crew of the merchantman, some blank-faced intelligence officers and then the usual horde of officials and workers.
Blake said, ‘I was right. I
know
it.’
He thought of the
Jacinto Verdaguer
’s captain when he had had him brought to the bridge. Angry to the point of hysteria, but behind all the bluster Blake had detected a defiance too, a sort of wild triumph. As if by sacrificing his ship the man had done his best to crucify Blake.
Now, alongside once more, Blake’s orders were brief. Take on fuel and stores. Local leave only to be allowed, but no loose talk. One hint about what had happened, and as a cheerful Australian naval officer had said, leave would become something as unknown as a good cup of coffee.
Fremantle
was due in this afternoon, her patrol having passed without incident. Stagg would send him packing when he heard what had happened. Once he might not have cared. But now it mattered. Because of the girl, and for a lot of other reasons, too.
The telephone buzzed and he lifted it to his ear, hoping a shore line was already connected.
But it was Friar, the torpedo officer, who was OOD.
‘Sorry to bother you, sir.’ Through the telephone his Australian accent seemed far more pronounced. ‘But there’s a commander come aboard to see you.’ His voice faded as he turned from the telephone and Blake heard him ask, ‘What was the name again?’
Weir muttered, ‘Another bloody “expert”, no doubt!’
Friar continued amiably, ‘Commander Wilfred Livesay, sir.’
Blake stared hard at the bulkhead, a face emerging like one at a séance. Wilfred Livesay, a slightly-built youth, with dark plastered-down hair, like a survivor from the Great War, a face which laughed too readily, and often on the defensive.
They had been in the same training cruiser as cadets. Straight out of Dartmouth with the world at their feet. He had met up with Livesay several times in his career. He never seemed to change much in spite of the war, and yet Blake felt he had never really got to know him.
‘Show him down, please.’
Weir grunted, ‘I’m away then. Before those thieves from the dockyard rob us blind!’
Blake stood up and looked at himself in the bulkhead mirror. There were deep lines at the corners of his mouth. His hair was untidy and thick with salt. He looked like an unmade bed, he thought wearily. What was Livesay doing in Australia? he wondered. A command perhaps. He was the same age and seniority as himself, but
Andromeda
and a VC had put Blake far above him.
The door opened and Livesay stepped over the coaming. Just like all the other times. Neat and careful.
He was perfectly turned-out, and his face shone as if he had just walked out of a shower.
He held his cap with its gold-leafed peak under one arm, as if unsure whether or not he would be invited to stay.
They shook hands, and Livesay said, ‘You look a bit worn out, sir.’
‘For God’s sake, Wilfred, not now!’
Livesay seemed pleased. ‘Sorry. I find it a bit hard to call you Dick.’ He sat down and looked round the cabin. ‘Quite a ship.’ He was wrestling with something, which was nothing new either. ‘They say it will soon be winter here. It will suit me. They don’t know what a real winter is. I was just saying –’
Blake said gently, ‘Look, Wilfred, it’s me, remember? You don’t have to waste time with the coming-shortly bit. You’re here for a reason, right?’
Livesay sat back and stared up at the fan. With his eyes screwed up he looked like the nervous midshipman again.
He said, ‘Fact is, er, Dick, I’ve just arrived, so to speak. I’m attached to the Navy Office on behalf of our High Commission. Sort of staff job. Getting ready for the time when our Pacific fleet is formed again, for a crack at the Nips.’
A staff job. That would be right up his street.
Blake tried again. ‘Have you had breakfast yet? We’ve only been alongside for an hour or so.’
‘Yes. Look, the fact is, I’ve been sent.’ He stood up, his cap rolling unheeded on the carpet. ‘It’s a bit beyond me. But I was summoned by their lordships before I was flown out.’
Blake tensed.
Flown out
. It had to be important.
Livesay turned to peer through a scuttle. ‘I think they chose me because we’ve known each other for a long time.’ He swung round, his eyes troubled. ‘You don’t mind, Dick? But I’ve always looked up to you, envied you, I suppose. Then along comes the war and everything’s different. Even the worst officer stands out like a genius against some poor devil who has been commissioned after a few weeks’ training. And I’ll not deceive myself, I was never much good in peacetime. The fact is –’
Blake waved him back to the chair. ‘If you say “the fact is” once more, Wilfred, I shall probably go berserk. We’ve had rather a bad time lately, and I’m too bushed to guess why you’re here, so let’s be having you.’
Livesay wriggled in his chair. ‘You know the Navy, Dick. It’s a family. People talk. News gets round. Everybody in the UK is too keyed up about the coming invasion to bother much about what’s going on here, but in the Service,
they
know.’
‘Know what, for God’s sake? If you mean that I’m trying to help catch a raider, all I can say is –’
Livesay seemed to relax for the first time. ‘Oh,
that
! No, Dick, it’s about, well, you know, your personal life.’
‘I see.’ He felt for his pipe but had left it in the sea cabin. ‘Diana’s been on to you, has she?’
‘Well, yes and no. You remember Vice-Admiral Tasker? Well, he’s at the Admiralty, and I was on his staff before I was sent out here. He’s a big noise now, and after the war he’s the
obvious choice for planning the new structures for employment and appointments. He told me as much.’
‘I feel I should tell you to leave, Wilfred,
old friend
or not. I don’t think I’m going to like this at all.’
Livesay stared at him as if mesmerized. ‘Please don’t do that! It’s because of our friendship, and the fact they know you would not even discuss your private affairs with a senior officer, that they sent
me
!’ He looked as if he might burst into tears. ‘Like it or not, Dick, when they gave you the Victoria Cross they did more than you realized. After the war, and even during the next critical phase of it, you are the kind of officer they’ll be marking down for higher command. You know what it was like in our fathers’ time. Good chaps thrown on the beach, selling their medals and begging for work. I’d not want that to happen to us, to me.’