Blake threw off the heavy oilskin and said, ‘Tell Moon to bring me a clean shirt.’ He looked questioningly at their lined faces. ‘All right, lads?’
Several of them nodded, a few tried to grin.
Blake studied each one in turn. Ordinary, everyday faces. You would never notice them in a crowded street or a barracks.
But here, in the middle of an ocean, they were special.
Moon appeared with a carefully folded shirt, the shoulder straps strangely bright and alien amongst the dirt of battle.
He said mildly, ‘I’ll fetch some sandwiches later on, sir.’
Blake did not know whether to laugh or crack wide open.
He gripped the steward’s shoulder and shook him gently. ‘You do that thing, Moon. I shall look forward to it.’
‘From Seafox, sir.
Enemy in sight!
’
Lieutenant Trevett, who was bringing some notes to Villar, said quickly, ‘I’ll say something for that galah. He’s bloody punctual!’
Stagg looked at Blake and spread his big hands. ‘Ready?’
Blake nodded. ‘Ring down for maximum revolutions. Stand by to engage!’
Stagg was on his feet, restless and grim-faced, as the
Andromeda
’s bow wave peeled away on either side in steep banks of white foam.
‘What d’you reckon he’ll do?’
Blake raised his glasses and stared at the horizon. It had misted over slightly, and was made worse by the sun’s harsh glare reflected from the sea.
‘He’ll make a diagonal attack, sir. These converted merchantmen usually have their armament in halves, one full battery on either beam. Torpedoes, too, but he’ll not reduce speed to use those.’
He felt the deck lift slowly and then surge forward and down again, a long roller breaking past the ship’s sides and flinging water over the deserted decks.
The raider probably had the latest range-finder, whereas
Andromeda
was almost blind. Blake turned his smarting eyes from the sun and knew the only chance was to get as close as possible and beat down the enemy’s fire-power. If they waited until night the German could pick them off at leisure.
Walker said in a hushed voice, ‘Engineroom, sir.’
Blake tried to keep his face expressionless as the men watched him stride to the telephone.
‘Chief? Captain here.’
Weir said, ‘I’ll need to reduce speed, sir. Starboard outer is giving me trouble. Must have taken a bad knock from a bomb or shell splinter. If we cut the revs on the port screws it will give you a better chance.’
Blake stared past the telephone at one of the splinter holes where a man had died. Weir knew what he was doing.
Andromeda
would need all her manoeuvrability. She could not manage on helm alone, and with unequal thrust on her screws it would take longer to alter course, to avoid those first deadly salvoes.
‘How long, Chief?’
Weir did not answer directly. He said, ‘We’re losing fuel, too.’
‘I know.’ Blake did not have to peer over the screen to remind himself of the long silver-blue trail they were leaving astern. ‘Do your best.’
Weir gave a short laugh. ‘Aye, sir. I’ve no wish to swim home.’
Stagg asked, ‘What did
he
want?’
Villar snapped, ‘Enemy’s opened fire, sir!’
There was a thin, abbreviated whistle, and seconds later a column of water shot from the sea barely half a cable from the port beam.
The two forward turrets began to whirr round, their guns lifting to their maximum sixty degrees elevation.
The quarters officers would find it more difficult at the reduced speed, Blake thought. The swell was noticeably heavier and the hull was corkscrewing back and forth in long, sickening swoops.
‘Open fire!’
The gong gave its tinny warning below the bridge and A turret, followed closely by B turret, belched fire towards the horizon.
Over the speaker Blake heard the Australian lieutenant, Blair, call, ‘Range one-double-oh. Inclination one-one-oh right!’
Blake blinked rapidly to clear his vision and tried again. Then as some of the mist parted below the horizon he saw the enemy for the first time. A solid dark shape, guns flashing from her hull even as he adjusted his glasses.
The four six-inch guns were moving very slightly now, the smoke from their opening shots still fanning abeam like hot breath.
‘Sights moving, sir! Sights
set
!’
Whoosh
. . .
crash!
The raider’s shells exploded close alongside like twin thunder-claps. The hull shook and reeled to the force of the detonations, and splinters clashed against steel or whined away over the glittering water. Two more heavy shells arrived seconds later, bracketing the cruiser in shining waterspouts and filling the air with the shriek and crash of white-hot metal.
Blair’s voice came through the din. ‘
Shoot!
’
The four guns recoiled together, and Blake saw the shell-bursts to the right of the target, the white columns seeming to stand like pillars for ages before they cascaded into the sea.
Walker yelled ‘X turret is jammed, sir! Seven marines wounded!’
A boatswain’s mate stood back from his voice-pipe, his
eyes wild. ‘Two pumps have carried away, sir! Damage control need more men aft!’
Blake snatched up a handset, his ears cringing to the crash of gunfire as the two ships continued to close the range.
Andromeda
had been badly hit and it was too soon after her punishment in the Mediterranean.
A frightened voice called, ‘D-damage control, sir!’
‘Get me the first lieutenant,
quickly
!’
The voice broke off in a sob. ‘He’s dead, sir! He’s here, looking at me! All cut about!’ He was close to hysteria.
Blake asked, ‘Who is that?’
‘Thorne, sir.’
A face swam through the smoke and despair. A replacement midshipman. Straight from the training school. A boy.
‘Well, listen, Mr Thorne. Send a petty officer and some stokers aft to help your party there. Can you do that?’
There was a long pause, and in his mind Blake could see it all. The splinter holes, the blood and upended switchboard and damage control panel. Scovell, who had wanted his own command so much, lying dead with his men, staring at a terrified midshipman.
Thorne said in a whisper, ‘Yes, sir. I’ll do it now.’
Blake ducked his head as a great explosion smashed against the bridge, buckling steel plate and hurling broken glass and fittings amongst the crouching figures like missiles.
Two men were down, kicking out their life-blood, and Commodore Stagg was gripping his shoulder and staring at the spreading stain which ran down his side and on to the gratings at his feet.
Blake yelled, ‘Starboard twenty!’
He strode past the bodies and a signalman who was dabbing his cheek with a bloodied flag.
‘Midships!
Steady!
’
More steel hammered into the ship, and for an instant Blake imagined she was already going down. But
Andromeda
had dipped her stem deep into a breaking crest so that the sea surged aft along the forecastle before spilling over the sides as the bows began to rise again.
‘Shoot!’
The four forward guns, their muzzles stained black from firing without a break, recoiled together, but through the distant bank of haze the raider continued to draw nearer, apparently unmarked.
The ragged clouds, impartial spectators to the savagery below, lit up suddenly to reflected tracer, neat lines of fiery balls, as the raider’s short-range weapons opened up. A solitary star seemed to detach itself from the other bursts and fall slowly towards the sea. Just before it touched the water it exploded to leave a dirty smudge against the sky.
Blake watched the wind drive it away. Masters had got too close and had paid with his life.
Several of
Andromeda
’s company who were working on the exposed upper decks saw the Seafox fall like a comet. One of them was Ordinary Seaman Digby who, with a handful of assorted ratings, was rushing to hack some blazing canvas from a search-light mounting and throw it overboard before it spread to something more vital.
He paused, sobbing for breath, his mouth hanging open while he stared at the sea as it rushed below the guard-rail. Occasionally it would surge over the deck, sweeping broken fragments of boats and rafts away like litter, and once Digby saw a seaman he had spoken to several times being rolled bodily over the side. Before the next wave sluiced across the wet metal he saw the man’s blood.
A petty officer bellowed, ‘Over here, lads! Lively now, there’s two blokes trapped under this lot!’
One seaman raised an axe, another took a firm grip on some twisted metal.
Digby saw it all like a still life or an old photograph. Then the shell burst somewhere below, probably on one of the messdecks, and the world seemed to erupt in smoke and flying metal.
The seamen were hurled down and scattered like butchered meat, and the petty officer who had been calling to some men pinned beneath the collapsed flag deck dropped to his knees and remained there.
Digby vomited helplessly, stricken and unable to take his
eyes from the horror. The petty officer, kneeling to listen for sounds of life, had no head.
A voice rasped through the smoke, “Ere, lend a ’and, someone!’
It was Leading Seaman Musgrave. He was badly cut about the face and there was more blood shining beneath his life-jacket.
The sight of Musgrave seemed to give Digby a kind of strength, and wheezing like an old man he seized his arm and began to drag him beneath the shelter of the trunked funnel.
Musgrave took his hand gratefully and asked, “O’s that then?’
He was moving his head from side to side, and it was then Digby realized he was blind.
‘It’s me, Hookey! Diggers!’
He could barely stop himself from weeping. At their frailty and their loneliness. Most of all at seeing the man he had come to admire so much cut down and so utterly dependent.
‘Diggers?’ Musgrave grimaced as the pain grew worse. ‘Good lad. ‘Ow bad is it?’
Men were shouting, and smoke billowed through a gaping hole by the boat tier as if the whole ship was ablaze.
Digby said, ‘I’ll get help. You’ll be all right.’
Musgrave gripped his wrist, but was so weak that Digby could easily have prized his hand away.
The bearded leading seaman whispered, ‘No, Diggers. You stay along of me. Just for a bit, eh? Feel dicky. Real rough.’
Digby sat down beside him, oblivious to the sprawled corpses of men he had scarcely known and conscious only of the one he now knew was dying.
‘I’m here.’
Musgrave tried to touch his eyes and said, ‘You’ll make a good officer, Diggers. Just remember wot I said. . . .’ His head lolled and he was dead.
Some sick-berth attendants, their steel helmets awry, the heavy red cross bouncing against them as they ran, paused and looked at the solitary, crouching seaman.
‘You all right, mate?’
Digby stood up slowly. ‘Yes, thank you.’
One SBA said, ‘Right then. Up to the bridge. Chop, chop!’
Digby walked after them. He did not even duck as a splinter slammed through the funnel and ricocheted over his head.
He might be going mad, but he was no longer afraid. It was as if the strength of that coarse, violent seaman had somehow drained itself into him.
Blake felt someone tugging at his arm. It was Sub-Lieutenant Walker, his hat gone, and some tiny flecks of blood on his forehead. He was tying a crude dressing round Blake’s arm.
‘Might help, sir!’
Blake looked past him, seeing the smoke pouring from the ship’s wounds. He had not even felt the blow on his arm.
Stagg was roaring like a bull, and Blake turned towards him, almost afraid of what he would see.
Stagg shouted, ‘The bugger’s turning away! He’s going to fire a full broadside at us!’
Blake levelled his glasses, his teeth grating on the dust and chipped paint which seemed to fill the air.
There was the raider, angled away across the starboard bow, smoking from several hits now, but moving as firmly as before.
The sea was rising more and more, and the smoke seemed to mix with the blown spray as if trying to save the ships from mutual destruction.
But Blake could see the flashing guns, the rectangular openings in the raider’s side where the massive shutters had been dropped.
Two more shells exploded off the port beam, and he guessed the German gunnery officer was preparing for a final straddle before he closed in to use his torpedoes.
It would not take much longer.
Andromeda
was barely answering the helm as with her pumps unable to cope against the racing screws she was listing more and more to starboard.
Blake looked at the angry sea and knew there would be few left who would be able to tell of their fight and their sacrifice.
Forward of the bridge, and sitting on his little steel seat at
the rear of B turret, his eyes glued to the sights, Lieutenant Blair, who came from Queensland, studied the blurred target with something like despair.
He knew that forward of his turret the other two guns were silent, most of their crew killed by a direct hit. Down aft, X turret was still jammed solid, and Y was unable to train on the enemy.
Blair heard the hissing sounds of the shells being guided into the smoking breeches, the hoarse bark of orders and then the slamming click of the locking mechanism.
‘Both guns loaded, sir!’
Blair adjusted his sights with elaborate care. The enemy was moving on a different angle now, but what was more interesting was that she was heeling over steeply whenever her stern lifted above the crested rollers.
Sweat ran down the side of his nose, and he tried not to flinch as the sea boiled to the impact of another big shell from the raider. He felt the little steel seat shiver but, like the rest of the fight, it was remote, sealed off by the inch-thick armourplate. Only when it burst in on you did it have real meaning.
He watched the magnified picture of the raider’s bridge, a tiny pale sliver as it rolled once again towards him.
‘Sights moving! Sights
set
!’ He held his breath. ‘
Shoot!
’