He held CMB 11 on the course for Dunkirk. The weather forecast had proved accurate: only a light breeze ruffled the straits, and the swell was long, leisurely; the boat skimmed it, swooping in long shallow dives and climbs, a rhythmic, waltz-time motion accompanied by her engine’s steady roar and the thudding of her bottom-boards against the sea’s solidity. Harry Underhill in CMB 14 was in station one cable’s length astern; there were thirty miles to go, two-thirds of the distance still to cover. Since these shallow-draught boats had seldom to bother about such nuisances as shoals, their route to enter Dunkirk Roads was ‘as-the-crow-flies’.
Nick jerked his head to Selby.
‘Here, you can have her. South seventy-three east.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
No snigger. Nick had asked him yesterday, during the torpedo firing practice, ‘Why d’you giggle whenever anyone says any damn thing at all, Mid?’; and he hadn’t done it since. It was surprising what a difference it made; when you separated Selby from his laugh, he became quite likeable. And yesterday afternoon Nick had made him take over for one of the torpedo shots, and he’d handled it perfectly.
Reaper had said to them in his quiet, matter-of-fact tone, ‘I want you to go over to the Belgian coast and bring back Weary Willie. That armed trawler the Huns anchor every night off Middelkerke, you know?’
He’d looked round at them – at Nick, Underhill and Treglown, and they’d all nodded. He’d added, ‘Intact.’
A cutting-out operation, in fact. Boarding-party in the ML, and the two CMBs to ward off interference. Very simple, really. Nick had been thinking about it ever since Reaper had given them the briefing, and he was still thinking about it now as he moved over to the cockpit’s starboard side, leaving Selby to drive the boat. On the way across he stooped to look in at Ross. The ERA was on his little wooden seat, peering intently between tall, bony knees at dials that told him about such things as revs, oil-pressure, temperature. She was a good’un, CMB 11 was, he’d told Nick. Some of the others had to be nursed like babies and still gave trouble. He was nursing this one, Nick thought, very much like a baby.
The action torpedo rested where yesterday a succession of practice ones had lain. This one wore a warhead, though, three hundredweight of explosive. He stroked the ice-cold curve of silver steel, and wondered if there’d be a use for it tonight. He hoped not. What was wanted was speed and silence and no trouble, no Huns seeing or hearing or even suspecting anything. The cutting-out had to take place within spitting distance of the coast at Middelkerke and only about five miles from Ostend. Thirty years ago it would have been done with cutlasses and muffled oars.
CMB 14 was a dark blob bouncing in a welter of foam two hundred yards astern, in this boat’s wake. They were travelling at twenty knots, a fairly economical speed that would get them to Dunkirk in plenty of time to refuel, have a snack and be on their way again. Treglown had set off in his ML much earlier in the day, and he’d have left Dunkirk before the CMBs got there. He had a PO, a stoker PO, three seamen, and one stoker as passengers; his own sub-lieutenant would be taking charge of them as a boarding party.
He moved to the for’ard starboard corner, leant with his arms folded on the coaming and his chin resting on his arms, watched the craft’s long grey bow rising to the swells and carving a path across them. After each swoop up there was a fall and a thudding jar as her forepart smacked down again and her 340 horsepower flung her at the next one. Not difficult to imagine how uncomfortable she’d be in anything like rough weather.
Cloud-cover was thick, unbroken. It had to remain so. Provided the night stayed dark, and they had a modicum of luck: or at least an absence of bad luck… Such as meeting a destroyer or torpedo-boat coming out of Ostend. They had a habit of prowling round old Willie, snooping up between the Ostend Bank and Nieuwpoort Bank, then turning back into the port again or up-coast. The CMBs’ function tonight would be to guard against any such interference, watch the approaches while the ML carried out her boarding and cutting-out, and then hang around to cover the joint retirement of the ML and her captive. If a torpedo-boat showed up, they’d try to lead it away and, if necessary, torpedo it. But only if it was necessary. So close to Ostend – and to Zeebrugge, for that matter – the important thing was not to attract attention. A Hun destroyer flotilla could be whistled up within minutes. Ideally, the trawler’s crew – although she was armed they weren’t trained, fighting seamen, apparently – would wake up to find revolvers at their heads; and the Huns ashore would wake to find Willie gone.
‘What the devil do they want us to pinch a trawler for?’ Underhill had been puzzled, after last night’s briefing. ‘We’ve got – what, eighty here already?’
Nick had been thinking about it too, and he had a theory that explained it and pointed to a much bigger issue than this little jaunt. But he gave the CMB man the same vague reason that Reaper had offered: this was the beginning of a switch to the offensive, a policy of keeping the Hun hopping and spoiling his sleep.
‘We want ’em on the defensive,’ Reaper had told them. ‘We’ve still got to guard the straits, but we want to go out and hit ’em too. As you know, Vice-Admiral Keyes is in command now – and he’s never been a man to sit back and let the enemy come to him.’
‘Right we are, then.’ Reaper had begun to roll up his chart. ‘Any other questions?’
There weren’t. He told Nick. ‘Work out your own detailed orders and carry on from here. It’s in your hands. Let’s have a tidy and successful operation. You’re not getting anything on paper – just go and do it… Perhaps you’ll see me to the gangway, Everard.’ He said to him privately, on the way down, ‘I said I want this Hun intact. That will include, of course, her crew.’
Nick thought about it for a moment. Then he asked, ‘Is that the priority, sir? Prisoners?’
Reaper frowned at him. ‘Is there any reason we can’t have the whole caboodle?’
‘No, sir. Just a matter of priorities, if anything should go wrong.’
‘I very much hope it won’t… You’re right to the extent that we haven’t any great need of another trawler…’ He’d said it vaguely, as if it didn’t really matter either way. The fact was, it had been said.
Nick nodded. ‘I understand, sir.’ But Reaper had been at pains not to be too precise. ‘The object is to take the trawler, crew and all.’ He hesitated, near the gangway’s head now. ‘Look here-we wouldn’t want the Hun to think we’d just gone after prisoners. The object is to let him know we’re pushing him, that the straits belong to us… Makes sense, doesn’t it?’
Nick saluted. ‘Goodnight, sir.’
‘Goodnight. Everard. And good luck.’
He’d thought, watching the gold-peaked cap disappear down the depot ship’s gangway, that it was pretty obvious what was wanted, and what for, and why Reaper had been so mealy-mouthed about it. It was surprising Underhill hadn’t caught on too. But he and Treglown might not have known where Weary Willie came from, where she and her crew spent their daylight hours.
They didn’t ask, so he didn’t need to tell them.
After supper he’d gone up to the chartroom, alone, to work out the orders he’d give them in the morning. To start with, for his own benefit, he jotted down the essentials of the situation they’d be facing. For instance, that the operation had been planned not only for a calm spell of weather but also for an exceptionally low low-water. The Huns might be thinking themselves safe behind the Belgian shoals; they were shoal-conscious, they’d left the channels un-dredged in order to keep the Royal Navy off their coast. They might not think of CMBs and MLs, which drew so little water they practically walked on it… Second, there were to be two Dover destroyers patrolling near the pillar buoy at the Hinder, twelve miles north-west of Willie; when the trawler had been taken, she and the ML were to head straight for their protection. While any destroyers – Germans – which the CMBs managed to entice away were to be led east-nor’-eastward, into the minefield which Mackerel and her friends had laid a few nights ago.
The emergency situations most likely to arise were (a) a breakdown, engine failure, of one of the three boats of the cutting-out flotilla, (b) encounter with enemy destroyer/s, (c) change of cloud/moon conditions. Nick’s orders as he finally produced them dealt almost entirely with reaction to these contingencies.
Everyone knew exactly what to do, now.
He looked across at Selby. ‘All right, Mid?’
The pink face turned to him; and this time, Selby laughed. He shouted, ‘Bloody marvellous, sir!’
Treglown, they learnt, had arrived in Dunkirk and sailed again on schedule. The CMBs refuelled and were clear of the harbour by 9 p.m. The route Nick had planned would take them about three miles offshore most of the way, after an initial zigzag to seaward to clear the silted east side of Dunkirk Roads and the Hills bank. They’d finish up only two miles off Middelkerke; they’d be just inshore of Weary Willie then, and over the top of a shallow patch which the Germans might well consider impassable and therefore an approach not worth watching very closely.
There was a danger that it might be impassable, places so shallow at this lowest of low tides that even CMBs and ML: couldn’t scrape over them. The lack of dredging and the removal of navigational marks, all part of a deliberate enemy policy, created that uncertainty. There’d have been sifting into channels, and some of the shoals would have extended this way or that, even moved bodily to new positions.
The distance to cover was about twenty miles. The CMBs could have raced there in not much more than half an hour, but Nick had set a speed of twelve knots – which would leave virtually no wash or broken water to catch a German eye, and allowing for the tides would give a speed-made-good of ten and get them to the rendezvous position by the zero-hour of 11 p.m. Twelve knots was also about the slowest speed a CMB could manage; their engines couldn’t put up with low revs for any length of time.
By eleven-ten the trawler should be captured and the flotilla – now of four instead of three – on its way seaward.
He looked to his right, at Selby. The midshipman had his glasses up and he was keeping a fairly constant watch on CMB 14, who was tucked-in close now, only fifty yards astern. Each snotty had the job of keeping track of the other boat; and since at this distance they were within hearing distance of each other’s klaxons, a system of emergency sound signals had been established.
The monitor and its attendant destroyer off La Panne had been warned that they’d be passing. And it was a halfway point, a way of checking their position accurately for the last time before they found Weary Willie. The squat, black shape of the monitor loomed up ahead, and Nick moved the wheel gently, easing the CMB over to pass close to seaward of her. Ahead and to starboard a glow hung in the sky over Nieuwpoort, and the small sparks of distant starshell drifted downwards, flickered out to be replaced by others; Nick thought, No starshell to seaward, please… They’d be worse than searchlights, even; and the searchlight crews along this section of the coast had been warned of the boats’ schedule. The rumble of gunfire from the Front was remote, impersonal. He saw the destroyer now: an ‘M’, lying at anchor beyond the monitor. Both ships were dark, dead-looking, silent; but there’d be more than a few pairs of eyes watching the CMBs slide out of the night and into it again. At Nieuwpoort they’d pass within two miles, four thousand yards, of the point where the trench-lines met the sea. Nick wondered if his father had even been that close to the firing line, or whether his previous appointment had been of a similar kind to this riding-school job he had now. Something to do with horses, most likely. He’d never made any comprehensible statement about what he did. He’d implied, or allowed others to imagine, that he’d been actively involved in the various ‘pushes’, and talked about the fighting as though he’d been in it; but if it turned out eventually that he hadn’t, nothing he’d said would prove him a liar.
He wished his elder brother David was still alive. They’d never got on; but David had been the heir to the baronetcy and Mullbergh, and now he was dead he, Nick, was in his place; he’d have preferred to have been detached, disinterested altogether in the inheritance, in whether his father lived or died.
Underhill was passing the destroyer. From this boat the monitor, well astern now, was just fading out of sight.
‘What’s the time, Mid?’
‘Nine fifty-seven, sir.’
Three minutes inside schedule. A rocket soared, burst over Nieuwpoort, a greenish-yellow colour. He wondered what it meant. The land to starboard now was Belgium; France had ended just before La Panne – where, astern, a searchlight beam had just sprung out, lancing the darkness with its silver blade, sweeping the sea to the westward of the guardships. Their timing wasn’t far out either, he thought; they’d been told to stay switched-off until ten.
‘Selby – see if Ross is happy, will you?
Selby ducked down for a quick chat with the ERA. He told Nick a minute later, ‘lt’s all fine at the moment, sir. Except for the usual worry about oiling-up.’
It was a risk that had to be accepted. Gunfire was louder as they drew closer to the front line. You could see the flashes low down, sometimes, and bits of walls or broken buildings silhouetted for split seconds in their light; but no individual sounds, it was all one continuous background rumble. Inland searchlights wavered, fingering the clouds, searching for aeroplanes or Zeppelins; but those were too far east, he realized, to be anything but German. They’d be watching for the RNAS squadrons, Johnny Vereker’s friends. A flare hung, the brilliant magnesium-white illuminating a black spread of land, the horror-ground of Europe.
Selby shouted, ‘I think fourteen’s in trouble, sir!’
Nieuwpoort was well astern. They’d been in what might be called enemy water for almost half an hour.
‘Think – or is she?’
He heard the letter ‘A' on Underhill’s klaxon. In their code it meant ‘am aground’…
With target almost in touching distance, and German batteries a bare two miles to starboard.
There was a quick remedy and a slow one; they’d practised both. This was a time for the faster, riskier method. He was turning the CMB to port, seaward, holding full rudder on her; at twelve knots no amount of helm would turn her over.
‘Tell Ross I’ll be opening right up in a minute!’ He had her on the opposite course now, heading back the way they’d just come. He asked Selby, as the snotty came up from shouting in Ross’s ear, ‘Was she dead astern of us?’
‘Bit out on the quarter.’
‘You should’ve told me.’
Spilt milk… Underhill had let his boat swing off to starboard and he’d hit the mud and there he was… Nick swung the boat around to port again, taking her in two cables’ lengths astern of the stranded CMB and holding on until he was inshore of her. Then hard a-port, right round quickly, aiming her at Underhill’s boat, on a course of about east-by-north. When she was pointing the right way and he’d steadied her and centred the wheel, he pushed the throttle wide open. CMB 11’s stern went down hard and she surged forward under full power. You could feel the thrust, the sea trying to hold her back and then its resistance lessening as she lifted in the water and began to skim it, bounce it, engine-noise a deafening roar now and sea flying past, wind ripping, whining, wash piling upwards and outwards, flinging high and white from her quarters as she drove forward. Underhill would be ready for the wash that – hopefully – would lift his boat off the sand and give him a chance to clear it. Nick moved the wheel a little, easing her to port and aiming to pass about ten yards clear of fourteen’s stern. This boat was right up on the plane now, rocketing along, the sea crashing under her as she hurtled over it: and passing fourteen – now…
As soon as he’d passed, muttering thanks to God that he hadn’t hit the ground himself – in fact with the boat up and skimming she was a foot or two further from that danger – he cut the power. There was an immediate sensation of drag: as if an anchor had been thrown out to pull them back: like brakes slammed on and as if she was stopping dead, and her own wash rushed past and under, lifting and then dropping her several times, making it difficult to hold glasses steady enough to see what had happened to Underhill.
‘I think she’s off, sir.’ Selby was propped with an elbow over the torpedo warhead and glasses at his eyes. Nick was bringing the boat round to starboard, swinging her across the rolling ridges that still followed from that short, sharp rush. Rocking in towards the land again, dead slow. Now he had his glasses on the other boat: and he heard her hooter bleat the letter ‘P’, which meant ‘ready to proceed’.
‘See how Ross is, and tell him I want the revs for twelve knots again.’ He’d control it by the throttle, but Ross down there could watch the revs minutely and keep them adjusted. That burst of speed should have cleared his worries over oiling-up; and fourteen had been got out of trouble without the delay of passing a line and trying to drag her off. The risks had been of grounding oneself, and of making such a display of wash. He’d been shown aerial photos of CMBs going fast in poor visibility, and the wash and wake was all you could see. Navigationally too it was a nuisance that it had happened; he’d been on the track he’d worked out and needed to be on, and now he couldn’t be sure of it any more. If he went too far to starboard he’d do what Underhill had done, whereas if he came too far to port they might run straight into Weary Willie before linking up with Treglown. There was a strong element of chance in it, anyway, with so much uncertainty about what changes had or hadn’t occurred in the shoals and channels. For that matter, Treglown could have run into trouble, could be stuck on some inshore bank; or been too cautious and stayed farther out, passed the luckless Willie and now be groping in the darkness, lost…
He decided to take Underhill’s present position as being fifty yards too close inshore: and turn here, now, on to the old course.
‘Tell me when he’s back in station.’ He waited, searching the sea ahead. It was all black, quiet, empty. The deep growl of the engine emphasized that surrounding emptiness. There was a special feeling, state of mind, when you were in enemy waters, close to his coasts and bases, a distinctly enjoyable sensation of loneliness and danger: a sharp consciousness of being there, armed and secret. You’d have to experience it, he thought, to know it, it wasn’t something you could put into words. No sign of Treglown. Selby reported, ‘Fourteen’s in station astern, sir.’
‘Good. Now look out ahead and both sides, help me find the ML.’
‘Some way to go yet, sir, isn’t there?’
The fireworks over the trenches were well abaft the beam. But perhaps Selby was right, perhaps they weren’t yet far enough back. He checked: first that the boat’s head was on the course – north 65° east – and then the relative bearing of the pyrotechnics. 130° on the bow: and he had the hearings in his head, memorized, as you had to when you couldn’t use a chart: Nieuwpoort would have to be 150° on the bow when they were inshore of Weary Willie’s regular anchorage. Selby was right: there was about a mile, or slightly more than that, to go. Say five minutes, then: and expect to meet Treglown in three?
‘Time, Mid?’
‘Ten-fifty, sir.’
Nicely up to schedule. His sense of timing had been thrown out by the emergency of Underhill’s grounding. An excess of anxiety had given him the impression they were late and in danger of messing the thing up. In fact the incident with Underhill’s boat had only so to speak taken up the slack.
Lesson to be learnt: to keep on the ball you don’t have to worry… Command was a new experience, and one had to be careful not to allow it to distort one’s judgement.
He told Selby, ‘You’re right. About a mile to go.’
Silence all around them, soaking up the engines’ rumble. The sea’s blank, dimpled surface hid its secrets. Shoal water: at times there was probably no more than a foot or even a few inches under the boats’ keels. And any channels that were still deep enough for navigation might well have been mined. Two miles on the beam there, German gunners would be peering seaward. There was a sudden stench of petrol exhaust as a breeze swept up from astern. Wind rising? Wind didn’t only make calm seas rough, it blew cloud-cover off the moon… He told himself, It’s moving according to plan, there’s no point dreaming up problems that aren’t here. Selby was cleaning the lenses of his binoculars. The sea hissed as it swept along the CMB’s wooden sides and the engine grumbled deep in its throat as it drove her steadily through the night. The midshipman had his glasses up again, now. Nick’s own last spoken words, a mile to go hung in his brain as if he’d memorized them; he wasn’t sure if it might be one minute or five since he’d spoken them. It was like a dream when something nonsensical or totally unimportant keeps running through your mind.
He checked the bearing again. Nieuwpoort was slightly more than 140° on the bow now. Almost there. The ML might appear at any—
‘There she is, sir!’
Too good to be true…
But that odd, cuttle-fish shape was too distinctive to confuse with anything else. He looked back, saw Underhill close astern, and put the wheel over, headed to close Treglown. Close up to him, he throttled right down and stopped, de-clutched. The CMB lay rocking on the swell, so close that if Treglown had come out of his little box of a wheelhouse and waved, he’d have seen him. Underhill had stopped too, after getting in much closer; the object was to let Treglown see them and identify them, without the need for exchanges of signals.
He had seen them. The ML was gathering way, on a north-wards course. Half a mile in that direction, Weary Willie should be nuzzling sleepily at his anchor.
‘Time now?’
‘Eleven o’clock sir.’
He checked the Nieuwpoort bearing. South 35° west.
Bang on. The main worry had been a variability of the tidal streams on this coast, but the allowances he’d made for them seemed to have been right… He told himself not to count his chickens, that things could still go wrong. He was edging CMB 11 out to a position one cable’s length, two hundred yards, on Treglown’s port quarter, and Underhill was opening out the other way to put himself on Nick’s beam, the MLs other quarter. He could see both the other craft, he realized suddenly, with the naked eye… The clouds hadn’t broken up, but they’d thinned, enough to let a suffused radiance filter through. Now, of all moments! White froth under the ML’s counter suddenly: she’d speeded up.
‘They must have the trawler in sight.’
“I have too, sir. Just to starboard of her.’
‘Yes… Well done.’ He pushed the throttle shut, and the engine-sound fell away to a harsh stuttering. Clutch out… He kept his glasses on Treglown’s craft as it slid up towards the German trawler’s tall black shape. It was Willie’s funnel that gave him that high look. No light showing: no movement: only the ML sliding across the dark sea like a ghost-ship.
‘What’s fourteen doing?’
‘Stopped, sir, level with us – abeam, I mean.’
Good… Except for the moon. Any moment now the ML would be spotted and there’d be shooting, or a rocket soaring… The two shapes merged into one as the ML crept up to the trawler. One solid black smudge now, shapeless except for its height on the left edge. Willie’s chimney. They could have been just in line from this angle, but they’d been united for so long that it was safe to assume they were alongside each other: Treglown’s boarding-party would be aboard the German : if no alarm was raised now, why—
‘Ship, sir! Starboard there, a—’
A searchlight beam sprang out, swept the sea in a short arc and settled on the ML and the trawler locked together. A German voice boomed gibberish over a loud-hailer. Selby had his glasses on her, and began shouting in a high, choked voice, ‘Destroyer, sir, it’s a dest—’
She’d opened fire. A gun on her foc’sl: a scarlet spurt of flame and now the sound of it, a sort of cracking thud: four-pounder probably. Moonlight brightening the whole scene now, but nothing like as bright as the searchlight still holding the ML in its hard steel clamp. That side was Underhill’s. The ML had left the trawler’s side, you could see a gap widening between them as she moved ahead and towards the German – whose shell hit her low down and for’ard, a shattering upwards disintegration of timber lit in its own shoot of orange flame. That was all it needed: she was built of half-inch planking, and ML 7I3 was finished, but the destroyer had fired again to make sure of her. Nick swung his glasses to CMB I4 and saw her gathering way, moving towards the enemy destroyer and rising in the water as she picked up speed, white sea boiling, piling from her stern, spreading as she slammed on power. The destroyer was stopped, or as near as dammit stopped. Harry had a sitting duck ahead of him. But the searchlight swung and picked him up, held him: the Huns would be staring down that beam at a welter of foam with a black dart cleaving through it, racing at them. Nick muttered under his breath ‘Fire! Fire now!’ If he didn’t he’d lose his chance. The German was moving ahead, in the direction of the burning ML: no, he was turning, you could see his length shortening as he turned to put his bow towards his new enemy. Harry must have fired, because he was going over to starboard now, listing hard over as he swung away: the fish must be on its way, but the German would be bow-on to it, and unless there was a bit about… now? Nothing had happened: except that CMB 14’s white wash was a brilliant fish-hook track across the sea to starboard, and the Hun was continuing his turn and putting on speed himself, still under helm: you could see his bow-wave lengthening, its white curve rising, extending now the full length of that rather high, level-topped foc’sl: a short, high foc’sl, probably turtle-backed, with a gun on its after edge and then a deckhouse in the well before the bridge: a ‘V’, he thought, built for thirty-five knots but getting a bit old now, probably do 30 at most flat out: a CMB should have the legs of him. Harry would have to have the legs of him, he’d nothing left to hit him with. The ML’s flames were lower, almost extinguished as she settled in the water; she was only afloat now because she was made of wood. The Hun destroyer captain would be thinking he was on top of things: he was driving the CMB away and he’d smashed the ML, he’d think he’d saved Weary Willie from the English swinehounds; he hadn’t seen CMB 11, thanks to an extra couple of hundred yards and the fact that lying stopped like this there wasn’t much to see.
Nick slipped the clutch in, and put the throttle to slow ahead. He told Selby, ‘Watch the Hun and fourteen and tell me if anything develops.’
‘They’re chasing off, sir, that’s all!’
‘Keep an eye out that way.’
Harry would be heading for the new minefield. Nick steered CMB 11 for the ML. If the German had come from the west instead of the east matters would have been reversed, he’d have attacked it and CMB 14 would have lain doggo. He took her up towards the wrecked ML slowly: wouldn’t help anyone if he flung up a lot of white water and attracted some Hun’s attention. There could easily be another in the offing: or that first one might give up the chase and come back to see if there were any prisoners to be fished out. But most likely he’d be leaving that job to Willie.
There were two men standing on the ML’s stern, and she was only just afloat, with her forepart buried in the sea. He shut the throttle and told Selby, ‘Get up for’ard, help those two aboard.’
There were raised hand-hold strakes the whole length of the CMB’s curved wooden topsides, and a bit lower another raised one was well placed for toe-holds. The top of the engine-space, immediately for’ard of the cockpit, was flat, but everywhere else you needed something to hang on to. Selby crawled for’ard past the round engine-access hatch at the for’ard end of the engine-space and halfway between the cockpit and the stem; Nick gave her another touch ahead, then shut down again: the CMB’s stem-post nudged the ML’s stern, and Selby was holding on to the bull-ring while he helped the two survivors climb up. Nick shouted to them to get down through the engine hatch, and saw them doing it as he edged her away from the wreckage; it wouldn’t be floating for much longer. Weary Willie was off on his port beam: black, quiet, and still at anchor. Then he saw men on her bow and heard a clank of cable-gear; those had to be British, because any Germans at liberty would have been blazing away with her four-pounder. Someone came out of this end of the engine-space and clambered up beside him.
‘Glad you were around.’
Sam Treglown.
‘Casualties?’
‘None. There was only me and my leading hand – that’s Eastman here – left on board. I’d decided the rest would be more use in Willie. She was ours without a shot before I shoved off, by the way.’
Too soon to express joy or even satisfaction. There was the question of what was happening to CMB 14. The leading sea-man was in the cockpit now, and Selby was coming out of the engine-space behind him. Nick, with the CMB swinging to point her bow at the German trawler, was thinking about the likelihood of that destroyer coming back, and about the low speed of the trawler and the steadily increasing moonlight. That last factor was the clincher that was pushing him towards a variation of the plans made earlier. Treglown asked him, ‘Will Underhill be all right?’ He couldn’t have put the question at a better – or worse – moment: gunfire crackled in the north-east, perhaps a couple of miles away: Nick was looking in that direction when he saw red sparks near the horizon, heard more shouting; then there was a whitish flash and the deep boom of an explosion. He answered Treglown: ‘I wouldn’t count on it.’ He’d arrived at that decision. ‘Selby – raise the firing-lever stop.’
‘Raise it, sir?’
‘Do it!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
If the stop was down, when the torpedo was fired it would knock back the firing-lever, starting the missile’s engine so that as it dropped into the water its two concentric propellers would be whirring at full speed. If the stop was raised clear, there’d be nothing to hit the firing-lever, so the engine wouldn’t fire and the torpedo wouldn’t run. It would simply be pushed out astern and sink.
Selby came back into the cockpit. ‘It’s raised, sir.’
Nick moved the lever to withdraw the retaining-stops; they would have held the fish in its trough even against the ram’s thrust. He put his hand on the firing-lever, and jerked it over, heard the thud of the cordite cartridge firing to create sudden pressure inside the hydraulic cylinder. The boat jerked with the force of it as the ram slammed back: the torpedo was a silver streak that sprang away over her low stern. They heard the splash that represented about twelve hundred pounds of taxpayers’ money thrown away; then there was a long, sharp hiss of excess pressure leaking from the cylinder.
‘Stand by to go alongside the trawler. Selby, Eastman – hold us alongside when we’re there… Treglown – I want everyone out of her and into this boat. There’s plenty of space where the fish was. I want the Germans – here, Selby – get one of these panels out. That one.’ He kicked at the cockpit’s after bulkhead, on the starboard side. ‘We’ll put the Huns in there, inside the stern.’
The panel could be removed, and there was room inside, between the heavy timbers that supported the torpedo channel, for several men to crouch or sit. They could be watched and guarded from the cockpit, and there was no equipment in there that they could do any harm to.
He told Treglown, ‘Everyone into the boat, then have your stoker PO open Willie’s seacocks.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
Selby had forced the plywood bulkhead panel out, and CMB 11 was sliding up to berth on the trawler’s starboard side. As she loomed up closer, Willie looked surprisingly big. That tall funnel: and the high, square bridge with sandbags piled around it. Must make her top-heavy, he thought: and every little would help her down, presently. The moonlight was even brighter now. Treglown’s sub-lieutenant, Marriot, appeared on deck and reported that everything was under control, they’d only to get the hook up: then they bumped alongside and Treglown sprang over and started passing out Nick’s orders. There was a momentary hush of surprise, then a rush to obey. Nick was searching the sea to starboard, east and north-east: you could see quite a distance now and he knew he couldn’t help Harry Underhill, to try to would be like throwing a chestnut into the fire in the hope of dislodging one already in it. And with this moon beginning to break right through now it was simply not possible to remain so close inshore… There was nothing to be seen, out there. Since those two spasms of gunfire and the explosion there’d been no sound, either. The explosion could have been the German hitting a mine. Otherwise…
‘Get a move on.’
Four German prisoners were being hustled aboard. Nick told a seaman, ‘Inside there. They’ll have to crawl in.’
‘Aye aye, sir… Giddahn, Fritz, giddahn there…’
Otherwise: well a CMB wouldn’t strike a mine, because they were moored too deep, those M-sinkers. But there’d been gunfire first: and the petrol tank was right under the cockpit floor. It was the only place they could have put it, he supposed. It would be well enclosed, reasonably protected; but still, a four-pounder shell…
If the destroyer came back, with this moonlight there’d be no escape from her. Not for a trawler that couldn’t make more than about twelve knots. That was why there wasn’t going to be a trawler for the destroyer to find if she did come back. Men were climbing over from her now. Treglown called, ‘Stoker PO’s below, sir, opening the seacocks. Only him and your midshipman and myself to come.’
‘Very good.’
He waited. That calm ‘very good’ hung in his ears. Had it been his voice?
‘She’s filling, sir!’
‘Come aboard, then.’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
The stoker PO sounded like a Devonport man. Nick shouted, ‘Treglown, Selby, come on!’ They all three tumbled over. He called down to Ross, ‘We’re overloaded but we need some speed – all right?’
‘She won’t let you down, sir.’
The CMB was swinging round to point seaward. And Weary Willie was settling, lowering himself sedately but quite rapidly into the sea. When the Germans came back – or when any other German came – they’d think their Willie had been taken. Reaper had said, We wouldn’t want the Hun to think we’d just gone after prisoners. There was no reason why the Hun should think anything of the sort.
Glancing round, a final look towards the east, Nick thought that if that explosion had been the destroyer going up on a mine, CMB 14 would have been back by now. But there was nothing in sight except the long, flat swells and the increasing moonlight. Reaper had said something about responsibility, and not shirking it. Here it was. Responsibility was here and now and this throttle his hand was resting on.