“WHAT THE DEVIL,” asked the navigator, “did you do to those sailors of yours today, Jimmy? Give ’em a shot of horse-dope or something?”
Lieutenant Wouk smiled enigmatically. The time was five o’clock of a still-hot afternoon and the wardroom was full, with frosted glasses of beer in cheerful evidence. The ship’s side had been finished on time, the liberty-boat had shoved off for shore, and all he had to worry about now was a heavy shower of rain before the next morning, by which time his precious paint would be dry.
“No,” he answered, and sipped his beer. “Unless you can call extra leave incentive dope.”
“What sailors won’t do for leave ...!” the navigator grunted.
Wouk let it go at that. He was constantly in the middle of war—a secondary war, with his troops. But unlike their struggle with the Japanese, this local engagement had elements of justice and fair-play about it. He knew that his men, being sailors, would see him off if and whenever they could—that was only right and in the natural order of things naval. He also knew that when the pressure was on those same men were as loyal and steadfast as anchor-chain.
Lieutenant Wouk was in something of a paradoxical position. He was the senior officer in the wardroom, the captain’s deputy; and yet by virtue of his responsibility to the upper-deck he was by far the officer closest to the men. What they did to him, and he to them, would remain an upper-deck secret.
Someone murmured “Captain,” and the mess rose to its feet.
“This is a cheerful scene,” said the officer who stepped in over the coaming, “another few hours in harbour and we’ll be aground on our own empties. Gin thanks, steward.”
They had been at sea for a month, and it was possible they would be at sea again tomorrow: the captain’s joke was about as light-handed as a judge’s humour, but the man who made it was the captain. The mess laughed.
Commander John Gray (known universally, and unofficially, as “Dolly”) came on into the mess, a short tubby man who was perfectly aware of the duty behind that laughing reception of his “joke”. He had many times in his own career been in a similar position, and would be again when he attended a senior mess.
“Sit down, please,” he murmured, and the mess sank with him back into its chairs.
Wouk glanced at the pantry door, the stewards’ domain. Strictly speaking, the captain was in the wardroom mess only by invitation—he had his own dining-room and cabin. But there had never been in naval experience a first-lieutenant so reckless of his future as to insist on protocol. And in any case Dolly Gray was a well-liked captain.
But his presence there involved Wouk in certain responsibilities. Wouk was the first-lieutenant, the president of the mess, the host. He was so trained that at any time he kept one eye on the comfort of his guests, whether naval or civilian. Now the captain was in that category. Hence the watchful eye on the pantry.
He need not have worried. The captain had barely begun to fill his pipe before the steward emerged complete with silver tray and gin-glass and jug of iced water.
There were no “whens” in this mess—the steward knew the exact level of dilution for his lord’s drink. The captain nodded “Thank you” and took up his glass. “Cheers,” he murmured traditionally, and traditionally they drank with him.
“Ah,” said the captain and leaned back in aromatic satisfaction, “that was a nice effort on the upper-deck today, Greg. The best, in fact, I’ve seen.”
His glance at Wouk was inviting, and shrewd. But Wouk’s loyalties were safely placed. He had won a victory today, so far as he knew, and the manner of winning was not a subject for general fun or derision.
“Thank you, sir. They did work damned well. I told ’em they could go ashore at two-thirty if they finished before that.”
“Good idea,” the captain nodded, his pipe moving in sympathy, “the poor beggars need all the leave they can get.”
Feeling a little guilty, Wouk sipped his beer and pondered briefly on the sometimes unfairness of Service commendation. Only for Able-Seaman Mann’s overheard words he would not have given them that extra leave ... But tomorrow he might cop a rocket for some failure on a seaman’s part—you took it as it came, praise and blame.
The mess drank its beer and smoked its cigarettes and was subdued. Gray knew why. They were waiting for him to make known his intentions—general conversation about ship’s movements or business to which they must listen, or simply casual talk with Wouk.
The captain turned to his first-lieutenant, leaning over a little. He did not consciously think of his reason for this—he had been doing it for so long the movement was automatic. But the mess had to get talking again before the quiet became noticeable, and therefore embarrassing.
“By the way, Greg,” he started, “the quarterly recommends are almost due, aren’t they?”
His voice was quiet and intimate. The navigator asked the gunnery-officer if he were stepping off that night. Someone else laughed. Satisfied, the captain raised his finger to the pantry door.
“Yes, sir, I’m working on them now. But there’s nothing important—only a couple for higher rates.”
The captain wasted another three matches on his clogged pipe. Not important ... that’s what you think, he was pondering. Wait till you get your own command, my lad, and then you’ll understand that a ship which sends in a high number of requests for recommends for advancement is considered to be on the ball, keen, its men urged on by their officers to better themselves. A small number of requests had the reverse effect.
“I see,” he said, puffing, “what about this fellow Meredith? He’s still keen on his commission?”
“He is keen, sir.”
“Oh ...? You’re not?”
The captain’s voice was still casual, but the flick of his upward glance indicated plainly that he wanted to hear more about this.
“No, sir, not yet.”
The captain puffed, waiting.
“Meredith has all the technical qualifications, sir. As you know, he’s a university man. And he’s keen enough—seamanship study in the dog-watches, that sort of thing.”
“So?”
“It’s a matter of power of command, sir. The man ... well, he’s just not tough enough. He’s a nice chap—too nice. Not hard enough. You know well enough sir it takes a good deal of guts to come up from the lower-deck—and to stay there once you make it.” Gray knew that well enough. He also guessed that maybe Wouk was judging this man by his own obvious toughness—a somewhat unfair criterion.
“I believe he owns the D.C.M.,” he said quietly, “I don’t imagine he got that through his good looks?”
“No, sir.” Wouk’s heavy face looked a little worried. “I’ve thought about that. But I can’t seem to find out just where or how he got it. The nearest I’ve got is something about kicking a mine free from a corvette’s sweep-wire close to the stern.”
“Perhaps Meredith is—commendably—reticent?”
“Perhaps, sir.” Wouk felt the captain was a little against him in this. Despite his inherent fairness, the feeling tended to stiffen his resistance.
“What I’m getting at, sir, is this—a man’s personal bravery doesn’t necessarily qualify him for a commission.”
“I quite agree. But it seems the only thing you have against his recommend is that he’s not tough enough. All things else seem to be equal.”
Wouk rubbed his nose with a thick forefinger.
“I didn’t mean toughness exactly, sir. What I meant was power of command. In my opinion the fellow’s too nice and good-natured to take charge of men.” His voice had grown a little exasperated. “Damn it all—I’m sorry, sir—but you know what I mean by power of command.”
“Of course,” Gray nodded. The importance and value of his first-lieutenant was of more significance to him than a hundred Meredith recommends. “You’re the boy, you know what’s going on. We’ll let him wait a bit. Would you mind if I dined with you tonight?”
“Delighted, sir,” Wouk answered at once, and meant it. The captain had eaten all his meals alone for the past thirty days. “We have fresh steaks from the Yanks tonight.”
“Really? That almost makes me feel like the other half of this.” He held up his empty glass.
“Let your head go, sir.”
“You’ve talked me into it.”
They smiled at each other.
“WHAT,” ASKED SPLINTER Mann lugubriously on the messdeck, “is on for scran tonight?”
No one answered him. A dozen men sat around the scrubbed wooden tables, most of them in a pair of shorts and nothing else. The mess was hot and now beerless, their tropical ration of one bottle per man having been long ago consumed down throats whose sides the liquid had hardly touched.
Four men were blearily playing mahjong, silent except for a word now and then and the click of the tablets. Meredith was at the end of the table staring at a seamanship manual, his head held in his hands.
“I arst,” Splinter said ominously, “what’s on for scran tonight?”
The response was identical, and negative. Splinter slammed his hand down so that the mahjong boards jumped.
“Damn and blast it!” he snarled, “the bloody side’s finished, ain’t it? You got your leave, didn’t you?”
“Oh sure,” one of the players mocked, “look at us dancin’ round the Trocadero, a blonde in one hand and a schooner in the other. Pull yer head in, will yer?”
“The duty watch gets theirs tomorrer,” Splinter persisted, “can’t you mongrels take a joke?”
One of the players muttered something, in which the word “joke” was heard, preceded by certain unprintable adjectives.
“I was in a clove hitch up there this mornin’,” Splinter complained, “what’d you expect me to do—admit what I said about them flamin’ Yanks?” He stared from their disinterested faces to that of his friend. “Pudden—you’re cook of the rook tonight. What’s on for scran?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” Pudden answered, looking up from his letter.
“Strike me—as bad as that?”
“Depends whether you like steak and cackle-berries.” The mahjong players looked up. Meredith turned his head.
“Fresh eggs?” he asked, incredulously.
“Dunno about that,” Pudden shrugged, enjoying the effect, “but we got ’em from the Yanks, which means the hens only knew about it theirselves in Townsville this mornin’.”
“I don’t believe it,” Meredith said wonderingly. “Fresh eggs ...”
“Maybe the Yanks was impressed with our paintin’ ship this mornin’,” Pudden grinned, and ducked.
“East wind,” said one of the players, and juggled his tablet in, “say, Splinter, if you want to get off I’ll look out for you.”
Meredith put his hand up to hide his grin. He was relieved to see that Splinter had been taken back into the fold, at the same time as he was interested to note what an effect the thought of good food had on these men used to tinned beef and dehydrated potatoes and carrots.
“No thanks, Thunderguts,” Splinter grinned happily, his lips twisted, “leave’s up at ten o’clock. I wouldn’t get a taste of it by then. But thanks all the same.”
“You don’t have to crawl on your belly,” Thunderguts remarked, and the atmosphere in the mess was back to normal.
EVEN ON THE upper-deck it was too hot to sleep. Meredith stood down near the gangway, leaning against the torpedo-tubes, smoking without pleasure. Against his belief and wish he had thought a good deal of what Splinter had told him on the painting stage. He was not a fool, and he appreciated that to the officers he must be something of a lower deck freak. But precisely because of that, surely they must understand that he belonged with them?
Then why hadn’t his recommend come through by this? If Splinter was right, they could keep him dangling indefinitely. No matter what his professional proficiency, or zeal, or background, he was stopped solidly before the absence of that captain’s recommend. That was the only thing which would concern the drafting officer down in Flinders.
From somewhere across the darkened harbour he heard a voice lifted in raucous and ribald song; and heard the song’s instant result:
“Pipe down in the boat!”
That would be the leading-seaman coxswain of the liberty boat. Meredith saw movement on the quarterdeck near the gangway and watched the ship’s routine for receiving liberty-men move into action.
The duty petty-officer placed on the quartermaster’s desk a wooden box, compartmented, in which were kept the liberty cards. Each returning man had to collect his own card; any cards not collected represented the names and number of men absent over leave. There were not likely to be any in this forsaken hole, he thought.
The bosun’s mate climbed down the ladder to the wardroom to warn the officer of the day. Soon they came on deck, and Meredith saw the duty-boy was the gunner, an officer commissioned from the lower-deck.
The bow-wave of the boat was visible as a white flash in the dark, heading for the shaded light at the gangway. Meredith heard the gunner say to the petty-officer:
“They sound a bit happy. Get ’em below out of it quick as you can. I’ll be on the other side of the quarterdeck. Any trouble, call me.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The gunner took a look at the now-visible boat then strolled to the other side, out of sight. Meredith was conscious that he was learning a lesson in men-handling. A college-trained sub-lieutenant would have stood threateningly right at the gangway, and would—rightly, according to regulations—have put most of those half-tipsy liberty-men in the first-lieutenant’s report. They would have been punished, according to regulations. And—according to regulations—the captain would be required to furnish to Melbourne his quarterly punishment returns, the size of which would raise questioning eyebrows.
But the gunner, like another and somewhat more elevated naval officer, knew when to turn a blind eye. Tonight those men would be hustled off below decks out of sight, where they would sleep off their harmless binge. And the punishment returns would be sparse. At the same time, if there were any serious trouble, the officer of the day was there on hand to deal with it.
The action and judgment of experience, Meredith thought. The gunner was in a position of peculiar strength—he knew these men, knew their mentality, knew that they would appreciate not being watched over by a vulture with a book of regulations in his hand.
He knew all this because once he himself had been in a returning liberty boat like this one.
An odd, almost fierce desire to achieve his commission filled Meredith. He would be a bosun, not gunner, dealing with seamanship instead of fire-control, but he would be of the same executive branch as the gunner. And he too would hold this inestimable boon of knowing both sides of the Navy—messdeck and wardroom.
He had passed the educational test easily. He was sure he could pass the seamanship examination. All he wanted now was his recommend.
The gangway ladder shook and the first liberty-men, quiet now near the symbol of authority, the quarterdeck, stepped on board.
The routine of reception was smooth and efficient. A few minutes later the upper-deck stretched dark and quiet—Termagant was once again a whole ship, her workmen back on board. The gunner strolled over.
“All well?”
“All well, sir. No absentees.”
“I’ll walk round the ship,” he said to the quartermaster.
Meredith watched him come towards him, his body leaning a little so that he could see the boat moored safely at the boom, the gold of his shoulder ring gleaming faintly in the starlight. He came abreast Meredith and looked a moment into his face.
“Good night, Meredith,” he grunted—the seaman belonged to his gunner’s party.
“Good night, sir.”
The gunner walked on, heading for the foc’s’le and the anchor cable. There was little wind, and less current in this reef-locked harbour: but he was a gunner, and officer of the day, and at sea you could never be sure of anything unless you made sure.
Walking slowly, getting what he could from the last inch of cigarette, his face thoughtful, Meredith moved forrard to his hammock laid out under the whaler.
It seemed he had been asleep not more than an hour when the noise of men running on the deck brought him to wakefulness. At sea he would have slept through the sounds of the watches changing; but the ship was now in harbour, unmoving, and his mind had been conditioned to a full night of restful sleep.
He sat up and stared about him, and the bosun’s mate piped shrilly:
“All watches of the hands! All watches of the hands fall-in. At the double!”
That pipe at this hour meant only one thing—trouble. He jumped up, shrugged off his pyjamas and pulled on his shorts and sandals. He secured his knife-lanyard round his waist as he ran aft.
“Meredith!” Bellet’s voice halted him.
“Yes?”
“Reeve the motor-cutter’s falls. Smack it about!”
“What’s up?” He looked into the petty-officer’s alert face.
“Crash run to sea. Not sure ... submarine. Get on with those falls!”
Meredith ran across to the port side of the iron-deck. His stomach was beginning to churn. He did not want to go to sea, nor did any of the destroyer’s crew. But after the monotony of their last convoy this promised novelty, and to a sailor at sea at war novelty is as interesting almost as leave.
Around the boat’s davits he found a shadowy group already working, unreeling the thick rope falls from their reels and running them aft along the upper-deck. He joined a man struggling to lift the heavy block over the rails and lower it down to the boat.
“I hear it’s a submarine, Splinter.”
“Did you now? Did you also hear why the bastards had to pick on us? There must be twenty Yank boats in there.”
“But we’re closest to the entrance. I suppose the Old Man’s junior skipper as well. We might get that sub.”
Splinter flicked a glance at him.
“We got as much chance as an ice-cube in hell, fulla. That Jap’s got all the Pacific Ocean to play in. It prob’ly was only a floatin’ stick anyway.”
“They sighted his periscope?”
“Some patrollin’ aircraft, yeah—so I hear. Poor mongrel—if he’d got in amongst this lot he’d have had a picnic,” Splinter growled with grim and illogical satisfaction.
“Cut the cackle!” a hard voice ordered behind them, “off your clackers and get those falls down!”
“I’ll catch up with him in the blackout,” Splinter growled automatically and without rancour at Bellet’s broad back, and worked faster on the falls.
In a moment the long twin ropes were run out along the deck. The heavy motor-cutter was the main thing delaying the ship’s departure. It could be hoisted by electric winch, and normally was—but it could be run up much faster by men running away with the falls, and now they were waiting for the lower blocks to be hooked-on in the boat.
Meredith had lowered his block to the boat. He backed away from the guard-rail and cannoned into a heavy body.
“Watch it,” a deep voice growled, and the seaman recognised in the moonlight Lieutenant Wouk’s presence.
“Sorry, sir,” he muttered, and Wouk strode quickly on, to run up the ladder leading to the bridge.
For a second as he watched the bulky figure move on Meredith was faintly surprised that the first-lieutenant did not remain at the scene of operations, the place where you would expect his urging presence. Then in a flash of insight he understood that he was witnessing the real relationship between the first-lieutenant and his sailors: the chips were down now, and Wouk had complete faith in Bellet and his men. The private war had been submerged, the conflicting parties cemented into a solid union in face of the enemy threat outside.
Bellet roared an order and Meredith’s brief musings became swamped by the need for action.
“Haul taut singly!”
The two rope falls were hauled taut separately, all hands keeping on their outside and evenly distributed on either side down the length of deck. Meredith and Splinter, with other iron-deckmen, remained near the davits, ready to secure the falls round the cleats when the boat was finally up.
“Marry!” came Bellet’s bellow.
The lines of men closed together and their hands gripped both falls as one. Their bodies were leaning aft, in the direction they would run, and their faces were turned forrard, towards the davits and Bellet.
Bellet leaned over the guard-rail, a final checking stare below. In the brief pause Meredith heard clearly the cable-officer’s voice from the foc’s’le:
“Anchor’s aweigh, sir.”
Then, as Bellet heaved himself back from the rail, he caught the faint clang of bells from the wheelhouse and felt Termagant’s thin sides shudder a little. Over the sound of thrashing from under her stern Bellet’s bellow triumphed easily:
“Hoist away!”
A hundred pairs of legs strained against the deck, moved, and ran away aft. The heavy motor-cutter lifted from the water like a child’s toy.
Bellet’s eyes were critical, alert. The boat was coming up square, which would save time in the hoisting. Now she was a few feet below the davit heads.
“Handsomely!”
The headlong run of the haulers slowed to a walk. Judging his distance, Bellet roared:
“High enough!”
It took a second or two for the order to be implemented down the long line of men. When they stopped hauling, the big blocks of the falls were nicely chock-a-block, together.
Now the men in the boat swiftly passed the lifelines under the hooks of the slings, up over the davit heads, back under the slings and dogged the ends round all parts of the thick ropes. Then they lay back on the ends in their hands.
“All to the lifelines ...” Bellet ordered in a slow, drawn-out way, and the bosun’s pipes of the leading-seamen twittered the order down the line.
The two lifelines stretched, creaked, and took the weight of the boat. Bellet’s eyes flicked from end to end of the boat, critical, judging. Then he gave the final order of the evolution:
“Light to!”
The men threw the falls towards the boat, the tarred hemp striking the steel deck with a slithering thump. Then they quickly dispersed, leaving the iron-deckmen to turn the boat in and secure it for sea.
For the next few minutes Meredith was too busy to look about him. When he straightened up with the boat turned inboard and secured from rolling by the ubiquitous lifelines passed crosswise over its belly, he saw the moonlit water of the harbour slipping past quickly. The deck was pulsing rhythmically beneath his feet.
“Nice work,” Bellet grunted, eyeing the tautly-held boat, “you slobs can work if you want to.”
For a moment they enjoyed in appreciative silence this rare commendation, and then Splinter’s voice came, slow and doleful:
“My Gawd ...!”
“What’s up with you?” Bellet demanded, looking about him alertly for something amiss.
“The ship’s side,” Splinter groaned.
Silence, while realisation of what rushing water was doing to their work, flashed upon them. Bellet said: “So what? There’s plenty more paint where that lot came from. Since when have you worried about pusser’s stores?”
“I ain’t worried about the blasted paint!” Splinter snorted. “But we gotta put the flamin’ stuff back on again!”
“By two in the afternoon,” Bellet reminded him grimly.
“Them,” Splinter said morosely, “was special circumstances.” And then, to distract attention from uncomfortable time-tables, he asked:
“What now? We go back to the old banana bedsteads?”
“It might be a good idea to wait for the skipper’s ideas on that,” Bellet said drily, “we aren’t on a pleasure cruise, remember?”
The shell-riven palm trees fringing the entrance through the reef slid into their sight, and the ship began to move a little in the open swell. The white-flashed water rushed hissing down the side.
“A sheer waste of fuel—and sleep,” Splinter pronounced lugubriously, “like I said, we ain’t got a chance in hell of gettin’ on to that boy out there. Can we shove off now?”
“Like I said, the Old Man might just want his crew on deck. I hope you don’t mind waiting till he lets us know?”
Splinter’s lip curled. But he leaned back against the boat and pulled out the makings. Then he realised where he was, and cursed. He stuffed the tobacco back into his overalls pocket and a loudspeaker of the Sound Reproduction Equipment crackled.
“Now ...” said Bellet, and his head turned up towards the bridge.
Commander Gray took the microphone Wouk handed him. He held it close to his mouth, and all the time his eyes, almost squinted, searched the moon-silvered sea ahead.
It was an automatic precaution. He knew it would be difficult to sight a slender periscope face in the moonlight; his real eyes and ears now was the asdic set, whose regular and metallic pinging pitched across the quiet bridge from the repeat speaker on the bulkhead near his knee.
The commander waited a few seconds longer, subconsciously listening for the returning peep which would mean a contact. The rhythmic pinging was not interrupted. He cleared his throat.
“This is the captain. What is suspected of being the periscope of an enemy submarine was sighted a short time ago by a patrolling American aircraft, ten miles east of the harbour. Our job is to find and destroy that submarine.”
He paused. Dolly Gray had been at sea a long time, most of it in destroyers—he could imagine easily enough the reaction his last statement would surface on the messdecks. A little grimly, he thought he would wipe some of those cynical grins off.
“There is the possibility, of course, that if we don’t find them, he might find us. It is a lovely moonlight night ...”
He paused again, and the hiatus in the speech was as plain to his listeners as his words. Wouk smiled appreciatively behind his hand.
“The ship will go to action stations in five minutes’ time. That will give you time to get your battle-dress on. We might surprise him on the surface; gun-crews will remain on their toes. Check your ready-use direct-action ammunition.” He coughed. “Let’s hope this crash run to sea is productive of more than lost sleep. That’s all.”
The S.R.E. clicked off, and now they heard again the soughing of the wind in the mast rigging.
“Very funny,” Splinter groaned, “stop it, Dolly, I’m bustin’ me sides laughin’!”
Bellet knew well enough the real harmlessness of Splinter’s sneer, but any reflection on the captain—in a petty-officer’s presence—had to be nipped instantly and definitely.
“Pipe down,” he growled, “get below all of you and prepare for action. I want the gun manned in three minutes. Move!”
They moved.
The forty-odd men of the iron-bark division manned their share of Oerlikons, Bofors and pom-poms, but their main contribution to the destroyer’s offensive capabilities was the manning of B-mounting, whose twin 4.7-inch barrels projected from immediately below the bridge, on B-deck. Bellet, captain of the top, was also captain of the gun.
Meredith walked quickly through the bulkhead door outside the galley, past the little sickbay, and into his mess. He pulled on a pair of overalls and changed his sandals for a pair of heavy boots—the overalls would protect him from the white-hot burst from shells, and the boots his feet from the spent cartridges the guns would vomit backwards as they ran forward from the recoil.
He was the breech worker of the left gun, the man responsible for the gun’s proper loading and bringing it to the ready for firing, and if Bellet should be incapacitated, he would take charge of the whole mounting.
Splinter, who had an eye like a hawk, was the gun layer, his place at the brass laying-wheel a few feet from Meredith’s left leg. The trailing of the mounting, by means of a powerful hydraulic pump, was in Pudden McCabe’s capable hands, and Thunderguts Cleary was one of the six loading-numbers.
Altogether there were fourteen men on the mounting, and they had been trained and bullied and cajoled and drilled by Bellet’s bull-like voice into a compact, highly-disciplined team of proved efficiency.
Meredith grabbed his steel helmet, with his antiflash gear stuffed inside it, from his locker.
“Come on,” he admonished Splinter and the others, “let’s get up there.”
“Hurry up, chaps,” Splinter mimicked the other’s tone, “the Baron’s rearin’ to go! Strike me,” he invited in his normally morose voice, “I’d hate to be anywhere near you if you get that thin ring you’re after, fulla. Talk about Captain Bligh ...”
Nevertheless, while his words were derogatory, Splinter hurried with his dressing, and he was only a few steps behind Meredith as that seaman jumped through the watertight door on his way to B-deck.
The rest of the crew herding them close, the two men climbed the ladder to the gun, and were met by another voice, one this time which brooked no argument.
“Come on, smack it about!” Bellet adjured. “Meredith, check the guns; Mann and Cleary, get those guard-rails down—we may be in close-range firing; McCabe, clips off the ready-use ammo; Anderson, on the phone—report closed-up!”
His orders came out in a vehement staccato tone, and under its flail they ran to do his bidding. Though none of them thought about this, they would have their gun-captain speak in no other way. On twin quick-firing guns, striving to punch out as many shells per minute as training and strength would allow, you didn’t want a pansy-toned gentleman behind you: you wanted a man whose gale-trained bellow spurred you on to further effort, a man who knew just how much morale was heightened and strengthened by expert vehemence.
They had only a minute or so left them before the action bells rang, but they had been on these guns a long time, and B-mounting was ready for whatever was ahead of it before the clanging shrilled through the speeding ship.
Breeches gaping open, ready-use lockers open, clips off the long yellow cartridges, guard-rails laid flat on the deck, breech-mechanism and firing-locks checked and found correct, the heavy grey barrels waited, silent and menacing, for a target.
Within a few minutes the ship had subsided from the rush of men closing-up for action: now she was quiet again, a tense, alert quietness, a sub-killing destroyer on the hunt. The only sound was the steady whining of the wind in her rigging, and the soft hiss of water pressing down her steel sides.
Into the quiet about B-gun dropped a voice.
“Below there. You may have to open with star-shell. Have you got the clips off the cordite?”
The words were addressed to Bellet. Meredith looked up and saw Wouk’s shoulders bunched over the windbreak of the bridge.
“All clips off, sir,” the gun-captain reported formally.
Wouk’s shoulders withdrew, and Splinter snarled:
“What’s that acid drop think we is ... girl guides? I was takin’ base clips orf before he wet his pants. Them mongrels can’t trust us. Oh no, he’s gotta poke his big snots in, he’s gotta say somethin’. Talks more than a barber’s cat. An’ you ...” his lip lifting sideways at Meredith beside him, “you wants to be one of them! Strike me up a gum tree! You must be ready to flip yer lid, wantin’ to be ...”
His voice, low, stopped. Nobody was listening to him, not Meredith near him—or Pudden on his trainer’s seat. Their heads and attention were on the bridge, its grey-painted steel rising from the deck a few feet away.
From the asdic speaker, sharply noticeable because of its contrast with the even pinging of the transmission, clear to their ears in the quiet night, came the shrill peep of an underwater contact.
“All right,” said Bellet with deliberate calm, “close-up at the gun.”
For some seconds their boots thumped on the steel deck, and then the mounting was quiet again. Meredith stood beside his open breech, one part of his mind alertly open to receive orders—whether to open fire in surface action, or to fling a brace of starshell up in the air to light their target, if it were surfaced, so that the other four guns could engage.
The other part of his intelligence was thinking ... they were only a few miles outside the harbour entrance; the submarine then must be closing the harbour, intent on getting in amongst its packed and juicy targets.
If it did get in, his thoughts ran on, there was little doubt it would be beaten to death before it could escape again. But it did not take long to fire a salvo of torpedoes, and in there a torpedo couldn’t miss ...
There had not been time to lay an anti-submarine boom across the wide harbour mouth, nor a betraying electric cable. There was only one obstacle to the submarine’s successful entry ...
“We gotta get this boy,” Splinter’s voice came low and worried from the laying wheel.
Nobody answered him. Not because the statement was so obvious, but because their attention was on the bridge, hoping to glean from an order some knowledge of what was happening there.
A bell clanged, again, and they knew a change of speed had been passed to the engine-room. Experienced in submarine hunting—it was the ship’s prime purpose—they waited for the shuddering of the deck to ease, and when it came they knew that the captain was in firm contact with his target, and was slowing down so as not to confuse his asdic operator with the sibilant sounds of the ship’s own passage.
It looked, they agreed wordlessly and collectively in their minds, as if old Dolly Gray had this bloke.
B-mounting’s crew were exclusively gunnery, but they had been taught the basic principles of, and lived among the operators of, asdic and radar. So that every man on the guns could judge by the short time between the ping of transmission and the peep of the echo that the enemy submarine’s range was close.
They waited at their positions round the guns, silent, attentive, and now as the ship moved on, and the evidence of that subsurface steel cigar was continuously betrayed by the asdic speaker, a quiet and deep exultation began to mount within them.
They had seen Termagant in action before, they knew how her quarterdeck could spew out the crushing canisters of high-explosive amatol, and they felt a rising certainty that this particular Japanese submarine was due shortly for a violent and conclusive death.
They heard a quiet voice say from the bridge: “Stand-by depth-charge attack,” and that was all they needed to relax their vigilance a little and to savour in its place the grim and pleasurable certainty that the ship was about to kill.
So that none of them was prepared for the next startling evidence of the progress of the hunt.
Several things happened almost at once. The regular and passionless pinging and peeping of the asdic set changed abruptly to a shrill, tearing sort of screech. A voice called, obviously to the captain:
“Torpedo approaching, bearing oh-five-oh!”
And Commander Gray’s voice reached them, calm, but clipped with urgency:
“Hard-a-starb’d! Full ahead both engines!”
The sounds and orders offered to the listening gunners as plain a picture of what was happening as if they could see it visually. The submarine had been aware of the tok-tok of the asdic transmissions tapping at her hull; she was at periscope depth, and she had decided to fight this killer-ship instead of sinking deep. The first messenger of her intention was now on its fast way towards them.
In comparison to the size and weight of the ship, a destroyer’s screws and rudder are quite enormous; Termagant was less than a fifth the weight of an eight-inch cruiser, yet her engines could develop half the big ship’s power.
Now forty-thousand boiler-room horses were straining her two huge screws round, and the rudder-face was receiving the pressure of water both from her forward movement and from the thrashing stream which the curved surfaces of the screws were forcing aft.
She had to be quick. The sound of the approaching torpedo, its own propellers driving it at thirty-five knots, was now a high-pitched, thin scream, and rising in pitch as it got closer to its target.
But Termagant was leaning. Meredith hung on to the breech-mechanism lever as she heeled, feeling the powered shuddering of the ship through his braced feet. He looked over Splinter’s head, out through the sighting-port, to see the slim bow wiping fast round the moonlit horizon.
The torpedo was coming at them from the port bow. In an instant of judgment of speeds and distances and bearings the captain had decided that his safest course was to swing her to starb’d; now she was turning as fast as she could to the right, striving with all her strength to heave her vulnerable sides clear of the path of the oncoming explosive-headed danger.
Bellet ordered:
“Jackson, Owens, up forrard. Lookout for torpedo track.”
The two loading numbers had barely moved past the mounting when Meredith heard the captain’s order:
“Midships. Steer oh-four-oh. Half speed ahead both engines.”
Then he knew, both from the orders and from the calmness in Gray’s voice, that they had slipped the torpedo. Termagant would now come round and run towards the origin of that flat, smooth track laid on the surface of the sea.
Meredith’s taut muscles let go a little. He heard Bellet order the two lookouts to watch for another spear-headed track, and with the words his stomach tightened again.
Skill and luck had saved them the first time. But the ship was now turning back, she was committed for several long seconds to this course, and a submarine carried more than one torpedo. As well, the ship’s speed had dropped, for Gray wanted his asdic eyes to regain their contact, and this he could not do at high speed.
The next minute or so would decide whether her sides would be blasted open to the sea or whether the enemy had dived deep after his initial gamble.
The information of the submarine’s movements when it came was a shock. Meredith heard a commotion on the bridge, but high and clear above that he heard Jackson’s voice, shrill with urgency:
“Submarine surfacing dead ahead! Range ... range five hundred yards!”
His brain and muscles as taut as piano wire, Meredith glared out through the sighting-port. He saw it at once, it was so close—the sea heaving, and then breaking into white as a black conning-tower shouldered its way up clear.
It must be faulty ship-handling, his racing mind judged—somebody had committed a colossal blunder down there. Then his irrelevant thoughts were swamped by Bellet’s bellow:
“With direct-action shell and full charge, load, load, load!”
Meredith watched tensely as the shell and cordite were slammed down on his rammer. The gunnery part of his mind told him what Bellet was up to. There was not time to follow director, to open fire in the normal controlled shoot. Now only training would tell—training and drill and speed, to hole that ugly black shape before the handling error could be rectified and she sank back again into water-covered obscurity.
The shell rammed up into the open breech and the big breech-block shut behind it and he heard Bellet shouting ranges and deflection. Meredith wiped the palm of his hand up beneath the electric firing interceptor and shouted:
“Left gun ready!”
“Layer on!” Splinter snapped, and “Trainer on!” came from Pudden.
“Fire!”
The submarine was almost dead ahead—the deflection was negligible. Pudden had his vertical crosswire, duplicated in Splinter’s sight, dead on the forrard edge of the conning-tower. Splinter’s horizontal wire rested at the tower’s base.
A heave of the ship’s bow lifted the wire. His finger, crooked round the trigger, relaxed a fraction. His left hand moved the laying wheel and B-mounting’s ugly twin snouts lowered a little. Then, strongly and definitely, Splinter’s finger squeezed. The guns roared, and flung back in recoil, and ran forward again to the firing position. Before the shells had landed the next salvo was on the loading-rammers.
The shells landed. There were only two of them, B-mounting having beaten her sister guns to the first punch. The shells landed smack where Splinter’s experience had intended them to hit, at the base of the water-lapped tower.
Armour-piercing shells would have bored right through the thin steel. These two projectiles hit, and their fuses jolted into instant action. Twin gouts of abrupt red flame showed against the glistening black.
Unknowing of the results of the first salvo, uncaring in the intent intimacy of his job, Meredith slammed his hand up again. His voice rapped out:
“Left gun ready!”
Splinter squeezed. The roar erupted again, the challenging sound blasting across the quiet sea. The shells hit, and the phone-number shouted:
“Cease firing! A-gun clear the foc’s’le! Stand-by to ram!”
Automatically Meredith whipped his interceptor open, breaking the firing circuits. He reported his gun loaded to Bellet, and his head swung back.
Now he could look, now he could see Gray’s intention. The submarine was still visible, but sinking down so that only the top of her bridge, and the two periscope standards, showed. Obviously she had been damaged, but not enough apparently—just as obviously, she had to be stopped before she could disappear to turn again into an invisible threat to their lives.
It was almost certain that the destroyer could pick her up again by asdic if she did get under—but probabilities could not be accepted here. Now Gray had her. He had to keep her. And there was one certain way of ensuring that.
Bellet said, his voice deep and controlled:
“All right, clear back from the gun. Hang on—and hang on tight!”
Meredith jumped down and moved back and to one side of the mounting. He braced himself against a ready-use locker. His body was facing aft, pressed against the locker, but his head was craned round, his eyes staring ahead over the swooping bow. He had to see this, impelled by a wholly irresistible fascination. Not one ship in a thousand ever had the opportunity to ram in mid-ocean. Now they were going to obey the dramatic order.
Termagant was quivering with unleashed power, with feral eagerness to get at her enemy. She had been given her superheated steam fast, too fast, but that didn’t matter now. All that mattered was for her to get her slicing bow up against what was even now eluding her, sinking down faster, dragged down by the desperate weight of water to slip beneath her avenging steel.
She was doing close to thirty knots, helped in her acceleration by her already fast speed. Under Meredith’s fascinated sight the moon-glinting water seemed to race towards her bow—that swooping, striving, eager bow.
Ahead of her, fifty yards ahead, there was nothing now but a tossing spume of white. While his eyes stared, his brain worked—she drew ten feet; the submarine’s fore-casing would probably be beneath that draught, but the conning-tower ...
Gray had to get the conning-tower. It was too late to alter course, he was committed to his run. Meredith hoped with a fierce single mindedness that the captain had allowed for that when he had given his last course-order. For a moment he hoped, and then he knew the captain had not failed.
It was a surprisingly slight bump, their first contact. That was the bow meeting the rounded point of the pressure hull and riding up. But then the endpoint of two thousand tons of driving steel weight met the solid, vertical resistance of the submarine’s bridge structure.
The shock thrilled through her, staggered her as if she had run her nose into a concrete breakwater. Her bow lifted as though on a great wave, and Meredith’s stomach was forced painfully into the clips on the locker. He hardly felt the pain. He watched the bow rise up, shaking, and ride on over.
There was a horrible, alien sound, like the magnified rasp of sandpaper dragging across rusted iron. Above the sound came the captain’s voice:
“Stop both! Full astern together!”
Even in that cosmic moment, and through its shock and rising exultation, Meredith recognised the staccato calmness of the captain’s voice. For the first, and probably last, time in his career Commander Gray had rammed his enemy, ensured her destruction, and still his mind and actions were activated by the training and requirements of seamanship.
Voices, excited and vehement, broke out about him but Meredith’s attention was still focussed ahead. He could see no change in the shape of the bow, but he reasoned quickly that all damage would be beneath the water-line. Then he noted that the destroyer was pulling smoothly and rapidly astern, away from the frothing white.
Satisfied in their own safety, Meredith returned his attention to the local scene—and saw three men bending over a figure lying quiet and still on the deck behind the guns.
He stepped forward, and recognition came almost at once—there was no mistaking that long and skinny form. As he reached the group Bellet straightened up.
“He’ll live,” he growled, his tone unalarmed, “must have caught his scone a wallop on the platform when we hit. He’ll have an outsize hangover, that’s about all. But anyway,” and he looked round at his crew with gruff commendation, “he’s done his job. We won’t need him now.”
“I think, chief,” Meredith said, and tried to keep his voice controlled, “you could be wrong. The submarine’s surfacing.”
Bellet swung. His stare grabbed at the water ahead of the receding bow. They all swung, and saw at once the black ravaged tower in sight. Wallowing, rolling so that water streamed back from its bridge in white cascades, the submarine looked like a wounded animal striving to reach air and safety. An animal which, for all they knew, was still capable of baring its claws.
The bridge saw it too. But they did not need Wouk’s shouted order. X-gun down aft could not bear, it could not fire anywhere near dead ahead. And A-gun crew had been cleared off the foc’s’le.
“Close-up!” Bellet roared, and then his gaze fell to the unconscious gun layer, of all the crew the one indispensable man.
“I’ll take it,” Meredith said quickly, and before Bellet could answer he was scrambling into Splinter’s seat, calling as he went:
“Jackson—take the breech!”
Then he had plumped down in the wooden seat, his hands on the laying wheel, his eyes to the telescopic sight.
In that urgent moment of time none of them waited to think that the submarine could not possibly hurt them, that her control-room must be swamping with a deluge of water, that their shells could add little significant damage to what Termagant’s bow had already caused. They knew nothing of a submarine control-room, of the delicate buoyance which can be so easily upset, and which had been.
Their minds were wholly concerned with one overriding item of knowledge—their enemy was still afloat, and theirs was the only mounting which could deal with it.
Meredith heard the shout “Ready!” and Bellet’s “Fire!” His crosswires were on—the range was point-blank—and as he began to squeeze the trigger he saw a man’s head and shoulders appear above the edge of the submarine’s bridge.
He saw the man, but in the concentrated ecstasy of the moment his mind registered nothing except the need to hit, and hit, and hit again. His finger pulled.
Almost simultaneous with the guns’ bellow the shells smashed into the riven bridge. The submariner, whoever he was, had a second only of freedom in the cool night air. In the flash of the bursting shells his body was seen jerking backwards, his arms outflung in a mute unconscious supplication. Then he disappeared from sight, and Meredith heard Jackson’s shout:
“Left gun ready!”
The third salvo was being loaded into the smoking breeches when the cease-fire bell shrilled. Automatically Meredith withdrew his hand from the firing-grip, but he kept his eyes to the sight. He was still watching when the enemy bridge dropped swiftly and definitely out of sight beneath the roiling sea.
Tension can jump into a man’s guts in a flash; reaction can set in almost as quickly. Meredith pulled his face away from the sight and turned to ease himself from the cramped seat. He climbed back to the rear of the gun, aware, and dully surprised, at the feeling of tiredness slowing him down.
“Nice work,” Bellet grunted, and Meredith nodded, “All right then,” the gun-captain ordered, “let’s get these cylinders cleared away. That bastard could have a friend.”
Oddly quiet, for their excitement had been so intense it could not last long, B-gun crew set about their task of clearing the mounting.
THE SHIP WAS on-course back to harbour, with the damage assessed—the cable-locker was half-flooded, but bulkheads and pumps were holding it—and B-gun was still closed up, when Lieutenant Wouk poked his head over the bridge windbreak.
“Captain of the gun?”
“Sir?”
“On the bridge.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Automatically Bellet checked his battle-dress, his anti-flash gear and his respirator, and Splinter, recovered and aching but unsubdued, said:
“This is one time you can be sure you ain’t gonna cop a rocket.”
“Maybe, maybe,” Bellet answered, smiling. He tightened this unwonted expression and said curtly to Meredith:
“Take over. Keep ’em quiet and keep ’em on their toes—or else there will be a few rockets flying around.”
“You’d winge if a man was ...” Splinter uttered the coarse and stereotyped comment, secure in the privilege of “old ships.”
“If it was you—yes. Watch it now,” and with the final and unnecessary adjuration Bellet swung his big body down the ladder and headed for the bridge.
He found the captain and the first-lieutenant talking quietly together in the starb’d forrard corner, near the captain’s tall-legged stool. He saluted and said:
“Captain of B-gun, sir.”
“Ah, Petty-Officer Bellet,” the captain said easily, and turned, smiling. “I just want to tell you, and through you your crew ... that was a good effort from B-gun. Pass it on.”
“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
“One of your men was injured? Who was it?”
“Able-Seaman Mann, sir. He just fell and clocked—er, hit his head on the platform, sir. The jolt when we hit, sir.”
“I see. He’s the gun layer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who took over for the last salvoes?”
“Able-Seaman Meredith, sir—breech worker of the left.”
The captain nodded. Dismissed, Bellet saluted and turned smartly about. His weather-beaten face as he made for the ladder was filled with a quiet and full delight. Praise in a fighting destroyer was rare and sparsely-given; his had been offered publicly by the captain, and it was a rich and unique experience for him.
The ladder chains rattled as he ran lightly down and turned forrard to his gun.
“M’mm,” the captain mused, and rubbed his chin.
“Pardon, sir?” Wouk glanced at him attentively.
“You heard that?”
“Yes, sir, I heard it. And they deserved it.”
“I was referring to Meredith’s taking over the laying.”
“Oh ...”
“You’re not impressed?”
“With Bellet’s drill, yes sir,” Wouk answered at once. “But if you mean what I think you mean—no. I imagine any of that gun-crew could have taken over the layer’s duties, or any other man’s duties for that matter. They have been trained to do just that.”
“I agree. But wouldn’t you concede that the quickness with which it was done indicates some initiative on Meredith’s part? Not to mention his actual skill in hitting that bridge?”
“The range was point-blank ... look, sir,” Wouk went on, a little stiffly, “I don’t want to decry what he did.”
“And you especially don’t like being put in the position where it seems you are?” Gray smiled at him.
“As you say, sir. But I still can’t concede that good work on a gun-mounting in action fits a man for his commission. If that were so, I can think of fifty men on this ship right now who’d qualify.”
“I’d give anything for a cigarette,” the captain murmured inconsequentially. He rubbed his chin again, glancing sidelong up at his companion’s bulky form. “But what I’m getting at, Greg, is that all else being equal—and we both agree that this man is fit for his commission mentally and educationally—what he just did must stand in his favour. We must judge his action on the basis that he is different to the rest of the ship’s gunnery personnel.”
“I agree, sir, that it must stand in his favour.” Wouk’s hand tapped at his pocket, as though he too felt the need of a cigarette’s solace. He went on, his formal:
“If in your opinion the man deserves his recommend, sir ...”
Gray chuckled, and briefly his hand touched his lieutenant’s arm.
“That is not the point, Greg, and damned well you know it.” He breathed in deeply, his eyes on the bow. “She seems to be holding all right. I’d risk a little more than ten knots, but we’re so close in it’s not worth it.”
Wouk had known his captain a long time. Dutifully he acknowledged the implications of Gray’s last words, and followed along.
“What do you think, sir? Espiritu Santo? They can’t help us in Manus.”
“It could be Santo,” the captain nodded, his face thoughtful. “But from what I hear the refitting basin is pretty full there.”
“Then ... it could be Brisbane?”
“Most likely—yes. Evans Deakin’s yard could handle us all right. They build corvettes.”
“Well, well,” Wouk grinned, and Gray knew he was not thinking of recommends now.
“You know someone there?”
“No sir—not yet.”
“Oh to be a bachelor now that Brisbane’s here,” the captain said drily, “but you can tell them that if they want their wine-bills increased the answer’s no.”
“From what I know of them, sir, they’ll do most of it ashore. And I might be with ’em.”
“I wish I was as sure of collecting my deferred pay as I am of that,” the captain growled. He stared about him at the quiet breathing sea. “I’m slipping below for a moment. Look out, will you?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Wouk watched him go, affectionate understanding in his eyes. Of all Termagant’s men he alone had a full appreciation of what the captain had been under during those few hectic moments.