NEXT MORNING, PRECISELY at ten o’clock, the ordered time, destroyer Termagant cast off her spring and thus severed her connection with the shore.
As she slipped down the twisting river she was a cauldron of hopes and regrets, of worry and bitterness and deeply-felt joy. But none of these results of a long period in port showed on the surface: there was more than enough to be done to hide them.
A pair of heavy leather gloves on his hands, Meredith was helping to reel-up the wire spring. He stood in front of the reel, and as Splinter turned the handle Meredith held on the wire a wad of cotton waste soaked with linseed oil. The wire in that way was given its protection against rust.
But Splinter was more concerned with his own protection. He glanced at Bellet, the captain of the top, a few yards away, and said in a low voice:
“I dunno why you won’t put me in the picture. Me guts has been churnin’ all night—waitin’ for the axe.”
“I told you,” Meredith answered tiredly, “you have nothing to worry about. Nobody knows you were even there. Now let it ride, for Pete’s sake.”
“Then what about yourself,” his friend persisted, “you mean he’s gonna let you get away with it?” Meredith was silent. They had had time for only a couple of drinks in the Royal before closing, and they had parted soon afterwards, Splinter to return on board. At no time had Meredith intended to tell his friend the facts—he had no doubt of his loyalty, but something could always slip out, and it was not hard to imagine the furore on the mess-decks if it became known that an A.B. of the iron-deck division was to become the first-lieutenant’s brother-in-law.
“Well?” Splinter asked, his voice and stare curious.
“I’ve got away with it,” Meredith told him. “Wouk turned out trumps, like I told you last night. I ... made a fool of myself, and I don’t want to be reminded of it. Now how about forgetting the whole thing?”
Splinter reeled on. They were almost clear of the bay, with Moreton light on their starb’d hand.
“We’ll be turning shortly,” Meredith commented, “we’ll know whether it’s Sydney, or up north again.”
“Huh,” Splinter grunted, “I wouldn’t bet a zack on Sydney ...”
A few minutes later, while they were securing the end of the wire, they learned that Splinter’s investing caution was justified. The ship leaned over to starb’d, while its sharp nose swung round to port.
“Here we go again,” gloomed Splinter, “another six months of it.”
“Oh I don’t know. Maybe another ramming—then a month back in Brisbane.”
“Gawd forbid!” Splinter answered illogically.
“This is the captain,” interrupted a voice from the speaker. The noise of work along the deck stopped at once.
“No doubt after a long spell in port,” Commander Gray went on, “you are as pleased as I am to be at sea again.” He waited for the inaudible cat-calls to subside on the mess-decks, then:
“We are headed back up north, to Port Moresby. There will be no leave given, so I can tell you we are rejoining the Fleet, taking up our position in the destroyer screen. What happens after that I don’t know, of course—but judging by newspaper reports in Brisbane there is plenty happening up north. I don’t doubt we will be in the thick of it. The ship will go to drill every day on the run up. I want the cobwebs dusted away quick smart. That’s all.”
“An’ I thought I’d be bung up and bilge free this arvo,” Splinter growled, “instead of which we’ll be flippin’ around like blue-bottomed-flies.”
“You must admit the old gun-drill will be more than rusty.”
“I’ll admit nothin’ except that you’ll jump into it with both feet! You’ll admit you can’t wait to get stuck into your commission business again.”
“I’ve got to get my commission,” Meredith answered, so quietly yet vehemently that Splinter stared at him, puzzled. He was about to speak when the bosun’s mate came up to them from the bridge ladder.
“Hey, Baron—Jimmy wants you in his cabin right away.”
The seaman went on his way disinterestedly, leaving consternation in Splinter’s homely face.
“This is it,” he pronounced at last, watching Meredith pull off his gloves. “Listen, fulla, if you’re in, I’m in.”
“Bastard!” Meredith responded rudely, and then he saw the worry in the thin man’s face. “No, Splinter,” he went on kindly, “there’s no point at all in your coming into it. If I do get a few days’ leave stoppage I’ll serve it at sea—so what? But thanks for the offer.”
He laid his gloves on the reel and walked up to Bellet.
“First-lieutenant wants me, chief. In his cabin right away.”
“Eh?” The petty-officer was supervising the rigging of the sea-boat. He pushed himself upright. “What’ve you been up to? What’s he want you for?”
“Haven’t a clue,” lied Meredith, and even through his worry he grinned inwardly at the inevitable assumption that a summons from Authority meant trouble, “maybe my recommend’s come through.”
Bellet’s look stated “I doubt it!” He said:
“All right, get down there. And hurry back—there’s a lot to do on deck.”
Meredith walked quickly aft, automatically straightening his cap. He had been expecting this summons—he had not allowed himself to hope that the incident of the party would be forgotten. Maybe, he worried, he’s changed his mind—maybe he’s going to hit me with everything. Back on board his ship, Wouk would be a different man to the Beth-deluded fellow of the night before ...
He knocked on the cabin door and heard Wouk’s deep voice:
“Come.”
He stepped in over the coaming and the first thing he saw was a large photograph of his sister standing on Wouk’s steel desk. The sight reassured him a little—her influence was still here ...
“Yes, sir?”
Wouk glanced up from a signal he had been reading. Meredith saw that it was a signal, and his heart jumped. But also in that quick glance he saw half-a-dozen names on the sheet, and the jump gave up in mid-leap.
“Sit down, Meredith,” the lieutenant invited, and shoved a chair forward with one foot.
“Thank you, sir.”
Meredith sat down, his cap on his lap, his thumbs tapping restlessly at the cap’s edge. Wouk looked at him, and kept steady gaze on him.
“I’ve sent for you for two things,” he started, “and I haven’t much time for either of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
This is definitely Wouk the officer, Meredith decided—and waited.
“First, last night.” The voice was flat, clipped—official to the last brusque cadence. “I have decided to do nothing about it. You know why.” His look stopped Meredith. “I want this clearly understood—my indulgence stops there. In this ship you are an able-seaman, and your treatment will differ not one iota from that of any other man.”
This time Meredith would not be stopped.
“There was no need to point that out, sir,” he said, his own voice as brusque as the other’s. “I did what I did, and if you’re going to take that attitude I’d just as soon take what’s coming to me. I’d like this clearly understood, sir—I don’t hide behind my sister’s skirts.”
In the next four seconds Meredith, his face flushed, felt the full intensity of the lieutenant’s glowering stare. On the lower edge of his own vision he saw Wouk’s big hand clench into a tight knuckled knot.
All right—this is it, he thought, and waited for the thunder.
He saw instead Wouk slowly turn his head, and lean his elbow on the desk and pull at his chin with his fingers. Beneath the fingers he saw Wouk’s lips twisted in a small grin. Bemused, he heard:
“All right ... Dickie ... Perhaps I asked for that. But now we know where we stand—both of us. Good.” His head turned to face his visitor “Now for the second thing. More pleasant, this one. This signal came this morning. It contains the names of men attached to destroyers in the area who’ve been advanced to leading-seaman. Your name is among them.”
His forefinger tapped the signal and Meredith saw his name, underlined with blue pencil. Pleasure surged through him.
“Thank you, sir. Does ... does this mean my recommend for commission is closer?”
Wouk’s smile slipped away.
“I recommended you for a leading-rate some months ago,” he said curtly, “now you’ve got it. The other recommend will come when and if you deserve it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put in your request to see the captain for advancement to leading-seaman next Thursday.” He tossed the signal back onto his desk. “That’s all.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Meredith got up and left the cabin.
THE SHIP WAS a few miles south of Townsville, and Meredith wore the blue anchor of his new authority on his left upper-arm, when the captain’s voice came again through the speakers.
B-gun crew was closed-up at drill, sweating under the burning sun. Bellet roared:
“Cease firing! Gun crew—rest!”
Panting, they rested the drill ammunition on the toes of their boots and waited. To starb’d the blue face of the sea was slashed into whiteness where the combers rolled against the Reef; to port the mainland loomed, also blue, but shadowy with distance.
“Our plans have been changed,” the captain told them, “we have been ordered into Townsville to top up with fuel. There will be no leave, and no mention whatever is to be made to anyone ashore about this development. What we are in for I don’t yet know. But the new orders will be passed on to you as soon as possible. We have increased speed to twenty-five knots. E.T.A. Townsville is two o’clock this afternoon. That’s all.”
The voice clicked off.
“What’d I tell yer,” Splinter growled, “we’re in for some dirty work, you mark my words ...”
“Maybe the new bow’s sprung a leak,” Pudden gloated, “looks like back to Brisbane to me.”
And “Pipe down!” bellowed Bellet. “Alarm aircraft bearing Green four-oh, angle of sight seven-five.” The drill rounds slammed up into the breeches. Speculation was effectively squashed under the lash of the bull voice.
LONG PRACTISED IN the art of information-worming, there are many and devious ways by which men on the mess-decks try to establish their ship’s movements and intentions.
The destroyer had crammed her oil-tanks with fuel—there was nothing else she needed for defensive or offensive operations—and had scooted out of Townsville, her course still to the north, but her speed now increased, when the coxswain was seen to pin up a notice on the main board. He had pressed in the second thumb-tack before he was surrounded.
A jostling group of information-hungry men read what was offered. The sheet of paper showed a list of the landing-party, with the names of Petty-Officer Bellet and Leading-Seaman Meredith at the top. Then followed ten seamen, among them Able-Seaman Mann. Below these names was an order from the first-lieutenant that daily from now on, until further notice, the landing-party would drill.
“I told yer,” Splinter croaked, “dirty work. The mongrels ...”
His brown face excited, Meredith walked back with him to their mess.
“This could mean anything,” he said quickly.
“You’re tellin’ me! I wouldn’t be surprised if us mugs ain’t been selected to land in Tokyo Bay and do a hara-kiri on Tojo himself.”
“Oh, well,” Meredith sighed, and sat down, “I’m sure Pudden will volunteer to take your place ...”
“I ain’t ratted out of nothin’ I been detailed for yet!” Splinter asserted at once. “Well ... what the hell you grinnin’ like a hairy ape for?”
“Nothing.” Meredith smiled, his look shrewd, and then tapped his fingers thoughtfully on the scrubbed table. “I wonder what the devil’s up?”
“All I’m worried about is we have to handle grenades,” Splinter said pointedly.
“This time I’ll remember to take the pin out,” his friend glowered at him, “won’t you ever let that lie?” The bosun’s mate stepped on to the mess-deck, preceded by his shrill call to attention.
“Landing-party will muster abreast the tubes in five minutes’ time.”
He went on his way piping, and Splinter said wonderingly:
“The bastards ain’t wastin’ any time. And feel the old girl shake. I don’t,” he ended darkly, “like this. Mark my words, it’ll be dirty work.”
Splinter could well be right, Meredith learned shortly. The landing-party formed-up near the tubes, with the decks cleared around them. Silent, wondering, they waited for an officer. Every ship has a landing-party detailed, but the group is infrequently used, shore-side operations being mainly and wisely left to the Army. But now it was obvious that Termagant was going to utilise her party.
The group stirred. Lieutenant Wouk had appeared up the wardroom ladder. He stood in front of them with characteristic pose and started bluntly:
“You’ll be landing in five days’ time. In the meantime your normal duties will be suspended. You’re all right on 4.7’s but I doubt if any of you could hit a packing-case at twenty feet with a Thompson gun or rifle. By the time we land you’ll be good shots. The gunner’s mate will see to that. Six men will carry rifles and bayonets, the other six sub-machineguns. Draw your weapons from the gunner’s store now. The first firing practice starts in ten minutes’ time.”
He paused, his eyes looking them over. Meredith had already noted that every man in the party was big and well-conditioned. He had also noted that use of “we”. Wouk, then, was coming with them. He had no time to dwell on the particular satisfaction and relief that knowledge gave him. Wouk said: “After firing practice we will try and learn how to move silently and under cover. There’s not much scope here, but we have the boats and tubes, things like that, to hide behind. For two hours each night we shall also practise silent movement. The rig will be khakis and sandshoes. Ah ... faces will also be blackened. Boot-polish, not burnt cork.”
He pulled at his nose, and grinned slightly.
“I don’t favour this cloak-and-dagger stuff—it’s a bit out of our line—but we’re in it up to our necks. I’ll admit we have little to go on but what we’ve read and our own common-sense. But this I can tell you—our lives will depend on quiet movement and accurate shooting. The targets will be tins thrown overboard from the bow. We open fire as they drop aft towards us on the quarterdeck. Petty-Officer Bellet—detail the men for rifles and machine-guns. Fall-in again here in ten minutes. That’s all.”
He began to turn away and Bellet said:
“Excuse me, sir—can we know where we’re landing, and why?”
“No,” Wouk answered without hesitation, “you’ll be told the night we land. And draw fifty rounds of .45 ammunition for me while you’re about it.”
They felt a little foolish at first, lining-up along the quarterdeck rails with rifles and machine-guns. Every man, of course, had fired his weapon before, but they were more used to lumping rifles at drill in Flinders than aiming them at targets. Their normal ammunition was something better than four feet long—now they pressed into the magazines the small shiny .303 cartridges.
And for the first two days they had an interested, and sometimes caustic, audience. Their shooting was vile. But constant practice, and under the persistent and experienced tuition of the gunner’s mate, himself a Fleet marksman, the audience’s interest remained, but the caustic comments dwindled.
Self-preservation is a marvellous spur to proficiency. Meredith’s shoulder was sore from the hammering kick of the Thompson, but on the morning of the third day he was laying a cone of bullets all around the empty tin bobbing at speed down the ship’s side.
Wouk left the training to the gunner’s mate. He himself stood on the other side of the deck, with a seaman on the foc’s’le providing him with targets, usually empty jam or powdered-milk tins. The sharp, single crack of his .45 Webley pistol came with dogged regularity.
Just before lunch on the third day Meredith was fitting a fresh drum of .45 ammunition to his hot Thompson. It happened that the other men were also reloading. Into the peaceful quiet on the quarterdeck there rang suddenly a single revolver shot. Meredith idly turned his head. He saw the bobbing tin fifty feet off the ship’s side, and then he heard a succession of shots so close together they sounded like a rippling chain of detonations. Five little white spurts leaped up round the tin, and twice it jerked under the shock of a heavy slug.
He looked at Splinter.
“Wyatt Earp, yet,” he grinned, and turned to his own gun.
At night they tried stalking each other; faces blackened, squirming round wire-reels and under boats, wriggling over the tubes and worming flat on their bellies along the deck.
Meredith was lying flat beside Wouk near the port depth-charge throwers when he felt the ship lean. He raised his head and looked towards the land. To his surprise the cliffy loom of the coast was well astern, and the ship was turning to port into open sea. He knew then they were rounding Cape York.
“It looks like,” he whispered to his prone companion, “somewhere between here and Darwin.”
“You could be right,” Wouk grunted, “now pipe down and get on with it.”
Their training ground was limited, they had no one on board experienced enough to teach them the art of stealthy approach and hiding, and they knew while they were trying that they were endeavouring to accomplish in a few days what it took commandos months to master.
“We’ll need to be bloody lucky in this,” Splinter decided gloomily, trying to hide behind a ring-bolt a bit smaller than his nose.
It might have helped, they all agreed, if only they knew what the hell they were up to. And late on the afternoon of the fourth day they were mustered by the tubes, and Commander Gray came walking aft from the bridge. Like Wouk earlier, he wasted no time.
“You are landing tonight,” he told them, his gaze running over the sober faces. “Here’s the drill. Intelligence suspects—almost knows for sure, in fact—that the Japs have landed at a small bay fifty miles ahead of our present position.”
They waited, silent, their faces intent.
“Not a full-scale invasion, of course—yet. This party we’re interested in is assumed to be building up a supply base—ammunition, supplies, fuel. And they’re landing the stuff from a submarine. The Army people judge that this initial build-up is to establish a bridgehead to contain their foothold until the main body lands. We’ve got to do something about that.
“You’re probably wondering why the devil the Army or Air Force don’t take a look. First, the bay is several hundred miles from Darwin, a tough proposition for land-based troops. Second, aircraft scouting about would be sighted at once, and the stuff would be hidden, if it isn’t already that. The best approach is from the sea. The ship will come in after dark, lower the motor-cutter, and then retire behind an island nearby, a couple of miles eastward. The first-lieutenant will show you a map of the area.
“Your job will be to find the supply dump. That is the main object. It will depend on circumstances—and the first-lieutenant—if you do anything about the Japs guarding it. If the submarine is there it will be better—and safer—if you merely surround the dump and its guards, then contact the ship with the portable radio you’ll have with you. I want that submarine.”
He nodded to Wouk, who stepped forward, unrolling a chart. Meredith said:
“Excuse me, sir—but won’t breaking wireless silence give the game away?”
“Probably,” the captain answered him, “but we have to risk that. I’m assuming that the submarine will be well inside the bay, unloading. Even if she hears your message, by the time she can get under way and out to sea the ship will be on to her. All right?”
“Yes, sir. Ah ... may I ask another question?”
“Go ahead.”
“What if the submarine is not there now—tonight?”
“The first-lieutenant has his orders,” Gray told him, a trifle curtly. But he went on: “If the submarine does not show up tonight, you remain hidden all tomorrow, and wait for it that night. We have to get that boat. It’s not as important to destroy the supplies as it is to let the Japanese High Command know that their loading method has been discovered—and dealt with.”
“Yes, sir.”
“All right, Number One, go ahead.”
Wouk saluted and the captain turned back to the bridge.
“Gather round,” Wouk ordered, “you’ve got to get this map imprinted on your memories.”
Meredith peered over Splinter’s shoulder, studying the chart with interest. Because of his officer-study he was familiar with elementary navigation, and the chart revealed more to him than the other seamen.
He saw a fairly small bay, almost semi-circular, but with deep soundings. The most marked characteristic, he saw at once, was a sub-surface reef which jutted out from the western tip of the bay and then curled round in a waiting hook of menace almost to the centre of the entrance. It left an entry passage between its tip and the eastern edge of the bay about two hundred yards wide. More than enough room for a submarine to get in and out.
Wouk’s forefinger rested on the chart.
“We land here, on this side, the eastern arm. Then we make our way inland to the head of the bay. There’s a small beach there, as you can see, and it’s safe to assume the unloading is done there. The ship will wait behind this island a mile and a half eastward. The hill in the centre is high enough to hide her masts.”
“Real cloak-and-dagger stuff,” Meredith mused aloud.
“It’s likely to be more dagger than cloak if we don’t move quietly,” Wouk promised grimly. He rolled up the chart. “That’s all now. We’re taking enough food for two days, put away a good feed before we leave. The rest of the afternoon I want you cleaning your weapons. Each man will carry four grenades as well. Carry on.”
They didn’t feel at all foolish now. Nor were there any coarse quips. A score of men watched them fall-in abreast the motor-cutter, and the dark groups were quiet in the moonless night.
“That breeze will help,” Bellet muttered.
Meredith knew what he meant—the westerly wind would help to kill the sound of the boat’s engine. But they would get the oars out and pull the last hundred yards—their boat was a 32-foot cutter, the same as a cruiser’s sea boat, and though it was powered, it still had rowlocks for a few oars.
“Man the boat,” Wouk ordered.
Sitting in the rocking boat, the grenades uncomfortably bulky where they were slung on a belt round his waist, weighted down with ammunition, Meredith stared upward and saw the white blobs of faces looking down. The ship looked quite strange from below—it is very infrequently that seamen see their home from the water’s edge in the open sea, and when they do it’s normally because their home is about to vanish. Then he forgot his musing as Wouk ordered: “Cast off.”
As the cutter drew away from the dim grey side a rough voice floated after them in affectionate and muted benediction:
“Watch yourselves, you bastards ...!”