Esmond Brooke sat squarely in his bridge chair, an unlit pipe clenched between his teeth. The air was heavy and clammy, but compared with between decks where it was like an oven in spite of the busy fans, and the blazing heat in the confines of an open bridge during the daylight, it was almost exhilarating. He watched the arrowhead of the sharp forecastle rise streaming from the sea, water cascading down either side as far as ‘A’ gun before ploughing into the next steep roller. Even some of the older hands would be throwing up in this, he thought.
It was pitch black, with no stars to divide the ocean from the sky.
Down again, the spindrift flying over the glass screen like white arrows.
Kerr emerged from beneath the chart table’s hood and said, ‘Pretty lively, sir.’
‘It may get worse.’ Strange how easy it was to talk with the first lieutenant now. Perhaps Kerr’s admission of his fear aboard the sinking fishing boat was a part of it. Like Calvert, who had even touched very briefly on flying.
Like me. He wiped his face with a wet towel as he recalled his shame over his injured leg. He was not over it, but the girl had helped more than she could ever know.
He had seen her only once more before Serpent had been ordered to sea on another patrol. Without effort he could summon her to his mind, even though he had repeatedly told himself he was being ridiculous. Perhaps she was trying to show his brother that she did not care about his behaviour. That she had never been really serious.
Their last meeting had been so formal he had barely spoken to her. Her father had invited some of his own friends to dinner at his fine house on the Peak, dedicated eaters to a man. Charles Yeung had prodded the air with a cigarette, which he was rarely without, and through the smoke had said, ‘Lian, sit beside the Commander. Teach him the foreign ways of chopsticks!’
She had not looked at him but had watched her hand on his as she had guided his fingers until he had eventually obtained a proper grip on them.
A wet figure lurched across the bridge. Sub-Lieutenant Paul Kipling, at odds with the others in the same old khaki drill uniform in which he had first come aboard.
Brooke twisted round in his chair. ‘Number One? What can we do about getting some Chinese dhobi-men on board? Other ships on the China Station have them. They could manage our shirts and other gear in no time, I’m told.’
Kerr’s teeth shone through the gloom. ‘The old three-badgemen won’t thank you for that, sir. They’ve got their own firm down below, in league with the boiler-room crowd of course, for drying out the clothing!’ He considered it. ‘I’ll lay something on. The wardroom funds can stand it.’
He watched Brooke as he raised himself in the chair to stare into the spray. More like a first-passage midshipman than the commanding officer, he thought.
‘You were always in destroyers, sir?’
‘Except for a training cruiser, yes. Always wanted to be. I suppose my father had something to do with it.’
Kerr saw him run his hand along the rail below the screen, where canvas dodgers had once been rigged to help protect the bridge team from wind and weather. The dodgers had vanished with many other original fittings.
‘I never thought I’d get to drive Serpent though.’
‘You seem to get along well together!’ Kerr staggered as the bows went down again and somebody sprawled headlong by the ladder. The ship was at cruising stations, four hours on and eight off. Welcome under other conditions, but not in this.
Brooke commented, ‘My father always said of destroyers, “Bigger than anything faster, faster than anything bigger”. Suits ’em, eh?’
Kerr said, ‘I hear you’ve been doing Hong Kong in some style, sir.’
‘The car, you mean?’ Before, he might have looked for some other reason for the remark. To Kipling he said, ‘Phantom II, you said?’
Kipling walked across the rolling bridge like a Liverpool drunk. Against the pale paintwork his shirt looked black. He was soaked.
‘Give me a chance to drive it, that’s all I ask!’
Brooke wiped his empty pipe on his shirt. So Kerr knew. Then the whole ship would. In destroyers it was like that.
He said, ‘Better go round the ship, Number One. Make sure that everything is battened down. I know you’ve done it, but be certain the hands know what it’s all about. After the Atlantic and home waters – well, it might take the edge off them. Sub and I will hold the fort until you get back.’ He lowered his voice and added, ‘There might be a temptation to open a scuttle or raise a deadlight. It’s common enough. But this ship is on active service, although it may not seem like it to some. I want her blacked out, right?’
‘Are you still considering the chance of a German commerce raider, sir?’
‘No.’ He touched his bare arm; it was not only wet but also it was suddenly cold. It was absurd. He reached down and felt the fresh bandages on his leg. It was not that.
‘Something wrong, sir?’
‘Just me. Forget it. Can’t get used to all this, I suppose.’
Kerr peered at him and wished he could see his face. More likely that stunning Chinese girl, he thought. Probably thinking of her right now. The island was about fifty miles astern. It could have been ten times that much.
‘D’you think we’ll ever be returning to the U.K., sir? I mean, for active duty?’
‘It rather depends on . . .’
A bridge messenger called, ‘Signal, sir!’
‘Tell the W/T office to send it up.’ He heard Kerr say, ‘Not urgent, anyway.’
The messenger hauled the little brass cylinder up the tube from the W/T office and pulled out a rolled flimsy.
Together Brooke and Kerr crawled under the canvas hood and switched on the chart light.
Brooke read it aloud. ‘Broadcast from Hong Kong. Typhoon of unknown intensity situated within fifty miles of Latitude nineteen degrees North, Longitude one hundred and ten degrees East. Moving North-West. Time of origin seventeen hundred.’
‘Well, now we know, sir.’ He watched as Brooke’s brown hands moved the parallel rulers expertly on the soiled chart. Outside their tiny haven the spray hammered the hood like lead pellets, and Brooke could feel the sweat running down his spine as if there was a leak in the canvas.
He said, ‘Should veer away before it gets here.’
‘Bit early for a typhoon, I’d have thought, sir?’
Brooke tapped the chart with his dividers. ‘October is usually the worst, according to the good book. But you can never rely on it apparently. Pass the word when you go round the messdecks, will you? Nothing too dramatic. I’ll speak to the lads on the tannoy if it does get bad.’
They ducked out from cover and into the clinging heat. It was not raining, but it might just as well have been, Kerr thought.
‘Tell Pilot if you see him. He can log its progress when the watch changes.’
Kerr knew there was something else.
‘Have you ever been close to marriage, Number One?’
Kerr gripped a rail as the side went down. ‘I know a girl, sir. Known her since I was a cadet. I’m not sure, though . . .’
‘About what?’
Kerr looked in his direction. ‘In wartime – you know, sir.’
‘I suppose so.’ He clambered into the tall chair again. ‘Carry on.’
‘Wheelhouse – bridge?’
Kipling went straight to the voicepipe. He had learned fast.
‘Forebridge?’
‘Able Seaman Shaw relieving the helm, sir!’
‘Very well.’
It never stopped. Soon the various messes would start to prepare their evening meals, provided the galley fire was still alight. If the sea really got up they would be sharing the meal with some of that too, Brooke thought.
He recalled her eyes when she had told him about the damage to Sarah’s photograph. She must have done it out of anger. She had thought him to be like Jeremy in that too.
A fanny of tea came to the bridge but it tasted salty; it must have had a rough passage from the galley.
Kerr returned and shook his sodden cap on the deck.
‘All secure, sir. Told Pilot about it.’ He took a mug of tea and grimaced. ‘God, I should have brought some from aft!’
A voicepipe squeaked again and Kipling reached out to snap open the cover.
‘Busy this evening,’ Brooke observed calmly. But his insides were far from calm.
Kipling snapped, ‘Send it up, man!’
To Brooke he said, ‘Mayday call, sir.’
Kerr seized the little brass tube again and took the signal flimsy to the chart table.
Brooke said, ‘Call the navigating officer to the bridge, someone!’
Kerr called out, ‘From Flag, sir. Distress signal from S. S. Kiang Chen. Has lost rudder and out of command. Requires urgent assistance.’
Kipling asked quietly, ‘Why didn’t our W/T pick it up, sir?’
‘The conditions, probably. Besides, the transmitters and receivers at the base are giants compared to ours.’
Kerr was still under the cover writing busily on the navigation pad.
He called, ‘Signal ends, sir, Proceed with all despatch.’
Feet clattered on to the bridge and Calvert swayed like a ghost on the top of the ladder.
‘Sir?’
Brooke said, ‘S.O.S., Pilot.’ Kerr reappeared. ‘One hundred and fifty miles south-west-by-west of Hong Kong. Latitude twenty, Longitude one hundred and ten.’
About a hundred miles away. Still time to avoid the storm. Brooke watched the sea explode over the bows again. They could manage half-speed in this if it got no worse.
He said, ‘Course to intercept, Pilot. Get the Chief out of his armchair.’
Calvert said eventually, ‘Course to steer is two-one-five degrees, sir.’
Brooke rubbed his chin, his mind far beyond the trembling ship. The South China Sea’s other face.
Kipling said, ‘The Chief’s on the phone, sir.’ He was smiling. ‘He was already down there with his engines!’
Brooke took the red handset. How difficult it must have been in his father’s day when the engine room had only a speaking tube. With all that din it was a wonder they got anything right.
‘Chief, sir.’
‘S.O.S., Chief.’ He covered the handset. ‘Call W/T, Number One. Ask them if they picked up anything. If not, make a signal to the Flag and report our position and acknowledge the order to proceed.’ He removed his hand again. ‘Can you give me revs for eighteen knots?’
No hesitation. ‘Of course, sir.’
He smiled. ‘I’ll ring down when I’m ready.’
‘You are relieved, Number One. Get hold of the Chief Bosun’s Mate and put him in the picture. Fenders, line-throwing gun – he knows what to do.’
Kerr hesitated. ‘No signals received by W/T, sir.’
‘Probably gone under.’ That was Kipling.
‘Need me, sir?’ It was Onslow, still unfamiliar in his peaked cap.
Brooke smiled grimly. ‘Mind-reader, Yeo. Check the signal and have a look through the intelligence pack in my hutch. Try and discover what sort of ship we’re dealing with. Could be a liner or the Star Ferry for all this tells us!’
Several of them laughed while the ship fell about beneath them. He saw her face, suddenly and as clearly as a photograph, as she had gazed up at him from the car.
He looked at Calvert by the chart table. ‘Bring her round to two-one-five, Pilot. We should intercept the ship in five to six hours if this gets no worse.’ He touched the back of his chair. ‘She can make it.’
Then he held up his hand. ‘But first things first.’ He picked up the tannoy microphone, wet and smooth in his grip. How many hundreds of times must it have been used. While soldiers had floundered in the sea in desperate but patient queues at Dunkirk, or while Serpent had circled struggling survivors after a ship had gone down. What she could say if only she could speak . . .
Calvert must be thinking of it too. From Stringbag to destroyer. But the same, bloody war.
He snapped down the button. ‘This is the Captain. In a moment we are altering course to port. It may be slightly uncomfortable.’ The signalman bared his teeth in a grin, and down on the messdeck they would be chuckling or cursing the bridge in equal portions. ‘There is a vessel in distress. This is a ship of war, but the other rule is older and as important.’
He hung up the instrument and said, ‘Carry on, Pilot.’
Calvert crouched by the gyro-repeater and then spoke into the bell-mouthed voicepipe.
‘Port twenty!’
‘Coxswain on the wheel, sir! Twenty of port wheel on!’
Brooke gripped the chair as the helm went over. Pike always knew. Like the Chief, and Onslow, and the Buffer, the foxy-faced petty officer who was already gathering rescue gear and the men to handle it.
Kipling muttered, ‘Whoops!’
Calvert felt his shoes slipping on the wet gratings.
‘Steady! Meet her! Steer two-one-five!’ He wiped the ticking gyro-repeater with his bare arm as he watched the luminous figures come to rest.
Pike reported calmly, ‘Course two-one-five, sir!’
Brooke nodded, pleased. The ex-Swordfish pilot had handled her like a veteran.
‘One-one-zero revolutions!’
Onslow came in at the bridge gate, but paused to watch the surge of sea and foam against the weather side.
Brooke said, ‘Find out anything, Yeo?’
Onslow nodded. Out of breath. He was proud too that the captain had allowed him to go to his hutch and look at his confidential log.
‘The Kiang Chen is registered at Hong Kong, sir. A coaster, two thousand tons. Built in the Great War.’
Brooke touched his skin again. The same feeling. ‘So was this lady, Yeo.’
It must have been something in his tone. Onslow said, ‘Nothing much else, sir.’
He asked, ‘Who owns her?’ He had to repeat the question before the yeoman heard him. He already knew.
‘Coutts Steamship Packet Company.’
Brooke could hear his brother’s voice again, telling him about Charles Yeung’s many interests. This elderly coaster was one of them.
To the bridge at large he said, ‘We’re on our way.’
But later Calvert thought he had been speaking to his ship.
‘Blue Watch closed up at cruising stations, sir!’
Brooke heard Calvert acknowledge the report. Confident, his earlier wariness apparently gone.
He watched the bows rising again, higher this time, before smashing down into a cruising roller like a giant axe. He thought of what Kerr had told him when he had carried out another tour of the lower deck. Some of the messes were in chaos with shattered crockery scattered everywhere and gear coming adrift. Even the fiddles and lashings could not cope with these wild plunges.
In the heads it was far worse as gasping men tried to find a space to vomit, while the confined stench had affected the others. Even Kerr, who was a good sailor, had admitted to being queasy.
The middle watch. Brooke had hoped to find something by now, a flare perhaps, a drifting boat. There was nothing. Worse, they had lost precious time by reducing revolutions to avoid unnecessary strain on the shafts. Before doing so the whole ship had shaken herself like a wet dog when the screws had been lifted almost to the surface.
The vessel in distress had probably gone down. It happened often enough out here, according to the reports. Old, unseaworthy vessels, sometimes overloaded, or those whose cargoes began to shift when the sea showed its temper.
Beyond the glass screen it was black but for the leaping spectres of ragged waves. Even the cosy red glow below Brooke’s side of the bridge had gone: he had ordered all lights out, including the navigation lights. Right or wrong, who was to say? This was not described as a war zone. But the Serpent was at war. Whatever happened Brooke was in no doubt of the outcome. If you did right, others would take the credit; make a mistake, and it would end in a court martial. It was a tongue-in-the-cheek joke amongst most commanding officers. Until it happened.
‘Bridge, sir?’
Calvert swayed to the voicepipe. ‘Officer-of-the-Watch!’
‘The interpreter requests permission to come up, sir.’
Brooke turned. ‘Affirmative, Pilot!’
The interpreter, Mr John Chau, was the new addition to their company. A serious-faced, eager little man, he was a bank official by profession but also a member of the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. During his peacetime training he had acted as a boarding-officer in one of Hong Kong’s auxiliary patrol vessels, where his knowledge of both Mandarin and Cantonese had been extremely useful. He would make the chance of a mistake when stopping and searching a suspicious vessel less likely. Graded as an acting warrant-officer, he was permitted to share the wardroom, and he slept on a camp-bed in Calvert’s chart-packed cabin. In any night emergency it would be likely that Mr Chau would be trampled to death before he could get up.
It took him an age to reach the forebridge. Groaning and retching, he was eventually hauled through the gate by one of the signalmen.
‘So sorry, sir!’ He gripped the compass platform’s safety rail and stared despairingly at the sea while the bows lifted once again.
Brooke said, ‘Keep your eyes outboard, dead ahead if you can.’
Calvert said, ‘Like a roller-coaster, you know.’
Brooke smiled. ‘Give him a break, Pilot.’
Under his breath Onslow, the yeoman, who had remained on the bridge since the distress call, muttered, ‘Just keep a bloody bucket handy!’
Brooke asked, ‘Settled in, Mr Chau?’
‘Very much, sir, thank you.’
Brooke thought of Charles Yeung’s valet, Robert Tan. Chau spoke like a younger version of the man.
Calvert said, ‘Come and look at the chart, John. You might learn something.’
Brooke settled down in his tall chair and smiled to himself. Calvert was making up for his comment in the midst of Chau’s seasickness.
Under the cover of the canvas hood Calvert tapped the chart with his pencil. ‘The sea shoals to starboard. Although in home waters we’d still think it was deep!’
‘What about here, sir?’
‘Different matter entirely. A few more miles and we shall have fourteen hundred fathoms under where you’re standing.’
Chau was neither impressed nor surprised.
He said softly, ‘A place unknown to any man. All-time darkness, fish and creatures so terrible that the gods keep them where they can harm no one.’
Calvert grinned. ‘I expect you’re right.’ Across the interpreter’s slight shoulders he called to Brooke, ‘Shall I work out a boxsearch, sir?’
‘I think not. Another fifteen minutes. Then I’m turning back.’ He was still thinking of the interpreter’s seriousness. As she had been, when he had believed she was making fun of him. Chau was not speaking of superstition or fable. To him it was simply fact.
Brooke said to Onslow, ‘Have some men uncover the big searchlight. Men who know what they’re doing.’
‘Aye, sir.’ He touched the seaman beside him. ‘Get your mate and report when you’ve cleared away the searchlight, right?’
The young seaman grinned. ‘Sure thing, Yeo!’
The old lower-deck magic, Brooke thought. The seaman was the same one that Onslow had sworn at so despairingly when the dead woman and her child had been found under the overturned lifeboat.
They had obviously put it behind them. A solemn handshake, and probably sippers or gulpers from their respective tots of rum, but each man knowing he would react the same way if it happened again.
Kerr reappeared on the bridge. Nobody was sleeping tonight.
Brooke put him in the picture. He added, ‘I’m not too hopeful, Number One. How is it below?’
Kerr thought of the sprawled bodies trying to rest, huddled or lying on the tilting deck amidst a confusion of broken plates, scattered food and vomit.
He replied with a grin, ‘Just fine, sir.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘Oh, one thing, sir. I visited the Asdic cabinet. They’re having a spot of bother with the set. Leading Seaman Aller is convinced it’s something the dockyard did wrong.’
‘I’ll get on to the yard when we get in. Not that it’s much use anyway out here.’
‘It wasn’t that, sir. The new Asdic chap, Ordinary Seaman Kellock – he only joined a few months back.’ Even in the darkness he knew Brooke was frowning. ‘Ginger hair,’ he prompted. ‘Nice lad to all accounts.’
The round freckled face appeared in his mind as if on a screen.
‘What about him?’
‘I think he’s going to put in a request to see you in private, sir. The Cox’n has had his ear to the ground.’
‘Any ideas?’
‘He wants to get married, sir.’
Brooke tried to see his expression. ‘God, he’s only a child!’
‘We all were once.’
‘You see him, Number One. Welfare. It’s out of the question.’
Kerr had saved the best part for last. ‘She’s a Chinese girl from Wanchai.’
Calvert called, ‘Better ask Paul Kipling about Wanchai. I think he knows the area!’
Kerr persisted, ‘Kellock has the right to see you, sir.’
Brooke grinned. ‘Tell me about it!’
‘Flare, sir! Starboard bow!’
Several pairs of binoculars braved the drifting spray to find the look-out’s flare.
Like a guttering candle, low down, or so it appeared. Instinct, or had some poor wretch been able to make out Serpent’s great ragged bow-wave as she plunged through each successive roller?
Brooke said, ‘Pass the word to the Buffer.’ He wiped his face with his forearm. ‘Stand by with the searchlight. Give them a rough guide to sweep from the bow to abeam!’
He leaned forward in his chair, and realised that his ribs were sore where its arms had been scraping into him every time the ship rolled.
Kerr said, ‘I’ll get down there, sir.’
Brooke turned towards him. ‘Ordinary Seaman Kellock indeed!’
The youth in question was hunched over beside the Asdic set trying to keep out of everyone’s way. The small cabinet was crowded. Leading Seaman Aller was on his knees passing wire to a torpedoman who was stretched out on his back beneath the steel mounting. The sides of the place were streaming with condensation, and more dropped from the deckhead like tropical rain.
The torpedoman, Usher, nicknamed Pop because of his premature baldness, croaked, ‘Nearly done, me old mate – just a tick longer.’
Nobody questioned him. He was known as a crack wireman.
Ginger Kellock tried again. ‘Look, Hookey, it can’t do any harm if I just see the Skipper, now can it?’
Aller glared at him. ‘Just stow it, will you! I’ve had just about a jugful of you an’ your Chinese bird! She’s probably a bloody tom for all you know, after your money-belt!’
Pop Usher grinned up at them, sweat mingling with grease on his tanned face.
‘All set, gents! Here we bloody well go!’
It purred into life and Aller thought of all those other times in the Western Ocean.
‘Tell the bridge, Ginger. We’ve got our white stick again!’
They all suddenly froze and stared at one another with shock and disbelief.
Aller moved swiftly. ‘Shift your arse, Ginger!’ The others watched as he took the controls very carefully until the tell-tale echo pinged back into the receivers.
His voice was quite calm as he spoke into the voicepipe to the bridge.
‘Strong echo, sir, bearing one-one-zero. Stationary!’
Pop Usher muttered, ‘That’ll stop them farting in church!’
At that moment, the alarm bells began to ring.
‘Ship at action stations, sir!’
Brooke acknowledged. If only there was light.
Calvert asked, ‘Could it be a wreck, sir?’
Brooke recalled his earlier remarks about the depth hereabouts, and Chau’s thoughtful reply.
‘Who’s on the Asdic?’ He already knew. He was merely fighting for time. Had he known earlier that this might happen? He seemed to feel the hair rise on his neck in spite of the damp heat. Suppose this was the Atlantic? They would be sitting ducks.
Kerr said, ‘Aller, sir. A moaner, but he’s a good operator.’
Brooke moved to the voicepipe. ‘Asdic, this is the Captain. What do you make of it, Aller?’
‘Strong echo, sir. No change.’
Brooke returned to his chair and used it as a crutch while the ship lifted and dipped beneath him.
Suppose it was a wreck? It was a common enough mistake in the Atlantic. But not here, surely?
‘Another flare, sir! Fine on the starboard bow! Damn – it’s gone out!’
‘Slow ahead both engines!’ It would make the motion worse, but there would be less risk of a collision.
‘Scrambling nets ready. In case we can’t get alongside.’ He felt the chill on his spine and could sense the presence out there in the darkness. Like a hunter. An assassin.
He made up his mind. ‘Searchlight!’
Like a long bar of ice the big searchlight hissed out across the water, somehow magnifying the troughs and the breakers into moving glass valleys.
The beam settled on the vessel and held it. The light must be blinding to them, Brooke thought.
A familiar sight. He found he could study it through his glasses, his mind detached, even callous. The coaster was drifting without power or lights; he could see her rust-dappled bilge, the extent of her crippling list. Shifting cargo? It didn’t much matter now.
He said, ‘We must take off her crew, Number One. A tow is out of the question in this sea. I don’t want to risk our chaps’ lives.’ He had seen the small huddle of crouching figures below the solitary, spindly funnel.
The interpreter had forgotten his seasickness completely. ‘Know ship, sir! I have seen her many times!’
‘Switch on all navigation lights!’
He recalled his own words to Serpent’s company. A ship of war.
‘Asdic – Bridge! Contact on same bearing but moving left!’ Even Aller sounded shocked.
Brooke snapped, ‘Make a signal to C-in-C. Am in contact with submarine, position so-and-so . . .’
‘Bridge! Torpedo running to starboard!’
The explosion when it came was so loud and violent that the stokers and artificers down in their world of noise and steam must have thought for a split second that they were the target. Fragments of metal splashed down between the bows and the place where the crippled coaster had been; some scraped across the forecastle deck like bomb splinters.
Brooke said, ‘Am attacking! Now send it off!’
He gripped a rail. ‘Starboard twenty! Steady! Steer one-one-zero!’
‘Asdic – Bridge.’ Aller sounded subdued. ‘Ship breaking up.’
Brooke imagined the blasted and broken hull dropping so slowly into that great yawning valley of perpetual darkness.
‘Stand by depth charges!’
‘Asdic – Bridge. Lost contact.’
‘Keep on with the sweep.’ He heard the hardness in his voice. The Atlantic had not released its grip after all.
There was no further contact. A signal was received from the C-in-C. Discontinue action. Return to Sector Charlie Zebra immediately.
Kerr watched as Brooke listened to the curt signal.
‘What are you going to do, sir?’
Brooke slumped in his chair and realised that the motion and the violence of the sea were easing. They had missed the worst of it.
He shrugged. ‘I’m going back to find out if anyone survived. There’s always a chance.’ He sounded drained.
Calvert said, ‘It might have hit us, the bastards!’
Brooke looked towards his head, framed against the sky.
‘It was meant to.’ How easily it came out. Then he said, ‘Fall out action stations but remain at defence stations.’
Through the mouth of an open voicepipe he could hear the regular ping of the Asdic. He knew the attacker had gone. Somehow, he simply felt it.
It had probably been the sudden and unexpected blinding glare of the big searchlight. The eyes at the hidden periscope had been momentarily shocked, blacked-out.
He glanced around the pale figures of the watchkeepers. Unsteady on their feet as if they were too stunned to adjust to the ship’s movements. They did not even know what they had interrupted merely by responding to the S.O.S. They only knew that they had nearly died.
At first light they discovered some small charred fragments of flotsam spread over a large area, like spent matches in a pond. They also found an elderly survivor, clinging half-dead to a hold-cover which must have been hurled clear from the coaster by the explosion.
The man was so badly burned that when he was hauled aboard and carried carefully to the sickbay he looked more dead than alive. The Petty Officer S.B.A., Twiss, did what he could with the ointment which was issued for extreme burns; he had used it many other times when a merchantman had been torpedoed.
Brooke handed over the bridge to Kerr and went down to the sickbay. ‘Sister’ Twiss’s expression was like stone as he worked with each piece of dressing. It was doing more harm than good.
John Chau was bent over the old man’s body, his face so close to him that some burned skin was sticking to his immaculate white tunic.
The dying survivor was in fact the vessel’s master. He probably did not even know what had happened. It was usual under such circumstances.
Twiss said quietly, ‘He’s gone, sir.’
Brooke took the burned and sodden identity card from the interpreter. ‘You did well, Mr Chau.’
He saw the deep hint of pleasure in his dark eyes.
‘Have him sewn up. We shall bury him in the forenoon.’ He glanced at the interpreter. ‘Perhaps you would help me by reading something for him?’
‘Of course, sir. An honour.’
He climbed the ladders to the swaying bridge, each step an effort.
As he walked to his chair he looked around, then aft to the gaff where the ensign made a bright display against the heavy clouds.
It was suddenly a clean and decent place.