The Straits of Tsushima: An action-packed historical military adventure (Marcus Baxter Naval Thrillers Book 1)

by Tim Chant

But below him, strung out along the rope ladders that led to the crosstrees, a line of bluejackets struggled up towards him. He would only admit it to himself later, but an extraordinary sense of relief shot through him when he saw those resolute faces turned up towards him. Vasily was there at the front, and Lieutenant Koenig just behind him. Relief, and a towering pride.

  He looped an arm around a rope and pushed them past him out onto the yard, doing what he could to send the lighter men out to the extremes. He yelled simple instructions into the face of each as they reached him. Koenig needed no encouragement, gamely clambering past him. Now they just had to hope that the rarely-used or inspected ropes and the canvas that had spent most of its life furled had not rotted through…

  The ship had lost way entirely as Baxter fumbled his way out onto the yard last of all. The mountain of water was right on them and, without the great brass screws turning to drive them forward, her bow had started to fall off. So little time…

  He didn’t think about it, just shoved his feet securely into the loops of rope that hung below the thick wood. Here, close to the mast, was bad enough — the lighter men further out were being tossed about and subject to wild gyrations as the mast swung with the ship’s roll. He knew that shaking and now frozen hands wouldn’t be able to undo lashings that had been tied for years. Instead, he fished out the clasp knife Vasily had given him. He almost dropped it as, with numb fingers, he struggled to open the folding blade. Those nearest to him caught the idea and started pulling their own knives — even in this modern age, a working blade was still vital equipment for anyone at sea. He gave it a moment to allow the idea to spread all the way along the mast — there was no shouting of orders in this wind — and brought the keen edge down on his lashings. The steel sliced straight through with a minimum of sawing and wet canvas battered against his legs as the sail let go.

  Ideally they would have released at the same time, allowing the sail to belly out and draw, but co-ordination had been impossible and the canvas sagged and flapped, threatening to flog itself to pieces against the mast. The wind that pounded them was strong enough that they couldn’t carry anything more than a storm reef, but that hadn’t been heeded by everyone. There followed a scramble to even things out, the sailors somehow interpreting his wild hand gestures.

  We’re too late, he thought. The cruiser was heeled right over and there was only the Pacific beneath his boots. There was nothing he could do as one of the bluejackets slipped and fell, his scream torn away by the wind. No time to worry about that now. All he could do was hang on to the yard. At least if the ship did broach to, the impact would probably kill him outright…

  But the sail was drawing now, the fall of canvas evened out, and even the scrap they had loosed was enough to put a little bit of headway on the cruiser. He caught a glimpse of Juneau yelling into his speaking tube and the cruiser turned, turned, turned, slowly at first and then with increasing speed. She staggered as she reached the crest of the wave at an oblique angle, hung there, teetering.

  And then a great cheer went up as, almost peacefully, she started to slide down the far side.

  That sail, hurriedly handled and having been furled on the yard for so long, gave not long after the cruiser had survived the enormous wave. More sails were being shaken loose on the other masts, though, reefed almost to the point of being tablecloths but providing just enough draw to keep the cruiser ploughing onwards. They lost four in the end, the abused canvas splitting in the wind, but they couldn’t bend any replacements from the paltry sailmakers’ store, and they had to make do with the others. The crew worked itself to the point of exhaustion, and beyond, in the following hours. Juneau had to be carried below having passed out at his station. Despite not being an officer, Baxter stood a watch until he couldn’t stand anymore — Juneau, returning to the bridge, had had to order Vasily to manhandle him below.

  Once the sails were rigged, and the hands were in the discipline of handling them, Baxter had no doubt they would survive. Crisis, it seemed, was an excellent way of bringing a crew together. At some point, after Juneau ordered him below, he slept. He didn’t know for how long — night and day had become moot concepts in the endless twilight of the typhoon — but he awoke to a gentler motion. He lay in his cot for a while, the clothes he’d fallen into bed in stiff with dried-in salt, and contemplated not emerging for another few hours. Some residual sense of duty, though, made him drag his stiff limbs up onto deck.

  He emerged, bleary-eyed and blinking, into watery sunlight and broken clouds scudding overhead. The sea was unhappy, short and choppy with white caps, but gone were the gargantuan waves of the last few hours. He could just make out a few other ships in the distance, their plumes of smoke being whipped away by the still-stiff breeze. The Yaroslavich was still under sail, the reefs shaken out, and the sight of those great arcs of canvas stiff in the breeze stirred something deep within him.

  “Ah, Mr Baxter,” Ekaterina said. “Awake at last, I see.”

  He turned slowly and regarded her with a bemused look and a slightly raised eyebrow. There was a twinkle of amusement in her eyes and a small smile played about her lips. He wanted nothing more than to put his arms around her, crush her against him, feel her strong frame move. Really wouldn’t be the done thing, though.

  “Indeed, Countess,” he replied, matching her tone. “Did you sleep well? I trust the slight roughness didn’t disturb you?”

  Her eyes were shadowed with fatigue, he noticed, and there was dried blood on her skirt. He knew she had been at work in the sickbay for much of the storm, helping to tend the inevitable cuts and abrasions, not to mention broken bones and dislocated joints.

  “I slept tolerably well, thank you,” she said, the smile spreading into an enormous grin. A moment later, they were both almost doubled up with the almost hysterical laughter that came with relief, with the sense that they had dodged death. Again.

  They drew a few bemused and indeed concerned looks from the sailors who were moving listlessly around the deck, and that brought back some semblance of calm.

  “Did we lose anyone?” he asked once he had recovered his breath. “Aside from the poor sod who fell from the mast?”

  Her own expression became serious. “No, God be praised. Many injuries, and the doctor does worry about one or two — but no other dead.”

  “It seems miracles never cease,” he said, leaning his forearms on the oak rail and staring out to sea. There was always an odd quality to the air and the light after a big storm, matching his mixed sense of fatigue and relief. But, now the danger of the typhoon had passed, other pressing matters bubbled up in his mind. “Juneau has told you who warned us about the sabotage?” he asked quietly, having glanced about to make sure that no one he knew spoke English was within earshot.

  She nodded. “This, more or less, confirms our suspicions,” she replied in the same low tone.

  “The question now, is — what can we do about it?”

  She shrugged. “Inform the captain and have him arrested,” she said in a tone so nonchalant he was taken completely aback.

  “Who are you?” he blurted. “Truthfully?”

  She just gave him one of her enigmatic smiles. “You should, perhaps, change your clothes,” was all she said in reply.

  He sighed and shrugged, once again resigned to never knowing the truth of her. “As you require,” he said, bowing and turning to head below decks.

  “And Mr Baxter? Perhaps a bath?”

  “Captain Gorchakov,” Juneau said, his voice carefully neutral, “will not hear of it, countenance it, or agree to take any action upon it.”

  The three of them were taking tea in the small receiving room attached to Juneau’s cabin. The space should have belonged to a junior officer, but apparently his influence knew no bounds and it had been the simplest task for the ship’s carpenter to turn it into a well-appointed sitting room. Baxter did not ask where the officer who should have occupied the cabin was berthed.

  It felt o
dd to him, taking his ease in the Juneaus inner sanctum. The feeling had never struck him when they had shared a villa those long weeks in Madagascar, but while Pavel had tried to make the cabin feel spacious it still felt very … intimate. He hadn’t been here since the day he’d first stumbled upon Ekaterina, which felt like a year or more ago.

  “He feels that any suggestion of dishonesty, corruption or, indeed, treason about one of his officers can only reflect ill upon the personage making the accusation and that, unless actual evidence can be brought forward, Mr Yefimov should be given the courtesy of being treated with the same respect any other officer is due.”

  Silence fell. Baxter sipped the tea in his bone china cup, relishing the strong, smoky flavour. “Yefimov wouldn’t be a protégé of the captain’s, would he?” he asked at last.

  Juneau smiled briefly. “He would. Indeed, I have been given to understand he would have been the first officer under him if I had not been appointed.”

  “And, of course, as we are giving him the respect due any officer, I am sure we are prevented from making a search of his quarters,” Ekaterina said, her voice tart.

  Juneau dropped into the free chair. “You are quite correct,” he said, then tilted his head back. “Though I suspect the cur has learned his lesson and we will have heard the last of his machinations. His, how do you say, cat’s paws having shown themselves to be dangerously unreliable, he would be wise to keep his head down.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure,” Baxter said thoughtfully, turning his mind to his own interaction with Arbuthnott. “As the Scottish play would have it, he’s waded in blood so deep, it’s nearer to go over. Or somesuch.”

  Both of his companions regarded him with some surprise, though he could not be sure if it was because he knew Shakespeare or because they did not and had no idea what he was talking about. “He’ll certainly want to get off this ship as soon as he can,” he soldiered on doggedly.

  “That much is true. His occasional bluster aside, it is clear he is disillusioned with this mission and does not want to throw his life away — particularly for a service that has ill-treated him.”

  It was Baxter’s turn to be surprised at Juneau’s frank assessment. “Everyone aboard should be disillusioned,” he said. “We all know Port Arthur is fallen and the First Squadron is no more. The mission is over.”

  “It has changed only,” Ekaterina said sharply. “We will fight through to Vladivostok and strike back from there.”

  Baxter exchanged a glance with Juneau. It seemed he had not yet told his wife of the intention to put her ashore at Singapore or some other neutral port. It was also a relief to him that she apparently knew little about the realities of naval warfare — he’d become a little worried about the extent of her expertise.

  “Well, these are matters for the admirals,” Juneau said, slightly uncomfortable. “Let us turn our minds back to the problems at hand. Whether or not our friend sensibly keeps his head down or not, he has been involved in a number of attempts on both mine and my wife’s life, not to mention putting my ship at risk. I will not stand for that.”

  “And there are the remains of the revolutionary cell aboard,” said Ekaterina, as though the risk to her own life was of little importance. “Our friend has, ah, not been able to furnish us with their names.”

  “I’m sure that’s because he doesn’t know them, not because they will be able to identify him as their controller,” Baxter said sourly.

  “Indeed,” Juneau said, taking a swallow of tea and then peering into the depths of his cup. “I feel something stronger may be required,” he said, reaching for the decanter himself rather than ringing for Pavel.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Baxter said.

  “It will be difficult to interrogate the engine room staff without causing a great deal of ill will, of course,” Juneau said out of nowhere, once they had drinks in hand. “Particularly while repairs to the engine are on-going.”

  The cruiser was still under sail, and even in the light airs that had followed the typhoon she was more or less keeping pace with the rest of the squadron as it coalesced out of the great emptiness of the South Pacific. A number of the ships had been damaged and they clustered around the overworked Kamchatka and the other repair ships.

  Juneau had ordered a reduction of revolutions to zero not a moment too soon — while no permanent damage had been done, repairs to the overheated shafts were required, and the damage to the oiling system had to be made good.

  “With any luck the wind will have come out of their sails,” Baxter said.

  “Which is not to say that they shouldn’t be rooted out and shot,” Ekaterina said, her voice taking on a flat, hard edge that chilled him.

  “Yes, well. Yefimov, however, is perhaps more of a threat in the long term.” Baxter looked between Juneau and Ekaterina — husband and wife, one his friend and one, perhaps, his lover. It was hard to say. A smile spread over his face. “What do you say to a bit of a ruse de guerre?”

  The days stretched out, feeling as long as the horizon was far, as the battered Russian ships made their slow way across the Pacific. The typhoon had claimed lives but, miraculously, no ships. In the aftermath of its fury the seas were relatively placid. Out of sight of land and with barely a scrap of cloud in the sky, the crews basked in the warmth and relative peace when they weren’t called upon for the feast of coal or other more mundane tasks.

  Men fished from the Yaroslavich’s side when they were able to take their leisure, or watched the albatrosses that turned overhead, the only other living things moving above the water. On the surface, at least, everything was calm. Peaceful, even, a far cry from their warlike purpose. Huge sharks drifted in the squadron’s wake, setting upon anything that was thrown overboard.

  Baxter could feel a tension on board, though. Rumour of the attempted sabotage had spread through the ship, not quite as fast as wildfire but just as dangerous. While some may have been sympathetic to the revolutionaries before, that had changed with the attempt to send them all to the bottom and now the bluejackets regarded each other — and particularly the engine room crew — with some suspicion.

  It was reflected, to an extent, in the wardroom. They’d managed to keep their suspicions of Yefimov under wraps, but the other officers had picked up that the tension between Juneau and his immediate subordinate was coming to a head. Sadly, they had split along lines of loyalty, with most of the cadre of older officers aligning with Yefimov and, by extension, the captain, while the younger officers supported Juneau.

  “It seems word had got out that I attempted to have our friend removed,” Juneau commented. “And that has turned some, including Dr Andropov, against me even if they were not aligned with him to begin with. It’s not the, how do you say, ‘done thing’?”

  “And, of course, the reason for you taking that extreme step is not known.”

  “No — Captain Gorchakov would not hear of it, just as he would not hear of any actual investigation.”

  “He can’t admit he’s backed a wrong ’un. We’re going to have to prove it.”

  “Indeed. If only we could come up with a suitable gambit,” Juneau said, his voice tired and frustrated.

  Somewhere over the horizon and creeping closer every day was the British colony of Singapore, and not far beyond that waited Japan and her navy. Port Arthur, Russia’s hope for a year-round blue-water port and the squadron’s goal, now lay in enemy hands, and safe haven lay much further north, at Vladivostok.

  All that was the future, though, and seemed almost inconsequential. All it did was set a time limit on the task at hand, to bring down Yefimov and his revolutionary collaborators before they could do more harm.

  “In the way of things, the sailors will know or at least suspect who the saboteurs are,” Baxter said after further reflection, not lifting his eyes from the wake that ran, straight as an arrow, behind them. “It’s entirely possible they will take matters into their own hands.”

  Juneau shrugg
ed uncomfortably. “It is not unheard of, and while it may rid us of one problem, the effect on discipline and morale would be … undesirable. And that’s assuming they even deal with the right people.”

  “Oh, indeed.” Baxter swallowed the last of his pre-dinner drink. “Shall we go in?”

  The wardroom was full that evening as the cruiser made her slow way north and east. It was a bubble of light and sound and jollity in the gathering darkness. It felt divorced, insulated, from the concerns of the ship and the wider formation, just as the squadron was isolated from the upheavals back home. They drank cheerfully and copiously, ate well, and celebrated the fact they had survived everything the South Pacific had thrown at them and would soon come to grips with the enemy.

  “Assuming we get that far, of course,” Koenig declared cheerily. The young man was flushed with drink and high spirits, perhaps a little too much of both.

  “Whatever do you mean, Mr Koenig?” Ekaterina asked from where she held court at one end of the long mahogany table.

  Koenig blinked at her as though trying to clear his vision. “Why, the rumours are everywhere in the fleet. The British, it is said, will sail out from Singapore and Hong Kong and bring us to battle. At the very least they will, once again, support Japanese torpedo boats from those ports.”

  Yefimov raised his gaze from his plate. He had barely spoken all evening, to the point of insolence with Juneau, and ate mechanically.

  “Poppycock,” Baxter snapped before he could stop himself. “There were no torpedo boats in the North Sea, nor did the suicide schooners appear off the coast of Africa.”

  “And even if they did,” Juneau said, “we have more than enough force to defend ourselves successfully.”

  Baxter was slightly taken aback by his friend’s sudden enthusiasm for fighting the Royal Navy. He was also puzzled by his own reaction to the statement — he owed his old service little and certainly no loyalty, but he could not let that lie; felt a flicker of choler. “Even with the bulk of the fleet in home waters,” he said, slowly and carefully, trying to inject a note of friendly rivalry into his voice, “what is left out here is, I’m sure, more than a match for this … collection of ships.”