* * *
Pym answered a new call from the voicepipe. Mackerel was lifting slightly to the sea now, a short rocking-horse type motion that barely wet the foc’sl deck. Down there, the bow gun’s crew were none the less crowded into the shelter of the gunshield; you didn’t need to be wet to be freezing cold, in the Channel in December.
It wasn’t Christmas Day yet. Not quite yet, Nick thought. What do we do at eight bells, though – sing Old Lang Syne?
No. That was for Hogmanay. And where might he be, by that time? In Scapa Flow? New Year horseplay in a battleship? Pym said, into the voicepipe, ‘Bridge.’
‘In about three minutes we should alter to east-north-east and stay on that for fifteen miles, sir. No change of speed.’
‘Very good.’
Wyatt said, ‘All right. I heard.’ He had his glasses on Musician’s stern, that heap of white that you could see even when you couldn’t see the ship herself.
A quarter of an hour ago they’d had the signal about Hun wireless activity. Wyatt had thought it out in silence; then he’d commented, ‘Precautionary, one might suppose. Huns may be sending Christmas messages, for all we know.’
The thing was, Nick realized, that there was nothing they could do about it, except carry on with the operation and hope that if the enemy was at sea they didn’t meet him. Not in this vulnerable, explosive state.
Pym failed to understand. He laughed, as if Wyatt’s remark had been just a pleasantry. Wyatt cut into the false sound of it.
‘Have small-arms been distributed, Number One?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Cockcroft had reported five minutes ago that he’d seen to it. Cockcroft’s action station was aft, in charge of the midships and stern guns; but he had only one, tonight, to look after. The for’ard four-inch had Clover, the gunner’s mate, as its officer of the quarters, and besides this Nick could easily control it himself over the forefront of the bridge.
He wondered about the whisper of some ‘special operation’, the rumour he’d heard them talking about the other night in Arrogant. It had been connected, or seemed to have been, with the gossip about a new admiral taking over. Nothing more than that, really, had been said, and it seemed to grow from a belief that if Bacon was being relieved it would basically be for not having pursued a sufficiently aggressive policy against the U-boats. So it could be just wishful thinking: or a barking-back to Bacon’s own dreamchild, his plan for a ‘Great Landing’ which had now been abandoned. Its object would have been to land a force that would have linked up with the Army’s advance – the one that had stopped at Passchendaele – and captured the Belgian ports. There’d been a mass of yarns about the plan: how it had involved using 600-foot floating pontoons, a kind of pre-constructed harbour jetty which monitors would push into position against the sea-wall at Middelkerke, four or five miles behind the German line. The pontoons had been designed by an engineer called Mr Lillicrap – which may have been partly why they’d been talked about so much. But that scheme had been abandoned, and this rumour might well be just wishful thinking: by the CMB men, for instance, who felt starved of action. Harry Underhill had said that several of the CMB officers had gone off on some mysterious course: and Elkington – Rogerson’s guest, from the thirty-knotter Bravo – had a story that a friend of his just down from Scapa had told him privately that Admiral Keyes, who headed the Admiralty committee that had been putting pressure of one kind or another – this was gossip again, of course – on Bacon, and who was also director of the Plans Division at the Admiralty, had been up at Scapa having private talks with Beatty. That certainly did sound as if something was in the wind; and if it involved the whole Fleet, not just this Patrol, it would have to be something fairly big.
Keyes had been the commodore commanding submarines, at the beginning of the war. Rogerson had said he was a live wire, he’d give them something to do. And he’d been in the Dardanelles, as Chief-of-Staff to Admiral de Robeck. A man of action…
That was how rumours started, of course, and were built up. Adding to the structure, item by item, and probably none of them in any way connected with each other. It could be nothing – simply the expression of a desire for action. But – could one, all the same, volunteer?
Pym blurted suddenly, ‘Sir, they’re altering—’
‘Damn it, pilot, I’ve got eyes!’
Wyatt had snapped Charlie’s head off… Now he told CPO Bellamy, ‘Port ten, cox’n.’
‘Port ten, sir.’ Following Musician round. This was the start of the second fifteen-mile leg of the round-about route. It would bring them to No. 8 buoy, a fixed marker in 51° 30’ north, 2° 50’ east. From there they’d edge down south-eastward towards the Belgian coast. In fact, almost directly towards Zeebrugge; towards – conceivably – a head-on encounter with any German destroyers that might be coming out of Zeebrugge. But it would be no less surprising or unlikely to meet them here, now, or in half a minute’s time: there, in that sea that looked empty, like an enormity of black ice crackling down the ships’ sides as they pushed steadily, watchfully north-eastward. Air like ice too: and outside a radius of a few hundred yards it looked as solid as the water under it, as impenetrable and as good a cover to an enemy as it was to these mine-layers. If you met raiding Germans the meeting would be at close quarters: sudden, savage, shattering.
There’d be no time to think. Not a spare second.
Nick got Cockcroft on the navyphone to the midships four-inch.
‘Sub, make sure the guns’ crews are on their toes, wide awake all the time. Go and tell the GM the same. There may be Huns about, and if we run into them we’ll be alongside ’em before we know it. Understand me?’
‘Absolutely!’
‘But we do not fire unless we’re fired at. Drive that home to Clover too. All right?’
‘I’ll have a chin-wag with him right away – I mean—’
Nick put the ’phone quickly on its hook. Cockcroft’s manner and habits of speech would have been understandable if he’d been RNVR instead of RN. Somehow he’d survived the Dartmouth conditioning without letting any of it get inside his skin or skull. One might have thought that to achieve such a feat a man would have to be either incredibly strong-minded or thoroughly obtuse; but Cockcroft combined an easy-going lightheartedness with a brain that was in full working order. It was phenomenal.
Nick had his glasses at his eyes, adding his contribution to the general effort of looking out. Mackerel and the ships ahead of her were thrusting into the night at twenty knots, and if one reckoned on an enemy flotilla approaching at the same speed the gap between them would be reduced at a rate of almost one land-mile per minute. With a range of visibility of something like five hundred yards, there’d be no room for late sightings or slow reactions. He wondered, as he tried to distinguish where sea ended and sky began – but you couldn’t, they were as black as each other – about that rumoured special operation. And about his own motives for wanting to volunteer for it. As an escape? But it wouldn’t be: there’d be an inquiry into that pub row in any case, and nothing would save him from having to face it… But – well, if the worst came to the worst, to be allowed to volunteer for something of that sort would be quite a different matter from being simply kicked out of one’s ship. Was that it: a question of how his leaving Mackerel would look to other people?
And by other people – Sarah?
There was no one else to consider. Uncle Hugh would know precisely what had happened.
The dream he’d had: calling her name, talking to her in his sleep, dreaming that he and she were – that Sarah, and not Annabel, had been in his arms… One had to face it, and – displace it. Otherwise it nagged on in one’s thoughts. But the mind had a life of its own; this had nothing, surely, to do with will, intention, desire, any waking thought of her. To think of the dream wasn’t to think as one had thought in the dream.
He’d thought he’d glimpsed something: something more solid than the empty night. In that split second he’d jerked the gl
asses back, holding his breath for steadiness and to keep the lenses from fogging-up.
Nothing. So easy to imagine…
Sarah – as close as Annabel had been?
Chapter 5
The inshore marker had been laid last night, probably by a CMB from Dunkirk. It was a small moored buoy with a black flag on it, ten miles east-south-east of No. 8 buoy, where at 8.45 the minelaying flotilla had altered course and reduced speed to twelve knots.
Wyatt watched the destroyers ahead swing away to starboard. He knew they’d be turning round the buoy, but it wasn’t yet visible from Mackerel here at the tail-end of the procession. Musician had put her helm over: you could see the swirl of white, like a pool of spilt milk spreading as the rudder dragged her stern round. Wyatt, with his glasses up, muttered to himself, ‘There it is.’ He meant the marker buoy. It was very small and so was the flag on it, and nobody who wasn’t looking for it in this spot would have seen it except by purest chance.
‘Port fifteen.’
'Port fifteen, sir!’ Bellamy span his wheel, putting on starboard rudder. Wyatt bent to the voicepipe and told the engineroom, ‘Three hundred revolutions.’ Acknowledgement floated hoarsely from the tube, and the coxswain reported, ‘Fifteen o’ port wheel on, sir.’ Everyone spoke rather more quietly than usual, as they turned down towards the enemy-held coast. But it wasn’t the nearness of Germans doing that, it was the load they carried aft. Mackerel swung round across a half-acre patch of ploughed-up sea, and as she went round it the marked buoy was bobbing like a float with some great fish nibbling at the hook below it. They swept round it, heeling, and Pym called down to the midshipman in the chartroom, ‘Six miles from now!’
‘Aye aye, sir!’
It was nine-eighteen. Not that timing was strictly necessary at this point; the next turn, like the others, would be a matter of following when Moloch turned. After that it would be stop-watch timing while the mines were laid. Meanwhile six miles at twelve knots meant another half-hour before they could begin to shed the explosive load.
‘Midships.’
‘Midships, sir.’
The brass caps on the wheel’s spokes flickered dully in the binnacle’s faint radiance as they circled. ‘Wheel’s amidships, sir.’
‘Meet her—’
‘Meet her, sir!’
‘—and follow Musician, cox’n.’ Wyatt left Pym at the binnacle, and moved into the starboard fore corner of the bridge. Nick transferred himself to the port side and further aft. Wyatt called to Pym, ‘Come down to two-nine-oh revs, pilot.’
Wind and sea – about enough to make the snotty and the ship’s cat seasick – were on the starboard bow now, on this course just west of south, and the ship was rolling as well as pitching. She’d get livelier when she’d lost the weight of the mines; and if the breeze had risen this much in the last half-hour there was no telling how it might be by midnight. Poor little Grant, he thought. There weren’t many things worse than chronic seasickness. He had his glasses up and he was sweeping the darkness on the port side, starting at the bow and sweeping back across the black frozen emptiness towards the stern. The glasses were trained out at about seventy on the bow when the German destroyer-shapes swam into them.
Just suddenly – like that – there they were.
And only himself seeing them. For half a second perhaps they were his private, as well as hardly believable, enemy. Staring at them; and conscious of the mines…
‘Enemy destroyers seventy on the port bow, moving right to left – three – no, four—’
‘Very good.’
Very good?
It wasn’t real enough to be a nightmare. One had thought of it, envisaged it: here it was, and it was as if it wasn’t. Wyatt said, ‘Yes, I’m on ’em! Pilot, keep your eyes on the next ahead.’ Nick was telling Hatcher, ‘Bearing red ninety degrees, range oh-one-oh.’ Hatcher was setting it on his transmitter dial. Nick snatched up the navyphone. ‘One and two guns, follow pointers, load and stand by!’ He said into the torpedo-sight navyphone ‘Mr Gladwish – train your tubes port beam. Enemy destroyers passing on opposite course, fifteen knots, range one thousand. Do not engage, just stand by.’ His voice had been little more than a whisper, he realised. But Mackerel sounded like a brass band, felt like a cruise ship – floodlit, impossible not to see from miles away, let alone that bare five cables… He had his glasses on them again now; he heard Wyatt mutter, They’re big destroyers. Almost certainly it’s…’ His voice faded out. For a small ship moving at only twelve knots, Mackerel seemed to be throwing an enormous wake. Were the Hum blind? Or still so near their base – Zeebrugge – that they weren’t bothering to keep a proper lookout yet?
No. It would start, at any second. There’d be the blinding flashes of their guns: Nick had his eyes narrowed, actually ready for it. At this range, they wouldn’t miss.
Bellamy’s voice broke the silence.
‘It’s the schnapps they put away. Rots the eyeball, I been told.’
Nick was holding his breath. He thought, Why don’t we slow down and cut that bloody wash? He answered his own question: if they did, they’d lose contact with Musician. And this was the run-in to the minelaying area, it would have botched the whole operation.
Might the Germans think these British and French ships, so close to Zeebrugge and steaming towards it, were Huns like themselves? If that was the case it would mean there were even more of them about, and at sea, in this area… But all four had passed the beam; which was the closest point. From now on the range would be opening, and the chance of some Hun opening his eyes or considering the possible rewards of turning his square head to the left were being steadily reduced.
Did Germans have square eyes, too?
He didn’t think those were Heinecke’s ships. They’d looked big at first, but—
Using the past tense, he realized. It was incredible: they’d passed, a whole flotilla of Germans had passed at no more than five cables’ lengths and just – gone on…
Wyatt roared suddenly, ‘Herr Heinecke! Damn sure of it! Of all the filthy luck!’
He was wrong. Nick was certain those hadn’t been the ‘Argentinians’. Ship recognition was something he was good at, and he’d have sworn they were either Schichaus or Krupp ‘G' class. He also felt that there was luck and luck, and that Mackerel had just had her share of it. Touch wood… The enemy ships were still in sight: not separate shapes now, only a smear on the quarter drawing aft and growing fainter, merging into the surrounding dark. He heard Wyatt ask Pym, ‘How long before we’re there?’
No relief in his tone: only a touch of impatience. One could guess the intention in his mind: to get rid of the mines and then go after those destroyers. But it would be necessary to contact Moloch by lamp first, and to use a lamp when they were as close inshore as they would be when the laying started – it simply wasn’t possible. Any more than one could have sent an enemy report by wireless, giving German shore-stations a chance to take cross-bearings on the transmissions.
Pym had told Wyatt, ‘Twelve minutes, sir.’ And the Huns had disappeared north-westward. An enemy report would have been of enormous value to Admiral Bacon in his Dover headquarters, and to the other divisions of the Sixth Flotilla. But at least they’d been warned, with that signal about German wireless activity – which looked now as if it might have been well founded. Intelligence was pretty hot these days, under Admiral Hall. Nick heard Wyatt say to Pym, ‘All right, I’ve got her.’ He meant he’d taken over the conning of the ship again. Nick told Hatchet, ‘All guns train fore and aft.’ He went to the navyphone at the torpedo sight and spoke to Mr Gladwish.
‘We were lucky, that time. Train fore and aft, please.’
Gladwish said, ‘I lost a stone, that’s all… Aye aye.’
Everyone knew how Gladwish felt about mines. He hated them. It happened that mines came into the scope of the torpedo department. Wyatt asked Pym, ‘How long now?’
Pym got the answer from Grant, up the voicepipe, ‘Se
ven minutes, sir.’ Wyatt raised his voice above the ship-noise, wind-and-sea racket. ‘Number One! Have ’em stand by aft!’
‘Aye aye, sir,’ He got Gladwish again. ‘Stand by to lay mines. I’ll use the voicepipe now. First one at my order when we finish the turn in about five minutes, then intervals of seven seconds.’
The explosive eggs had to be laid one hundred and fifty feet apart. At twelve knots the intervals between dropping them should therefore be seven and a half seconds, but to make sure of getting rid of them inside the distance it was better to ignore that half second and call it seven. The first twenty would be laid in one half-mile line, and then the ship would be turned four points, forty-five degrees, to starboard, to drop the second twenty in a line at that angle to the first lot. As the last mine, number 40, splashed into the wake, a flash on a shaded blue lamp would tell Musician to start laying hers. She’d spread her first twenty along the original straight course and then turn four points to port, not starboard as Mackerel had done, for the others. Ahead of her, as she finished laying, the rearmost Frenchman would put down the same right-handed dog-leg pattern as Mackerel had done; and so on, alternately one way and the other, so that the end result would be two hundred mines planted in a sort of fishbone pattern, much harder to locate and sweep than they would have been in straight lines.
Grant called up, ‘One minute to the turn, sir!’ Nick used the voicepipe to what was normally the stern four-inch gun. ‘Stand by, Mr Gladwish. Less than one minute.’
The gunner would have a stopwatch in his hand. His righthand man, CPO Hobson, would be operating the release-gear of the trap while CPO Swan supervised the business of winching the mines aft, one from each side alternately so the ship wouldn’t take on a list. It was always tricky work, in total darkness on a slippery, pitching deck dotted about with gear and fittings to trip a man and send him skidding overboard. And it had to be kept moving smoothly: no jamming-up, no trolleys coming off the rails.
Sixty Minutes for St George Page 8
