"Midships."
"Midships, sir... wheel's amidships."
It was the two of them now, the captain and the coxswain. One judging, the other implementing. The R.S.M was never as close as this...
"Steady!"
"Steady, sir! Course 225."
"Steer 225."
"Steer 225, sir."
It was done. To a civilian observer the manoeuvre would have appeared ridiculously simple, a minor exercise in course-alteration. Yet Bentley, ten feet above the ship's wheel, had by his judgment stopped the swing of two thousand tons of advancing steel dead on the course required. Aided by the quick and practised hands of the coxswain, the practical extension of the captain's brain and experience.
The light was sweeping past on their port hand now, and they could see that its apparent pristine whiteness was marred by the grey droppings of a myriad of sea-birds. The island behind the light rose to a rounded peak, its rock sides scrubbed over with low bushes and an occasional palm.
To the right the coral reef ran its jagged teeth up to the edge of the chasm through which the ship was safely sailing; the green swell broke lazily over this obstruction, and fell back, exposing the cruel brown niggerheads, snags which could rip her thin sides open as easily and efficiently as a can-opener,
"Lovely sight." said Randall beside Bentley, and the growl in his voice belied the words.
Bentley nodded, shortly. His head was raised to the leaden skies, and now he had no qualms about letting the whole bridge team know the source of his worry. A destroyer's main defence against attacking aircraft is her length and her manoeuvrability. Viewed from that angle, Wind Rode might now as well have been held immobile in dry-dock.
Bentley's instinct was to give her her head, to release her waiting strength and increase to 35 knots. His experience warned him that he had to keep her in hand, that a set could move him to port or starb'd, that he could not afford to gamble with the increased line of advance a turn at high speed would ensure.
They were almost through. An enemy would have to strike shortly, or lose a priceless advantage. Above his head the air-search radar aerial circled smoothly, its radius of search blocked only by the bulk of the island, which was now dropping astern on the port quarter. Down to Bentley's ears came the sound of its operation, a soft electronic whirring.
Slowly his taut nerves let go. His head lowered from the sky and he automatically searched the empty sea ahead.
"Clear, sir," Pilot reported.
Thank God for that, Bentley felt. He said, casually:
"Put her on-course, Pilot," and then leaned to the voice-pipe:
"Cox'n? I'll see requestmen and defaulters as soon as you're ready."
"Yes, sir. They're mustered now, sir."
"Very well, I'm coming now."
Bentley unslung his black binoculars and stepped down from the grating. Pilot moved over behind the compass.
At sea, the captain held his court in the tiny flag-deck behind the bridge. This position had several advantages-it was clear of curious eyes, and it was handy to the bridge.
As he stepped towards the ladder Bentley idly noted that with the ship's swinging on to her more northwesterly course, with the quartermaster now on the wheel, the island and its light were almost dead astern, though still quite close.
He knew it was deserted-the light was unwatched and his tension-relieved mind mused briefly on the fact that men like Bully Hayes and the old copra-traders would have taken their bearings on that peak to beat up to and through the Passage. That island had seen many ships come and go - and had received more than one luckless hull on its hard coral edge. Now another ship had made its landfall and was receding into the blue distance. The island and the reef, uncaring, timeless, waited for the next.
Bentley stepped on to the flag-deck and he saw the pom-pom's crew falling-out; the starb'd oerlikon was already deserted, the danger past. Then he saw the coxswain and the supplicants lined-up, waiting, but his eyes went to Nesbitt, standing a few paces clear of the requestmen.
Bentley had possibly a little more than five seconds before he reached the baize-covered table behind which he would deliver judgment, yet in that time the expression of utter dejection on the seaman's face seared into his consciousness. Nesbitt's normally alert face was drawn and grey, tortured, pitiful in its evidence of what he had been through in the past days, and Bentley knew with the utmost clarity of conviction that it would be a long time, if ever, before the seaman was of any use for anything.
As Landis had judged, his keenness and eagerness had been his weakness; the reaction was complete and irrevocable.
The cowswain's waiting head jerked back and faced his line-up. His voice, curt and impersonal, snapped out:
"Requestmen and defaulters..." The warning. Then: "Requestmen and defaulters, atten..."
`'Requestmen and defaulters." "Requestmen and defaulters." "Request..."
When the shells land and explode. When the grinning radiator and the pounding wheels of the car loom above the fallen pedestrian. When the heart can no longer pump, and the brain-cells are starved for oxygen, and consciousness slides down into blackness, there remain in the dying brain words or thoughts, or perhaps a remembered face or scene, which linger on the photographic cells of memory before death closes the shutter.
Bentley was not dead, but the coxswain's words and their broken ending remained ringing in his consciousness for a second or two after it had happened.
He was not sure which had come first, the powered snarl of the aircraft or the softer, shearing noise of the bomb. It did not matter-both sounds were blasted to insignificance by the intimate eruption of the bomb.
The next thing he knew was that he was sprawled on the deck, a body beneath him and a stinking rain of salt water pouring upon him. The noise of the water was like the hissing of torrential rain, a foreground accompaniment to the shrill background of the alarm bells.
Then he was scrabbling to his feet, one hand shoving uncaringly at the other prone body.
His eyes stung with the deluge of salt. Upright, he dug at them with his handkerchief, and with his clearing vision he saw two definite things amongst the shambles on the flag-deck. The bomb had exploded close to the ship's side, abreast where they had been standing. The splinters had laced upwards. The coxswain, on whom he had fallen, was lying on his stomach, unmoving; Able-seaman Nesbitt was beside him but Bentley could no longer see the tortured expression of his face. Nesbitt now had no face.
These things Bentley saw, but they were extraneous, unimportant impressions. Insistent in his brain was the need to get back to the bridge. He flung the handkerchief aside and stumbled forward on the drenched deck. He did not even halt to think if he were himself wounded-subconsciously his unhindered movements told him he was not. But his brain was racing-that Jap was a fool! He'd missed his chance. Or was he? He had let them through the Passage, but he'd cleverly come in behind the island. Nicely blanketed from their radar.
These thoughts were a flash of appreciation, formed and discarded before he reached the bridge. Blinking from the salt, he saw Randall at the wheelhouse voice-pipe, snapping orders with his mouth close to the pipe and his head twisted so that he could look up at the sky.
He felt Bentley jump on to the grating and he jerked upright and said at once:
"Fighter-bomber, bearing Green two-oh angle of sight seven-oh. Climbing for another run!"
The rapped directions were just as quick as a pointing hand, and more specific. Bentley picked up the aircraft at once, a bat-winged shape dwindling ahead and above them. It was climbing steeply, and as he stared the wings canted- in a moment he would be round, facing them for the next run in.
The ship was heeling on the turn, and as Bentley tensed one leg and relaxed the other to meet the cant the movement crystallised an urgent memory prodding at his consciousness.
His eyes trained on to the bosun's mate.
"Get the Buffer on the wheel! First-aid party on the flag-deck!"
<
br /> The seaman dived for the ladder and Randall asked:
"Cox'n?"
"Yes. Wounded at least."
All about him he heard voices and running feet as the gun-crews closed-up. Directly below him B-gun's pump began to whine. His eyes on the wheeling aircraft, he spoke to the wheelhouse:
"Who's on the wheel?"
"Leading-seaman Bennet, sir."
"Cox'n's been wounded, Bennet The Buffer will be up to take over."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Bentley thought of adding some exhortation to the quartermaster to be on his toes. But this was no time for needless speech. He watched the aircraft, now circling at ten thousand feet, and he spoke to Randall:
"That pilot's a fool."
The big lieutenant nodded, definitely. He understood Bentley's judgment. The pilot had caught them napping, with gun-crews fallen-out. He had barely missed with his first bomb; he should have climbed and come in again at once. Even if he had missed with his second bomb he could have raked the scrambling men on the upper-deck with cannon-fire.
Now, circling high up there, he was merely threatening them. His threat was empty. They had been given precious minutes, and in that time the decks had emptied, the men were posted behind their guns, waiting, ready.
"He might be waiting for some cobbers," Randall suggested.
Bentley shook his head.
"I doubt it. If he had any he would have brought them down in a bunch. I'd say he's patrolling from Woodlark and decided to have a shot on his own. Now he's left it too late."
Randall pursed his lips, his face alert, thoughtful. Only just too late, he was thinking-a few feet in to the right and that bomb would have landed nicely... But he said nothing.
"Bridge? Buffer on the wheel."
That was Chief Petty-officer Hooky Walker, the giant chief bosun's mate, next to Smales in seniority, a polished steel hook in place of a hand, and an old shipmate of the captain.
"Very good," Bentley acknowledged.
As with Bennet, there was no need for amplification. He would know by now Smales was wounded, and certainly he would need no exhortation to remain alert.
A phone buzzed and Lasenby's voice came through from the director:
"Main armament closed-up."
Now... Bentley thought grimly. He reached forward and juggled the microphone from its brackets.
"This is the captain speaking. We've been attacked by a single Japanese fighter-bomber. He's now at ten thousand feet ahead of us, circling. Very nice of him... Now listen to this, gun-crews. That pilot seems either a fool, or very green. You know why I say he `seems' to be. We must assume he knows his business. Therefore you will not open fire until ordered. He could come down in a power-dive, draw your fire, haul off, and then come in for the real thing and catch you with your guns empty. If he does that we'll be ready for him. When ordered, main armament will open in long barrage, shifting to short barrage if he gets through. Close-range weapons will open in the normal hosing fire. The ship will be swinging quite fast, so watch your aim-off."
He paused, the microphone cuddled in his big hand, his eyes on the distant black speck. Throughout the length of the listening ship there was no sound, nothing but the soft hissing of the water down her sides and the muted beat of the engines.
"We'll get this fellow," Bentley said, "that's all."
CHAPTER TWO
THE BRIDGE WAS QUIET.
There were four officers and several ratings posted there, and it was a measure of their training and experience that of them all only two men were watching the enemy aircraft.
The torpedo-officer was talking through a sound-powered phone to his tubes aft in the waist. They would not be used, but the ship was closed-up at action, and that meant every section of her had to be on the ball.
Pilot had no eyes for the plane. He was stepping quickly from compass bearing-ring to the chart-table, making sure she was on the map accurately while the Passage light was still in sight. He was doing more than this-each time he made a mark on the chart his eyes roved far ahead over the white parchment, ensuring that in her coming gyrations Wind Rode had no subsurface snags to contend with in addition to the one now waiting above her.
Towards New Guinea? There was plenty of space there to manoeuvre in, even at the 30 knots to which Randall had raised her speed. A spiky patch which meant "shoal" lay on their port quarter, and although the captain knew of that trap he must himself keep it in his memory; Wind Rode would be twisting in all directions once it started.
Nutty Ferris, the signal-yeoman, was not watching the aircraft. There were no ships to signal to, but he had the keenest eyes in the ship and they were not being wasted on a target everybody knew about. His long telescope up, Ferris was scanning the sea ahead and on both sides. That aircraft could be in contact with a submarine; and in any case Wind Rode was not sailing on a close preserve. Ferris had seen it happen before-all hands concentrated on the one airborne target, while another came up eagerly and unnoticed from seaward.
The director phone-number, in normal times Bentley's messenger, a smart able-seaman named Frost, had his back to the enemy. He was standing against the fore wind-break, the phone to Lasenby to his ear, and his eyes never left his captain's face. He was the vocal link between bridge and gunnery control, and his orders, especially against an aircraft, had to be passed fast. There was no idle gawking on this bridge... Bentley and Randall had their glasses on the target. Randall, big and hard, efficient and unimaginative, was simply watching for the tilt of a wing or the foreshortening of the fuselage-the warning.
Bentley was also watching for that, but his mind was exercised by many other things. That pilot was either as gutsy as hell or else an inexperienced greenhorn to take on a Fleet destroyer single-handed. Whatever he was, if he attacked again he had to be shot into the sea.
Bentley felt no exultation at the prospect of battle. As the captain, he could not afford such fictional extravagances of feeling. Wind Rode was heavily-gunned, but she was also thin-skinned, and a bomb in her boiler-rooms could rupture her wide open.
Bentley's mind was a tightly-meshing complex of considerations and prophecy and forthcoming decisions. Like Pilot, he had the chart in his mind's eye, and he was consciously aware of that shoal patch astern. He was also thinking of relative bearings of ship and aircraft, of what direction he could steer her to avoid the bomb, of what effect such an alteration would have on the line of fire of his big guns, of the minimum degree of rudder he could put on so as to swing her without hopelessly throwing-off his pom-poms and oerlikons.
Fuel. At this shaking speed she was gulping it up, but his daily fuel-report had shown him he had more than enough to make Moresby. Much more in reserve, in fact, than his enemy up there.
What the hell was he waiting for? Screwing up his nerve, probably. He didn't blame him. If the aircraft came in again, unless he was lucky and dead accurate with his bomb against his slim twisting target, he was finished. Kaput.
Those thoughts were idle, barren of product. Bentley crushed them. Fuel. Engines. He leaned to the voice-pipe.
"Tell the engine-room we will be manoeuvring at high speed shortly."
"Aye, aye, sir."
All right, damn you! Come in and get it over with! Bentley crushed that spurt of irritation too. Maybe that's what the Jap was up to; making them wait, tensed as they were, increasing their nervousness; not the nerviness of fear - they were too battle-wise for that - but of coiled-spring tension.
Perhaps he was an ace after all. He let them through the Passage because he could not know their radar was partly inoperative through temperature inversion; let them through and then had come spearing in unseen behind the island. Maybe he was a very clever fellow indeed, a psychologist...
"Aircraft's started its run," Randall reported flatly.
Bentley responded instantly.
"All guns follow director! Barrage long, long, long!"
Frost passed the word through.
The ai
rcraft tilted on its streamlined nose towards them and the six 4.7-inch guns elevated their grinning muzzles to greet it.
Because they would be firing at a set fuse-length the guns were already loaded. And they did not have to wait, like the pom-pom and oerlikons, for the enemy to finally commit himself. The plummeting aircraft was in range of Wind Rode's main claws, and now she bared her teeth.
The blast of the two forrard mountings opening fire crashed back over the bridge in a face-smacking slap of sound. The spurting clouds of brown cordite smoke whipped quickly astern and Bentley heard the next rounds slamming metallically up into the breeches.
J. E. MacDonnell - 021 Page 2
