Now he was looking at him, and he knew he was the captain who had dragooned him into many more months of savage fighting, after a year of it.
Damn you to hell! his brain shouted silently, damn you and your glory-hunting ship! He said, his voice flat:
"Yes, sir. Is that all, sir?"
For a long four seconds grey eyes locked on blue. Then Bentley stabbed his cigarette out in the ashtray.
"That's all, cox'n. The Buffer will put you right on anything you want to know until you find your legs. If there's anything else-don't hesitate to come to the first-lieutenant or myself."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Bentley nodded and Rennie got up. He went out and shut the door quietly. For a minute Bentley stared at the door, his elbow on the table and his fingers gently rubbing his chin. Then he pressed a buzzer and sent for the first-lieutenant.
When Randall came in Bentley asked brusquely:
"How are the stores coming?"
"I'll be through in an hour," Randall answered. He recognised Bentley's tone, but he had also known him a long time. He went on:
"I passed the cox'n on the way up. He wasn't leaping with joy. Not so good?"
"He will be," Bentley promised grimly. "I appreciate the position, but we can't coddle the fellow."
Aha, Randall thought, so you're waking up at last, old feller. Kid gloves are all right-up to a point. He said:
"I quite agree. He's a cox'n, not a seasick ordinary-seaman. I'll handle him."
Bentley looked sharply at his friend's satisfied face. Then he lowered his eyes to the table and thoughtfully pulled at his nose. He'd needed that little reminder.
"No," he said, "don't ride him. Not yet."
"Look, Peter." Randall leaned his big hands on the table. His face was serious. "I didn't like the idea of grabbing those blokes any more than you did. I also appreciate the necessity for it. Okay - they're on board now. There's been lots of things we didn't like having to do, but we didn't cry in our beards over `em. Same with this crowd. Sure, they're feeling low. But if we pander to that all we're doing is making `em feel more sorry for themselves." He pushed himself up from the table. "If there's one thing I know, it's sailors. I say at the least sign of slackness, we slam down-hard!"
Bentley lit a cigarette and let the smoke waft up past his nose in a blue haze. Randall knew sailors, all right, and they knew him-knew him, with all their native shrewdness, as a hard-working, tough, completely fair and completely unimaginative first-lieutenant.
They liked him, respected him, and for him they'd work their guts out. That was all right. But a sullen man could be driven to dangerous lengths if he thought he was being unfairly treated. Sailors understood and respected discipline - just so long as they believed it was fair. These new men believed, with justification, that they had been most unfairly treated. A tough officer riding them would serve merely to blind them to reason: he could make them a nucleus of discontent and disobedience, a focal point for all the imagined wrongs of their messmates.
"I'll handle this my way, Bob," he said, and smiled - Randall was more important to him than a dozen coxswains. "If it doesn't work, then bring on the big stick. Until then we'll take it easy."
"For how long?"
"A week should crystallise matters." Bentley tapped gently at the end of his cigarette. "Y'know, we might be all up a certain creek. These fellows might be working like beavers by tomorrow. Maybe..." his grin was self-mocking, quizzical, "maybe we're both a bit too wrapped up in this confounded ship. We could be developing into a perfect pair of old schoolmarms."
"That," sneered Randall, though he grinned back, "is a lot of cock, and you know it! However, you're the boss." He slapped his open hands against his wide chest. "That's enough of philosophising about jolly Jack Tars. Sailing time still the same?"
"Three-thirty, yes." His mouth twisted at the question in his deputy's face. "We rejoin the Fleet off Guadal Canal."
"That one wasn't hard to guess. We go back through Jomard, the direct route?"
"No."
"Your preference - or higher up?"
"Both. We're ordered down round the Louisiades. The Admiral wants us to snip round and see what's cooking in those unfriendly parts. Seems to me we're always doing that - like a ruddy terrier after rats."
"That puts it fairly enough," Randall grinned. "You want the new cox'n to take her out through the reef, or Hooky?"
"Rennie, of course."
"Right - I'll warn him."
Randall was turning for the door when Bentley's voice stopped him.
"No, Bob," he said quietly, "don't do that at all. He's the cox'n. I want him to know that we assume he assumes his duties at once. Just let him close-up on the wheel with special sea-dutymen."
"If he doesn't? If he organises Hooky to take her out?"
"Then," Bentley smiled tautly, "we shall know a good deal about our new cox'n."
The new coxswain was unpacking his kitbag in the chief's mess on the starb'd side of the foc's'le when Hooky Walker stepped in over the coaming. The big fellow's oaken face creased in a grin.
"Hi there, cobs! You pack it, you unpacked it. That's how she goes in this outfit, eh?"
He threw his cap deftly on top of the hammock-bin and slid his huge body along the padded seat against the ship's side. The steel hook went out and pulled a jug of lime-juice towards him.
"Yeah." Rennie answered sourly.
He looked at the man and the hook over his shoulder. He knew, the whole Navy knew, about the giant chief bosun's mate with the hook in lieu of a hand.
For a moment Rennie felt a twinge of excitement. This was a famous ship he had come to join - so well-known that he had taken the trouble to come up on deck in Pelican and watch her sail in. Now he was a member of Bentley's crew, a team and a ship whose exploits, solid enough in fact, had become almost legendary through the cumulative exaggeration of sailors' yarns.
In the next instant the pulse of excitement was crushed. It was not difficult for him to manage that. In normal circumstances he would have felt quietly exultant that he had been drafted to a ship like this - now all he could feel was the blatant injustice of his transfer.
"We've got a good bunch in here," Hooky said, and grimaced at the jug. "That flamin' stuff's hot!"
"Seems to me that's all I've heard since I joined," Rennie growled,
"Come again?" Hooky squinted up at him.
"What a wonderful crowd of angels man this hooker!" Rennie jammed a blue suit into the aluminium locker. "Most ships I've been in you find at least a couple of messdeck horrors, but aboard here they seem to be all textbook sailors. Or so I'm told. My God!" he ended disgustedly.
Hooky quietly laid his cup on the table.
"You seem a bit brassed-off, cobs," he said gently.
Rennie looked at him.
"What the hell d'you expect me to do? Dance round like a fairy."
Hooky's voice was still quiet.
"So you're chokker, fed-up to the gills. That's fair enough. But there's no reason to go round like a fathom of misery. It'll wear off. You'll settle in. A week's time'll find you glad you joined. This is a bloody good ship, cobs-right from the top to the lowest."
Rennie swung on him. His face was taut.
"Not you too, for God's sake! Not in my own blasted mess!"
A muscle twitched along the side of Hooky's jaw. He stared back into the clean, sharp face, tight now, and he liked what he saw. In his vision also was the prematurely grey hair. He smiled, and the muscle relaxed.
"Thanks for showin' me up to myself," he said, "I suppose a man can get to thinking the sun shines out of his whatname. Here-burn?"
He held out the cigarette packet and Rennie looked down at it. He wanted a smoke - he felt the need for it in his mouth and stomach.
"No thanks, not now," he said, but his voice had lost its acid tone. He turned back to his unpacking. "D'you know what time we sail?"
"Sure. The Old Man keeps us informed when there ain't no le
ave. Three-thirty."
Rennie nodded, and Hooky stared at his thin back. It was on his lips to ask if Rennie wanted him to take her out, this first time. There was that reef fouling the entrance... Then he remembered Pelican: she had made a name, too; and she was a destroyer. He said:
"When we get clear I'll give you a run round the books, if you like."
The coxswain was responsible for keeping many books and papers, from captain's defaulters and service certificates to canteen stores and the registered-letters' book.
"Thanks,"' Rennie said drily over his shoulder, "but books are books, I'll manage."
Hooky's lips pursed in a soundless whistle behind his new messmate's back. But he said nothing. A figure darkened the doorway and a squat, heavy man came in.
"Oh, Pete," Hooky said, glad of the interruption, "this is Jack Rennie, the new `Swain. Pete Luxton, chief gunner's mate..."
Rennie turned and took the proffered hand, nodding curtly. Luxton reached for the limejuice jug and Hooky made a rude reference to the incompetence of messmen who forget ice-cubes in limejuice. Rennie went on unpacking.
At 3.20 that humid afternoon special sea-dutymen were piped to close-up. Normally Bentley would have remained in his cabin until the first-lieutenant reported ready for sea. But this afternoon he was on the bridge shortly after the pipe sounded. He wanted to escape from the close heat of his cabin up to the wind-cooled bridge, and he had another reason.
He had the answer to that second reason not much more than a minute after sea-dutymen closed-up. The voice, competently curt, sprang from the wheelhouse voice-pipe:
"Bridge? Cox'n on the wheel, sir."
"Very good," Bentley acknowledged formally. Then he straightened and caught Randall's eye. A small smile twitched between them.
Bentley gave his wheel and engine-orders and the long destroyer moved smoothly out towards the reef. He had his eyes on the frothfringed gap but he was thinking: He's passed that test all right. And then because he had been long trained to consider every facet of a problem, his mind ran on: Maybe Rennie knew he would be sent for and ordered to the wheel anyway; maybe he was so quick with this particular duty of a coxswain because his own life depended on the safe handling of the ship through the reef.
The doubt lingered, an annoying irritant to mar his satisfaction in the clean getaway from the anchorage.
"On the bearing, sir," Pilot reported.
"Port fifteen," Bentley ordered.
She came round, as quickly as if Smales had been handling her. But the alteration was a simple exercise-an ordinary seaman could have done it as well. The real test would come when they were in the gap. It was almost ahead of them now, and Bentley could see the long smooth hills of water rolling down and smashing into abrupt white on the coral.
He steadied her for the middle of the gap. Rennie's replies to his orders came back clipped and economical. They were almost there. Bentley snatched a swift look around - he did not want another craft fouling his approach at the last minute.
The harbour nearby and the sea outside were clear. The ship began to lift a little in the oncoming swell; the result of the roots of the long ocean rollers striking the shallow bottom, being retarded, and sending their heavy crests toppling forward.
The bow lifted. It hung there, poised, the forefoot almost clear. The motion was made more alarming through contrast with the smooth passage of a minute before. Then the wave ran on past the point of balance and the bow swooped down, the flares spraying out a fan of white water on either side.
They were in the gap.
Her speed seemed to increase abruptly, an illusion caused by the closeness of the coral on both sides. The crash of the rollers on this resistant barrier was a long, continuing roar. She was compassed by a frothing maelstrom of white and green, flashing above the ugly black of the reef itself.
Bentley was directly behind the binnacle. His eyes never left the compass-card. She rolled wickedly, and he felt her shaking as the screws lifted clear. The lee gunwhale dipped and the sea reached up for her, spouting from the feet of the guardrail stanchions.
She lifted, hesitated, then reeled over on the opposite side. He saw the black lubber's line, which indicated the ship's head, begin to swing. The black coral waited a few yards to port. He was leaning towards the voice-pipe, his eyes riveted on the compass, when he saw the lubber's line steady.
Twenty seconds more and she was through. The confused rolling of the confined space eased into the rhythmic swooping of the open ocean. The reef and the roar and the flung spray dwindled rapidly astern. Bentley glanced at Randall standing beside him.
"He can handle her." he said quietly, And, crisply into the voice-pipe:
"Special sea-dutymen fall out."
The coxswain acknowledged and a moment later the quartermaster reported closed-up at the wheel. Wind Rode sailed on across the trackless reach of blue, alone on an empty sea, running south-south-east into the approaching night.
The night came on from the east in a sable flood and she ran to meet it darkened, quiet, alert.
It was a night like this that the torpedo had struck.
Just like this, Rennie remembered, standing on the upper-deck below B-gun, the wind and the sea whispering about him. Just before the moon rose, before they had a chance to sight the periscope aimed with such malignant purpose on the old ship's belly.
The bow-wave flashed briefly below him and the wind sighed its tune in the rigging above him, and his memory raced back to that night. He did not try to stop it - the memory came often, and often he had tried to force it down. But the terror always squeezed up again through his consciousness.
He had not been on the upper-deck that night, He was in his coxswain's office after supper, a tiny cubicle with shelves of books and one porthole. Preparing the list of captain's defaulters for the next morning's session.
No one had seen the torpedo in the blackness before moon rise; the outworn asdic set had failed to pick up the screech of the screws. The missile struck a little forward of the engine-room, which had given the engineer, before he died, time to open the safety-valves.
The coxswain's office rocked as though a giant hand had punched the ship in the guts; she reeled like a clubbed man, and when she came back from that punishing roll the water was pouring into the passage outside the office.
He knew this because from where he had been flung to the deck he felt the cold salt filling his mouth and eyes. He struggled out into the passage and the ship lurched and a giant cataract plunged down the ladder leading to the upper-deck.
Swept back bodily, he grabbed the door-jamb of his office. The emergency lights had come on, and in their subdued glimmer he stared into his office and he saw green water against the glass of the porthole.
Water... against the glass. It was then he knew, with a numbing paralysis of shock, that the ship was sinking. Not damaged, not split open; sinking, Already beneath the surface.
The horror of the realisation acted as a catalyst, reversed the trend of his mind's dissolution. He clawed his way back into the office, knowing in one flash of certitude what he must do. With all his force he strained to shut the door. He managed it, and then he locked it, feeling no sense of the ludicrous in that action; all his senses were occupied by the silent threat of what was behind the door. From down all its sides, through the keyhole, water sprayed in a forceful, menacing promise.
He knew the door would not hold back that weight for very much longer. But now he had another weight to overcome. Stumbling, half falling, he groped for the brass dogs of the porthole. They would not move at first-there was an increasing tonnage pressing against them from the outside.
He took up his portable typewriter and with the edge he struck at the clips, struck again and again. The edge crumpled and he twisted the machine and struck with the other side. The first clip moved.
He had no sense of time. The whole concentration of his mind-power was on moving those clips. He had the third and last clip almost screw
ed off its thread when the heavy porthole snapped open.
The whipping brass took him on one arm but it was the solid jet of water which picked him up and flung him back against the door.
He stayed there, pinned against the wood, seeing the thick column of water jetting in, knowing at least that now with the pressure equalised the door would not cave in. Then the emergency lighting went out.
J. E. MacDonnell - 021 Page 5
