J. E. MacDonnell - 021

by The Coxswain(lit)

  He leaned back against the door, feeling the pressure of the jet easing against his stomach as the office filled, straining his head to keep his mouth and nose above the creeping liquid cold.

  Floating things bumped against him, swirled by the incoming current, brushed across his face in the utter blackness. He knew the deckhead was not much above his head, and still he waited, knowing that he would not have the strength to battle forward against the water jet, waiting now for the pressure to approach equalisation inside the office and outside in the sea.

  He stood strained against the door, feeling the water reaching up for his mouth. His face was set in a forced mask of composure and the terror mounted in his brain.

  The first water lapped into his mouth. He stretched his head as far back as he could and filled his lungs. But when he brought his face forward again to make the plunge under towards the porthole his nerve failed him.

  Gasping, he jerked his head out of the water, wiping his eyes with dripping hands. The small pocket of foul air seemed like salvation. And then, without halting to think, knowing that thought would paralyse his will, he ducked under and pushed himself towards the porthole.

  It was as though the sea had tried him, found him not wanting, and had finished with him. He squeezed through easily, his thin body snaking out and upwards under the frantic thrust of his hands.

  With all his unreasoning, animal will he forced himself upwards. He had no idea how deeply the ship had sunk, and when a few seconds later he broke the surface it was some time before he realised he was safe and ceased the senseless thrashing of his arms.

  Spluttering, gulping in the cool night air, he saw only the forrard end of the ship had sunk beneath the surface. While he stared, the moon came up, flooding with its silent silver the macabre scene: the debris fouled water, the broken boats and rafts, the two bronze propellers still slowly turning in mid-air.

  He paddled towards a smashed seaboat, its bow-end kept afloat by the buoyancy chamber, and hanging there on the lifelines he watched the stern begin to lower itself under the oil-scummed sea.

  As far up as the after gun it sank quite slowly. Then a bulkhead somewhere inside must have burst open. With a hissing and frothing all that was left of the old ship was sucked down into the lightless deeps of the Mediterranean.

  A destroyer picked him up in the morning; him and the four who had been on deck and escaped the hammer of the explosion. At first in the sickbay, he had wondered mildly at the surgeon's concern with him - he felt physically well, hungry in fact, and only a little shaky. The night clinging to the boat had relaxed his tautened nerves.

  "Nice night."

  Then, later that day, he had gone to the bathroom to shave. And had looked at himself in the mirror... his hair had changed colour.

  "I said it's a pearl of a night. What the hell's up with you, `Swain? You often go off into trances like this?"

  Rennie's head jerked round. Hooky was staring at him, his lips smiling and his eyes concerned.

  "Ah... Can't a man think if he wants to? Even on this hooker?"

  "Sure, sure. Except I wouldn't like you to have them deep sort of thoughts while we're steaming through a reef." Hooky chuckled.

  "I'm thinking in my own time," Rennie told him curtly. He nodded and walked off.

  Hooky stared after the thin figure, its hair shining whitely in the new moonlight,

  "Brother,'' he muttered, "something's eating you!"

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT IS CLOSE ON 600 miles from Moresby to the Louisiade Archipelago in the Coral Sea, and at her economical cruising speed it took Wind Rode a shade under two days to get there.

  The day following her departure from Moresby passed quietly enough. The ship was as clean as she would ever be, yet Randall had no difficulty in finding productive work for his hands.

  Two hundred men living in a space three hundred feet long must of course dirty that space: so there were always men working between decks to keep clean mess-tables and bulkheads and decks. But it was on the upper-deck that the first-lieutenant had most of them working.

  Salt-laden air can put a sheen of green verdigris on highly-polished metal in a matter of hours, and most of that brass and steel was on guns; guardrail pins can be scraped clean one day and carry the beginnings of rust the next; she carried many reels of steel-wire rope, and as her safety alongside in a blow depended on that wire it had to be regularly unwound and oiled; her paintwork was gleaming, but only constant washing-off of crystallised salt kept it that way.

  Then there were the men engaged in drilling and the normal running of the ship - the bridge team, asdic-operators, radar-men, lookouts, lifebuoy sentries, telegraphsmen.

  So that twice that day Randall walked round his domain and found it good.

  Randall had been no more than just in his claim to know sailors. Added to his experience was the man's own nature - he was a first-class officer, yet in certain attributes -toughness, directness, lack of social graces and a contempt for sham-he was more sailor than officer.

  Now, about three o'clock of the afternoon after their departure, he was walking forrard on the foc's'le. The captain of the top saluted him, and together they strolled on towards the bow, talking seamanship. But Randall's eyes were on a man chipping rust from the anchor cable.

  He knew the face and name of every man in the ship - it is not only businessmen who like to have their names remembered... So that, watching this man from the bridge, he had known at once he was one of Pelican's seamen.

  What had attracted Randall's interest was the fact that the new man every minute or so turned his head to look up at the bridge. At first Randall had put this interest down to novelty in his surroundings, for Wind Rode's big bridge and aerial-cluttered foremast was a considerable departure from Pelican's comparative simplicity.

  But the watching had gone on too long. The man's action, he decided, was furtive. He was not watching the bridge so much as he was concerned about his being watched.

  Officer and petty-officer came up to the seaman. In the next ten seconds Randall knew that here they had a snag,

  "What is your name?" he asked pleasantly.

  The seaman was sitting on the cable, chipping at a link between his legs. He turned his head round and up. A smalt, sharp-faced, cunning visage looked at Randall.

  "Pascoe," he answered. And went on chipping.

  The petty-officer's reaction was automatic and instant.

  "On your feet when you talk to an officer!" he snapped, "and answer, sir."

  Pascoe got up immediately, the hammer in his hand.

  "Able-seaman Pascoe, sir," he said, humbly. His eyes were on Randall's chest. They shifted from side to side.

  Randall felt disgust. He knew this fellow, recognised his type infallibly. On the surface belligerent, in reality gutless; waiting and ready to take advantage of any weakness in authority, and falsely humble when faced with strength. A messdeck whinger who had tried the first-lieutenant on for size, and was now ready, in front of him, to play along. In the mess he would boast of how he had answered him, sitting on his backside, without describing the end of the scene.

  Randall would have preferred outright and genuine disgruntledness. Then he could have reasoned with an honest complaint. But any attempt at reasoning here would be construed as a weakness, to be played upon for all it might be worth.

  "What part of ship were you in Pelican?" he asked brusquely.

  The answer came with a leering, almost fawning smile, eager:

  "I was on the quarterdeck, sir. I'm pretty well up on all the fittin's there, sir. I'd be more use down there, sir.'

  For a moment Randall remembered Bentley's injunction to go easy on the new men. But not with this fellow, he decided; this man had to be shown promptly exactly where he stood.

  "You'll stay where you are," he said curtly, and held the shifty eyes with the penetrating force of his own. "Where I can keep an eye on you."

  He turned and the petty-officer walked of
f with him. Randall was sorely tempted to turn round again. He knew he would surprise a look of malevolence on Pascoe's face. But sometimes with those types, once they knew you were awake up to them, they gave the game away as not worth the effort. It might be better not to overdo the effect he had made.

  He walked on and climbed down the iron ladder to the deck below. This was the iron-deck division, and comprised, between foc's'le and quarterdeck, the midships portion of the ship.

  Here he saw two more new men but they were working well and seemed members of the normal breed of sailors. He spoke for a few minutes with the captain of the top and then moved on to the quarterdeck.

  The man was big and dark and hard. He was sitting on a centre-line bollard splicing an eye in a length of guardrail wire, dressed in khaki shorts and sandals. As he pulled the tough strands through, the muscles in his biceps and back rippled beneath the sunburned skin.

  "Who's that?" Randall asked the captain of the quarterdeck.

  "Beuring, sir."

  "How do you spell that?"

  The petty-officer spelt it out. Randall nodded and walked up to the splicer.

  "Able-seaman Buering?"

  The big man's head turned round. Randall looked into a dark, almost swarthy face, its expression saturnine. There was none of Pascoe's shiftiness here - his brown eyes stared boldy into Randall's. At once he rose to his feet, the wire dangling from one large fist.

  "Yes, sir?"

  The voice was respectful, enquiring. Randall, hefty himself, felt the force of the man. This was the type who might make a good leading-seaman. Might... To make a sound leader of men you needed more than physical strength. He said:

  "You seem to be handling that wire all right..." His eyes completed the question.

  "I was in the bosun's party in a cruiser, sir."

  "I see."

  Aboard Wind Rode each part of ship did its own wire and rope work; in a cruiser a man in the bosun's party would be splicing and knotting all day. This man could be useful.

  The dark eyes were still on him, watchful. Randall felt a vague disquiet. The man's attitude, his speech, were guiltless. It was those eyes...

  "Have you ever gone through for leading-seaman?"

  "No, sir."

  "Why not?"

  "I... I'm not interested, sir. I'm only in for the duration. It's not worth it."

  "The war might go on for years."

  "Yes, sir."

  Randall realised that his own thoughts had trapped him into what almost amounted to a request to this fellow to put in for his leading-rate. Normally seamen worked their guts out to get a first-lieutenant's recommend. He said, more brusquely than the conversation warranted:

  "Carry on with your work."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Over on the other side of the deck, beside the starb'd depth-charge thrower, Randall said quietly:

  "Know anything about him? He works all right?"

  "Yes, sir," the petty-officer answered. Randall looked at him sharply.

  "Well?"

  "Ah... I was with him in that cruiser, sir. The Canberra. Just after the stoush started," He stopped.

  "He got into it early then," Randall said.

  "Yes, sir."

  The petty-officer looked out at the brightly blue sea and Randall glanced at his face shrewdly. He was a senior seaman rating, completely trustworthy and professionally competent - he wouldn't have lasted a dogwatch where he was if he hadn't been. Now, obviously, he knew something about Beuring, and just as patently he didn't want to talk about it.

  Maybe Beuring had committed some offence in the cruiser, and surely he would have paid for it. Now his immediate superior wasn't holding it against him. Just so long as the offence wasn't repeated here. Let sleeping dogs lie was also Randall's philosophy. He said, casually:

  "I'd keep him on wire-work. He's happy at it and there's plenty of it around."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  Randall returned the salute and walked slowly forward towards tea in the wardroom. His face was thoughtful. Pascoe, Beuring... One certainly a fowl, a messdeck horror; the other... ? He wasn't sure.

  What he was sure of, as he halted at the head of the ladder and took an automatically cautionary stare about him at the smiling sea, was that in a ship as well-run and disciplined as Wind Rode any stepping out of line by those two would be promptly and effectively hammered down. If not by the petty-officers, then by the coxswain.

  Lieutenant Randall knew sailors, all right. Unfortunately he was unimaginative. Forgetting Pascoe and Beuring, happy with his ship and the work going on aboard her, he ran down the ladder and strode into the wardroom.

  Events have a habit of happening quickly in a destroyer, whether they concern the raising of speed or the fighting off of an air-attack - or the machinations of men.

  Wind Rode's crew certainly were as highly-trained a unit as was afloat in the area. They were also men. And these men, for months on end, had enjoyed practically no diversion, no recreation, whatever, Commander Bentley was perfectly aware of this; and normally he would have had his crew ashore playing sport or ridding themselves of inhibitions in a pub. But up in this unfriendly area, where the lines of Allied naval shipping were stretched so dangerously thin, there was nothing he could do about this other, important, side of his training. So, with more important considerations to concern him, he forgot it.

  He was to regret the omission bitterly. But, as he reasoned with himself later, there was nothing he could have done to circumvent what happened.

  A catspaw is a brief ruffling of the surface of the sea, a forewarning of the wind to follow. It is a small thing, not significant in itself, but a seaman will note it, and prepare for the squall behind it.

  The first catspaw to ruffle the serenity of Wind Rode's calm and efficient life came into the coxswain's office about nine o'clock that night, in the bulking form of Hooky Walker, chief bosun's mate.

  This office was larger than Pelican's. It opened from the passageway near the sickbay, but it had no porthole. Rennie had noted that fact, almost subconsciously, as soon as he had stepped into it the day before. Somehow the absence of his former terrible escape route had soothed him; it was not there to remind him, and exit from the place lay only a few yards along a passage which led straight out on to the iron-deck.

  The coxswain was sitting at his tiny workbench, the captain's book of defaulters before him, when Hooky stepped in. The big man's bulk seemed to fill the little office. Rennie looked up, and nodded. Hooky sat down, pulling out the makings.

  He said nothing while he rolled the white cylinder, and Rennie felt impelled to break the silence.

  "I've never seen a book like this before," he said, gesturing with a finger at the defaulters' book, hardly a name in it. "Not worth keeping."

  "Like I said," Hooky replied soberly, "she's a taut ship. Though..." slowly poking the strands of tobacco down with a match-end, "things could change. Fast."

  The tone of his voice brought Rennie's head round.

  "Meaning?" he asked.

  "Meaning we've got trouble," Hooky said seriously, and lit his cigarette, Rennie's hand went out to his own packet.

  "Let's have it."

  "Here it is then. A bloke on the foc's'le messdeck's just reported to me that there's three quid missing from his locker."

  "Oh hell, it's on again!" Rennie muttered.

  "What's that?" Hooky asked sharply.

  Rennie glanced sideways at him.

  "Nothing, nothing at all. You're sure the money was pinched? It could easily have been mislaid."

  "It wasn't mislaid," Hooky shook his head heavily. "The bloke looked everywhere for it before he came to me. There's a tea-leaf loose up forrard. And he's got to be stopped."

  "Why didn't he come to me?" Rennie queried sharply.

  "Fair enough," Hooky nodded. "But I happened to meet him outside the canteen. He looked so worried I asked him what was up. He told me."

  "I see." Rennie rested his chin on
the back of his hand. His face in the electric light looked drawn, tired. Hooky waited, silent. Then Rennie jerked his head round to face him.

  "What the hell d'you expect me to do about it?" he flashed.

  "Eh... ? You're the coxswain, ain't you? What d'you do? You tell the Jimmy and we organise a search, that's what!"

  Rennie laid down his cigarette in the ashtray. The surge of anger had left him. Slowly he shook his head.

  "No. That won't get us anywhere. How the hell are you going to pinpoint three quid? I've got five in my pocket right now." He leaned back in the chair. "A search would be a waste of time."