J. E. MacDonnell - 021

by The Coxswain(lit)

  Beuring had nothing to lose through his superiors' suspicions he was not after promotion, the Navy was not his career, and even stoppage of leave suited, rather than negatived, his purpose. The only object forfeiture of leave would achieve would be to retain him in his sphere of operations.

  So Rennie waited for the summons, distrustful of its results and not eager for the extra work it would entail.

  But the hours had passed and nothing had come down from the bridge. Against his inclination a slight interest in what Bentley was up to began to stir. This captain's name was a byword in the Fleet, and he could be expected to come up with something original.

  Then he felt the ship heel and noted the shaking of her speed. The loudspeaker outside in the passage cleared its throat and the captain's voice boomed out, and then Rennie thought he understood the full reason why his summons had been delayed. Bentley had been merely planning an offensive operation.

  "This is the captain."

  The captain spoke only for the delivery of a significant message. But the ship's sudden alteration of course had commanded their attention anyway.

  The gambling on the messdeck stopped. Men in the steamy bathroom looked up from their dhobeying. B-gun's crew lowered their magazines and moved to the speaker on the face of the bridge. Hooky Walker sat up in his mess, leaving the leather cushion behind him dark with sweat. Rennie leaned over and heaved the door further open.

  "I have reason to believe that the Japs have built up a considerable force of aircraft in the islands we reconnoitred last night. Object is almost certainly a strike at the shipping at Guadal Canal. I hope to pinpoint the airfield. We will be in a position to bombard at a little after midnight tonight.

  "It's been a long time since we carried out a bombardment against a shore target. But the control teams have been drilling this afternoon and we can expect some fast and accurate shooting. Once we find the airstrip we should do considerable damage.

  "Our handling of the air-attack this morning was not at all satisfactory. We should have got both those boys. I expect a much better effort tonight. That's all."

  The speaker clicked off.

  Rennie's first reaction to the captain's information was natural and involuntary - his nerves tautened and the old stirring of tension began in his stomach. Unless you were a completely insensitive clod you always felt that way when your captain told you he was taking the ship into action.

  But as he sat there, sopping the sweat from his face and chest, his brain took over from his instinctive reflexes.

  This is how he got his name, he thought - always willing and eager to hop in where another commander would have gathered reinforcements about him. They had beaten off an air-attack, and now they were well in the clear towards Guadal Canal. Yet this gong-hunting nitwit had to decide to take on half the blasted Jap air-force on his lonesome.

  To be successful, a strike against Guadal Canal would require not less than fifty aircraft. Fifty-against one destroyer. Did the clot believe they wouldn't take off once he started banging? And what the hell did he base his superiority on? That stoush this morning wasn't so hot. Not by a hell of a long shot. He admitted it himself.

  Now they were headed back at high speed into a suicidal trap. Now he should be somewhere between Moresby and Townsville course south, no worries, content in his job, three weeks leave coming up...

  Rennie slammed shut the ledger he was working on and shoved his chair back. He was in the passage when a young seaman came up to him.

  "Excuse me, `Swain. I've got my first badge coming up. Can I see you for a moment?"

  "No!" Rennie snapped, and strode down the passage.

  Commander Bentley was, happily for his peace of mind, unaware of his coxswain's reaction to an operation which was designed partly for his benefit.

  He watched the night falling wide and dense on all sides of the ship and he listened to the whine of the wind in the rigging and the wet swish of the water rushing down her sides.

  But these normal sights and sounds impinged only casually on his consciousness. As always when a decision to engage had been made, his brain was planning far ahead, judging, forecasting, allowing for eventualities, remembering past experiences.

  A recent memory slid into his mind. His head turned to Randall beside him. The ship was closed-up at night action-stations, the complementary precaution to her routine at dawn.

  "That fellow Pascoe," he said, "what've you done with him? He's not still on the pom-pom?"

  "Like hell he is!" Randall, the gunnery-officer, growled. "I've shifted him to the port oerlikon, ammunition supply; He can't bugger-up anything there. Even a Girl Guide can carry drums of ammunition!"

  Bentley grinned slightly. The reference was perhaps unfair to a fine body of young womanhood, but the meaning was clear enough. He said nothing, but he was thinking of the training and sense of responsibility which had caused Randall, without orders, to remove the weakness from the important pom-pom.

  Suddenly he felt confident again. They would do it-they would lambast that Jap airfield and they would get away and they would hold the ship together.

  They had to. The whole ship's company would know that he had planned and decided on this operation by himself. He was the instigator, he was responsible, he was not acting on senior-officer orders.

  Already, perhaps foolishly, he had planted in their minds a conception of their own inadequacy. It might have been better if he hadn't mentioned that air-attack. If they failed this time, if the shooting was not accurate, if they could not lather that strip before a vengeful enemy could get off to them, it could take months of painful rehabilitation before they could be lifted back to their old efficiency.

  If they were still alive to care...

  He thought these things, standing beside the binnacle in the cool night, grateful for the rush of air past his face, and he was perfectly aware of the strangeness of his thoughts.

  Two months ago they would not have entered his head. Two months ago his sole consideration would have been the planning of the operation. His weapons and their men were seasoned and sure all he had to do was to order them into triumphant action.

  But now he had a disinterested coxswain and at least three rotten members affecting his crew. Now he had a thief and a gambler. And now his crew, hard-worked, denied leave, were ripe for disaffection.

  You can drill men for hours every day; you can drive yourself to set an example of alertness and application to duty; but you cannot prevent them from gambling, and stealing, and listening to whining voices which bring their dissatisfactions out into the open. Not when their grievances are soundly based.

  The abrupt realisation of where his thoughts were taking him had an actual physical effect. He stepped down from the wooden grating and walked quickly to his stool. He hoisted himself up and his thought moved on:

  Damn it all! He was condemning his men without a shade of proof. Assuming in them weaknesses which had no real base other than his suspicions and prophecies. He had trained them well, certainly, but the basic material had to be there. You don't mould steel out of dross. They would come out of this just as solidly as they had out of the other actions. He must cling to that, be must believe in it completely.

  His problem was not what might happen to his men, but to root out the cancer now growing amongst them. The surgery of action was required, not the unfounded, gnawing doubts of presumption as to the future.

  His head swung round.

  "Bosun's mate?"

  "Sir?"

  "Cox'n on the bridge!"

  The coxswain had picked up his lifebelt - you never moved without it at night at sea - and was about to seek the coolness of the upper-deck when the bosun's mate poked his head into the chief's mess. His eyes found Rennie in the hot red lighting - ordinary light destroyed night vision.

  "Captain, Cox'n - on the bridge."

  The head withdrew and Rennie glanced at Hooky's interested face.

  "Looks like the flap's started," Renni
e said sourly, "you'd better join the happy throng."

  "He didn't mention me," Hooky answered doubtfully.

  "He did in his cabin this morning. Talked about a conference. Come on - it'll be hard enough listening to all the guff about detection without having to repeat it to you afterwards.

  "Okay," Hooky said, and kept the anger out of his voice.

  They climbed up to the bridge together.

  Bentley was still on his stool, and remained sitting there when Rennie said:

  "Cox'n, sir. I brought the Buffer in case you want him."

  "Good idea," Bentley said at once, and Rennie knew his forebodings had been right. "We'll talk here."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Now," Bentley started, and he deliberately kept his voice at normal pitch - it would not hurt for the word to get around that authority was on to the business down below. "Have there been any more reports of thieving or gambling?"

  Reports of gambling...? Rennie mentally sneered. He said:

  "No, sir. Nothing more."

  "You've been through the messdeck this afternoon? The petty-officers are helping you?"

  Watch it, Rennie's mind warned. This bloke doesn't muck about.

  "Well... no, sir."

  "Oh? Why not?"

  Bentley's voice was curt. He knew that the bosun's mate and the signalman would hear it, but he didn't mind that. The news that the Old Man was on the cox'n's back about this wouldn't do any harm.

  "Because, sir," Rennie answered, his tone also crisp under Bentley's, "the chief bosun's mate was on the messdeck last night. I consider that anyone running a board - if they were - wouldn't be such a fool as to set it up so soon after that."

  "I couldn't agree less, cox'n," Bentley said levelly. "If I were running this crown and anchor board I'd have it going again ten minutes after the Buffer did his rounds. For precisely the reason you have just put forward, And, it seems, I'd be doing the right thing. Eh?"

  "Not necessarily, sir," Rennie answered, needled. "We don't know it was running again."

  "There's lots of things we don't know," Bentley said flatly, "what we have to do is start assuming. And I'd say it's safe to assume that board's been in operation this afternoon - maybe even now."

  "Yes, sir," Rennie said.

  There was little else he could say. He was still, as Bentley believed him to be, a taut hand; and he was before his captain.

  "We've got to stamp on this, hard," Bentley continued, "and keep the pressure on. If we can't catch them we'll frighten `em. I want you two to go below right now. You forrard, cox'n, you aft, Buffer. And don't be at all shy about broadcasting why you're on the prowl. All right?"

  "And the cockatoo, sir?" Rennie asked drily.

  At that moment Bentley came very close to delivering as scorching a blast as anyone had heard on that bridge. Rennie's tone did not escape him, and the defeatism of the man exasperated him. But he was still the coxswain, and a patent reduction of his authority through a publicly delivered rocket could do great harm.

  There was also to be remembered Rennie's mental state. Bentley tried consciously to remember that when he spoke.

  "The cockatoos will screech," he said evenly, "but that won't worry us. My main concern now is stopping this business, scaring it off. Sooner or later thief or gambler will slip up. Then we pounce. Until then, I want the messdecks regularly patrolled. Is that clear?"

  "Clear, sir," Hooky answered heartily, and didn't give a damn what the coxswain thought.

  "Very well, then, get to it. I also want lights-out at ten o'clock enforced. Tired men, with what we've got on our hands, are not a pleasant prospect."

  He nodded, and the two men saluted and turned for the ladder.

  They did not speak on the way down, and at the foot of the ladder Hooky turned aft, heading for the quarterdeck mess-deck beyond the tubes. The coxswain walked slowly forrard. His face set, for though Bentley had made no specific charges Rennie felt he had been reprimanded.

  Stirring in his mind, as Bentley had meant it to, was a secondary animosity, this one directed against Beuring,

  In Pelican he had had little trouble with the big dark man. There had been occasional pilfering, but nothing serious, nor had there been wide-spread gambling. Pelican's men numbered fewer than Wind Rode's, and for long they had been awake up to Beuring, and had kept their lockers secure against the suspected Pascoe.

  But here the field was unharvested, lush. Only for this gambling, and its inevitable effect, Rennie felt he might have made of his new berth a tolerable experience. Now he was in the middle of trouble.

  So that when he saw the shadow merge into the night ahead of him, Rennie's thin face firmed into a mask of anger. Could he have seen it, Bentley, the psychologist, would have been grimly satisfied.

  They were quicker this time, for now Beuring knew for certain that authority was on to him. When Rennie stepped into the messdeck Beuring was sitting at the table with only three men for company. Before him, the page half-covered with handwriting, was a letterpad.

  "Night, `Swain," he greeted the visitor casually, "how d'you find the new berth?" His hand took in the larger messdeck. "Like the Troc. after the old bird, eh?"

  Rennie was as much deceived as he felt like sparring.

  "You've been at it again, Beuring," he stated flatly.

  "What's that, chief? Writing letters? Ah well, you know me-always one for keeping the floosies happy!"

  He grinned, and Rennie's next words tightened the gesture.

  "You're a quarterdeckman. What are you doing on the foc's'le messdeck?"

  Beuring's eyes narrowed. He hadn't thought of that - he couldn't say he was visiting, not with the writing-pad ostensibly in use before him.

  "I reckoned it'd be cooler up here, `Swain." He tried to make his voice easy.

  "You're a liar!" Rennie answered deliberately.

  "Now look here..."

  "Shut up and sit down!" Rennie's voice was vicious; several heads poked up from hammocks. "You're up here to run a crown and anchor board! I'm warning you, Beuring - I'm going to get you for this."

  Beuring was on his feet, his eyes hot.

  "You can't call me a liar, cox'n! I can put in to see the skipper about that!"

  "You can," Rennie sneered, "but you won't You haven't the guts to stand before the captain. But I'm telling you this, Beuring - one more step out of line, one more cockatoo who cringes away when I walk along the upper-deck and you'll be standing before the captain all right!"

  His spare frame turned to take in the messdeck.

  "And that goes for any sucker dumb enough to fall for this fowl's crooked racket! D'you hear me? The heat's on."

  The thin face swung back to Beuring. The seaman was several stone heavier than his opponent, and rank did not matter in those few tense seconds. But it was Beuring's eyes which fell before the cold anger in Rennie's.

  "Dingo," said Rennie in a hard clear voice, and then he swung on his heel and strode from the messdeck.

  Outside near the guard-rail he halted. He was breathing quickly, and he felt enervated after the vehement few minutes in there. He put his face up to the cool clear stars and gradually the tension eased. It was then he wondered, idly and briefly, at the sudden return to his old form which the exchange on the messdeck had represented.

  "Anything forrard?" Hooky's deep voice spoke beside him.

  "No," Rennie answered without turning. "If they were up to anything they got rid of it damned quick." He was about to tell his messmate what he had said to Beuring, but the anger had evaporated.

  "I'm turning in," he grunted, and walked off to the mess.

  The bridge was quiet, and tense.

  Radar had reported a land echo half an hour before. Bentley had worried about the enemy's possessing radar, but he solaced himself with the reflection that if they had, they would have spotted the ship last night. It seemed they had not had time to establish aerials on the hills in the middle of the island.

  At 20 knots, sil
ent, not a chink of light showing in the blackness of the cloudy night, Wind Rode slid on towards the black bulk of the land. Bentley had delayed closing-up for action so that his men would gain the maximum of rest, but now as he lowered his glasses he knew he must wait no longer.

  "All right," he said quietly to Randall, "get them closed-up. And warn the petty-officers to keep them quiet about it."

  The warning was not needed. Hit and run forays like this were peculiarly suited to a destroyer's function, and Wind Rode's men were acutely aware of the requirement of silence.

  All armament had been tested through during night-action stations. Now there was no calling of orders and reports, but a muted whine of the hydraulic pumps as the three heavy mountings followed director, pointing where it pointed, out over the starb'd bow towards the land.