J. E. MacDonnell - 070

by Under Sealed Orders(lit)

  "Stand at ease, please," Dutchy said, and his men took him at his word, straddling their feet, lolling over the tubes, leaning against the quartermaster's lobby. But not one man leaned against the guardrails. Slack at parade-ground drill, this bunch, but experienced in other things. The slipping sea, and the two big screws, were a few feet below.

  For a few seconds Dutchy's grey eyes patrolled their faces, recognising the false boredom in the old, the genuine interest in the new. These were as much interested in him, he knew, as in their destination and mission. He decided to settle one question at once.

  "We're bound for Hervey Bay between Maryborough and Bundaberg, for a ten day working-up period. After that... you'll know when I consider you're competent to move on. And that will be in ten days, no more. Now this is a vessel. In ten days from making Hervey Bay she will be a fighting ship. Some of you don't know me, yet. If you have any doubts about that statement I just made, ask those who do know me.

  "Reference to that... my name is John Benedict Holland. Any man heard repeating that second name can forget about shore leave. Some of you I don't know, but this I do know. The new men are all specialists. The old hands are specialists in many things, like whoring and guzzling, but in this ship they have a lot to learn. That includes me. The new men will remedy that lack. You're used to the equipment this young cruiser carries. You'll be asked about its operation, by me and my officers as well as ratings. You'll tell us and you'll teach us.

  "You may hear all sorts of things about me," Dutchy said, unsmiling. "But here's something I'll tell you. I believe false pride is the equipment of an idiot. There'll be none of that nonsense here." He paused, holding their eyes, old and new. "On the other side of the coin," he said quietly, "I want you specialists to know that the men you'll be teaching aren't exactly girl guides. Each of us has something to learn from the other. This has to be done quick and accurately. I don't have in mind an admiral's inspection at the end of our ten days-I'm thinking of our lives. Maybe I don't know much about that new-fangled radar scan on the bridge, but I'm not exactly a stranger to Japanese naval efficiency, or aerial for that matter. The Japs are good-bloody good. When we leave Hervey Bay we have to be better. Simple as that."

  Dutchy paused again, looking down at the deck. No, Matheson hoped, watching the craggy profile; no mention of the ships you've lost. No matter what you say, how you put it, they'll think you're excusing yourself. The old hands will tell them the story... let them tell it, not you.

  Dutchy lifted his head.

  "Now a final word," he said in his gravelly voice, "to the old hands. I happen to know you all volunteered for this berth. You want your heads read, the bloody lot of you." He coughed. "Just the same, it's nice to have you with me again. You remember the old boats? Well now we've got something a bit different. We won't be always last in the line any more. We'll be up there with the best of `em. A nice change, eh? What nit said crime doesn't pay? That's all-except the ship will close-up for action in five minutes. Carry on, Number One."

  She rounded Sandy Cape on Fraser Island early in the morning and slipped alone, unnoticed, into the vast deserted reach of Hervey Bay; with Jervis Bay the Fleet's peacetime exercise area, now dedicated to a sterner purpose. She came to anchor well clear of the shore and went to breakfast. And immediately after breakfast the agony began.

  It would be pointless agony to recall for you wartime visitors the memories of that bay of travail, and purposeless to describe for gentler readers the running and the shouting, the sweating and the cursing of a working-up period. Let it suffice for our purposes to record that at the end of ten days Jackal was a vastly different ship to the one which had sailed from Sydney, and to mention that no one who knew her captain was at all surprised at this metamorphosis. An innocent patch of sand on the foreshore still had black smoke boiling above it from Jackal's bombardment-no misfires, a fast rate of fire- when Dutchy lowered his glasses and grunted:

  "I think that might do it."

  "Thank the Heavenly Host for that," Matheson said fervently, but strictly to himself. Neither was he the same young man who, refreshed and plump from three weeks' leave, had sailed from Sydney. Matheson had in fact lost half a stone in weight, and gained circles under his eyes and lines on his face. He was a very tired young man, and fed up to the teeth with gunnery and radar and torpedoes and seaboats and shoring up bulkheads, for while a captain may order and supervise and watch and condemn, it is the first-lieutenant who carries out those orders and receives the condemnation.

  "Yes, sir," Matheson said aloud.

  Dutchy looked at him. There was cynicism in the twist of his mouth but affection in his eyes, before he veiled that treacherous expression. Surprisingly, he had learned even more about his young deputy than he had known before. In the other ships Matheson had been loyal and competent, but there he had been master of his environment: he had carried out his job efficiently and without complaint. Here it was different, a different sort of test altogether- not so much of professional competence as of personal characteristics. There he had been simply told, and the thing was done: here he had been hounded, at all hours, day after day and night after night, and the hounder had watched his personal reactions as much as he had the professional results.

  And only once had Matheson cracked under the whip, and snapped back from the exhausted limits of his tolerance; and he had come to the bridge again an hour later and said, quietly, "Sorry, sir, it won't happen again," and had departed, not seeing the little smile which had tenderised his tormentor's face.

  Young Matheson had come through his own accentuated ordeal splendidly, a tougher man than he had been, mentally more than physically, and so now Dutchy looked at him with veiled affection, and said in his rasp of a voice:

  "You look bushed, Bertie. What's up? Don't tell me a little picnic like this has got you down."

  Matheson knew his tormentor.

  "Bushed? Hardly. I was just beginning to enjoy it. Pity we haven't another month of it." And then he closed his eyes against the pitiless glare from the sea and said, almost in a whisper: "Tonight, for God's sake-an all-night in?"

  Almost, Dutchy put a hand on his shoulder. He killed that feeling by brushing roughly past the youngster and plucking out the microphone.

  "This is the captain. The exercise period is completed. I'm quite satisfied that now we have a ship. We're returning to anchor. Ship will remain at anchor all night. There will be no drills. You've earned your all-night in. We sail after breakfast. That's all."

  Dutchy replaced the microphone and came upright. He smiled faintly at Matheson.

  "Happy now?"

  "Seventh heaven. But where do we sail to?"

  "Dunno," Dutchy said, "I'm sailing under sealed orders."

  Matheson's eyebrows drew together. "That's odd. When do we open `em?"

  "Now. But first break out a chart of the Philippines."

  "Aye aye, sir," Matheson responded automatically, and then he did a beautiful double-take. "You said you didn't know!"

  "Sea-cabin, Number One," Dutchy said, solemnly, "immediately after anchoring. Bring Pilot and the chart with you. And your own beer."

  "A caseful," Matheson promised.

  Two hours later Jackal was at anchor, quiet.

  There was a lookout in the crow's nest, and the petty-officer of the watch had been given orders that the position was to be relieved every half-hour. Asdic and radar were operating, for even here you never knew, but the decks were deserted. No men dhobying in buckets, no tombola game, no men pacing for exercise; they were all below, flaked out. Matheson could hardly remember a quieter ship as he walked forrard with Pilot.

  Pilot's name-purely for the record, for he answered to nothing but his title-was Raoul Shepherd, given to him by a fondly fanciful mother in the little riverside town of Wilcannia, some 400-odd miles to the north-westward of Sydney. As for exchanging the waters of the Darling for those of the Pacific, he could give only as a reason his boyhood readings of R. L. Steven
son's South Sea tales. Since then, Pilot had travelled in many seas.

  A little older than Matheson, he was a mainly reticent man with a sober face and an unflappable competence in his job. He would need this quality, in a destroyer headed for the Sulu Sea. There was another minor characteristic. Pilot hated exercise and liked beer; the combination had resulted in a brewer's goitre which bulged betrayingly over the waistband of his shorts. Dutchy, though now and again he jibed at this evidence of Pilot's two weaknesses, was not worried. So long as Pilot laid his courses and read his weather signs accurately, and could work out a starsight on the back of a matchbox, he could be afflicted with gout, gangrene and gallstones for all Dutchy cared.

  Abreast the funnel Pilot said:

  "It looks like the Philippines, then?"

  "Looks like," Matheson agreed.

  They were up the foc's'le ladder before Pilot spoke again.

  "Why? With a Fleet?"

  "Haven't a clue," Matheson said to both questions. "Ask me in five minutes' time."

  They knocked at a cabin door, heard a permissive growl, and stepped in.

  "Well now," Matheson said, "look at that."

  "That" was a brown bottle with streaks of condensation on its sides, but less anticipatory eyes than Pilot's could have described that it was empty. This, perhaps, lent more point to Matheson's remark. Dutchy took the point.

  Most captain's cabins are fitted with a bell-push as a means of communication between the occupant and his steward in the pantry. Jackal was no exception. But Dutchy was more direct.

  "Samson!"

  Promptly, the giant appeared.

  "Two more..." Dutchy started, and was stopped by sight of the silver tray already on Samson's hand.

  "Yes, sir," Samson said, and placed the bottles and glasses on the occasional table. Removing the dead marine, he made to depart.

  "Samson."

  "Sir?"

  "I am about to discuss my orders with these two officers. You remember what I said about writing nothing on this mission?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I was not joking. Clear?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Absolutely nothing, not even notes. If the ship has to be abandoned before we reach the operating area, even if she is sunk, paper can float. Information obtained by the enemy could jeopardise any ship ordered to follow-up our mission."

  "I understand, sir. Would you like me to leave the pantry?"

  "That won't be necessary. The ship's company will know shortly. In any case," Dutchy said, looking at him levelly, "I have given my orders."

  "Yes, sir."

  "That's all."

  Pilot waited till Samson was in the pantry before he made his economical comment. "A large fellow," he said.

  "Could be a large bloody pest," Dutchy muttered. "A man could go for a morning George in the afternoon and find himself in the `Women's Weekly.' All right, you've got your beer-let's have that chart."

  Matheson placed the bottles on the deck and Pilot spread the chart. Both lieutenants stared at the conglomeration or islands and reefs as though they had never seen a chart before. There was in their interest the suggestion that they believed they would be seeing a lot of this one.

  "Right," Dutchy said. "As of now we're a raider."

  The young men were silent. Then Matheson pointed.

  "Through there? Alone?"

  "Bright boy. Where a fleet mightn't get in, we can. Now here's the picture."

  To these men, once the destination and the intention were revealed, there was need of little more to tell. Imagination and experience supplied the rest. After a few minutes Dutchy said:

  "Our steaming range, now." Pilot leaned forward a little. This was the vital consideration-there were no fuelling bases where they were headed. Dutchy took up a piece of paper. "Chief tells me we have a radius of five-thousand miles at fifteen knots. Five hundred tons of fuel, working pressure three hundred and fifty pounds...

  Mmmm. That doesn't concern us." Dutchy dropped the paper. "But we can't hope to be at fifteen knots all the time. We'll gulp the stuff at high speed. I'm working on a radius of three thousand. Right, Pilot?" The navigator nodded. "How long will we be up there?"

  Dutchy grinned. "Until our fuel runs low." He did not mention the other reasons which might expedite their departure, or ensure their permanent residence there.

  "Then we'll need to top-up our tanks at the last available place," Pilot said. "I suggest Darwin."

  "No argument," Dutchy agreed. "The Philippines wouldn't be the best place to run out of juice."

  "Refuel at Thursday Island?" Matheson asked.

  Dutchy wagged his head. "The less people who know we're about the better. Next stop, Darwin."

  Agreement in his silence, Matheson looked again at the chart. Then he pulled it towards him.

  "Well, I'm damned," he said, softly. His finger moved out, touched. "Look at that. History repeats itself."

  "I bloody well hope not," Dutchy growled.

  Together, silent, remembering, they looked at the Talaud Islands, in the Molucca Sea almost due north of Darwin. There was big Karakelong, and off its southern toe, the smaller Salebaboe; and there between them was the three-fathom channel through which old Utmost had surged her two-fathom draught to surprise and fling herself upon the fleeing Japanese destroyer.

  "Ugh," Matheson said.

  Dutchy chuckled, a little hollowly.

  "Don't worry, Bertie, we won't be trying that caper again."

  "You might," Matheson promised. "I'll be over the side!"

  "H'mm," Pilot coughed. They looked at him. "En-route Darwin, sir," he brought their minds back, "what speed?"

  "Fifteen knots. It's a long way and I want enough for an emergency. They've left Darwin alone for a while, but you never know when they'll change their minds."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Any further questions?"

  Matheson smiled. In the gesture there was over-much cynicism and resignation for one so young.

  "Fine. Now that everyone's happy we can get on with these bottles. If you youngsters can stay awake that long..."

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Oil-bunkers topped-up to the limit, revitalised and refreshed, they steamed past Salebaboe Island; but instead of through that channel of three fathoms they sailed to the south, across twelve hundred fathoms. And at night. They were more than a hundred miles from Mindanao, one of the southern-most islands of the Philippines, and much further than that from what they hoped to get in amongst.

  Thus, by the dawn's early light, Dutchy was not surprised to sight a group of warships each one of which, he knew by their silhouettes, would be wearing Old Glory at the gaff.

  "Yanks," he said to Matheson from under his glasses, "let's get out of here. They'll want to know why we're here on our lonesome and I don't want the world and his dog to know. Starb'd twenty, increase to thirty knots."

  The turn placed the cluster of big ships astern, while the speed placed them hull-down. The lofty masts showed no alteration of inclination; they were continuing on-course to the eastward, away from the Philippines.

  "Looks like they haven't sighted us," Matheson said.

  By inclination and experience Dutchy was pro-British, like most of his colleagues. He was not anti-American, but neither was he overly fond of their methods or national character. "Yanks," he said again, with a different intonation. "Lucky for them we're not a submarine. The coots are probably still at their ice-cream and doughnuts."

  And in dispassionate refutation of his slight, a voice sprang from a pipe.

  "Radar-office... bridge. Aircraft approaching from astern, identified friendly."

  "One of them's on the ball," Matheson grinned, maliciously.

  "So's our I.F.F.," Dutchy defended.

  Matheson had no argument with that. I.F.F. (Identification Friend or Foe) was an ingenious British radar invention which, perforce, they had not used before. Its pulse triggered off a certain response from an airborne radar set, and so i
dentified the visitor as friendly- or otherwise.

  "What the hell..." Dutchy snarled, before his voice was drowned.

  Instinctively he ducked, thus joining his companions, as a Corsair fighter howled a few feet above the topmast.

  "Bloody nit," Dutchy finished, "What's he think he's playing at?"

  The R/T speaker told him.

  "Who are you?" a nasal voice enquired. "What ship, where bound? Identify yourself. Waste no time, Mac."