J. E. MacDonnell - 070

by Under Sealed Orders(lit)

  And now the bridge. Elevate a little, give the brass a taste. Down a bit, take those close-range crews, then on to the tubes. Wait for it, boys-here she comes. This is the story of a starry night... Red stars, you sloe-eyed bastards. Beautiful red stars, bursting an biting.

  And then there was only the white picket-fence of splashes in the guiltless sea, and they were past, and still the two after guns were belching away, hit after hit, still so close, smashing. Dutchy swung her. The guns ceased firing. There was no further need of their attention. The Jap was heeled over, burning-the bright orange flames of cordite and the smoke of other things.

  Someone on the bridge was shouting. Dutchy heard but took no notice. The sound was half-hysterical, not urgent. Someone was laughing, a continuing zany cackle of sound. Dutchy let them go, enervated to carelessness by the huge swamp of his own relief. Matheson was gripping his arm, making little squeezes with his fingers, not knowing he was doing that, pointing with his other arms across at the cripple. Not talking, just pointing, infinitely more than words in the mute gesture. And into the odd sounds of the bridge there sprang a voice.

  "Wheelhouse-bridge. Wheelhouse-bridge."

  Dutchy answered. "Yes, Cox'n?"

  "What bastard do I steer for now, sir?"

  They were steering southeast three hours later, heading to clear the Talaud Islands, the place where old Utmost had had her last fling, when Mr. Baxter made his report. He made it personally, and when Dutchy saw his overalled figure step on to the compass platform he knew that the worst danger of all was upon them.

  "How long he said.

  "You've got a handy place to anchor?"

  "That bad, eh?"

  Listening, this time Matheson noticed the calmness oftheir voices. But he did not think to analyse the reasons. His interest was for Baxter. "Half an hour, no more."

  "Fine," Dutchy said. "That gives us time to get organised."

  Baxter wiped at his hands with a clean wad of cotton waste. Then he flicked with his finger at a speck on the arm of his overalls. But Matheson noticed that Baxter did not notice he had missed the speck.

  "I suppose you're thinking of feeding other fuel into the furnaces?" Baxter asked calmly.

  "Bright boy. There's stacks of wood, clothes, stuff like that."

  "I see." They might be discussing the painting of a messdeck, Matheson thought. "You think that will give us anything like the heat of oil? You think that will last till Darwin?"

  "I think it might keep us going till nightfall. I know I've signalled for help."

  "That so? You won't get anywhere near a working pressure of three-fifty pounds, you know. Wood in an oil-fired furnace! Clothes... You're back in the bow and arrow days."

  "Everyone talks to me about bows and arrows."

  "Eh?"

  "Skip it. It might work?"

  "Been thinking about it," Baxter admitted. "It might Matter of fact, it's been done before. Once."

  "Wonderful! What can you give me? Twelve knots?"

  Baxter looked at him pityingly. "Eight. If you're lucky."

  Dutchy looked at the sun. "Three hours till dark. Eight knots will take us clear of the Talauds by then. Then we can sail gently on through the kind bosom of the night."

  "You'll need the night. She'll smoke like a smoke-screen. How many men can you give me?"

  "The ship's company."

  "Flat-footed swabs cluttering up the boiler-rooms? Half-a-dozen will do, passing the stuff in through the air-locks."

  "You won't mind if the others, the gunners who saved your bloody black-gangers, work to supply those half-dozen?"

  Baxter shrugged. "Please yourself." And then, because although experienced he was really quite young, the facade broke and he grinned like a boy into Dutchy's rawhide face. "It'd be something, you know, really something! Bringing her home on a wing and a prayer? Steaming her home on a pair of bloody drawers."

  They toiled. It was their lives, of course, and the craved blessing of darkness, but mainly it was the novelty which wiped away weariness on that unique afternoon.

  Man, one hears, is naturally destructive. These men were trained to be that. They found a delight in swinging fire axes against wooden mess-tables and stools, in lumping paint and kerosene from the paint locker, in pulling gear from other men's lockers, hoping not very hopefully that their own might be missed.

  They ripped the planks of the motor-cutter from their ribs and cut out the thwarts. They took down the mast and the sails, and even the water barricoes. They unlashed hammocks and teased out the filling of and writing pads, and piles of ledgers and books and the mattresses. There were spars and rubber seaboots signal pads. There was in their ship, they found, a great deal that would burn. Including spirits from the wardroom liquor store.

  All this was hefted aft and piled up near the air-locks leading into the boiler-rooms. Pile after pile-which the big furnaces would gulp like a shark a minnow. But even if they knew that, they did not think about it.

  Down below Baxter had been busy. Sweating, burned in many places, his men had removed the sprayers. He had to be quick with the replacements, for the boiler temperature must not be allowed to fall too far.

  Then he was ready, and the wood went in.

  After a while a phone howled and Jackal crept ahead. She moved as friskily as a Chinese scow, and from her funnel she coughed stinking blackness, but she moved. They dared to hope.

  Stupidly. The sun lowered behind them, but slowly; it was still an hour from vanishing when the masthead lookout proved how stupid were their hopes.

  "Bearing right astern, three destroyers coming towards." - J.E. Macdonnell: Under Sealed Orders Page 112

  He would never know how, but Dutchy kept his voice controlled.

  "Identification? Can you make them out?"

  Before the lookout could reply the strange ships identified themselves. The flashes were small at that distance," merely eyes blinking, but the splashes were high and definite, and they rose on the point of ominous thunder. Dutchy came away from the masthead voice-pipe.

  "All right, Pilot," he said, "bring her round. Clear for action, Number One."

  Automatically with the instinct of training, and some other quality, young Matheson answered:

  "Clear for action. Aye aye, sir."

  Sluggish, Jackal heaved her length round. The single gun forrard cocked up its paint-peeling barrel and waited for the range to close. One hundred and fifty men waited.

  There was a perfectly solid reason why every man on the upper-deck was looking ahead, which was now to the northward. Just the same, it was inexcusable-technically speaking-that no man was searching the whole horizon. She was a ship about to go into action and every point of the compass should have been taken into careful account. Yet one cannot be too hard on her. She was very, very tired...

  Dutchy was the first to notice something odd about the situation, though he, like his juniors, was remiss in that he had failed to pinpoint the reason.

  "What the hell's going on," he growled. "They're shooting bloody short." He pointed, frowning with puzzlement. "Look at that."

  Matheson had seen. But he, too, had failed in his executive officer's duty. He saw the fence of white spouts shoot up close ahead of the Jap destroyers but he had no answer as to why they should be depressing their guns to such an incredible degree. Even while he stared the fall-of-shot came again, even closer to the enemy. Inexcusable, their obtuseness. A sea scout would have provided the answer. Except that sea scouts seldom come very close to the point of mental and bodily exhaustion. As it was, a youth who could have been not long out of his scout ship gave them the answer. He was the bosun's mate, aged seventeen.

  "Oh God," he said, in a whisper. No one heard him, no one saw that he had happened to glance astern, to the southeastward. He raised his voice. "Captain, sir." But the captain, his faculties not rejuvenated by what the youth had seen, was staring in bemusement at the enemy line, which was turning away. "Captain."

  They he
ard him this time. His voice was a high cracking scream. Dutchy swung. He saw the face, contorted, streaming with tears, and that he ignored as being in the expected order of things from a boy on a dreadful day like this. But he could not ignore the outstretched arm, for that was pointing, rigidly with vehemence, not towards the enemy but in the opposite direction. Dutchy turned his head and his tired eyes looked. And saw.

  Matheson was to screw a good deal of questionable pleasure out of what immediately followed. "The big act," he was to call it, "when you were damn near wetting your pants with relief." For Dutchy said, in the tone of voice he might have used to comment on a mild change in the weather:

  "You were wrong, Bertie. We have seen our belted earl again."

  The sun was shining on them. On the five of them, the grey lean strength of them; flashing back from the bow-waves hosing side by side and showing the battle ensigns; a still-bright sun, but not so bright that it smothered the brighter flashes stabbing from their foc's'le.

  It was then that young Matheson afforded Dutchy the counter to his own jibing-to-come. In a casual tone to match, he commented:

  "Your belted earl, eh? By jove, he can belt."

  They were silent after that. The whole bridge was silent, listening to the wondrous music of quick-firing four-point-sevens, watching Japanese ships heading in the direction of Tokio, two of them trailing smoke, then watching a powered shape turning back and sliding in close alongside, and hearing, casually cultivated, a voice:

  "Good afternoon, Holland old chap. We got your message all right. Of course you realise you're a little south of Salebaboc? Where Masters found you? History repeats itself, what? Over."

  "Nice to meet you again, sir," Dutchy replied. But with Matheson's daring grin on him he didn't dare try an imitation. "Bloody nice, in fact. There's one small problem?"

  "Oh? Anything I can do to help, old chap."

  "We're fresh out of fuel. We've been burning mess-tables and old socks."

  The British, generally speaking, are a phlegmatic race, unflappable. There was only the briefest pause before Trelawney came back:

  "I must admit I was intrigued why you were making so much smoke. Our friends seem to have departed. Could you be ready to take on fuel in ten minutes? Perhaps it might be better if I came alongside you?"

  "Please do," Dutchy said.

  It was about the same time the next day. The British flotilla had just departed. Jackal was in handy distance of Darwin, and an extensive boiler-clean. Dutchy Holland was in his cabin. His face was lined, but only slightly more than usual. His face was frowning, a not unusual setting for it.

  "You're a damn pest," he said.

  "Yes, sir. But it should be told. You yourself mentioned we won't be able to send another raider up there after what's happened."

  "Bloody hydrophones for ears. You don't miss much."

  "The public shouldn't miss this, sir."

  "Bulldust. Ships are in action all the time."

  "We know that-but the public don't. All they get is ships and tonnage sunk. None of the details. We're the Cinderella service."

  "Damn the public."

  "They pay our wages, sir. They own this ship."

  "Oh my God..."

  "It's true. You know it is. You can't let this slip by. I'm-well-a pretty experienced journalist. I saw it all, the lot. You'll be doing the service a service. It's your duty, sir. Public relations is a most import..."

  "All right, all right." A hand like a meat axe descended and the table shook. "You're worse than a bloody wife, Samson. Write your saga of the bloody sea but leave me alone!"

  "Thank you, sir. Here it is."

  "What?" Dutchy took the sheaf of foolscap pages. "You're quick off the mark, I'll say that for you."

  "What?" he snarled.

  "What's this? Built like a barrel."

  "Well, sir," Samson smiled placatingly, "a journalist has to be factual. Come to think of it, that is a bit of a cliche. Maybe I'd better change it."

  "Maybe you'd better. I suppose the rest of it's tripe like that." The fox's eyes "read swiftly. The pages turned. "Bloody bulldust." But the frown, the author noted, had smoothed away. From the safety of his great height he smiled. "Rubbish. Exaggerated out of all proportion. Overstated." The bull head bent. "Twenty thousand tons? That carrier was every bit of thirty thousand."

  "Understated," the author murmured.

  The reader read on. He seemed not to have heard. He turned a page, came back to it, smiled. The author smiled, a trifle cynically, yet without malice. The reader finished, handed up the manuscript.

  "You really think a paper will print that guff?"

  "There's a slight possibility, sir."

  "Must be damn short of material."

  "Yes, sir. Can I send it from Darwin. Time is the essence, sir..."

  "Oh all right, if you must."

  "Thank you, sir." Samson turned away.

  "Samson."

  "Sir?"

  "You like this berth?"

  "Of course. Suits me fine, sir."

  "You don't want to be recommended for a cruiser?"

  "Hell..."

  "Then you delete one word of that article." "Certainly, sir. Ah- which one."

  "Benedict, damn you!"

  "As you wish, sir," Samson answered poker-faced. He kept his grin for his pantry.

  The End