HMS Saracen

by Douglas Reeman

  Damn them, he thought savagely. Bouverie with his im

  mature and fatuous remarks. What did he know? They were not involved, so they did not care. One man was lost overboard because of his own carelessness and stupidity;, and the ship almost went into mourning because their captain did not stop. In submarine-patrolled waters they had expected him to offer the ship as a sitting target. But now that hundreds of lives and precious ships were being smashed and killed beyond the horizon they just did not see reason for alarm or interest !

  What was worse was the way Erskine accepted the Navy’s new vulnerability. Chesnaye remembered his own feeling of loss and betrayal that morning off the Gallipoli Peninsula when the Saracen had moved in for her final bombardment. The supporting fleet gone. The sea empty. The men in the convoy must feel like that. Their only hope was the Saracen, and she was to be denied them.

  He pounded the screen with slow, desperate beats. Come on, old lady ! Give me all you’ve got. Faster … faster !

  Only, twenty miles to go, and but for the driving spray and gale they might even have been able to see something. But the sea was grey with anger, and the wind showed no sign of easing. Instead it hurled itself like a barricade across the ship’s thrusting stem, cutting away the speed under remorseless pressure.

  Fox looked across from the charthouse towards the Captain’s stooped shoulders. `No further signals, sir.’ He caught Erskine’s anxious stare. `I guess it’s all over,’ he added quietly.

  Erskine waited for Chesnaye to resume his old course and speed. There was nothing to be gained now. The small convoy must have been decimated, like others would be before this was all over. Chesnaye was only offering his own ship as a target and deck, nothing more.

  Two more hours dragged by. Hardly a man moved on the upper deck, and the voices of the men on watch were hushed and rare.

  The wind slackened, veered round and dropped away as if it had never been. The hazy clouds rolled aside and the sun moved in to greet •them. Humid at first, and then with its of penetrating brilliance, so that the grey shadows fled rom the sea and the wave crests gave way to deep swells of glittering blue and silver.

  Once the engine room asked permission to reduce speed, but Chesnaye said shortly, `Not yet.’

  Erskine could not take his eyes off him. He is waiting for something to happen, he thought uneasily.

  The watches changed. Men relieved went to their messes to eat, but without their usual noisy gaiety. Even the rum was issued without comment, and the men drank their watered tots with their eyes upwards towards the bridge, where the dark outline of the Captain’s head and shoulders stayed rigidly like a carving on the front of a church.

  `Smoke, sir ! Bearing Red two-zero !’

  Every glass was swivelled and then steadied to watch.

  Slowly, remorsefully, like a reaper in a field, the monitor pounded her way across the inviting water. Without a wind the sea parted to allow the Saracen easy access, as if eager for her to see the spoils.

  Chesnaye said at last, `Slow ahead.’,

  From the corner of his eye he saw the seamen off watch lining the guard-rails, their faces turned towards the smoke.

  There was little of the ship to be seen. It had been a sizeable freighter, and it lay on its beam, only a fire-rusted shell to show where the hull had once been. The eddying bow wave from the monitor’s blunt stem pushed gently against the dying ship and made the littered surface of the water between the two vessels surge with sudden life.

  Chesnaye heard a man cry out, and saw a white flash as a hand pointed involuntarily at the flotsam of war.

  Broken planks and blackened hatch covers. A headless corpse trailing scarlet weed in the clear water, an unused life-jacket found, too late.

  The sinking freighter coughed deep in its shattered insides and plunged hissing into a maelstrom which mercifully sucked down some of the grisly relics also.

  Far on the port beam the little trawler was picking her way through more wreckage, like a terrier in a slaughterhouse.

  A patch of oil a mile wide parted next across the monitor’s bows. Then there was more debris, much of it human.

  Erskine felt sick. When he looked sideways at Chesnaye’s face he saw that it was impassive, almost expressionless.

  Chesnaye said quietly, `If only we had been here in time..!’

  Then over his shoulder he said in a strange, cruel tone: `Well, Sub, what do you, think of all this, eh? We were too late for these chaps; you were right!’

  A dead rating bobbed past the monitor’s anti-torpedo bulge, and a seaman on lookout said in a strangled voice `God ! One of our chaps!’

  The guard-rail quivered as the lines of watching men, leaned to look at the lonely, passing figure. At last the disaster was no longer anonymous and indistinct. The corpse was in naval uniform. Even the red badges on its sleeve were clear and mocking.

  Chesnaye stood up, his feet thudding on the grating. ‘Bring her back to her old course, Pilot !’ He glanced only briefly at Erskine. `Make a signal to C.-in-C., John. Repeated Second Inshore Squadron.’ He looked up at the flapping commissioning pennant at the masthead. `Convoy, destroyed. No survivors.’

  `Aye, aye, sir. Anything else?’

  Chesnaye was filling his pipe with short, angry thrusts. `There’s a lot I’d like to tell them at the Admiralty. But it will keep for the moment!’

  Erskine wanted to help, to make the Captain understand, and he tried to find the right words.

  Before he could speak Chesnaye said : `Get those gawping men off the upper deck, or find them something to doli Like a bloody circus!’

  Erskine was suddenly grateful for the bite in Chesnaye’s voice, even though they both knew it was merely acting.

  Lieutenant Malcolm Norris stood high on the port gratings, his hands clasped tightly behind his back. From his lofty position he could just see over the Captain’s shoulder and beyond the screen where, transfixed between the two big guns, the monitor’s bows moved very slowly towards the long strip of land.

  He could see Erskine and some of the fo’c’sle party already moving around the cables, making a last check before entering harbour.

  He heard Fox say quietly : `Starboard ten. Midships.’ The Navigating Officer’s buttons rasped against metal as he bent over the compass and swung the pelorus on to another fix. `Steer one-seven-five.’

  Norris bit his lip. Fox was so calm, so ice cold when he was working. The halyards squeaked and a string of flags soared upwards to the yard. Through the shore haze, beyond the long, low-lying breakwater, a signal lamp blinked rapidly, and Norris heard Laidlaw goading his signalmen into further action.

  But as Officer of the Watch Norris had little to do. The Saracen was at last arriving in Alexandria and the Captain and Fox were conning the ship over the last half-mile.

  Norris felt the sweat running down his spine, but did not relax his vigilant position. It was like everything else he did. He did not dare drop his guard for a second. Speaking, thinking, passing orders, each action had to be vetted.

  He watched the busy harbour life opening up across the ship’s bows. Nodding buoys, weird Arab sailing craft poised like bats on their own reflections, an outward-bound sloop gathering way as it passed the harbour limit.

  As the sloop drew abeam the trill of pipes echoed across the flat water.

  The monitor’s tannoy barked : `Attention on the upper deck ! Face to starboard and salute!’

  The bosun’s mates, already in a small line on the Saracen’s upper bridge, raised their pipes. C.P.O. Craig snapped, `Sound !’

  Again the twittering, shrill and ear-splitting as the senior ship returned the sloop’s mark of respect.

  Craig watched the other ship with slitted, critical eyes. `Carry on!’

  The yeoman called hoarsely : `Signal from Flag, sir Anchor as ordered!’

  Chesnaye grunted, his eyes fixed on the shimmering anchorage. Like a pewter lake, he thought. Cruisers, destroyers and supply ships. Bobbing derrick
s, squealing cranes, dust and busy preparation.

  At the head of a line of moored cruisers was the Aureus, the flagship. Every glass would be watching the monitor’s approach. Every eye critical, perhaps amused. He heard the

  rasp in his voice as he ordered, `Slow ahead both!’

  He heard, too, Norris stammer as he repeated the order down the voice-pipe. He was obviously worried and strained. Like me, thought Chesnaye, with sudden bitterness. He wondered what Norris had thought about the shambles left by the Italian cruisers. Probably thinks I took the ship there just to frighten everybody.

  Somewhere deep in his brain a voice persisted. Why did you go there? You knew it was too late ! Was it to prove something to yourself ?

  `Time to take her round, sir!’ Fox’s voice startled him. A prickle of alarm made him stiffen in his chair.

  Dreaming again. Too tired. Can’t think clearly any more.

  `Very good. Port fifteen.’

  More shouted orders. `Port Watch fall in for entering harbour ! First part forrard ! Second part aft!’

  The decks blossomed with scampering figures, unfamiliar in correct uniform and without the well-used duffel-coats and balaclavas. Chesnaye’s aching mind began to drift again. There should have been a marine guard and band on the quarterdeck. It would have made all the difference.

  He gritted his teeth. Those days were gone. No marines. Just an old ship, with God-knows-what job ahead. ‘Midships!,

  ‘Coming on to bearing now, sir!’ Fox sounded alert.

  Chesnaye stood up and stepped on to the forward grating. The monitor moved slowly past a destroyer which glittered like a yacht from beneath its impeccable awnings. More piping, and tiny, antlike figures stiffening in salute.

  `Half a cable, sir!’

  `Stop engines!’ Chesnaye shielded his eyes and peered down at the fo’c’sle. Erskine was standing right in the bows, his face towards him across the length of the foredeck. A signalman stood at his side ready to break out the Jack on the staff the moment the anchor went plummeting down. The cable party stood in various stances, like athletes waiting for the gun. Eyes on the massive, treacherous cable and the brake which would halt its welcome sound.

  Still the monitor glided forward. Almost graceful in the clear water.

  `Coming up now, sir !’Fox was busy checking bearings again.

  Chesnaye lifted his arm, and saw the rating with the big hammer brace himself above the slip, the only force now holding the anchor. Chesnaye felt elated but unsteady. It was a combination of exhaustion and over-eagerness, so that he felt he had to speak, to break the unbearable waiting. `The flagship looks smart enough.’ He even forced himself to smile as he said it.

  Fox grunted. `The Flag Officer of the Second Inshore Squadron is rather particular !’The air on the bridge was light-hearted, even gay.

  Suddenly Chesnaye realised that he had been so preoccupied during the last harrowing days he did not even know who his new senior officer was to be. Not that it mattered now. The time he had been apart from the Navy had cut all his old connections. `What is the Admiral’s name, Pilot?’

  Fox frowned, his gaze on the open water ahead of the bows. The Skipper was cutting it fine. From the corner of his eye he could see the empty tanker, high and ungainly, backing stern first across the narrowing anchorage. Absently he replied, ‘Vice-Admiral Beaushears, sir.’

  Chesnaye staggered as if struck a blow. It couldn’t be ! Not now, out here? He looked round like a trapped animal, his mind reeling.

  Fox’s voice, controlled but sharp, cut into his tortured thoughts. `Let go, sir ! Let go !’

  Almost in a trance Chesnaye dropped his arm, and from forrard came the sharp click, followed immediately by the rumble of cable as the anchor roared from its rust-streaked hawsepipe.

  Fox was now up on the grating, his eyes anxious. `Are you all right, sir?’

  Chesnaye swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Yes!’ Over his shoulder he called, `Slow astern together!’

  Norris, an imaginative man at any time, had watched the little drama mesmerised like a rabbit. He repeated the last order and heard the Coxswain’s voice answer him up the voice-pipe. Slowly the monitor moved astern, paying out her cable along the bottom of the anchorage. But Norris was unable to take his eyes from Chesnaye’s square shoulders and the anxious Fox at his side.

  Later in his cabin he would be able to think about it more clearly. Norris knew that something really big had happened. With this vital knowledge, once he had unravelled it, he would make those smug bastards in the wardroom really sit up and notice him !

  `Stop engines!’ Norris watched as the stern-moving tanker floundered across the bows, its half-bared screw thrashing the water into a snow-white froth. Norris held his breath. He was quite sure Chesnaye had not even seen the other ship. But for Fox’s quick action there might even have been a collusion.

  Chesnaye turned towards him, so that with sudden terror Norris thought he had been thinking aloud. `Ring off main engines!’ He brushed past Norris and walked into his seacabin.

  Norris was quivering with excitement, his past fears momentarily forgotten. `Did you see that?’ He waited impatiently as Fox stopped rolling a chart and peered across at the gleaming white buildings and tall minarets. `Did you see the Captain’s face?’

  Fox cleared his throat and picked up the chart. For a moment he looked hard at Norris’s flushed features. `Nice place, Alex. Think I’ll take a run ashore tomorrow!’ Then he was gone.

  Satisfied, the Saracen swung at her anchor while the cable and side parties dismissed and hurried below to escape the sun. On the maindeck Mr. Joslin, the Gunner, was supervising the rigging of an awning, while McGowan and Sub-Lieutenant Bouverie watched over, the boats as they were dropped in the water alongside.

  From the flagdeck the signalmen eyed the shore and the flagship, but in the wheelhouse the wheel and telegraphs stood unattended and already forgotten.

  Norris still paced the empty upper bridge, ignoring the sun on his neck as he tried to fathom out the enormity of his knowledge. He felt a new man. The ship was safe in harbour, and, there was the strength of other ships and men nearby. Already he had forgotten that but for the Captain the Saracen would be lying even more quietly on the bed of the Mediterranean, while on some distant airfield the Stuka pilots would be celebrating, instead of mourning their dead comrades.

  Norris thought of his wife. `You’re as good as they are ! He grinned. For once she had been right.

  Chesnaye followed the flagship’s captain down the quarterdeck ladder and into the cool shade below. His stomach felt uneasy, and he wished now he had made time to take a good meal before leaving the Saracen prior to attending for his interview with the man whose flag flew high on the Aureus’s tapering masthead.

  The two captains passed down a narrow passageway, the sides of which were so well painted that they shone like polished glass. Chesnaye darted a quick glance at his opposite number and wondered how he got on with ViceAdmiral Sir Mark Beaushears. Captain Colquhoun had met him at the gangway, his tanned face set in an automatic smile of welcome. He was pleasant enough, but Chesnaye had the impression that he was a much-harassed man. It could not be pleasant to have a flag officer for ever breathing down your shoulder, he thought.

  Chesnaye noted the smart marine sentry outside the the Admiral’s quarters, and waited with mounting curiosity and apprehension as Colquhoun tucked his cap beneath his arm and stepped over the coaming. Chesnaye followed him, aware of the soft carpet beneath his shoes and the air of quiet well-being the stateroom seemed to exude.

  There were two men present. A tall, languid flag-lieutenant rose slowly to his feet, glanced at Chesnaye and then turned to watch his superior.

  Vice-Admiral Sir Mark Beaushears was only a year older then Chesnaye, but time and ambition had been hard on his outward appearance. He still appeared cool and relaxed, but his tall figure was markedly stooped, and his once-athletic body was marred by a definite paunch. His hair had receded,
too, so that the high forehead gave him a new expression of watchful deliberation, and. he appeared

  to be summing up Chesnaye from the moment he stepped into the cabin. Only his eyes were the same, Chesnaye thought. Veiled, giving nothing away.

  Beaushears waved his hand to a chair in front of the well-turned desk. Again Chesnaye had the distinct impression that everything had been carefully planned beforehand and the chair had been placed in position like a stage prop.

  He sat down and folded his hands in his lap. He ticked off each item in his mind. No handshake. Only the briefest hint of a smile.

  Beaushears said evenly : `It’s been a long time. I watched you dropping anchor earlier and wondered if you had changed much.’

  Chesnaye waited for him to dismiss the other officers. Colquhoun was looking stiff and uneasy, and the young flag-lieutenant faintly amused. He is going to keep them here, he thought. As a sort of barrier. He is afraid of old acquaintanceships and memories.

  This new knowledge did nothing to comfort him, but instead made him vaguely angry. In a formal tone he began : `I have submitted my report about the voyage from Malta. I was very sorry I was unable to help that convoy.’ He toyed with the idea of mentioning the bombers Saracen had shot down, but he knew Beaushears was well aware of the facts. Let him bring it up first, he thought with irritation.

  `Yes, a great pity. Still, if, as you say, you were unavoidably detained, there’s nothing more to be said, is there?’

  Chesnaye stiffened in his chair, his fingers laced together with painful fierceness. What did he mean?

  Aloud he said, `I did my best, sir.’

  Beaushears leaned back in his chair. `You lost a man overboard too?’

  `It’s all in the report.’ Chesnaye could feel the colour rising to his cheeks. `It was the only decision.’

  `Yes.’ Beaushears pressed a small button. `The sun is well over the yardarm. A drink will do us good.’ Almost casually he said, `I thought for one small moment that you were going to overshoot the anchorage when you came into harbour.’ He smiled for the first time. `She’s not a fleet destroyer, y’know !’