by Alan Evans
He could have said that a drunken armchair tactician had been critical of the Navy's inability to destroy an enemy who refused to come out to be destroyed. Smith had boiled over and replied that he had seen enough men killed at Jutland and that if the rest of the country were like the drunk the Navy would do well to stay at home. The story had been repeated but not the words in italics. He would not explain that and he could not explain the women.
But he had been in the Navy since he was twelve and lonely often enough. As a cadet at Britannia he had been an outsider, accepted but different. An orphan brought up by a retired Chief Petty Officer and his wife, his home a village shop; he had been different enough. They wondered how he had got into Britannia and so did Smith. Before he was old enough to try to find out the C.P.O. and his wife were dead and the Navy was his home and his family. But he wondered still.
Now he paced restlessly out to the wing of the bridge, aware of them watching .him and stared out at Thunder's shadowy bulk. He had found a ship run by Garrick, the First Lieutenant because the Captain, embittered at his backwater command, kept to his cabin and his gin. He looked now at that bulk, impressive in the darkness with the bristling guns and thought it was as well this man of war was a ship of peace. The nearest enemy was ten thousand miles away.
Thunder was a four-funnelled armoured cruiser of twelve thousand tons. She had served on the Pacific seaboard, based at Esquimalt and cruising off the coast of South America, for two-and-a-half years since the outbreak of war, the sole representative of a Navy stretched thin by the concentration in European waters. Before the war she had been a unit of the Third Fleet, which meant she was laid up with a tiny caretaker crew. Her crew admitted the dockyard at Esquimalt sent her back to sea as nearly new as hard work and ingenuity could contrive, but it was only a relative term.
She was too old. Laid down when Victoria reigned, her designed speed had been lower than the later more modem cruisers and it was doubtful if she could attain that speed now, let alone maintain it for any length of time. Davies, her Chief Engineer, Lieutenant-Commander R.N.R. and recalled from the Merchant Service, swore that she could. But he always evaded putting it to the test and nobody believed him. She was slow. So on the mess-decks they said, "Had to call her Thunder, didn't they? ’Cause it's a bleeding certainty you couldn't call her Lightning!"
Joke.
She had been built with some abortive idea of using her in the rivers and shallows of the China Station. It came to naught, but thus designed to cruise in shallow waters, in any kind of sea she was an uncomfortable ship. So they said, "Called her Thunder 'cause she's one long roll!"
Joke.
Plenty of jokes. In the wardroom that first night Aitkyne, the navigator, tall and elegant and watchful said, “We wondered if you'd arrive in time for resurrection day, sir."
Smith, sweating coldly and stomach rebelling on what was also the first night at sea, clutching a glass of sherry he wanted like the plague, asked blankly, "Resurrection day?"
"Bringing the old girl back to life again, sir. Taking her to sea." Laughter. Then Aitkyne added, "'If she was a house, you'd expect to find bats and ghosts."
Smith replied, "One carries one's own ghosts around." And told himself he had still to learn to keep his mouth shut. He had spoiled the joke and they looked at him oddly. The spectre at the feast, or rather the party. It was a party given to welcome Smith aboard but he had sensed the self-consciousness behind that welcome and knew the cause. They were all wary of him and that was a pity because he liked the look of them.
And Thunder's wardroom was comfortable with a long table at which the officers ate, two sideboards, easy chairs, carpet on the deck and even a piano and a gramophone, though the last belonged to young Wakely, one of the mid shipmen, and had been borrowed from the gunroom for the occasion. After two-and-a-half uneventful years on that station it was hardly surprising that they had discarded the spartan surroundings familiar to the Grand Fleet. Any fool could be uncomfortable.
But on the surface they made Smith welcome. A new face in the wardroom, a new face aboard Thunder, was an event. Her crew had served in her since the war started. The midshipmen had joined her not long ago as fifteen-year-old cadets to fill the gaps created by aging officers invalided out and one lost at sea in a gale. A score of young seamen and boys had accompanied the cadets. That had been Thunder's first and only draft.
The crew of the fore-turret was a fair sample of Thunder's crew, which consisted largely of reservists with that sprinkling of young seamen and boys. Farmer Bates was a grandfather, one of seven aboard. Gibb at seventeen was far and away the youngest in the turret but he had settled in. Thunder's slowness and rolling, her old guns and short-handed crew did not worry him because she was his ship. His first ship. And because here in these waters those things did not matter anyway.
Thunder carried a 9.2-inch gun in a turret forward and another aft. Of her twelve six-inch guns, in casemates like armoured steel pods bulging out from her hull, four were on the upper deck, one at each corner so to speak. The other eight were on the main deck below, four to a side. The guns were elderly and it was a notorious fact that in her class of ship the eight guns on the main deck could not be fired in bad weather because opening their ports would let in the sea. That did not matter in the case of Thunder because she sailed with a reduced complement. That is to say that, as she was not expected to fight in a Fleet action nor anything like it, she was not manned for the purpose. Half her crew of 600 were engineers or stokers because at her most economical speed she burned 100 tons of coal a day, every piece of which had to be shovelled from bunkers to fires. There were barely enough gunners for the turrets and the four upper deck six-inch.
Garrick was Gunnery Officer. The ship had engaged in practice firing shortly after leaving Esquimalt and the gunnery had been startlingly good, but Garrick was a gunnery fanatic and had trained and drilled these men for two-and-a-half years. The men were all right, but there weren't enough of them and the ship and her guns were too old.
Smith shrugged; these things did not matter. Thunder would drag out her last days beating up and down this coast then return to home waters to become a depot-ship- back to the dockyard wall. What mattered was that he had his duty and he would do it. He heard a scrape of a boot on the ladder and saw the clinging figure scrambling unsteadily up to the bridge and thought these last days and weeks would be long ones. It was his sentence and there would be no reprieve.
He stepped forward as the Captain stumbled on to the bridge and fetched up against the rail. Before Smith could speak he growled, "Get on with it!"
"Aye, aye, sir."
Now instead of tension there was an unease on the bridge. Smith saw Aitkyne's mouth twisted with disgust and saw the navigator turning away to hide it. A look-out yelled, the guns trained, the lights blazed out at the pinnace then died and the darkness returned.
The Captain turned slowly on Smith and said thickly, "Waste of time." And added an obscenity. Smith did not answer. The Captain pushed past him to the head of the ladder and fell head first to the deck below.
It sounded like a sack of coal hitting the deck.
Smith shouted, "The Captain's fallen!" He dropped down the ladder and knelt by the Captain. The Captain's cap still rolled on the deck till Smith set his hand on it. Aitkyne leaned over him. "I shouldn't touch him, sir. Doctor's on his way."
Smith shook his head and fumbled in the pocket of his bridge coat for a torch.
*
Albrecht the surgeon came, breathing heavily and dropped to his knees beside the Captain. His examination was swift. When he gently and carefully lifted the Captain’s head in the light of Smith’s torch they all saw the terrible wound at the back of the skull where it hit the deck. A party gently carried the Captain down to the sick-bay and Smith waited there until Albrecht made his report. “Massive concussion. God knows what damage may have been done to the brain.”
“He has a chance of recovery?”
&nb
sp; “I wouldn’t have been surprised if an injury like that had killed him instantly. Add to that the effects of shock and...” He’ did not need to finish; the gin reeked.
Smith went to his cabin. He managed to sleep only once and only then to jerk awake, running with sweat. He had not dreamed of the Captain, the fall and the sickening end of that falling. It was the old dream again of the two great ships growing huge out of the dark to hurl the fires of hell at him. He made his way forward through the sleeping ship to the sick-bay, and found Albrecht alone. Smith raised his eyebrows in enquiry and the Doctor shook his head. “No change.”
They stood in silence watching the Captain until Smith asked, it was more question than statement, “An unusual name, Albrecht.”
Albrecht’s lips twitched sardonically. “In this Navy, yes. My grandfather came over from Germany in ‘forty-eight. He became British; I was born British. When this war started and the mobs threw bricks at shops with German names I thought I might change my name. But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ashamed of it. And then it seemed if had called myself Atkins they would still have chased me but with white feathers because I wasn’t in uniform. So I decided they could all go to hell and joined the Navy for the duration.” He smiled faintly. “The lower deck call me the ‘orrible ‘un.” The smile faded. “But I didn’t want anything to do with the war. I didn’t want to join the Navy, I just ran away to it. I think the war is stupid and ought to be stopped—“ He broke off.
Smith said, “That’s a view that takes some courage with a name like Albrecht.”
The Doctor shrugged. “No. When you’re a ministering angel it’s different. If was a sea-officer—“ Again he stopped but now embarrassed for Smith.
Who smiled coldly. “If you were and you had any sense you would keep your mouth shut.”
Albrecht stared at him. “You are not a pacifist?”
Smith said deliberately, “I think wars are better won than lost, better avoided than won. They’re not an excuse for stupidity and carelessness.”
Albrecht blinked. “That’s scarcely the philosophy of a fire-eater.”
Fire-eater. Smith knew he was not that. Someone must have described him thus to Albrecht, though God knew why.
“It’s the philosophy of a man who has been shot over.”
“More than once.”
“Yes.”
“And likely to be again.” Albrecht shook his head, baffled, intrigued.
“If you see a risk that has to be taken, you, Doctor, take it and cut away. So do I.”
Albrecht grinned. “But my patients don’t cut back.”
Mention of patients sent his gaze back to the Captain. His feeble hold on life was slipping away with the night.
He died at daybreak.
*
They buried him at sea. Afterwards Smith confirmed the course he had ordered the previous night when the Captain fell. Then it had been an attempt to get the Captain to a hospital ashore but now it was to reach a telegraph office and inform the British Consul in Chile. Thunder had radio but the Navy's signalling stations did not cover South American waters. Admiralty kept in touch with her by cables and she entered ports at intervals to collect them. The Consul had to be informed of the Captain's death and that Smith had assumed command; he would advise Admiralty.
Now it came to him. The Captain was dead and he was in command. He was conscious of a lightening of the atmosphere in the ship but that, he believed, was not because he had assumed command but because the bitter presence aft had gone.
As if in mourning the weather was breaking and the wind rising. When they raised the coast of Chile in the early evening a bright sun still shone but astern the clouds were breeding black.
The sun had no warmth in it. Smith shivered. The Captain's death was a bad start to a command and Smith was still not accepted, nor likely to be, he was certain.
*
The Signal Yeoman shattered his mood of introspection. “Signal from shore, sir! S.O.S.! Bearing red three-oh!”
Smith swung around and raised his glasses, berating himself for not having seen that winking light, for day-dreaming. Night was falling, the setting sun sending Thunder’s shadow stretching long towards the shore that was still bathed in that last light.
“T-H-D-R.” The Yeoman spelt out the slow Hashes of the point of light. “Think they mean us, sir.”
What else could it mean? But who would know this ship?
The Yeoman: “S.O.S. again, sir. An’ it’s a light from a motor car. Front light.”
“Hard to see but I think it’s a 24/30 Buick tourer.” Midshipman Somers was on the bridge for some reason and had a telescope clapped to his eye. Excitement had wrung the comment from him. Now he realised his temerity and said meekly, “Sorry, sir.”
Smith scowled. He could barely make out that it was a motor car. “Don’t see that it matters, but what makes you so sure?”
“My father had one before the war, sir. But of course, when the war started he gave it to the Army with most of the others.”
Somers was undoubtedly the richest, or potentially richest man aboard. His father probably did have half-a-dozen motor cars including a Rolls-Royce. He was a tall, handsome boy, a fine athlete with a good brain. In spite of all these reason& for envy he was well-liked.
Smith ordered, “Port ten.” Thunder began to close the shore. Dusk had swept over them and now reached the blinking light that seemed to flicker in that dusk more brightly before it died.
Smith snapped, “Ask nature of emergency.”
Thunder’s signal-lamp clattered out but there was no answer.
The Yeoman grumbled, “Stopped now, sir. Can’t see much of anything. Thought I saw a Hash, though.”
Garrick had pounded up on to the bridge and stood panting, too late to see the signal but he’d found out what had happened. He panted, “Damn funny business. S.O.S. from the shore! And naming us?”
Smith said laconically, “Yes.’” He tried to hide his own curiosity. The obvious answer was to send – No, he would not! “Fires lit in the pinnace?”
“Yes, sir.” Somers answered. “And steam up.”
“Bit early, weren’t you?”
Somers replied straight-faced, “Mr. Knight said we had to be ready, sir.”
Knight was the Signals Officer and also drew an interpreter’s pay for his labouring Spanish so he went ashore to send and collect telegrams. He was stout and when the ship held a concert he did a knock-about turn with Lieutenant Day of the Royal Marine Artillery as a coster and his missus. It was vulgar, obscene and funny. He would be eager not to miss a moment of that run ashore in Castillo.
Smith grunted, “Then we’ll go and see what it’s all about.” And to Garrick: “I’ll go myself. Tell the doctor to come along ready to do his stuff.”
Thunder hove to, the winch hammered and the derrick swung the pinnace over the side and down to the water. Her crew boarded her and cast off. Smoke belched from her stubby funnel and they could hear the rapid scrape and clang as the stoker below hurled coal on the fire. They ran in to the shore, Somers at the wheel straining his eyes against the gathering dusk, steering for a stretch of beach. The engines stopped, thrashed briefly astern, stopped again and they ran in to the shallows.
The shore was quiet, peaceful, empty. Smith wondered uneasily if he was the victim of some practical joke, if he would return to the ship having made a fool of himself. He snapped, “Come on, Doctor. You too, Buckley.” He jumped over the bow and up to his waist in water and waded ashore, followed by Albrecht and the burly leading hand of the picket-boat. Beyond the beach the ground rose steeply. They could not see the motor car nor any sign of life. There was silence but for the crashing of the surf.
As they climbed up from the beach Albrecht panted, “Wonder what it can be? You can have nasty accidents with motor cars, though. Once had a fracture of the wrist- some chap not cranking the damn thing properly. And—“
Smith rasped, “I won’t be sorry for any fool who
sends an S.O.S. to my ship because he’s fractured a wrist.”
They climbed over the crest, crossed a little plateau and looked into a shallow depression that twisted away inland. They could see the big Buick Tourer, a dull gleam of metal in the dusk, a score of yards to their right. They halted, peering. Albrecht said, “There’s a body, at the front of the car.” Smith saw it, lying crumpled untidily under the dead carbide lamps, one arm thrown out. Albrecht took a pace forward and a shot cracked out.
There was the spit of flame to their left, from further inland up the depression and then the crack of the shot. Immediately it was answered by a shot from the car. In the flash Smith saw the head lifted briefly from behind the car, then the darkness closed in and his night vision was destroyed. “Get down!” He shoved Albrecht down. “Buckley! Back to the pinnace and bring back two men, rifles for all of you!”
“Aye, aye, sir!” Buckley plunged away. Smith thought Buckley was under the impression they were going to fight a little war here but he was very wrong. This was a neutral coast, Smith and his men were belligerents and any action of that kind would be a flagrant breach of neutrality. But they had to be ready to defend themselves.
And that wasn’t all. Smith was here; that was a fact. If anyone was killed or injured, anyone, while Smith meekly stood by and looked on it would not make pleasant reading in his report. He thought bitterly, What a bloody mess!
To rub it in, the shots came again, from left, from right. A slug clanged against the motor car and howled off into the night.
Albrecht whispered, “Somebody’s going to get hurt if this goes on, besides that chap lying there already.”
Smith ground out, “Keep still.” He rose to his feet. He was a score of yards at least from either of those firing, they had pistols and he knew it was very long odds against anyone hitting him with a pistol at that range in this light. He swallowed just the same before he shouted: “Cease firing! I am a naval officer!” He spoke in English because he had no Spanish. “Show yourselves and put up your hands!”
