Thunder at Dawn

by Alan Evans

  She opened the window and he climbed in. She threw up her hands in horror at his condition and rattled a spate of Spanish at him. His legs gave way under him and he sank down on the bed. He held up a hand weakly to stem the flow and said, “Tomorrow. Yes? Tomorrow.” And laid head on his hands, miming sleep. She nodded and held out her hand. He fumbled his money from his belt and she took it all. He said, “No tell. No one.” And put finger to his lips.

  She nodded again and repeated his gesture.

  He stripped to the skin, folded his sodden clothes carefully and laid them on a chair. The girl reached out to him but he shook his head. He would not look at her. He got into the bed and pulled the covers over his head.

  The girl peered at him, puzzled, then shrugged, hid the money, undressed and blew out the lamp. She climbed into bed, shoving him over and in minutes she was asleep. It was not until dawn that he sank into an uneasy doze.

  XI

  Aboard Thunder the work went on through the night and into the day, the crew working watch and watch. At Smith’s orders he was called when the watch was changed and inspected the work and talked with the men.

  Garrick reported unhappily, “Able Seaman Rattray and Ordinary Seaman Gibb are missing from this working party, sir. They could have gone over the side. Gibb is a very good swimmer.”

  Smith bit his lip. He did not want to believe it. “Together? They don’t sound a likely pair.”

  “No, sir. That’s a fact.”

  “Well, make a search but quietly. I don’t want this blown up.” There could be others who might find desertion preferable to facing the cruisers. God knew he could sympathise but he had a duty and so had his crew.

  “Master-at-Arms is looking about, sir.”

  Hobbs, the Master-at-Arms on his rounds spotted the open door of the turret and shoved in his bullet head. “Anybody working in here?”

  The ship’s Corporal with him said, “Somebody over there.”

  They entered the turret and then they saw Rattray properly. For one horrified moment they stared, then the Corporal, who had seen the bloody debris of bar-fights from Chatham to China, said in a hushed whisper, “Gawd Amighty!”

  Somewhere along the way in that mad quarter-minute Rattray’s head had caught the breech of the gun and the laceration streamed blood that covered his face. His nose also bled so that at first they did not know him but then they went quickly to him and the Corporal said, “It’s Rattray.”

  Rattray had a reputation as a brawler but not as a victim. The Master-at-Arms summed it up. “Well, I’ll be buggered.”

  They started to lift Rattray and he recovered bleary consciousness so they stood him on wobbly legs. Hobbs asked, “Seen anything of young Gibb?”

  Rattray blinked, muttered, “No. Never seen him.”

  Hobbs looked thoughtful, but shrugged. They walked him, shambling and stupid, down to the sick-bay, where Purkiss peered at him and said, awed, “What happened to him?”

  “Don’t ask me. I just found him,” Hobbs replied comfortably. “Can you fix him up?”

  “Somebody’s already done it.”

  “You know what I mean. Return him to duty.”

  “Let’s have a look.” His examination was thorough but rapid and unsympathetic. He cleaned, and anointed where necessary, bandaged the torn scalp. “There y’are. Good as new. Who done it?” He started to wash his hands.

  Hobbs said, “Gawd knows.” The Corporal thought that, leaving God aside, two of them could make out a bloody good list of probables. He kept his mouth shut. Hobbs nodded at Rattray. “You can ask him, but o’course he won’t split in case that big feller, whoever he is, gets ahold of him again.”

  Rattray glared balefully from the one eye still open, climbed stiffly from the stool to his feet and limped out.

  Purkiss said, “Strictly speaking I ought to make a report.”

  “’Course you should.” Hobbs nodded. “Same as me. But times like these, when I’m busy, I sometimes forget.”

  The Corporal thought, ‘You bleeding liar. Memory like an elephant.’

  Purkiss also nodded. “I’m rushed off my feet just now.” He glanced around at the sick-bay that presented a picture of utter calm.

  “I can see.” Hobbs started to leave. “Sorry to have troubled you when you’re that busy.”

  “No trouble,” Purkiss replied, “no trouble at all.” He was whistling happily as they left.

  *

  The attempted deception was a waste of time because Rattray had already met Albrecht, who stared at him. “What happened to you?”

  “Accident, sir. Fell down in the fore-turret.”

  Rattray’s thinking was still sluggish and it took him a second or two to realise what he had said but Albrecht did not question the fatuous excuse; Rattray could have fallen a dozen times in the fore-turret and sustained fewer injuries.

  Albrecht said only, “Very well.” And it was some time later before Rattray thought there might be some ambiguity in that simple remark.

  In the sick-bay Albrecht glanced at the log, innocent of mention of Rattray — and said nothing.

  Smith was at his desk before dawn. There was a letter to be written to Graham’s widow, another to Somers’s parents. They took him a long time. Then he wrote his report, adding his commendations of Garrick for the gunnery, and Somers. He was uncomfortable in full dress now with his cap and sword on the desk because later he had a formal duty.

  As he finished he thought cynically that it would bring none of them honour or glory. It was a bald recital of a ship that had run for cover, been hit only twice and suffered but a single casualty — a decidedly unspectacular affair to the reader. It did not mention that every man aboard and many ashore thought he had performed a miracle, for the simple reason that he did not know it. But he would not have said so anyway.

  He thought the next report would be a very different matter but he would not be writing it. He wondered what those men of his would think of him then, if any of them survived. They would know he had failed them. They followed him and asked for nothing but they were entitled to a fighting chance and they would not get it.

  He pulled his head from his hands as Garrick knocked and was straight-faced though cold-eyed when the First Lieutenant said, “Burial party ready, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  “And Leading Seaman Bates and Sergeant Burton ask to see you on a personal matter, sir.”

  “Now?”

  “They say it’s urgent, sir.” They had been evasive and stubborn but both were old hands. Garrick had ceased probing.

  Smith said, “Send them in.” And when they stood before him: “I hope this is a serious matter.”

  Bates said, “It’s about young Gibb, sir. There’s more to it than meets the eye. I don’t reckon him as a deserter in the face o’ the enemy. ’Course, he had the wind up like all of us but I reckon there was more to it than that.”

  “What?”

  “Dunno, sir. But I reckon I could get him to tell me. If we could sneak ashore and bring him back, ’cause we know where he’ll be, I could get the truth out o’ him, give him a chance to speak up for himself. Please, sir.” Bates was pleading because Smith’s head was already moving in a slow negative.

  It was too wild a scheme. Smith sympathised; he wanted Gibb back, hated the thought of one of his men labelled as a deserter or a coward and like Bates he sensed that Gibb was neither.

  Burton broke in. “There’s only one place he can be, sir. Fizzy’s Bar. That’s the only place he’ll know and the only one as might hide him. We’d land downstream clear o’ the town and we could get to the place by the back way. We’ll wear old clothes. Should be easy but if we was stopped we’d say we jumped ship to get a few drinks and how about sending us aboard.”

  Smith pushed up from his desk and shifted restlessly across the cabin to stand at the open scuttle staring out at his ship and the men as they worked. He stood there a long time until Burton said, chancing his arm, “It’s been
known for a feller to slip ashore unbeknownst, sir.”

  Smith’s lips twitched. They all knew about his escapade at Malaguay. But when he turned his face was serious. “It will not be as easy as you think. Now listen to me.”

  *

  When he took up his cap and sword and went on deck, he found the day again in mourning with scarcely a breath of wind and the sky overcast, grey. For once no smoke trailed from Thunder’s four funnels because Davies had put out all her fires and the stokers were cleaning them of clinker, one more periodic chore of a coal-burning ship. The flag-draped coffin rested aft by the accommodation ladder. The party was a small one. There were eight pall-bearers, seamen from Somers’s battery, at their own request. There was Kennedy and a boy bugler, sixteen years old, even younger than Somers had been. He was already nervous, pale.

  Smith detected a slackening in the work throughout the ship. The sombre little group aft was having its effect. This was a duty to be done for a fellow officer. It was as well that it should be done without delay. The bugler sounded the ‘Still’, work ceased and the ship’s company froze into immobility.

  The coffin had come off during the night; Cherry had arranged that. Aitkyne was officer of the watch at that time and had signed a receipt for it. The boat’s crew had gaped at Thunder and the signs of damage, the great wounds and the men working on them and in them under the lights. And they had stared at Aitkyne ‘as if they were measuring me, the mercenary bastards’. That had been macabrely amusing.

  This was not.

  They lowered the coffin into the pinnace and the burial party went ashore and disembarked on the quay under the eyes of a considerable crowd, who were curious but quiet. There was a glass-sided hearse pulled by a pair of blackplumed, black horses. There was a large escort of soldiers. The Chilean army was modelled on the German and the troops in their field-grey and spiked helmets seemed more guard than escort. And there was Cherry. As the seamen loaded the coffin into the hearse, Smith muttered to him, “I need more time.”

  Cherry shook his head. “They won’t —”

  “I think they might. My essential repairs will barely be completed at dusk. I want until six in the morning, but tell them I’ll move up to Stillwater Cove as soon as repairs are complete and I’ll leave the river by six.”

  “It will be broad day!”

  “What difference does it make? They have a gunboat patrolling the mouth of the river and I can’t pass her unseen, however dark the night.”

  “It will make a difference to them, surely?” And Cherry was talking about the cruisers. “They will be able to lie off and engage you at extreme range, twelve guns to your two.”

  “Then Muller won’t oppose such a request. And the Chileans don’t want a night engagement virtually on their doorstep.”

  Cherry murmured thoughtfully, “Ye-es. It might well be …” He stopped, then finished apologetically: “Of course you know your own business best.”

  “I hope so.”

  The cortege was ready.

  They marched behind the hearse out to the cemetery, that was the graveyard of the English church. Smith stood as the parson droned through the service, his mind absorbed in his plans. Then a phrase cut through that absorption: “… man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live … he cometh up and is cut down like a flower …”

  Cut down. But not like a flower. “Cut him in half,” Garrick had said. Like a bloody tree-stump.

  “… ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”

  It was neither ashes nor dust but a horrible bloody mess on the deck. They had hosed it and scrubbed it away.

  He had closed his eyes. He forced himself to open them.

  Somers had gone into the hole.

  The soldiers fired a salute. The bugler boy’s lip was trembling and big tears rolled down his cheeks. Kennedy snarled under his breath, a savage whisper that reached the boy alone and snapped him upright. The first notes quavered but then he got hold of it and did it well.

  They marched back to the pinnace with Smith at their head, stone-faced.

  *

  The girl stumbled from the bed, pulled a robe around her and padded barefoot from the room.

  In the kitchen she yawned as she brewed a pot of coffee and put it on a tray with two cups. Olsen asked, “You got an all-night job?”

  “English sailor —” The truth slipped from her, half-asleep, and her hand went to her mouth.

  Olsen said, “No sailor last night.” He kept the door. And anyway, he knew as everyone did the political climate in Guaya prohibited the British from landing.

  She pleaded, “He came in by the window. Did I do wrong?”

  Olsen stood up and shrugged. “You? No. But the sailor?” He grimaced and crossed to the door then paused to point a finger at her. “Take the coffee but tell him nothing.” He went upstairs to Phizackerly.

  The sun was high but it was far too early for Phizackerly. Again. He woke reluctantly, bemused, to Olsen’s determined shaking of his shoulder. The previous night had been difficult. He had been torn between a desire to celebrate Thunder’s escape from the cruisers and an awful fear as to her predicament. He was in a position to enjoy both sensations because he was not personally involved. Whatever happened he was all right. But that nagged at him, too. He compromised by officially delegating all responsibility to Juanita and Olsen, who had it anyway, and drank himself into a melancholy stupor.

  So he tried feebly, as a man wishing at least to be left to die in peace, to push Olsen’s hand away. He tried to turn over and burrow into the warm lee of the snoring Juanita but Olsen stolidly resisted both attempts, clamped both hands on Phizackerly’s bony shoulders and dragged him half-upright so he sat in the bed.

  Phizackerly said in the voice of a ghost, “Oh, Gawd! My bloody ’ead!” His mouth was thick and his skull pounded. From the slanted rays of the sun that shot hot needles into his eyes he could tell it was early morning. He would kill Olsen for this.

  Olsen said, “There is a sailor from the British ship downstairs. If the police find out they will come.” He continued to hold Phizackerly, stopping him from swaying, falling, as the words sank in.

  It was like dropping a stone down a deep well. For seconds Phizackerly sat dumb, blank-faced, eyes slits. Then he reached out fingers like talons to claw at Olsen’s arm. “Sailor? From the cruiser?”

  “He came last night. Over the wall at the back. He’s downstairs now.”

  Phizackerly groaned. “Give us a hand.” Olsen helped him from the bed and he sat on its edge, pulling on his clothes, and whispered huskily, “A mender. Get us a mender.”

  Olsen went downstairs. When he returned Phizackerly was dressed and splashing water on his face. He could not find a towel so pulled up the ample tail of his shirt and used that. Then he took the glass of rum from Olsen and sank it, gasped, coughed and chased it down with the black coffee. “Right.” He headed for the door, still moving stiffly but drawn on by the emergency that caused him to leave his teeth grinning in the cup.

  *

  The girl whispered, “Coffee.” And Gibb took the proffered cup and drank. It was stuffily warm in the room but he still sat huddled as a man in the grip of cold. The girl was afraid that her fear would show in her face but he never looked at her, only stared at the wall.

  Phizackerly and Olsen entered. Phizackerly glared at Gibb with hatred and jerked his thumb at the trembling girl. “Out.” She fled.

  There was no room for doubt. Gibb’s clothes lay on a chair. But to be absolutely certain: “You’re a deserter.”

  Gibb did not answer.

  Phizackerly yelled at him, with an old man’s shrillness, “You’re off the cruiser!”

  Gibb muttered, “Yes.”

  Phizackerly chewed it over and his toothless jaws moved in time with his thoughts. He had to get the bugger out of it. That was the first thought that formed, because if the law found him here there would be a hell of a row. They might even close the place. Then he thought it was
more difficult than just throwing him out on the street. His capture then would be certain, he would be questioned and he would say he had spent the night at Fizzy’s Bar.

  His head ached.

  Thunder lay out in the pool and the cruisers waited outside.

  This was a personal matter between Englishmen.

  He said to Olsen, “Fetch the rum.” And when it came, “Give us a half-hour. Keep that girl’s mouth shut an’ everybody else out of here.”

  Phizackerly poured the rum, got Gibb to drink it and saw him shudder, nodded to himself as he refilled the glass. It was an investment. Gibb would not be the first man to be taken unwillingly or unwittingly and dumped on a ship that waited for him out in the pool. Phizackerly had done that before now to oblige a skipper and turn an extra penny. This was a different situation altogether, mind, but his back was against the wall. Sometimes you had to use force and Olsen carried a blackjack but Phizackerly judged that this time the rum would suffice, that and a good talking to.

  He poured and he talked, about England, the Navy, duty, honour, comradeship and the rum gave him a marvellous sincerity. But his sharp little eyes watched Gibb keenly and saw despair give way to bewilderment and then stupor as the words flowed over him and the rum ran down to sink its teeth into his empty belly.

  Olsen returned and together they got Gibb into his clothes. He moved slowly, dazedly, as he was told. Olsen brought a coat to hide Gibb’s working dress and Phizackerly muttered, “Right. He’s going back. I’ll see to him. You hold the fort here. Tell nobody nothing till I come back, only I’m out on business.”

  Olsen said, “He is good boy after all.”

  Phizackerly stared at him. “He’s a mug. You wouldn’t get me on that old bucket for all the tea in China! Now clear off!”

  He heard the distant popping of musketry, a salute and the lonely call of the bugle and knew what it meant. He glanced furtively at Gibb as he worked the coat on to him but the young seaman had not noticed. The rum had him. It was going to be hard work getting him back to his ship. Phizackerly swore under his breath.