Thunder at Dawn

by Alan Evans

  The telegram was to relieve Smith of his command of Thunder and place him under arrest.

  XIII

  Aboard Thunder the activity below deck bore fruit. As she slipped slowly down-river towards the sea, lights again sprinkled her decks so the men could see as they began to bring up the furniture, the stores. Everything that could be ripped out, somehow, and moved, somehow, was brought up and heaved over the side. She left a slow, thick trail. At the end of twenty minutes, down to coal for twenty-four hours anyway, she was down to stores for that same period and her inside scoured clean as a washed corpse.

  Benks and Horsfall and a party of seamen staggered on deck with the wardroom piano and grunting, shoved it jangling into the river.

  Benks groaned, “Going too far it is. He’s barmy.”

  “No, he ain’t. He knows what he’s doing.” But to himself, Daddy added, ‘I hopes’. Because stripping for action was one thing and this was another.

  On the bridge Garrick said, “They’ve thrown everything overboard but the galley stoves.”

  So Smith answered laconically, “See to it, Mr. Wakely.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  They stripped the galley except for one stove.

  Smith left the bridge and made his way down through the men as they worked and talked, joked, laughed. He passed them with his cap in his hand, the fair hair sweat-darkened and set close to his skull from the cap. He was smiling and the blue eyes searched them, but were not cold. He looked very young. They watched him pass and only then realised they had responded and returned the grin of this young Captain.

  Smith descended into the bowels of the ship until he came to the marine sentry and the door of the cell where they had put Gibb. The marine snapped to attention, startled. What was the old man doing down here?

  “Open up.” Smith waited as the marine fumbled with the keys. Through the little barred opening in the door he could see Gibb in the glow from the solitary light. He sat on the edge of the bunk, hands pressed tight between his knees. There was no bedding, nothing in there but a bucket. Gibb looked up and peered uneasily as the key turned in the lock, saw Smith’s face striped beyond the bars and rose to his feet. The marine opened the door and Smith’s hand lifted to put on the cap, then he decided against it and walked in.

  Gibb stood to attention, too rigid, too taut so that he wavered. His face was black with stubble and shiny with sweat. The knuckles of his clenched fists were bruised and the skin split.

  Smith said, “You were in a fight with someone before you — left the ship?”

  Gibb noted the hesitation and the choice of words and licked his lips. “Aye, sir.” He knew Rattray was alive and working at that moment.

  Smith stared at him for a long minute, not a trick to screw the man’s nerves tight, but trying to sort out what to say and how to say it. He could preach or bully, sneer or appeal. No, he couldn’t. He was not that type of man, not a man for speeches let alone emotional oratory. Anyway, he did not have the time.

  So he said flatly, “We will shortly be in action. Would you rather be aloft doing your duty or down here?”

  Gibb stared, swallowed and whispered, “Aloft, sir.”

  “Shave and shift into clean rig.” And to the marine: “Give me the keys and report for your normal duties.” The marine looked at him oddly then, but handed over the keys and left.

  Ten minutes later the cells were empty and Smith returned to the bridge. He had sent two men back to duty. No superfluous weight.

  Thunder slipped down between the dark shadows of the forest towards the sea. Then fine on the starboard bow opened a black void, a tunnel thrust into the forest, but to port lay Stillwater Cove.

  Smith ordered, “Steer a point to port.” Thunder edged over and into the cove, dead slow now, barely making headway against the tide that was beginning to flow. A cluster of lights crept into view over the starboard bow, set high on a low hill beyond the black void; they marked the signalling station. Thunder, lit up as she was, would be clear to the watchers there. Her anchor roared out, her engines stopped and she hung at the end of her cable as the pinnace had done.

  Then the deck lights went out and there were only the riding lights to mark her position.

  A lamp blinked a question from the signalling station. They had known she was coming but they put the formal question: “What ship is that?”

  Thunder replied.

  Voices called softly along the boat-deck and Garrick reported, “Whaler’s away, sir.” And then: “Gig’s away, sir.” The boats had been lowered by hand in near silence.

  Smith nodded and looked at his watch.

  One minute. Two … Ten minutes.

  He was watching the shore to port and saw the blink of light there that was come and gone in the wink of an eye but a score of eyes had watched for it, marked it. That was Midshipman Thorne who had taken the whaler and a dozen men, reporting that he was ready.

  Now they waited for Kennedy, who had gone off in the gig.

  Smith’s eyes turned to starboard and he waited again in the night that enfolded them. There was no mist; that would come with the last of the night. The lights of the signalling station were clear but the station itself was not, though it stood on the crest of the hill. The night was overcast, without moon or stars, black dark here under the hanging wall of the forest.

  Smith asked, “Who has Thorne got with him?”

  Garrick answered, “Leading-Seaman Bates.”

  Smith nodded approval. Mention of Bates summoned up thoughts of the fore-turret and the men who manned it: Gibb, Rattray — he had been the victim of an ‘accident’, Albrecht had mentioned it acidly to Smith and Garrick.

  Smith said absently, softly so only Garrick could hear, “I think young Gibb had a lot to do with Rattray’s ‘accident’!”

  “Gibb?” Garrick’s whisper could not hide incredulity.

  But Smith was definite. “Yes. We must make other arrangements, split them up, after this.” Then he realised what he had said and what kind of ‘arrangements’ they might be making in twelve hours’ time. If any.

  Garrick remembered the words of Fletcher, that he suspected Rattray was slyly picking on Gibb. Garrick thought that belatedly he agreed with Smith on this but that it was a bloody funny time to bring it up.

  There came another blink of light where they watched for it, seeming right under the lights of the signalling station but down at water level.

  Garrick said, “Kennedy.”

  “Seen.” Smith ordered, “Slow ahead both. Douse the lights.”

  The riding lights went out. As they did so fresh lights blinked on, duplicates, where Thorne and his men had tied up their lanterns in the forest. Thunder, in total darkness now, eased up on her cable until Fletcher forward rasped, “Up ’n down!” And the blacksmith knocked out the pin from the shackle and that length of the cable fell to join the anchor on the bed of the cove.

  “Hard astarboard!” The wheel went over and Thunder swung out of Stillwater Cove and cut across the main channel. Thorne and his men tumbled into the whaler and chased after her.

  Kennedy stood on the shore, at his back the lift of the hill that hid him and the side channel from the signalling station. The water of that channel lapped at his boots and nudged the stern of the gig where it was drawn bows onto the sand. He could not see the two seamen on the opposite bank. He could not even see the seaman high above his head in the tree, nor those strung out, kneeling in a half-circle behind him. They were his sentries, armed with nothing more lethal than thick ropes’ ends; his orders were not to be seen, let alone taken.

  He saw Thunder’s looming, barely drifting bulk lift huge out of the dark and inch into the side channel. She moved past him with the only sound the slow beating swash of her turning screws. Not a voice, not a whisper, not a chink of light. She passed before him and into the darkness of the side-channel and was gone.

  “Right,” Kennedy said huskily, “it’s time we were out of this. Recover that wir
e.”

  The two seamen with him on the bank began hauling in on the telephone wire that those in the trees had earlier lowered so that it lay on the bed of the channel. Thunder had passed over it. One of them ceased hauling at Kennedy’s word and with Kennedy ran out the gig and rowed to the centre of the channel. The men on either bank, perched in the trees, were hauling on the lines attached to the telephone wire so that it emerged from the channel. It hung, not in a sagging loop, but in a sharp V because of the weights Kennedy had made fast to it to make sure it sank and was not cut. He cut the weight free and the wire rose into the night was lost. By the time he reached the shore again the seaman was down from the tree. “All secure, sir.”

  Kennedy pulled in his sentries and they manned the gig. Halfway across the side-channel on their way back from picking up the two seamen on the far bank Kennedy leaned forward, gestured, and the rowers were still, mouths open. They heard the creak of oars then a boat came at them out of the dark and Kennedy called edgily, “Gig!”

  Thorne’s voice quivered back at them: “Whaler!” And she slid across their bow, the men in her pulling strongly, little Thorne in the stern, a white face turned to Kennedy, and disappeared after Thunder.

  Kennedy took a deep breath. “Give way.”

  Almost at once Thunder grew out of the dark where she lay, just enough way on her to hold her against the still flowing tide. She was lowering her boats, all of them, again by hand and the men were swarming out along the booms and down into them. Kennedy thought, quoting Smith’s orders, ‘No superfluous weight’. Every man aboard who was not absolutely essential to the running of the ship at this time, went down into the boats. Butchers, bakers, stokers, seamen, marines. Albrecht and his little staff. All went into the boats. Enough stokers and engine-room staff remained to move Thunder, and men for her bridge and look-outs. Two cooks laboured in the almost denuded galley, sweating in rivers with every scuttle tight closed.

  Near five hundred men went down into the boats, going over the side in the same way that every removable part of the inside of the ship, from stoves to stores to partitions to beds to the wardroom piano and Wakely’s gramophone, in the same way and for the same reason as the boats themselves. Weight, taken out of Thunder for this one passage. The men and the boats might make a difference of a half-inch or more to Thunders draught. It might be vital.

  The picket-boat crept up past Thunder’s length and took station ahead of her, Manton at the wheel, Buckley with the lead already swinging from one fist as he balanced in the bow, getting the feel of it. Wakely stood in the stern to relay orders and reports. Thunder inched into the side-channel and the blackness of the night seemed to change in texture into a tangible thing through which they moved yet which seemed to move with them. Mist was here already, wisping pale across the surface of the channel, and through those trailing grey draperies and beyond, on either hand, they could make out the shore where the forest grew out of the water. Thunder seemed to stand still, only the slow heart-beat of her screws and the faintest wash from her bow showed that she moved against the tide. The forest and the mist and the night had reached out to wrap them round.

  The hail came softly from the bow, repeated from the pinnace: “By the mark, five!” And Phizackerly stepped onto the bridge.

  When Smith had let him out of the cell as Thunder ran down to Stillwater Cove Phizackerly went straight to the galley. Now he nursed a mug of cocoa as he said with hollow cheer, “Evening, gentlemen.”

  Smith said, “Five fathoms. Do you know where you are?”

  Phizackerly peered out at the night, to port, to starboard, ahead, his head thrust out on its scrawny neck, questing. “Aye. Five fathom as remember right.”

  “You’d better remember right.”

  “Aye. Starboard a point.” The night was chill. Phizackerly buttoned his jacket around him and shivered. He was like to catch his death of this. Lucky he hadn’t died of fright already. The bastards had shanghaied him! Him! The expert! If they ever found out ashore — but they wouldn’t. Smith wouldn’t split and Phizackerly would never admit it. They had shoved him in a cell but they’d fed him like a fighting cock, wine with his meal an’ all. But Lord! He’d been worried. And when Smith finally opened his cell and told Phizackerly what he wanted he hadn’t felt any better. It had been a long time.

  “You said she would draw less’n twenty-five feet, Captain?”

  “She’s drawing twenty-four feet three inches.”

  “Fore and aft?”

  “Fore and aft.” Smith did not add that thirty tons of coal had been moved from forward to aft at cost of sweat and cursing on the part of the stokers to achieve that trim.

  “Ta.” Phizackerly was only slightly encouraged. He thought that it was one thing to stand safe in the sun full of wind and piss, and boast. It was another matter to prove that boast. He glanced furtively at Smith then quickly back to their heading. Smith seemed cool but that had to be an act, Phizackerly knew it. No master, no seaman could take his ship into this sort of trap without a sickening apprehension. Or rather no ordinary seaman could. Smith was a long way from ordinary and he would not want excuses. But then he thought that if he, Phizackerly, made a balls of this, Smith would not condemn. All at once he knew that and he had nothing to fear from Smith but it brought him no comfort at all. Now Phizackerly had no use for excuses either and felt he would die rather than offer them.

  “Ease her a point to port.” His voice was husky but there was a new note in it that brought a quick, curious glance from Smith. The whine was gone and the authority lost for fifteen years was back. He was the pilot and this ship was his charge. “Steady.”

  “And a half, five!” The hail came back, the voice disembodied, its owner unseen in the bow. Phizackerly nodded. That was right.

  Thunder crept on through the channel that seemed narrow in any event between the cliffs of forest, was in fact desperately narrow where the deep water lay, where it counted. She seemed suspended, unmoving, in a small world of darkness and mist where even the clock was slowed to tick leadenly away the seconds of the night. The night went on for ever. Fractional changes of course, minute adjustments, with the bridge sparsely staffed by rock-still figures and the only sounds the slow-turning screws and the regular muted hail from forward, “By the mark, five!” … “And a half, five!” … “A quarter less five!”

  They touched, the barest tremor rubbing gently at the skin of the ship beneath them and away. Touched again. And again. But always Thunder slid on.

  They passed a village on the bank, the pin-point dull red glow of a fire’s embers there and a dog that howled and barked, startling the hand in the bow so his call came: “By the mark — Bloody hell! — by the mark, five!”

  And Smith said, “By the bark, five.” Nobody laughed. They grinned nervously in response to his tight grin, teeth white momentarily against pale blurs of faces. Garrick wondered how he could find a joke, however weak, at this moment, because Garrick, like all of them, was aware of the risk that Smith ran.

  As also was Smith. If he failed in this then at best he would somehow have to try to take Thunder astern into the main channel and to the fate that awaited her there. At worst Thunder could be stranded and interned, probably to lie for ever in this swamp to rot.

  But they were better than halfway through and with time in hand. He had taken one more calculated risk and it was going right. In three hours or less it would be dawn but by then —

  “And a half, four!” There was an urgency about that hail and the figures were sufficient to invest it with that urgency. Thunder was running into shoal water.

  Phizackerly said, “’Ere!” And: “Stop her!”

  Smith snapped, “Call back the picket-boat!” And to Phizackerly: “Silted?”

  Phizackerly scowled. “Sounds like it. Should be deeper than that.”

  The screws were still, Thunder drifted with the little way on her, stopped. The pinnace slid alongside and Smith called down, “You’re certain about tha
t last sounding?”

  Buckley’s voice came up, “Dead sure, sir. Straight up an’ down. And we got another after: four an’ a half fathoms.”

  The tide was at the full, slack water. Soon it would start to ebb and Thunder’s chance of running the channel would drain away with that ebbing.

  Phizackerly said heavily, “She’s silted. Never did afore, though it was always a chance, like, cause the channel forks here. Straight ahead there — see that light?” And as Smith nodded, “Another village on the right hand bank where the channel goes on, that’s what that light is, but the true channel turns to port near ninety degrees and she’s silted out from that left hand bank. So there just ain’t the room to make that turn. Aw, hell! Of all the bleeding luck —”

  Smith cut him off. “We’ll take a look at it.”

  They went down into the pinnace and Manton took it creeping away from Thunder’s inert bulk to sound the channel. Phizackerly’s forecast was proved depressingly correct. Over the years a bar had built up, maybe it had been building in Phizackerly’s day, grain upon grain, running out from the left hand bank and cutting into the channel. The deep water was still there, just. If Thunder’s length had been less by fifty feet she might, just, have worked around that tight turn. As it was, she could not. They explored the channel where it ran straight ahead, the false channel, and proved it to be just that. The water was deep for about forty yards but then shelved rapidly. Phizackerly thought exploring it was a waste of time anyway. “It peters out. Another three, four hundred yards and you can walk across.”