He strode out to the bridge and crossed to the clearview screens on the windows. Figures moved busily, on the forecastle, and a solitary signalman stood shivering right in the bows, ready to lower the Jack when the slipwire came free.
He turned and looked at the bridge party. Chief Petty Officer Jolliffe, the coxswain, whom he had already met briefly on his inspection, was standing loosely at the wheel, his eyes gleaming in the compass light as he idly watched the gyro repeater. He was a barrel of a man, but on the short side, so that his legs appeared too frail for his massive body and paunch. No trouble there. Jolliffe had been coxswain of a battle-cruiser and was used to the whims of big ships. At each brass telegraph the quartermasters lounged with their hands ready on the levers. On either bridge wing the signalmen stood by their shuttered lights and flags, the yeoman, Ritchie, with his long telescope trained towards the shore.
Lieutenant Stannard saluted formally and said, `Wind's nor'westerly, sir. A bit fresh for my liking.' In the dull grey light he looked even more leathery, his eyes very bright below his cap.
Hovering in the background, two of the sublieutenants, Escott and Smythe, were trying not to be seen, their single gold stripes shining with newness.
Goss paced from side to side, his head thrust forward as if to discover some last fault. He glared at the two sublieutenants and barked, `Get out on either wing, for God's sake! You might learn something!'
Seizing oilskins they fled away, and Lindsay saw one of the quartermasters wink at his mate.
Goss did no good at all by bellowing at them in front of the ratings, he thought. But there was not time for another confrontation now.
Ritchie yelled, `Signal, sir!' A light winked impatiently through the rain. Like a bright blue eye.
`Proceed when ready!'
Lindsay tried not to lick his lips. `Ring down standby.'
The bells were very loud, and he walked to the port door of the wheelhouse and peered over the screen towards the forecastle party. Maxwell was squinting at the bridge, his sodden cap tugged over his eyes as he awaited the order.
Lindsay relaxed slightly, tasting the blown salt on his lips, feeling his cheeks tingling in the crisp air.
`Very well, Yeoman. Make the affirmative.'
Seconds later a red flare burst against the leaden clouds and drifted seaward on the wind.
Stannard called, `That was the signal from the boom vessel, sir. Hoxa gate is open for us.'
He sounded cheerful enough. Lindsay had heard him bawling some Australian song at the wardroom party when he had turned into his bunk. Every other word had been obscene. But he appeared to have avoided any sort of hangover. Which was more than could be said for Dancy, the sub-lieutenant with experience. His face was the colour of pea soup as he staggered aft along the boat deck where the marines and some of the hands had fallen in for leaving harbour.
Feet thumped above the wheelhouse where Chief Petty Officer Archer and his boatswain's mates were assembled to'pipe as and when they passed any other ship. The Navy never changed. No matter what.
Lindsay lifted his hand and watched Maxwell point with his arm to indicate that the buoy was close up under the starboard side of the stem.
Once free, the wind would carry the ship abeam like a drifting pier, Lindsay thought. But there was plenty of room. Had wind and tide been against them, he would have had to contend with the nearby battleship and three anchored cruisers. He could see several tiny figures watching him from the battleship's quarterdeck and her name gleaming dully in the morning light. Prince of Wales. The ship which had been in company with Hood when she had been blown to oblivion. She had been too new, too untried to be much help, and Lindsay wondered, briefly how he would have felt, had he been in her at the time.
`Slow ahead together.'
He saw the telegraphsmen swinging their brass handles and turned away to make a chopping motion with his hand towards Maxwell in the eyes of the ship. He saw a petty officer swing his hammer, heard the clang of steel as the slip was knocked away, and the instant rush of activity as the oilskinned seamen tumbled aft, dragging the mooring wire with them. The buoy appeared immediately, as if it and not the ship had taken wings. .
Jolliffe intoned, `Both engines slow ahead, sir. Wheels amidships.'
`Port ten.'
He raised his glasses and watched the low humps of land beginning to drift across the bows. It was strange to have the great foremast right in front of the bridge with all its tangle of rigging and derricks. Standing at one side of the bridge it made the ship feel lopsided, Lindsay thought. The list to starboard did not help either.
He heard Goss say in a fierce whisper, `She's making too slow a turn.'
He glanced at him. Goss seemed to be thinking aloud. All the same, he was right.
`Increase to fifteen. Starboard engine half ahead.'
That was better. A noticeable crust of white'spray was frothing back from the stem now, and he could feel the bridge vibrating steadily to the additional thrust of screws and rudder.
Two incoming trawlers pounded past the port side, their spindly funnels belching smoke, their ensigns little more than scraps of white rag, after another antisubmarine patrol.
`Midships. Slow ahead starboard.'
Lindsay watched the nearest trawler as it rolled dizzily in the cross-current, showing its bilge. God knows what they're like in open water, he wondered.
Faintly across the water he heard the shrill of a pipe. Somebody, somehow was trying to pay respects to the Benbecula as she towered past on her way to the gate.
Overhead he heard Archer bellow `Pipe!' And the answering squeal from his line of boatswain's mates.
From aft another shout,,that would be Mr Baldock, the elderly gunner. `Attention on the upper deck there! Face to port an' salute!'
On the forecastle the seamen were still fighting with the seemingly endless mass of uncoiled wire, like people caught by some deadly serpent.
Lindsay steadied his glasses and watched the land closing in on either bow where the humps of Flotta and South Ronaldsay crouched on guard of the Sound. He could just make out, the hazy shape of the boom-defence vessel, and beyond her another A/S trawler, sweeping to make sure no U-boat would slip inside while the gate was open.
`Take her out, Cox'n.'
There was no point in confusing the helmsman with unnecessary orders now. Jolliffe could see as well as anyone what was required. He was easing the spokes back and forth in his great red fingers, his eyes fixed on the channel.
A signalman said, `I think someone's calling us up, Yeo!'
Ritchie was through the door and across to the opposite bridge wing in seconds.
`Where, lad?' His telescope was swinging round like a small cannon. Then, `Gawd, you need yer eyes testin', it's a bloody car flashin'.its lights!'
Lindsay walked to the open door as the yeoman exclaimed, `You're right, lad, it is callin' us.' He looked at Lindsay. `He'll cop it if the officer of th' guard spots 'im!'
Lindsay raised his glasses as the signalman, mollified, reported, `He says Good Luck, sir.'
A hump of land was cutting Lindsay's vision away even as he steadied his glasses on the distant lights. The battered staff car was parked dangerously close to the sea's edge, and he could picture her as she sat muffled to her ears. Watching the old ship edge towards the boom gate.
He said, `Acknowledge.' He knew they were staring at him. `And say Thank You.' The lamp started to clatter, and then the car was lost from sight.
He saw one of the sub-lieutenants putout his hand to the screen as the deck lifted to the first low roller. On the bow the boom vessel was puffingoutdense smoke as she started to set her machinery in motion again. A man waved from her bridge and then scuttled back from the rain.
Lindsay stooped behind a gyro repeater and said,'Starboard ten.' The dial ticked gently in front of his eyes. 'Midships. Steady.'
`Steady, sir. Course two-two-zero.'
Stannard said quietly, `New course in fifte
en minutes, sir. Two-five-zero.'
`Very good.'
Lindsay walked out to the wing and rested his gloved hands on the screen. Already the land had fallen away to port, and he could see the whitecaps cruising diagonally towards the ship in an endless array. He felt for his reactions, then banged his gloved hands together, making a signalman start violently. He felt all right. It was amazing.
He thought suddenly of the girl in the car. She must have got up specially and wangled her work-sheet to get to that point in'time to see them sail. He was being stupid, but could not help himself.
A telephone buzzed and Stannard called, `From masthead, sir. Ship closing port bow.'
Lindsay glanced up at the fat pod on the foremast. It was hard to get used to after the congested layout of a warship's bridge and superstructure.
Goss asked, `Fall out harbour stations, sir?'
But Lindsay was watching the approaching ship through his glasses. She would pass down the port side with a good half cable to spare. -It was not that. He felt the tightness in his throat as she loomed slowly and painfully out of the rain and spray.
A cruiser, she was so low in the water aft that her quarterdeck was awash. Her mainmast had gone, and her after turret was buckled into so much scrap. She had received a torpedo which had all but broken her back, but she was fighting to get back. To get her people home...'
A destroyer was cruising watchfully to seaward, and two tugs followed close astern of the listing ship. Like undertakers men, Lindsay thought with sudden anger.
He snapped, `No, Number One! Have the hands fall in fore and aft! And tell the buffer I want the best salute he's ever done!' He saw Goss's face working with confusion and doubt. Probably thinks I'm mad.
. As seamen and marines ran to fall in on the B'enbecula's decks, Lindsay walked to the end of the wing and raised his hand to his cap as the cruiser moved slowly past.
The pipes shrilled and died in salute, and then Lindsay saw a solitary marine, his head white with bandages, walk to the cruiser's signal platform and raise a bugle to his lips. The Still floated across the strip of tossing grey water, and above the neat lines of sewn up bodies on the cruiser's deck. Along the Benbecula's side the lines of new, untried faces stared at the other ship in silence, until the bugle sounded again and Archer yelled, `Carry on!'
Stannard said quietly, `That was quite a scene, sir.
Lindsay looked past him at the young signalman who had seen the car's lights. He was biting the fingers of his gloves and staring astern at the listing cruiser.
`It will do them good!'
He had not meant to speak so harshly, nor were they the words he had intended. So nothing had changed after all. Not the bitterness or the shock of seeing what the Atlantic could do.
Stannard said, `Time to alter course again, sir.'
Lindsay looked at him, seeing the hurt in his eyes. `Very well, take the con.' To Goss, `Fall out harbour stations, if you please. We will exercise action stations in ten minutes, right?'
Goss nodded. `Yes, sir.'
The Benbecula's straight stem lifted and then ploughed sedately into a low bank of broken rollers. Spray dappled the bridge windows and made the anchor cables look like black glass.
Later, as she came around the south-western approaches to the Orkneys, past the frozen shape of the Old Man of Hoy, she rolled more steeply, her forward well deck catching the incoming sea and letting it sweep lazily to the opposite side before gurgling away through the scuppers.
Then at last she turned her stern towards the land and headed west-northwest, and by noon, as the watch below prepared to eat their meal and the other half of the ship's company closed up at defence stations, she had the sea to herself.
Lindsay remained on the open wing, his unlit pipe in his teeth, his eyes fixed on the tossing wilderness of waves and blown spume.
He was in the North Atlantic. He had come back.
`Char, sir?'
Lindsay turned in his tall chair and took a cup from the bosun's mate of the watch. As he held the hot metal against his lips he stared through the streaming windows and watched the solid arrowhead of the bows etched against the oncoming seas.
For eight days since leaving the buoy the scene had hardly changed. The weather had, got colder, but that was to be expected as hour after hour the ship had ploughed her way to the north-west. And apart from some armed trawlers and a solitary corvette, they had sighted nothing. Just the sea, with its endless panorama of wavecrests and steep rollers.
He felt the deck vibrate as the stem smashed through one more bank of cascading water, and saw the feathers of spray spurting up through the hawsepipes as if from powerful hoses.
Stannard walked across the bridge, his lean bodyangled to the uneven motion.
`First dog watchmen closed up at defence stations, sir. Able Seaman McNiven on the wheel.' He looked through a clearview screen. `I guess we've arrived.'
Lindsay nodded.: `Yes.'
An invisible dot on the ocean. The starting leg of the patrol area. Area Uncle Item Victor. A sprawling parallelogram which measured five hundred by three hundred miles. As far north as the Arctic Circle between Iceland and Greenland. It had been impossible to get an accurate fix, and their position was obtained by the usual method, described by navigators as `by Guess and God'. Dead reckoning. Except that in this case you could not afford to be too casual, or you might end up dead in another sense.
`Very well, Pilot. Bring her round to three-five-zero. Revs for ten knots.'
He heard Stannard passing his orders, the instant reply from the engine room bells to show that Fraser's people were wide awake.
When the ship turned slightly to port the motion became more unsteady and violent, the waves piling up against the starboard bow before exploding high over the rails and hissing viciously across each open deck. Below there would be more wretched sufferers retching and groaning at this added onslaught, he thought.
He watched a tall greybeard of a wave surging down the starboard side, taking its time, as if to find the best place to attack. Just level with the bridge its jagged crest crumbled and broke inboard, the shock transmitting itself through the whole superstructure like something solid. It was almost pitch dark beyond the bows, with only the wavecrests to determine sea from sky.
Lindsay ran his fingers over the arms of the chair and recalled Goss's face when he had told him what he required. Goss did not seem to understand that it was no good trying to act as if everythingwas normal and routine.
The watches changed, the relieved men scampering thankfully below to cabins and messdecks for some brief respite, but Lindsay had been on the bridge almost continuously since leaving the Flow. `I want: a good strong chair, Number One.' That had been the first day out, and the shipwrights had built it during one watch from solid oak which had lain hitherto unnoticed, in a storeroom. Bolted to the deck it gave Lindsay good vision above the screen and was within reach of the bridge tele., phones. But Goss had stared at it with something like horror.
'But, sir, that timber was being saved! You just can't get it any more.' Like Jupp and his damn glassware.
But if he was to keep going, to hold on to the vital reserve which might be demanded in the next hour or minute, he needed a good chair.
It was strange how Goss avoided facing the truth about the ship and her new purpose.: Or maybe he wanted the captain to crack under the strain so that he, after all, could take command.
Lindsay thought too of the practice drills he.had carried out on passage to the patrol area. In spite of the severe weather he had put almost every part of the ship through its paces. Gun and fire drill. Damage control and antiaircraft exercises, until he had seen the despair, even hatred on the faces around him.
Maybe Goss had some justification for expecting him to crack, he thought bitterly. Once or twice he had heard himself shouting into a telephone or across the open wing to some unfortunate man on the deck below.
The gun drill had been the worst part. Path
etic, he had called it, and had seen Maxwell's rigid face working for once with something akin to shame. While mythical targets had been passed down from the so-called control position above the bridge, the crews of the six guns had endeavoured to locate and cover them with minimum delay. But each gun was hand-operated, and valuable time was lost again and again while Maxwell and the assistant gunnery officer, Lieutenant Hunter, had shouted themselves almost hoarse with frustration and despair. In most warships, and certainly all modern ones, it was possible to train all major guns, even fire them, direct from the control and rangefinder above the bridge. One eye and brain, like that of a submarine commander at a periscope. But Benbecula's firing arrangements had not even begun to reach a stage where some hope was justified. The six-inch gun crews had no protection from the weather, and had to crouch behind the shields, shivering and cursing as ranges and deflections were passed by telephone and then yelled to them above the din of sea and wind. And having no power at each mounting it also meant that the big shells and their charges had to be manhandled and rammed home with sheer bodily strength. If the deck'chose to tilt the wrong way at the moment of loading it could mean disaster for an unwary seaman. The massive breech block of such a gun could swing shut, despite the normal precautions, and bite off a man's arm like a horse snapping at a carrot. It was hardly likely to encourage the gun crews to take risks, but.on the other hand it reduced the speed of loading and firing to a dismal crawl.
A telephone buzzed at the rear of the bridge and the bosun's mate called, `Number Three Carley float is comin' adrift, sir.'
Stannard opened his mouth and shut it. He crossed to the chair and said quietly, `Can't very well send the lads out in this, sir. Shall I tell the buffer to scrub round it until daylight?'
Lindsay tried to answer calmly. `Do it now. The boat deck is miles above the waterline. Pass the word for lifelines to be rigged. That should do it.'
Stannard remained beside the chair, his dark features stubborn. `In my opinion, sir
Lindsay swung round, seeing in those brief seconds the pale faces in the background, watching and listening.
Rendezvous-South Atlantic Page 5
