Rendezvous-South Atlantic

by Douglas Reeman

  He heard Ritchie's shuttered lamp clicking busily but kept his eyes fixed on the ship ahead.

  Stannard exclaimed, `We'll ram her if we keep on this course, sir!'

  `Exactly.' Lindsay did not move.

  Several miles astern a starshell burst almost level with the clouds, and he heard the immediate crack of gunfire. That destroyer must have caught one on the surface.

  Ritchie said, `Pole Star requests permission to pick up survivors, sir.'

  `Denied!'

  Stannard looked at Dancy's stricken face and shrugged. If Lindsay did not check Benbecula's onward charge they would hit the other ship fine on her port quarter. At nearly fifteen knots, Benbecula would carve through her poop like an axe into a tree.

  `Pole Star is under way again, sir.' Ritchie had to clear his throat before adding, `She's turnin'!T 'Port fifteen.'

  Lindsay stayed by the screen, his heart pounding in time with the engines. The Pole Star's master had ignored a necessary signal to try to save a few lives. It had taken the sight of Benbecula's massive bows to make him change his mind. As the freighter turned heavily on to her proper course the sinking ship drifted into view down her starboard side. Lindsay watched the blazing hull fixedly as if under a spell. When Pole Star moved clear it was like the opening door of a furnace. Most of the freighter was ablaze now and she was going down by the stern, her poop and after well deck blanketed in steam as the beam sea eddied and swirled over the heated metal.

  A signalman called, `Sir! There's men in the water! I can see 'em by a raft!'

  Ritchie said harshly, `Just you watch the commodore's ship, Bunts!'

  But the signalman turned towards him, his - voice breaking. `But, Yeo, there's blokes down there! I saw one wavin' at us!' He sounded close to tears.

  Ritchie strode across the vibrating gratings and gripped his arm. 'Wot d'you want us to do, lad? Bloody well stop and get our arse blown off!' He swung him almost savagely. `Up at the 'ead of the convoy there's two troopers with Gawd knows 'ow many squaddies on board, see? If we're goin' to get through we've got to stick together!'

  The signalman was little more than a boy. 'I know that, Yeo.' He dashed one hand across his eyes and picked up his Aldis lamp. `It's just that....'

  Ritchie interrupted gently, `You don't 'ave to spell it out, lad.' He sighed as the signalman moved slowly to the opposite side of the bridge. Away from the drifting inferno which was now almost abeam. He could feel the furnace heat on his face through the wheelhouse door, caught the foul stench of charred paint and woodwork. A ship dying. One more for the scoreboard.

  The bosun's mate by the voicepipes said bitterly, `Look at the skipper. Just standin' there watchin' 'em fry! The cold-blooded bastard!'

  Ritchie pivoted on his heels and thrust his face within inches of the seaman's. `If I 'ear you talk that sort of squit again I'll 'ave you on a charge!' He turned slightly to watch Lindsay's head and shoulders silhouetted against the angry glare. "E's worth twenty of your sort, an' you'll eat your bloody words 'if you lives long enough!'

  Lindsay heard none of it. He watched the other ship's bows begin to rise slowly above the litter of drifting flotsam, heard the dull roar of inrushing water, the screech of machinery tearing free to crash through the burning hull to speed its end. Some sort of fighter plane had broken from its crate and was suspended across one of the blazing holds. In the red glow it looked like a charred crucifix, he thought dully.

  With a final roar the ship slid steeply under the surface, leaving a maelstrom of exploding air bubbles and frothing foam. Then nothing.

  A messenger said, `Captain, sir. From W/T office. Six plus U-boats in convoy's vicinity.'

  Stannard snapped, `Very well. Tell my yeoman in the chart room.'

  He walked out to the wing, sucking in the cold air like a man brought back from drowning.

  He said, `Poor bastards. D'you think the escorts will be able to find any of them, sir?'

  Lindsay's shoulders seemed to sag. `Listen.' Astern the depth-charge explosions were rising to a drumming crescendo.

  Stannard opened his mouth and then closed it, his mind suddenly sickened. The depth-charges would do what the torpedo had failed to accomplish. He had seen many hundreds of dead and gutted fish left in the wake of a depth-charge attack. Men in the water would fare no better, except they would know what was coming.

  Lindsay continued to stare astern, his mind still cringing from the suddenness of death. He should be used to it. Hardened, as his half-trained company imagined him to be. But you never did get used to it. Close the ranks. More speed. Don't look back. His mouth twisted in a tight smile. That was the most important bit. Don't ever look back.

  Stannard saw the smile and said quietly, `I'm sorry, sir. I didn't understand.'

  Lindsay turned his back'on the sea and looked at Stannard's dark outline against the dazzle paint.

  `Stop thinking about those men, Pilot.' He saw Stannard stiffen and added coldly, `Another few feet and it would have been us. Think about that and about how you would have reacted then.'

  An hour passed with nothing to break the regular beat of engines, the sea noises beyond the bridge. In the new darkness it looked as if the lines of ships had drawn closer together for mutual support. Another illusion.

  Ritchie found Lindsay in his chair. `From escort, sir. No survivors.'

  Half to himself Lindsay said, `And no U-boat sunk.' `No, sir.'

  Lindsay turned in the chair. `Pass the word to Lieutenant Barker to get some hot soup around the ship for all hands. Sandwiches as well.'

  As Ritchie beckoned to a messenger Lindsay heard Stannard mutter, `He should have thought of that already himself!'

  Lindsay turned and stared at the screen, the black blob of the ammunition ship's stern which seemed to be pivoting on Benbecula's jackstaff.

  `Pilot, come here.'

  `Sir?' Stannard crossed to the chair.

  Lindsay kept his voice very low. `You have the makings of a good officer, a naval officer I'm talking about now.' God, how difficult it had become to keep his voice level. `You are a good navigating officer too, and God knows that's something in a ship like this.' He turned and studied Stannard's face, pale in the darkness. `But try not to be too clever for your own good. Don't get' too hard or you'll grow brittle. Brittle enough to break when you're most needed.'

  `I only meant

  `I don't give a damn what you meant! For all you know, Barker may be dealing with the men's food right now. He may just as easily have fallen down a hatch and broken his neck.'

  Stannard said abruptly, `I have apologised.'

  `That's fine then.' Lindsay turned back to the screen. `Just one thing more, and then carry on. If a piece of Krupp steel comes through that screen or a shell bursts above your head on Maxwell and his spotters, things could change for you and fast.' He waited a few more seconds, feeling Stannard's resentment and uncertainty. `You will be in command at that moment. Alone on this bridge maybe. Perhaps for just a few seconds until the next shell. Or maybe you'll have to nurse this old tub a thousand miles without help from anyone.'

  Stannard nodded slowly. `I think I do understand, sir. I'm sorry.' He smiled sadly. `When you've always had a captain or someone to give orders and get you out of a jam it's hard to see, yourself in that position.'

  Lindsay nodded and took out his pipe. `We'll say no more about it.'

  But Stannard said, `I was wrong about Aikman, too. I'll never forget how he looked when he left the ship.'

  `I was the one who made the mistake, Pilot.' He heard Stannard's quick intake of breath. `Surprised? That I can be wrong?' He gave a short laugh. 'I used to think much the same about my first captain. He died at Narvik. He turned out to be just a man after all. Like the rest of us.'

  Dancy called, `The first lieutenant's on the phone, sir. Wants to know if he can fall out action stations.'

  `No.' As Dancy turned back to his telephone he added quietly, `Cold and uncomfortable it may be. Cursing my name and birth
they most certainly are. But if we catch a torpedo 7 want our people, or as many of them as possible, on deck, where they've- got a chance.'

  Jupp appeared at the door behind the helmsman carrying a tray. "Ot cocoa, sir?'

  Lindsay looked at Stannard, feeling the nervous tension dragging at his mind like one huge claw. `You see, Pilot? Someone remembered us!'

  Stannard walked to the starboard side where Dancy was peering through his night-glasses at the ship ahead.

  `I wish you'd heard some of that, Sub.' He kept.his voice very quiet. `Sometime in the future you could have tried to write it all down.'

  Dancy lowered his glasses. `He cares, doesn't he?'

  Stannard nodded slowly. `By Christ, and how he cares. I saw his face when we steamed through those wretched devils in the drink back there. I've sailed with some skippers in my time, but never anyone like this.'

  Dancy said simply, `I was scared to death.'

  Stannard took a cup of. cocoa from Jupp and held it in his gloved hands. And so was he, he thought wearily. Lindsay was making himself watch those men die with

  something like physical force. Testing his own reserves and hating what he was doing.

  He thought suddenly of a captain he had once served in a ship on the meat-run from Australia. They had gone to assist a Portuguese vessel which had lost. her rudder in a storm off Cape Finisterre. And what a storm. Stannard had been a green third officer at the time, and the thought of standing by a crippled ship in such mountainous seas had made him swear it would be his last voyage,,if he ever managed to 'reach port. The old captain had stayed on the bridge for three days without a wink of sleep, never resting until they had lifted off every man from the stricken ship. And that was after several attempts to take her in tow.

  There had been a doctor travelling as a passenger on board at the time and Stannard had heard him say to the skipper, `You must get some rest! Or your life will be in danger next!'

  The skipper, a man of few words on most occasions, had regarded him indifferently. 'My life, doctor?' He had walked up the pitching deck to the screen again. `My life is obligations. Nothing else counts.'

  Stannard had had his own troubles at the time and had not fully grasped the significance of those words.

  He watched Lindsay as he craned over the gyro repeater, the unlit pipe still jutting from his mouth. But he understood now well' enough. Perhaps, better than any

  other man aboard.

  13

  Abandoned

  Thirteen days out of Liverpool found the convoy steaming due south, with the Cape Verde Islands some three hundred miles on the port beam. All the colours had changed, yet few aboard the Benbecula had noticed the exact moment the transformation had come about. Instead of leaden grey the sea had altered its face to a deep blue, and above the spiralling mastheads the sky was of paler hue with just a few frayed banners of cloud to break its washed-out emptiness.

  Lindsay sat in his chair feeling every movement as the ship heaved up and over in an uncomfortable corkscrewing motion. There was a stiff breeze to ruffle the blue water with a million busy cat's-paws, and with a quarter sea to add to the ship's plunging lifts and rolls he could feel the chair pressing into his body as if the bones were pushing through his skin.

  Thirteen days. Long days and longer nights, with hardly a break for the men who came and went about their duties like dull-eyed robots.

  Not only the weather had changed. The convoy was steaming in just two lines, and it was smaller. The day after the first ship had been torpedoed the Pole Star had received a' similar fate. Except that the attack had been better planned and controlled, possibly by three U-boats simultaneously. She had taken two torpedoes in her side and had started to sink in minutes. Even before the bow-wave around her rust-streaked stem had died away a third torpedo had struck her dead amidships, blasting her into halves, the forepart sinking immediately, the stern section remaining afloat just long enough for a destroyer to scrape alongside and lift off the remaining survivors. That same day one of the escorts had been hit, the explosion shearing off her forecastle as cleanly as a giant welding torch, laying bare her inner hull for a few more minutes until she rolled over and disappeared with her straight white wake still marking where she had dived.

  Encouraged by their success the U-boats had made a surface attack under cover of darkness, only to be caught and pinned down by starshells from one of the other destroyers. She had dropped far astern of the convoy to pick up some survivors sighted by the cruiser's Walrus flying-boat. In fact, they were from some other convoy, and they had not survived. Eight men in a scarred lifeboat who had not waved or cheered as the destroyer had come to find them. They must have been dead for several weeks. Just drifting with the currents and winds, already forgotten by the living world they had left behind.

  The destroyer had chased after the convoy and even as she had been about to make the recognition signal had detected the surfaced U-boats directly across her bows.

  In the eerie glare of drifting flares she had opened fire with every gun which would bear. One U-boat had managed to dive without being hit, but another had been seen to receive several shells so close alongside it was more than likely she would never reach home. But, the third had been even less fortunate. In the eye-searing flares her commander may have misjudged the destroyer's bearing and distance. Or perhaps his stern tube had been unloaded and he was trying to engage with his bow torpedoes. Whatever the reason for his sudden turn, the result of it had been swift and definite.

  At twenty-five knots the destroyer had rammed her just abaft the conning tower, riding up and over the low whaleback of her casing with a scream of rending steel which had been heard even aboard the Benbecula. Like a gutted shark the U-boat had rolled over, breaking apart as the destroyer continued to grind and smash across her.

  When daylight came the men on the rearmost ships of the convoy had lined the guardrails to cheer the victorious destroyer, the sound wild and almost desperate as she had turned away for the dangerous passage to Gibraltar. With her bows buckled almost to her forward bulkhead and her forecastle gaping open to the sea she would be out of the war for some time to come. She had made a sad but defiant sight as her low silhouette had finally faded astern, and there were few men in the convoy who had not prayed for her survival.

  Nothing else had occurred for two whole days. Then one of the tankers had been hit by a long-range torpedo, her cargo spilling out around her broken hull like blood, until with a great roar the oil had caught fire, encircling the ship in a wall of flames which had almost trapped one of the escorts which was attempting to pick up some of her crew.

  Lindsay put a match to his pipe and tried to concentrate his mind on the ships ahead. Without such constant effort his eyes seemed to droop, so that he had to drag himself to his feet, move about like some caged animal until his circulation and brain returned to life.

  Thirteen days. Two escorts gone and three merchant ships. The two remaining lines were led by the commodore's troopship, Cambrian, and the cruiser Madagascar. Just four ships in each line, with Benbecula now steaming directly abeam of the ammunition freighter. The early fear of having her in the convoy, and so close to the Benbecula for most of the time, had given way to a kind of nervous admiration. Day in, day out, through the U-boat attacks and the desperate alterations of course and speed, she was always there. Big and ugly like her name,

  Demodocus, she had, according to Goss, been sailing under almost every flag in the book since she had been laid down some four years before the Great War. A coal-fired ship, she was usually on the receiving end of some caustic signal about making too much smoke, but either her master didn't give a damn or as Fraser had suggested, her chief engineer had his work cut out just to keep the boiler from bursting.

  He saw some off-watch seamen sprawled on the forward hold cover. In the bright sunlight their faces and bared arms looked very pale, almost white. He was thankful that for the past twenty-four hours there had been neither an atta
ck nor any more reports of U-boats from the Admiralty. The hands had been able to get some rest, enjoy a properly cooked meal, and above all to be spared the jarring clamour of alarm bells.

  He could hear Stannard moving about the chart room. It was not his watch, so he was probably getting his personal log up to date.

  Lieutenant Maxwell had the forenoon watch, and he was out on the port wing staring at the ammunition ship, his cap tilted over his eyes against the glare. His assistant, Lieutenant Anthony Paget, did not seem to know where to stand. Afraid perhaps of disturbing his captain he stayed on the starboard side of the bridge, but at the same time he seemed unwilling to stray out of Maxwell's vision, just in case he was needed.

  Paget was Aikman's replacement. He appeared a pleasant enough chap, Lindsay thought. He had obtained his watchkeeping certificate in a corvette but had been in the Navy for only eighteen months. Before the war he had been a very junior partner in a firm of solicitors in Leeds. It was his father's business, otherwise he might have found it more difficult to get that far, Lindsay decided'. He seemed rather shy and hesitant, and his previous captain had- written in his personal report, `Honest and reliable. But lacks qualities of leadership.'

  But he was one of Benbecula's lieutenants now, and more to the point, his watchkeeping qualifications would help to spread the load more evenly in a wardroom where most of the junior officers had no experience at all.

  Petty Officer Hussey, the senior telegraphist, walked to Lindsay's side and saluted.

  `Just the usual bulletins, sir. No U-boat reports.' He flicked over the neatly kept log. `It seems that the Japs are still advancing though.' He held the log in the sunlight and squinted at it. `Says that they've reached a place called Batu Pahat.' He grinned. `Could be in Siberia as far as my geography is concerned, sir.'

  The rear door slammed back. `What was that?' Stannard stood in the reflected sunlight, his brass dividers grasped in one: hand.

  Lindsay said quietly, 'Batu Pahat.'