J. E. MacDonnell - 139

by Death Of A Destroyer(lit)

  "Come on, Stokes," Carella grumbled, "we ain't got all fuckin' day, y'know. There could be a sub about."

  Even that had no effect. Graham's face was set in a grimace, but they thought that was because of the salt in his eyes and mouth.

  "Give us a hand, will you?" he grunted.

  Carella made another of his witticisms re stokers which made the crew grin dutifully, leaned over and hooked his hand beneath Graham's stern. He heaved, and Graham snarled: "Go easy, blast you!"

  Carella simply put the other's moroseness down to the fact that he was a stoker. It was only when Graham had been hauled inboard and laid spluttering and soaking on the bottom-boards in the stern that he understood the real reason. Through the skin of Graham's shin the tibia bone thrust in a sharp splintered point.

  They tried not to look at the yellowish-white bones, bared through the brown skin, as they pulled, urgently now, back to the ship. It would be hard to find a more efficient inducer to bleeding that warm sea-water, and before they had pulled two hundred yards the white bottom-boards had turned a wet, gleaming red. Carella left the tiller long enough to tie a clumsy tourniquet with his belt around Graham's leg above the knee, but the blood still flowed.

  The stroke oar, nearest Graham, could see it extruding in three or four well-defined streams, running down until it met the ankle and then dripping on to the boards. But the splintered bone was clear, and stuck out white, naked and bloodless. And horribly novel.

  Surgeon-Lieutenant Doherty had automatically come on deck as soon as he heard the pipe "Away lifeboat's crew." At first, the order was so apposite to his recent conversation with the captain, that he thought it might be an evolution carried out for his benefit. This was a foolish idea, as he realised when he saw the hands pointing and saw the black head bobbing astern. Just the same, he had to be on hand; even if a man was uninjured by his fall into the water, there was a good possibility he might be suffering from shock.

  A few minutes later Doherty saw, with a pleasant tingle of anticipation, that there was work for him and his first-aid party. He could see plainly the state of Graham's leg, and he stepped forward to the guard-rail. But the surgeon's time was not yet.

  Caswell and Hooky Walter were busy with the big rope scrambling net; until they saw that Graham could not use it. Caswell's eye swung to the torpedo-hoisting derrick nearby. Hooky interpreted the look and grunted:

  "I'll fix him, sir."

  Hooky dropped a rope down into the boat, now alongside beneath them.

  "Bowline on the bight under his arms," he ordered Carella. Doherty turned to his sick-berth attendant and gave him an order.

  Carella passed the line round Graham's chest, under his arms. His fingers worked swiftly, expert at this. Then he looked up at Hooky and nodded.

  "Keep him clear of the side," Hooky warned. He tested the top guard-rail, then leaned over. It seemed almost without effort he drew the heavy stoker out of the boat, while Carella steadied him with a hand on his good leg; Hooky braced himself and lifted. Hand over hand Graham was drawn upwards, while the watching seamen stared with appreciation at this evidence of Hooky's oaken strength.

  He came up smoothly, but his legs dangled, and from the ruptured blood vessels two small drains of dark red fluid dripped back into the boat, fouling its cleanliness. Doherty leaned over the guard-rail. His anticipation had been replaced by worry.

  Willing hands took hold as soon as Graham reached the top rail, and the surgeon himself held the injured leg, keeping it straight. His

  S.B.A. slid forward the stretcher he'd been sent for and they laid Graham gently upon it. Made of long cane laths and canvas, it was more like a strait-jacket. They folded it around him, then strapped it tight with the leather bands. Graham could not move - there was even a band around his forehead - and now he could be lowered with ease and safety through the hatch and carried along to the little sickbay.

  As he was about to pass into the passageway at the break of the foc's'le Doherty saw the captain leaning over the bridge above him. He stopped, his head craned up.

  "You're going to operate?" Sainsbury asked.

  "Yes, sir. Compound fracture. I'll have to set it."

  "Want any help?"

  "No. I'll have the first-aid party. But I might need blood, he's lost a fair bit."

  "What's his group?"

  Doherty had already checked Graham's dog-tag, or identification disc, hung around his neck. "Type 0, sir."

  "Right, you've got it. I'll come down to ten knots."

  Sainsbury drew back from the edge. It was all he could, or needed to do. The water was smooth. Spindrift's movement was negligible. Meteorological conditions, at least, were ideal for surgery.

  "Two men with blood-type 0, Number One. Have them standing-by near the sickbay."

  "Wilco, sir."

  Doherty's theatre conditions were not so rosy. Instead of the air-conditioned and sterile atmosphere of a hospital theatre he had a small operating table bolted to the deck, a portable anaesthetic machine, and one professional assistant.

  Warned by the S.B.A., the first-aid party was now in the sickbay

  -a stoker petty-officer who had come up from the boiler room, two officers' stewards, and a petty-officer cook, their faces white beneath their tans as they involuntarily glanced at the leg. These men constituted Doherty's theatre sister, his trained nurse and assistant surgeon - had he been in any sort of hospital ashore. Underneath his sterile white cape the boiler-room man wore a clean pair of overalls; the cook followed the surgeon at the sink, washing flour from his hands.

  His own hands dripping and held level with his chest before him, Doherty came back to the table and looked down; his mind was a moil of procedure. This was worse than the captain's arm, and the loss of blood worried him: gangrene.

  While a steward washed the sea lice from Graham's body, and the blood from a small wound on his forehead where he had been pecked by an albatross - Doherty noted that, and remembered the man who'd had his eyes pecked out - the surgeon's swift hands had a sterile dressing over the wound, then the temporary splints were applied.

  The S.B.A. was busy with a small, compact machine from which came a corrugated rubber tube with a mouthpiece and a rubber container like a football bladder. This was an Oxford vaporiser, their anaesthetic machine, and it had a small plate attached, with the legend: "Presented by Lord Nuffield." Every destroyer and below in the British and Commonwealth Navies had one of these machines, provided free; not all rich men should fail to get through the eye of that needle...

  Graham's pain-squinted eyes followed the preparations; then he pursed his lips. One of them lit the cigarette and held it there; Graham drew deeply.

  The S.B.A. took up a pair of bone forceps, then quickly laid them below the level of the patient's eyes. But he had seen - and guessed. He grinned, weakly, at the other's dissembling.

  Now they were ready. Doherty eased himself along the bulkhead and placed the mouthpiece on Graham's face. In a little while his clenched finger - they, not his smile, were the actual indication of his mind - opened, slowly, just a little. Doherty beckoned his anaesthetist, the stoker petty-officer, to the machine. His voice came muffled through his mask.

  "Keep the level between ten and twelve."

  A properly trained anaesthetist would have been horrified. But Lord Nuffield, born William Richard Morris - he actually wanted to be a doctor, but his father couldn't afford the fees - went on to become an engineer, and designed and built the first Morris car, in his backyard garage; so this chap, since then becoming a multimillionaire, knew a bit about working under adverse conditions and made sure that the anaesthetic machines he presented to the Navy were capable of being used in just about any conditions, and by just about any man.

  Thus, at the surgeon's instructions, the stoker petty-officer nodded his understanding. The S.B.A. petty-officer nodded his understanding. The S.B.A. handed a case of instruments each to the stewards - there was not room enough on the operating table, whic
h, in any case, was more normally used for captain's requestmen and defaulters. Scalpels, forceps, muscle retractors, bone saws gleamed silver in the late sunlight coming in through the scuttles.

  Doherty moved to the right side of the table.

  Like a breath of wind it went through the mess-decks and up to the bridge. The bosun's mate came up to Sainsbury and said, "He's under, sir."

  Sainsbury spoke to pilot: "Come down to nine-oh revolutions. Cox'n on the wheel."

  A calm sea is never that, on a watery plain so vast. A slight swell came rolling up from astern, like the tentative rippling of the ocean's muscles; the wind's voice in the rigging was a whispered monotone, and Spindrift slipped on, rolling just a little, a rhythmical movement that to practised feet made her as level as a billiard table; but which now made itself noticed by men under the influence of that most mystical science, surgery.

  Less impressed, for he had other things on his mind besides Graham, Sainsbury looked round the sharply defined horizon, at the gently breathing sea, and up at the deep wells of the blue sky, and while he was thankful that they seemed to have no unfriendly company, he was glad for the stoker's and the surgeon's sakes that the weather was so co-operative.

  Down in the sickbay Doherty worked methodically, correcting the slight roll easily and automatically, for all his seatime had been in destroyers, and in this type of ship you get your sealegs fast, or you get them broken. He was not much worried about the surgical requirements of the job; but still his forehead above the mask was furrowed into a troubled frown. Gangrene. There was no smell yet, too early for that, nor any blackness of tissue.

  He reminded himself of the sulpha drugs he could inject, and the transfused blood, and forced his mind to concentrate on the first job in hand.

  The wound was shaved, then cleaned with ether soap. The scalpel moved swiftly and surely, and the broken skin came away, still coloured grey with paint from the ship's side. But the wound was too small to allow a satisfactory examination. From one inch it grew to two, three. Doherty looked into his assisant's eyes and pointed to the dead, bruised muscle flanking the bone The S.B.A. looked, mentally noted, and nodded.

  One hand braced against Graham's thigh, Doherty took up a pair of long forceps and carefully withdrew the bits of splintered bone. When the small area of useless muscle had been resected they were ready to set the bone. The stewards laid their trays on the deck and moved to the patient's shoulders. The S.B.A. took a firm hold of the foot. Beside the vaporiser the stoker petty-officer kept the fluctuating lever between ten and twelve.

  Doherty stood abreast the break and nodded. Gently at first, they pulled. The two ends of yellow-white bone drew apart as the reluctant muscles stretched further, until the lower spear-shaped point lay an inch below the V which Doherty had made in the upper part. He nodded again. His gloved hands guiding, the two bones, point and V, came together perfectly.

  It did not take long for the wound to be dusted with sulphanilamide powder, filled with vaseline gauze, and the plaster of paris splint applied. Then the gear was stowed away. Graham was covered up warmly, still unconscious; the stoker petty-officer climbed back down to A boiler-room; the cook finished off his batch of bread in the galley; and to the S.B.A. Doherty said:

  "We'll start the blood transfusion. Bring in the first man, then send someone up to tell the captain the operation's over."

  Not only the captain was glad to hear that news, and not only for Graham's sake. The range of Spindrift's asdic was only about one mile, while a torpedo's range was many times that, and a destroyer at ten knots in a sea like this made a beautiful target, for it would be difficult to swing away in time from a forty-knot torpedo.

  "Increase to twenty knots," Sainsbury ordered, and in a moment all hands felt thankfully the shaking as she worked up. When the needle of the electric speed log rested on the ordered 20, Sainsbury said, "Have the Cox'n relieved."

  The relieving quartermaster was already standing-by in the wheelhouse. Presently there came on to the bridge a man. On his cap he wore the badge, with oak leaves, of a chief petty-officer; on the upper left sleeve of his khaki shirt he wore another, small, simple badge; just a crown. Yet somehow its very smallness and simplicity were impressive, and rightly so. This man held the most powerful rank below that of officer.

  He stepped towards Caswell, officer of the dogwatches. Sainsbury had already turned, and with no attempt at concealment he studied him. He saw a man of something the same shape as Logan, the captain of B-gun - tall and straight-backed, and straight-eyed as he looked at Caswell. His face was hard and lean with weathering, and it wore an expression of hard authority.

  "Cox'n relieved at the wheel, sir," he said to Caswell. "Course one-two-four, speed twenty knots."

  "Very well, Cox'n. Over here a moment." They stepped to the starboard side of the bridge. Sainsbury slipped from his stool, with some relief, for the hard wooden top was not kind to his sparsely-padded buttocks.

  "Captain, sir, this is the Cox'n - Chief Petty-Officer Smith."

  "A good old Patagonian name," Sainsbury said easily, returning the salute. "I'm glad to meet you Swain." They shook hands.

  "Me too, sir -at last," Smith smiled; a face-lightening gesture.

  "Oh?" Sainsbury felt some small surprise, though no suspicion; a coxswain of a Fleet destroyer might have faults, but fawning was not one of them.

  "I shipped with Lieutenant Bentley, sir, for a while." His hand tapped his badge. "Before this. He, well, talked about you somewhat."

  Sainsbury successfully hid his satisfaction; if Smith was the sort of man Bentley talked to, then he himself had no worries about him. He said:

  "Being aware of young Bentley's lack of reticence, I think your use of the word `somewhat' is less than adequate."

  By hell, Smith thought behind his smile, young Bentley's description of your speech was adequate enough.

  "Dunno about that, sir," he said, "but I do know he said nothing derogatory."

  "Oh, I'm quite sure of that. I know too many things about him." But this had gone far enough. "Thank you, Swain."

  Smith saluted again and rattled down the ladder. Sainsbury turned back to his stool. His face was thoughtful as he stared out over the bow at the onrushingblue, now beginning to darken. It was stupid, but he didn't like it. This was just too good to be true. First Hooky Walker in his strange new ship, then an obviously taut officer like Caswell for his deputy, and now, for coxswain, that most important of senior ratings, a man whom Bentley liked, and therefore, by implication, strongly recommended. It all looked too easy, too nice and pat. With men like these, he might never have left his last beloved destroyer. It was just too good.

  Then there slipped into his memory a phrase Hooky Walker, that erstwhile instructor in the ways and manners of sailors, had revealed to him long ago. He'd whinge if a man was up him.Crude and succinct and expressive; said of a man who was never satisfied, who'd sniff suspiciously at the best of good fortune, who tried to find some ulterior motive behind his being drafted to the cushiest of safe shore jobs; a fellow who would... well, whinge if a man was up him.

  Which was precisely what he was doing right now. Damnit all, was there anything so odd about finding in a new ship a respected and friendly old face? Or an efficient lieutenant, for God's sake, or a coxswain who'd happened to ship with Bentley in some ship or other? Don't be such a bloody old curmudgeon, he castigated himself; accept your good luck and be glad of it. War wasn't all hell, not all the time.

  He still didn't feel as happy as he told himself he should feel. And this feeling, searingly, he was to remember.

  The ladder shook. It did this often, day and night at sea; yet this time, possibly because of his worrying thoughts, Sainsbury turned to see who it was. Doherty, wearing a face that was not alight with happiness.

  "Well, Doc," Sainsbury said, calmly, "all well? Operation a success?"

  "Yes, sir. The patient's doing fine - surgically."

  At once, but without haste, S
ainsbury slipped from the stool, nodded once to Doherty, and went down to the chart room. The navigator's yeoman was in there; at a flick of the captain's finger he departed.

  "Now then, Doc. What's the problem?"

  "I'm not sure we have one."

  That plural "we". How many times has a captain heard that, even in regard to a subject quite beyond his province? "Let's have it," Sainsbury said curtly.

  Doherty gave it to him. "Gangrene."

  "My God!"

  Doherty held up one hand, his smile placating. "I'm not sure, sir. He lost a lot of blood, which is the main cause of gangrene, but he's been transfused and he's had sulphanilamide. He should be all right, but it's too early to tell for sure. I just wanted to put you in the picture."