J. E. MacDonnell - 139
Page 13
Like a javelin she hurled herself at the enemy.
She was a mile away when the rain stopped. As if the fates had tired of succouring her, after so long a tolerance, the clouds ahead opened and through the gap the westering moon shafted down a pale but telling radiance. It picked out her wet-shining superstructure and the lofty betrayal of her bow-waves.
"She's opened," Caswell said, needlessly, for all hands saw the carrier's port side break from dark-grey dimness into bright yellow light.
"Zig-zag, sir?" Pilot shouted, but Sainsbury simply shook his head. Though long in itself, the target was too short for him to heave his ship all over the sea, when his ship was the weapon, and had to be kept aimed for the target.
Splashes, a group of eight, erupting whitely directly ahead; roar of explosions, loud and menacing. And abruptly the clouds closed up again and she was in darkness. We'll do it, he thought; and suddenly anger, not exultation or fear, burst from the control of his mind and exploded into him. After all this night, after all the fright and tension, we'll get this bastard!
No.
The first shell caught the bow and bent its steel plates up and back like tinfoil. Another of that broadside, fired at an angle from the carrier's forward battery, hit the base of the second funnel. From being almost invisible, Spindrift changed abruptly into a flaring torch. The furnace flames, white with heat, were beaten aft by the gale-force wind of her rush and wrapped themselves round Carella and the pom-pom's crew. They took one fiery breath and died. The ammunition on the guns, in the ready-use lockers nearby, went up in a meteor shower of hurled shells.
She might as well have opened all scuttles and switched on all lights.
The four 5-inch guns directly ahead of her aimed for the bow, and they got it. Two shells ripped her open at the waterline. The sea surged in with cataract force and laid a watertight bulkhead flat as if it had been cardboard. More and more water poured in, until her foc's'le deck was a few feet clear. But still her screws drove her and still she wallowed on, her bow taking the seas over it like a half-tide rock; and from the truck, the very top of her formast, her huge battle ensign whipped its valorous, determined, and hopeless challenge.
Now she was down to fifteen knots, and labouring mightily to get that. Not only was her bow down, but her stern had come up, raising the screws and reducing their grip. They raced. The engineer phoned the bridge. His plea to reduce revolutions was shouted to Sainsbury where he stood, as taut as an over-wound watch spring, against the fore windbreak.
"Maintain order revolutions," he flung back over his shoulder. She was dying, but if he could just force her against the Jap's side, then maybe her underwater body would meet the carrier's port screws and bend them.
No.
Two shells, aimed downward at this little, close enemy, hit her side amidships and penetrated into the engine-room before bursting. Hurtling slivers of steel ruptured one of the main steam lines. In an instant the engine-room was filled with white wreathing death. The steam, heated to 600 degrees superheat, was as terrible an enemy as the flames from the funnel. One inhalation, and the lungs of the engine-room crew were seared to uselessness; even before their skin started to peel off.
But still she had steam left for the starboard screw, and still, with the throttles wide open and unattended, she struggled on to get at her enemy. It was hopeless, even before a shell exploded amongst the packed depth charges on the quarterdeck and, thus cruelly aided, blew half her stern off.
Spindrift wallowed at last to a stop, shaking her head in the seas like a punch-drunk boxer. The carrier, so close now that she loomed like a block of flats, moved with triumphant steadiness across her battered bow. She had ceased firing, the final sneer.
Sainsbury watched her go. He did not shake his fist at her, did not even feel the urge for such a pointless gesture; all he felt, searing and savage, was the ultimate bitterness of defeat. Tears of weak, impotent rage dimmed his sight.
So that he did not see them arrive.
The bosuns's mate, aged eighteen, he who been vomiting with tensioned fright earlier in the night, he was the one first to see. Youth, perhaps, or lack of responsibility, or even relief that their long battle was finally over; whatever the reason, it was his eyes that first saw the quiet dim sea off the carrier's receding port side suddenly leap into jetting life.
"Captain!" he shouted hoarsely, "captain!" and his arm stretched out rigid like a sign post.
Sainsbury shook his eyes and his senses clear. But a half-blind man could have seen the evidence of that next multiple broadside. Not only did the sea spurt whitely, but the carrier's flight-deck burst into red life. For she had planes ranged on deck now, ready for the launching, and 8-inch shells found eager allies in those filled fuel tanks and bombs.
"Oh Jesus, oh Jesus," Caswell mumbled over and over.
Sainsbury rowelled at his beaten senses. "Yeoman, the light! For God's sake burn your light at the cruisers!"
It was a valid and vital order, but not obeyed. "I can't sir, all power's off!" yelled back the yeoman.
And once again the bosun's mate saw what the bridge officers had missed. "There's no need, sir," he shouted, amazed at his own temerity, "they can see the flames from the funnel!"
Sainsbury stared at him stupidly; it had been a terrible night. Then:
"Good lad," he said, almost calmly, "good lad."
But even if minds wearied almost to exhaustion missed obvious things, bodies were still awake. Caswell felt the sudden lurch. "She's going, sir, any minute now."
"Yes. Abandon ship. Pass that through the PA..." But there was no power. "Bosun's mate, pipe abandon ship. And for God's sake don't get trapped down below."
"Yessir!"
He hurried off, handling himself along the tilted decks, piping that most forlorn of all naval orders. Spindrift lurched again, this time over to port. "Boats and rafts, Number One, smack it about."
Sainsbury was last to leave the bridge. For a moment he hesitated about leaving Torps and Pilot there, looking down at their bodies butchered by splinters. But they'd think he was a fool, to bother about them now, with the ship ready to go. He half-raised one hand in an odd little gesture of respect and gratitude and farewell, then he was hurrying down the ladder.
He came out on the foc's'le deck, and heard a sound like someone cursing. Frowning, for this part of the ship seemed deserted, he went forward a few paces.
"About bloody time," a voice said hoarsely. "For Chrissake get me outa here."
"Good Lord," Sainsbury exclaimed. "You haven't... not all night!"
"Yes, sir," said Stoker Graham, "and I've had it - if you don't mind."
"Sorry about this, but I'm afraid we must have forgotten you," said Sainsbury, casting off the lashings, trying not to grin like an idiot, for Graham looked so put out. "Here put one arm round my shoulder."
And that was how Caswell found him as he came worriedly forward to search; staggering along the canted deck with a man twice his size with one leg in a plaster cast.
"Well I'm damned," said Caswell, and took over.
* * *
They were all in the boats and rafts - that is to say, about half of the ship's company - when the yeoman said from beside Sainsbury in the sternsheets of the whaler:
"Here's the first of `em, sir." He had, wonder of wonders, his telescope. "Well I'll be buggered." Then, more formally, "That's Number 133, sir, the cruiser you went aboard in Moresby."
And so it was. They could see clearly in the dawnlight: the lofty white-washed bow rushing towards them, the two triple-gunned turrets belching from the forepart, and beyond them the rearing bridge structure.
"I think she's slowing," Caswell said.
And so she was. The tonnage of steel eased its headlong rush and slid close by them. The voice was magnified through an electric bullhorn, but Sainsbury easily recognised Budensky's undulcet tones.
"Is your captain alive?"
He stood up in the boat, one hand on Caswell's should
er, and waved.
"Thank God for that," Budensky said surprisingly. "We got your signals about what you were doing. You held her for us just long enough. Now we'll blast the hell out of her. Tremendous job you did, Sainsbury. Hang on there, you'll be picked up shortly."
The End