parties would be hindering the gun-crew.
The action was one-sided, yet it took a long time to finish.
Both Australian ships were hitting continually, every minute closing the range. The Jap burned in four or five places along her decks, but no shell had yet reached a vital part. Bentley thought of torpedoes, and forgot the thought - a destroyer's draught is comparatively shallow, and she can twist too quickly.
He thought of something else, and this time the thought lingered. If those other two Japs had any sense or guts they would circle in the darkness and come up behind the Australians, whose flashing guns made them readily detectable.
Hampered though it was, he ordered his search radar from its forrard bearing and on to a wide sweep astern. He had no doubt that Sainsbury had done the same.
But nothing came up from astern to help the battered Jap. He was alone, and alone he died, his sides opened, his steering smashed, his engine-room flooded. They were still firing into the flames when the flames, as abruptly as the candles on a birthday cake, were quenched.
"Cease fire!" Bentley ordered.
Silence fell over the ship. The rest of the bridge team waited, but the captain had work to do. He made sure he had a radar bearing on Scimitar - she was close to them now, and at that range operated efficiently enough to maintain contact. Satisfied, Bentley also waited.
Soon it came. The noise was deep, a vast low bellow of sound which rumbled up and through the water and beat againstWind Rode's resonant sides. The Jap's boilers, strained to capacity with superheated steam, had met the cold water under the surface. They knew, with a reaction of feeling that left them a little sick, that she was finished.
There was no need of wireless silence now. The R/T speaker on the bridge crackled, and Sainsbury's thin voice sprang out. There was no exultation in its tone, not even satisfaction - only crispness and decision.
"Maintain your present station," the voice ordered, "we will search for one hour, then return to base. Over."
"Roger and out," Bentley replied in the same un-impassioned tone. It was not affected. He felt only the tiredness of mental strain, and that sickness in his stomach. Naval warfare is remote, not intimate. He had felt no personal animus towards his enemy - he had not even seen the face of one of them. It is not pleasant to see a ship die.
They searched for the stipulated hour and during that time the rain fell upon them in windless, soaking sheets. It pattered on the bridge structure like handfuls of flung leaden pellets, huge drops; it streamed from their oilskins and forced down inside their collars, making their binoculars as well as long-range radar useless. Water hissed down on the foc's'le, penetrating easily into the gun-mountings and mounting up in the scuppers into bubbling streams that roared softly as they poured aft and then back over the side.
They found, as they expected to find, nothing. The two Jap destroyers had a long lead on them. They could be anything up to fifty or sixty miles ahead in the streaming blackness. And every minute took them closer to their base, while time had the reverse effect on the Australian ships. They had a long way to steam home, and they had gulped fuel during the fast journey in pursuit.
Bentley was thankful when the thin voice came through and ordered his ship on to the return course. Because there was no wind, the cloud mass in which they had been searching for hours was stationary. At two in the morning the first stars appeared, sparkling pinpoints playing hide-and-seek amongst the thinning wrack above them. An hour and fifteen miles later they were clear, with a diamond-studded sky above and Scimitar gleaming grey to starb'd.
Strict wireless-silence now. Alert radar search, and asdic operating. Bentley, who had not left the bridge, listened tiredly to the steady whirring of the aerial over his head, and to the regular pinging of the asdic pulses. Nothing on the surface, nothing below.
Freshened by three hours' sleep, the Gunner came on to the bridge to relieve Pilot. Randall was already in his bunk. Bentley listened as the watch was turned over, then he said to Lasenby, his voice weary and grumpy:
"Sea-cabin, Guns. Usual calls." "Aye, aye, sir."
As he made his way slowly down the ladder, peeling off his oilskin coat, Bentley reflected without much interest that he had made no comment to Lasenby on the accuracy of his shooting. It had become like that lately, he recognised; the ship's efficiency was accepted without comment. But then why shouldn't it be? Once again, one more time added to all the others, her superiority had been conclusively demonstrated. And, he was sure. Lasenby expected no laudatory praises. He had been shooting accurately for too long.
Bentley stepped into his warm dry cabin and forgot Lasenby and the ship's efficiency; forgot everything but the delectable thought of his bunk, and sleep.
CHAPTER THREE
CAPTAIN SAINSBURY DID NOT send for him until four hours after they had come to their anchors in the ship-crammed harbour. Aware of the delay, Bentley put it down to the senior man's consideration - he was giving him plenty of time to make out his report.
Yet there was something about that unusual lapse of time which exercised Bentley's mind, if only slightly and without worry. Sainsbury would have to put in his report to higher authority, and it did not take four hours to describe Bentley's part in the relatively minor action. He had, in fact, completed his brief essay on Wind Rode's fight an hour after he'd finished breakfast the next day.
But it did not occur to him to worry. There was nothing to concern him - they had found the enemy ships, they had sunk half the force without serious damage to themselves, they had returned to base expeditiously and safely.
Fresh in starched khaki, he ran down the gangway to the twitter of the pipes and stepped into the motorboat. Although he knew it would have been done, automatically he noted that the motorboat had been scrubbed; the wooden thwarts gleamed saltily in the hot sunlight and the paintwork was spotless. This boat was taking a captain to the flotilla-leader, and first-lieutenant Randall was fully conscious of his responsibility.
Scimitar lay to her anchor to seaward of the battle-line, as shining as her gun barrels. It seemed incongruous that the peaceful craft had been a few hours before thrusting at full speed, her paintwork shrouded in the acrid smoke of her own violent action.
But she was here, Bentley reflected idly, alive and afloat, while her enemies were ripped to pieces deep down to the pressured depths. The reason, was simple - efficiency. It had been demonstrated effectively enough.
He was only faintly surprised to see that Sainsbury was not at the gangway to receive him on board. The first meeting, yes, but now they were back in the old formal routine. He waved aside the officer of - the watch's offer to conduct him, and strode forrard to the captain's cabin under the bridge.
It was a bright hot afternoon, with the almost certain promise of a night in harbour, and he was smiling as he knocked, heard the thin-voiced "Come," and stepped into Sainsbury's spartan cabin.
"Ah. Good afternoon, Peter. Take a pew. Gin?"
"Beer thank you, sir, if you don't mind. It's about a hundred and five out there."
"As you wish."
Sainsbury, Bentley noted, did not have to push a buzzer. His steward came in at once, took the order, and withdrew. They talked desultorily until they had their drinks. Then, with the door closed behind the steward, and a beer bottle standing beside the gin bottle on a silver tray, Sainsbury said:
"You have your report?"
"All ready, sir. I-ah-thought you would have wanted it sooner."
The first shock came at once, delivered in stilted tones from the vinegary face:
"Normally I would have, Peter. But there are elements about this report with which I am not completely happy."
Bentley stared at him. "Not... happy?"
"That is so."
"I'm afraid I..." His mind, normally acute, was meshing swiftly. Could Sainsbury have had further orders about which he had kept silent? "I don't quite get it. We sighted the enemy force, we sank two of `em, no real damage to ourse
lves. After all, sir, two out of four...
"Precisely, my boy. Two out of four. It could have been four out of four."
Now Bentley was fully alert. He had known this man to smile, but never to joke. There was something here to step around very carefully. But not to worry about. There was not, yet, any censure in the senior officer's tone or face.
"It could have been, yes, I suppose," he said carefully. "But I'm damned if I can see how. Short of the other two scuttling themselves." He was about to say: "Damn it all, you were there! You know the weather conditions!" He said:
"My radar was mainly inoperative at long range, as I imagine yours was. The weather was all on their side, apart from the start they got. We hadn't a hope of finding them in that muck."
"Precisely," Sainsbury said again. "But we could have found them in the morning."
"I... beg your pardon?"
Sainsbury lifted his glass and sipped delicately. Then, with an old-world motion of his hand, he replaced the hardly-denuded contents on the table.
"I see you don't follow my point," he said, and under that deliberate and pedantic tone Bentley felt like a schoolboy before a patient master. "This is what I mean. We sighted those enemy destroyers just before dusk. They had not sighted us; nor, under the conditions prevailing, could they have been expected to. My intention, if I had been the sighting ship, would have been to track them all night at their reduced speed. Then, in the morning, we could have closed up to maximum hitting range and sunk all four of them. Do you follow me?"
Bentley followed perfectly. Yet he was more concerned with his feeling of relief than with his perception. He smiled.
"Yes, sir. But pursuing that course we might have got the lot. As it was..."
"I do not doubt we should have... got the lot, as you say."
"I wish I could share your optimism, sir."
"I trust that in future you will. As well as my intentions."
No doubt, no doubt at all, about the rebuke there. Bentley's smile contracted.
"Of course, sir." His answer was immediate. His respect for the man facing him went much further than that engendered by the rings on his thin shoulders. "Providing I know what your intentions are."
"Then let us make them plain. When you are in company with me you will make known to me all sightings of interest."
"Naturally, sir." Bentley felt his face flushing.
"Then why, may I ask, did you fail to do so yesterday?"
Normally Bentley would have not bothered to answer that question - the reason was apparent to anybody but a blindfolded mole. But the man asking it was Sainsbury. He answered, his own voice patient:
"We could not assume that they would not sight us, sir. Radiotelephone was out of the question, of course. So, for the same reason, was a signalling lamp."
"Why?"
The word was dry, brittle. Bentleybreathed in. "Because, sir, a casual look aft from any one of those four ships might have spotted my lamp."
"I am not, Peter," Sainsbury told him, "completely an idiot. I am perfectly aware that from your position when you first sighted the enemy a signalling lamp might have been seen. But you increased to full speed. You drew ahead of your original bearing relative to me. You could have turned a few points to port, which would have placed me well on your port quarter. And from that bearing not Tojo himself could have seen a battery of signalling lamps?"
The shock of realisation of the truth of Sainsbury's words hit Bentley like a fist in the guts. The feeling was so acute that unconsciously he was forced into analysis why he had not carried out that elementary procedure. He had the answer at once, truthful and complete. He had sighted the enemy. His only thought had been to close with them, to fight them and sink them.
"You're quite right, sir," he answered simply.
"I think I am. Another beer?"
Bentley nodded. He watched the skinny claw of a hand lift the bottle and pour. And then hard fact punched into his consciousness. Sainsbury was right - but only a minor point of ship handling. The crucial guts of the matter was that Bentley was also right - he had blown one ship to pieces, and he had helped to sink another. Signals or no signals. He said:
"But I think you should come my way to this extent, sir. We did account for two of them. The other way... it's simply conjecture."
"Conjecture based on a certain amount of experience my boy. It does not always pay to rush in, you know. We would have come on the enemy ships fresh and alert. They, on their part, would have been sleepy, with most of the ships' companies still in their hammocks. Don't you agree?"
"I suppose I must, yes, sir."
Sainsbury was looking at him keenly, Bentley noticed. But he always looked that way. He sipped his beer. The older man was quiet. He was thinking: You don't agree at all. You think I'm a cautious old
fool, betting possibilities against proven fact. I don't think you're cocky. Not headstrong. Over confident. Yes, that could be it. But still a damned good young destroyer driver. Perhaps the lesson will come. When it does, I only hope it's not too drastic...
He said:
"Well, my boy, that's all. Another beer?"
"No, thank you sir. There's a deal of ammunition to come in yet." He paused, his hand reaching for his cap. "Ah-the report, sir...?"
"The report will go in in accordance with the facts. The proven facts..." The prim mouth twitched slightly. "Enemy sighted, two enemy sunk, two enemy escaped in darkness. I presume that coincides with your own assessment?"
"Yes, sir," pulling at his nose, his face to Sainsbury looking suddenly boyish.
"Very well. I wonder... perhaps you are already engaged? But dinner?"
"Delighted, sir!"
"Perhaps your Randall might like to join us? It's been a long time."
So it was all over. No more lecturing, however indirect. Randall's presence would preclude any formality. Bentley's grin was genuinely pleased.
"We'll descend on you," he promised, "thirsty." They walked along the iron-deck side by side.
"Nice of the old boy to ask us," Randall smiled in Bentley's cabin. "All well? I mean, the delay?"
"All well-now," Bentley told him. He thought for a moment. The last thing his nature would permit would be to derogate a captain to a junior officer. But Randall was more than that, and Bentley could not be maliciously derogatory about Sainsbury if he tried. He told him of what had transpired in the leader's cabin.
Randall reacted as his friend knew he would. His tough face wore an expression of complete definiteness. "Jump `em at dawn?" he growled. "Fine. On paper. Of course you did the right thing! You see the bastards, you sink `em. All night astern of `em? They could've sighted us, they mightn't have been asleep at daybreak, they might've been waiting for us!" He stared at Bentley belligerently. Slowly, Bentley nodded.
"I agree with his plan of action," he said soberly. "But I also agree that there were too many `if's'. Now we know we got a pair of them. Maybe," he went on, and crossed his legs slowly, "he's becoming a bit over-cautious. He's getting on, you know. Must be all of forty-five. Pretty old for a destroyer-driver in this sort of scrapping. In his day, of course... But it's natural after what he's been through that he should favour the cautious approach." He looked briefly up at Randall. "Isn't it?"
The big lieutenant nodded definitely.
"M'mm," Bentley mused. Then, quickly, he pushed himself up. "How's the ammunitioning?"
"Finished forrard. Give me half an hour on the after magazines."
"Fine. We're expected at 6.30. One thing about the old fellow he still likes his gin. And he can still hold it! Now let me get some real work done while you bully your sailors."
It had been a pleasant dinner, with Captain Sainsbury in mellow and reminiscent mood, and it was well that they'd enjoyed it. Sailing orders for both Australian ships had come shortly after breakfast the next morning.
Admirals are much the same whatever flag they sail under, and no praise had been forthcoming for their action against the Jap
destroyers. Yet the American Admiral was quite satisfied with the way they had conducted themselves. It would not be stretching the fabric of truth too much to record that actually he was pleased.
He had reason to be. Leaders of large offensive forces are always short of knowledge regarding a enemy's intentions and strength. Aircraft make fine reconnaissance units, but their surveys are necessarily swift, lacking in methodical and detailed examination. Destroyers, on the other hand, are ideal for sniffing around enemy country, for drawing his fire and having a good slow look at what he has to offer in the way of unpleasantness.
The American admiral was, like most admirals, short of ships. Yet he had felt compelled to act on his aircraft's information that four enemy destroyers were in the vicinity. Not very hopefully, he had sent out a pair of Down-Under boats - and they had not only come back, but they had ensured that half that enemy force would not.
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