J. E. MacDonnell - 030

by The Lesson(lit)

  "My God...!" Randall muttered, "how are you?" He knew the words were banal.

  Bentley answered: "Worst hangover ever I hope not to have. What's happening?"

  Randall enlightened him rapidly - this was no time for thankfulness.

  "The Fleet's altered to about east-north-east. Port screw done, rudder damaged. We're doing about eight knots, steering with difficulty. Four destroyers coming in for us."

  "Are they, the bastards!"

  Bentley lifted his binoculars. There they were, much closer now, stems spurning under the thrust of their utmost power - eager stems, malignant and vengeful. Not at all beautiful in the symmetry of their bow-waves.

  Bentley lowered the glasses. He swayed against the binnacle. The young bosun's mate was watching him, his eyes wide and concerned. Not frightened, yet.

  "Right, lad," Bentley said crisply, "get me a brandy. Sea-cabin."

  "Aye, aye, sir!"

  "You might have made that two," Randall grunted from under his glasses. "What's the drill? Divided control?"

  "Yes. A and B mountings in director control at the two right-hand ships. Three broadsides on one target, then shift to the next. X-mounting in local against the remaining two, same sort of fire. We'll give `em all a taste. If one of `em gets in torpedo range we're finished."

  The orders were given briskly from the bloodied face and neither man attached any real hope to their possible results. Even a full-powered ship against four destroyers was in an almost hopeless position - with one screw and little rudder it was simply a matter of time.

  "Screws, rudder... His mind went back through the ache in his head to a time, years ago it seemed, when he had caught himself wanting to pat the blade of the screw which time and time again had kept him and his men alive. Now that screw, and that rudder about which he had mused so sentimentally, were to be the cause of their almost certain death. His thoughts were not sentimental now.

  He looked again at the approaching destroyers and then he smelled the wind. No. At their reduced speed a smoke-screen would be a waste of fuel. The Japs would simply circle round it. Torpedoes in the same category of uselessness. They would slip them effortlessly. He had left only his guns.

  Only his guns... Many times he had had only his guns, and they had pulled him through. He was gunnery, gunnery to the core of him. They would go, this time, but before they did they would leave some marks on those eager bastards out there! The savage feeling rose in him, flooding through his veins, strengthening his body and his will. He grabbed at the microphone.

  "D'you hear there! This is the captain." He did not pause, he did not know the effect his words were having throughout the waiting ship: he did not know he was "dead." "This looks nasty - bloody nasty. Which means it's right up our alley! They're four to one. They've been four to one before." His voice was savagely ugly. He scorned restraint. "They're also Japs. We're Australians. Now you remember that, you whingeing matloe bastards! Australians! We might go, but we'll take some of those yellow -s with us!"

  Randall stared at him, but without shock. His own face mirrored in its twisted-mouthed hardness the toughness of his captain's words.

  "D you hear that? We'll take some of `em with us! You've been with me a long time, a hell of a long time. You're the finest bunch of bastards a captain could ever hope for. Now you listen to me. We're going to fight those destroyers and we're going to give `em such a fight they'll never forget. D'you hear that! A fight they'll remember! Now get those guns loaded, and thank you... and God help you all."

  His face was compressed with emotion. He dropped the microphone so that it clattered against the wind-break on its cord. There came a complementary sound to that small clatter. Not a full-throated cheer, not a shout of faith and determination. A non-human sound, metallic, definite: the streaking slam from B-gun below as the first shells rammed into the breech.

  The enemy destroyers opened fire together.

  Bentley had regained control of his feelings. He was still weak, but calm, insofar as his professional mind was working smoothly over the churning in his guts. He had just noticed that the main Fleet was dwindling to the north-east, crossing his bow hull-down on its way to Manus, when Ferris told them that their action had commenced. Bentley's eyes and his attention swung back to the prime task.

  The Japs were in close formation, judging with acceptable accuracy that their task would take neither much time nor effort. They fired again, Wind Rode's bridge sighting the spaced sparkles of yellow light a second before the first broadside burst all about them.

  It was good shooting, even though Wind Rode was practically a sitting duck. Splinters whined over their heads and the ship shook, but it seemed she was not hurt. A second later she gave tongue herself, and the stench of cordite blew back over the bridge. Her shells had not fallen when from the foc's'le a vivid sheet of flame spewed upward. The blast of the explosion drowned the noise of three more shells coming inboard down aft.

  Bentley heard the vast breath from forward and saw the flames from the corner of his eye. He knew instantly what it was - there was nothing below decks to cause flames like that. But plenty around Amounting - scores of ready-use cordite cartridges. He knew also that now he had four guns left, and probably not a man left alive at A-gun.

  He kept his glasses on the enemy.

  The Japs were closing at top speed and Lasenby's first broadside landed over, six ghostly white pillars with only their tops visible past the four spurning hulls.

  "Fire aft near the tubes?" Randall shouted above the uproar.

  "Get rid of them!" Bentley snapped. "Fire the lot. It might break their formation!"

  A few seconds later Wind Rode emptied her tubes of their ten missiles. One after the other they speared out and, badly-aimed because of her lack of manoeuvrability, reached out in the general direction of the four destroyers. Those Japs were well-handled. As though on flotilla manoeuvres the whole formation altered course to starb'd, and the ten smooth streaks of water slipped passed harmlessly on their port sides.

  Wind Rode fired again, a reduced bellow of challenge. The shock of discharge was followed immediately by the shudder of receipt. Down aft again, smoke now mixed with hissing white steam. Though he could do nothing - Monty McGuire was in charge down there Bentley leaned over and stared aft, his face tight and desperation in his mind. He could see the steam billowing from a jagged hole above the engine-room. A burst pipe, which would reduce his speed even further. He heard the shrill ringing of the engine-room phone and he let Randall answer it. Three knots, the lieutenant told him. Three knots... They might as well be at anchor.

  The next few minutes were a confusion and bemusement of violence and ear-drumming uproar, with only three guns now answering the 24-gun pounding of the Japs. Weakened by his wound, his brain battered by noise and still compelled to retain control of his almost-crippled ship, Bentley wondered confusedly at the speed with which he was being smashed to uselessness. He had thought it would be quick with four destroyers against one, but not this vicious rapidity of demolition.

  "X-gun out of action, six men killed," Randall reported huskily, and Bentley still by his binnacle, wondered not at the reduction in his offensive potential but at the fact that even in that holocaust down aft men could yet count and get their reports through to the central control.

  Training, he thought, training and discipline, and grabbed instinctively for a hold as the ship leaped. Yet what good were all his meticulous programmes of drill in the face of this unbearable weight of opposition? He saw the enemy ships, still in precise formation, spit flame and smoke and automatically he croaked:

  "Hard a starb'd."

  It would do no good, for she could barely move. But training died hard...

  Rennie repeated the order, as he had done hundreds of times before and Bentley waited with squinted eyes and aching mind for the bow to swing. He was still waiting when an eye-searing flash erupted from the foc's'le and the ship jerked and he saw through the smoke the ragged-edged
hole between the cables.

  Any time now. They had the range, she was practically stopped. Any time now for a shell to get into the boiler room, or a magazine. Just one shell through her thin and valiant sides. He had seen that happen often enough. Now he would know what it felt like. But he wouldn't know. Not with a magazine, or a boiler-room still under superheated pressure. Nothing-ness. Oblivion. Finis.

  Gropingly, his mouth filled with a horrid taste of burning cordite and explosive and paint, he turned to find Randall. Smoke was blowing back over the bridge, but he picked out Randall's big form holding on to the wheelhouse voice-pipe. His shirt was stained red near the left shoulder.

  "Bob...

  Randall looked up, his face twisted. He smiled, a macabre malformation of his tight mouth.

  "Yes, Peter."

  It was not an acknowledgement of Bentley's word, it was a statement of full understanding. Bentley's hand came up, and even then, with death all about them, Randall knew his old friend too fully to offer his own hand. Gently, Bentley punched him in the ribs.

  In the gesture was farewell, and manly love, and appreciation of years of friendship and knowledge of a man's nature he knew as well as his own. Staggering as the ship lurched, Bentley turned back to the binnacle.

  Not even the sun would help them. Its great yellow eye was watching, still several degrees above the horizon. But it allowed him to see something which gave him the sole satisfaction of that dreadful action. A spurt of red lashed out from the right-hand Jap and smoke poured in many tongues from her funnel.

  "Good boy, good boy," he muttered unheard to Lasenby.

  Then Ferris spoke to him.

  It was in keeping with the unnatural savagery of the punishment she was taking that Ferris should be guilty of the unnatural omission of not keeping an all-round lookout. It was understandable that his eyes, too, should be rivetted on the origin of their torment. And he would not have seen what he had just sighted if, through the violence which slammed at his ears and his senses, the thought had not come to him. He was the signal yeoman, his life was to do with flags, and there was one piece of bunting which his doomed ship was not wearing. Her White Ensign flew at the gaff, torn but still fluttering its defiance above the thunder, yet it was not enough. Battle ensign, battle ensign, the words repeated themselves in Ferris's numbed mind. The biggest, proudest flag the ship carried. It should be hoisted right at the truck of her foremast, it should be the last emblem the Japs would see before she went under. Now it was in its locker.

  He had stumbled across the reeking bridge and his hands were fumbling to secure the great flag to the halliards. He braced himself and he began to haul. Ferris did not need to watch what his expert hands were doing. His eyes were staring out to sea, over to starb'd, the side opposite the enemy.

  He saw it. He stared in disbelief, striving to understand how one of those belching destroyers could have got round on to that side. Then understanding came. And then he turned and spoke to Bentley.

  "Scimitar," Ferris said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SHE CAME UP.

  She came up roaring under every punching pound of her 40,000 horse-power. She came with a bow-wave surfing up higher then her guard-rails, with clouds of brown smoke billowing, and shredding in the gale of her urgency, with four stabs of red flame lancing briefly and brightly in the middle of the smoke. She came fighting.

  Past Wind Rode's smoking stern. No signals from her bridge, all the signals from her perfectly manned guns. Past the stern and straight in an undeviating; wake-tossed line for the Japanese flotilla. The Japs saw her coming, they felt the blast of her shells against the bridge of the left-hand ship. They altered course violently to starb'd, heeling the lee gunnels into the creaming sea, away from their victim, away from her rescuer. But still in line-abreast formation. And still, alone, belching, Scimitar bored in.

  "My God!" Randall jerked hoarsely, "he's going straight through the line!"

  Straight through he was. Directly between the two inner ships of the enemy formation, leaving not more than two hundred yards between him and two destroyers.

  "Mad!" ejaculated Randall, "he's gone mad. He's broken!"

  Mad? Bentley thought. As mad as Nelson, who originated the manoeuvre one hundred and forty years before. Mad? He saw clearly the skinny figure in its khaki shorts and shirt bend to the voice-pipe, and saw the hosing bow alter its direction a little. Then he could not see, and automatically he wiped his dirty hand across his eyes, and he knew with no surprise whatever that he could not see because his eyes were wet with tears.

  He shook his head, thrusting down on the lump choking in his throat. He knew that if he did not succeed in mastering this intensity of emotion he would break.

  He did not break. Nor did that calculating, tigerish madman in his driving destroyer. It was well that Commander Peter Bentley managed to choke down on his emotion, fortunate indeed that he could see. For he was witnessing the most furious and brilliantly fought action he had ever been privileged to watch, handled with calm ferocity by an absolute master of his trade. He was, as well, receiving the second part of his lesson.

  Scimitar's bow was almost level with the sterns of the two Japanese destroyers in the middle of the formation. The Japs were so astonished by the apparent insanity of this new arrival that they had ceased fire. Bentley knew, as surely as though he had been inside Sainsbury's mind, that the V.C. holder had counted on that.

  Sainsbury had the advantage of knowing precisely what he was doing. One of his quintuple banks of torpedo tubes was trained to port, the other to starb'd. He emptied them. The range was close, but his depth-setting was shallow. Not aimed like Wind Rode's, those ten silver missiles. Aimed from a fully manoeuvrable ship, by an icy and meticulous judgment.

  The range was so close Scimitar's guns were at zero elevation. Now was evidenced the value of seeing to the greasing of those simple little pins which allowed the guardrail stanchions to be dropped flat. A and B mounting engaging to port, X-mounting to starb'd, she bored up level. The Japs had lost speed on their turn, and Scimitar was outpacing them by ten knots. But for about thirty seconds the three ships were level with each other.

  Nelson's strategy at Trafalgar. Go down between the enemy lines. They are loth to fire for fear of hitting their own ship on the other side. The range is so close that you cannot miss. And where the enemy has only one target, and can fire a broadside from only one side, you have two targets, and can fire from both sides.

  Thirty seconds. In that time Scimitar's six big guns belched a total of more than thirty shells. And every one hit. The bridge of the right-hand destroyer crumpled into a mess of spilled metal and the midships portion of her second target was a flame-shot wall of black smoke. Only a few close-range weapons had fired upon her in return, so numbing had been the effect of Sainsbury's incredible manoeuvre.

  The burning ship, with her bridge and control still intact, was heeling away to port. She took only one of the five torpedoes aimed for her, but she took it in her stern. She would alter course no more. The other destroyer had taken no avoiding action. It was impossible to determine how many torpedoes ran against her bilges, for they exploded almost simultaneously, and they covered her with a pall of dirty water. The upflung opacity hid, for several seconds, the fact that her port side had been savaged widely open. When the water returned to its element it fell down on her horizontal starb'd side. Three minutes later she had disappeared.

  Scimitar burst out from the temporary shelter of her two targets and Sainsbury drove her straight at the left-hand, undamaged ship. On this course he had only his four forward guns, but he had also the Jap's whole starb'd side for target. The range was still suicidally close and his shells bit at her with spaced and vicious accuracy.

  The remaining Jap had recovered his wits. He was astern of Scimitar, but still close to Wind Rode, so triumphantly had the flotilla pushed home its attack. Now that Jap destroyer swung his bow to port to come up behind the busy Scimitar. Bentley g
rabbed at the director phone. He had one mounting left him. "Lasenby! Take that right-hand destroyer! Rapid broadsides!"

  For the first time in his life Lasenby failed to repeat an order. He had been one with the rest of the ship's company in his awed wonder at Scimitar's spunky and incredible action. But though he did not answer Bentley his director swung on to the bearing. A few seconds later the twin barrels of B-mounting joined the uproar.

  They were lucky, in several respects. The Jap was intent on overhauling Scimitar, and had all his guns trained on her. They still had their transmitting-station undamaged. And they had the tremendous upsurge of will and spirit which Scimitar's arrival had granted them. Lasenby and his control-team and his gunners fired like men possessed - as they were.

  But they had to be quick. They had been exhausted a few minutes before, and the drug of this new-found hope would not for long boost their bodies against the drag of their exhaustion. They were quick.