Audacity (Commander Cochrane Smith series)

by Alan Evans

  Smith said, ‘Stop her! Send away the boat!’

  The crew were into the boat before Audacity stopped, slipped and pulled away as the last of the way came off her. The Camel had smashed into the sea not far off Audacity’s bow and the boat was soon alongside the waterlogged remains.

  Danby saw the boat coming. When the Camel had stood on its nose the Sutton harness had held him in his seat. It had hurt, but he was not thrown out or injured. Now he pulled the spring clip out of the conical pin, the straps of the harness fell away and he slithered out of the cockpit into the sea. The cold shock of it left him gasping, but the boat’s crew quickly found him, clinging to the fuselage, goggles pushed up to show white sockets in a face coated with grease, spattered with castor-oil and grimed by smoke. His teeth chattered so that he could not speak. They hauled him in like a wet sack and took him back to Audacity.

  Smith watched from aft of the wheelhouse, standing on top of the four-inch gun’s housing and close by the funnel, feeling the warmth from it. He saw the petty officer in the boat raise a hand, signalling success, and was thankful.

  Elizabeth Ramsay, outside the wardroom on the deck below him, saw the relief on his face and called, ‘He’s safe, then?’

  Smith glanced down at her. ‘Yes.’

  She harked back to their earlier conversation: ‘You’ll sleep easier.’

  Smith said, ‘I sent him up there, but only because I had to. I’m very glad that he’s OK.’

  On his orders they left the Camel to sink and Audacity turned on to a course for the Sound. Minutes later McLeod reported, ‘Sparks picked up a transmission about the time Danby attacked the Zeppelin. He took it down and it was in clear, not coded, but short and garbled. I looked at it with Mrs. Ramsay and we make it something like’—he consulted a signal flimsy—‘“Attacked by fighter”—and then a row of figures, their position. Some of that’s guesswork but it’s the best we could do.’

  Smith grinned. Getting Danby back on board was like a huge weight lifted from his shoulders and he said cheerfully, ‘That sounds like the Zeppelin. If she did send a report of us, before that signal, it could only be that we were on a course for Germany. As we were when she was close enough to see.’

  So Audacity approached the Sound unheralded. In the dusk they sighted a destroyer steaming eastward from the Sound. The sun had set and she stood out against the red afterglow like a black paper silhouette, but Audacity lay in darkness safely to the south-east of her.

  Ross said, ‘She’s steaming full speed. Going to look for survivors from that Zeppelin?’

  Smith nodded, hoping that maybe she was leaving the gate unguarded.

  They passed through the Sound as they had come, steaming its length at twelve knots, creeping through the shallows of the southern entrance and northern exit with a man at the lead or the motor-boat probing the depth ahead. The night was dark but clear; there was no fog. If they were seen from the Swedish or Danish shores they must have been deemed innocent because no one tried to stop them. The next night they passed the minefield at the mouth of the Kattegat in the same way. It was tense, eye-straining, nerve-stretching, exhausting work and they came out of it hollow-eyed and staring, weary. But Audacity was free of the Baltic.

  Then that morning Ross heaved a sigh of relief and said,

  ‘Compared with going in, that was just too easy.’

  That jarred on Smith. They were not home yet.

  14—Audacity

  Audacity made a good twelve knots after clearing the shallows off Goteborg and she was ten miles away when the sun rose astern. McLeod kept the morning watch and Ross had the forenoon. Smith had spent the night on the bridge and now snatched a few hours of restless sleep. When he went out to the wheelhouse shortly before noon he found Ross there.

  ‘What’s our position?’ Smith hunched his shoulders and dug his hands into his pockets. He felt chilled. It was a fine day with a clear sky and there was even some warmth in the sunlight streaming in through the windows of the wheelhouse. But the cold was in his guts, an illogical apprehension. He stood by Ross at the chart table as the first lieutenant laid the pencil’s point on the line of the ship’s track that McLeod had drawn. Smith saw they were passing between Denmark and Norway, out of the Skagerrak into the North Sea.

  Ross moved the pencil on along the track to rest on a neat, small cross. ‘Where we meet the escorts, sir. A little over forty miles ahead, less than four hours’ steaming.’

  Smith nodded. The destroyers would be on station now, had patrolled since first light, waiting for Audacity as they had every day since she entered the Skagerrak. ‘Thank you.’ He was aware of an air of anticipation in the ship as her company shed the tension that had ridden them these last ten days. Wilberforce had been cheerful when he brought Smith’s tea: ‘Everybody’s looking forward to gettin’ home, sir.’ Even Ross, gaunt and hollow-eyed, somehow looked more relaxed this morning. Thinking of his young wife? Smith would wait his time to celebrate.

  He stood at the front of the bridge. The launching platform was gone from forward, as were the two boxes from aft, all of them dismantled and jettisoned with the rest of the disguise of the Anna Schmidt. The Swedish ensign now flew at the stern while the blue and gold boards hung against the sides below the bridge. This was once again the Swedish Lulea and that name was on bow and stern. Wilberforce’s concertina wheezed away, jerkily and jauntily, from the steward’s pantry below the wheelhouse. Smith wondered if Wilberforce had set out the two deck-chairs below the break of the fo’c’sle. Or maybe it was Danby because he sat in one of them, none the worse for wear now, two days after his crash. Elizabeth Ramsay had the other. They would be sheltered from the wind in the lee of the fo’c’sle, sitting in a sun-trap. The girl wore her cloak but it was thrown open. She was laughing at some remark made by Danby.

  Smith asked, ‘Anything from Sparks?’ There had been no signal addressed directly to Audacity because he would have known of that at once.

  Ross answered, ‘He’s hearing a lot of wireless traffic but you can expect that here.’ Besides merchant shipping there were the stations ashore in Denmark and Norway, the German Navy at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, British and German patrols in the North Sea. He grumbled, ‘Nothing more on that raider.’ There had been one signal, received the night before last as they passed through the Sound, the destroyer reporting she had lost the raider in the night. Ross muttered, ‘She gave them the slip in the dark—and there might have been fog, too. So she’s still out there, sinking ships; different hunting-ground, that’s all.’

  Smith nodded. The raider would seek fresh fields after being chased by that destroyer. Out into the Atlantic? The Western Approaches? She would have several previously arranged rendezvous with colliers so she could coal from them and keep the sea for weeks on end. Her cruise had barely started. She might head for the South Atlantic…

  Audacity’s voyage was almost done and he would soon exchange the problems of the sea for those of the land. For the first time since that forenoon outside Kirkko, when he thought he would soon be in England, he remembered he had a home, or at any rate a house. That and its mortgage would ensure he stayed a poor man. And there was enough gold in his cabin to solve his money problems ten times over. The bloody gold! It had left a trail of death. The destroyer off Kurgala, the convoy in the Gulf of Riga…

  Ross glanced at his captain from the corner of his eye, saw the set face and thought, Keep out of his way this morning.

  Smith watched them on the deck below the bridge. Danby was making patterns in the air with his hands held flat but turning at the wrists. Smith had seen other pilots use their hands like that to show how they had flown. Elizabeth Ramsay listened intently, a half-smile widening her red mouth, but then her eyes lifted to the bridge and found Smith for a long second before turning away.

  Smith’s scowl faded and he said, ‘I’ll take a turn around the deck.’ He left a relieved Ross, dropped down the ladders to the deck aft of the superstructure but then change
d his mind and descended further still, to the austere little cabin shared by Gallagher and Danby. The door was hooked back and Smith stepped in, nodded at Gallagher where he lay in his bunk with the blankets humped over the splinted leg. ‘How is it?’

  Gallagher let the book he was reading drop on his chest. ‘Not bad, so long as I don’t move.’ Pearson had set the broken leg as Audacity passed through the Sound, and Gallagher had had a bad time.

  Smith chatted with him for a minute or two, thinking that one reason why the flight commander and Danby got on better now was perhaps that Danby had slashed the gap of experience dividing them: they were both Camel pilots now, a breed apart.

  He continued his tour of inspection. He was looking at the men and again he saw their relaxation, a looking-forward. He passed under the superstructure and walked the length of the foredeck towards the two deckchairs with Elizabeth Ramsay’s eyes on him, turned the corner of the forward hatch and was in the lee of the fo’c’sle, out of the wind and feeling the warmth of the sun.

  Danby jumped to his feet as his captain arrived and Smith waved him down again. ‘No, don’t get up.’

  But Danby said, ‘I’m just leaving, sir. I thought I’d look in on Malc and see if he’d like a drink before lunch.’

  ‘Malc’ would be Malcolm Gallagher. Smith said, ‘Tell him they’re on me.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Smith watched the young pilot stride away aft and unthinkingly sat down in the chair he had left. Elizabeth Ramsay said, ‘He’s a nice young man. He was telling me that when they get back he’s going to Gallagher’s place to spend some of his leave. And Gallagher told me he thought he could fix Danby up with a girl.’ She was laughing.

  Smith grinned, ‘Good luck to him.’ They would all be making their plans for when they got ashore.

  ‘That boy worships you.’ The girl was still smiling, but serious. ‘They all do. They say nobody else could have got them out of the Baltic and safely home.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ He’d been lucky. And they weren’t home yet. He felt that stir of apprehension again. Was it simply due to reaction and overstrung nerves? Or was it because he was tired? He was bloody tired. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his hair.

  Elizabeth Ramsay asked lightly, ‘What happens to you when we get back?’

  Smith shrugged, ‘There’ll be fresh orders for me.’

  ‘But not at once.’ She watched him for a moment as he sat blinking tiredly, gratefully in the sunlight, looking younger now without the cap, but still too thin to be handsome. She said quietly, ‘I understand you have no family.’

  Smith frowned. Somebody had been talking. Ross? No, Buckley, who knew a lot more of Smith’s private life than anyone else aboard, who made up his own mind in whom he should trust or confide. And who had always been right. Smith’s frown cleared. He answered, ‘That’s so.’

  ‘I’ll have some time on my hands.’ The girl was off-hand now, clearly hoping, but she would not beg. ‘I want to go somewhere quiet after this, where I can think, but I don’t want to be alone. Do you?’

  This was an invitation, and certainly the house in Norfolk was quiet enough. He was used to being on his own but loneliness was a state of mind and he knew he would be lonely there without her. There was an easiness between Elizabeth Ramsay and himself now, the glances no longer sliding away but holding. They were closer. He looked at the woman, her cloak thrown back, the lines of her body unmistakable under the dress. He wanted her but lust was not enough: hers had not been that kind of invitation. She wanted that but a lot more as well.

  Did he?

  He heard the hail faintly, coming down against the wind from the starboard lookout high on the flying bridge: ‘Smoke green four-oh!’

  Smith stood and said, ‘Excuse me.’

  ‘Of course.’ She smiled, but as he walked quickly away her smile faded.

  McLeod poked his head out of the wheelhouse as Smith reached the bridge. ‘Too soon to be our escort, sir, unless they’re a long way off station.’

  Ross muttered, ‘Could be a patrol. Ours—or theirs?’

  Smith snatched his glasses from the wheelhouse, ran up the ladder to the flying bridge and joined the starboard lookout. ‘What d’you make of her?’

  The man said, ‘Can’t tell yet, sir, she’s just coming hull-up under the smoke, but in a minute or two—’

  Nor could Smith see what kind of ship this was so they waited, watched. Ross appeared on the wing of the bridge below and McLeod climbed up to join Smith, standing a pace away. And after a time it was the navigator who said with relief, ‘She’s a merchantman. Looks as if we’ll cross her bow a mile ahead of her.’

  There was reason for his relief. When Audacity steamed through the Skagerrak on her way to the Baltic her seeming neutrality was some protection: a German patrol was unlikely to stop her, knowing she could only be bound for a German or neutral port. But now she was headed out into the North Sea and if the ship ahead had been a German destroyer she would certainly have stopped this supposedly Swedish tramp because her cargo could be contraband destined for a British port.

  McLeod leaned over the rail to call down cheerfully: ‘You can start breathing again, old son!’

  Ross grinned up at him.

  Smith said nothing and kept his face expressionless as he watched the other ship. Seen now with the naked eye, she was just a black break on the horizon under her smoke. He waited for her to come closer, so he could be sure, one way or the other.

  McLeod glanced sideways at him, puzzled, then lifted his glasses again.

  So did Smith. The ship was a merchantman as McLeod said, like hundreds of others, but there was something about the look of her, the flush-deck, the derricks set low on her masts—no single feature betrayed her but the whole picture called up another stamped indelibly on the mind.

  The lookout started, ‘Sir—’ Then he hesitated, not sure.

  Ross was. His voice came up. ‘She’s that raider we saw nearly two weeks ago! And under the same Norwegian flag!’

  The lookout said, ‘That’s what I thought, sir.’

  McLeod muttered endorsement: ‘It looks like her.’

  Smith let the glasses hang against his chest. ‘Yes. Send a signal to our escorts: Enemy raider—course, speed, my position.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ McLeod dropped down the ladder to take the position from his chart.

  The destroyers would arrive in an hour but that would be too late for Audacity.

  The raider’s six-inch guns would sink her.

  Smith jammed his hands into his pockets and stared out at the ship, thinking. The raider had last been reported north-west of Bergen, about forty-eight hours ago. There had been ample time for her, after slipping the pursuing destroyer in the night, to steam down the coast of Norway and be here now. But why was she? There had been no report of her before she was first sighted by Audacity off Kristiansand, when they saw her sink the British tramp, so presumably that had been the beginning of her raiding cruise. Normally such a cruise would last for weeks but here she was, already on a course for home. Why was she returning so soon? Had she suffered damage at the hands of the destroyer? Or developed some fault in her engines that only a dockyard could repair? Either was possible and there could be other reasons, but whatever these were lack of success was not one of them. In the Baltic several reports had reached Smith of ships she had sunk and there could well be others he had not heard of.

  Ross called, ‘She’s not altering course!’

  McLeod was back now from passing Smith’s signal to the wireless office and his voice answered gloomily, ‘She don’t need to. We’ll pass her close enough.’

  Which was true if Audacity stayed on this course. Alternatively, Smith could turn her south, crack on full speed, and might just reach the sanctuary of Danish territorial waters before the raider could get near her—provided those big six-inch guns did not disable her first. His orders had prevented him reporting the raider’s presence that
day off Kristiansand, or going to the aid of the tramp. How many men had died since then? How many more would die if she returned to Germany, to cruise again and sink more ships?

  He saw McLeod and the others waiting, Buckley up on the flying bridge now with him, Ross on the bridge below, his face upturned. ‘Mr. Ross! Sound action stations and get the chief on the pipe for me.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir!’ Ross vanished into the wheelhouse and Smith dropped down the ladder to the bridge. The alarms buzzed throughout the ship and he heard the clatter of running feet as the crew of the four-inch doubled through the passage from their mess to the gun housing.

  As he swung into the wheelhouse Ross said, ‘The chief’s at the pipe, sir.’

  ‘Be ready to hoist every ensign we’ve got. Ours mind; no funny ones this time. And tell the “panic party” to stand by below the bridge.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  Smith stooped over the voice-pipe to the engine room. The raider would call on Audacity to stop and show a gun to prove she could enforce the demand, so she would be able to get in the first blow. Smith could open fire first, before the other ship signalled or uncovered her gun, but that would mean a straight fight at comparatively long range and he dared not risk that with the weight of armament so heavily against Audacity. The raider mounted four big six-inch guns forward, another gun aft. So: the ‘panic party’. He was going to use a variation of an old Q-ship tactic.

  ‘Chief! That German raider we saw off Kristiansand just over a week ago is ahead of us now. We’ll be in action soon. Be ready for some rapid changes in revolutions. And I want a drum of oily waste, old cleaning rags—anything that will make a lot of smoke when it burns—forward of the bridge. You’ve got two minutes.’

  ‘Aye, aye, sir.’

  ‘Good luck, Chief.’ Smith shut the lid on the voice-pipe and wondered what the engineers and stokers were thinking now, down below the waterline. Only the thin metal plates of the hull protected them. Shells would rip through it as if it were paper. They were surrounded by boilers and pipes carrying high-pressure steam that could flay the skin from their bodies. The off-watch engineers and stokers were not down there so they might be lucky. Only ‘might’, because some were on damage-control and the rest in the ‘panic party’.