Vincent stood in the front of the bridge, his long hands resting on his hips, and another Quartermaster was standing by the engine-room telegraphs.
“Morning, sir.” Vincent’s face was expressionless. “She should be well afloat in a couple of minutes.”
The seamen straightened up, suddenly conscious of their new Captain, but Rolfe only grunted and walked out of the wheelhouse to the wing of the bridge.
From his lofty position he watched the busy white figures moving about the decks in orderly confusion. Fallow’s hoarse voice threatened and pleaded from a dozen directions at once and he could see his ungainly figure, even worse when viewed from above, covering the distance from the fo’c’sle to the quarterdeck in great, shambling strides, his arms swinging and pointing as he ploughed his way through a group of chattering Chinese seamen.
Rolfe looked at the latter with interest. It would be one of his first jobs to have a word with his unknown crew, as soon as he had read his orders, he decided.
The deck lurched slightly, and a little tremor ran through the ship. Still the water frothed into the dock, and when it eventually began to slacken, Rolfe watched the black, slimy doors of the basin with something like apprehension.
Out there, countless eyes would be watching him again and he knew what their owners would be thinking. He gripped the rail and stared down at the deck below him. This wasn’t the navy, this was a victim partly reprieved from execution. And so am I, he thought slowly.
How would he react? What does it feel like to fall into a command like that? They would be the questions asked in the waiting ships and in the cool offices of Government House. He clenched his jaw, his eyes steely.
The gunboat rose, almost majestically on the water, as if arising from her tomb, and Rolfe caught a glimpse of the calm water in the harbour and heard the noisy clamour of the early morning traffic at the back of the port.
A wafer of sunlight split the lock gates in two, and to the chant of the labouring dockyard men the winches pulled the massive steel slabs slowly apart, and a widening path of tiny glittering wavelets opened up before the ship’s bows.
A hush seemed to fall and, although from past experience he knew it to be imagination, Rolfe was again reminded of a bull waiting in its pen to enter the arena. The doors open, the bloodthirsty crowd is stilled with expectancy, and then—, he trembled slightly and shook his head angrily.
“Sir?” Vincent was framed in the wheelhouse door. “Signal from Flag to proceed when ready.” The sulky eyes watched Rolfe for some sign or reaction.
“Very good!” Rolfe turned on his heel, and began to climb the ladder to the upper bridge. Although it was early the steel rungs were already warm in his hands.
A plump, square-faced Chief Petty Officer saluted from beside the gun, and Rolfe had the impression the man had been waiting in that position for some time. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly, and at once the man began to speak in short, tense sentences.
“I’m Chase, sir, Chief Gunner’s Mate.” He thrust out his chin belligerently. “Responsible for armaments and general weapons training, sir!”
Rolfe took in the well creased and pressed uniform, the small cap at exactly the right angle, and the gleaming whistle chain around his thick neck. Another one, he thought wearily. There seemed to be so many of them cut from the same rigid pattern. Even the short, ginger hair which bristled from beneath the cap, was cut exactly to regulation style. “A bit of Whale Island in China, eh?” Rolfe smiled, trying to imagine what the man beneath the wooden expression was like.
“Sir?” The slit mouth snapped open and shut like a rifle bolt.
“Alright, carry on, Chief.” Rolfe had seen the voice pipes by the binnacle, and they seemed a suitable retreat.
“Bridge, wheelhouse!” He spoke sharply into the brass bellmouth.
“Wheelhouse, bridge!” The voice of the Quartermaster below him rattled tinnily back to him.
“Stand by!” He heard the jangle of bells from the bowels of the ship and a steady, pulsating rumble made the deck at his feet jump and vibrate. He leaned over the thin rail of the bridge, watching until Fallow’s glistening face turned upwards.
“Single up to head and stern ropes!” he yelled. It seemed strange not to enjoy the luxury of telephones and voice pipes for passing orders to the deck, but in a way it suited both his attitude to the ship and to his new role.
“I can repeat all your orders, sir.” Chase stood watching him in puzzled perplexity.
Rolfe grinned, “I think I’ll get used to the ship first, thank you!”
As Rolfe turned his attention back to the movements below, the face of the Chief Gunner’s Mate darkened with annoyance.
The greasy wires splashed into the water and were hastily plucked on deck by the sweating seamen, and when only two wires remained, Fallow’s bellow announced that he had “singled up.”
Rolfe swallowed hard, tasting the whisky in his throat. The dock entrance looked appallingly narrow. How pleased everyone would be if he repeated his last manœuvre.
“Let go forrard! Let go aft!”
The mangy-looking coolies at the stone bollards heaved the wires free and hurled them down to the waiting seamen. Wagtail shuddered. She was free.
“Slow ahead, together!” His voice was surprisingly calm, and he watched almost detachedly as the harsh shadows of the dock gates slid over the bows and past the bridge. He was so close to the winch platform that a small, smiling man in blue reefer and white silk trousers bowed and saluted as he moved by.
There was a twitter of pipes, and the thud of bare feet across the decks as the seamen dashed to their new stations for going alongside the loading jetty. Gingerly, but firmly, Rolfe guided the ship along the jagged stone wharf under the leaning arms of the giant cranes and gantrys. With something like a sigh he watched the lines snake ashore to the waiting hands, and the wires once more safely secured. His first trip of about fifty yards, was completed.
Now that he had handled her, he was impatient to be moving again, and after several hours of torment and irritation, while the ship took on stores, it was with real relief that he saw the jetty slide away as he moved his ship out into the harbour.
With the immovable Chase behind him, he stood silently watching the grey ships at their moorings, and listened to the shrill twitter of pipes, as marks of respect were exchanged.
The powerful bulk of the flagship loomed into view, and as Rolfe conned the gunboat between two junks which appeared to be quite motionless on the blue water, he imagined the Admiral’s sharp eyes watching from somewhere on that towering superstructure.
In actual fact, the Admiral was in his stateroom, but he was certainly watching the steady approach of the Wagtail . . .
“Right on time,” he remarked crisply. “And very nice, too!” He saw himself as the young, innocent midshipman again, setting out in a gunboat such as this one.
Commander Pearce frowned over the Admiral’s shoulder. “Doesn’t look much like a warship, does she?” he commented bitterly. “Pity we couldn’t send a couple of ‘Darings’ instead.” He nodded towards the two powerful destroyers astern of the flagship.
“Hands all fallen in, too,” observed the Admiral, ignoring Pearce’s sourness. He watched the little ship steam abreast of the cruiser, and heard the shrill wail of the pipes, while the cruiser replied with a lordly bugle, and he raised his glasses to study the lonely figure saluting from the gunboat’s bridge.
He had listened carefully to Pearce’s report on his visit to the gunboat the previous night, and he had been satisfied. Somehow he knew that the job to be done in Santu was not for the ordinary, unimaginative officer, like Pearce, for instance. Rolfe’s record, but for the one lapse, showed he was eminently suited for the task, and if a woman had been at the back of it, he chuckled, the sea trip would do him good anyway.
Wagtail had passed, and the Admiral craned his head round the scuttle to see her blunt bows meet the first heavy swell beyond the protecting sa
ndbanks and walls of the harbour.
“River boat on an ocean cruise,” he chuckled again. Reaching for a new pink flag from his desk, he wrote Wagtail on it in his firm, round hand, and with a small frown, he stuck it carefully on the wall chart.
“Well, Pearce, they’re off!” he exclaimed. “Ring for my steward, and we’ll drink to her success.”
* * * * *
The sheltered waters of the harbour dropped slowly astern, and as the sea bottom grew farther and farther from the gunboat’s keel, the colour of the sea itself changed rapidly from a deep blue to a shining, emerald green, every tiny ripple and wavelet glittering with a million sparkling gems. But the flat, comfortable calm was also gone, and in its place was the great, sullen power of the China Sea, hidden at the moment, but for the full, regular swell which trundled shorewards in a steady, ponderous rhythm.
Chief Engineroom Artificer William Louch steadied his spindly legs automatically on the gratings as the blunt bows lifted to the challenge of the ocean, and mopped his small beaky face with a piece of cotton waste. He grunted with grudging satisfaction as the two heavy engines beat out their monotonous rumble, and the fans whirred in the air-shafts, sucking great gulps of salty air down to the noisy clangour of the engine-room.
Louch was a quiet, taciturn man, who had all but lost the art of speech after a lifetime spent in similar engine-rooms, a lifetime of grunting and gesticulating to native firemen and stokers amidst the constant noise and sweat of obstinate machinery.
By now he had become immune to both, and he watched the brass dials and gauges about him with professional disinterest and allowed his thoughts to encompass the other matters and happenings which were making the ship move seawards once more.
It was certainly a rum do, he considered, what with the skipper hardly appearing anywhere on deck, other than the bridge, and the First Lieutenant scared of his own shadow. His thin mouth softened slightly at the thought of Fallow. Poor old bugger. He’d be better off in our mess than cooped up with young Vincent, he decided.
His small, bird-like eyes watched a Chinese stoker apply an oil-can to one of the many gleaming vents. The man was naked but for a ragged pair of shorts, and a fragment of cloth around his cropped head to keep the sweat from his eyes. Realizing that his chief’s eyes were watching him, he bowed solemnly, and bared his teeth in a huge smile, before continuing on his tour with the oil-can. Louch grinned dourly, “Bloody savage!” he said, but the words were lost in the noise, and the short, stocky figure of the stoker, his skin gleaming under the inspection lamps, was soon lost from view. The grin faded, as the voice pipe at his elbow shrilled suddenly.
“Engine-room. Chief speaking!”
From the land of sunlight and clean decks, the world which Louch avoided and despised so much, Vincent’s clear, crisp voice echoed down the pipe.
“Report to the bridge in two hours, Chief!”
Louch glared at the pipe belligerently. “Little bastard!” he muttered. No please or thank you about Mr. Vincent, just snap, snap, snap!
“Aye, aye, sir.”
There was a short silence, and Louch felt a tremor of alarm that Vincent might have heard his comment.
“Captain’s calling all heads of departments to a conference,” the voice added, and Louch breathed again.
On the sun-slashed bridge, Rolfe leaned his weight on the warm teak rail at the side of the wheelhouse. He had just told Vincent to explain the reason for the summons to the Chief Engineer, as the terse, arrogant manner in which the Lieutenant gave all his orders, was beginning to get on his nerves.
I’ve been out on the flying-bridge too long, he thought, feeling the streams of sweat exploring his back, and clogging the shirt around his armpits. The harsh glare from the shimmering water made him squint painfully, but anything was better than sharing the wheelhouse with Vincent.
“Signal from Flag, sir!”
Rolfe turned at the sound of a cheerful, twanging voice at his side. Telegraphist Little, a short, snub-nosed Cockney, held out the signal patiently.
Rolfe peered at the pencilled jumble of figures, and thought of the Admiral arranging his paper flags like pawns on a chessboard.
“Alter course, oh-nine-oh, at nineteen hundred,” he barked to Vincent, who had appeared briefly in the sunlight.
So we’re going westwards are we, he mused, Formosa perhaps. Damn all this stupid secrecy anyway. Nobody would send a gunboat like this on anything important, so why all the fuss? And if it’s pirates we’re after, they’ll probably know about it before we do. He glared down at the Telegraphist, who was watching him with absorbed attention.
“How long have you been aboard here?” he asked suddenly.
“A month, sir. I finishes next month, sir,” he added quickly. “National Serviceman, y’see, sir.”
Rolfe nodded wearily. Everyone aboard seemed to be finishing with the ship, or the navy altogether. Even the ship was finished, he thought. Dismissing the man with a nod, he walked into the comparative cool of the chart room, behind the bridge.
The charts lay in neat packs under the glass-topped table, and in half an hour, when he had read his orders, he would know which one to select. At the moment, the local chart, well-worn and criss-crossed with pencilled lines, lay on the table, the brass dividers where Vincent had last thrown them.
Another roller passed under the ship, and in the chart room loose objects clattered and banged, and a pencil rolled on to the deck. Being flat-bottomed, and with practically her whole hull above the surface, Wagtail was like an iceberg in reverse, and the least movement made her roll sickeningly. As the water mounted her side she would yield wearily, hanging over at an ungainly angle, and when the mass of moving water had passed under her, she would still hang for another moment, her triple rudders struggling for a grip, and then, with her ancient plates protesting, she recovered her dignity, sliding upright again to meet the next assault.
In a dead calm, too, Rolfe muttered to himself. Thank God this isn’t the typhoon season. Still, typhoons were not unknown, even now. He pressed his damp face in his hands. Stop it, he told himself angrily, just concentrate, just keep—
A warning squark of the siren jerked him out of his deepening gloom, and he stepped quietly into the wheelhouse.
Half a dozen junks, their ribbed sails black against the sun, floated eerily towards the ship, their brightly painted hulls and high, carved poops adding to the air of timelessness which seemed always to be associated with China.
The gunboat’s steady ten knots sent a small but impressive bow wave creaming towards them, and Vincent watched the junks carefully through his glasses, which he rested negligently against the bridge window.
“Get out of the way, damn you!” he snapped to the towering sails. “I’d like to run a few of you down!”
“Slow ahead, together!” said Rolfe calmly, and as the engines’ rumble died away to a quiet throb, he, too, raised his glasses to study the junks, and their grave-faced occupants, as they glided past.
Once clear, Rolfe ordered an increase of speed again.
“They’re people, not savages, Vincent!” he said coldly, his eyes still on the ships. He felt Vincent’s furious gaze on his neck, and he was conscious of the Quartermaster’s rigid back as he delightedly gathered a tit-bit for telling later on the messdecks.
“But sir!” The words were a protest in themselves. “We had the right of way! They completely disobeyed the rule of the road!”
“Well, we don’t want a collision, do we?” Rolfe tried to keep his voice even, but as he turned to face his subordinate, he saw he had said the wrong thing.
Vincent’s face was a picture of torn emotions, and he half smiled as he answered softly, “I’ve never been in a collision yet, sir!” There was a sort of triumph in his tone, like a child answering back his father for the first time and watching for results.
A nerve jumped in Rolfe’s throat, and he felt as if the sides of the wheelhouse were pressing in on him.
&nb
sp; “Meaning what?” He was amazed at the flatness in his voice.
Vincent’s handsome face coloured beneath the tan, he had expected Rolfe to fly into a rage, or back down completely, but the icy coldness in the Captain’s voice, and the unpitying stare from those grey eyes had unnerved him. “I just thought, sir,” he stammered, “that it’s part of our job to show firmness with these people.”
“At the expense of the ship’s safety?” Rolfe tossed the challenge to Vincent without any change of expression.
“I, I just didn’t know—” began Vincent weakly.
“There are quite a few things you don’t know, Mister! And I’ll trouble you to keep your private opinions to yourself in future!”
The door of the chart room slammed behind him, but it was some time before anyone in the wheelhouse could relax.
Vincent’s eyes were watering with rage, and as he stamped out on to the flying bridge, the Quartermaster began to whistle softly between his teeth. “That told ’im, Ops!” he said to his mate. And they winked at each other knowingly.
Lieutenant Fallow was quite unaware of the worsening atmosphere on the bridge, and was more concerned with his painstaking inspection of the decks to ensure that all was secured for sea. His heart thumped painfully from his exertions, and his limbs felt heavy and sodden.
“Well, sir, looks like being a nice calm trip.” Fallow’s companion was Chief Petty Officer Wilfred Herridge, the Chief Bosun’s Mate, and general foreman, watchdog and advisor to the ship’s company and responsible to Fallow for the running and cleanliness of the ship’s routine. He was a striking man of compact and sturdy build, with a long, leathery face and twinkling blue eyes, and a full mouth which was given to hardness, but for the small crinkles of humour at each corner. Born and bred of good Cornish stock, he looked every inch the professional seaman, and Fallow was, as usual, grateful for the feeling of confidence and determination which this man seemed to radiate.
Herridge was feeling even more cheerful than usual—although, like most of his countrymen he was able to conceal the more obvious appearances—as he was well on the way to achieving yet another well-deserved lift in the service, which, to him, meant everything. Just before sailing, he had been told that he was next on the list for consideration for promotion to commissioned rank, to the position of Bosun, if all went well. And he was quite sure that it would. As he thought of the prospect once more, his heart seemed to swell, and he was again overcome by the eagerness to get this trip over and collect a nice air passage home. He was not interested in leave, his one desire was to get back to Portsmouth and start the new course, with new faces about him, and a new life ahead. He watched his First Lieutenant with a small smile on his lips. He had Fallow to thank for his recommendation in the first place, and it had been almost pathetic to hear his warnings and advice about the pitfalls of wardroom life. He chuckled to himself. No fear of that for me, he thought. Nobody’s going to tell me I’m not as good as he is. He flexed his powerful muscles at the thought. To Fallow, promotion had meant mental defeat; to him, it was another challenge, another interesting game, in which he was going to come out on top.
Send a Gunboat (1960) Page 5
