Send a Gunboat (1960)

by Reeman, Douglas

  “I’ll stay with him, Justin. He looks so ill!” she said simply.

  “Yes.” He turned wearily, as Herridge poked his head round the door.

  He looked at Fallow and then stared at Rolfe. “All the passengers are fit an’ well, sir. Bit shaken up, of course!”

  “I can imagine,” Rolfe answered grimly. “Still, it’s lucky they weren’t at the other end of the ship!”

  “Is the Lieutenant badly hurt, sir?”

  “I can’t tell yet, Chief. But he’s lost a lot of blood!”

  Herridge eased his stiff shoulders. “Lieutenant Vincent told me to tell you we’re passing between the main group of islands now, sir.”

  “Good.”

  There was no more firing. The gunboat was momentarily safe amidst the maze of green humps. The destroyer must soon discover the ruse Rolfe had left behind, and would be thrashing after them. But at the moment they were secure.

  He gripped her shoulders. “Lie down on the deck if it starts to get noisy again!”

  As he returned to the bridge, he saw her kneeling by Fallow’s side, wiping his damp face with her hand.

  Lieutenant Vincent found he could not stay still, and every bone in his body felt loose and unsteady. He continually shook his head and licked his dry lips, and tried to remember what had happened on the forward deck.

  He had left the bridge at Rolfe’s orders, and as he had gone to look for Herridge, he had felt as if he was giving up his life and throwing away his last chance of survival.

  With crazy deliberation he had paced the rocking deck, shutting his ears to the screaming shells and the turmoil of water. He had held his body erect, waiting for the sudden impact.

  A seaman had been cut to ribbons by the lowered boat, but he had felt nothing, not even shock.

  He stared around the wheelhouse, unable to realize he was still alive. I must be going mad, he thought. Nothing seems real any more. I can’t feel anything!

  When he thought of Fallow, he was strangely affected, but he saw Fallow as himself, and felt pity rather than sadness.

  He looked up, startled, as the Captain strode to the open shutters. Rolfe looked gaunt and completely exhausted. His dirty tunic hung open, and his bare chest was pockmarked by the tiny wooden splinters which had whistled up from the torn decks.

  Vincent found himself grinning again. “They built this ship pretty well, didn’t they, sir?”

  Rolfe regarded him calmly. “Just as well!”

  In the dim cabin Fallow stared up at the deckhead, his eyes dark with inner misery. He could feel no pain any more, merely a pricking sensation in his shoulder, like pins-and-needles. He felt as if his body was suspended in space, lighter than air.

  He saw the girl’s brown face close to his and noticed that her huge eyes were brimming with tears.

  That worried Fallow, and he tried to tell her not to cry. But he found that no words came, and that he could not even raise his hand to her hair, which hung close to his cheek.

  He felt himself sinking again into another bank of cloud, the cabin swayed and receded before his eyes. Mary, he thought desperately, what will she do without me? What about the garden, and the rockery I was going to make? Judith’s face had faded to an oval blob, but her presence gave him comfort.

  Poor little Wagtail. I’ve looked after you all this time and now they are trying to destroy you, as they’ve destroyed me! All the light had gone now, but it didn’t matter any more. It was easier to see Mary and the distant liners making for Southampton.

  * * * * *

  The Wagtail’s engine-room was an inferno of noise and steam. Above the straining beat of the remaining engine, Louch listened gloomily to the screech of a hacksaw and the thud of hammers, and tried to read some sound of success.

  He stared at the silent mass of steel and brass, which a short time ago had been a living symbol of his power. Now, deprived of its precious fuel and drive, it lay inert and useless. A Chinese stoker was rubbing the shining shaft with a piece of oiled rag, as if in some mysterious way he was going to set it in motion again.

  Louch thrust his bird-like body away from the warm bulkhead, the very movement sending a fresh stream of sweat down his angry face. He had to do something, anything, to take his mind away from what was happening overhead and around him. He listened to the water sloshing against the hull, and wondered why the firing had stopped. When the five-inch shell had ploughed into the fo’c’sle, and exploded below the waterline, he had thought that the moment dreaded by all ships’ engineers everywhere had arrived. His heart seemed to stick in his throat, as he waited, crouched like a trapped animal, for the bulkhead to burst open and a wall of water to surge in on him. Once that happened, and the savage water reached the boilers, there was no escape. It was said to be a quick death. He shuddered again and spat. Who knew what it was like to be fried alive?

  Herridge was thinking along a similar line of reasoning as he watched the pumps squirting a steady stream of sea-water over the side. It was amazing to think such a small ship could stand so heavy a blow and survive.

  He smiled sardonically. Survive for what? he wondered. Far behind he could still see the oily spindle of smoke rising from the abandoned sampan. Trust the skipper to think of something like that, but perhaps it was only prolonging their agony just a little longer.

  He scratched his chin, watching the small islands skimming past, and feeling the gunboat roll and sway, as she twisted between the threatening sand bars. Sixty miles of islands the skipper had said. But even if they survived that, the open sea still lay between them and safety.

  Rolfe’s head appeared over the top of the scarred bridge. “Check the passengers, Chief!” he called. “Make sure they’re comfortable, and get Mr. Lane out of the Sick Bay and put him with the others. I want ’em all together.”

  Herridge made his way quickly to the storeroom, glad to have something to do. He grimaced as he stepped around the cruelly rejected pile of rags and flesh on the main deck, and lifted the heavy hatch over the twin storerooms.

  In the dim light of a swinging inspection lamp he saw their eyes gleaming whitely, as they turned towards him. They think I’ve come to tell them we are sinking, he thought, and grinned cheerfully.

  “S’all right, everybody, everything’s under control!” He glanced about the wide compartment and had to stoop to avoid crashing his head on the low supports. He saw the white jackets of the stewards as they moved between the stooped forms, adjusting lifejackets and passing around cups of fresh water.

  Laker’s face shone distortedly in the swinging light. “How far have we got? Has the other ship gone away?”

  Herridge shook his head, his eye straying to the pale shape of Ursula Laker. Her long legs were directly beneath the lamp and shone with a disembodied brightness, which fascinated him. She was a fine girl, he mused, well built, and she knew it, too. His thoughts were interrupted by Laker’s demanding voice, and he wearily gave the man his attention.

  “We’ll have a bit more firing in a minute, I expect, sir.” Charles Masters gripped his wife even closer in the darkness, and Herridge softened his tone. “But the Captain knows what he’s about!”

  “Those damned Chinks!” Laker rocked back on his seat with sudden rage. “I’d like to get my hands on some of them!”

  Herridge glanced quickly at the two stewards, but their blank faces told him nothing. “Well, try to remember, sir, that two of them have just been killed up top. Fighting for you,” he added mildly.

  There was a pregnant silence, and Herridge began to mount the ladder. “By the way,” he spoke across their heads, “if you get the order to come on deck. Do it at the rush! And keep together!” He pushed back the hatch and felt the sun hard on his head.

  “There’s no need to throw your weight about!” Laker seemed to be trying to regain his prestige in front of the others.

  Herridge glanced at him stonily. “You’ll do yourself a bit of good to obey orders, sir.” He spoke with flat politeness. “You�
��re next to the magazine!”

  He felt childishly pleased with his lie as he climbed out on to the deck. He stood aside as two seamen carried Lane down into the darkness on a stretcher. Stuck-up bugger, he thought. I hope his daughter hasn’t got any of his ways.

  Rolfe’s eyes were beginning to dance and burn in their sockets, as he stared from the bridge to the islands, and from the rocks to a small feather of spray, which might be hiding a reef.

  He almost jumped as a voice spoke quietly at his elbow.

  “Nice mug of iced beer, Captain-sir?” Chao stood respectfully at his side, his dark eyes tired and fearful. He nevertheless smiled as Rolfe lifted the huge mug to his parched lips, and drank deeply. “Sorry about mug. All wardroom crockery smashed!”

  Rolfe watched the boy affectionately, wondering if he and Judith had really been marooned on a distant rock with this brown elf. “That’s too bad, Chao. But the beer tastes all the better!”

  Chao still waited.

  “Well? What’s on your mind?” Rolfe kept his eye on the nearest strip of beach.

  “Miss Judith. I think we better get her down to deck, Captain-sir! It not safe up here any more!” He glanced around the shambles and fallen wreckage.

  “It’s as safe as the rest of the ship,” he said slowly, “but I am relying on you to keep an eye on her for me!”

  Something of the old smile flashed across the round face. “Very good! I stay up here too then!”

  “That’s what you really wanted, isn’t it?”

  Chao placed the mug carefully on the tray, his features masked in tired gravity. “That is so, Captain-sir.”

  “Two fathoms, sir!” The voice was getting weary and cracked, but Rolfe nodded briefly and raised his glasses to study a small fishing boat which had appeared round one of the beaches. It was being sculled by a thin, bearded man in a wide straw hat. He neither looked up nor slackened his stroke with the long sweep-oar, as the gunboat bore down and passed him.

  Overhead, a white line of gulls circled watchfully above the tiny boat waiting for the fish to appear. It was so peaceful and so strangely beautiful that he felt a lump in his throat. How could anyone begin to understand China?

  Vincent stirred on the other side of the bridge and cleared his throat. “Alter course, sir? I estimate our position to be just to the north-west of the last group. That means we’ve got two more hours of cover to go.” He seemed to be speaking half to himself, and Rolfe watched him thoughtfully.

  Vincent seemed to be making an almost superhuman effort to appear calm and natural, and he felt relieved that the man was trying to help him. “Yes, alter course,” he answered distantly.

  “Port fifteen!” Vincent peered at the compass. “Midships! Steady!”

  The gunboat tugged rebelliously at the rudders, but slowly swung on to the new course.

  “Steady, sir! Course One-eight-five!” The helmsman looked as if he was riveted to the wheel. As if he had been there for ever.

  “Steer One-eight-six!” Vincent chuckled strangely, amused by his own preciseness.

  Rolfe caught his eye and smiled grimly. It did seem rather stupid to imagine that any careful effort of navigation could be of any assistance to them.

  “Two more fishing boats!” the look-out reported. The small wooden craft floated motionless on the glassy sea, their sails folded like the tattered wings of sleeping birds.

  The machine-guns on the bridge swung menacingly towards them, but the harmless vessels drifted past, and bobbed gaily in the gunboat’s wake.

  Food and drink was passed round the ship, the stewards creeping furtively between each group of waiting seamen. Nobody spoke, and few noticed what they had eaten. Their throats became dry almost as soon as they had finished the water, and they knew that, for once, the sun was not solely to blame.

  Rolfe examined the pencilled line across the chart. Their escape line from Santu. It was as if a magnet had drawn them closer and closer to the waiting mainland. He cursed aloud, defying his weakness and imagination. The islands were fading away, and he remembered when he had waited for the fog to lift, so long ago, in the North Sea. He had been searching for a crippled U-Boat, which was hiding in the fog, hanging on to the thread of life.

  The fog had gone, and they had gone in to the kill.

  He stared at the printed shapes of the islands on the chart and realized just how that U-Boat commander must have felt when his cover and protection faded away.

  There was one island, quite apart from the remainder, which would be their last barrier against the destroyer. After that, the sea-bottom shelved down and dropped away to a bottomless cavern. The field would be open then.

  “Tell the guns to prepare to shoot when we clear this group,” he called wearily. “We shall cross to the last island, and although the water is still shallow, it’s a bit deeper than here, and the target will close in a bit more, I think.”

  He heard Vincent passing the instructions and he straightened up, feeling the stiffness in his limbs.

  He listened to the empty shell cases rolling across the gun platform as the ship swung heavily into a sullen roller, and dipped her waterlogged bows with tired resignation. Poor old girl, he thought, it’s unfair to you, as much as the rest of us.

  The islands began to fall away, and they moved into the open stretch of sea with what appeared to be terrible slowness. Unlike the first time, there were no sharp commands, and few sounds of any kind, but for the muffled hammering in the engine-room. Their uneven shadow twisted across the water, and Rolfe could feel every eye on the distant sea and its threatening emptiness.

  “Three fathoms, sir!”

  He pulled the creased chart urgently against the rail and studied the tiny figures denoting the various depths and the positions of the nearest rock formations.

  The sea ahead of the Wagtail was empty and flat, yet the chart showed the continuation of the reef barrier, which seemed to surround most of the islands in grim detail and closely packed profusion.

  He cursed himself for not taking it into consideration earlier. The echo sounder would give little warning of a sudden shelf or rocky crag just beneath the surface. The muscle in his jaw began to twitch, and he dashed the sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand.

  Vincent sucked in his breath in a loud gasp. “There she is, sir! Dead astern!”

  Rolfe plunged to his side, his glasses already to his eyes. He found that he did not need them. The destroyer, frustrated and angered by his decoy, was charging recklessly along the islands, her guns trained inland, covering every inlet and creek. Her high, raked stem was covered by her powerful bow-wave as it cu savagely through the sea. Less than a mile away she seemed to fill the horizon with her plunging shape, and blot out their chance of even reaching the last island.

  The bells rang once more, and the Wagtail’s gun barked viciously overhead. It was pointing practically dead astern, and a hot shock-wave forced its way into the bridge and made Rolfe stagger with its intensity.

  He saw the four guns swing round towards him, and in no time at all, the sea about the Wagtail was a raging torment of boiling water and screaming shells.

  The little gunboat halted in her uneven track as a shell struck her dead on the superstructure.

  It penetrated the seamen’s messdeck and exploded with a deafening roar inside the small steel compartment. For a few moments the ship vibrated and cracked, as a hail of white-hot splinters whined and banged in every direction, and pieces of heavy equipment were hurled high into the air, with the ease of a boy throwing stones.

  Something rolled noisily across the Battery deck and clattered over the side. Rolfe saw that it was the barrel of the Oerlikon gun. It had been directly above the explosion, so it was pointless to look for the gunner.

  Chase could still be heard shouting and cursing above the noise of burning woodwork and exploding ammunition, while his men tried vainly to spot the destroyer through the billowing pall of smoke, which was rising above the decks in an impenetrab
le cloud.

  Rolfe heard Herridge, too, as he led a party of seamen with fire extinguishers and axes towards the blaze, and watched their puny figures swallowed up in the smoke.

  The helmsman was retching helplessly, but grimly holding to the wheel, his eyes smarting and pouring in the fumes which were rapidly filling the wheelhouse.

  “Open all the bridge shutters! Vincent, check with the engine-room and report damage to hull!” He noticed that the destroyer had stopped using her main armament, probably because of the smoke which was masking her target, but his heart felt numb as he heard the rattle of machine-guns and the lashing of steel hail along the gunboat’s hull.

  “Hull not making any more water!” Vincent’s eyes rolled as a burst of bullets hammered at the bridge. “But Chief says that the port fuel tank is damaged and we’re leaking fuel behind us all the time!”

  Rolfe looked for the last island, but it was as far away as before, jeering at him beneath the sun.

  “Very good. Get the passengers on deck. Midships, starboard side. That’ll give them a bit of cover from the machine-gun fire.”

  Vincent faltered at the voice pipe. “Does that mean we’re baling out, sir?”

  “It means, do as you’re told!” barked Rolfe, his body tensed as another burst of firing echoed and clanged around them.

  Even if we shook her off now, he thought, we’d never make it. They’d just follow our trail. A nice clear track of oil, with the prize at the end of it!

  “Herridge has gone to get the people on deck, sir.” Vincent’s voice was a mere whisper.

  Rolfe nodded, his slitted eyes watching their remaining mast drag alongside, held only by the trailing mess of stays and halyards. He raised his voice harshly above the din.

  “Chao! Get Mr. Fallow in here! See if you can get a lifejacket on him!”

  It didn’t really matter if he had a lifejacket or not, he thought, not any more. But Judith would be kept busy until the end. Perhaps too busy to see what had happened.

  Herridge fought his way over the twisted plates, feeling their heat through his shoes and marvelling that the ship was still beneath him.