All the Drowning Seas: The Nicholas Everard World War II Saga Book 3

by Alexander Fullerton

  On the other hand, the French had only seen the Montgovern forging on southward across the Gulf. They hadn’t seen the subsequent turn to port, so the enemy couldn’t know where she was now. With the surviving ships of the convoy fifty miles closer to them—closer to Malta, too—and with this bad visibility as well, the Luftwaffe might not be inclined to waste time searching for stragglers.

  Not that this meant the Montgovern could have any real chance of getting to Malta, Paul thought. Mackeson had been talking sense. A ship alone, making only a few knots, already sinking and with the best part of two hundred miles of enemy-infested sea to cover … You’d back a donkey to win the Derby, he thought, if you’d back those chances.

  Withinshaw said, “Once fog lifts, we’ve fookin’ ’ad it.”

  Nobody argued with him, because that was also true. The Montgovern was carrying out a clumsy zigzag, altering about twenty degrees each side of the mean course to make submarine attack less easy. It reduced the speed of advance, of course: but what tidal stream there was here—according to McCall—was running in their favour. McCall reckoned they’d be making-good about seven and a half knots; so ETA Malta, given some sort of magic wand to keep enemies away, could still be tomorrow forenoon.

  Like an owl and a pussycat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat. Malta tomorrow forenoon was about that believable. He began to sing about the owl and the pussycat, and Beale was looking round at him as if he couldn’t stand it, when they heard an aircraft engine. The droning German kind, the note with the throb in it. Paul, startled, shouted “Stand by!”

  He’d yelled it without thinking; it hadn’t been at all necessary. Being tired made one stupid, and jumpy. Withinshaw had thrown him a look of mock alarm, and Beale, hunched at his gun, looked round and grinned sardonically. The sound of the plane was drawing ahead. He thought it had flown up the starboard side, and it was moving from right to left now as it crossed ahead. Then it was in sight—ahead—a big float plane, a Dornier, he thought. It could see them too, of course. Withinshaw opened fire, aiming out over the port bow with about fifteen degrees of elevation on the gun. The ship was under helm, swinging to a new leg of the zigzag, and the Dornier was already on the beam. The midships Bofors, McCall’s gun, began firing at it. You saw it sporadically, flying in and out of fog patches. Then it was out of sight, and Withinshaw’s gun fell silent.

  Beale muttered. “Recce plane.” The Bofors amidships and aft were still firing. Paul went to the starboard rail to look back, expecting it to appear on that other quarter, but it didn’t and the after guns ceased fire now, having lost it in the fog astern.

  Beale muttered, “Know where to find us now, don’t they?”

  An hour later, the Ju88s came.

  All hands had breakfasted. Devenish had set up a cafeteria system, so each man collected his own food from the galley and ate it at his action station. Short was the last of the foc’sl-head gang to return with his mug of tea and mutton sandwiches, and he informed them that the depth of water in number one hold was now more than eleven feet. Harry Willis, fourth mate, was the ship’s officer responsible for that hold, and he’d just been along with the bosun to take soundings. They’d been in the food queue at the galley, and the bosun had said the leaking into number two was getting worse.

  Everyone looked gloomy as well as tired. Paul said, echoing Woods’s earlier remark, “But we’re still afloat and still moving. If we’d been with the convoy last night—”

  “Ah.” Beale nodded. “Reckon they took a clobberin’, all right.”

  Paul hadn’t told them about there being only three ships left in the convoy. When you remembered that at sunset last night there’d been eleven …

  McNaught grumbled. “There’s nae sugar in this fuckin’ tea.”

  “Sugar?” Withinshaw looked round at him. “You’re lucky there’s tea in it, y’ Scotch twit!”

  He glanced at Paul, winking, inviting him to share in the joke, but Gosling’s whistle shrilled from the bridge wing. They were at the guns in a rush of movement and a Ju88 from wave-top level was lifting over them in a scream of engine-noise, bombs tumbling from its racks as it swooped across the ship and banked away to the right with the mist already folding round it. One bomb struck somewhere aft, and the others went into the sea to starboard, the first one very close and the other two farther out. The guns on the ship’s stern had got off a few rounds but these Oerlikons hadn’t fired until the attack had been over and that first bomb had burst on her. Now a second Junkers, again from sea-level and the direction of the Tunisian coast, was roaring over with all the guns at it this time, tracer pastel-shaded in the fog and one of the bomber’s engines smoking: flames too, that engine and the wing on fire, black smoke trailing, rising in the machine’s own upward-curving path. Beale’s and Withinshaw’s guns were blazing at its tail as it tilted away to starboard: its bombs had gone into the sea. The Montgovern was slowing: her engines had stopped, and smoke was pouring up astern—from the area of the boat deck, he thought. That second bomber had gone into the sea nose-down and then toppled over on to its back, spray raining down in a white circle around it. Everything seemed quiet, suddenly; the regular thud-thudding of the engines had stopped, and although you hadn’t noticed it before you missed it now. You were left with the noise of the sea against the ship’s hull, the sound of flames as the fire took hold amidships, and the fading engine-throb of the Junkers that had done the damage.

  Mick McCall was dead. Splinters or blast from that bomb had wiped out the crew of the midships Bofors, and he’d been with them at the time.

  Fighting the fire would be easier now the engineers had got the ship under way again. It had been the near-miss, the second bomb in the stick, that had stopped her. She was making about six knots now. The fire would be more easily controllable, and a lot less dangerous, because the wind from ahead would hold it back. Until they’d got her moving it had been touch-and-go whether they’d manage to keep the flames from spreading into the bridge deck where the cased aviation spirit was stowed. Devenish was in charge of the fire-fighting.

  Astern, smoke rose to a height of a couple of hundred feet, hung there like a marker telling the enemy where they’d find an easy target. Obviously they were looking for stragglers, or those two Junkers 88s wouldn’t have been hunting fifty miles away from the convoy’s track.

  Fog hung around in patches, but visibility averaged about two miles.

  The boats amidships, those near the for’ard end of the boat deck, had been turned out on their davits. Not because anyone was thinking of abandoning ship—yet—but to get them clear of the fire. Devenish had men hosing them down, so their timber wouldn’t catch from sparks. Paul had seen it when he’d been back to the bridge to offer his services as a fire-fighter, but he’d been told to stay on the foc’sl-head: Mackeson had warned, “That won’t be the last attack we’ll see today, you know.”

  You could forget about arriving in Grand Harbour tomorrow morning. Even if there were no more attacks, at this speed it was going to take more like thirty-six hours than twenty-four. And as the ship was on fire, with twelve feet of water in her forepart, it was difficult to look far ahead.

  Paul told the DEMS men, “We’re lucky, in one way. If it had been a clear day like yesterday—without this fog to cover us?”

  “There’s some as like to look on the bright side.” Beale said it to Withinshaw, and they both laughed. There was no malice in it: he was labelling Paul an optimist just as he’d labelled Withinshaw a bigamist. As far as Beale was concerned, either was good for a laugh. Paul passed his cigarettes round, and Short gave him a light for his own; he said, standing back from it, “I wonder what we’ll get for lunch?” Withinshaw suggested, “Soup an’ a mutton fookin’ sandwich, o’ course.” He added, “Mutton-bone soup, an’ all.”

  There was some excitement in the bridge, activity out in the port wing. They all stood up and moved so they’d have a view of what was happening. Mackeson was out there, with his signal
man. Then the signalman was out of sight but you could hear the rattle of an Aldis lamp. Humphrey Straight appeared, with binoculars at his eyes: behind and above that sturdy silhouette, smoke still billowed up.

  “Some bastard’s flashin’!”

  McNaught was pointing out on the port bow: there was a flash there just as Paul turned to look. An answering flash—to a message that was being passed from the Montgovern. From down here you couldn’t see what sort of ship it was, but Paul guessed it would be the Hunt which had visited them before. But then, in a patch of better visibility, he made out the outlines of a freighter, and he thought he recognized her.

  “Is that the Stars and Stripes?”

  It was. Which made her the Santa Eulalia.

  Beale said, “Got on fire, didn’t she?”

  She’d been on fire at one time. According to McCall, she’d been in danger of blowing up. Last night, it must have been. One memory of convoy action in the last day or two was very much like another, they’d merged in Paul’s mind into a montage of guns, bombs, aircraft, dusks and dawns and stolidly plodding ships, with a mental image of Malta in the distance like a mirage … But it would be good to have company now, and the DEMS men were immediately much happier. As the ships drew closer to each other they were waving and cheering, and Americans on the Santa Eulalia’s upper deck were waving back. You could see the blackened area where the fire had been.

  Mackeson sent Gosling round with the information that the American ship had been directed to this rendezvous by Ainsty, the Hunt who’d been looking for stragglers in this area. She was now looking for a third one, and hoped to get them all together before nightfall.

  Gosling looked ill. Paul asked him, “How about our fire, or fires?”

  “Getting the better of it, they say. But my God it stinks, back there.” The smoke did seem to be thinning. But so was the mist: the circle of visibility was growing rapidly. Paul said something about it, and Gosling left, to return to his lookout job. He was seasick, Paul guessed, like the airman. This quite gentle but continuous rhythmic rolling was probably worse for them than a really rough sea might have been. As he turned back, he found Beale watching him with a peculiar, half-suppressed grin. Beale said, “Fog’s about gone. Be clear as a bell soon.”

  “So?”

  “Well—lucky, aren’t we? I mean, we can see where we’re going, like.” He began to let the laugh out: and the others, catching on, were also sniggering. Beale spluttered, choking with amusement, “Gawd, ain’t we bloody fortunate?”

  Paul said, “I don’t know about fortunate, but you’re a bunch of idiots, all right.” Over Beale’s head, high up and still a long way off, he saw the Stukas. It was just the first glimpse of them that told him they were Stukas: there’d been nothing he could have explained in terms of shape or features, and they were no more than specks; but they were, undoubtedly, Stukas. Withinshaw was saying, “Don’t mind Ron—’e likes to ’ave a go, like.”

  “He can have a go at them, in a minute.” He put two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. It was a better noise than Gosling could have produced. The signalman appeared at the front of the port-side wing. Paul shouted, and pointed. Then someone else was blowing a whistle; but the American was ahead of them, there was a red warning flag at that yardarm already, and men were ready at her guns. The two ships were steering the same course, parallel to each other and four hundred yards apart, and the Montgovern seemed to have built up her speed to something like the previous eight knots. He wished, as he pushed the strap of his tin hat under his chin and watched the Staffel of ten or twelve Ju87s growing very slowly up the sky, that he had a gun he could use himself.

  But they were changing direction. They’d appeared on a course that would have brought them from Sicily, and now, with some miles still to cover, the mosquito-like objects were altering away … No—they were dividing. Some going left, some right.

  “Splittin’ up.” Beale glanced round from his gun. Paul nodded. They’d circle, he supposed, anyway separate, so as to attack from different directions. Against two slow-moving, virtually helpless merchantmen. The bastards had it made, the way they liked it. Nazi schoolgirls could have done it, but that lot would go home and be given Iron Crosses … It seemed odd, all the same, to be starting their deployment at such a distance.

  Whatever tactics they adopted, a few of them were bound to land bombs on these ships. When there were only close-range weapons to fight them off with.

  “Twelve, d’you make it?”

  Withinshaw, to Beale. Beale answered, “Too bloody many, any road.” He looked round at Paul again: “Fam’ly man ’ere can’t swim. Would you credit it?”

  The far-off Stukas were now in two entirely separate groups, flying in opposite directions. It didn’t seem to make sense. Nor did what Beale had just said. Paul asked Withinshaw, “Is he joking again?”

  “Not a fookin’ stroke, I can’t.”

  “Did you ever try to learn?”

  “Never seemed to take to it. I reckon me bones is too ’eavy.”

  Beale said “Bones!” and laughed. Then: “What’s this monkey business?”

  Paul was wondering, too. The Stuka group to the left had seemed to be motionless, static in mid-air: then he realized—they were circling, turning yet again, way out there over the horizon. He wondered if they might be waiting for other forces to join up with them—more of their own kind, or torpedo aircraft, for the sort of multiple attack they’d mustered once or twice before this. It would make sense, he supposed: this close to Sicily they were in enormous strength, and after their successes of last night they mightn’t have so many targets left, so they could afford to make sure of each one they found.

  It struck him for the first time as a serious proposition that perhaps not even one ship out of the sixteen who’d passed through the Gibraltar Strait three days ago would reach Malta. Such a huge effort, for a total loss. And what happened to Malta, then? Surrender?

  It was unthinkable. He found he was looking at Withinshaw, and angry with him for not being able to swim. If that was true, and not another childish leg-pull. He told him. “If you really can’t swim, and we look like sinking, you’d better hightail it aft and make sure of getting a place in a boat.”

  “These lads’ll ’old me up.” The fat man’s eyes stayed on the Stukas. He’d meant Short and McNaught would hold him up. McNaught said, “Aye. Wi’ a block an’ tackle.”

  Two of the Stukas, tiny at that distance, were plummeting like hawks. Beale shouted, “Some other bugger they’re after!”

  Soundless, and remote. At the bottom of their dives they were out of sight, either over the rim of the horizon or in the haze obscuring it. More going down now. None of them reappeared: they must have flown off at low level, Paul guessed. That area of haze was darkening and swelling, like smoke.

  Beale said, “Some poor sod’s copping it.”

  “Bastards.” Withinshaw spat. “Dirty fookin’ bastards.”

  The smoke-cloud rose, black, mushrooming. After what seemed to have been a long interval they heard the deep rumble of an explosion.

  That quick, he thought. That easy for them. A ship alone, probably. Stopped, broken down, the easiest of targets. This one and the Santa Eulalia wouldn’t be much different.

  “Us next, d’you reckon?”

  Beale was asking him. Half-turned from the Oerlikon, with a fresh cigarette in his mouth and one hand feeling for a match. Withinshaw pointed: “Us now, Ron, could be.” The group of Stukas who’d separated to the right were still up there, still circling. Their movement at the moment was from right to left. Watching them, Paul saw that movement stop. They were flying either away now, or towards: from such a distance it would be a minute or two before you could be sure.

  Withinshaw, his bulky frame resting against the shoulder-pieces of his gun and his eyes fixed on the Stuka formation, was mumbling a private litany: “Fookin’ soddin’ murderin’ bastards …” Paul detected the small upward tendency, the slight
lift of those bombers against the greyish background which told him they were approaching, not departing. Beale had seen it too. He took one long drag at his newly-lit cigarette, and flicked it arcing over the starboard rail.

  Mackeson counted five Stukas. In the haze out on the port beam there was nothing to see now. There’d been a glow, just before the explosion, but no outline of any ship. After the explosion, black smoke had hung there, slowly changing shape as it broke up. Now there was nothing—except five Stukas who hadn’t emptied their bomb racks yet.

  Straight had asked him a few minutes ago whether he still thought the Hunt, Ainsty, would be coming back for them. He’d answered that if she didn’t he doubted if it would be her captain’s fault …The Stukas were close now, rising overhead, as menacing and unpleasant as vultures. Any second now, the leaders would be tipping over into their dives, and he’d have given a lot to have had that Hunt here with her high-angle four-inch.

  One was diving on the Santa Eulalia. By the sound of it, another might well be coming down on the Montgovern, but he couldn’t see it from inside the bridge. The Oerlikons on the foc’sl-head were both engaging the American’s attacker, but the guns aft had opened up as well. He muttered to Straight, “Going to have a look at this,” and put his tin hat on as he went out into the wing. The American’s guns were all in action, a roar of noise and tracer flooding up through smoke to meet the diving Junkers. Junkers plural: there were two going for her now. And there was another coming down astern; he’d noticed that the leading edges of its wings were painted yellow, then his attention was on the single bomb that looked as if it was rocking, wobbling in the air as it fell away, slow-moving at first as the pilot began to drag his bomber’s nose up. He didn’t see how it could possibly miss. Another bomb had burst in the sea ahead of the Santa Eulalia: her guns—rocket-launchers too—were barraging under the nose of the second attacker. Mackeson felt the shock of the bomb hitting and bursting aft. He called to Straight, telling him the ship had been hit at the after end of the boat deck. Devenish was sprinting for the ladder, and Straight had taken over the conning of the ship. A Stuka was spinning, in flames, off on the far side of the American, but two were still to come and it looked as if both had picked on the Montgovern. They always went for the one that was already hurt. It was the jackal mentality, and one’s contempt for it was the greater for being on the receiving end of it. In fact the Stuka pilots weren’t being stupid: the Santa Eulalia’s defensive barrage was twice as effective as this ship’s. The rising note of the first bomber’s engine-scream rose above the cacophony of Bofors, Oerlikons, Brens and whatever the American’s light guns were: those were adding to the umbrella above the Montgovern now. There was a fire aft, he knew, but he was watching these last two bombers coming, and one bomb was already on its way. Staring up under the rim of his tin hat and through a mass of tracer-streams roofing the ship in a lattice-work of explosive brilliance, he saw the slant of the falling missile and shouted, “Miss!” The shout was inaudible and he had his hands in his reefer pockets with their fingers crossed, in case he’d misjudged it. He hadn’t—not that one—and it went into the sea thirty yards clear, to starboard. But the second one was a different matter: he knew in the last second before it hit that it was going to, and its bone-shaking explosion was in the after well deck. The possibility of reaching Malta changed in that moment of impact from being remote to non-existent. It was the chance of the ship’s survival even until nightfall that became remote. The Stuka had been hit; it was trailing smoke and its engine was coughing in uneven bursts as it banked away to starboard, away from the American guns on the other side. The foc’sl Oerlikons followed it, and he thought one of them was hitting too. At any rate the Junkers was done for: it had jack-knifed downwards, and the sea flung up a white shroud around it as it hit and cartwheeled. The Montgovern’s afterpart was solid flame, the roar and crackle of it taking over as her guns and the American’s fell silent.