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

by Alexander Fullerton

  The gunner’s “wingers” had refilled all the Oerlikon magazines; the bin was full and there were several on the deck beside it. They’d also brought up several cases of loose ammunition for late refilling operations. A bosun’s store in the foc’sl had been in use as a magazine, but it had now been sealed off, like other spaces for’ard, so as to provide some buoyancy as the flooding pulled her down. So they’d got their stuff out of it while they’d had the chance.

  Paul said to Withinshaw, “Should’ve had some of that wheat down there.”

  “Ah.” The fat man nodded. “We’d ’a been laffin’, then.” He began to tell him again about the trip he’d made from Halifax. The bulk cargo of wheat had shifted, apparently, but it hadn’t stopped him laffin’.

  They’d been unmolested for several hours, but dusk wasn’t far ahead and nor were the island bases of Lampedusa and Linosa. If the ship floated long enough to get that far. Devenish and his fire-fighters had kept the fire away from the high-octane stowage, and on the starboard side they’d actually got it out, but the full-scale dousing operation meant diverting pump-power from the flooded spaces for’ard, and the rate of inflow had substantially increased. It seemed to Paul a rather silly arrangement of pumps and plumbing, that you couldn’t do both jobs at the same time, but a ship like this one hadn’t been designed to cope with action damage, simultaneous fire and flooding. As the third mate, Pratt, had commented, you couldn’t have it both ways—“as the bishop said to the actress”—and the choice, anyway, wasn’t likely to be either the bishop’s or the actress’s or their own, but the Luftwaffe’s. The bombers would be busy elsewhere, he supposed, but they’d surely be back. When they arrived, the only opposition they’d meet would be from the Santa Eulalia’s many guns and from the Montgovern’s foc’sl Oerlikons. All the after guns had been knocked out and their crews killed either by the bombs or in the fire that resulted from them. A few survivors, alive but suffering from first-degree burns, were in the hands of Dennis Brill in the saloon. Harry Woods was among the missing—who would have gone over the stern, Paul guessed, if they hadn’t been killed outright. They’d have been either killed, or incapacitated and caught in the flames, or they’d have jumped. Jumping would have meant drowning, because nothing had been visible aft during the worst of the fire, but most men, he guessed, would choose drowning in preference to burning. It brought you back, if you had a sense of humour like Beale’s, to Pratt’s Alternative.

  Paul hadn’t been aft. He remembered very clearly, from Narvik, what the results of battle looked like, and he couldn’t have helped or done anyone any good. But he felt stupid. Everyone had told him and the others how slim the chances were of getting through to Malta. You’d listened, not doubted the facts about previous convoys or that on the face of it the hazards on this trip would be the same. But you hadn’t really taken it in, not in real and personal terms, you’d never recognized the probability that you’d burn or drown. Beale had known, though: Beale, with his dark-sided humour, knew now.

  When he thought about Woods, he saw it very clearly. Woods had expected to be in Malta in a day or so. Right up to the last second he’d still have been expecting that. There’d be this danger, that danger, but eventually you’d get through it and you’d be there. But Harry Woods would not be there. Most likely Paul Everard wouldn’t either. He told himself, That’s real, it’s true.

  So there’d be no letter to his father. And that, he told himself, was the only truly ill effect his death would bring.

  The weight of water in the ship’s forepart, the flooded bow’s resistance to forward movement, had cut her speed to about five knots. The Santa Eulalia had reduced speed to stay with her, and was still abeam. It was generous of the American, he thought, to be doing this. Her guns would help to shield the Montgovern, who was otherwise more or less defenceless, and it was comforting to know she was close by in case they had to abandon ship. (When they had to, Paul corrected.) But from the Santa Eulalia’s angle the Montgovern’s company was now a liability. There was smoke coming out of her, there might be a glow from her fire still showing after dark, and there was the fact that moving faster would get one out of the enemy’s back yard more quickly … He thought that if he’d been Mackeson—or Straight, whichever of them had the decision to make—he’d have suggested to the American captain that he should push on at his best speed, leave the Montgovern to take her chances. It ought to be a matter of judging priorities, he thought, cutting your losses; there’d surely be a better chance of getting that one cargo into Malta if the faster, undamaged ship pressed on alone.

  The smoke wasn’t rising, as it had earlier, only lying in a spreading trail above the wake. There wasn’t as much swell now, and there was hardly any breeze at all, but it was still extremely cold.

  McNaught muttered, “Here’s y’ whatyacall ’im.”

  Mackeson. Old Bongo, coming for a visit. Paul stood up. Withinshaw was asleep, swathed in tarpaulin, but Beale came aft from the bow where he’d been smoking and staring down at the froth.

  “Well, Everard!”

  “Hello, sir.”

  Mackeson nodded to Beale and the others. His eye fell on the slumbering mass that was Withinshaw. “That one all right?” Beale said, “It’s ’ow ’e likes to be.”

  “No accounting for tastes. Deck must be damn cold.” Mackeson nodded towards the Oerlikons. He looked exhausted, ten years older than he’d looked two days ago. “These are all we’ve got between ourselves and perdition, now. We’re relying heavily on you chaps.”

  “Reckon we’ll get there, do you, sir?” Beale’s grin had something behind it, Paul noticed. He’d grinned like that when he’d been taking the Micky out of him: it was the same line, the same amused contempt for false optimism. Mackeson said, “The thing is, we have to keep going. As long as we’re afloat and moving in the right direction, we are getting there.” He noticed Beale’s wag of the head, wordless sarcasm saying something like That’s the stuff to give ’em … “I’m not saying we will get there, but I am saying we still have a chance.”

  Withinshaw sat up, staring at him. He transferred his blinks to Beale. “What’s this, then?”

  Paul said quickly, “This is the other Oerlikon gunner, sir. Withinshaw.”

  “Sorry to disturb you,Withinshaw.” Mackeson nodded to him. “What I came for really was to say we’ve seen the pair of you doing some nice shooting, a few times.”

  “That would ’a been me.” The fat man jerked his head, indicating Beale. “Killick’s no fookin’ use.”

  Mackeson laughed. He and Paul walked for’ard, up into the bow. The liaison officer stood looking down at the foam pushing out around it. “Not much freeboard now, is there?” He was right: when the time came to leave her, it wouldn’t be much of a jump. Mackeson added, “Frankly, there’s very little chance she’ll last the night through. We’ve got to try, that’s all.”

  “Yes.”

  “Every cargo’s so darned important. And miracles do happen. I know, I’ve seen some. What seemed like miracles, anyway. So we’ll stick to her as long as she’ll float and move.”

  “Isn’t it surprising they’ve left us alone this long, sir?”

  “Probably got targets nearer to them. Anyway at sunset, pretty soon now, we’ll be less than thirty miles north of Lampedusa … Those fellows seem sound enough?”

  “They’re—very individualistic … Sorry about the gunners aft, sir. Woods and all his—”

  “I think the only way to look at it is that the rest of us are bloody lucky, Everard.”

  He thought, So far … He asked, “Any more news of the Italian cruisers that were reported at sea, sir?”

  Mackeson glanced at him sharply. Then, with a shake of the head, away again. “No. None.”

  Sunset came in technicolor: pink and gold and lilac, the pink deepening to blood red and the lilac to mauve and black. With the day fading and the air getting still colder, what had been a smoke-trail was only vapour, a shimmer against the light.
There was an exchange of signals. A long message from the Montgovern was answered by the Santa Eulalia with “Negative, and let’s just keep praying.”

  “What’s that about, then?”

  He told Withinshaw, “I wouldn’t know.” All you could know was as much as you could see around you. He didn’t even know whether the fire was still a danger, aft, but he could see for himself that she was about six inches lower for’ard than she had been at the time of Mackeson’s visit. He came back to the Oerlikons, from another visit to the bow. The light was leaking away and the colours astern were deepening, but the two gunners were still lounging around, smoking and chatting with the younger men. McNaught chewed steadily. Paul didn’t want to have to tell Beale and Withinshaw to stand-to. Contrary to all the precepts and principles that had been dinned into him during his training, lectures on such subjects as “Power of Command” and “Leadership,” it was plain to him that his relationship with these DEMS characters depended largely on not giving orders. They accepted him because he didn’t try to, and if he’d ignored the tacit agreement they’d have responded by ignoring him. Then his usefulness here, small as it was, would disappear altogether.

  It was a relief when Beale stood up and stretched, and told Withinshaw through a yawn, “Best start lookin’ like sailors, Art.” He threw Paul that same half-smile, the sardonic look, as he moved to his gun and unclamped it.

  Mackeson heard Gosling shout, and then the whistle. He went out quickly into the starboard wing. “What’s up?” “Surface craft—green eight-oh, sir!”

  The spark of a white bow-wave caught his eye, and he settled his binoculars on it. E-boat. There was another to the left of it and both were bow-on, attacking. E-boats if they were German, Mas-boats if they were Italian, and it made not a shred of difference. He shouted at Humphrey Straight through the bridge window, “E-boats attacking, starboard beam. Will you come hard a-starboard, captain?” Then—“Signalman!”

  “Sir?”

  “Make to the Yank: E-boats starboard.” Over the front barrier of the wing he saw the foc’sl-head gunners standing by, alerted by Gosling’s whistle. Everard looking up this way to see what was happening. Until she’d swung her bow towards the attackers, only one of those Oerlikons would bear. The Santa Eulalia had all the firepower: these bastards should have come from the other side. But they’d come from the Lampedusa side, of course. Even closer, just a few miles away, was the smaller island of Linosa. They’d quite likely been lurking there all day, anchored inshore in the knowledge that some easy kills were coming right towards them.

  She’d begun to swing, at last. It was to avoid torpedoes as much as to bring both Oerlikons to bear that he’d suggested the turn to starboard. He had the E-boats in his glasses again. No—only one of them: and it was mostly bow-wave he was looking at. But where the hell … “Ah. There you are.” He’d said it aloud. From behind him Humphrey Straight bawled: “Midships the wheel!” He had Pratt, third mate, in there; Devenish was still occupied below decks, getting that fire out. The second E-boat had shot away eastward in a wide, sweeping turn: moving across the line of sight as it was now, you could see it was doing about forty knots.

  The Oerlikons opened fire. The first E-boat was moving slightly right. It had altered to port, to put itself on the Montgovern’s starboard bow. The other—he swivelled, and focused on it—was creaming round on the other side, to the east. That one would be out ahead of the Santa Eulalia, who’d held to her course and was consequently on the Montgovern’s port quarter. The first one opened fire. A machine-gun firing tracer: yellow, twin streams of it lifting, slow-moving as it reached towards them, then accelerating to meteor-like flashes as it passed—at bridge level, for’ard. It fired in short bursts, not a continuous stream like the Montgovern’s starboard Oerlikon was spouting. Straight had ordered another turn to starboard, to avoid any torpedo that might already have been fired and also to bring the other gun to bear. The E-boat jinked, came on again, coming in almost on the beam. Unless its skipper was dim-witted he must have realized by now that this ship had no weapons anywhere except on her foc’sl-head. Mackeson heard the Santa Eulalia’s guns in action, as the Montgovern began responding to her rudder: slowly, and the damage for’ard wasn’t making her any easier to handle. The E-boat was tearing in to close quarters, two double streams of tracer leaping from it. The Montgovern’s starboard Oerlikon found the range and began to hit. You could see the explosive shells bursting, and one of the two guns stopped firing—and so did the Oerlikon. Jammed … The enemy’s bow-wave high, brilliant white, wide-spreading on a surface turning black with the fading of the colour in the west: the E-boat swung hard a-port, dipping its gunwale to the sea as it spun around, one machine-gun slashing viciously at the foc’sl-head at point-blank range and unopposed, and at about that moment the torpedo hit the Montgovern in her starboard quarter. The crash of the underwater explosion like a kick in the belly of the ship triggered a voice in Mackeson’s tired brain. It was his own, and it said, End of the road, old son … The Oerlikon had started up again but the E-boat, roaring from left to right down the ship’s side as she still swung, was already escaping from the field of fire. He heard water drenching down across the stern—it would be from the torpedo’s explosion—then tracer was bright in his face, the glass side of the bridge shattered, Gosling collapsed and flames were licking round the paintwork at the back end of the bridge. The foc’sl gun had ceased fire, and so had the E-boat after that final, vicious burst. It had turned away, swinging its stern towards the Montgovern, a pile of foam moving at forty knots. At Mackeson’s elbow the signalman shouted, “One’s on fire, sir. The Yank must’ve got it.” The Montgovern was listing to starboard, and her engines had stopped.

  Paul was at the port-side Oerlikons, leaning into the shoulder-rests with the gun cocked, his fingers on the trigger and the weapon’s long, slim snout trained out to where a feather of white had been his last glimpse of the E-boat. It might be finished, going home, but with any luck it might come back, too. The list on the ship made his stance difficult. He was a couple of feet higher than Beale was on the other side, and the slanting deck was also slippery. The listing process seemed to have stopped, for the moment: half a minute ago he’d been expecting her to carry on, roll right over. This was Withinshaw’s gun. Withinshaw’s head had been smashed in in that last but one burst of machine-gun fire. The fact that the E-boat had still been hanging around out there gave him hope that it would come back to finish them off. He and Beale were waiting for the flicker of bow-wave to show up again. He wanted the pleasure, the relief, the deep joy there’d be in blasting it. McNaught, at his elbow, complained that it was his job to take over this gun when the number one gunner copped it. Paul told him, “Sure. Hang on. You can have it, in a minute.” He thought, Come on, come on, or we’ll sink before you get here!

  Gunfire, out there on the bow. Biggish guns, percussions cracking hard across the water. But the American was astern somewhere. Surely, this ship had reversed course and was pointing west, back the way she’d come from, and the Santa Eulalia had held on? Ahead, there was a flash, a yellow streak that shot upwards from sea-level and then died down into a glimmer of burning on the sea. Gunfire had ceased. Now a white light sparked, expanded, lengthened into a long, harsh finger that swung and fastened on the Montgovern’s bow. From the north: a ship from the north, with a searchlight on them. He didn’t think E-boats had searchlights, not of that size. It swung aft, touched the bridge, came back for’ard. At that moment, blinded by its glare, he felt the ship move, her stem rising in a sudden jolting lurch as the list became a steady roll to starboard.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  In the southwest Pacific it was about ninety minutes short of dawn. It was pitch dark, and Nick could smell the mangroves. He said into the telephone, “Steady as you go.”