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

by Alexander Fullerton

  Malta sixty-five miles away.

  High on the port beam—Stukas. Paul had only just spotted them when Ainsty opened fire at them with her four-inch HA guns.

  Sixty-five miles at five knots: thirteen hours. It was now just after eight. So ETA Malta—Stukas and others permitting—might be 2100 hours this evening?

  Stukas permitting … Ainsty’s time-fused shells, opening black against pale grey sky and turning immediately into brown smears on the wind, lined the Stukas’ approach. Eight—no, ten of them, all in one group. He’d looked round, checking that all the other guns were manned and pointing the right way. Now he settled at his own, straddling his feet and pressing his shoulders into the curved rests. He pulled back the cocking lever, felt and heard the first round slide and click into the breech. Eight o’clock here, he thought—remembering what Simpson had told him about Defiant, that she had gone east—would be eight hours plus six, therefore 2:00 in the afternoon, in the Java Sea. The mind reached to what one knew, in sober recognition of reality, Beale-style reality, might very soon be unreachable.

  Come on, Stukas …

  By noon he’d lost count of the number of attacks. Nearly all had been by Ju88s, only three by Stukas. There’d been plenty of near-missing. All three ships, at times, had been hidden from the others by bombs bursting around them. The red flag had just run up the Ainsty’s yardarm again, and Paul was remembering Jack Everard telling him that in the Crete battle there’d been occasions when ships had been under air attack continuously, with no intervals, from dawn to dusk. By that comparison, he told himself, this wasn’t anything to write home about. You did get moments in which to draw breath, look around, smoke a cigarette.

  It was bad enough, though. The attacks got into your mind, after a while. You had the images of diving aircraft, noise of guns and bombs there all the time, like some internal film running which you couldn’t stop. Like the kind of replay-dreaming that you got sometimes, after some daytime task of a repetitive nature, the half-asleep brain playing it over and over …

  Low on the port bow: torpedo aircraft. Real, not imagined. Italians: Savoia Marchetti 79s. Withinshaw’s voice croaked in his mind, Bastards. Fookin’, soddin’ bastards … Ainsty was cracking on speed and heading straight out towards them, a mound of foam piling under her stern as she charged at high speed towards the closely-grouped flight of torpedo-bombers. Her for’ard four-inch opened up. She looked small from here, stern-on and with all that foam around her, twin four-inch hammering and shell-bursts opening, low to the sea, under the attackers’ noses.

  One was in flames, slithering down; a sheet of water sprang up where it went in. Another was banking away, its torpedo falling askew. Two others bearing away to port, getting the hell out … Another torpedo toppled in all wrong, wasted—from any Italian way of looking at it—and there was only one Savoia left now. It had turned away to port, but not running away like that other pair. It had by-passed the destroyer and was now swinging in again to approach from the starboard bow, the Santa Eulalia’s side. Ainsty was turning back, and all her guns were concentrating on it. It was on the American freighter’s bow, steadying on a low, attacking approach with the American obviously its target. The Santa Eulalia’s Bofors had judged the range right and opened fire. The Caracas Moon’s guns weren’t going to get a look in, because by the time the range was short enough the Santa Eulalia was between them and the attacker. Frustrating. But there’d be time yet. Nine, ten hours, for sure … Ainsty was swinging hard a-starboard and her guns were cocked up, firing at maximum elevation. Target overhead?

  Ju88s were coming in shallow dives from astern: four of them, a pair going for each of the merchantmen. They’d sneaked up when everyone had been concentrating on the Italians. They were at about two thousand feet, in dives that would bring them over at about fifteen hundred, and almost right on top of their targets already. Paul aimed well ahead of the leader of the pair on this side, and opened fire, heard Beale’s two Bofors banging away at about the same time. The bastards had been pretty smart, he thought, his gun deafening him and his head back from the sights now, watching the other end of his tracer-stream and hose-piping it towards the bomber’s nose.

  Hitting!

  Bombs slanting down. All the guns in all three ships working hard. An explosion—away to starboard somewhere. Torpedo, he guessed: Santa Eulalia? The front Junkers was streaming smoke but he’d left it, to concentrate on the second. A bomb went into the sea close off the tanker’s starboard quarter: a second and a third—horribly, unbelievably—burst on her, somewhere aft. He heard and felt the explosions, then almost immediately felt heat, flames behind him. The second Ju88 had let its load go. He knew, in physically sickening disappointment, that this would be the end of it—for the ship and for himself personally … There were no targets now except for that bomber leaving, the Santa Eulalia’s second one departing too and bomb-splashes subsiding right ahead of her. He thought—from just a quick glance—that she’d stopped. The gunners aft—where flames roared, heat so strong that even right up here you wanted to take cover from it—were his responsibility, and on the port side it might just be possible to get through to them. With a coat over one’s head—might be … Harry Willis yelled at him, but he didn’t hear the words. He ran to the ladder and started down—it led down in two flights, with its base at the walkway over the after tank-tops—going down it backwards, on that port side of the ship, his back to the heat and the fire’s noise. One-handed on the ladder’s rail as he reached with the other for a handkerchief to hold over his nose and mouth to act as a filter. Halfway down he thought, I shan’t make it. It’s impossible and they must be dead. He’d heard of people plunging bravely into fires, but he’d just begun to appreciate that there were degrees of heat into which the human body could not be forced. He went on down. He had to, because something might change, it might become easier down there. And there could be a man or men not dead. Two more steps backward, dragging himself down into the inferno, knowing he wouldn’t make it, paint that was already black from an earlier fire beginning to run and blister on the bulkhead and the ladder’s handrail already hot to hold. “Bloody idiot, here!”

  Willis had come down after him. He was grabbing at his arm. They were halfway down, where at the level of the accommodation deck you had to switch from one flight of ladderway to another. It made sense. Sense mightn’t have prevailed if the fourth mate hadn’t been here bawling it in his face. They were off the ladder, in the after promenade of the accommodation deck, when the fire got into an after tank and the Caracas Moon blew up.

  He didn’t know it, at the time.

  It wasn’t clear what was happening, or had happened. He’d go on down in a minute, he thought, and get Beale out of it. The other way about, Beale wouldn’t have left him to burn. Beale was a hard nut in a way, but he was absolutely straight, a man to count on. One knew that, instinctively, it was a basis of—he hoped—mutual respect. His father had said, “I really do have to marry Mrs Gascoyne, old chap. Very kind of you to be so concerned, but—” Beale had laughed. “Soft as butter, that’s his trouble. Can’t say no to ’em.” When Paul came out of the dream-world he was flat on his back and staring up at a steel ceiling on which paint was bubbling and turning brown. Something was on fire beside him, the smoke of it in his eyes and throat; and Harry Willis was crawling towards him on his hands and knees but with his head up and his eyes fixed on Paul, his mouth opening as if he was shouting but no sound coming out. He looked either furious, or mad. Willis was on fire; the nearer burning was Paul’s own greatcoat. There’d been some kind of cataclysm in which personal responsibility had ended, everything had cut off, finished. Willis was totally on fire: didn’t he know it? Paul was crouching beside him, beating at flames with his bare hands. Then he’d wrenched his own coat off—it was only smouldering—and he tried to wrap it around Willis, to smother the flames with it. Willis struck out at him. He was a big man and he did seem mad, screaming like a character in a film with the
sound cut off. He’d pushed Paul clear, throwing him back, and broken free—to the rail, sliding his body over it horizontally and then letting go … He had been screaming, Paul realized; because he, Paul, had shouted at him a second ago and not heard his own voice either. He was stone deaf. Burst eardrums, probably. There’d been an explosion, she’d blown up … But—afloat, still …

  Where the ladder had been, the ladder he’d come down from the deck above, flames licked over paintwork on the blackened vertical bulkhead. The ladder itself was scrap, twisted iron, and the bulkhead ran straight down to the sea. Down there now was no fire, no ship. Sea washed soundlessly six feet below him. A littered sea, all sorts of rubbish floating. No heads, no swimmers. The stern half of the ship had gone, sunk: she’d broken in two, he realized, and he was on the for’ard half, which was still afloat. It was conceivable, he supposed, that this half might remain afloat … He’d have been dead by now, he thought, if Harry Willis hadn’t pulled him off the ladder. Willis: he went back to the side rail, where the fourth mate had gone over, expecting to see him swimming, getting clear of the ship’s side. But he wasn’t, he was close to it and spreadeagled face-down, motionless except for the sea’s own movement. He’d have a lifebelt on, under his coat—should have—and for the time being the coat and his clothes would be helping to hold him up. But face-downwards in the water, unconscious, he’d drown even before they were sodden enough to drag him under. Paul climbed over the rail. Hesitating for a moment, he saw Ainsty—to his left—coming up astern through patches of burning oil and a scattering of wreckage. She had scrambling-nets down, and a whaler just leaving her side. But from there they wouldn’t see Willis, not in time anyway. He jumped, feet-first and well out, away from the ship’s side and Willis who was still close against it.

  Under water—for a long time after he’d thought he ought to be coming up—he wondered about Beale and the others who’d been aft. Whether they’d got over the side. If they had, the destroyer might find them, somewhere astern. The light was blinding and his stretched lungs were hurting as he broke surface and let breath go, gulped air, tried not to gulp sea or, worse still, oil. Willis was within arm’s reach. Paul got hold of the large, heavy body and turned it over: it had already begun to sink. And the forehead was bloody, pulpy. He’d hit the ship’s side on the way down—because of the list, the slant, and just letting himself drop like that. He’d been on fire, for God’s sake … Paul got behind, under him, began to swim with his legs, towing Willis backwards away from the tanker’s side. Above him, in the bridge wing, someone was leaning over, pointing downward and waving either to the destroyer or the boat. Probably shouting, as well, but Paul still couldn’t hear anything at all. Be no damn use in submarines, he knew, if he was deaf. No use anywhere. He stared up, through the water and salt in his eyes, at the figure on the tanker’s bridge—two men there now. He was wishing he could hear a shout, hear anything—when, up beyond them and against pale grey sky, he saw four Spitfires in tight formation circling above the ships. He couldn’t hear them, either.

  On board the destroyer—whose whaler had picked him and Willis up, after which they’d been inboard in what had seemed about five seconds—Paul assured the doctor, Grant, that he was perfectly all right except for the fact that he couldn’t hear. Grant examined him, then wrote on a signal-pad, “Temporary flattening of the eardrums. Should correct itself quite quickly.” He didn’t look as if he believed it, though. Paul took the pencil from him and wrote, “Willis?” The answering scrawl read, “Unconscious. Head injury. You rest now.” Willis had been in the sickbay, and Paul had been lent the navigator’s cabin. He wasn’t sure, and couldn’t remember drinking anything except a mug of coffee, but the doctor might have given him some kind of sedative, because he did go out like a light; and Grant had been right about the eardrums, because after a short, heavy sleep he was woken by the ship’s guns firing at more aircraft. Either he’d dreamt about seeing Spitfires, or they must have left … Wrapping himself in a blanket, he went into the wardroom: its sole occupant was Thornton, reclining on the sofa. The cipher expert woke up, and asked Paul why he wasn’t on board the Caracas Moon.

  He didn’t mind Thornton now. When the Montgovern had been sinking he’d seemed quite human. Thornton asked him, “Why are you wearing a blanket, for God’s sake?”

  “D’you have a cigarette?” He had to explain it all. While he was doing so, he smoked the cigarette and got dressed. There was a heap of gear in the corner, stuff that had been borrowed while the borrowers’ clothes had been drying out, as Paul’s were drying now. He selected grey flannel trousers, a collarless shirt and a white submarine sweater, and seaboots with seaboots stockings in them. The boots were tight, so he discarded the stockings, and the trousers were short but it didn’t matter, they were tucked into the boots anyway. There was an oilskin coat on a hook outside the wardroom door, and he borrowed that too on his way out. The guns had ceased fire, by this time.

  He went to the sickbay first, to check on Harry Willis, but the fourth mate was still in coma. And no other swimmers had been picked up, so far as the doctor knew. Simpson, whom Paul ran into in the lobby outside the cabins, confirmed this. There’d been no survivors from the Caracas Moon’s afterpart. Simpson said, “But the good half of her’s in tow now. Did you realize?”

  Half a tanker: in tow from the Santa Eulalia. Simpson told him, “Apparently she has seventy-five per cent of her total cargo in the for’ard tanks.”

  It had taken an hour to get the tow passed—a manilla hawser from the Santa Eulalia’s stern to the tanker’s bow, and a wire linking the Caracas Moon’s after end—which was now just behind her bridge, where she’d broken in two cleanly at the bulkhead, which was holding—to Ainsty’s foc’sl. The wire, with the destroyer’s weight judiciously applied from time to time in this or that direction, made towing possible by holding the misshapen hulk on course; without it, the halftanker swung around and pulled the Santa Eulalia off her course. The art, Ainsty’s captain’s expertise, was to use just enough drag and no more: clumsy handling might part the bow hawser. Meanwhile, they were making-good three knots.

  Simpson added, “Except for interruptions. In the last Stuka attack we had to cast off the wire, to get room to manoeuvre. Then it takes a while to get connected up again.”

  “So what speed are we averaging?”

  “Well—up to now—about a knot and a half.”

  “How far to go, now?”

  “Thirty-eight miles.”

  At a knot and a half, that would mean twenty-five hours’ steaming.

  His ears still felt muffled, and one of them had a persistent ringing noise in it … Simpson said, “You’d better come up top. Skipper wants to say hello, anyway.”

  Ainsty’s captain was an unshaven, exhausted-looking man: bloodshot eyes stared at Paul from under a woollen hat with a red bobble on it. He nodded. “I’ve met your father. You’ve got something to live up to there, sub. Glad they fished you out so you’ll get a chance to.” He was watching the wire and the hulk of the Caracas Moon. He told Simpson, “Let him stay up here if he wants to. Out of the way somewhere.”

  Paul settled at the after end of the bridge, behind the starboard lookout position. He saw that the Santa Eulalia, who was towing the tanker, was herself listing about ten degrees to starboard. She’d been hit by a torpedo from a Savoia, Simpson told him. He remembered: he hadn’t seen it but he’d heard it, just as those Ju88s had been coming at them. But a cripple towing a wreck, he thought, watching the two ships lumbering ahead: how the hell anyone could think it possible to keep this lot afloat and moving for a whole day, or even half a day …But the American freighter’s weight, her momentum through the water, did make her a far better towing vessel than the lightweight Hunt could have been. It still seemed futile—inevitable that pretty soon one or both ships would be bombed and sunk. But on the other hand it was also impossible just to give up, go home, admit defeat … He remembered a passage from a novel he’d read a
few months ago, when he’d been in Ultra in and around the Clyde. It was a book called The Empty Room by Charles Morgan, and he’d re-read the lines until they’d stuck in his memory, and with an effort he could recall them now: “Because the security of tomorrow was gone, the long, binding compulsion of past and future took possession of the English mind. Not to yield ceased to be heroic because to yield had become impossible.” It was exactly like that: you were in it and you had to go through with it, as long as there was strength to move. This convoy operation seemed to have become disjointed and haphazard; but this was only one fragmented section of it, there’d be other struggles elsewhere, ships like badly wounded men just managing to crawl on, with Malta like a magnet drawing them. Morgan’s words hit the nail on the head: there was no question of heroics, only of a one-way street and a driving impulse.

  He asked Simpson about the Spitfires. And they had been here—Spitfires from Malta. Simpson thought they’d be back again in the morning, probably. It had almost certainly been due to their presence earlier that there’d been an hour’s respite from attack while the tow had been passed and the ships had got themselves under way again. Since the Spits had flown off there’d been two attacks, and the Stukas had come with an escort of fighters—Messerschmitts—over them. Stukas on their own made easy meat for fighters: but on that evidence, when the Spitfires did return these ships couldn’t count on anything like total protection, because the bombers would probably have their escorts.

  RDF had hostile aircraft on the screen. Simpson muttered, “Here we go again. Keep your head down, sub.” He moved away, into the forepart of the bridge.

  “Aircraft red three-oh, angle of sight one-five, Junkers 88s!”

  The guns would be swinging to that bearing and elevation. He heard the captain tell Simpson, “I’ll try to keep the tow intact this time, number one.”