A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Brian Callison

  And suddenly I was outside on the boat deck with the still warm rays of the setting sun blinding me after the darkness of the radio room, and we were crawling on our hands and knees for the cover of the holed wooden hull of number two starboard lifeboat as it hung forlornly outboard under its swung-out davits.

  I hardly felt the web of pain encasing my body as the beating Larabee had given me signalled itself: too sickened and numb with the impact of the scene that opened out before me in the narrow space between the two ships. The killing machine was in gear again, working as smoothly and as efficiently as before, with the U-boat crew silhouetted against the glittering backdrop of the anchorage waters and the whole length of her black casing sparkling with the muzzle flashes of various calibre weapons.

  I had time to notice the hungry, predatory shape of her 4.1, abandoned and pointing idly over her bows, then the figure of the one-pounder gunner hanging well back in his straps as he traversed the bell-mouthed barrels across the water, spitting a constant stream of light shells as he swung and—towering above them all—the man in the white peaked cap high in his conning tower, leaning casually, almost disinterestedly, over the rail beside the jolting Spandau mounting.

  Then my tear-blurred eyes switched involuntarily to the Cyclops’s boats.

  All that was left of number three—which should have been my boat—was already down to the gunnels, kept afloat only by the last bubbles of air trapped in its riddled buoyancy tanks below the thwarts while, all the time, bits of shattered oars and canvas and men kept on leaping and up-ending in the foam-whipped pink water as the Spandau lashed the area into a boiling foam. I saw young Breedie’s torn corpse still erect at the tiller, then a one-pounder cannon shell exploded just where his chest should have been and the kid vanished in a fine spray of bright red blood and flesh and flying condensed-milk cans from the after stores locker.

  Lying beside me Curtis suddenly drew his knees to his chin and dragged in great gouts of retching, uncontrollable air while I had one more indelible vision of a slowly-spreading ring of men face down in kapok-protruding lifejackets, including two in the floating tatters of bright silk pyjamas. Then the line of bullet-lashed foam extended to one side, towards the Captain’s boat, reaching and at the same time contracting at its rear like some monstrous, hideous caterpillar creeping over the water until, suddenly, they were all screaming and jerking as the concentrated fire turned on the virgin target.

  And I was screaming, too ...

  *

  There must be some kind of horror limit—some level at which one’s facility for absorption of the unwatchable is neutralised. I remember only two imprints of the massacre of that second boatload. The first was an angry chief engineer standing up contemptuously, still in red dragon slippers, bellowing obscene Barrowland oaths at the men who were killing him without a bluidy receipt, and the second—most indelible of all—the sternsheets of the still immaculate boat, with the words Cyclops - Liverpool carefully picked out in black paint and, above them at the tiller, the stocky figure of Captain Evans with his arms round frightened little Conway, shielding and at the same time consoling him with a pathetically vulnerable love.

  Then the Spandau scythed into the two embracing bodies and they merged into one another for ever and ever.

  ... and I slipped into blessed unconsciousness.

  *

  I suspect I was only out for a few seconds but, when I did come round, I remember I felt absolutely nothing. No horror, or fear, or compassion or even hatred ... yet maybe all I felt was hatred: a hatred so deep and intense that it was too great for ordinary recognition. I frowned up at our towering black masts above me, noting disinterestedly that the firing had stopped except for a few sporadic, scattered small-arms shots.

  A movement beside me caught my attention and, turning my head, I looked at Curtis, kneeling by now, with the wet smear of tears still glinting on his cheeks. He blinked back through eyes filled with a terrible sadness and I could sense the nearness of hysteria. I tried to forget my own troubles for a moment.

  ‘You remember what Henry McKenzie’d say just now, Three Oh?’ I smiled softly, ‘He’d say—"Keep the heid, laddie ..." Remember?’

  Curtis sniffed and tried to muster a weak grin but it vanished as, from the lagoon, a bubbling scream was punctuated by the full stop of a shot. ‘Bastards,’ he muttered sickly. ‘Can’t we try to do something, for God’s sake, Sir?’

  I shrugged, still trying to overcome my own fears. We were good as dead anyway so it didn’t make any difference. ‘Sure, Three Oh,’ I agreed. ‘You fire the Very pistol at them, I’ll throw a few spare shackles.’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Sir, not really. I’ve already been aft to the 4.7. ... She’s good as new, there’s even one up the spout all ready for us.’

  Of course - Phyllis! The fat bombardier’s jinxed mistress. I still felt paralysed inside but, by God, how much easier I’d die to see even one shell from Cyclops burst among the butchers on that U-boat casing ... but could we? Against a highly trained crew of smoothly oiled automatons? I remembered how Charlie Shell’s corpse had jerked and rolled under the hail of shells from the Spandau and started to feel nasty things in my stomach again.

  I tried not to look too dubious. ‘OK, Mate. But first ...’

  Curtis shuffled anxiously as I crawled back to inspect the still suspended Larabee, trying not to look too closely at the face, now waxy white where it wasn’t bleeding sullenly through the split, jellified flesh. No threat from that particular enemy any longer. Maybe the bastard was already dead. It didn’t really matter, though it would have been nice to have seen him hanged by his neck instead of his shoulder blade. I’d begun to search for his pistol when Curtis coughed as deferentially as though we were still on the bridge at sea.

  ‘They’ll be sending their boarding party over any moment, Mister Kent. Shouldn’t we be getting aft?’

  I nodded and gave up looking for the automatic—a .38 handgun was hardly going to tip the scales in our favour anyway. A quick, hopeless glance at the shattered remains of the W.T. set before, keeping low, I headed for the after centrecastle ladder. The Third Mate threw one last, bitter stare at the U-boat as it cruised slowly among the sluggishly drifting, humped shapes in the water, then came after me. I saw one sodden lump move slightly as the long black cigar slid past it with a whirr of propellers, then the sea around it whipped into a brief slash of gouting foam as a Schmeisser rattled, and Quintanilha de Almeida grew quiet again.

  There was still one mystery to be cleared up, though. I hesitated briefly at the top of the well deck ladder and turned back to Curtis. ‘Incidentally, Three Oh, just why did you stay aboard when you should have been away with the rest of the crowd in the boats?’

  He smiled a bit and looked embarrassed. ‘Silly really, Sir, but when the Captain gave the order to abandon ship I had my best whites on. I figured they’d be ruined in the boats so I nipped below to change into my number twos. I hung my new ones carefully in the wardrobe, then I ... I ...’

  He mumbled to a stop and looked like a recalcitrant schoolboy but I knew the rest.

  ‘... then you remembered that the bloody ship was due to be sunk any moment—and with your best gear aboard?’

  He nodded as I finished for him, ‘... and when you finally came topside, the last boat had gone.’

  I nodded understandingly, turned without another word, and slid down the ladder towards the gun on the poop.

  *

  I nearly didn’t make it as my head rose above the level of the gun deck and I registered the charnel house of severed limbs and blood that smeared the scorched wooden planking. For a moment I just hung there, resting my sweat-saturated face against the cool steel of the ladder rail and feeling the dead Cyclops heave and reel under me. The half orb of the setting sun, now almost masked by the jet-black landscape, swam crazily and grew larger and larger until it swamped over me in a glaring, blood-red haze.

  Then the Third Mate’s head bumped into
the tight seat of my white shorts and I realised he must have been climbing the vertical ladder with his eyes closed. I didn’t blame him either, as I heaved myself over the low coaming and lay full length in the sticky grue.

  Curtis flopped cautiously beside me with a grunt of exertion and together we gazed over to where the U-boat still picked its way idly among the flotsam of the silent, floating graveyard. He sniffed with satisfaction. ‘Careless at the last moment, aren’t they, Sir? Taking too much for granted.’

  I saw what he meant. The sporadic shooting had finally ceased as we'd crawled on hands and knees past the steel coamings of numbers five and six hatches, keeping out of sight on the port side of the ship. Now the crew of the U-boat were standing smoking and talking idly along her casing while cradling their automatic weapons under armpits like some distinguished Highland shooting party after a hard day at the butts. Occasionally a laugh drifted across the darkening water.

  I was staring over to where I had a special interest—to where White Cap was leaning placidly on his bridge rail beside the now abandoned Spandau mounting—when Curtis whispered again, ‘They must know Larabee’s still aboard, Sir. Soon they’ll be wondering why he hasn’t shown up. Shouldn’t we ...?’

  I nodded, thinking with savage satisfaction about our erstwhile Second Sparks: still hanging on the W.T. office door. Then I remembered we had one more problem to face. I twisted my head back to Curtis.

  ‘How the hell do we fire this bloody thing?’ I muttered.

  He blinked back in that infuriatingly bland way of his.

  ‘Perhaps, Sir, if I take the gunlayer’s seat, you could feed the ammo? Have another round ready to load?’

  Even though I knew I owed him at least this fleeting extension to my life, I still couldn’t help glowering like a Chief Officer. ‘D'you know what the blazes you’re doing, Mister? We’ve maybe sixty seconds of a surprise factor over them and we’re running second favourite from then on. We don’t have time to read the Admiralty Manual of Gunnery.’

  He looked lugubriously modest. ‘Actually I’m RN Reserve. Even went on a gunnery exercise once. Plan to transfer to regular RN service when we get back. Learn to shoot properly.’

  I could only hope he'd get the bloody opportunity. I also wished he’d inspire a bit more confidence, more like Charlie Shell. But then, Charlie was dead. I snatched one more hurried glance at our proposed target and noted gratefully that she was virtually broadside on to us, with the wicked silhouette of her foredeck gun still unmanned and nosing well over to the other side of the anchorage. A movement abaft the conning tower caught my eye and I could see several men leaning over the rubber raft, sliding it down over the pregnant bulge of her buoyancy tanks.

  I dug Curtis with my elbow, ‘They’re getting ready to send the boarding party. If we’re going, then for Christ’s sake, let’s go.’

  ... and suddenly, without really realising it, we were both on our feet and running desperately for the gun called Phyllis.

  *

  The next few seconds passed in a heart-pounding terror of fumbling with blood-slimed handles and catches and clips, then I'd wrenched the lid of the ready-use ammo locker open and was reaching in for the long, shiny brass cylinders of the shells. Hell! Fuses? Were they fused already? Yes, I remembered Allen had once said they were all set to explode on contact. One brief, shocking sight of an officer’s white deck shoe still with a stocking and something else projecting from it—there had only been one man up here with merchant navy officer’s rig when the last futile duel had taken place—then I was swinging round past other contorted shapes towards Curtis and our very last hope.

  He was already in the stained gunlayer’s seat, spinning the traversing handle with surprisingly competent hands, head bent forward and mouth twisted in a half-open grimace as his right eye glued to the foam rubber cup of the gunsight while, twelve feet ahead of me, the slightly belled muzzle travelled agonisingly slowly along the submarine’s length. I heard myself whispering to it, whispering because my throat had gone all dry and constricted with the fear of what would happen if the gun across the water spoke first. ‘Get round faster, gun ... Get round faster before ...’

  And then they’d SEEN us! A startled shout from the U-boat’s deck. ‘ACHTUNG!’ and instantly the lounging shapes were running forward towards their own weapon while a voice from her conning tower screamed ‘Raus! Raus!’ and the white cap was lunging for the butt of the Spandau still hanging dejectedly downwards in its mounting.

  Then Curtis was yelling the same magical incantation that the incinerated Bombardier at our feet had intoned. ‘On ...! On ...! ON ...!’ while I was screaming at the top of my fear-resurrected voice, ‘Oh, get round, you bitch - Please get round ...’ and the Third Mate’s hand was blurring on the dull brass traverse wheel. Three cables away the long black gun had started to vector, too, while at the same time the Spandau muzzle was sweeping towards us ...

  I had my arms round the cold cylinder of cordite- and Amatol-packed metal, hugging it so tight that I could feel its raised base rim cutting into my groin, but all I could do was stare in horrified fascination at Phyllis’s snout as it actually passed the high conning tower and still kept on traversing, turning all too slowly on to the rapidly fore-shortening silhouette of the German gun.

  ‘Jus' FIRE, Curtis!’ I bellowed, hating him for being such a perfectionist, for frittering away that last chance of saving my life. ‘Fire for Chrissake, or do you bloody want to die?’

  Then the brass wheel had stopped spinning and Curtis’s white arm was stretching for the firing lever and he was screaming, ‘Bugger you! I’m going to ... shoot.’

  And when the muzzle flash had expanded into a hot, cordite-tainted cloud, and the deck had stopped leaping under my feet, the gun on the U-boat’s casing had gone, and the only member of its crew still to be seen was stumbling round and round in shrieking circles trying to hold his face on with stumps of arms until the demented figure finally stepped blindly into space to roll, smoking and kicking, down the bulge of her ballast tanks and into the already occupied waters of Quintanilha.

  I felt tears of hysteria streaming down my cheeks as I heard myself laughing and crying at the same time, and shouting, ‘Oh you beaut, Three Oh ... You bloody lovely man!’

  Then White Cap reappeared over the coaming of the blast-pocked conning tower and felt dedicatedly for the Spandau again while another two figures picked themselves from the U-boat’s after deck and started running for the still-unharmed one-pounder. Curtis clawed the breech open and yelled, ‘Shurrup an’ LOAD ... Sir!’ as the empty brass case slid backwards in a cloud of evil-smelling fumes and clanged to the deck between us.

  I barely felt the tips of my second and third fingers slice off when Curtis slammed the breech shut on them, then he was banging the locking bar with the heel of his hand and Phyllis started to traverse again, back along the length of the U-boat to where the conning tower gunners were going through their still machine-precision drill.

  ‘Get more shells,’ Curtis panted as his brow banged against the rubber cup again. ‘More, more, more!’

  One brief glimpse of the Spandau finally spitting flickering gouts of flame in the near darkness, the flashes lighting up the water round the black shape of the submarine, and I was lying flat on the deck with my hands clasped over my head while the terrifying drum of heavy calibre rounds climbed the ship’s hull below us. Suddenly everything was clattering and spanging under that hail of supersonic metal. Above me Cyclops’s Red Ensign jerked and flapped grotesquely as crisply-edged brown holes appeared in it.

  The racketing suddenly stopped as if a sound-proof door had been slammed and I lay for a second blinking stupidly into the strangely indifferent, placid features of one of the dead army gunners. Why had the Spandau suddenly stopped firing? The magazine ... they must be having to change the magazine over there ...

  Curtis’s tight voice filtered through my numbed brain. God but he had guts to have stayed up there on that exp
osed seat at the gun . ‘Mister Kent! Where the bloody ...?’ I raised my head and saw his wide, black eyes against the whiteness of his face ...

  ‘MISFIRE!’ he screamed.

  Misfire? Oh Jesus! I scrambled to my feet, skidding in the mess below me, ignored it and staggered to the gaping locker. Another round with the pain now shooting from my semi-amputated fingers and I was swivelling back towards the gun as the misfire ejected past its open breech-block and smashed alarmingly to the deck. Curtis dived for it and grappled for a hold on the slippery, verdigrised cylinder while I frantically pushed the new coned shape from my arms into the spiral rifled mouth.

  I slammed the breech shut while bawling at the Third Mate again as he still struggled to lift the rolling misfire. We didn’t have time to be tidy. ‘Leave it, man. Leave it for Chrissake!’

  Then he was up on his feet, running for the rail with the shell pulled well into his stomach. ‘Get out of my bloody way, Mate!’ and the wiry young body was past me and hurling the thing over the taffrail. It exploded as it hit the water and yellow sea cascaded back over the rail as I stood stunned with the shock of it. And he’d had it buried in his guts two seconds before ...?

  The first one-pounder cannon shell from the U-boat burst squarely against the ten-inch port docking bollard five feet behind me just one and a half seconds later.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I was lying stupidly on my back under the long grey barrel of the gun. Yet I distinctly remembered being behind the breech of it a moment before. Then I stared vacantly down at the empty space where my left foot had been, and started to laugh when I saw the stump of bone and sinew protruding flesh below the brown knee ... Snap, Charlie Shell! Now I’m getting cut down to your size.

  Poor bloody Royal Naval Reserve Officer Curtis. I wonder how many spare parts you’re going to need after that hit? But now you’re dead and I’ll never ...

  I found I’d even been wrong about that when the muzzle flash from Phyllis licked down at me and I felt the hair on my floating head singe in the heat. I turned just in time to see our shell land smack at the base of the U-boat’s conning tower and watched with intense interest as White Cap shot up out of his perch like a human cannon-ball on the end of a jet of smoke. Just at the top of his arc the cap fell off as he hung, momentarily suspended, above his beautifully trained crew, then fell, a perfectly ordinary little corpse, back to join Evans and McKenzie and Conway and the rest of Cyclops’s crowd as they bobbed obscenely in the Quintanilha Polka.