A FLOCK OF SHIPS

by Brian Callison

  And the Third Mate’s smoke-blackened face, with a deep cut above the eye pouring blood all down his right cheek, hovered above me for a moment, frowning at the embarrassingly untidy stump of my severed shin bone, then his voice said tightly, ‘Hang on, for God’s sake, Sir! I’ll be with you in a sec ...’

  Then I started to scream with the pain from a foot that wasn’t even there, while the gaping muzzle above me flashed and smashed thunderously God knows how many times, with the high-explosive fumes belching down on me and charring my skin. All around the tanks of the now burning, listing U-boat, men were jumping into the water as the shells from Phyllis searched out the vital spot in her forward torpedo room.

  Until one found the first sleek warhead in her tubes and she started to blow up as ton after ton of Amatol fused into one long, brain-bursting roar, and Cyclops was snubbing at her cable in terror for the second time while Curtis clawed at the slime on the deck beside me and said over and over again, ‘Jesus, that was awkward. The trigger position’s different to the one in the manual ...’

  And I finally passed out, thinking what a funny thing to say when you’ve just killed a hundred men.

  *

  I remember coming round again and seeing Curtis through a haze of pain, framed against the gun barrel that still slashed across the scope of my vision. It was pretty dark now and, above and behind him, the clear violet sky sparkled with a myriad of tiny, twinkling stars. White teeth gleamed reassuringly in the shadow of his face as he smiled softly, holding up a strip from his torn shirt.

  ‘Tourniquet, Sir,’ he said. ‘I’ll try and rake up some morphine once I’ve got you fixed up. Anything else you want?’

  There was, but I didn’t think even the admirable Curtis could manage that.

  I wanted my leg back.

  *

  I remember the way the bile choked me as Curtis applied the torniquet. Then more floating in a morass of delirium. It seemed an expensive way to go about shearing a bloke’s limb from his body. I mean, two million pounds’ worth of ships on the bottom? My damned leg was worth more than Betty Grable’s ... I started to laugh, then cry, then laugh and cry all at the same time, until Curtis gave the stricture one last, gentle twist which wasn’t quite gentle enough, and I toppled yet again into the blackness of a billion slimy horrors ...

  *

  When I next opened my eyes it was to find myself propped against the pedestal of the gunlayer’s chair with the warm gleam of the brass firing lever just above me. I tried to move my leg and couldn’t. In fact I could hardly move anything at all, not from the waist down, yet at the same time I didn’t feel much pain—more a sort of numbness, an impression of drifting just beyond the fringe of a terrible, threatening agony.

  A clang behind me made me twist slightly to see the Third Mate slamming shut the cordite-stained breech mechanism. He glanced down and smiled nervously, ‘Thought I’d leave one up the spout. Just in case ...’

  In case of what? There were only corpses out there now, Curtis ... sundered, life-jacketed shells of men and, maybe, a few ghosts out of all the dead sailormen. He knelt down on one knee beside me and shivered. ‘Cold,’ he said. ‘It gets surprisingly cold out here at night, doesn’t it?’

  I tried to grin painfully back at him because I knew he was looking for comfort too, but he held up a cautionary finger. ‘Don’t try to talk,’ he said. ‘I’ve given you a shot of morphine from the emergency pack. Your leg ... I’ve tied it off as best I can. Maybe if we can get you forr’ad to the ...?’

  He stopped talking then—rather abruptly—and his eyes grew wide and surprised for a few seconds. Almost hurt, if you know what I mean. There was something else slightly different about his face, too, but it took me much the same time to realise what it was.

  He’d now got three eyes!

  As Third Officer Curtis keeled forward into the space where my leg used to be, I noticed something else that struck me as odd—he didn’t have any back to his skull. And then I found out why.

  ... because the little hole in his forehead was precisely the same diameter as the one in the end of Larabee’s gun.

  *

  Larabee—it must have been Larabee, though you couldn’t have told from the grotesquely deformed mask of a face above the radio operator’s epaulettes on the smashed shoulder— Larabee heaved himself laboriously over the break of the ladder and sort of half-rolled towards me with a muffled sob of agony. He was still pretty well in control of the pistol, though.

  I slumped there, staring stupidly into the back door in Curtis’s head, as the Second Sparks climbed painfully to his feet, stood swaying against the backdrop of the stars, and said, ‘Heroic bastards!’

  I felt the closing agony very near. Suddenly I didn’t care any more, so I put my arms around poor, misunderstood Curtis and whispered, ‘For Christ’s sake, get it over with, Larabee ...’

  Through the twilight I could still detect flecks of spittle clinging to the corners of the slashed mouth as he shook his head deliberately. ‘Get up, Kent. I want to see you take it on your feet.’

  Which was bloody ironic, really.

  I felt the tears wash into my sandpaper eyes as I lay there under the gun feeling very lonely. Larabee started to shake uncontrollably and I knew he, too, was near the end of his tether. He dragged in a shuddering gout of agony-laden breath and stumbled forward a couple of paces. I thought he was going to pass out right then but he recovered and, clinging weakly to the depressed muzzle of Phyllis, jerked the automatic savagely in line with my belly again.

  ‘Get up, Kent,’ he muttered, ‘’cause if you don’t, I’ll make damn sure it’s only the last shot that kills you ... an’ I’ve still got five left.’

  I took one last, long look at him, thinking how much he still looked like a butterfly on a pin as the barrel of the 4.7 merged into the silhouetted blackness of his chest—then I started to get up.

  I raised my arm hesitantly, feeling for a hand-hold above me while the sickness rose higher and higher in my throat.

  When my groping hand found the firing lever it was cold to touch—just like the brass handles of the bridge telegraphs that time when the Frenchman went ...

  ... and suddenly Larabee just ceased to exist. Or most of him did, anyway.

  The rest of him remained for perhaps a milli-second longer—until the furnace-hot gases from Phyllis’s muzzle flash had crisped the white deck shoes and stockings and shorts to a crinkly brown—then Larabee’s legs, and pelvis, and quite a lot of his torso, folded into one another as they collapsed.

  And the tears streamed down my face as I screamed with the first lick of the unbearable agony which was overcoming the morphine as it drained out of my system.

  LAST WATCH

  TO WHOEVER MAY FIND THIS MANUSCRIPT:

  The events I have described seem to have taken place an eternity ago yet, in fact, I sense that only a few weeks have passed since the last but one crewman from Group H 24 S died so violently. I can’t be more specific about times and dates because so many days were spent in a twilight half­world of shock-filled pain and semi-delirium immediately after that bloody gun on the poop fired her final salute.

  The radio equipment is smashed beyond repair. Larabee has still wreaked his revenge on me because, unintentionally, he’s condemned me to the life of a Twentieth Century Ben Gunn—except that, instead of cheese, I’ve developed a desperate craving for morphine.

  I thought, for a time, that I was going to get better. I’d eaten well, and rested for weeks while scribbling this log, and had even started to hope again. When I found I had the strength to patch up number four starboard boat and lower her, I really imagined I had a chance of escaping. I interred Curtis—and what parts of Larabee I could find. And young Brannigan from the shattered wheelhouse and the various parts of Charlie Shell and his gunners. Your little Bible did come in handy after all, Captain. And not simply as a story book.

  But then, two days ago, I started to notice a curious, clinging, sickeni
ng odour that seemed to follow me wherever I went—a stench of living putrefaction—and I knew that the malevolent gangrene was going to kill me before I got even half way to the Cape.

  Why did I write this fragment of history ...? Well, I had to, didn’t I? As a duty to those shipmates of mine who are already dead, so that there will exist a record of their passing.

  I’m leaving Cyclops now—if I can make it to the bottom of that damned accommodation ladder. It’s funny how you still cling to hope, even when you’ve used it all up a long time ago.

  And, come to that, there’s another silly thing I find myself hoping for.

  That—when this catalogue of agony is finally found—there’s going to be a small space left for quite a lot of names at the bottom of that war memorial of the Old Man’s ...

  *

  EPILOGUE

  The Commander sat for a long time after he had finished reading the last page of the yellowed, painfully scrawled manuscript. It wasn’t until he heard a discreet knock at his cabin door that he swivelled stiffly in his chair to notice with surprise that the early morning sunlight was streaming through the forward ports, lighting up the shrivelled, curled sandwiches and the cold, untouched coffee pot of the evening before.

  ‘Good God,’ he thought, ‘I’ve been sitting here all night.’

  The First Lieutenant pushed the green curtain aside and stuck his tousled head through, looking at the unshaven Commander with respectfully concealed interest. ‘Morning, Sir. The work party’s ready to leave for Cyclops now. Do you have any instructions for them before they go?’

  The Commander levered himself wincingly to his feet and looked out of the port, blinking in the warm sunlight. Three hundred yards away the old ship lay docilely at the end of her rusty cable, as she had done for so many decades. He turned to the young First Lieutenant.

  ‘You and I are going over too, Number One.’ He suddenly wondered about the little Bible—had Kent replaced it in the drawer of that deserted chartroom, under the shelf with the bearded Jack Tar tin? He hoped so—it would be fitting for what he intended to do.

  He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin and glanced through the port again. There were a lot of dead men under those silent green waters. He knew they had a Red Ensign aboard, but did they have a German flag too? Either way, perhaps those long gone sailors from Cyclops and Athenian would like to see the Red Duster flying over their ships for the last time. He closed the manuscript and smiled sadly at his First Lieutenant.

  ‘Have the hands muster at eleven hundred, Number One. We have a duty to perform ... before we disturb anything at all.’

  A short time later—while the survey ship’s ratings assembled gravely on her after-deck, standing to attention in their gold-badged number one dress and with all eyes fixed on the simple ceremony being conducted on the aged ship’s poop—the Commander allowed his fingers to brush briefly against the breech of a very old gun called Phyllis.

  And even while he was reading from the battered little book he still couldn’t stop snatches of long-forgotten sentences from drifting through his head. Like—‘Now you remember, Charlie Shell - only a little submarine, mind?’ ... and names like Breedie and Brannigan, and Evans, and Samson and McKenzie and Curtis ...

  ... and Conway, and Eric Clint and Bill Henderson ... Please God that a certain John Kent also entered that place where Chief Officers voyage eternally together ...

  And the Commander saluted the Red Ensign as it climbed slowly up the scarred staff and fluttered proudly once again over the rusted, silent ship resting forever in that distant inland sea.

  * * *

  Extracts from Brian Callison international reviews

  No mistake; Mr Callison can grip you ... he whirls this exciting action forward with a masterly touch. Conrad might have liked a lot of this book. The Wall Street Journal.

  (A Flock Of Ships) The best war story I have ever read. No qualifications, no reservations, no exceptions as to type and time: it's the best. Makes All Quiet On The Western Front look like one of the lesser works of Enid Blyton. Alistair MacLean.

  Heart-stopping suspense. New York Times.

  Here's a dandy tale of the briny with so many sea changes that the plot churns like a ship caught in an ocean storm. The author, an ex-merchant marine officer, has taken his approach from the early adventure novels of Alistair MacLean, famous for their suspense and unrelenting action. San Francisco Examiner.

  One of the best writers of modern sea stories. Will keep the eyes of all addicts glued to the page until it is ended. Daily Telegraph.

  A superb story indeed, graphically told with sharp jolts of realism and with a fine and sensitive understanding ... an absorbing tale. Sunday Herald Traveller.

  A story ... that has just about everything, logged by Mr Callison with a beautiful sense of timing that will keep his readers hanging on to the bitter end. New York Times.

  (Trapp's War) This must be Brian Callison's best book. It is even better than A Flock Of Ships and I didn't think he could achieve this. I didn't think anyone could ... there can be no better adventure writer today. Alistair MacLean.

  Tempestuously exciting. Times Literary Supplement.

  Outrageously alive ... his action scenes thunder along. Dick Francis.

  One of the most exciting books I have ever read. New Haven Register.

  This distinctly different and absolutely first-rate story holds the attention for every one of its 256 pages ... one of the most absorbing war-at-sea novels in quite a while. Publishers' Weekly.

  From stunned bewilderment to desperate panic to the acknowledgement of death - a narrative of profound emotion handled in masterly style. Birmingham Post.

  Compelling and unputdownable ... as always Callison takes hold of his readers and the grip remains until the last page is turned. The action and the drama are there all the way. Grimsby Evening Telegraph.

  (The Judas Ship) ... a whizzer ... Callison's tightest show since A Ship Is Dying. Kirkus Reviews.

  Brian Callison compresses a chilling collection of marine horrors, all the more horrible because of his matter-of-fact tone. The behaviour of men under stress gives the book a powerful chemistry. New York Times.

  Brian Callison has done for the modern sea adventure what Patrick O'Brian did for the Napoleonic Wars. Another stunning sea chase … one of Callison's best thrillers yet. Packed with suspense and tremendously pacy, this is one for the enthusiast. Birmingham Post.

  A riveting piece of maritime action with a fifty-year-old mystery at its core. With all the energy we expect from Callison, the detail of this nautical thriller has all the requisite authenticity. Good Book Guide.

  All Brian Callison novels are now published as eBooks. If you enjoy this one, then perhaps you'd care to keep a weather eye open for others among his twenty-one titles released in digital format?