A Ship Must Die (1981)

by Reeman, Douglas

  Blake lowered his glasses and looked at Fairfax. ‘Tell the doc to take charge down there. We shall lower two boats, one port, one starboard.’

  Fairfax hurried away, glad to be doing something. Relieved that he did not have to watch the pathetic, grisly remains which parted across the bows and drifted slowly down either beam.

  A life-boat, its gunwale shot away almost to the waterline. Two corpses lolling inside, covered with oil, through which their blood shone like dried paint.

  Bodies in life-jackets, pieces of men.

  Blake heard someone vomiting helplessly below the bridge. Another was whimpering like a child, repeating himself over and over again, ‘Oh God, Oh God’ until Buck, the chief yeoman, said savagely, ‘Keep quiet, that man!’

  Blake said, ‘Check with Asdic, Number One. I’m going to stop.’

  He heard the hum of machinery and knew that the derrick used to raise and lower the seaplane was being prepared to hoist a boat from its tier.

  ‘Nothing to report, sir.’

  ‘Very well. Stop engines.’ He did not wait for the telegraphs. ‘Send the boats away. Doc will know what to do.’ He banged his fist on the warm metal. ‘He should, by now.’

  He saw Walker staring past him, his face pale despite his tan.

  Blake said, ‘We might find something.’

  Nobody spoke as the first boat, a whaler, shoved off from the side and pulled slowly towards the blackened remnants of a ship and her crew.

  Blake saw the plump shape of Surgeon Lieutenant-Commander Edgar Bruce squatting beside the boat’s coxswain and guessed that his assistant, Lieutenant Renyard, would be in the other one. Renyard had only joined the ship at Gibraltar. Straight out of medical school. God, he would come face to face with war this morning, Blake thought.

  He heard Buck mutter, ‘Lucky there was no sharks about. Otherwise there’d be nothing left.’

  Blake watched the padre’s gaunt figure half running along the port side, peering towards the nearest boat, his wispy hair upright in the breeze, a prayer-book gripped in his hands like a talisman. Poor old Horlicks. Too late again.

  ‘Starboard whaler’s signalling, sir!’

  Buck trained his long telescope on the boat’s bowman who was semaphoring with his arms. The boat had stopped amongst some drifting woodwork and a solitary broken spar.

  ‘One survivor!’

  Blake swallowed hard. A survivor. From that filthy, obscene flotsam. It did not seem possible.

  He raised his binoculars and levelled them with difficulty as Andromeda rocked more steeply in the swell. As if she hated being stopped amongst this horror, like a thoroughbred will rear at the smell of blood.

  ‘Recall that boat, Number One. Tell the chief boatswain’s mate to have his party ready to winch the survivor aboard.’

  In the glasses he saw the young surgeon lieutenant doubled over the gunwale, a handkerchief jammed in his mouth. It was that bad.

  Some of the oarsmen were looking near to breaking point, too.

  The other boat reported it had found nothing, and with the oars rising and falling like wings she turned and headed back towards the dangling tackle.

  ‘Boats hoisted inboard and secured, sir.’ Scovell’s face was like stone.

  ‘Very well. Resume course and speed. Fall out action stations.’

  He tried not to think of the men in the shattered life-boat. One had been staring up at the cruiser, his eyes black holes, but seemingly more intense. The sea-birds had done that to him.

  There would not be so much eagerness for breakfast now, he thought.

  The deck began to tremble again as Scovell reported flatly, ‘Both engines half ahead, revolutions one-one-zero. Course two-eight-five, sir.’

  Fairfax appeared on the bridge, his face set in a mask.

  ‘They’ve taken him to the sick-bay, sir.’

  Blake slid from his chair. ‘I’ll go and have a word with doc.’ He looked at him gravely. ‘So Stagg was right, after all.’

  4

  Rendezvous

  BLAKE CROSSED THE Andromeda’s upper bridge and paused to watch the remainder of the sunset. It was very red, spilling over the horizon like blood, losing its colour in the regular procession of deep troughs to rise again as it reached out to touch the ship’s guns and upper works.

  The cruiser was steaming at reduced speed and rolling uncomfortably in a quarter sea. Even on the high bridge it felt stuffy, humid. Blake did not need to consult the glass again to know there was a storm about.

  He could taste the remains of Moon’s last pot of coffee, and could picture the chief steward’s disapproval when he discovered the untouched meal in his sea cabin.

  Blake felt restless, unbearably so, like some form of illness. When he left the bridge to find solitude in the tiny cabin he needed to be back here. Like a cat which always seemed to be on the wrong side of every door.

  His men could sense it, he thought. They kept their distance, showed extra interest in their duties, as they were doing now.

  He gripped the chair on the fore-gratings and felt his ship lift and then slide deeply into another trough. Above the radar and range-finder the signal halliards clattered noisily, and the whole structure seemed to be groaning and protesting at the motion. Weir had asked permission to reduce speed. Blake never questioned his judgement. In real need the chief engineer would pull out all the stops, warning markers or not.

  It had been three days since they had run down on the drifting flotsam and human remains. Perhaps that was the cause of his restlessness, his despair. Three days while they had waited for the sole survivor to die.

  It would have been kinder to let him slip away. Of all the members of the Kios’s crew, the survivor had been a steward. A small, terrified Greek who had defied even the strongest drugs as he had relived the agony and the finality of his ship’s destruction.

  Had he been an ordinary seaman he might have been able to gasp out some tiny piece of information, a description of hull design or a hint of the raider’s age, but as a steward he had had no understanding of such things.

  The Andromeda had produced yet another unlikely asset in the shape of Paymaster Sub-Lieutenant Cyril Pim. He was a thin, bespectacled young man whose pallid skin defied the sun, and out of uniform would never have passed for a veteran of the Mediterranean war, let alone a naval officer.

  But before joining the Navy as an hostilities-only volunteer, Pim had been learning Greek to help him in his job as a trainee travel agent.

  For three terrible days he had not left the sick-bay, but had stayed beside the cot, listening to the dying steward, concealing his horror at the man’s frightful burns, his stench and his pathetic belief that somehow, if he kept awake, he would live.

  Blake climbed on to his chair and placed his cap below the screen. There had been no more attacks reported . . . yet. This time tomorrow they would rendezvous with Stagg in HMAS Fremantle. A pencilled cross on the ocean. Two ships meeting to discuss what they should do next. For all they had achieved so far they could have stayed in harbour.

  Stagg would be fed up too, he thought. Andromeda’s slowing down would not help.

  He let the wind ruffle his hair and clear his mind. He thought about the raider, tried to see her as the poor rambling steward had described her as he had carried some wine to the bridge for his captain.

  Big, he had said. How big? The steward had mentioned a ship he had once served in on the South American trade routes. Blake, with Fairfax and Villar, who had done his time in the Union Castle Line, had gone through the manuals and recognition books until they had found the vessel described. If the raider was anything like her it would put her in the eight thousand tons class. It seemed likely. Big enough to cruise over long distances, agile enough to escape if the chase got too hot.

  The Kios’s master had apparently escaped from Greece when the Germans had marched in to crush the last resistance and drive their British allies into the sea. Perhaps that alone had made him make the last g
esture, the final spark of defiance when the enemy had run up her true colours.

  The radio message, the desperate call for help, had cost him his ship and all but one of his company.

  The steward had died that morning and had been buried at sea. Pim had read something in Greek, his voice hoarse and faltering, while the cruiser stopped her engines and a marine bugler paid a last farewell. So now there was nobody left from the old ship which had lost her propeller and thought that the rules of the sea had not changed.

  Lieutenant Palliser had the watch, and Blake could hear him muttering sharply to one of the lookouts. Palliser, the gunnery officer, had never suffered fools gladly, and after the last Mediterranean battle he had an even harder job controlling his temper.

  Once, after a particularly frustrating gunnery exercise, and in front of Fairfax, he had exploded, ‘All I can say is, sir, that if we run up against the enemy we’ll have to attack stern first! The marines in X and Y are ten times as good as the forrard turrets!’

  The two forward turrets, each containing a pair of six-inch guns, were manned almost entirely by Australian seamen. Perhaps Palliser could recall too clearly when he had been a quarters officer in one of them, blazing at the enemy cruisers while the ship seemed to be falling apart around him.

  A torch showed itself briefly on the gratings and Fairfax stepped up beside the chair.

  ‘Just finished my rounds, sir.’ He watched Blake’s profile. ‘All quiet.’

  Blake nodded. How different we are. Fairfax had a wife in Australia. He would probably have to meet her when they returned there. He knew he would feel it all over again. The hurt. The envy. Fairfax had her to think about, someone to wait for him.

  He thought of Diana, how she had looked. I’m leaving you, Richard. You go back to your ship. I’ve had enough. Beautiful, demanding, tantalizing. And yet he felt now as if he had not known her at all.

  Blake said, ‘When we make the rendezvous, the commodore will most likely begin another search. We’ve most of the information about previous raiders, their grid system and so forth.’

  Fairfax replied, ‘He’ll expect something dramatic.’

  Blake twisted round in his chair to survey the bridge. The light had almost gone but he knew the yards and feet of this steel island better than anything.

  He saw Palliser’s buttocks protruding from beneath the canopy which covered the chart table. Lieutenant Blair, the Australian who had Palliser’s old station in B turret, was assisting with the watch. It was unfortunate that their gunnery held them apart, but to change them round on the watchkeeping rota would be equally unwise now. A challenge to one, a slur to the other.

  Lookouts, each with his powerful glasses moving through a prescribed arc, boatswain’s mates and messengers at voice-pipes, one with a headset and earphones, like a man from Mars.

  Blake turned back to the sea. They were all out of earshot.

  He asked, ‘What is this thing you’ve got against the commodore?’

  Fairfax sounded surprised. ‘He didn’t tell you, sir?’

  ‘I’m asking.’

  Fairfax shrugged. ‘It was after Singapore. Like a bloody rout, a stampede. Nobody knew where or if the Japs could be held. As it is, they’re too close to Aussie for comfort. Anyway, I was a two and a half at the time. Straight from a command course and into the thick of it. I had a fleet minesweeper and two MLs.’ He smiled sadly.’ ‘Not exactly an armada. My orders were to probe along the escape routes from Singapore. Thousands of blokes had tried to escape before the sell-out. Sorry, sir, I mean, the surrender. Yachts, old tug boats, even a ferry steamer. It was close on six hundred miles from Singapore Island to Java. Some of the poor devils made it, but most of them were spotted by Jap aircraft and chased by destroyers.’

  Blake listened, conscious of the ship noises, the hissing plunge of the stem through each trough. But even more aware of Fairfax’s quiet voice as he relived the memory, the scar of Singapore.

  ‘I was supposed to hide during daylight amongst the islands, camouflage nets and fronds from the trees, real boy scout stuff. Any people who had escaped, or got that far only to have their boats shot from under them, I was ordered to collect and carry to safety.’ He lifted his chin slightly. ‘We did it, too, soldiers, nurses, kids even. God, it was too painful to see their faces when we dropped anchor and found them.’

  Blake waited, knowing it was coming, knowing they should not be talking like this.

  ‘Stagg drove a destroyer in those days, sir. He was all blood-and-guts even then, a man’s man, a winner. Well, his ship ran into a German raider, I don’t suppose either of them expected it. The destroyer caught fire and the German took her company prisoner. It was either that or leave them to the sharks.’ He turned away. ‘Then something happened. The Jerry landed his prisoners to be handed over to the Japs. But we happened along at that moment and the German made off. I was already loaded to the scuppers with refugees, and then a Jap plane flew over and bombed one of my MLs. I had to pick up what was left of her people. I couldn’t cram another soul aboard, let alone Stagg’s ship’s company. I tried to explain, but it was useless. I even offered to return when I had off-loaded my passengers, but he wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘And he was taken prisoner again?’

  ‘Yes. It was all a bit vague, we had other things to think about at the time. But the Japs killed most of Stagg’s people, and they made him suffer, tortured him and his officers. But especially him. Somehow he escaped. Went native, and was eventually picked up in a drifting prahu with two of his men. They were dead. But he’s never forgotten. He blamed me for leaving him to the Japs, and the German, Rietz, for beating him in the first place. It’s an obsession with him, but his record and reputation were enough to put him where he is now.’

  Blake said, ‘Thank you for telling me. In your place I would have done the same.’ Probably in Stagg’s place, too. ‘In this sort of game we’ve got to know each other. Not just the enemy.’

  Palliser stepped out of the gloom. ‘W/T office have decoded a signal, sir. Fremantle is in contact with a German ship. Pilot is in the chartroom now working out the details.’

  Blake slid from the chair. ‘Right.’ To Fairfax he added, ‘This might be an end to it.’

  Later, as they grouped round the vibrating chart table watching Villar’s strong fingers working with parallel rulers and dividers, Blake said quietly, ‘Must be a different ship.

  Unless. . . .’ He watched Villar make another rapid calculation and then draw a pencilled line on the chart.

  Villar looked up, his eyes glinting in the reflected lights. ‘She’s heading our way, sir, with Fremantle in pursuit.’ He tapped his teeth with a pencil. ‘Weather’s worsening to the nor’-west of us and the glass is still falling. We might make first contact ourselves if we can increase speed.’

  Blake felt the familiar pain against his ribs, the excitement which always lay hidden but ready to move him.

  ‘I’d like to speak with the Chief. Let me have another look at your calculations, Pilot, then we’ll alter course to intercept. A lot will depend on the weather. A full-blown storm would make things difficult.’

  He looked up from the chart and saw Fairfax watching him.

  The commander said softly, ‘All the same, sir, with Fremantle in pursuit the German isn’t going to hang about. He’ll be making good all the speed he can, probably hoping the weather will close down and separate them.’

  They both looked at the pencilled lines on the chart.

  Then Fairfax said, ‘Whereas, we will be ready and waiting.’

  The navigator’s yeoman held out a telephone. ‘Engineroom, sir.’

  Blake put the instrument to his ear, picturing Weir down there with his roaring machinery and jungle heat.

  ‘Chief? Captain. I think we have a German raider. Can you give me full revs when I call for them?’

  ‘Aye, sir. Just give me another thirty minutes.’

  Blake handed the telephone to the young se
aman who was like Villar’s shadow.

  A vast ocean, and two ships heading towards an unplanned rendezvous. Fremantle with her eight-inch guns and two aircraft would be a formidable opponent, and after Devonport’s loss Stagg would have no use for carelessness.

  Thinking aloud he said, ‘I’d like to see our airman. We may be able to fly off the Seafox at first light.’

  Villar grimaced. ‘Pity we don’t still have the old Shagbat, sir. I’d not fancy ditching in our little kite, not if the sea gets any worse!’

  Moon’s doleful face peered around the chartroom door.

  ‘Coffee an’ sandwiches, sir.’

  Their eyes met. All those other times. The racket of gunfire, the dazzling panorama of burning ships and exploding ammunition. Moon had always been there. Now as then, he would know his mood. The sandwiches would seem like something special. Tea at the Ritz.

  ‘Thank you. I’ll come now.’

  He looked at the two officers. One Australian, one South African. Chalk and cheese, yet they seemed to sum up what it was all about.

  ‘Call me if you hear anything. Alter course when you’re ready.’

  He still hesitated, wanting to stay but knowing they could cope. Knowing too they would see his presence as lack of trust. Later that could prove fatal.

  As soon as Blake had left Villar snapped to his yeoman, ‘Go and get some coffee. Nice and strong, eh, Shiner?’

  Alone and separated by the chart table, Villar said calmly, ‘How do you feel about the ship, sir?’ His voice seemed to hang on the last word as if he disliked calling anyone sir.

  Fairfax replied, ‘I think I can manage, Pilot!’

  Villar spread his hands. ‘Sorry, sir, I’m a bit tactless sometimes.’

  ‘You’d never guess.’

  Villar grinned unabashed. ‘The skipper’s nearly over the edge, you know that, don’t you?’

  Fairfax was about to shut him up here and now when he recalled his own words about Stagg.

  He said evenly, ‘I know what he’s been through, if that’s what you mean.’

  Villar sighed. ‘His wife went off with another chap. Just before we left for the Med. I’ve met her. Right tear-away, if you ask me.’ He saw the warning in Fairfax’s eyes and added briskly, ‘The captain’s worth fifty of her sort. He held this ship together when everyone said we were finished.’ For the first time his voice shook with something like emotion. ‘He drove us, he carried us, he led us.’ His mouth curled in contempt. ‘Those war correspondents, what did they know? The boy captain, they called him! Boy? He’s a bloody man!’ Just as quickly his voice dropped. ‘But he’s going to need you, make no mistake. He’s like the ship, you can’t go on driving, driving, driving without something giving way.’