He half listened to the chatter of reports and checks as each department went through the drill. A and B turrets were moving, their paired barrels glistening in the dull light where the salt had formed a crusty surface.
He had to know what was happening. Had to.
‘What do you think, Pilot?’
Villar came back instantly. ‘Another six hours, sir. It’s my guess that the Germans will have stopped the Empire Prince by now and are probably taking on fuel. Commander Fairfax’s last signal to base might have made them jumpy, but I doubt it.’
Blake peered at his watch. Six hours. It was too long. He looked at the sky again, hating it, dreading what might happen to Fairfax and his men.
He glanced round as Sub-Lieutenant Walker said, ‘Here comes more rain!’
Rain . . . it looked more like a solid wall as it advanced towards the cruiser’s surging bow wave. Then it hit the ship, driving out thought and understanding with its drenching intensity.
A seaman thrust a telephone towards Blake and shouted, ‘Engineroom, sir!’
Blake jammed it to his ear. ‘Captain!’
Weir called, ‘I can give you another two knots now, sir.’
Blake stared at the telephone while the rain roared through the bridge, battering his cap and oilskin like a flail. Yet through it all he heard Weir’s quiet confidence, the prop he needed more than Weir would ever know.
‘Everyone seems good and busy, Captain.’
Commodore Stagg’s rich voice tore his mind from the complex equation of speed, time and distance.
Stagg walked to the bridge chair, oblivious to the downpour. ‘Got bored aft.’ He shot Blake a questioning glance as he joined him by the screen. ‘Something bothering you?’
Blake could smell bacon and eggs on his breath, fresh coffee, too. Stagg’s massive confidence helped to settle his mind.
He replied, ‘It’s going to take longer than planned.’
Stagg growled, ‘Rietz will need a whole lot longer to get his fuel across in this swell, damn him.’ He rubbed his wet hands. ‘He’s lost his safety margin. Andromeda will have him by the guts long before that. He’ll know he can’t outpace us.’
Blake pulled his pipe from his pocket and put it between his teeth. There was nothing more he could do. If they were closer he could get the Seafox airborne, if only to give Fairfax confidence, to show him help was near.
Stagg had to shout above the drumming downpour. ‘You worry too much! Don’t you see? We’ve got him cold!’
They both turned as the gunnery speaker barked, ‘Ship, bearing Green two-oh, range one-four-oh!’
Stagg stared at Villar accusingly and shouted, ‘You said six hours!’ Then, surprisingly, he grinned and said to Blake, ‘So Rietz was suspicious after all, damn his bloody eyes! Fairfax must have got the wind up! But it doesn’t matter now!’ He gripped Blake’s wrist. ‘D’you hear? Go get him!’
The speaker’s metallic tones pierced the rain like a lance. ‘Two ships, repeat two ships at Green two-oh, range one-four-oh.’
Blake lowered his glasses, the misty picture fixed in his mind. The rain passing on and over, the sea riding in long, undulating rollers to meet them, and then, just off the starboard bow, two blurred, oncoming shapes.
He shouted, ‘I was right! There are two of them!’
Stagg stared back at him, his jaw hanging open.
Blake turned away, barely trusting himself to speak.
‘Ships altering course. Now steering zero-four-zero. Rate two hundred, closing.’
Blake looked at the men around him, his eyes settling on Villar.
‘Tell W/T to make the signal. In contact with two German raiders. Am engaging!’ He watched Villar move swiftly to a voice-pipe. ‘Fast as you like, Pilot.’
Scovell asked, ‘Shall I stay here or go aft to damage control, sir?’
‘Carry on, Number One. Tell Masters to be ready to fly-off immediately and to make sure his plane is fully armed. He’ll understand.’
Scovell hesitated, his eyes moving from Blake to Stagg and back again. ‘Good luck, sir.’
Blake nodded and then looked at the Toby Jug. ‘Very well, Yeo. Hoist battle ensigns.’
‘All guns with semi-armour-piercing, load, load, load! Follow director!’
Blake wiped his binoculars with his handkerchief. He was sweating under the oilskin and his hands felt as if they were shaking uncontrollably. But when he looked at them they were quite steady. A faint shadow moved over the bridge, and when he glanced up he saw one of the big ensigns running up to the yard, the white like snow against the dull clouds, the red cross like fresh blood.
Stagg said loudly, ‘One or twenty-one, what’s the bloody difference, eh?’ He was speaking to the bridge at large but it sounded like an appeal.
‘Open fire on leading ship!’
The gong rattled faintly below the bridge’s protection and both forward turrets fired together.
Blake jammed himself in a corner of the bridge and tried to cushion his body against the crash and recoil of the four guns, the shuddering of the steel superstructure as Andromeda continued her onward charge.
Crump . . . crump. Crump . . . crump. Blake levelled his glasses and watched the fall of shot. It was like firing into steam, but he saw the vivid red flashes, the pale waterspouts which shot skyward to mark the neat array of explosions.
‘Up two hundred. Shoot!’
Blake looked at Villar as his face lit up in the flames. ‘Alter course two points to port. That’ll give the marines a chance.’
More shellbursts blinked through the rain and spray. Like someone opening furnace doors. Far away and without danger.
He felt the deck tilt to the pressure of rudders and screws as Villar said tersely, ‘Course one-nine-zero, sir.’
‘Shoot!’
Muffled voices crackled over the intercom. ‘A hit! We hit the bastard!’
Blake saw the glow of flames, like tongues, changing shape and spreading as he watched. The leading ship was hit, probably badly. Just one of Andromeda’s hundred-pound shells would blast through an unarmoured hull with terrible effect.
There was a lot of smoke about, billowing low across the sea, lifting and swirling as it was caught in a freak gust of wind. Beyond it, at a range reduced to about six miles, the flames were adding to the confusion.
Stagg bellowed, ‘That’s taken the wind out of him, by God!’ He was standing on tiptoe, his face streaming with blown spray, his cap cover smeared with gunsmoke. ‘Hit him, my lads!’
X and Y turrets opened fire at an extreme angle, the shells ripping past the cruiser like express trains.
‘Captain, sir!’ Sub-Lieutenant Walker waited for Blake to look at him. ‘W/T report that the first ship has made contact with us! She’s the Waipawa, captured in that convoy!’
Blake snatched up a handset below the screen, his mind compressed into a tight, desperate ball. Rietz had fooled them after all. He had kept the merchantman for this sole purpose, to draw their fire while he worked into an attacking position where he would be unhampered by extreme range.
‘Guns! Shift target! The leading ship is –’
The bridge seemed to rise under his feet so that the pain lanced through him from his heels to the nape of his neck. He heard no explosion but was momentarily rendered speechless by concussion, by the terrible lurch which threw men about like rag dolls.
Then he heard Palliser’s voice and realized the handset had been blasted from his fingers and was swinging on its flex.
‘Captain! Direct hit!’ There was something screaming in the background. It was too terrible to be human. ‘Can’t cope here . . .’ his voice was getting fainter, more slurred. ‘All dead up here. . . .’
Blake peered aft, aware of the fumes, the stench of burned paint. He saw the director control tower rising above the streaming trail of smoke like a knight’s helmet. A knight who had been cut down in combat. Blood was running down the sides and there were several holes punched through
the plates, which in turn were pouring out smoke. There were eight men inside there. Or had been.
‘Shift to local control.’ Blake strode back to the compass. ‘Hard a-port.’
‘Thirty of port wheel on, sir.’
Stagg was yelling, ‘What are you doing?’
Blake stared past him, his eyes stinging with smoke. ‘He’s got his sights on us now. We must close the range.’ He waited, trying to shut out the sound of the screams. He was not sure if it had stopped and was only in his mind.
‘Midships. Steady.’
Loose equipment clattered across the bridge and was trampled unheeded by the crouching lookouts and messengers.
Someone was calling for a stretcher-bearer, and through the tannoy a voice shouted, ‘Damage control party port side forrard, at the double!’
Walker called, ‘First lieutenant, sir!’
Blake took the telephone. ‘Yes?’
‘That shell passed through the starboard flag deck and exploded on the port side. Couple of boats are gone and an AA gun has been flung overboard.’
‘Casualties?’
Blake winced as the hull bucked violently and he saw two great columns of water rise over the bridge before roaring down on the forecastle in a solid mass.
‘The DCT is knocked out, sir. Guns is dead. About ten men in all. The doc’s got some splinter cases aft.’
The phone went dead.
Blake said, ‘Alter course again. Hard a-starboard!’
Men fell and slipped from their feet as the helm went over once more. The four turrets were already swinging across as the bearing changed, their muzzles crashing back as they fired again.
Without the control tower and main range-finder each turret had to fend for itself. Blake recalled Palliser’s comments about the new men in the forward turrets. Now he was dead and his subordinate was down there in charge of B turret. It was history repeating itself.
‘Midships. Steady!’
Blake raised his glasses. If only the sky would clear. It was like fighting shadows.
Crash. A shell exploded right alongside, shaking the hull from stem to stern with such force that a seaman fell to the deck.
Blake ran to the side, and when he glanced at the receding pattern of hissing foam he saw the flag deck directly below him. It was hanging down towards the water alongside like buckled cardboard, its signalmen and Oerlikon crew flung into the sea and already far astern if they had managed to avoid the racing screws. Either way they were lost.
‘Shoot!’
That was Lieutenant Blair in B turret, his voice unemotional over the speaker as if he was at target practice.
‘Over. Down one hundred. On! Shoot!’
Blake’s ears were cringing from the jerking crash of the forward guns.
Stagg was sitting in the chair, his eyes unblinking as he peered through his glasses.
‘Target’s altered course, sir. Steering due north.’
Stagg shouted hoarsely, ‘Probably going to launch his tin fish at us! Some hopes in this sea!’
Blake climbed to the opposite side and wedged his elbows on the wet metal. Strange they had forgotten about the storm. That was for real people, not for lost madmen like themselves.
He said, ‘Pass the word aft to Masters. Stand by to fly-off the instant I reduce speed.’ He lowered the glasses, able to ignore the urgent voices repeating orders. ‘The German is turning to get his seaplanes airborne.’ He saw Stagg’s disbelief. ‘He’s nothing to lose, has he?’
‘All ready aft, sir!’
Blake hurried past the rating, his eyes everywhere until he was in the after part of the bridge. Something fell on the shattered glass by his side. It was blood, black in the filtered light. Palliser and his men. Up there above it all. They would still be there when the ship went down.
Blake wanted to tell Masters and his observer. But what? That he was sorry they had to die? That to be able to keep attacking, Andromeda needed to have her engines moving at full power. The Arado seaplane carried bombs. Not big ones, but enough.
‘Stop engines!’
Andromeda seemed to lean forward as the way went off her shafts. A few moments later two shells exploded directly ahead. Where she would have been but for Masters.
Blake’s heart sank as the little Seafox shot along the catapult and tilted drunkenly to the driving wind and rain.
Then he said, ‘Full ahead together!’
The freighter which had been deliberately used to draw Andromeda’s opening salvoes was already moving closer, her hull down by the bows and one anchor cable dangling in the sea as evidence to the damage below decks. There were several fires raging, and tiny figures were racing about with hoses and other equipment like demented beings. Someone had run up a white flag, and Blake saw a few of the crew pausing to stare towards the cruiser, as with her battle ensigns streaming brightly above the smoke and pain she charged to the attack.
The Waipawa with her German prize crew would have to fend for herself. It was a race. Who would get to her first? The storm or the victor of the fight?
‘Aircraft bearing Green four-five! Angle of sight three-zero!’
Like angry dogs the short-range weapons jerked skywards, pom-poms and Oerlikons, machine-guns and anything which would bear.
Blake saw the aircraft coming straight for the starboard bow. There were two of them, the second slightly lower and buffeted about by the wind.
It was all there, fixed in his mind. The seaplane racing over the shattered Catalina, cutting the survivors down, then returning across the limp corpses just to make sure. It was probably one of these pilots.
‘Barrage! Commence . . . commence . . . commence!’
Tracer lifted from the sponsons to join the small, vicious shellbursts from the anti-aircraft guns. The noise, blanketed every so often by the main armament, was shattering.
The first seaplane flew directly for the ship, turned at the last minute, its cannon ripping across the bridge structure like a steel whip.
A bomb hit Andromeda’s forecastle and skidded over the side without exploding. Another burst in the water, fragments clashing against the armour-plate, while others cut through some signal halliards high above the bridge.
One of the ensigns tugged away on its severed halliard and the Toby Jug shouted, ‘Another flag, Bunts! Don’t stand there gawping!’ He turned away, angry with himself and with the destruction of his department. The young signalman was sliding very slowly down the side of the bridge, a red smear marking where he had been cut down by a splinter.
‘A hit!’ Someone was cheering like a maniac. ‘Got him!’
Blake swung round in time to see the sparks and smoke spreading away from the other ship like signal rockets, but had to duck as the second aircraft roared overhead, guns hammering, a bomb already on its way down.
The deck shook under his feet and metal shrieked past him, punching through steel and slapping hideously into solid flesh. Two men were down, another was trying to drag himself towards the bridge gate, his agony making him try to reach the darkness below decks. But the other darkness mercifully found him first. As he rolled over to lie staring at the sky, Blake saw that he had a hole in his chest as big as his fist.
‘Stretcher-bearers to the bridge!’
The second aircraft was swinging away, trying to gain height as the tracers followed it with merciless concentration. Fire rippled along its wing and belly like droplets of molten liquid, then it exploded and threw fragments as far as the ship.
The first attacker was standing well away, waiting for a chance to cut through the smoke and perhaps rake the open bridge, just as sharpshooters had once marked down the officers of a ship of the line at Trafalgar.
Lieutenant Masters peered at the terrible panorama below him. The sea seemed brighter from up here, so that the ship with her bow wave and wake zigzagging away through broken rollers like plough marks appeared out of control. Great patches of white froth drifted nearby where enemy shells had exploded, while
from Andromeda, with her wounds made small by distance, came the regular flash of gunfire, the mounting smoke from her funnel as Weir turned his back on the red danger markers.
Provided Andromeda could avoid a fatal hit in a magazine or shell room, and keep away from those drifting patches of white foam, it would soon be over, Masters thought.
The listing freighter had stopped altogether and was in a bad way, her hull sliding into each successive trough and finding it more difficult to rise up again.
Masters looked towards the enemy. The raider was badly hit, too, with fire and smoke trailing astern as she continued to shoot from her hidden mountings.
Masters’ earphones crackled and he heard the observer say calmly, ‘Sorry to disturb you, Skipper.’ When Masters craned round to look at him, Duncan was actually grinning. ‘But there’s a ruddy great bird coming just underneath us!’
The Seafox was a midget by comparison, and with reconnaissance in view when it had been designed it had only been fitted with a single Lewis gun. But the two Germans in the Arado’s crew had other things on their minds and were not even aware of Masters’ presence as they overtook the Seafox about two hundred feet below its floats.
Masters said quietly, ‘If they spot us, Jim, we’re done for. What about it?’
Duncan was still grinning. ‘Ready when you are!’ He cocked the outdated Lewis and swung it over the side of the cockpit as if he had been doing it all his life. To the gun he shouted, ‘Just don’t jam on me, that’s all I ask!’
Masters dragged the stick over and saw the Arado right beneath him, and far beyond its perspex cockpit he could even see the cruiser. A last-second warning made both Germans look up together. They were still staring, unable to believe what they saw, as a stream of tracer smashed through the cockpit and turned it into a torch.
Masters watched the blazing plane reel away in a tight spiral, a greasy plume of smoke marking its fall, until with a silent explosion it hit the side of a long, crested roller and vanished.
He heard Duncan whooping in his cockpit and wondered if any of them would ever be the same after this, if they survived.
A Ship Must Die (1981) Page 27
