He put down the cup and stood up, immediately aware of the ship’s regular rise and plunge as she maintained her course and speed. He could even picture her like the old photograph in his cabin down aft. Seven thousand tons, evenly proportioned. Her four twin turrets pointing ahead and astern, the other, smaller guns positioned around her superstructure like guardians. The big, stream-lined funnel above a central boiler room, the bridge, everything which made a ship, a cruiser. And her people, all five hundred and fifty of them, officers, seamen, stokers, marines, scattered throughout
Andromeda
’s hull, some, like himself, just being awakened, although very few would be greeted with a cup of tea.
What were they thinking about? he wondered. Of distant homes, loved ones, lost ones. Some longed to return to their wives and their girlfriends, others dreaded the prospect.
He put on his cap, slung his glasses around his neck and stepped out of the cabin.
Vague figures loomed past him or stood respectfully aside as if to become invisible.
The morning watch had settled down, the keen air over the bridge soon took care of sleep, dreams of bunks or snug hammocks.
Scovell had the watch and was lounging in one corner of the bridge, while his young assistant, Sub-Lieutenant Walker, a New Zealander, stood apart by the ready-use chart table.
‘Morning, Number One.’ Blake crossed to his chair and climbed into it. The smooth wooden arms felt cold. In a matter of hours they would be like furnace bars.
Scovell moved towards him, his hair ruffling in the air which hissed over the forward screen.
Blake peered ahead, then down at A and B turrets, the six-inch guns overlapping in pairs. It was still very dark beyond the slender barrels, but he could see the white painted anchor cables on the forecastle, the blob of a seaman walking aft with a bucket.
Scovell said, ‘Nothing to report, sir.’
Blake nodded and put his unlit pipe between his teeth. By
nothing to report
, the first lieutenant meant there was nothing which
he
could not handle. Scovell was excellent at his job but difficult to work with. Intolerant over carelessness and even small breaches of discipline, and yet willing to spend hours with a junior watchkeeper until he was satisfied with his performance. The perfect first lieutenant. On paper, that is.
‘How are they all settling down together, Number One?’
Scovell levelled his glasses above the screen and then let them fall to his chest again.
‘All right, sir. I’ve a few defaulters, but the commander will deal with them.’ He sounded bored with it. ‘A fight or two, some disagreements over messing, the usual hard-cases finding out they’re not so tough as they imagined.’
A voice said quietly, ‘Radar wants permission to shut down, sir.’
Scovell swung on the man. ‘What the
hell? Again?
’
To Blake he added in a controlled tone, ‘May I go and see the senior operator, sir? He’s reliable.’ He gave a rare smile. ‘Which is more than can be said for the equipment!’
Blake replied, ‘Carry on. I’ll be here until we exercise action at six bells.’
He could almost feel the resentment behind him. But he had kept it up every day since leaving harbour. Action stations, fire drill, damage control, man overboard, the whole book. They could moan as much as they liked, but he knew that they were no way near ready to meet an enemy on level footing yet.
He leaned back in the chair, feeling the gentle pressure of one arm against his ribs and then the other as the ship swayed slightly from side to side. He saw spray flying like spindrift from the sharp stem and imagined the water parting across her bows as she sliced forward.
A good ship, everyone said. And a lucky one. So, resentment or not, he would see that where possible luck would continue.
He heard the sub-lieutenant’s shoes moving on the gratings and said, ‘Come here, Sub.’
Walker moved up beside him. A slim, dark-haired youth of nineteen, he would be a good example for the unruly midshipmen under his care, Blake thought.
Walker came from Wellington, the “windy city”, he called it.
‘Well, Sub, what do you make of all this?’
Walker shifted his feet. It was the first time he had ever been alone with the captain.
He said quietly, ‘I think we’ll catch the raider, sir. Trouble is. . . .’ He fell silent as Blake turned to look at him.
Blake said, ‘No, go on. Tell me.’
‘I think we need a carrier, sir. It’s too big an area for us and
Fremantle.
The German might be anywhere, go anywhere.’
Blake nodded. ‘True. But to have any success a raider has to cross and re-cross our main trade routes. In the past, the raiders have cut the sea into a grid, each square a rendezvous for meeting a supply vessel or for marking down a convoy for shadowing or attack. The grid is used by their people in Berlin too, rather like pushing model ships about a big chart in the War Room.’
Rather like us, he thought with sudden bitterness. Moved and used.
‘Anyway, Sub, every carrier is pure gold at the moment. Cruisers are the best bet, with the range and the hitting power. What we need now is a bit of real luck. Then we shall see.’
Walker, who had been in the ship for seven months, and had survived the last battle without a scratch, said, ‘I’d not want to leave this ship. If she were mine.’
Blake looked at him, moved by his sincerity. ‘I know. I was of two minds in Williamstown. If you must leave a special ship it’s best to break quickly and cleanly. But when my chance came to stay with her I didn’t hesitate.’ He knew Walker was staring at him but added simply, ‘When you get a command, you’ll know. You may serve in a dozen ships, but there’s always
one
which stands out.’ He reached out and touched the quivering steel.
‘Able Seaman Evans requests permission to be relieved on the wheel, sir.’
‘Very well.’ Walker did not want to break the spell while the watch continued around them.
He said, ‘My dad was in the last war, sir. At Gallipoli. He often talks about it, puts on his medals on Anzac Day.’ He smiled affectionately. ‘I’ll bet he’d like to be here right now.’
Blake looked away, thinking of his own father. His mother had died shortly after that same war, in the terrible influenza epidemic which had swept the country like a plague. A nation worn down by sacrifice, bad food and despair.
He could see his father as he had once been. A quiet, grave-eyed man. A fine seaman, as Quintin had described him. Now he was just a husk, a mindless being for most of the time, nodding in his chair or pottering in a garden he no longer recognized. There were worse ways of dying than in a fighting ship, Blake thought. His father had been dying for years.
Scovell came back into the bridge muttering to himself.
Blake faced the sea again, excluding the watch, keeping within himself.
He heard Scovell say, ‘God Almighty, you’re a degree off course, Sub! Wandering all over the ocean like a drunken duck! What did they teach you in your Maori encampment or wherever you come from, eh?’
Walker replied brightly, ‘Lots of things, sir! How to do a war-dance. . . .’
‘All right, Sub,’ Scovell interupted heavily, ‘I can manage without the humour at this hour, thank you!’
Blake smiled. Walker would do all right. More to the point, Scovell was man enough to know it.
As sunlight spilled over the horizon and brought life and colour to the ship and the sea around her, the gongs jangled like mad things and the tannoy bellowed, ‘Hands to exercise action!’
The bridge shook with feet stampeding up ladders and through doors. Hatches clanged shut, clips rammed home, while voice-pipes and telephones kept up their insane chorus.
‘A and B turrets closed up, sir!’
‘Damage control parties closed up, sir!’
‘Short-range weapons closed up, sir!’
From end to end, from range-finder to the depths of the deepest magazine, until Fairfax reported smartly, ‘Ship at action stations, sir.’
Blake glanced at his watch. Better. A
little
better anyway.
‘Very well. Fall out. Port watch to defence stations. But pass the word to all lookouts. The radar’s playing up again, so no slacking on reports.’
Eagerly the watch below scurried from their action stations, and with his usual dignity the marine bugler stepped up to his microphone, puffed out his cheeks and blew.
Hands to breakfast and clean.
Blake slid from his chair. Another day.
Walker stood up sharply from a voice-pipe. ‘Sir! Masthead reports wreckage in the water, dead ahead!’
Blake jumped back to his chair and stabbed his thumb on the red button below the screen. Action stations shrilled through his command once again, and startled or bewildered, men cannoned into each other in confusion. Some climbing down ladders to get their breakfast were met head on by others rushing to obey the call.
Blake raised his glasses and watched the dark, bobbing fragments spreading out to meet the onrushing cruiser.
Then he said, ‘Slow ahead both engines.’
He heard Fairfax breathing deeply beside him, like a man who has been running.
Scovell said, ‘Both engines slow ahead, sir. Seven-zero revolutions.’
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.’
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.