Fairfax left the chartroom and paused in the passageway, his hand resting on a clip as the ship plunged and swayed through the outer darkness.
God, they were right about this ship, he thought. A legend. No wonder it was hard for outsiders to understand.
He saw the small door with the word Captain above it and shook his head.
Andromeda
could give, but she demanded much from those who served her.
Blake wrapped a towel around his neck and trained his binoculars over the screen. The sea’s face had changed yet again, and with dawn so close it gave an impression of endless movement and power. The
Leander
class cruisers had sacrificed only one thing in their design to appear so graceful. They were notoriously ‘wet’ ships, and as Blake lowered his glasses to dab his eyes with the already sodden towel he saw
the sea boiling up through the hawse-pipes and along the forecastle like a tide-race.
Villar called, ‘Steady on new course, sir. Ship’s head is three-three-zero.’
Blake waited for Fairfax to join him by the salt-smeared screen. Although the ship was and had been at action stations for a full hour, Fairfax had remained on the bridge. If they were called to fight, the commander’s place was well away from the bridge and its open vulnerability. As
Andromeda
’s last captain had once told Blake, there was no point in putting both eggs in one basket. Fairfax would be with damage control, keeping the ship afloat and working, no matter what.
Blake said, ‘Soon now.’ He peered up at the sky. Instead of blue dawn there was scudding cloud, low and hostile.
Fairfax asked, ‘Will we use the plane, sir?’
Blake nodded. ‘Otherwise we could lose the German completely.’
He had a mad picture of
Andromeda
opening fire on Stagg’s
Fremantle
while the enemy slipped past them both. He thought too of his talk with Lieutenant Jeremy Masters, the Seafox’s pilot. A temporary RNVR officer, Masters was the one real odd-ball in
Andromeda
’s wardroom. He was never happier than when he was risking his neck, and as far as Blake could gather he had spent most of his life doing just that. He had flown in pre-war air races in his own plane and had raced cars at Brooklands. He had an outsized private income, but for all that was easy-going and well liked by his men, who nicknamed him Bertie Wooster. His young observer, Lieutenant Jimmy Duncan, another reservist, was his exact opposite. Serious, over-conscientious, and if he had a sense of humour at all nobody had discovered it in the past two years. He and Masters got along like a house on fire.
Blake had explained the difficulty of pinning down a single ship in such an expanse of ocean, and bearing in mind that the fragile Seafox had a maximum endurance of four and a half hours and a range of only four hundred miles and a bit, it did not leave much room for error.
Masters had listened with his face set in its usual attentive and blank mask.
Then he had said cheerfully, ‘Piece of cake, sir. No bother.’
Feeble light played across the bridge, the intent faces, the eyes of men screwed up against the spray and wind. The spray drifted over the screens like bits of glass and felt much the same.
Blake said, ‘Slow ahead both engines.’ He stood upright, steadying himself against the rough motion as he peered aft at the whipping ensign and the tongue of smoke above the trunked funnel. ‘Port ten.’
He felt the ship rising to respond to the alteration of speed and rudder, saw the sea’s roughness ease away as the cruiser continued in a slow turn to make some sort of barrier to leeward.
There was a coughing roar from aft and he knew that Masters was ready, crouching at his controls while the catapult was swung outboard to meet the wind’s challenge.
‘Midships. Steady.’
‘Steady, sir. Course two-nine-zero.’
‘Very good. Yeoman, make the signal!’
The muffled toby jug marched to the screen and triggered an Aldis towards the pulsating seaplane. With a snarling roar it shot along the catapult, dipped, faltered like a stricken bird and then swung crazily round towards the bows. At one time it was so close to the leaping water that it looked as if the sea would snatch it down.
Blake let out his breath slowly. He saw Masters give a brief wave from his cockpit and the vague outline of his observer in his enclosed canopy before the aircraft climbed steeply and headed away from the ship.
‘Resume course, Pilot. Increase to one-one-zero revolutions.’ To Fairfax he said, ‘I think that mad airman does that to give us all heart attacks!’
Fairfax had to raise his voice as the cruiser began to turn again, the sea crashing over the port side in a solid, creamy bank of foam.
‘Told me he was in the last Paris race before the war, sir, but had to ditch in the Channel. Quite a character!’
Blake nodded. ‘Tell the W/T office to keep a close check on his timing. I don’t want to have to start searching for
him
just now!’
He glanced at the men behind him as Fairfax hurried away. Settling down again after Masters’ spectacular departure. That was a sailor’s life. Boredom, moments of interest, survival or oblivion.
The metallic voice from the rear of the bridge made everyone start.
‘Ship bearing Red one-oh. Range oh-nine-two.’
Above them the range-finder and control tower seemed to come to life.
‘A, B, X, Y turrets to follow director!’
Below the bridge the two forward turrets purred evenly to port, their slim barrels rising and depressing very slightly as the hidden crews tested their controls. It made the guns appear to be sniffing for their enemy, their kill.
Blake bit his lip. The other ship was less than five miles away. With better visibility they would have picked it up much earlier.
He said, ‘Stand by, all guns.’ He tried to ignore the regular patter of orders and bearings which murmured from speakers and voice-pipes like an insane chorus.
Scovell, the first lieutenant, had put on a steel helmet and was staring at the sea, his eyes reddened with salt. The helmet made him look different, like a yeoman soldier at Agincourt.
‘All guns with semi-armour-piercing
load . . . load . . . load
!’
Blake snapped, ‘Starboard ten!’
He looked aft to watch the two turrets swing their muzzles into view as the marines in X and Y followed the director’s orders.
‘Midships.
Steady
.’
He heard Villar correcting his calculations, as would the plot operators and the transmitting station behind their toughened armour-plate. Just the slight alteration of course would give all the main armament a chance. He thought of the missing
Devonport.
Had she been too confident, as Stagg had suggested?
Scovell said, ‘We’ll never be able to speak with the Seafox in this murk, sir. That R/T set has never been any good after the bouncing around it got off Tobruk.’
Blake said, ‘Masters will fly back when he’s ready.’ He glanced at the fat yeoman of signals. ‘Tell your people to keep their eyes peeled.’
The toby jug nodded. ‘Will do, sir.’
They were a team, thinking as one at times like these.
‘Ship bears Red two-five. Range oh-eight-five.’
Blake strained his eyes through his glasses but could see little but churning water and strange, distorted levels of light. There was no sign of the little seaplane. If he had held back from launching it, Masters would be safe on board right now. As it was. . . .
He blinked and held his breath. There it was again. Flash . . . flash . . . flash, vague orange distortions through the spray and feeble dawn light.
Gunfire.
Fremantle
must be close by. He sensed the two forward turrets moving occasionally, the muzzles feeling the range, the elevation and deflection as the unseen ship came steadily towards them.
Blake rubbed his chin. It would be light enough to see everything in a matter of minutes. He felt strangely light-headed without knowing why. It had to be the ocean, the size of it. To die out here, and it could happen at any moment, did not make any sort of sense.
He snapped, ‘Hoist battle ensigns.’
Someone gave a cheer as the first big flag broke from the upper yard, the white bunting with its vivid red cross very clear against the dull clouds.
Blake listened to the growl and crash of gunfire. Heavy weapons, they had to be
Fremantle’s
eight-inch armament.
He stood pressed against the wet steel and stared hard through the screen.
Soon now. Just once more. Like all the other times. No better, no worse.
He heard Palliser’s voice again, distorted but intent, over the gunnery speaker.
‘Stand by, all guns!’
The boom of explosions seemed to come from the sea itself, and rolled along the hull to be lost astern in the racing screws. Weir and his men would feel it more than most, some would be remembering, staring through the pounding machinery at the curved sides. Waiting for the tearing impact, the sea smashing in to become scalding steam in seconds.
Scovell shouted, ‘Signal from
Fremantle
, sir.
Am engaging German raider.’
Blake tightened the towel round his neck. Stagg was getting his revenge all right. It sounded like a major bombardment.
‘Target on same bearing, sir. Range oh-seven-five.’
Blake gripped the teak rail below the screen and waited, his heart a mallet against his ribs. He could almost feel some of the men near him, watching him, searching for their own fates in his eyes, from his reactions.
Andromeda
hit the side of a cruising bank of solid water and split it apart like a battering-ram, the broken sea cascading along the forecastle and around A turret as if the ship had started to go under. Then, as her stem lifted again and the spray flew past the bridge like tattered sea-birds, Blake saw the other ship for the first time.
A vague, bulky shadow ringed with smoke and etched against a curtain of falling spray from the last salvo. The enemy.
He heard himself call,
‘Open fire!’
The rest was lost in the crash and recoil of the two forward turrets.
Lieutenant Jeremy Masters eased the stick of the Seafox and guided it skilfully through a broken patch of cloud. To anyone without his experience the panorama above and below the racing propeller would seem impossibly wild. Jagged clouds rushing to meet them, bouncing the plane about like a leaf in a November wind, then great sections of empty sea, broken and violent, in every direction. Above the upper wing Masters could see occasional fragments of deeper, clearer
blue. Like most of these storms, it would soon pass and the heat would envelop them once more.
Masters turned the aircraft in an easy banking dive, his eyes barely blinking as he concentrated on a thinning bank of cloud. Behind him he could imagine his observer, Jimmy Duncan, watching the cloud, waiting for the first break and a sight of the enemy. Stolid, dependable Duncan. It was good to know he was back there, even if the plane’s only defence was an ancient Lewis gun.
The cloud whipped through the prop and between the wings and suddenly there it was. The ship, steaming diagonally below and slightly to port, smoke pouring from her funnel as if to show her determination to shake off the pursuit.
The seaplane bucked wildly as a great salvo ploughed into the sea and exploded in a towering wall of spray and smoke. Masters saw the other ship’s wake start to twist as her captain manoeuvred to avoid the next fall of shot.
Masters jammed some glasses to his goggles with his free hand and fought against the Seafox’s tossing motion while he searched for the warship.
Through his earphones he heard Duncan yell, ‘There she is! Starboard bow!’
Masters eased the rudder and thought about the plane’s safety as he headed for some cloud-cover.
He shouted, ‘No sense in hanging about, Jimmy! They’ve got her cold!’
Duncan agreed. ‘That’s
Fremantle
right enough! Going like the clappers!’
It was useless to try and contact
Andromeda
by R/T. The Seafox was soon to be scrapped and replaced. The radio, like the rest of the little seaplane, had seen better days. But she had done well, Masters thought. He thought too of
Andromeda
’s Walrus flying-boat which with its crew lay scattered somewhere across the bed of the Mediterranean. Masters had been a friend of all of them, and had felt a lump in his throat as the slow old Walrus, spotting for
Andromeda
’s gunnery officer right up to the end of the fight with the three cruisers, had wandered just too close to the enemy’s flak.
He shouted, ‘I’m going round again! Hold on for tracer!’
Not that Duncan needed telling. He followed everything Masters told or showed him. He was more like a gun-dog than a companion at times.
Why was he going round again? Masters concentrated on the thinning cloud, hunched forward in his harness like all the other times.
There was something wrong, but what?
Here we go. Nice and easy. Level off.
Now.
The ship swung into view again, smoke belching from her fore-deck and blotting out her squat bridge completely. A big merchantman, freighter of sorts, and fairly high in the water. Masters saw the sea curling along her hull, the patches of rust, the dents in her plates. A real old lady.
He could even see the bright dab of red at her masthead with the black cross and swastika. Against the
Fremantle
’s massive salvoes it seemed somehow pathetic.
But somebody was wide awake down there. Masters began to weave the seaplane from side to side as bright balls of tracer drifted towards the port wings with deceptive gentleness.
Duncan swore into his mouthpiece and sent a single line of tracer spitting over the side of the cockpit with his Lewis, which almost immediately jammed.
Masters said between his teeth, ‘Serve you right, Jimmy, you bloodthirsty bastard!’
Spray shot up the side of the German and one of the life-boats was blasted from its davits with part of the deck as well. Inside the enemy’s hull the real effect would be felt. A massive explosion and white-hot splinters ripping through in a lethal hail.