Ship of Force (24 page)

Curtis thought, Much closer an’ you can step over the side and wade in for a real good look. But he wielded the paddle so that the canoe pointed its stem towards the shore again and crept in on the lighters. They crept in until what was a murmur of sound became clear orders, bawled across and up the beach. Voices became linked with individuals, figures; Smith could almost hear the words as they carried over the soft wash of the surf. Now the lighters and the men were close and Smith could judge the size of the lighters against the quick-moving figures of the men and it only confirmed his original estimate of their size.

He saw the team of horses turning then backing down the last shallow slope of the beach with men at their heads as other men heaved at the wheels of the bogey, running it into the surf. The team stopped and engineers moved in on the shoreward end of the bogey. He saw them working and that the bow of the lighter was rising. The front of the bogey was being jacked up; the lighter slid slowly back off as the whip cracked and the horses plunged then settled to the collar and drew the bogey away. The lighter rested on the shore with its stern in the surf. A torch moved for a second over the stern of the lighter and Smith saw the propeller, the rudder, and thought each boat probably had a small petrol engine. He could smell petrol.

Forty of them, and more. As the canoe pushed through the darkness against the set of the tide and parallel to the shore he could see the line of lighters still stretching on into the night. Each would hold — what? A platoon — more likely half a company? The men were coming down the beach now as the last of the lighters were brought down, moving in black phalanxes tipped by a rippling fringe of muzzles of slung rifles. The marines who had boarded the train at Zeebrugge but never arrived at Ostende. A phalanx headed for each lighter and they looked to be half a company or close to it. One-two-three thousand men? A ghost army, their boots stepping rigidly in time but silent on the sand against the cracking of the whips and the bawled orders.

And guns. They were being hauled down by teams of horses and there was a crane on a bogey to hoist each gun into a lighter. The guns rolled on wheels inordinately wide, wheels wide as barrels so they rode easier and those wide wheels would have even more point when the guns had to be disembarked because there would be no horses on the waiting beach…

Curtis paddled delicately, slowly, seeing those troops close, the engineers at work, thinking, How much farther? How much longer? For God’s sake! Does he want to count their buttons?

Smith still stared at the shore. A flat calm. A dark, rainy night. A spring tide that would be high at 4.10 a.m. just before dawn, in that first twilight before the sun rose. The tugs to tow the lighters to Nieuport and the destroyers as escort for all of them. They would be less than three hours at sea and the tugs would slip the lighters and Morris’s shoe-boxes would start their little engines that would yet be big enough to drive the lighters inshore on a flowing tide, through the last of the shallows that the tugs could not pass and into the surf to ground on the beach…

Time.

That first grey light was barely four hours away. The German engineers had run a race against the clock. They’d had to start bringing down the lighters as the tide still fell so that they would be lined along the beach ready to float when the tide started to flow and with four hours or more to spare before high water. The lighters would have to be worked out until the tugs could pick them up and pass the tow. Then three hours at sea at four or five knots. They’d had no more than two hours between the ebbing of the tide below the water-line now and this moment when the sea returned — but they had done it. So the lighters would be loaded with their men and their guns easily while their flat bottoms rested solidly on the shore. No soldier would need to wade out to a lighter to climb aboard.

The crane was whirring and engineers were climbing over the gun, ducking under the barrel, fixing the strops. The whirring note of the crane rose and so did the gun and it was swung into one of the lighters. As the strops were thrown off so lashings were put on, securing it against the sea passage.

The engineers had won their race.

Smith had his still to run. He turned and saw Curtis’s eyes, white against the black goo on his face, flicking towards the beach. His mouth was wide but whether to breathe or just gaping Smith could not tell. Smith said softly, “Home!”

Curtis’s eyes flicked back to him and he nodded. A stroke of the paddle spun the prow of the canoe away from the shore and it headed out to sea. Smith bailed but with his head turned on his shoulder and watching the beach. The surf was nudging at the sterns of the lighters, reaching halfway up towards their blunt bows. They would float on the tide in less than an hour.

He looked down at the compass and checked their heading, looked up and saw the tug but knew it was not the one they had seen on the way in. This one seemed bigger, standing higher out of the water but her mast was shorter. So there were two at least. At least. There were more than forty lighters to be towed.

They shot past her stern and on into the night. Curtis still drove steadily, unhurriedly, with the paddle. A third destroyer loomed and Curtis tried to haul off from her but with only partial success as the tide was setting them down on her. They passed her close, too close for Curtis who swore softly. The canoe was low in the sea, far below the destroyer’s deck but the lights from the shore were behind them, might show them up. He worked the paddle with his shoulders hunched for the shouted challenge, the shot, but it did not come.

How many destroyers might there be, anchored in that long line offshore? Smith calculated, guessed: five, six? He thought five, at least. He bent over the compass, watched their heading and stuck out right hand or left as a helm order to Curtis.

And he thought it was so simple and how could it have eluded him? The lighters were no more than timber boxes, probably brought down to the woods by De Haan in sections and then put together. He had seen timber lighters like this used for landing troops in the Dardanelles. A spring tide at Nieuport. Yesterday’s attack there had taken the enemy to the north bank of the Yser. There they were halted but the crossing would come tomorrow. With that first grey dawning the lighters would run aground behind the British lines at Nieuport and the troops would charge ashore. They might have a hatch to let out the guns but more likely they would just smash out a section of the box-like bow and run the guns ashore and up the beach on their fat wheels. In the first half-light the British at Nieuport would be attacked in the rear by two or three thousand crack troops, picked men with their own field-guns, as the other attack came in across the Yser. Once across the Yser they could sweep down the coast to Dunkerque, turning the flank of the British Army, cutting the lines of its communications and supplies, thrusting on to Calais…

The U-boat commander had been involved and Smith could guess how; they would have sent him and his boat to creep off Nieuport one night and confirm the depths along the line of the shore. And when he did not return they’d then sent another.

A spring tide because, though it only came twice a month, it rose higher than the normal tides by two to three feet. So on that shallow beach the grounding lighters would discharge their racing troops much nearer their objective.

Schwertträger
…sword-bearer…stab in the back.

It was so obvious now. For three years the Generals had schemed and planned to try to break the deadlock on the Western Front. What was more obvious than an attack in rear? Trist had even given him the answer, thrust it under his nose only hours before when he said the British planned a landing on this coast to take the Germans in the rear. Even then Smith had not seen it.

Schwertträger
had one subtlety. The obvious places on this coast to assemble lighters were the ports of Ostende and Zeebrugge. They could be brought down the canals. But the Navy bombarded both ports and there were thousands of Belgian eyes to note the massing of the lighters and pass word of the concentration by means of pigeons or secret agents like Josef. So. Don’t use a port at all. Use a stretch of coast suitable for nothing but fishing boats, where there were few people and woods right down to the dunes to hide the lighters. And seal it off.

If only he’d had the courage of his convictions, if he had not bungled, if he had somehow seen to it that this reconnaissance was made twenty-four hours earlier. But he had not and the force was on the point of sailing.
For Christ’s sake where was Curtis’s CMB
?

Then he heard the mutter of its idling engines and the muttering grew into a low throbbing and it was suddenly there, the low, black hull, nearly as invisible as the canoe, lifting out of the darkness.

Curtis steered towards it. A seaman crouched just aft of the cockpit called softly and raised an arm. They slid in alongside the CMB with a final thrust of Curtis’s paddle. Smith grabbed at the side and as the seaman reached out to hold on to the canoe Smith shoved the compass at him and hurled himself aboard the CMB. “Slip! Full speed ahead for
Sparrow
!” He saw Curtis following, wide-mouthed and panting, face running with sweat as he shoved into the cockpit and took the wheel from Johnson.

The seaman was tugging at the canoe and Smith snapped, “Shove it off! Leave it!”

“Slipped!” The shout came from forward where a seaman crouched in the bow. The engines’ note rose and the bow of the boat with it as she accelerated, starting to work up to her full speed of close on forty knots.

Smith sat down and pulled on his boots, dragging them on over wet socks. He was stiff and aching, soaked from backside to feet and stood up easing the clothes from his skin. He went to stand beside Curtis and stare ahead. After a moment he said, “You did very well. I’m sorry about your canoe but we’re short of time.”

Curtis shrugged and grinned. “To tell you the truth, sir, I was a sight more concerned about getting
me
back aboard this boat in one piece. I’ve never seen so many Germans and guns that close before.” He did not add how he had watched Smith peering curiously, coldly, at the lighters, the troops, noting every detail on the beach. As if he was merely a spectator and they were not within hailing distance of a German beach and thousands of the enemy, and inshore of two or more destroyers. He glanced at Smith who stood with his arms crossed on the cockpit screen staring ahead as the spray wet his face and the wind blew at the fair hair. The fingers of one hand tapped restlessly, were still, and tapped again.

Smith thought that
Marshall Marmont
should be up with them at first light but first light would be too late; by then the lighters would be aground at Nieuport. He could run at full speed for Dunkerque and give the alarm but still the lighters would sail and once at sea they would be part of an armada. The destroyers from Zeebrugge would also be out in force and this time they would not ‘shoot and scoot’ to maintain a threat in being, because they could not abandon the lighters. They would fight. They could not win a battle like that but they would fight it to its bloody end. Both sides would lose and Britain the more because she could not afford such losses, she had to keep the sea.

There was no decision to make; his duty was obvious.

Spray soaked him now. The wind of the swift cruising of the CMB set the clothes dank against his skin and he shuddered all the time as he stared into the dark.

Curtis eyed him covertly and wondered what he would do. What could he do? Curtis was not a fool and had drawn his own conclusions and they were close to those of Smith.

Rain drove in on top of the spray, rain that was warm but stung their faces. Smith narrowed his eyes against it and saw the dark blur of her under the plume of her smoke as Curtis said, “
Sparrow
on the port bow.”

The midshipman worked the lamp, a brief stab of light that was instantly acknowledged by a flicker from
Sparrow
taking shape before them, slipping slow and slower across their bow as the engines of the CMB dropped in tone from a rumble to a mutter. Curtis swung her around and slid her in towards the larger boat.

Sparrow
was hardly moving now, and looked very small, even from the CMB — small and narrow and low in the water. She was not a ship to fight in a big action against odds but one to patrol, to observe and report. This was not a man-of-war, but an errand boy. But sometimes you had to call on a boy to do a man’s work and more. Smith saw the figure of Sanders on her bridge, dwarfed by the towering bulk of the coxswain. He had confidence in Sanders now.

Lines came flying down from the deck of
Sparrow
and the CMB was drawn in alongside. Smith climbed aboard, ducked under the hood of the chart-table and bent over the chart, seeing the pencilled line of their track, their present position. Then with Curtis he went to the bridge where Sanders waited, relieved to see them, but on edge. Lorimer came on the run and Smith gathered them together and gave his orders. He had only to tell them what they were to do and that did not take long. He asked, “Any questions?”

They stood silently a moment then shook their heads. “No, sir.” The rain felt warm on their faces, the air was thick, sultry, as
Sparrow
lay barely moving.

Smith wiped at his face and peered at them. “Remember the prime objective. The lighters must be destroyed. I don’t need to tell you that the attack must be pressed home at all costs.”

He did not and they knew what such an attack would mean.

Curtis went down into his CMB and she cast off and edged away with him standing tall at the wheel. Johnson sat at the torpedo firing controls. Her slim shape had the deadliness of a sword blade but she was as fragile as a match-box. She was to attack the centre of the line of destroyers while
Sparrow
struck at the head.

Smith ordered, “Full ahead both. Starboard ten.”

Gow answered, “Starboard ten, sir.”

Sparrow
began to move forward through the sea and the darkness and her bow swung towards the unseen coast as Smith stood at the compass. “Meet her…Steady. Steer that.”