Ship of Force (26 page)

To Buckley: “Report the damage aft!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Smith told Gow, “Steer that!” But Gow knew already, was holding
Sparrow
on the line to take her back between tugs and destroyers, a line as if ruled in chalk on a board.

Sanders was squinting at his watch and now looked at Smith. “Missed again, sir.”

“Not surprised, the way she was shifting about to haul out of the line.”

The voice pipe from the torpedo-platform whistled and Smith bent to it. “Bridge!”

Buckley’s voice came up the pipe. “Gunner’s hurt bad, sir. They’re taking him below, an’ the crew of the six-pounder right aft, but the gun’s all right. I’ve got a feller here to load for me an’ I’ll work it with your permission, sir.”

“Carry on!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

Smith straightened then ducked instinctively as another fourinch shell from the destroyer ripped over the masthead. He could see her, just, and she was turning her head from the sea so as to fire broadside at her target. The gap between the lines of destroyers and tugs offered some sort of brief sanctuary again but
Sparrow
had yet to reach it. Lightning played far down the line and showed others of the destroyers moving, one of the tugs swinging inshore from her bow anchor.

Still no sign of Curtis. He wondered if the CMB had taken an unlucky hit right at the start. One of those four-inch shells would blow the fragile little craft apart.

The CMB was up on the step and tearing in again towards the coast and the ships. Curtis prayed that the second torpedo would not jam. For a second he had
Sparrow
’s searchlights as a mark then they went out but now he could see the destroyers against the light of the fires that burned along the shore and he knew what the fires were. He saw he was heading for the tail of the line but held his course. There was a ship, a destroyer there, last of the line and she was hauling out of it, her silhouette foreshortening as her bow pointed towards him. All this seen over the bucking bow of the CMB through the spray that came back in two long, white wings as if she was nearly flying.

Curtis shouted again, “Attacking!”

The destroyer was still turning, presenting her side to him and as he looked past her bow, to port that is, he could make out another ship beyond her.
Sparrow
? Both of them flickered with muzzle-flashes, both of them firing hard.
Sparrow
seemed to be only creeping — was she disabled? He swore softly. But the German boat was leaping up at them and broadside now. He saw no water spouts but heard the rip of the shells overhead and knew they were firing over, the speed of the CMB cheating the layers. Then the lightning came again and a clap of thunder like the last trump that even drowned the roar of the engines. In that split-second, blue-white blaze he saw the destroyer and she was big ahead of him.

Close!

Nearly…

Now! “
Fire
!” And this time he felt the kick at the stern and his heart leapt with it. He turned to port to swing out of the torpedo’s track and away from the destroyer and the CMB hurtled out into the dark with the guns still vainly following her, shells falling now in her wake.

* * *

Smith saw the CMB in that frozen instant of light that showed the big destroyer and the now ragged line of the rest of them, the tugs, the burning lighters with the flames momentarily made pale, the tiny scurrying figures on the shore. He saw the CMB without Sanders’s high-pitched yell and out-thrust, pointing finger. She was racing in with her stem high and the rest of her almost hidden by the curtain of spray that glittered in the light. Then the night clamped down around them once more and their night vision was lost, though the burning lighters were still clear. Firing briefly ceased as the layers rubbed at their eyes and blinked away the wheeling stars.

The flame seemed hardly more than a muzzle-flash but it showed the climbing spout of water on the far side of the destroyer at the tail of the line and showed her lurch, then the thump of the explosion came shuddering across the sea and Lorimer shouted, “Got him! Oh, bloody good, Curtis!”

The explosion was followed an instant later by another. This time the flame could not be taken for a muzzle-flash. It soared out of the waist of the ship as if it would never cease climbing and with it went whirling debris and after it poured the smoke. This time Lorimer did not shout but gaped silently as the flame dwindled, the smoke spread and the destroyer rolled over on her side and showed her bottom.

A flash from the torpedo’s explosion igniting a magazine? Smith thought so. But the certainty was that she would sink in seconds.

He turned away. “Full ahead both!”

The rain became a deluge. They were back between the lines, running through that narrow neck of water and now some of the destroyers’ guns, tormented beyond bearing by this wisp of a ship that had fired on them with impunity, fired in return. They took the chance of hitting a tug, of firing on their own ships, and some of them did. But some of them hit
Sparrow
. This time Buckley pumped shell after shell at what remained of the lighters and into the tugs. McGraw found he had a different kettle of fish. His targets, the destroyers, loomed big as houses but these were firing back. He still fired the little six-pounder as fast as his sweating, swearing loader could feed it.

For long, mad minutes they were between the lines but then they came up on the last destroyer and she had slipped and was moving ahead. Smith shouted, “Starboard ten!”
Sparrow
swung to slide past the big boat’s stern and the open sea lay before her. Out of the night burst the CMB with both of her Vickers machine-guns manned and hammering away at the destroyers’ decks and bridges as she tore past them. She spun away from the line, the machine-guns fell silent and that tight turn brought her sweeping close to
Sparrow
before racing out into the darkness again.

Smith ordered the signalman, “Make the ‘recall’ to the CMB.” The light flickered and out in the darkness another replied.

Sparrow
was working up speed again now and making fifteen knots. The crew of the twelve-pounder stood around panting, with heaving chests. They were stripped to the waist, sootsmeared, running with sweat and the rain that coursed down over their heads and bodies. Their gun would no longer bear on the ships lying astern. The six-pounders aft and in the waist still banged away and
Sparrow
was still under fire. Rain hid the ships now but their gun flashes marked them and Smith knew that was all Buckley and McGraw had to aim at, and that was the case with their opposite numbers in the enemy destroyers.

He told Sanders, “Cease firing!”

In the ringing silence that followed he ordered, “Revolutions for fifteen knots.” If there was pursuit they would elude it by stealth and not speed, not by hammering away with flames from the funnels to give them away. He found he was moving slowly and it was an effort to think. The men stood around dumbly, numbly under the rain. Maybe they weren’t sure that they were still alive? He wasn’t sure himself. He had no right to be. He had known it was an awful risk from the beginning but surprise had carried them through the first of it. Then when he had steered to enter that narrow lane again he had known it was a death trap, that the destroyer firing at him at the tail of the line would run along the outside of it and catch him as he came out. It was a box that he and
Sparrow
would never get out of. But then Curtis had attacked. He could close his eyes and see the CMB roaring in…

He said, “Mr. Lorimer! Get back to your chart and keep our track. I want to be outside the nets before daylight. Mr. Sanders! Check every gun and report to me. We stay at action stations till I order otherwise.” There was no bridge messenger. “I want a messenger on the bridge. Whoever you send, tell him first to get hold of the cooks and they’re to produce a hot drink and any grub for the men that they can knock up.”

The ship came to slow life again as the hands turned to, repairing damage where they could, clearing the rolling, empty cartridge cases from the deck, throwing wreckage over the side. Brodie reported three dead, one of them the gunner, and eleven wounded. Smith heard him tell McGraw and heard his reply: “The rest of us are bloody lucky to be alive. I cannae believe it.”

Smith stood on the bridge and when his hands started to shake he jammed them in his pockets.

Lucky to be alive. But it was over now.

There was no more lightning and the thunder rumbled away in the distance. The rain eased, stopped. When
Sparrow
stole cautiously through the gap in the mine-nets the cloud-cover was breaking up and stars showed. It was now just a warm, still summer’s night.

He stood on
Sparrow
’s bridge and he was very tired but he told himself it was over now, that he only had to wait awhile until it was day to see the end of it.
Sparrow
slipped softly over that still, dark sea at an easy ten knots, steadily patrolling up and down outside the mine-net barrage and waiting for dawn. Smith wanted to see the results of the night’s action, and proposed to run in through the gap in the mine-nets and close the shore until he could see. He was certain there would be nothing but the wreckage of the lighters but he wanted to present a visual report of that. And if, incredibly, the big destroyers still lay there? Well,
Marshall Marmont
should be up soon with her two big guns to give him cover. He did not believe they would be needed. After the night attack the enemy would suspect that a large force was at sea and
Sparrow
only a small part of it. They would have gone home.

He would go when he had finished the job.

Sanders stepped up on to the bridge with a mug of tea steaming in either hand and offered one to Smith. Sanders, like all of them, like the ship herself, was the worse for wear. His jacket was scorched and had great holes burnt in it. What light there was showed him hollow-eyed. Smith thought the boy would sleep for a week when they reached port and that he had earned it, as
Sparrow
had earned the rest she would get in dockyard hands. Both torpedo-tubes were mangled, one of her six-pounders was twisted and useless and another had been blown over the side. At the moment it did not matter about the tubes because she had no torpedoes left to fire anyway. But there was a hole in the deck aft, a lump chewed out of her stern and another hole in the turtle-back fo’c’sle. A shell had burst between the first and second funnels and blasted away more of the wreckage of the wireless shack. It was a bitterly ironic thought that if the wireless operators had survived
Sparrow
’s previous actions they would still have died in this one. Yet miraculously she still functioned as a fighting-ship. She had the twelve-pounder and three of her sixpounders and they had been cleared of what wreckage could be cut away. She had not been holed below or near the water-line and her engines were intact.

Like the rest of them, she had survived.

Not all. There were the three dead and eleven wounded men below in the wardroom.

The crew were still at action stations but though the look-outs were awake, the men at the guns slept where they were, curled on the deck or propped against the mountings. Smith could see them heaped around the twelve-pounder. They sprawled as if struck down and slept like the dead. He envied them.

He turned and looked astern to where the CMB kept station on them but all he could see was the white splash of her bow-wave. Earlier she had run alongside and Smith had seen that she, too, was scarred but Curtis had reported the torpedo firing-gear repaired. And said longingly, “What a night for a man to go fishing.”

Smith grinned tiredly. Victoria Baines had taught that boy some bad habits. Fishing from one of His Majesty’s ships! Or had he taught her, as he had fished when a farmer’s son in the creek by his home? And that was not so long ago.

His smile faded as he faced forward. It was quiet. So quiet that but for the hum of the fans and the engines’ soft beat they would be able to hear the guns at Nieuport that never stopped. He thought that in the German lines the troops would be standing to for the dawn and maybe a British counter-attack. But not to attack themselves. Not now. It would start to get light soon. Already he thought the visibility was gradually…

“Ship fine on the starboard bow!” The look-out called hoarsely, pointed. “Think it’s the tug, sir!” It was the tug
Lively Lady
trudging down on them and as the gap between them closed Smith made out, astern of her at the end of the tow, the flat-iron shape of
Marshall Marmont
.

Sanders said, “She’s right on time, sir.” And when Smith grunted, sipping at the tea, “Pity we didn’t leave her anything to do.”

“I’m glad to see them.” For he had sent them on a risky passage, at night and without an escort. Because it was another proof of the loyalty of Garrick, of all of them. They deserved to, and would, share in the success and that was what it was.
Marshall Marmont
would follow
Sparrow
home and nobody would laugh. He said, “Make to both of them: ‘Well done. Good to see you.’”

The lamp clattered and a light winked in reply from the bridge of the monitor. “Glad to be here.”

Marshall Marmont
, his ‘ship of force’. God, he was tired! When they got back there would be a blazing row over the way he had stolen her but he didn’t care. The landing had been stopped, and he had been proved right.

He ordered, “Starboard ten.”
Sparrow
had passed the monitor and now turned to swing around her stern and come up on her seaward side.

The landing. It had been a bold scheme and if it had gone through…He wondered absently how he would have done it, his weary mind trying to put himself in the enemy’s place. Nieuport. There were shore batteries and a monitor was anchored at La Panne to defend against a landing but not such a one as this. Those little lighters would be close inshore before any alarm was given, would be on the beach before they came under fire and the destroyers would back them up. But how would the German attacking force defend itself from attack from the sea? He would want to create a diversion. That answer was obvious and so was the nature of the diversion: a threat to Dunkerque or the cross-Channel traffic of heavily-laden troop transports, so that the little ships of the Dover Patrol and the Dunkerque Squadron were torn two ways, a monstrous threat that they could not handle and for that he would want…

“Signal from
Marshall Marmont
, sir!”

Smith saw the light blinking urgently from her bridge as
Sparrow
came up level with her.

The signalman read, “Wireless from
Gipsy
: ‘Enemy battlecruiser in sight. Course north-east. My position 51° 15’ N 2° 15’ E.’”

Gipsy
was another old thirty-knotter. He thought she must have been very close to the battlecruiser to have seen her, lucky to have survived to send her message, but the night would help her.

He tried to take it in with all its implications, saw the signalman waiting, excited. He said thickly, “Acknowledge.”

His interrupted train of thought lurched on — a monstrous threat to the cross-Channel traffic and Dunkerque. For that the enemy would want a ship of force, big, fast and heavily armed. A real ship of force slipping swiftly down the Dutch coast in the night to be on station in the Straits as the lighters ran in to the shore, ready to use her big guns to blast any ship in the Straits and to support the landing…

Boots hammered on the iron deck and Sanders hurled himself panting on to the bridge. “
Gipsy’s
just to the west of the Bergues Bank, sir.” He had run to check the position on the chart.

Smith nodded. But the planned landing was now still-born. The battlecruiser knew and she had turned back — due northeast, because that was her course for home. He turned to stare into the night astern, to where she was somewhere over the rim of the world. He did not need to look at the compass to know he faced south-west. She was heading straight for him and his little flotilla.

There was a greyness to the night now. The day was coming.

Sparrow
was nearly up with
Lively Lady
as the tug butted steadily onwards. Smith saw the signalman shaking the crew of the twelve-pounder into life, heard the killick’s startled: “
battlecruiser
! Suffering Je —” Garrick would be looking across at him from the monitor’s bridge, looking to him for orders while Garrick’s ship was an inert mass dragged along by a tug under the command of an old woman and the battlecruiser was running down on them. Orders?

He said, “Make to both: Turn sixteen points to port. Course Two-three-oh!” And to Gow at the wheel: “Port ten.”

“Port ten, sir.”

Sparrow
started to turn.

The battlecruiser would be racing; running for home she would work up to close on thirty knots.
Sparrow
could not make that but it would be forty-five minutes or so before the battlecruiser was in sight and that was time enough for Smith and
Sparrow
to scurry out to sea and out of the way. It was not time enough for the tug and Garrick and
Marshall Marmont
. The battlecruiser would hammer them to pieces. And then? North lay the crossing between the Hook of Holland and England and on that crossing was the ‘beef’ convoy. Trist had told him that the two thirtyknotters that should have been Smith’s had been sent to help escort it. The convoy was assembling a couple of hours after first light and would sail at the speed of the slowest ship, eight knots if they were lucky but it might be less. Smith had bitter experience of that. The convoy would be strung out over twenty miles of sea and the escort would be a few thirty-knotters and armed yachts, one or two newer destroyers and, barely possibly, a light cruiser. They, too, would be spread over twenty miles of sea. The battlecruiser would come on them when they were an hour or so out and they couldn’t scuttle back into Dutch waters. She would steam down the line of the convoy and through it and leave a trail of shattered and sunken ships.

Pakenham with the British battlecruiser force was in the Firth of Forth. But even if, by coincidence and a huge stroke of luck they received
Gipsy’s
signal and were ready to slip immediately they would never arrive in time. The Harwich force was closer but still not close enough. Both had the North Sea to cross. If Smith had forced a reconnaissance, got into the woods and discovered the lighters twenty-four hours earlier
and
thought the plan through, the Navy would have had a battleship force steaming this way…

If? That kind of speculation was useless, a waste of time. Again he tried to put himself in the enemy’s place. Did the enemy know that his attack on the lighters had been a spur-of-themoment decision forced on him? No. They would be thinking more reasonably that he
knew
they were there and his attack was planned, and
Sparrow
was only one part of a larger force…

Sparrow
was on course now and so was the tug and
Marshall Marmont
but they had fallen astern as they had taken the wider turn and more slowly. He said rapidly, trying to keep pace with his racing thoughts, “Slow ahead both. Make to
Marshall Marmont
and
Lively Lady
: Cast off tow.
Marshall Marmont
will anchor and prepare for action.” And to Gow: “Starboard five. Lay us alongside the tug.”

As her speed fell away
Sparrow
sidled in alongside the oncoming tug until she ran along a dozen feet away. The tug was also slowing, tow drooping, two men working in the stern of her where the tow was secured. Smith stepped to the port wing of the bridge and made a funnel of his hands. “
Lively Lady
!” In that first grey light he could only see that the wheelhouse held a blur of faces but then its door opened, out came Victoria Baines and…He still held his hands cupped before his face and stared over them at Eleanor Hurst. On that warm morning she wore only a white blouse and a long skirt that the breeze of the tug’s passage pressed against her legs. She held a hand to her hair. He stared until Victoria Baines called deeply, “What’s the matter?”

He did not look at her but spoke to Eleanor Hurst, voicing his disbelief. “What are you doing aboard this tug?”

Victoria Baines snapped tartly, “Don’t get on your high horse with me, young man! There’s nothing wrong with this tug. I took the gel to a hotel so she got a bath. But then she was so wore-out she couldn’t travel home so I found her a berth and just as well I did. She’d took a chill and spent most o’ yesterday in her bunk. A sight better and safer than in a hotel full o’ Frenchmen. And last night I told her where we were going but she wouldn’t go ashore. Can’t say as I blame her, either.”

Eleanor said, “I spoke to you last night when you came alongside in the sailing boat.” She sounded amused.

Smith accepted the situation because he had to. The girl looked pale and tired in that grey light but she was still smiling, watching him.

He looked away to Victoria Baines. “Cast off the tow and steer north-east. There’s an enemy battlecruiser coming up and you’ll be as well out of the way. Run into the Schelde if necessary.” In the estuary of that Dutch, neutral river the tug would be safe from attack.

“What are you going to do?”

“Just keep an eye on things.”

Victoria warned him, “Mind
you
don’t get in the way of that battlecruiser. It looks as if you’ve been in enough trouble already.”

“I’m not taking unnecessary risks. I don’t believe in them.” But anything that might save the convoy was necessary.

Victoria said severely, “Well, you be careful. How’s that Curtis boy?”

Smith said dryly, “He’s well — and wanting to go fishing.”

She was laughing as she waddled aft to the tow, Tweedledum in her boiler-suit. “Fred!
Fred
! Where
is
that bloody man?”

Sparrow
was pulling away from the tug, the gap widening between him and Eleanor Hurst. There was a lot he wanted to say but he only stared at her where she stood with hands at her sides and looked up at him. Until he ordered, “Starboard ten.”
Sparrow
swung around the bow of the stopped tug, and the girl was hidden from him.

He said, “Mr. Sanders! Tell Mr. Curtis I want to see him aboard. And get the —” He could not say the dead. “Clear the wardroom. I’m transferring them all to
Marshall Marmont
. Make a signal to her that we’re going alongside to do that.” The monitor’s surgeon would need that short notice to prepare for the wounded.

Sparrow
turned a slow circle and nudged in alongside the monitor, was made fast. Smith went across to her where Garrick awaited him on the monitor’s deck. Smith could see he had been up all night and was tense and anxious now but he grinned when he saw Smith. “Grand to see you, sir.”