Sunset (22 page)

Kerr called out, ‘From
Flag
, sir.
Distress signal from S. S. Kiang Chen. Has lost rudder and out of command. Requires urgent assistance.
'

Kipling asked quietly, ‘Why didn't our W/T pick it up, sir?'

‘The conditions, probably. Besides, the transmitters and receivers at the base are giants compared to ours.'

Kerr was still under the cover writing busily on the navigation pad.

He called, ‘Signal ends, sir,
Proceed with all despatch
.'

Feet clattered on to the bridge and Calvert swayed like a ghost on the top of the ladder.

‘Sir?'

Brooke said, ‘S.O.S., Pilot.' Kerr reappeared. ‘One hundred
and fifty miles south-west-by-west of Hong Kong. Latitude twenty, Longitude one hundred and ten.'

About a hundred miles away. Still time to avoid the storm. Brooke watched the sea explode over the bows again. They could manage half-speed in this if it got no worse.

He said, ‘Course to intercept, Pilot. Get the Chief out of his armchair.'

Calvert said eventually, ‘Course to steer is two-one-five degrees, sir.'

Brooke rubbed his chin, his mind far beyond the trembling ship. The South China Sea's other face.

Kipling said, ‘The Chief's on the phone, sir.' He was smiling. ‘He was already down there with his engines!'

Brooke took the red handset. How difficult it must have been in his father's day when the engine room had only a speaking tube. With all that din it was a wonder they got anything right.

‘Chief, sir.'

‘S.O.S., Chief.' He covered the handset. ‘Call W/T, Number One. Ask them if they picked up anything. If not, make a signal to the
Flag
and report our position and acknowledge the order to proceed.' He removed his hand again. ‘Can you give me revs for eighteen knots?'

No hesitation. ‘Of course, sir.'

He smiled. ‘I'll ring down when I'm ready.'

‘You are relieved, Number One. Get hold of the Chief Bosun's Mate and put him in the picture. Fenders, line-throwing gun – he knows what to do.'

Kerr hesitated. ‘No signals received by W/T, sir.'

‘Probably gone under.' That was Kipling.

‘Need me, sir?' It was Onslow, still unfamiliar in his peaked cap.

Brooke smiled grimly. ‘Mind-reader, Yeo. Check the signal and have a look through the intelligence pack in my hutch. Try and discover what sort of ship we're dealing with. Could be a liner or the Star Ferry for all this tells us!'

Several of them laughed while the ship fell about beneath them. He saw her face, suddenly and as clearly as a photograph, as she had gazed up at him from the car.

They like you.

He looked at Calvert by the chart table. ‘Bring her round to two-one-five, Pilot. We should intercept the ship in five to six hours if this gets no worse.' He touched the back of his chair. ‘She can make it.'

Then he held up his hand. ‘But first things first.' He picked up the tannoy microphone, wet and smooth in his grip. How many hundreds of times must it have been used. While soldiers had floundered in the sea in desperate but patient queues at Dunkirk, or while
Serpent
had circled struggling survivors after a ship had gone down. What she could say if only she could speak . . .

Calvert must be thinking of it too. From Stringbag to destroyer. But the same, bloody war.

He snapped down the button. ‘This is the Captain. In a moment we are altering course to port. It may be slightly uncomfortable.' The signalman bared his teeth in a grin, and down on the messdeck they would be chuckling or cursing the bridge in equal portions. ‘There is a vessel in distress. This is a ship of war, but the other rule is older and as important.'

He hung up the instrument and said, ‘Carry on, Pilot.'

Calvert crouched by the gyro-repeater and then spoke into the bell-mouthed voicepipe.

‘Port twenty!'

‘Coxswain on the wheel, sir! Twenty of port wheel on!'

Brooke gripped the chair as the helm went over. Pike always knew. Like the Chief, and Onslow, and the Buffer, the foxy-faced petty officer who was already gathering rescue gear and the men to handle it.

Kipling muttered,
‘Whoops!'

Calvert felt his shoes slipping on the wet gratings.

‘Steady! Meet her! Steer two-one-five!' He wiped the ticking gyro-repeater with his bare arm as he watched the luminous figures come to rest.

Pike reported calmly, ‘Course two-one-five, sir!'

Brooke nodded, pleased. The ex-Swordfish pilot had handled her like a veteran.

‘One-one-zero revolutions!'

Onslow came in at the bridge gate, but paused to watch the surge of sea and foam against the weather side.

Brooke said, ‘Find out anything, Yeo?'

Onslow nodded. Out of breath. He was proud too that the captain had allowed him to go to his hutch and look at his confidential log.

‘The
Kiang Chen
is registered at Hong Kong, sir. A coaster, two thousand tons. Built in the Great War.'

Brooke touched his skin again. The same feeling. ‘So was this lady, Yeo.'

It must have been something in his tone. Onslow said, ‘Nothing much else, sir.'

He asked, ‘Who owns her?' He had to repeat the question before the yeoman heard him. He already knew.

‘Coutts Steamship Packet Company.'

Brooke could hear his brother's voice again, telling him about Charles Yeung's many interests. This elderly coaster was one of them.

To the bridge at large he said, ‘We're on our way.'

But later Calvert thought he had been speaking to his ship.

‘Blue Watch closed up at cruising stations, sir!'

Brooke heard Calvert acknowledge the report. Confident, his earlier wariness apparently gone.

He watched the bows rising again, higher this time, before smashing down into a cruising roller like a giant axe. He thought of what Kerr had told him when he had carried out another tour of the lower deck. Some of the messes were in chaos with shattered crockery scattered everywhere and gear coming adrift. Even the fiddles and lashings could not cope with these wild plunges.

In the heads it was far worse as gasping men tried to find a space to vomit, while the confined stench had affected the others. Even Kerr, who was a good sailor, had admitted to being queasy.

The middle watch. Brooke had hoped to find something by now, a flare perhaps, a drifting boat. There was nothing. Worse, they had lost precious time by reducing revolutions to avoid unnecessary strain on the shafts. Before doing so the whole ship
had shaken herself like a wet dog when the screws had been lifted almost to the surface.

The vessel in distress had probably gone down. It happened often enough out here, according to the reports. Old, unseaworthy vessels, sometimes overloaded, or those whose cargoes began to shift when the sea showed its temper.

Beyond the glass screen it was black but for the leaping spectres of ragged waves. Even the cosy red glow below Brooke's side of the bridge had gone: he had ordered all lights out, including the navigation lights. Right or wrong, who was to say? This was not described as a war zone. But the
Serpent was
at war. Whatever happened Brooke was in no doubt of the outcome. If you did right, others would take the credit; make a mistake, and it would end in a court martial. It was a tongue-in-the-cheek joke amongst most commanding officers. Until it happened.

‘Bridge, sir?'

Calvert swayed to the voicepipe. ‘Officer-of-the-Watch!'

‘The interpreter requests permission to come up, sir.'

Brooke turned. ‘Affirmative, Pilot!'

The interpreter, Mr John Chau, was the new addition to their company. A serious-faced, eager little man, he was a bank official by profession but also a member of the Hong Kong Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. During his peacetime training he had acted as a boarding-officer in one of Hong Kong's auxiliary patrol vessels, where his knowledge of both Mandarin and Cantonese had been extremely useful. He would make the chance of a mistake when stopping and searching a suspicious vessel less likely. Graded as an acting warrant-officer, he was permitted to share the wardroom, and he slept on a camp-bed in Calvert's chart-packed cabin. In any night emergency it would be likely that Mr Chau would be trampled to death before he could get up.

It took him an age to reach the forebridge. Groaning and retching, he was eventually hauled through the gate by one of the signalmen.

‘So sorry, sir!' He gripped the compass platform's safety rail and stared despairingly at the sea while the bows lifted once again.

Brooke said, ‘Keep your eyes outboard, dead ahead if you can.'

Calvert said, ‘Like a roller-coaster, you know.'

Brooke smiled. ‘Give him a break, Pilot.'

Under his breath Onslow, the yeoman, who had remained on the bridge since the distress call, muttered, ‘Just keep a bloody bucket handy!'

Brooke asked, ‘Settled in, Mr Chau?'

‘Very much, sir, thank you.'

Brooke thought of Charles Yeung's valet, Robert Tan. Chau spoke like a younger version of the man.

Calvert said, ‘Come and look at the chart, John. You might learn something.'

Brooke settled down in his tall chair and smiled to himself. Calvert was making up for his comment in the midst of Chau's seasickness.

Under the cover of the canvas hood Calvert tapped the chart with his pencil. ‘The sea shoals to starboard. Although in home waters we'd still think it was deep!'

‘What about here, sir?'

‘Different matter entirely. A few more miles and we shall have fourteen hundred fathoms under where you're standing.'

Chau was neither impressed nor surprised.

He said softly, ‘A place unknown to any man. All-time darkness, fish and creatures so terrible that the gods keep them where they can harm no one.'

Calvert grinned. ‘I expect you're right.' Across the interpreter's slight shoulders he called to Brooke, ‘Shall I work out a boxsearch, sir?'

‘I think not. Another fifteen minutes. Then I'm turning back.' He was still thinking of the interpreter's seriousness. As she had been, when he had believed she was making fun of him. Chau was not speaking of superstition or fable. To him it was simply fact.

Brooke said to Onslow, ‘Have some men uncover the big searchlight. Men who know what they're doing.'

‘Aye, sir.' He touched the seaman beside him. ‘Get your mate and report when you've cleared away the searchlight, right?'

The young seaman grinned. ‘Sure thing, Yeo!'

The old lower-deck magic, Brooke thought. The seaman was the same one that Onslow had sworn at so despairingly when the dead woman and her child had been found under the overturned lifeboat.

They had obviously put it behind them. A solemn handshake, and probably sippers or gulpers from their respective tots of rum, but each man knowing he would react the same way if it happened again.

Kerr reappeared on the bridge. Nobody was sleeping tonight.

Brooke put him in the picture. He added, ‘I'm not too hopeful, Number One. How is it below?'

Kerr thought of the sprawled bodies trying to rest, huddled or lying on the tilting deck amidst a confusion of broken plates, scattered food and vomit.

He replied with a grin, ‘Just fine, sir.'

‘I'll bet.'

‘Oh, one thing, sir. I visited the Asdic cabinet. They're having a spot of bother with the set. Leading Seaman Aller is convinced it's something the dockyard did wrong.'

‘I'll get on to the yard when we get in. Not that it's much use anyway out here.'

‘It wasn't that, sir. The new Asdic chap, Ordinary Seaman Kellock – he only joined a few months back.' Even in the darkness he knew Brooke was frowning. ‘Ginger hair,' he prompted. ‘Nice lad to all accounts.'

The round freckled face appeared in his mind as if on a screen.

‘What about him?'

‘I
think
he's going to put in a request to see you in private, sir. The Cox'n has had his ear to the ground.'

‘Any ideas?'

‘He wants to get married, sir.'

Brooke tried to see his expression. ‘God, he's only a child!'

‘We all were once.'

‘
You
see him, Number One. Welfare. It's out of the question.'

Kerr had saved the best part for last. ‘She's a Chinese girl from Wanchai.'

Calvert called, ‘Better ask Paul Kipling about Wanchai. I think he knows the area!'

Kerr persisted, ‘Kellock has the right to see you, sir.'

Brooke grinned. ‘Tell me about it!'

‘Flare, sir! Starboard bow!'

Several pairs of binoculars braved the drifting spray to find the look-out's flare.

Like a guttering candle, low down, or so it appeared. Instinct, or had some poor wretch been able to make out
Serpent
's great ragged bow-wave as she plunged through each successive roller?

Brooke said, ‘Pass the word to the Buffer.' He wiped his face with his forearm. ‘Stand by with the searchlight. Give them a rough guide to sweep from the bow to abeam!'

He leaned forward in his chair, and realised that his ribs were sore where its arms had been scraping into him every time the ship rolled.

Kerr said, ‘I'll get down there, sir.'

Brooke turned towards him. ‘Ordinary Seaman Kellock indeed!'

The youth in question was hunched over beside the Asdic set trying to keep out of everyone's way. The small cabinet was crowded. Leading Seaman Aller was on his knees passing wire to a torpedoman who was stretched out on his back beneath the steel mounting. The sides of the place were streaming with condensation, and more dropped from the deckhead like tropical rain.

The torpedoman, Usher, nicknamed Pop because of his premature baldness, croaked, ‘Nearly done, me old mate – just a tick longer.'