Thunder at Dawn (10 page)

He saw the light but felt rather than heard the beat of propellers as the picket-boat’s prow thrust up high above him then swung away as she turned. Her side came down towards him and he saw Buckley, Robinson, Exton and Lambert all kneeling there. As Exton and Lambert reached down to grasp the hand he lifted from the fuselage, Buckley plunged in beside him and lifted away Bradley’s weight. They hauled Smith out of the bay and he fell over the side to sprawl in the well like a stranded fish. Seconds later they brought Bradley in to join him, Buckley crawling in after, spitting and swearing. Somers spun the wheel and the picket-boat swung away, straightened out. Smith got his legs under him and stood up, holding on to the cabin’s coaming and peered back through the gathering darkness to where the seaplane lay. He was in time to see the tail slide down as the water rushed up inside the hull and the weight of the engine dragged the wreck to the bottom. It left a little vortex and a crowd of bubbles that held brief life and died. The sea closed over the place; it was as if the seaplane had never been.

He turned away. They had rushed Bradley into the cabin and he could see Buckley in there; still dripping wet but helping to wrap blankets around the limp body. Smith called, “How is he?” He was furious that his teeth chattered.

Buckley replied cheerfully, oblivious to his own wetting, “He’s alive all right, sir, but he’s still out. Looks like he took a clout on the head.”

Somebody tried to drape a blanket around Smith. It was Lambert. Smith shrugged it away impatiently, “Use it in the cabin.” He moved to stand between Somers and Quinn, who was clicking the hand signal-lamp. The clicking stopped and he saw the answering blink from
Thunder
.

Somers said, “I told them to expect survivors, sir.”

“Very good.” Smith’s clothes were clammy against his skin, seeming to freeze in the wind. He was an impatient fool. He should have taken the blanket. He was cold to the bone. He said, “You all did very well. You were very quick.”

Somers kept his eyes on
Thunder
as she came up. “We saw the aeroplane take off, sir, and where it came from. Then when Miss Benson came off a while ago and said you were up in it, well, we hung about more or less ready to bring you off.”

“On whose orders?”

“It just seemed like a good idea, sir, and Mr. Garrick said I could do it.”

“I’m glad you followed me.”

Somers said absently, preoccupied with the business of bringing the pinnace alongside, “Follow you anywhere, sir.” And was instantly embarrassed by his own sincerity.

Somers swung the pinnace alongside the ladder, Lambert and Quinn hooking on. Smith snapped, “Get that man aboard as quick as you can.” And ran up the ladder.

Albrecht was waiting for him with a little group of hands with stretchers and blankets. “If you’ll come this way, sir.”

Smith pushed past him. “See to the man coming aboard.”

“Your head, sir.”

Smith ignored him. Garrick was there beside a number of others. He stepped close to Smith and muttered, “
Ariadne
and
Elizabeth
Bell
, both masters here to see you, sir.”

Smith said, “Prepare to get under way.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Garrick left and an instant later the pipes shrilled to his bawled order. Smith turned to the group that waited on him on his quarterdeck. Sarah Benson was there and she looked drawn, eyes fastened on the head of the ladder. He turned his back on them briefly while he saw Bradley brought aboard and hurried forward to the sick-bay but not before Smith said, “Word at your earliest, please.”

Albrecht answered, “Aye, aye, sir.” He did not lift his eyes from his patient.

Smith turned back to the group. “Miss Benson. Gentlemen. I don’t want to appear perfunctory but you’ll realise my time is limited.”

Hands were shaken. Smith’s was wet and the water dripped from him to form a widening pool around his feet. His face was very pale and his hair was plastered to his skull. A thread of water and blood ran thinly down over his temple.

Ballard of
Ariadne
was hefty and handsome, his uniform well-cut. He looked the picture of what he was, the commodore of a line. Graham of
Elizabeth
Bell
was short and solid with a little round paunch that shoved out his waistcoat with its looped watch-chain. He carried a bowler hat in his hand to go with the blue serge suit and his hair was a halo of fluffy white round an island of pink scalp.

Ballard said, “One of your officers brought us word that we couldn’t, or shouldn’t sail. Some story about German cruisers being loose in these waters!” He grinned.

Smith nodded. “My information is that two cruisers are out and I expect them on this coast at any time.”

Ballard’s grin faded. “That’s what he said. They’ve been sighted?”

“No, they have not.”

Ballard looked relieved but puzzled. “Then what makes you think they are bound for these waters?”

Smoke billowed and rolled around them as
Thunder
raised steam. Smith eyed that smoke, pleased to see it. “I haven’t time for a lengthy explanation, but among other factors I received information that two colliers were on this coast, loaded steam coal and manned by Germans. There is no doubt in my mind that the cruisers have this coast as their objective.” His voice was hard with certainty.

Ballard glanced at Graham. Neither seemed happy. Graham said, “Understand, Commander, we don’t want to be unreasonable nor rash but in the merchant service time is money. If I waste time idling here my owners will take a loss and they’ll want to know why. All you’re saying is that you
think
those cruisers are headed this way.”

Smith nodded sympathetically. “I appreciate your difficulty.” But he went on firmly, “I’m certain about the cruisers. Now look here, gentlemen. I expect to return to this port within thirty-six hours. If I do not then you may decide at the end of that time whether or not to sail in the light of the situation then. If you sail before without my escort then you do so against my advice.”

Ballard glanced at Graham then turned to Smith. “Well, that seems reasonable. It will give us time —”

But Albrecht appeared and Smith asked quickly, “Yes, Doctor?” He was conscious of Sarah Benson, intent.

Albrecht said, “Slight concussion and shock but nothing serious, sir.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Can he be moved?”

“He can.”

“Get him up here.” And to Ballard: “Can you take Miss Benson and that injured young man as passengers? Neither would be welcome ashore. I’d be grateful.”

The request was also a broad hint that it was time to leave. A party was already hovering, waiting to stow the accommodation ladder and both skippers knew what they were waiting for.

Ballard said, “As I’ve told your First Lieutenant, I’m already overcrowded. I will disembark a number of passengers at Guaya, but until then — I can put the man in the sick-bay, of course. Graham?”

Graham said immediately, “I’ve a cabin for the young lady and she’s right welcome, but we’re no liner, miss.”

Sarah grinned at him. “Lor’ love you, I’m no fine lady, either.” She winked at him impudently but Smith saw Graham smiling.

Smith sighed with relief. “Excellent.”

Sarah looked at him ironically but Graham was addressing Smith. “Only one more thing, Commander. There are a lot of rumours flying about ashore and those fellers spin a yarn a bit and we can hardly credit … they say a neutral ship was boarded in Guaya last night by a British naval party, and blown up.”

“That is not a rumour. She was German though claiming to be neutral but I’ve explained that. I sank her.” He waited as they stared at him then: “Anything else?”

Graham sucked in his breath. “No.” He thought, “That’ll do to be going on with.”

Smith shepherded them to the head of the ladder and as he handed Sarah on to the ladder he said awkwardly, “Thank you, I’m grateful — we’re all grateful for all you’ve done.”

“No more than my duty, Commander.” But she added, “Good luck.” And he saw her fingers touch that barbaric medallion. So they parted.

*

Before Bradley on his stretcher went down into
Ariadne’s
boat he managed a fragile smile at Smith. “Seems I bust one more airplane so nobody can straighten it out again. But I’ve been thinking: if I hadn’t smashed it up you would ha’ done because you wouldn’t have left it for Richter to fly reconnaissance for those cruisers. Right?”

Smith nodded. “Right. But it was a gallant piece of flying. No one could have done more.”

Bradley shook his head and winced. “They were right. You’re mad.” But his grin took the sting out of the words. He said seriously, “For you I’d try it again. I’m just damn sorry I didn’t find that ship for you.”

“I know where she isn’t and that will be enough.”

Bradley went down and the boats pulled away. Smith found Garrick and Aitkyne on the bridge and retired Aitkyne to the chart-room, leaving Garrick to take the ship to sea.

He stared at the chart and fiddled with a pencil, shivered with the cold of the wet clothes. He was unaware of Aitkyne watching him.

He ‘knew where she was not’. That ruled out one of a long list of possibilities that
Maria
had sailed west for Juan Fernandez. But there were still a thousand places spread over the hundreds of miles of coast to the south, seamed as it was with channels and inlets, where the collier could hide.
If
she could hide. What if she had a rendezvous to keep at all costs, with cruisers that had traversed the Atlantic and rounded the Horn, coaling secretly and precariously from colliers like the
Maria
? They would want to meet without delay. And there was a place the Germans knew and had proved in the far-off days of 1914 when Von Spee had cruised this coast. His fingers were tight on the pencil now.

It was logic allied with intuition and faith.

It was all based on his conviction that the cruisers would come.

He jabbed the pencil down at the chart. “A course for the Gulf of Peñas, pilot. Revolutions for fifteen knots.”

Thunder
headed south.

VI

Thunder
ploughed out of Malaguay and into the night and the storm. She was rolling and Smith was grimly aware that rolling was made worse by the lightness of her bunkers. The seas were black mountains in the night, capped with the snow of driving spray.
Thunder
thrust her bow into those seas to lift then fall, bow going down and stern lifting and all the time she rolled.

He stood by Garrick on the bridge and Garrick glanced sidewise at him and said, “Coal, sir.”

“I know, I asked Thackeray for help. The
Mary
Ellen
will be waiting for us here.”

Garrick chewed worriedly at his lip and scowled out at the humping seas. “Going to get worse before it gets better.”

He referred to the storm but Smith thought of the cruisers, out there, somewhere, in the all-surrounding darkness.

Smith said, “Yes.” Garrick thought they were on a wildgoose chase, that there would be no cruisers to meet the
Maria
. Smith
knew
they were there. He said again, but tiredly, “Yes,” and, “Call me at first light or immediately anything,
anything
, is sighted.”

He went to his cabin below the bridge, stripped and towelled himself dry, holding on to his bunk with one hand against
Thunder’s
pitching and dressed in dry clothes. A hot meal had been cooked while they lay at Malaguay, a stew of corned beef. Horsfall had kept some warm for him and brought it now, even managing to keep it warm through the journey forward, Smith sent Horsfall away and wolfed the meal. He laid himself down fully-dressed. He might get a few hours sleep before first light.

But he knew that sleep was impossible.
Thunder’s
rolling and pitching and the continuous hammering of the sea on her hull would see to that if his thoughts did not and they were black enough.

He was acting only on the evidence of one collier that had been suspect and another that seemed to fly at his approach. The seaplane could easily be a coincidence. He had no scrap of evidence that the cruisers were or would be in the Pacific. It was like assuming a murder without a body.

If he was right there would be a murder and
Thunder
would be the victim.

If he was wrong he faced professional ruin and worse. He would be the man who single-handed upset the pro-British feeling in South America at a time when Britain needed all her friends. There would be a clamour for his blood and no reason at all why that clamour should not be satisfied. If he was wrong.

And again, if he was right? The cruisers loomed huge in his mind and he twisted in the bunk and put a hand to his eyes. He had to sleep.

Bradley had done well. Do it again, would he? Guts. Bradley. Graham. Sarah Benson. He was rid of her now. He was grateful for her help, God knew! She had brought the word that the Germans were watching
Thunder
, spotted the oddity of the collier with wireless and but for her he would not have flown with Bradley. Because of her
Thunder
would not sail unprepared into an ambush.

If ambush there was.

Only Sarah Benson believed he was right.

He threw an arm across his eyes. But she was a prickly, short-tempered — Her face when she killed that man. He would not sleep. Somers: ‘Follow you anywhere, sir.’ The boy meant it. Thackeray, Graham. The water closing over him.

Sarah Benson …

He slept.

*

Dawn came in a full gale and as Smith clung on the bridge the seas broke over the bows to sweep aft like a green glass wall and smash against the conning-tower. Visibility was maybe three miles. There was no ship in sight.

He ate breakfast there, a sandwich of the inevitable, monotonous bully beef that tasted vile and was washed down by tea that was cold before he drained the cup. It was all gulped down, forced down, eaten one-handed as he held on with the other. The galley fires were out. There was no hot food nor would there be until this weather abated. The messdecks were in chaos and awash. Visibility was no better and the storm was even worse than in that heaving dawn.
Thunder
was reduced to ten knots and making hard work of that. In the stokehold men were thrown about as they fought to feed the fires and were bruised and burned.

Garrick said, “
Maria
’ll be no better off, sir. She’ll be lucky to be making more than five knots in this sea.” His face was grey as the sky under the prickling black stubble and there were shadows around his eyes.

Smith grunted in black bad temper, “I suggest you turn in, Number One.”

“Aye, aye, sir.” But Garrick hung on, reluctant, until Smith’s baleful glare caught him. He left the bridge.

Kennedy had the watch. He took one look at his Captain and ventured no comments at all. Smith swayed to
Thunder’s
heave and roll and peered wearily out at the wild sea. They would be making better speed than the collier but that did not mean they would catch her. In an ocean of millions of square miles Smith could see only a tiny circle and beyond that was lost to him in rain and leaden cloud. It was like seeking a needle in a haystack, and he could well be searching the wrong haystack.

He wailed it out.

At mid-morning the visibility was scarcely improved, variable as the squalls swept in over the mountainous seas.

For what seemed the hundredth time Kennedy hailed the look-out: “Masthead! Anything seen?”

The answer came down from the man miserably wet and cold on his swaying, swooping, dizzying perch: “Nuffink, sir!”

Smith opened his mouth but shut it again, biting back the irritable chiding that came to his tongue. He waited a moment then said in as normal a tone as the wind allowed, “He’s a good man, Mr. Kennedy?”

“Picked, sir.”

“Then I think we’d do well to leave him alone.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

He was trying to maintain an air of calm certainty but he knew they saw through it. He had been on the bridge for four hours. Waiting. Wait and see. But would they see? They could pass the
Maria
within a few miles and not see her in this weather. They should see her if Smith was totally, completely right, but if her course varied from his by only a degree that divergence would take him past her. He cursed the absence of a consort. If he had another ship with him, any ship, an armed merchant cruiser say, it would widen his search and be another pair of eyes.

What if
Maria’s
rendezvous was not the Gulf of Peñas, if she was already lying snugly hidden in some sheltered inlet?
Thunder
could sail on for ever like the Flying Dutchman, chasing a similar phantom.

No. At a point in time he would have to acknowledge that he had made a mistake and turn back. That time would be soon. They should have caught her by now but she would be running for all she was worth. He would have to set a time. He did a little sum in his head, involving the speed of
Thunder
and the probable maximum speed of
Maria
, and the relative times of sailing, and he arrived at an answer.

Noon.

If they had not sighted her by noon he must turn. He must return to Malaguay and give clearance to
Ariadne
and
Elizabeth
Bell
. And make his report by cable.

Then wait for the cable in reply that would relieve him, break him.

Garrick, unable to sleep, came onto the bridge.

Smith felt bleakly, briefly, sorry for him, for the mess he would inherit. Then he remembered again what his own state would be and grinned wryly at himself. Sorry for Garrick. That was almost funny.

Garrick caught the grin and misconstrued it. “Sighted her, sir?”

Smith shook his head and saw the worry that dragged Garrick’s mouth down at the corners and the glance he threw at Kennedy. Smith said, “There’s time yet, Number One.”

There was neither hope nor resignation on Garrick’s face, just worry. He did not know whether they would come up with the collier nor how it could help if they did. She had happened to sail before they arrived at Malaguay and that was all. Smith was just jumping to conclusions.

Garrick had said it all before and now Smith could read it on his face, and on the other faces. In a casual glance Smith covertly examined expressions on the bridge and decided they were not fools and had done their sums as he had. They knew that any chance of a sighting had slid into improbability and was sliding fast towards impossibility.

At 11.30 the weather worsened in a belt of squalls, visibility fell to less than two miles and spray burst continually over the bridge.

At 11.50 the bridge was ominously silent and they were all waiting as they had waited all through that long morning, but now they were waiting for the change of course. All of them were immobile as statues except that they rocked and swayed to
Thunder’s
rolling that now seemed as heavy and sullen as the atmosphere on the bridge. Smith was cold to the bone.

At 11.55 the squalls swept by and visibility marginally lifted to possibly five miles.

At 11.58 the masthead look-out howled: “Masthead! Ship bearing green two-oh!”

Smith fumbled at the glasses hanging on his chest, swept the arc of sea over the starboard bow and thought he saw something through the rain and blown spray, a shadow, a shape, but could not be sure.

“Masthead! I think she could be the
Marigher
!”

Smith could make out a ship now but what ship he could not tell. She was ploughing into the seas, gamely but slow and they hid all but her superstructure. The man at the masthead had a better view from his perch high above the deck Smith lowered the glasses. “Steer two points to starboard.”

Thunder
edged around and started to close the ship ahead and to starboard. She slowly came up through the rain until she was within a mile and they could see her with the naked eye, but Garrick used his glasses. “It’s her, sir. The
Maria
.”

If he expected Smith to be delighted and relieved then he was disappointed. If anything Smith looked grimmer. “Very good. Make: ‘Heave to’.”

The signal was hoisted and on Smith’s orders a searchlight repeated it in morse.

Garrick said, “Of course, we have right of board and search, sir, but launching a boat in this sea —”

“Yes.” A boat would not live a minute. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Garrick blinked and Knight said, “She’s flying ‘I am a neutral’, sir.”

Maria
maintained her course and speed.

Smith said deliberately, “Make: ‘Heave to or I will sink you’.”

Knight swallowed. “Aye, aye, sir.”

The signal broke out, the flags laid flat as boards on the wind. The collier steamed on.

Smith said, “Close up the starboard twelve-pounder battery.” And as the guns’ crews scrambled to the guns and the ‘Ready’ reports came in: “Put a shot across her bows, Number One.”

A twelve-pounder cracked and sea spurted ahead of
Maria
. She sailed on.

A messenger came staggering. “Wireless reports signalling, sir. Very close, they think it must be this ship an’ it seems to be in code.”

“Very good.”

So
Maria
was signalling furiously to someone out of his sight, quite possibly out of range of her wireless anyway because this weather would play the devil with wireless. Or whoever it was could be within a few miles. The eternal guessing game. The two ships ploughed heavily on through the breaking seas, the driving rain, lost in a little world of their own that was bounded by Smith’s vision. But there was a world outside this where diplomatic protests were flying concerning a naval officer who had flouted International Law and sunk a neutral vessel in a neutral port. Where two big, fast cruisers hunted. Somewhere.

Smith’s thoughts crystallised, ending his hesitation. He had known what the end of this would be and that hesitation was only a faltering of nerve. He had been right in his reasoning from the start and he was right now. Or had been wrong, ‘A wolf sneaking into the fold to murder a lamb’.

May as well be hung for a sheep.

“Close up the upper deck six-inch batteries.” The maindeck guns were unusable in this sea. “And sink her.”

“
Sink
her, sir?” Garricks’ voice rose on the word, the heads on the bridge jerked around.

Aitkyne said, “Sir, if I might suggest, we could lay right alongside and hail her. I’ll take a party of volunteers —”

Smith cut brutally across the protests. “They’re playing for time! First hours, and now for minutes! Sink her and quickly!” His voice was harsh and flat, denying argument or delay.

The men waded and clawed their way across the deck through the seas that washed it and manned the six-inch casemates. They reported ready. Garrick exchanged an agonised glance with Aitkyne, Kennedy, Knight — and Smith saw those exchanges. Garrick tried once more: “Sir —”