He found what he wanted and, with a satisfied grunt, picked up the pencil and started to write MASTER CYCLOPS TO…
Then he hummed a bit and, crossing out the line, started again. I smiled this time despite myself. The message read:
COMCONVOY TO COMESCORT: SUGGEST YOU CONSULT PROVERBS 28: 1 AND ACT ACCORDINGLY WITH COURSE ALTERATION EAST SIGNED EVANS END.
I picked up the heavy book and looked at it curiously. The small print jumped into sharp focus.
‘…the wicked flee when no man pursueth; but the righteous are bold as a lion.’
When a curious Charlie Shell handed the reply in it was with an alacrity which indicated that Evans wasn’t the only skipper in the group who knew his way through the Good Book. The Old Man read it, frowning, then handed it to me and I frowned too. This ecclesiastical repartee was way above my head, COMESCORT TO COMCONVOY… The heavy irony of the first part didn’t escape my notice… WHILE ACTING ON YOUR SUGGESTION ALSO CAME UPON PROVERBS 16: 28… PROPOSE MAINTAIN PRESENT ZIG-ZAG AND SPEED UNTIL DAYLIGHT SIGNED BRAID END.
The Old Man was thumbing back through the bible with a comical mixture of impatience and frustration on his face. ‘Jesus Christ!’ He gritted eventually, with a brutal irreverence that confirmed he was purely a reader and not a believer.
I watched with furtive interest, ‘Sir?’
He glowered for a few moments, then started to grin. ‘Cheeky bugger! It says—“A violent man enticeth his neighbour, and leadeth him into the way that is not good”.’
CHAPTER THREE
At two bells in my watch I was on the bridge, talking in a low monotone to Brannigan as we watched the first streaks of reddish-coloured daylight exploring over the distant horizon.
Aboard Cyclops it was still blackness broken only by the green glow in the wheelhouse and the occasional spark wafting back from the great funnel above and abaft the bridge deck. I hadn’t bothered to use up the rest of my watch below trying to sleep; instead I’d just slipped down to my cabin to change my rather ill-used pyjama bottoms to a clean set of whites. When I came up again I hadn’t forgotten to bring my lifejacket with me either.
Young Conway moved at my elbow and I jumped nervously. All through the past hour I’d been seeing U-boats move surreptitiously through the shadowy sea around us, only to find almost immediately that the threatening shadows were caused by sullenly rising waves. I noticed the wind had veered three points until it was blowing almost directly from aft, and groaned; now we weren’t even going to have the consolation of a cool breeze fanning over us from the dodgers. Glancing at the cadet I could see, even in the darkness, that I wasn’t the only one under strain, and I should have been better equipped to cope than a little boy who ought still to have been going walks with his Mum and Dad instead of scuttling about the Atlantic like a frightened mouse.
‘Yes, Conway?’ I asked softly.
‘Coming up to zig-zag time, Sir,’ he answered smartly.
I nodded to Brannigan and he moved off into the wheelhouse as I looked back to the lad. ‘Thank you. Er, have you had your smoko yet, son?’
He shook his head, ‘Not due ‘til four bells, Sir.’
I jerked my chin aft, ‘Nip off down to the half-deck for a few minutes anyway. Put your feet up and relax.’
He stared at me for a moment as if I were some kind of reformed monster, then mumbled thank you and scuttled off down the ladder, no doubt to spend the next ten minutes trying to convince himself that I’d only slipped temporarily and was still the steel-hard bucko Mate of his story books at home.
Brannigan’s teeth flashed in the darkness as he came back out on to the wing. ‘Wish I’d had a big softie like you for a boss when I was a cadet, Sir.’
I hitched my shorts up and glared at him severely. ‘That would have been about six months ago at that, wouldn’t it, Mister Brannigan?’
The teeth sparkled again. ‘Yeah. But us boys were men in those days.’
Leaving the irrepressible Fourth grinning after me, I wandered into the wheelhouse and glanced into the binnacle. The floating card swung slightly with the slow roll of the ship. ‘Watch your head!’ I said unnecessarily to McRae, standing stolidly behind the wheel in a bright check shirt and tight jeans — virtually the universal dress of British merchant seamen — plus, of course, the ubiquitous heavy leather belt with its traditional double sheath for marlinespike and knife.
‘Aye, aye, Sir,’ he muttered, resigned to the fact that the only justification for having officers of the watch at all was their capacity to issue non-essential cautions to a craftsman like himself.
I turned away and leant on the mahogany window-ledge, staring at the brightening line of the horizon through the circular Kent clearview screen. McCrae shuffled a bit behind me. ‘I see we’re still headin’ south by east, Sir?’
‘I hope so, McRae: I hope so,’ I answered absently without turning.
There came a few seconds’ silence, then he spoke again. ‘The crowd was thinkin’ we should have been alterin’ towards the coast by now, Mister Kent.’
I pushed myself upright and swivelled round, trying to look casual. So the sailors had it figured too? They were beginning to wonder why we were churning on into nowhere instead of running for the Cape. A few months ago I would have brought him up with a sharp round turn for inferring that the Captain needed assistance from the foc'sle, but now, with the war beginning to hot up and most of us living on our nerves, ships did a hell of a lot of odd things that required explanations. The trouble here was that I, myself, couldn’t really explain this headlong dash right past our destination. Even if I could explain it — could I justify it?
Doing the next best thing, I shrugged and tried to make my voice sound bored. ‘Admiralty instructions. Ours not to reason why, McRae.’
‘You what, Sir?’ he asked vaguely and I knew he wasn’t convinced, then to my relief Brannigan stuck his head in through the door and said, ‘Zig-zag leg again, Sir.’
‘Carry on, Mister Brannigan,’ I muttered, and left him to it. As I stepped aft over the low coaming of the chartroom I heard him issue the new course alteration to McRae and the ship lay over fractionally as we adjusted.
In the discreet privacy of the chartroom the bearded old sailor frowned down at me with wise brown eyes. I accepted his invitation and lit up, thinking he’d seen a lot of nervous anticipation and a lot of action too — him and the dignified ironclad moored in the bay behind him. I wondered who he'd been, and whether he had ever tried to run away instead of facing the enemy, and how many hoary old bluejackets like him there were aboard Mallard. The blue smoke from my cigarette hung suspended in the glare of the overhead light as I grinned tightly up at the Players' tin. Not many. Not many hard old shellbacks like my friend up there, I suspected. The only ones I’d seen from the lofty Cyclops’s bridge had been young, pink-faced kids who didn’t seem to fit in with the efficient image of what was still the finest navy in the world. Still, we’d heard rumours about a great naval engagement taking place off Cape Matapan a few weeks before and, if it were true, there must have been a lot of young boys getting suddenly older in that — or never getting any older!
I realise, now, that I should never have had that bloody sandwich.
Every time I picked up a sandwich it seemed to activate an explosion — like when the Commandant Joffre was hit. But I never thought about it as I picked distastefully through the box on the tray beside the chart table. Cheese this time and, as usual, dry as a piece of cardboard between two slices of melba toast. My teeth meeting for the first bite was the signal for the detonation.