And Brannigan had stopped screaming his commentary to the helmsman and, instead, was heaving and sobbing over the wing of the bridge as he spewed his guts up beside a curiously silent, thoughtful Curtis.
And Phyllis shouted hate again from the poop, and… and…
…and, just as suddenly, it was all over.
The mess in the water was quite a long way astern of us by the time the Lewis guns stopped chattering and the ugly, pink-tinged foam ceased spurting round the shattered hull. The steel-helmeted ratings round her four-inch had stilled, too: standing motionless and inspecting the havoc they’d wreaked on their enemy. I wondered how they felt right then. Had any of their flushed young faces gone a shade paler? Or wasn’t that allowed when you wore the uniform of one of the fighting services? Despite the sickness in my stomach I felt a grudging surge of respect for Braid and the smooth Admiralty machine which he manipulated.
Phyllis coughed once again from our poop and we felt the shiver in the deck as a last blossom of flame and black smoke bloomed at the base of the German’s conning tower, now lying flat on the water. Typical bloody woman, Phyllis — always had to have the last word. Then the bombardier’s almost girlish voice yelled, ‘Check! Check! CHECK!’ as the cigar-shaped cadaver of the enemy reared up slightly, silhouetting a skeletal jumble of rudder, hydroplanes and propeller against the shimmering, burnished horizon.
Maybe it would have been more appropriate if she’d blown up then. Disintegrated in a million spiteful fragments of Nazi steel and Nazi men as a last Teutonic blast of hate — a threat of what might be waiting for us, too, her murderers. But she didn’t. She just slid silently below the surface, leaving only a few blisters of bursting air and half a dozen black-humped shapes face down in the gore-pooled, diesel scum.
The last glimpse I caught before I turned to look for Athenian was the little grey Mallard dropping more yellow canisters off her stern. Life-rafts this time, like she did for the Frenchman. She must have had a nest of them below somewhere and I wondered if she would have enough of them left for us, if we ever needed them. She didn’t stop, though — the orders said ‘No survivors.’ I don’t really think she had any need to anyway.
Not this time, either.
From the wheelhouse I glimpsed the flash of white teeth as the quartermaster grinned fiercely at me, but it vanished quickly when he saw the look on my face. I ordered a full ninety-degree alteration to bring us back on an overtaking course with our sister, now several miles ahead and still going like a racehorse, then reached wearily for the engine room telephone.
The receiver was snatched off below when I’d hardly touched the call button. It was the Chief himself. ‘WHIT?’ he yelled above the pounding background of machinery.
‘Kent here, Chief. You can take the kettle off the gas now.’
McKenzie sounded aggrieved. ‘Aye? And about bluidy time too, man. We’re havin’ tae haud the engines together wi’ rubber bands doon here.’
I grinned without humour. ‘Put ’em back in the box again then, Henry. Maybe one day we’ll need you to go really fast.’
There came a pregnant silence from below and I thought for a moment he’d hung up on me. Then the broad accent came back, tinged with grudging curiosity. ‘Did we sink the bastards, John? Did we nab them good and bluidy proper?’
I looked at the phone, then back out to where Curtis was wiping his mouth thoughtfully with a stained hankie. ‘Oh, we nabbed them, Henry,’ I said quietly. ‘We nabbed them good and proper, all right!’
The answering screech of Highland joy and satisfaction rebounded round the wheelhouse as I gently put the receiver back on its hook and stepped out to the wing in time to meet Charlie Shell rushing up the ladder followed by an almost hysterical Cadet Breedie.
‘Did you see us perform back there?’ screamed Charlie in flushed excitement. ‘Oh, Jesus, but did you? Were you watchin’?’
The Third Mate excused himself abruptly and hurried into the chartroom, leaving Shell standing there in his filthy, oil-grimed white shirt and shorts, with the grey stains of cordite smearing his sweating red face. I nodded and tried to look suitably impressed, though, by this time, my head was splitting and the bile in my stomach felt as if it were eating its way through the very lining. ‘You did a bloody good job, Charles. You and the army both.’
He grinned like a Cheshire cat. ‘Yeah? You really think so?’ He turned to the Old Man. ‘Now can we paint a little U-boat on the side of the funnel, eh Sir? Like they do on the Raff planes when they bag a Jerry.’
I saw the Captain hiding a smile. He was looking pretty sick too, but Charlie was just like a kid at a Christmas party. It was dead funny, even to us on the bridge who’d had to stand and watch, and suddenly go off war, and killing, and bestiality, ‘Not on the funnel, perhaps. Mister Shell,’ Evans said solemnly. ‘But I don’t suppose a small, discreet one on the side of the monkey island would harm anyone, do you, Mister Kent?’
I shook my head. No, it wouldn’t do any harm. Anyway, it wasn’t the little painted U-boats I was worried about, it was the big, black, real ones. Maybe, one day soon, some leather-jacketed Kapitan-Lieutnant would be painting a little white Cyclops on the side of his conning tower. But, every dog has its day.
‘Breedie can nip down for some paint and a brush, Two Oh,’ I said, smiling at the pleased look on Charlie’s face. ‘But only a small one, mind.’
I glanced astern at our curving wake. It lay behind us like a great question mark. It suddenly struck me that, for a short time, we had been heading almost directly towards our destination for a change. Now we were running away again, steaming practically due south. It couldn’t go on for ever, sometime soon we were going to have to stop avoiding trouble and just go straight for it. Very soon.
A few minutes later Breedie came back with the paint and the Second Mate was climbing the vertical ladder to the top of the wheelhouse. I wondered perhaps if he shouldn’t put a long line of hump-backed, face-down little men up there too.
With a tiny, matchstick half-man running frantically at the end of it.
CHAPTER FIVE
It took us over two hours to catch up with Athenian, and only then after we’d flashed her a sarcastic signal advising her that THE BADDIE HAS BEEN SMACKED YOU CAN STOP RUNNING NOW DEAR END, followed on a rather sourer note from Mallard asking: DO YOU RUN YOUR ENGINES ON FEAR OIL QUERY… PLEASE REDUCE TO FIFTEEN KNOTS CONTINUE ZIG-ZAG FORTY DEGREES EVERY SEVEN MINUTES SIGNED BRAID END.
Which meant that Bill Henderson’s crowd had to spend the next two hours swanning about like a drunk in an earthquake and getting nowhere fast. One thing for sure — no ambushing U-boat Kapitan would ever figure out an attack plan for a ship behaving as irresponsibly as she was ordered to right then.
The Old Man couldn’t resist another crack at Bert Samson when finally we drew up on her beam and she was able to settle back into a somewhat less gyrating passage through the water. Our Aldis flashed again from the wing.
COMCONVOY TO MASTER ATHENIAN… RESPECTFULLY SUGGEST YOU KEEP BONDED LIQUOR STORE LOCKED FOR REMAINDER OF VOYAGE SIGNED EVANS END.
He grinned as wide as Charlie Shell with his painted submarine when he read the reply.
MY WATCHKEEPERS TOO USED TO KEEPING STATION WITH CYCLOPS TO KNOW WHAT STRAIGHT COURSE IS… ALSO REF BONDED STORE IF COMCONVOY WOULD CARE TO BOARD FOR MASTERS CONFERENCE NO DOUBT LIQUOR PROBLEM WILL CEASE TO EXIST SIGNED SAMSON END.