‘We could try to burn them, Sir,’ I muttered, racking my brains desperately for ideas.
‘Don’t have enough time, John. And a lot of the stuff will be in book form. Have you ever tried to burn books? We could never be sure they were sufficiently destroyed to be indecipherable, especially the centre pages and down the spines. And another thing. If that is what they’re after, what do you think they’ll do when they see smoke?’
I could guess—Bang! So what the blazes were we going to do about saving all those other ships that were depending on us? I shivered at the obvious answer: to send a signal out to the Admiralty advising them of our capture which would at least render them useless to the enemy too. A trickle of sweat ran into my eye, making me blink painfully. I couldn’t bring myself to suggest committing suicide. Maybe Larabee had found a hitherto dormant source of courage but the sight of those wicked shapes bearing down on us had made me lose any pretensions I’d ever had to be a hero.
And then I said it anyway, hating myself all the time for being such a goddamned fool. ‘We have to get a signal out, Sir. The Navy’s got to know what’s happened.’
He smiled grimly for a moment at my obvious lack of enthusiasm. ‘Don’t be in too much of a sacrificial hurry, John. At least you’ll finish the war as a P.O.W. - better than being a name on a war memorial, I suppose. You’ve forgotten that, in the event of no signal at all being received from us, the Admiralty will assume we’ve been captured anyway. All we’re surrendering is time… and the Cyclops.’
I looked at him in relief, mixed with concern at the expression of defeat on the lined, tired face.
Then everything happened at once.
And the real horror had begun.
Evans’s eyes had strayed back towards the entrance and suddenly he stiffened incredulously. I whirled, then simply froze to stare along the line of the Old Man’s gaze: barely aware of Evans’s voice, even gruffer than before with the shock of disbelief.
‘My God, John. What in hell’s he trying to do?’
Athenian had veered right round on a direct heading for the entrance and the approaching U-boats. The white water under her overhanging stern had now increased to a boiling maelstrom streaming well astern of her while the blue-tinged diesel fumes from her tall funnel jetted high in the clear evening sky. Aft on her poop, under the now wind-torn Ensign, her gun crew were moving feverishly to traverse her own antiquated 4.7—Phyllis’s sister — as far forward as it could bear against the safety stops designed to prevent them from blowing their own bridge and funnel off in the excitement of battle. Swinging it to bear at the first opportunity on the enemy submarine closing on them but masked, at present, from their view by the centrecastle superstructure. She was already roughly midway between us and the leading Nazi, about three quarters of a mile each way, but the steadily increasing throb of her giant engines and the constant splash of her cooling discharges carried clearly through the enveloping silence of Quintanilha.
The Old Man said again, ‘What in God’s name’s Bert intending to do?’
I knew, because I knew Bert Samson. I knew that defiant, bloody-minded individualist like I knew my own father. So did Evans but maybe he was too reluctant to voice the futility of his peer's action. We didn’t speak again as we stood and watched the beautiful ship with the tension building to screaming point inside us. Watched as she vibrated with the agony of being forced up to full speed under wide open valves; watched as the rushing wall of water built steadily higher and higher under the great, knife bows. The bows? Was Bill Henderson still up there in the eyes of the ship, or had Bert had the compassion to call them aft, away from where they wouldn’t stand a dog’s chance if she hit? Suddenly I knew something else. I was never going to see Bill again. Drowned Eric would, though. Yeah, maybe big Eric Clint would, if there was a place where chief officers went when…
Larabee threw out an arm and shouted with a sort of taut excitement, not hushed and reverential as I’d have expected from a man witnessing the opening act of such a vast, Romanesque tragedy. ‘Look…! They're calling her.’
The lead U-boat was still in sight from where we lay, the signal light from her conning tower flickering rapidly and menacingly: STOP YOUR ENGINES IMMEDIATELY OR I FIRE… STOP… STOP… STOP! Then, almost without pause, the big casing gun on the U-boat’s foredeck boomed viciously, the smash of the distant shot echoing reverberatingly round the black cliffs of the anchorage, causing a million cold-eyed seabirds to rise and wheel in squawking, fluttering protest.
They must have been temporarily unnerved on the German’s deck because the first shell went wide of Athenian and I watched in terrified fascination as it literally skipped across the water towards us like a flat stone on a pond until, less than three cables from our starboard side, it detonated in a climbing fountain of yellow water that momentarily obscured the other combatants.
Then, crazily, I heard a great cheer from aft and swivelled round in time to see Charlie Shell and the army gunners swarming up the ladders towards the lonely Phyllis, snout still pointing dejectedly astern. ‘Christ!’ I screamed at Evans. ‘They’ve taken that shot as a bloody excuse to fight.’
The beefy red face grinned back at me savagely. ‘Well, Mister Kent? Do you want Bert Samson's crowd to corner all the glory on that war memorial, dammit?’
I stared at him in bewilderment as he wiped the spray from his cheeks. Slowly I became aware of the madness that was growing around me. The Fourth Mate was taking his second turn to pulverise the teak rail of the bridge as he yelled in frustrated excitement, ‘What can I do to help for Chrissake…? Oh, what the hell can I do to get back at the sods?’
Our gun was traversing too, now. Veering round black and hungry as the fat little Bombardier crouched over the traverse handles with eyes glued to the sighting telescope. ‘On…! On…! ON…!’ he was screaming while the ready-use ammo flashed in the sunlight as the soldiers worked feverishly behind the breech. A bony hand gripped my shoulder painfully and I was looking into Larabee’s eyes, gleaming with some inner emotion.
‘I’ll get a signal out now, Mate,’ he shouted, ‘before anyone can…’
And a tremendous explosion from across the water stopped the hysteria dead as we saw Athenian’s funnel sail slowly high into the air like an empty toilet roll, then plummet with terrible accuracy on to the figures round the gun on her poop. When the unrecognisable mass finally rolled over her stern to fall with a colossal gout of foam into the boiling water of her wake the men had gone, the gun had gone… and our own fury had gone.
Evans acted immediately and grabbed the megaphone from the rack, aiming it towards the poop. ‘Mister Shell… you have not received orders to fire. You will clear the gun deck immediately, do you understand? Clear the gun area immediately!’
He didn’t even wait to see if his orders were being obeyed, just turned back to me with that tired look on his face again and nodded sadly towards the still racing Athenian. ‘I’m sorry, John. I was wrong. It’s just… Perhaps Bert out there sees his responsibilities in a different way to me.’