And I didn’t stop heaving my guts out until the bloody silly gun on our poop slammed deafeningly and a tall column of water rose less than thirty feet from the U-boat’s hull.
Which meant WE were fighting now. Whether Evans liked it or not!
CHAPTER NINE
Looking back I suppose it was a chance worth taking. Had the Old Man suspected the way events were to turn out, we would have fought as well and as suicidally as the gallant Athenian. It would have been better that way in the long run, as at least every man but one on the ship would have died in the knowledge that he had done so honourably, as so many had done before us.
But, then again… does a man in a Board of Trade lifejacket and no top to his head, or maybe with his intestines floating beside him — does he really care whether or not he was ‘honourably’ eviscerated?
Either way, I just stayed doubled over the rail for several stunned moments while I watched the sea tumble back aboard the U-boat and heard the fat little Bombardier’s voice from aft screaming, ‘Reload…! Up fifty…! On…! ON…! ’ then the U-boat’s gun was swinging round too, already loaded, as the German sailors moved feverishly in a deadly race against our own gun crew like in some Hollywood Dodge City shoot-out where the first man to draw won the day— except we were competing with four-inch diameter bullets.
Behind me Brannigan had stopped screaming and, above the scrunch of broken glass, I heard Larabee say, ‘The poor sod’s gone, Captain.’
And Evans’s voice, the abysmally sad tone in strange contrast to the text, answered, ‘Thank God for that, Mister Larabee.’
Then the German’s 4.1 had stopped traversing while Bombardier Allen was still screaming desperately, ‘On…! On… ON, f'r Chrissake…!’
I heard the staccato Teutonic bark slash across the intervening water, ‘…FEUER!’ cut short by the whiplash slam of their gun and, in the milli-seconds of eternity that followed I knew already that we’d lost the race. The baddies had drawn first and the Sheriff was already dead.
I registered one last image of Charlie Shell on the poop, standing out from the soldiers like a shining white knight in his tropical stockings and shorts, then the hurricane blast of the hit knocked me down for a second time while smoking-hot splinters of jagged steel whirred and spanged against the after-end of the bridge, wheelhouse and funnel, ripping through ventilators and boats with savage contempt.
I dragged myself to my knees and peered fearfully over the rail, even then praying that I would hear the answering boom from the long-snouted Phyllis. But, as my eyes focused through the haze of cordite fumes, I realised I never would— at least, not through the hand of any man on that gun deck.
Oh, the gun was still there all right, with the coat of 1940 paint covering the antiquated 1914 silhouette — but the indescribable grue of blood and flayed men scattered around it symbolised the end of our last hope of leaving Quintanilha de Almeida aboard Cyclops.
I wanted to take my eyes from those torn obscenities but I couldn’t move a muscle. I just sat there behind the doubtful concealment of the bridge wing, sensing the tears rolling down my cheeks, and watched as the once trim form that had been Charlie Shell dragged itself agonisingly slowly towards the loaded gun, and with infinite care, groped with the one arm it had left past the black-charred, tubby shape incinerated in the gunlayer’s seat, feeling blindly for the firing lever… a slow-worm of barely flickering organs and part-limbs, like the little half-man on the sinking U-boat’s deck that time so long ago. Would that Kapitan-Leutnant paint a half-Charlie on the side of his conning tower in retaliation? A Second Mate with only one arm and stumps of legs severed at the knees…?
The cremated mess of the dead Bombardier slowly keeled over and slopped to the deck as the blind hand continued to tremble and feel towards the trigger. I suddenly hunched in terror as someone started screaming and shouting behind me.
Breedie…! What the hell was Cadet Breedie doing up here on this morgue of a bridge? He should have been sheltering along with the rest of the crowd in the starboard alleyway.
‘Charlie? Is that you, Charlie? Oh, for Jesus’ sake, Charlie, I’ll come for you. Don’t move, Charlie…!’
Then the Spandau mounted on the U-boat’s conning tower opened up and a line of white-lashed foam approached across the green water. Up and up our steel sides it climbed, directly under the gun and its zombie part-gunlayer, then Breedie was screaming hysterically as Charlie Shell twitched and rolled over and over with the machine-gun shells sparkling and slamming all around and into him until, mercifully, the Thing disintegrated under what was left of the port side taffrail and disappeared over the counter for ever.
And the silence of Quintanilha de Almeida blanketed down again with an almost physical impact.
For a moment.
A very brief moment.
They’d even got a Tannoy hailer on that submersible killing-machine of theirs.
The metallic, emotionless voice of the man in the white cap cut across to us before the full horror of Charlie Shell’s gallant, mutinous death had had time to clear from our frozen brains. ‘Achtung, Cyclops! Achtung! That was your final warning. Any further resistance will force me to commence firing indiscriminately. I will not stop until every man of your crew is dead — Kaput!’
I registered the scrunch of broken glass and glanced round to see the Old Man watching over my shoulder, ashen-faced. In the background, under the shade of the darkened wheelhouse, Larabee still hovered but I couldn’t see the expression on his thin features. Maybe now he wasn’t so damned keen to be a hero.
The disembodied voice floated across the water again. ‘If your master is still alive he will answer, please.’
There fell a momentary silence as we looked tensely at one another, then Evans moved forward to pick up the megaphone. I cut in front of him and took it out of his hand, pulling him aside into the cover of the riddled starboard master’s ventilator. He glared at me angrily and the white pallor was replaced by a crimson flush. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing, Mister? I intend to stop this madness immediately. Or would you rather go aft and take a good, close look at Mister Shell?’
I was already dragging at the rank-bearing epaulettes on my shoulders. ‘Get yours off too, Captain,’ I said urgently. ‘That bastard’s liable to take you aboard as a prisoner, same as Henry McKenzie. Remember the Altmark last year? Hatches full of M.N. senior officers.’
I threw down my three gold bars and watched as his four followed reluctantly a few moments later, then stepped out to the wing and lifted the megger to my mouth. I had time to notice with a nasty churn in my stomach that the 4.1 was now trained right at me, as well as her four bow-tubes, before I shouted back with all the control I could maintain.
‘The Captain has already been murdered. This is Kent — Chief Officer. I protest at the massacre of certain members of my crew and warn you I shall report you to the Board of Trade as soon as possible.’
It sounded even sillier when I actually said it but the flat voice from the U-boat betrayed no sign of emotion, amused or otherwise. ‘I note your protest, Herr Kent, and have no doubt that your British Board of Trade will take the matter up with my superiors when we have won the war. Until then you will refrain from contacting either them or anyone else by means of your wireless. Do you hear me well, Chief Officer?’