The Teutonic voice cut across to us again, the syllables even harsher and more guttural under the distortion of the amplifier. ‘Cyclops… ACHTUNG! You will leave the bridge immediately, Herr Kent, and bring the other man with you also. My boarding party are under the strictest orders to shoot. I can assure you this is not an idle threat. You have thirty seconds to leave.’
Evans took one last, long look around his bridge. ‘They’ll sink her, John,’ he said, with immeasurable pain in his voice. ‘She was such a bloody lovely ship.’
I swallowed nervously. ‘Captain, we have to go.’
He turned without another word and walked down the ladder and along the port side of the boat deck, masked temporarily from the U-boat’s searching eyes. I suppose if we hadn’t met the Chief coming from aft, towards the bridge, things would have been a lot different and I wouldn’t have been writing this now.
McKenzie ground to a halt in front of us and glowered ferociously with arms akimbo. I noticed he still wore his red dragon carpet-slippers as he grumbled, ‘Bluidy square-heided bastards! Ah’ve shut down everything but the main generators, Captain. Maybe we’ll get back aboard after they U-boat lads leave and in that case we’ll be needin’ the power again.’
Evans smiled very slightly. ‘Perhaps you’re right, Chief. But you should have been in the boats five minutes ago. I trust there's no one else left below?’
‘No. Och aye, and another thing, if they buggers think they’ll be topping up their bunkers wi’ my fuel oil I’ll be wantin’ a formal receipt for it, so ye’ll mind and tell them.’
‘I’ll tell them, Mister McKenzie,’ Evans said. ‘If they find me that is. Right now you’d better remove those epaulettes of yours or you may have an opportunity to collect that receipt in person.’
I had a nasty feeling we were going to need a formal receipt for the whole bloody ship before they were through, but I didn’t say anything. The Old Man took a final deep breath before, squaring his shoulders, marching erect towards the forward ladders. I moved to follow then suddenly wondered if anyone had told the amateur bodyguard outside the radio room to shove off.
‘I’ll nip below round by the radio shack, Sir. Just to check the after decks are clear.’
The Captain nodded. ‘Aye, and we’ll have a good look forward as we go, John. The Chief and I will take number one boat away if you would be so good as to look after number three.’
He disappeared down the ladder ahead of McKenzie while I hurried nervously aft along the boat deck. It was very quiet aboard Cyclops now. All I could hear was the faint hum of the main generators below: the only sound to dilute the cone of silence over Quintanilha de Almeida. Occasionally I could hear the squeak of oars from the starboard side and, once, a guttural shout from the hidden U-boat followed by a distant, and unmistakeable, metallic rattle.
Then, insidiously, I became aware of another sound which seemed to go on and on with irregular persistence.
I stopped just before I turned the corner of the radio room at the after end of the centrecastle. There it was again — a sort of tapping noise, vaguely familiar. What in God’s name was it? It was almost like a… well, like a Morse key.
A MORSE key? Oh, please… no!
It couldn’t be. Larabee had been ordered to sabotage the W.T. equipment, then abandon ship with the rest of the crew, and somehow I couldn’t convince myself that Sparks was of the hero mould.
Yet someone was transmitting.
And then, suddenly, I knew who it had to be…!
With startling clarity it all fitted together… Curtis! Our generally impassive Third Mate… the one man who had left the bridge with ample time to lose himself until the rest of us had abandoned ship. The one man who always seemed to be in the wrong place at the right time, like on the afterdeck only minutes after our own bloody gun had obliterated Athenian’s W.T. room. I remembered the shocked surprise he'd displayed as we'd heeled under full helm to avoid the U-boat attack, and his strangely thoughtful mien when she vomited her crewmen into the slashing shells from Mallard and ourselves. I’d assumed, then, that he, like me, had been sickened by the carnage but, if he was a Hun sympathiser, he wouldn’t exactly have been waving a joyful Union Jack right then.
…If he was.
And if he wasn’t? If he was putting out a genuine call for help, thinking that the rest of the crowd were already safe in the boats…? Our transmitting so close to them must have had the U-boat's telegraphist clutching at his earphones in Teutonic agony. Aw Jesus, but I wished that all bloody gung-ho heroes could be locked up as soon as a war started.
Flattening myself against the cold steel plates of the deck housing I sidled aft, towards its rounded corner and the radio room door. It was beginning to get dark fast now, that time of night when colours appear muted yet clear-cut, with every detail standing out sharply, like when you don a pair of Polaroids on a blindingly sunny day. I shivered suddenly and felt very exposed up there on the empty deck.
The tap-tap-tapping continued and I became so stressed that I had to hesitate and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. The image of that bloody U-boat’s foredeck gun kept forming in my mind. Maybe it was already swinging on to the W.T. room. Maybe I was one half second away from a violent, exploding death. They must be picking up our signals and monitoring every word we sent. So why, in God’s name, hadn’t they already fired? I had to get away quickly, into the safety of the boats. Evans and the Chief must have left the ship by now and what was it that White Cap had promised? Any man found remaining aboard Cyclops would be shot immediately?
It was then that the full enormity of the risk I was running hit me. I’d completely overlooked the fact that our irascible Chief Engineer had stayed behind. Evans and I hadn’t met him until we’d left the bridge. The U-boat commander had obviously thought there were only the two of us still aboard the last time he’d hailed us, and now they would have seen two men climbing down the boat ladders. They’d assume that Cyclops was already deserted, the boarding party could be on its way across this very minute. Jesus! Perhaps if I ran round to the starboard side and signalled, they’d realise it was all a mistake and let me…?
But then I finally registered what the Morse key on the other side of the W.T. room door was actually saying…
…and forgot all about U-boats and Cyclops, and those Schmeissers under Kriegsmarine fork-tailed caps.
Subconsciously I suppose I’d been reading the key all the time, but it was only now that the full import of the transmission penetrated the cloud of fear fogging my mind. My hand hovered over the door handle while I stood for a brief space, staring out over the mortuary of our poop with our shredded Red Ensign still hanging lifelessly from its splintered staff, and listened to the deft professionalism of the operator’s keying. I was proficient at Morse, I’ve already said so, and it wasn’t difficult for me to pick up at least the basic text of that remote tapping — the last signal from M.V. Cyclops.
S… S… S… S… MV CYCLOPS TO ALL SHIPS: URGENT RELAY TO ADMIRALTY: TORPEDOED AND SINKING…