“Well, be that as it may, I’m not turning aside,” Mahlberg said. “It’s up to Frey to deal with those vessels before they get close enough to launch torpedoes. We are only an hour or so behind Prince of Wales, but every minute that we dally with this insignificant force is another minute wasted. Maintain current course.”
“But, Kapitan?” Kadow said.
“But, but, but! Is that all that you say? A cruiser and two destroyers, all badly damaged, and you have reservations. What should I do, turn away? How would that look if the greatest ship in the world fled from a cruiser and two destroyers?”
The telephone rang and a shaken Fahnrich zur See answered it. The exchange between Kadow and Mahlberg was unprecedented and it shocked even the veteran seamen.
“Frey, sir,” the Fahnrich zur See said. “He requests permission to fire.”
“Permission to fire,” Mahlberg said, returning to his post at the center slit.
Cole heard the shells traveling overhead, loud rumbling things, like the sound of overladen freight trains rumbling across a trestle. He looked up, expecting to see something, but all he saw were patches of smoke from the battle.
“There,” Baird said, pointing astern. Six huge columns of water rose above the surface of the sea about two thousand yards off the fantail. “That’s a dreadful waste of good explosives for a little scud like Firedancer.”
Cole saw a dozen lesser columns dot the water from the enemy’s secondary battery. Suddenly he felt the vibration from the deck increase.
“Now she’s a racehorse. Old Georgie’s got her all out.” Baird cupped his hands over his eyes. “Eskimo, too. She’s picked up speed as well.” He swung his makeshift binoculars to the stern. “Prometheus! Look at her run. By God, she’s sailing all right.”
“The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Cole said.
“How’s that, sir?”
“A poem. ‘Into the valley of Death rode the six hundred.’ Alfred Lloyd Tennyson.”
“Was he a sailor, sir?”
“No.”
“Well, then bugger him.”
The three ships, Firedancer, Prometheus, and Eskimo, gained speed, racing through the gray water of the North Atlantic like thoroughbreds bound for an unseen finish line. They rose and fell over swells, clean white foam boiling against their bows, broken waves rolling along their sides, the broad bands of their wakes streaming out behind them. More shells from Sea Lion came at them, tearing at the sea, hunting them, trying to stop and destroy them.
Cole stood on the deck near number-one torpedo station, his legs like springs as Firedancer dug into the waves and came up again, throwing clouds of spray into the air. It would have been fun, it would have been like an exhilarating ride at Cedar Point back in Ohio with the cold, sharp wind coming off Lake Erie and a shiver that was part excitement and the rest just trying to keep warm. It would have been fun like that except for one thing: the shells were getting closer.
The blast knocked Cole to the deck and almost immediately he was soaked by an ice-cold shower of water. He rolled over on his back and staggered to his feet. There was no damage to the tubes of the station as far as he could see.
“Baird?”
He saw the seaman slowly get to his feet. “Here, sir,” he called back groggily. “What happened?”
“I think we were hit forward.”
“Any more of those and it won’t matter where we’re hit,” Baird said. He looked around. “Have they given us the signal, sir? Are we going in port or starboard?”
“No,” Cole said. “Nothing yet.”
“What the hell is taking those simpletons so bleeding long? They’ve only got two sides to choose from. I for one would like to know what’s going on, sir. Just this one time I’d like to know what those grand lords have got planned for us.”
The shelling increased and became more accurate. Columns of water peppered the sea around the three vessels and Prometheus took a brick at B Turret, which blew the gun mount and crew overboard. Eskimo lost her aft funnel, and smoke boiled from her deck housing. Firedancer, battered and unsightly as a Fleet Street whore, remained strong and resolute, closing with the enemy as if nothing else on earth mattered. And to Hardy nothing else did because he knew what Sir Whittlesey Martin intended to do; what the captain of the Prometheus had planned as a last wild maneuver to keep Sea Lion from its target. It was a bold, valiant, desperate move, foolish in the extreme, but there was nothing else to be done. Firedancer and Eskimo displaced little more than the weight of two of Sea Lion’s turrets; Prometheus, armed with six-inch guns and torpedoes, was fast enough to dodge Sea Lion’s bricks — for a time, that is. But none of them, singly or as a pitiful little squadron, could affect Sea Lion’s voyage with any conventional tactic. Any conventional tactic.
The rapid crescendo of secondary and main batteries firing made it almost impossible to communicate in the conning tower. Kadow manned the telephones, speaking first to Frey, urging him to sink the enemy vessels, and then with the radar room, trying to anticipate what the British cruiser and two destroyers planned.
“A torpedo run,” a Korvettenkapitan offered as Kadow laid out the scenario to Mahlberg.
“Obviously,” Mahlberg said. “They want us to turn one way or the other to expose our beam. But we won’t turn at all. We’ll head straight for the cruiser. She’ll have to turn to keep from being run over. When she does — Frey can have her. We’ll be past the other two before they have time to react. Once we’ve cleared them, they can’t possibly catch up.”
“Kapitan,” Kadow said, “wouldn’t it be better to turn slightly off the cruiser’s course to bring at least some of our guns to bear?”
“We’ll have the forward 150-millimeter mounts available as well as Bruno. That’s all we need.”
“Kapitan—”
“That is all that we need, Executive Officer,” Mahlberg said.
“Kapitan,” a Stabsoberbootsmann serving as a lookout said, “the enemy ships are just clearing the smoke field now.”
Kadow grabbed a pair of binoculars and focused on the ships. They were steaming to their destruction. They had to break to port or starboard to begin their torpedo runs, and then the guns of Sea Lion would chew them to pieces, all without slowing her speed.
“Kapitan,” the Stabsoberbootsmann said, “enemy cruiser dead ahead.”
“Shall I change course, sir?” Kadow said.
“No.”
“But she’s coming straight at us, sir.”
“Leave it to the guns, Kadow. Frey knows what to do.”
Kadow stepped to the rear of the conning tower, troubled by a thought that remained hidden. He heard the rapid fire of the 150mm guns and knew that they were biting huge hunks out of the cruiser. All along the enemy vessel there would be a flash and a cloud of smoke and debris would erupt as the big shells pierced her skin and exploded within her. She was too close for the main batteries — they could not depress the big guns to reach her, but the secondary batteries were enough for the thin-skinned vessel. She was racing to her doom. Why? What was the British cruiser doing? Why rush directly at Sea Lion without maneuvering to avoid shellfire? Her torpedoes were useless at this angle and her small guns ineffectual even if she were alongside Sea Lion; but the British cruiser had not reduced her speed. The answer struck him.