‘Midships. Slow ahead starboard.’
Lindsay watched the nearest trawler as it rolled dizzily in the cross-current, showing its bilge. God knows what they’re like in open water, he wondered.
Faintly across the water he heard the shrill of a pipe. Somebody, somehow was trying to pay respects to the Benbecula as she towered past on her way to the gate.
Overhead he heard Archer bellow ‘Pipe!’ And the answering squeal from his line of boatswain’s mates.
From aft another shout,that would be Mr Baldock, the elderly gunner. ‘Attention on the upper deck there! Face to port an’ salute!’
On the forecastle the seamen were still fighting with the seemingly endless mass of uncoiled wire, like people caught by some deadly serpent.
Lindsay steadied his glasses and watched the land closing in on either bow where the humps of Flotta and South Ronaldsay crouched on guard of the Sound. He could just make out, the hazy shape of the boom-defence vessel, and beyond her another A/S trawler, sweeping to make sure no U-boat would slip inside while the gate was open.
‘Take her out, Cox’n.’
There was no point in confusing the helmsman with unnecessary orders now. Jolliffe could see as well as anyone what was required. He was easing the spokes back and forth in his great red fingers, his eyes fixed on the channel.
A signalman said, ‘I think someone’s calling us up, Yeo!’
Ritchie was through the door and across to the opposite bridge wing in seconds.
‘Where, lad?’ His telescope was swinging round like a small cannon. Then, ‘Gawd, you need yer eyes testin’, it’s a bloody car flashin’.its lights!’
Lindsay walked to the open door as the yeoman exclaimed, ‘You’re right, lad, it is callin’ us.’ He looked at Lindsay. ‘He’ll cop it if the officer of th’ guard spots ‘im!’
Lindsay raised his glasses as the signalman, mollified, reported, ‘He says Good Luck, sir.’
A hump of land was cutting Lindsay’s vision away even as he steadied his glasses on the distant lights. The battered staff car was parked dangerously close to the sea’s edge, and he could picture her as she sat muffled to her ears. Watching the old ship edge towards the boom gate.
He said, ‘Acknowledge.’ He knew they were staring at him. ‘And say Thank You.’ The lamp started to clatter, and then the car was lost from sight.
He saw one of the sub-lieutenants putout his hand to the screen as the deck lifted to the first low roller. On the bow the boom vessel was puffingoutdense smoke as she started to set her machinery in motion again. A man waved from her bridge and then scuttled back from the rain.
Lindsay stooped behind a gyro repeater and said,‘Starboard ten.’ The dial ticked gently in front of his eyes. ‘Midships. Steady.’
‘Steady, sir. Course two-two-zero.’
Stannard said quietly, ‘New course in fifteen minutes, sir. Two-five-zero.’
‘Very good.’
Lindsay walked out to the wing and rested his gloved hands on the screen. Already the land had fallen away to port, and he could see the whitecaps cruising diagonally towards the ship in an endless array. He felt for his reactions, then banged his gloved hands together, making a signalman start violently. He felt all right. It was amazing.
He thought suddenly of the girl in the car. She must have got up specially and wangled her work-sheet to get to that point in’time to see them sail. He was being stupid, but could not help himself.
A telephone buzzed and Stannard called, ‘From masthead, sir. Ship closing port bow.’
Lindsay glanced up at the fat pod on the foremast. It was hard to get used to after the congested layout of a warship’s bridge and superstructure.
Goss asked, ‘Fall out harbour stations, sir?’
But Lindsay was watching the approaching ship through his glasses. She would pass down the port side with a good half cable to spare. -It was not that. He felt the tightness in his throat as she loomed slowly and painfully out of the rain and spray.
A cruiser, she was so low in the water aft that her quarterdeck was awash. Her mainmast had gone, and her after turret was buckled into so much scrap. She had received a torpedo which had all but broken her back, but she was fighting to get back. To get her people home…’
A destroyer was cruising watchfully to seaward, and two tugs followed close astern of the listing ship. Like undertakers men, Lindsay thought with sudden anger.
He snapped, ‘No, Number One! Have the hands fall in fore and aft! And tell the buffer I want the best salute he’s ever done!’ He saw Goss’s face working with confusion and doubt. Probably thinks I’m mad.
As seamen and marines ran to fall in on the B’enbecula’s decks, Lindsay walked to the end of the wing and raised his hand to his cap as the cruiser moved slowly past.
The pipes shrilled and died in salute, and then Lindsay saw a solitary marine, his head white with bandages, walk to the cruiser’s signal platform and raise a bugle to his lips. The Still floated across the strip of tossing grey water, and above the neat lines of sewn up bodies on the cruiser’s deck. Along the Benbecula’s side the lines of new, untried faces stared at the other ship in silence, until the bugle sounded again and Archer yelled, ‘Carry on!’
Stannard said quietly, ‘That was quite a scene, sir.
Lindsay looked past him at the young signalman who had seen the car’s lights. He was biting the fingers of his gloves and staring astern at the listing cruiser.
‘It will do them good!’
He had not meant to speak so harshly, nor were they the words he had intended. So nothing had changed after all. Not the bitterness or the shock of seeing what the Atlantic could do.
Stannard said, ‘Time to alter course again, sir.’
Lindsay looked at him, seeing the hurt in his eyes. ‘Very well, take the con.’ To Goss, ‘Fall out harbour stations, if you please. We will exercise action stations in ten minutes, right?’
Goss nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
The Benbecula’s straight stem lifted and then ploughed sedately into a low bank of broken rollers. Spray dappled the bridge windows and made the anchor cables look like black glass.
Later, as she came around the south-western approaches to the Orkneys, past the frozen shape of the Old Man of Hoy, she rolled more steeply, her forward well deck catching the incoming sea and letting it sweep lazily to the opposite side before gurgling away through the scuppers.
Then at last she turned her stern towards the land and headed west-northwest, and by noon, as the watch below prepared to eat their meal and the other half of the ship’s company closed up at defence stations, she had the sea to herself.
Lindsay remained on the open wing, his unlit pipe in his teeth, his eyes fixed on the tossing wilderness of waves and blown spume.
He was in the North Atlantic. He had come back.
‘Char, sir?’
Lindsay turned in his tall chair and took a cup from the bosun’s mate of the watch. As he held the hot metal against his lips he stared through the streaming windows and watched the solid arrowhead of the bows etched against the oncoming seas.
For eight days since leaving the buoy the scene had hardly changed. The weather had, got colder, but that was to be expected as hour after hour the ship had ploughed her way to the north-west. And apart from some armed trawlers and a solitary corvette, they had sighted nothing. Just the sea, with its endless panorama of wavecrests and steep rollers.
He felt the deck vibrate as the stem smashed through one more bank of cascading water, and saw the feathers of spray spurting up through the hawsepipes as if from powerful hoses.
Stannard walked across the bridge, his lean bodyangled to the uneven motion.