Lindsay let the glasses fall on to his chest. He had to draw several deep breaths before he could find his voice again.
They, will understand, Mr. Tobey.’ He walked to the open door. ‘She’s Loch Glendhu.’ He seized the frame to steady himself. ‘I’ve met her before. I know her.’
Stannard said softly, ‘Oh, my God.’
Tobey was staring past Lindsay at the flickering pattern of flames. ‘Sea’s quietened a bit, sir. The whalers could be lowered.’
Lindsay did not turn. ‘Starboard ten.’ He waited, his nerves screaming soundlessly. ‘Midships. Steady. Slow ahead together.’ Then he looked at Tobey’s shocked face. ‘Yes. Whalers and rafts. Call for volunteers.’
He swung round as a sharp explosion threw an arrowhead of fire high into the sky. A magazine perhaps. Not long now.
Ritchie stepped aside as Tobey ran past. ‘Shall I call ‘er up, sir?’
Lindsay said flatly, ‘Just tell her to hold on.’ He heard Ritchie jerking the lamp shutter, but as he had expected, there was no reply. He said, ‘Keep trying. There’ll be some left alive. They’ll-need all the hope they can get in the next minutes.’
Another face emerged in the gloom. It was Boase, the doctor. He said to Stannard, ‘How many left, d’you think?’
It was too much for Lindsay’s reeling mind. ‘Where the hell do you imagine you are?’ He was shouting but could not hold it back. Boase was like those other doctors. Ignore it. Forget it. Don’t worry. The stupid, heartless bastards!
Boase fell back. ‘I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t mean
Lindsay shouted, ‘You never bloody well do mean anything! This isn’t some teaching hospital put here for your benefit! Not a Saturday night punch-up with a few revellers at your out-patients department while you play God!’ He swung round and gestured towards the sea. Framed in the door, with the sleet glittering redly in the flames, it looked as if the sky was raining blood. ‘Take a good look! There are men dying out there. Cursing the blind, ignorant fools who let them go to war in ships like that one. Like our own!’
A bosun’s mate said hoarsely, ‘Boats ready for lowering, sir.’
Stannard spoke first. ‘Very well. Tell them to watch out for burning oil-‘
Lindsay said, ‘Stop engines.’
He wiped his forehead with his hand. The skin was hot, burning, despite the cold air from the door. It was not the doctor’s fault. It was unfair to take it out of him in front of the others. Unfair, and cruelly revealing about his failing strength and self-control.
The deck swayed very slowly as the ship idled forward, her screws stopped for the first time since leaving the Flow.
More sounds rumbled in the darkness, like a ship breaking up. Crying out in her own way against the fools who had let it be so. All the fires had, gone but for one darting tongue which appeared to be burning right through the other ship’s bilge plates as she started to roll on her side, the sea around her misty with steam and whipped spray.
Small lights glittered in a deep trough, and he saw one of the whalers pulling strongly towards the sinking ship. He gritted his teeth as another crash from the forward gun hurled a starshell high over the scene of misery and pain.
Along the Benbecula’s side the boatswain had lowered some of the rafts, to act as staging posts for the survivors before they were hauled bodily up her tall hull. He saw white jackets in the cold and wet, and hoped Boase was there too with his stretcher parties.
When he looked up at the funnel with its low plume of dark smoke he realised that one side of it was shining like ice in the glare. The snow had started. There was not much time left. In the whalers the volunteers would even now be watching the snow, fearing more perhaps for their own survival than those they had gone to save.
He thought too of the corvette’s small quarterdeck on that morning. The line of corpses awaiting burial, like those aboard the listing cruiser at Scapa. And the two small ones at the end of the line. Like little parcels under the flag as they had gone over the rail. Look after them. Well, they had gone where there was no more hurt. No persecution.
Stannard said loudly, ‘She’s going!’
More frothing — water, and the last flame extinguished with the suddenness of death. Then nothing.
It seemed like an age before Stannard reported, ‘Boats returning, sir.’
He walked to the extent of the starboard wing and peered down through the snow flurries. The boats were crammed with bodies. Shining with oil. A familiar enough sight in the Atlantic. Others clung around the sides of the boats, treading water, their gasps audible even on the wing. Here and there a red lifelight shone on the water, others floated away unheeded, tiny scarlet pinpricks, each marking a corpse.
He tried to tear his eyes from the struggling figures, below him. There was so much to do. A signal to be coded and despatched, to inform those who were concerned with what had happened. Start the wheels turning. The Secretary of the Admiralty regrets to announce the loss of H.M.S. Loch Glendhu. Stop it.
Lindsay thrust himself bodily from the wet steel and turned-to see Lieutenant Aikman staring at him.
‘Go and make sure that everything’s all right! If they need more hands, take them from aft. I want those boats hoisted and secured without delay.’ He watched the officer scurrying for the ladder. One more victim of his own despair and blind anger.
Dancy said hoarsely, ‘If I have to die, I hope it’s like that, sir.’
Lindsay looked at him for several seconds, feeling his anger giving way to a kind of madness, with wild, uncontrollable laughter almost ready to burst out. Then he reached out to pat Dancy’s arm.
‘Then we shall have to see what we can do. But before you decide anything definite, go and visit the survivors in the sickbay. Then tell me again.’
Stannard called, ‘Ready to get under way, sir.’
Lindsay saw his own reflection in the glass screen, as if he was indeed — outside himself, assessing his resources.
‘Very well. Slow ahead together. Bring her round on course again.’
He saw Ritchie thumbing through a manual then holding his torch steady above one page.
He asked, ‘How many, Yeo?’
Ritchie replied quietly, ‘She ‘ad a company of three ‘undred, sir.
Goss appeared through the rear door and said thickly, ‘We’ve picked up thirty, sir.’
Lindsay seated himself carefully in the tall chair. Strange how light his limbs felt. As in the dream.
Goss seemed to think he had not heard. ‘Only thirty, sir!’
‘Thank you, Number One. We will remain at action stations for another hour at least. Pass the word for a good lookout while visibility holds.’
Not that they’ll need telling now, he thought dully.,
‘He heard Goss slamming out of the wheelhouse. Probably cursing me. The iron, cold captain that no pain, no sentiment can reach. God, if he only knew.
One hour later the snow came down, and within no time at all the ship was thrusting her way through a swirling, white world, enclosed and excluded.from all else.
As the men left their action stations and ran or staggered below to warmth and an illusion of safety, Lindsay heard a sailor laughing, the sound strangely sad in the steady blizzard.
Horror from what they had witnessed was giving way to relief at being spared. Later it would be different, but now it was good to hear that someone could laugh, he thought.
Goss clumped into the wheelhouse, shaking snow from his oilskin and stamping it from his heavy sea boots. The bristles on his chin were’.grey, almost white, so that in the hard reflected glare he looked even older.
‘Ready, sir.’ He watched as Lindsay slid from his chair and walked towards the starboard door.