Swan pushed Kemp aside and groped for the handset by the twelve-pounder. But the canvas cover was frozen iron-hard, and with a sob he ran for the ladder, yelling to the nearest marine gun crew as he went.
Kemp gripped the rail and peered down into the churning white wash. But he did not know where to look. Where would Biggs be? Below, staring up at, his ship as she faded into the darkness? Or already far astern, choking and crying out in terror? He began to fumble with a lifebuoy and was still struggling with its lashing as
Swan came aft again.
Swan said hoarsely, ‘Forget it. He’ll have been sucked into the port screw.’
The other seaman, who was still standing transfixed with the knife in one hand, said brokenly, ‘We’re turnin’! The wheel’s gone over!’
Kemp stared at the ship’s pale wake as it began to change into a wide sweeping curve. In a moment he would wake up. It was a mad dream. It had to be.
Right in his ear Swan said, ‘They’ll have to go through the motions. Even if he missed the screws he’ll be a block of bloody ice in minutes!’
A marine corporal from Number Six gun clattered on to the poop and snapped, ‘Captain’s compliments, Mr Kemp, and he wants you on the bridge right away.’ He looked at Swan. ‘You, too.’
The man with.the knife said in a small voice, ‘Worn’t my fault, Hookey!’
Swan looked at Kemp with savage contempt. ‘I know. You were obeying orders!’
Kemp tried to speak, his mind reeling with shock. ‘I….I’m sorry. I was only trying to….’
Swan gestured astern. ‘Tell him, sir! He’ll be bloody glad to know you’re sorry, I don’t think!’
All the way along the upper deck Kemp was vaguely aware of silent, muffled figures watching him as he passed. No matter what had really happened, he was already condemned in their eyes. Their silence was like a shouted verdict.
As they reached the door at the rear of the bridge Kemp heard Lindsay’s voice, very level, as if from far away.
‘Another five minutes, Pilot. Then bring her back on course.’
Then Stannard’s voice. ‘If he’d had a lifejacket on, sir, with a safety lamp
Lindsay had turned away again. ‘But he hadn’t.’ Stannard saw Kemp’s outline in the door and shrugged. There seemed to be nothing left to say.
7
A Wren called Eve
The Chief of Staff looked up from his desk as Lindsay, entered the office, and then waved to, a chair. ‘Take the weight off your feet. I’ll not keep you a minute.’
Lindsay sat. After the bitter air across the Flow as he had come ashore in the motor boat the office seemed almost tropical. It was evening, and with windows sealed and a great iron stove glowing pink with heat, he felt suddenly drowsy.
The grave-faced captain was saying into a telephone, ‘Very well, Flags, if you say so. Another draft coming in tonight, Get on to stores and find out about kitting them up. Right.’
He put down the telephone and shot Lindsay a brief smile. ‘Never lets up.’ He groped in a drawer and took out two glasses and a bottle of Scotch. ‘The sun, had it been out today, would be well over the yardarm by now, eh?’
Lindsay relaxed slightly, hearing the wind hissing against a window, the clatter of a typewriter in the next room.
Benbecula had picked up her buoy that morning, and while he had stood on the bridge wing to watch a fussy tug assisting the forecastle party with the business of mooring, he had allowed a grudging admiration for the Flow. The snow had held off, and it was not raining either. In the hard morning light there had even been a kind of primitive beauty. The cold, pewter water and hunched brown islands were as uncompromising as ever, but seemed to say, we were here first, so make the best of us.
The whisky was neat and very good.
The captain said, ‘I didn’t call you over until now because I thought you’d have enough-to do’. Anyway, it gave me time to study your report.’ He smiled and some of his sternness faded. ‘You did damn well to have a crack at that raider. Against all sane instructions, of course, but I’d have done the same.’
Lindsay replied, ‘I wish I could have finished him.’
‘I dare say. We had a couple of clear days recently and the R.A.F. got a reconnaissance flight going. Your raider is holed up in Norway, if you’re interested. She’s the Nassau, seventeen thousand tons, and fairly new.. Used to run to the East African ports.’ He refilled the glasses. ‘Intelligence have reported she’s completely converted as a raider.’ He added wryly, ‘Of course, they didn’t tell us anything about her until a few days,ago.’
Lindsay nodded. He had been expecting the captain his name was Lovelace — to go for him, to attack him for taking independent action. But now hee could understand. As Benbecula had entered the boom gate he had been watching and waiting for orders to moor on some vacant buoy, wherever was convenient to the harbour-master rather than the returning A.M.C. He need not have bothered, as the Flow had been almost deserted.
The officer who had come aboard from the guardboat to collect Lindsay’s despatchess and mail had said, ‘Several of the battlewaggons have sailed for the Far East and others to the Med. The shop window’s a bit bare at the moment.’
So even if Benbecula had complied to the letter of her orders, to stand off and await assistance, there would have beenn little available. No heroics, Lovelace had said at their other meeting. Now it looked as if heroics were just about all they had.
As if reading his mind the captain said, ‘We’re tightly’stretched. Things are getting bad in the Med. and we’ve had some heavy losses in Western Approaches. My operations staff will let you have all the backlog when you’re ready for it.’ He looked grave. ‘We have not.released the news of Loch Glendhu’s loss to the public as yet. The less the enemy knows about our meagre resources the better. Of course, the German radio has been playing it up. They claim they sank a heavy cruiser. Maybe they really believe it, but my guess is it’s all, part of the probing game. Testing our strength.’
Lindsay, felt suddenly depressed. The endless strain, the continuous effort needed to pull his new command into a fighting unit were taking their toll.
He said, ‘It all sounds pretty hopeless.’
Lovelace paused with the bottle in mid air above Lindsay’s glass. ‘Come on, man, I thought you Scots could drink!’ With his eyes on the bottle he added slowly, ‘Hard luck about losing that chap overboard. Still, you were damn lucky with your previous casualties. And with a partly trained company like yours I’d have expected ten times the number.’
‘Yes.’ He let the neat whisky burn across his tongue, recalling Kemp’s pale face, his wretchedness as he had stammered out his story of Biggs’ death. The leading hand, Swan, had been stiff, even angry. ‘Mr Kemp’s got no idea of things, sir.’
Things, as Lindsay well knew, needed time to be mastered. Kemp had had very little. But he also lacked something else. Perhaps he did not care.
Lovelace asked, ‘What have you done about the midshipman?’
‘Nothing, sir. It was an accident due more to ignorance than carelessness. I doubt Kemp will ever forget it.’
He thought of Fraser’s reaction. ‘Just one of those things,’ was all he had.said.
Lovelace nodded, apparently satisfied.. ‘Fine. I should keep Kemp busy, Make him jump about. If I transferred him elsewhere it would do him more harm than good.’ He shot Lindsay a searching glance. ‘Unless, of course, you want him, shifted?’