‘Starboard twenty!’ Lindsay locked his arm around the voicepipes as the: ielm went over. ‘Stand by, the port battery!’ He wiped paint dust from the gyro with his elbow.
‘Midships. Steady.’
‘Steady, sir. Course zero-three-zero.’
Jolliffe had to grit his teeth as a signalman wrapped a bandage around his arm. A small splinter had laid it open after passing cleanly through the screaming lieutenant a few feet away.
The port guns hurled themselves back on their springs, their muzzles angled towards the sky in their efforts to hit the enemy.
Lindsay made himself ignore the cries and screams until they became fainter and suddenly stopped. He knew that a stretcher party had entered the bridge but did not turn his head as he concentrated every fibre of his mind on the other ship.
‘Range now one-six-oh.’
He moved his glasses carefully. Eight miles separated the armoured cruiser and the garishly painted ship with the list to starboard. The enemy had got the message now all right. She had turned towards Benbecula using her two forward turrets alternately. The six guns fired with regular precision so that her bridge seemed to dance in the flashes as if ablaze.
When at last he glanced over his shoulder he saw that Paget’s corpse had been removed. Just a brush-stroke of scarlet to show where he had been torn down.
As the gunfire mounted Lindsay changed course at irregular intervals, their progress marked by the curves in their seething wake. Starboard battery and then port. Two by two against the German’s six.
Maxwell remarked over the speaker, ‘She’s the Minden. Eight-inch guns, twelve torpedo tubes.’ A brief sigh. ‘Estimated speed thirty-three knots.’
Lindsay bit his lip to hide his despair. A miniature battle-cruiser as far as Benbecula was concerned.
A telephone, buzzed, the sound muffled by explosions, the roar of fans.
‘W/T have received a signal about that other raider, sir!’
Lindsay blinked as the sea beyond the bows vanished behind a towering wall of spray. He felt the hull buck to the shockwave as if she had been struck by a bomb. ‘Read it!’
The man tore his eyes from an observation slit and crouched over his telephone.
‘Raider sunk. All available assistance on way to help you.’ And a few seconds later. ‘Cruiser Canopus calling us, sir. What is your position?’
Lindsay saw the sea erupt again. Much closer this time. ‘Tell her our position is grim!’
Stannard touched the man’s arm. ‘Here. I’ll give it to W/T.’
Lindsay called, ‘How are the ships, Sub?’
Dancy ran aft and peered through the Benbecula’s drooping plume of funnel smoke. In those seconds he saw it all. The scattered ships, so very small beneath the great ensign on the mainmast. The twisting white wake, the sea, everything…
‘Troopships out of range, sir. The, rest well scattered.’ ‘Good.’
‘Range now one-five-oh.’
All four guns were firing and reloading as fast as they could move, with Maxwell’s spotters yelling down bearings and deflexions with each veering change of course.
In the engine room Fraser clung to the jerking platform and watched his men swarming around the pounding machinery like filthy insects. In damage control Goss sat unmoving in his chair, facing the panel, hands folded across his stomach. Throughout the ship, above and below decks, behind watertight doors or on exposed gun platforms, every man waited for the inevitable. Meeting it in his own way.
Far astern, and spread fanlike towards the horizon, the once proud convoy had long since lost its shape and formation. The first ship to be hit had sunk, but the others which had received near misses still managed to maintain their escape, some leaving smoke-trails like scars across the sky.
Aboard the second troopship the decks and emergency stations were crammed with silent figures, mis-shapen in lifejackets as they stood in swaying lines, as they had been since the attack had begun.
A deck officer at his boat station said suddenly, ‘God, look at the old girl! I’d never have believed it!’ In spite of the watching soldiers he took off his cap and waved it above his head. But his voice was just a whisper as he called, ‘Good luck, old lady!’
The small party of Wrens packed at the after end of the boat deck huddled even closer as the distant ship was again straddled by waterspouts.
The one named Marion slipped her arm around her friend’s shoulders and said, ‘Don’t cry, Eve.’
She shook her head. ‘I know I’m crying.’ She strained her eyes to try and see the ship with the stubborn list and outdated stern. ‘But I feel like cheering!’
Something like a sigh transmitted itself through the watching soldiers.
A voice called, ‘She’s hit!’
When the sound finally reached the scattered ships it was like a roll of thunder. Even the officers with binoculars could hardly distinguish one part of Benbecula from the next because of the dense smoke.
Marion tightened her grip. ‘But they’re still firing. How can, they do it?’
The Wren called Eve did not answer. She was seeing the little villa, the table in candlelight. And him sitting on the bed. Looking at her. Holding her.
Another set of explosions rumbled across the sea’s face. More muffled now as the distance steadily mounted between them.
A man said, ‘Direct hit that time. Must be.’
‘Would you like to go below?”Marion stared sadly at the great spreading smokestain “far astern. ‘It’s safe now. They made it safe.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘He’ll know I’m here. I’m sure of it.’
‘So am I.’ Together they stayed by the rail in silence.
‘Shoot!’
Maxwell was hoarse from yelling into his mouthpiece. The compartment seemed full of smoke and the din was unbearable as time and time again the ship rocked to the enemy’s salvos.,
‘Why can’t we hit her?’ Hunter shouted through the tendrils of smoke below Maxwell’s chair. ‘We’re, down to six miles range, for Christ’s sake!’
The starboard guns crashed out again and Maxwell cursed as his shells exploded into the haze. ‘Up two hundred!’
He was still speaking when the next salvo straddled the ship in a vice of steel. He saw Hunter lurch in his chair to stare up at him, his expression one of horror even as the blood gushed from his mouth and his eyes lost their understanding forever.
Two of the seamen were also down, and the third was crawling up the side of Maxwell’s chair holding his hip and sobbing with agony.
‘First aid party to Control!’ Maxwell, sighed. The line had gone dead. He stood up and hung his microphone on the chair, then giving the wounded seaman a vague pat on the head climbed out into the sunlight.
Figures blundered past him in the smoke and a man yelled, ‘Up forrard! Starboard side!’
Number, One, gun was still firing when Maxwell arrived, and he found Baldock, his elderly warrant officer, giving local orders to its crew. The other gun was in fragments, hurled inboard above a deep crater around which human remains lay scattered in bloody gruel.
Baldock shouted, ‘Both quarters officers are done for on this side!’
Maxwell nodded, feeling very detached. ‘You carry on here then.’
He strode to the opposite side where he found the young sub-lieutenant in charge sitting on a shell locker, an arm across his face like a man in the sun.
‘All right, Cordeaux?’
The officer stared at him. ‘Yes, sir.’ Then he saw a spreadeagled corpse at the opposite gun. Headless, it still wore a jacket. Like his own, with a single wavy stripe.
A shell whimpered close overhead but Maxwell did not flinch. ‘Luck of the draw, my boy.’ He adjusted his cap. ‘I’m going aft to see the bootnecks. Keep at it, eh?’