The youth watched him leave and then groped for his helmet. In front of him the gunlayer and‘ trainer, the gloved seamen who worked the breech were all waiting as before. They were going to die. All of them. Like his friend who now lay headless and without pain.
The gunlayer said thickly, ‘We’re turnin’ again, sir!’
Cordeaux heard himself say, ‘Stand by, Number Two.’ Then with the others he watched the bows start to swing to starboard.
‘Midships!’ Lindsay had to yell to make himself heard. The enemy gunners were shooting rapidly and he knew that Benbecula had been badly mauled. But the noise was too great, too vast to recognise or distinguish. Time no longer meant anything, and as he conned the vibrating ship, swinging her drunkenly from bow to bow, he was conscious only of the distance which still separated the ill-matched enemies.
‘Wheel’s amidships, sir!’ Jolliffe was clinging to the wheel, his face ashen from loss of blood.
Ritchie climbed up beside him and said, ‘We’ll go together, eh, mate?’
The coxswain peered at him glassily. ‘Cheerful bastard!’
Ritchie looked away. Christ Almighty. The poor old sod still thinks we’re going to survive!
Lindsay swung round as sunlight lanced through the smoke and he saw the spotter plane flashing down the starboard side less than half a mile distant. The little seaplane looked near and remote from the crash and scream of gunfire. Like a child’s toy, her approach made soundless by the din. As it tilted slightly he saw the black cross on one stubby wing, and imagined he could see a helmeted head in the cockpit. Watching with the patient indifference of a cruising gull.
Somewhere aft an Oerlikon came to life, the bright tracer licking out through the smoke, making the seaplane veer away, startled, disturbed. Too far away for good shooting, but Lindsay could understand the Oerlikon gunner’s gesture. Strapped in his harness, vulnerable and helpless as the ship came apart around him.
Stannard shouted in his ear, ‘The ships’ll be safe now!’ It was more like a question.
Lindsay looked at him. ‘There’s still too much daylight left.’
He watched the seaplane turning for another run. But for the plane the ships would have been beyond reach by now. But once Benbecula had been destroyed the German captain would be in pursuit again. What had Maxwell said? It was hard to think. To remember. Thirty-two knots.
The deck canted violently and a wall of flame shot skyward from the forecastle.
Telephones buzzed and he heard men yelling over the remaining voicepipes.
‘Bad fire forrard, — sir! Number One gun knocked out. Mr Baldock has been killed.’
Lindsay dragged himself across the littered gratings. ‘Who’s still down there?’
Stannard called, ‘Young Cordeaux, sir.’
Lindsay wiped his face with his hand. Just a boy. And Baldock was gone. He should have been at home with his grandchildren.
A,savage explosion tore down the ship’s side, filling the air with splinters and heavier fragments. Cabins and compartments, machinery and bulkheads felt it as the scything onslaught expended itself through the hull. The funnel was streaming tendrils of smoke and steam from countless holes, and Lindsay saw that the mainmast had gone completely.
Not long now. Something splashed across the nearest telegraph which still pointed to Full Ahead, and glancing up he saw blood dripping through a split in the deckhead. Probably Hunter’s, he thought wearily.
When he dropped his eyes he saw that the chair was empty. For an instant he imagined the commodore had been cut down by a splinter.
Stannard called harshly, ‘He ran below, sir! Puking like a bloody kid!’
Lindsay shrugged. It did not seem important now.
He raised his glasses again. There was so much smoke that it was hard to see beyond the bows. Smoke from guns and bursting shells. From the ship herself as she defied the efforts of hoses and inrushing water to quench the creeping fires.
The range was less than six miles. It was impossible to know how many times they had managed to hit the enemy. If at all. The cruiser was still coming for them, moving diagonally across the bow, her turrets tracking Benbecula’s approach with the cool efficiency of a hunter awaiting a wounded beast to be flushed from cover.
A pencil rolled across the counter beneath the screen and for a brief second he stared at it. The list which had defied owners and shipyards for years had gone at last. Goss had probably flooded the magazines nearest the fires, the weight of waterbringing the old ship upright with kind of stubborn dignity. How would she appear to the enemy and the German gunnery officer? This battered, half-crippled ship, limping towards destruction but refusing to die. What would they feel? Admiration, or anger at being delayed?
He clenched his jaw again as more explosions made the hull quake. Not delay. The German must be held off until help arrived.
‘Where’s Canopus now?’.
Stannard glanced at him. ‘W/T office is badly hit, sir. Can’t be sure of what’s happening.’
Lindsay opened his mouth to speak and then found himself face down on the gratings with someone kicking and struggling across his spine. There was smoke and dust everywhere. He could hardly breathe and felt as if the air was being sucked out of him. Near his face small things stood out with stark clarity. Rivets, and pieces of his watch which had been torn from his wrist to shatter against the steel plates. A man’s fist, and when he turned his head he saw it belonged to Jolliffe. The coxswain had been blasted from the wheel and lay with his skull crushed against the binnacle.
Lindsay lurched to his feet, spitting out dust and blown grit, searching for the remains of the bridge party. He saw Stannard on his back, blood running between his legs, and Dancy kneeling over him.
Ritchie was already dragging himself to the wheel and managed to croak, ‘Got ‘er, sir! Steady as she goes!’ He grinned. ‘To ‘ell!’
Stannard opened his eyes and stared at Dancy. ‘Easy, mate. I’m all right. Christ, I can’t feel much of anything!’
Two more figures entered the smoke-filled compartment, slipping on blood and broken panels, groping for handholds. Midshipman Kemp and Squire, the navigator’s yeoman.
Lindsay said, ‘Man those voicepipes!’
Kemp nodded wildly. ‘I’ve sent for the first aid party, sir!’
Dancy crouched over the Australian, holding him as the deck jerked to another shellburst.
‘You’ll be fine. You see. We can be in England together and….’
Stannard looked past him at Lindsay and grimaced. ‘The letter. See she gets it, will you? Don’t want her to think I’ve forgotten…..’
His head lolled to one side. and Lindsay said, ‘Leave him, Sub. He’s gone.’
Dancy stood up, shaking badly. Then he said, ‘I’m okay, sir.’ He tried not to look at his friend on the gratings. ‘Later on I’ll…..’ He did not finish it.
The rear door rattled across the splintered gratings, and Boase with two stretcher bearers ran into the wheelhouse. Boase looked deathly pale, his steel helmet awry as he peered round at the chaos and death. A signalman had been pulped against the rear bulkhead, a messenger lay dead by his feet but totally unmarked.
In an unexplained lull of gunfire Kemp shouted wildly, ‘Go on, Doc, show us what you can do!’ He shook Squire’s restraining hand from hisarm and continued in the same broken voice, ‘You’re bloody good at offering advice to others!’
Boase stood with his arms at his side, his helmet jerking to the relentless vibration.
Lindsay snapped, ‘Get a grip on yourselves!’
Kemp’s face seemed to crumple. ‘He was helping my father and that surgeon to ruin you, sir. Was giving a bad report so that you’d be finished.’ Some of the fury came back to his face as he yelled at the stricken doctor, ‘You rotten, cowardly bastard! You’re like my father, so why don’t you run down and hide with him?’