Sparrow was hardly moving now, and looked very small, even from the CMB — small and narrow and low in the water. She was not a ship to fight in a big action against odds but one to patrol, to observe and report. This was not a man-of-war, but an errand boy. But sometimes you had to call on a boy to do a man’s work and more. Smith saw the figure of Sanders on her bridge, dwarfed by the towering bulk of the coxswain. He had confidence in Sanders now.
Lines came flying down from the deck of Sparrow and the CMB was drawn in alongside. Smith climbed aboard, ducked under the hood of the chart-table and bent over the chart, seeing the pencilled line of their track, their present position. Then with Curtis he went to the bridge where Sanders waited, relieved to see them, but on edge. Lorimer came on the run and Smith gathered them together and gave his orders. He had only to tell them what they were to do and that did not take long. He asked, “Any questions?”
They stood silently a moment then shook their heads. “No, sir.” The rain felt warm on their faces, the air was thick, sultry, as Sparrow lay barely moving.
Smith wiped at his face and peered at them. “Remember the prime objective. The lighters must be destroyed. I don’t need to tell you that the attack must be pressed home at all costs.”
He did not and they knew what such an attack would mean.
Curtis went down into his CMB and she cast off and edged away with him standing tall at the wheel. Johnson sat at the torpedo firing controls. Her slim shape had the deadliness of a sword blade but she was as fragile as a match-box. She was to attack the centre of the line of destroyers while Sparrow struck at the head.
Smith ordered, “Full ahead both. Starboard ten.”
Gow answered, “Starboard ten, sir.”
Sparrow began to move forward through the sea and the darkness and her bow swung towards the unseen coast as Smith stood at the compass. “Meet her…Steady. Steer that.”
“Course one-five-oh, sir.”
The beat of the engines increased, built up slowly, steadily. Ten knots…fifteen…until the frame of the old ship began to tremble. The rain was still with them but slashing now as they drove into it, the air fresh on their faces. Thunder rumbled suddenly close as if the guns at Nieuport had crept up on them in the night. The rain was good. They needed it more than ever now.
Twenty knots and the darkness still shrouded them but now there was a glow at the tops of Sparrow’s funnels and a flick of flame against the cloud-hung sky. The engines’ racing set the whole fabric of the ship to shaking and rattled every loose object aboard.
Soon now. The coxswain stood rock-steady, swaying to the motion. Spray from the tearing stem was bursting back over the turtle-back foredeck and over the bridge screen. Sanders stood with one steadying hand on the screen and its splinter mattress and the vibration that shook the ship seemed to be transmitted through him. His face was taut, nerves strung tight.
Smith stooped over the voice pipe. “Gunner!”
“Sir!” The torpedo-gunner’s voice came from his position aft on the torpedo platform.
“We’ll engage to port.”
“Port! Aye, aye, sir!”
The look-outs on the German destroyers would have their eyes screwed against the rain and maybe, just maybe, shirking the job. But still they must see the whiff of flame from each of Sparrow’s three funnels. Smith stared briefly out to port and astern. Curtis and his CMB should be out there somewhere keeping station on Sparrow and he thought he saw the white flash of a bow-wave but could not be sure. Looking ahead he could see the lights on the shore now and Sparrow’s bow pointed at the southern end of them. He knew there were two destroyers anchored there and he believed a line of them stretched north, parallel with the lights and with a cable’s length between ships it could be a line a thousand yards long.
And then the lightning struck down at the sea. It stood a jagged, blue-white blaze for a second and it showed them in that camera-shutter glimpse the destroyers ahead, anchored in a long line across Sparrow’s course and stretching away — five, six of them! Then the lightning was gone and the night came down as the thunder cracked again and close now.
Six. But he had guessed right: a line of a thousand yards.
Sparrow charged down on them out of the night, making better than twenty knots and in the stokehold they were still furiously stoking the fires. The flames now licked long tongues from the tops of her funnels. A winking light pricked the darkness and that was a German challenge. For once, right on their own coast and under their own batteries they were uncertain whether another ship was friend or foe. Smith shouted up at the rating on the searchlight platform, “Now!” And at Sanders: “All guns commence!”
“All guns commence!” Sanders’s piercing yell came as the searchlight stabbed its beam across the night to dart about the surface of the sea then settle, glaring, on the second destroyer in the line. Smith could see the one ahead of her and the other astern as shadows outside the searchlight’s beam. The twelvepounder right alongside Smith on the bridge kicked, spat flame and roared. The smoke whipped past him and the killick’s yell came, “Load!” as the empty case bounced across the deck. The two six-pounders below the bridge, one on either side, opened up together, snapping quickly away, a sharper note to the slower slamming of the twelve-pounder. Sanders crouched over the torpedo-sight by the voice pipe running aft to the torpedo-gunner and he would be aiming at the third or fourth in the line. As they tore down on the line so the silhouettes of the ships foreshortened in the torpedo-sight but so would the gaps between them. A miss would be nearly impossible.
Sparrow was on a course to ram the leading destroyer that was racing up at them out of the night, but Smith held on until Sanders shouted, “Fire!” He saw the torpedo leap out from Sparrow’s side and plunge into the sea.
Then he ordered, shouting at Gow’s ear, “Port ten!” And: “Slow ahead!” He saw the wheel going over in Gow’s long fingers and the engine-room telegraphs worked but did not hear their clanging. Every gun in the ship except the six-pounder right aft was firing now and Sparrow was scoring hits on both the leading destroyer and the second in line that was still in the searchlight’s beam. The enemy destroyers were firing back, a ripple of flashes running down that long line of shadowy ships but they hadn’t had time to get the range and Sparrow was a flying figure half-hidden in the dark. Smith did not see a shell fall near them but that would not last. The destroyers would get their chance. He bawled at the rating above him: “Douse that light!” The beam was cut off, the carbons in the lamp glowed briefly and died. The searchlight was a finger that pointed both ways, would point out Sparrow to the enemy destroyers.
Sparrow’s head was coming around and he ordered, “Meet her! Steady! Steer that!”
Sparrow raced into the gap between the first and second destroyers though the way was coming off her rapidly now with the screws turning slow ahead. That was what Smith wanted. Speed, what Sparrow had of it, had served its turn. Now it was manoeuvrability and steadiness that was needed and as the thirtyknotter shot between the two big boats he ordered, “Port ten!” Sparrow’s head came around again. As she swung to point her stem to run down inshore of the destroyers’ line her way took her on, sliding sideways. The first of the tugs was suddenly close and from Sparrow’s bridge they were looking down on her deck and seeing the faces in her wheelhouse as the lightning struck down again. “Meet her! Steady on that!” Sparrow thrust away from the tug and left her astern. The turtle-back bow was riding steady now and the stem sent no spray flying. Sparrow was down below ten knots and her speed still falling.