Victoria said severely, “Well, you be careful. How’s that Curtis boy?”
Smith said dryly, “He’s well — and wanting to go fishing.”
She was laughing as she waddled aft to the tow, Tweedledum in her boiler-suit. “Fred! Fred! Where is that bloody man?”
Sparrow was pulling away from the tug, the gap widening between him and Eleanor Hurst. There was a lot he wanted to say but he only stared at her where she stood with hands at her sides and looked up at him. Until he ordered, “Starboard ten.” Sparrow swung around the bow of the stopped tug, and the girl was hidden from him.
He said, “Mr. Sanders! Tell Mr. Curtis I want to see him aboard. And get the —” He could not say the dead. “Clear the wardroom. I’m transferring them all to Marshall Marmont. Make a signal to her that we’re going alongside to do that.” The monitor’s surgeon would need that short notice to prepare for the wounded.
Sparrow turned a slow circle and nudged in alongside the monitor, was made fast. Smith went across to her where Garrick awaited him on the monitor’s deck. Smith could see he had been up all night and was tense and anxious now but he grinned when he saw Smith. “Grand to see you, sir.”
“And you!” Smith glanced around the deck. The anchor parties were hard at work fore and aft and they looked excited but cheerful enough. The wounded — and the dead — were coming across from Sparrow to be gently carried below.
Smith said, “I want a dozen men off your four-inch guns. Now. They come as they are.”
Garrick shouted the order, then asked, “What do you plan to do, sir?”
Smith told him in a few sentences, held out his hand and Garrick shook it. There was no more to say and no time to waste. Sparrow, battered and filthy and ancient, sagged against the monitor as if weary to death — but she was ready to go. Marshall Marmont wasn’t going anywhere.
He returned to Sparrow and found the draft of a dozen men from the monitor being given a rude but warm welcome, the CMB alongside and Curtis waiting for him in the waist. He gave the Sub-Lieutenant his orders and asked, “The boat’s all right? And the firing-gear?”
“Raring to go, sir.”
Smith looked at the tall young man a moment. He hoped Curtis would come through. He said, “Remember to wait your time and then — stop at nothing! Understood?” He saw Curtis over the side into the CMB and heard the engines started with a roar then throttled down to a burble as the slender, low little craft pulled away with Curtis in the cockpit at the wheel.
‘Stop at nothing!’ Curtis understood all right. Smith watched him go, bitterly sorry and angry, and swore. He snapped, “Cast off…”
As Sparrow eased away from Marshall Marmont he saw Garrick climbing up to his open bridge. Yelled comments were tossed across the widening gap between the ships. The monitor looked fat and ugly where she now lay anchored fore and aft with her stern towards the invisible shore, her guns pointing seaward. Sparrow turned away from her as Smith ordered, “Starboard ten!..Meet her. Steer nor-west by west.”
“Nor-west by west, sir.”
“Revolutions for twenty knots.”
She turned away from Marshall Marmont and from the tug Lively Lady that was puffing north-eastwards towards neutral Dutch waters. The old thirty-knotter headed out to sea with the revolutions of her engines gradually increasing. The brownish vapour at the tops of her three funnels thickened into plumes of smoke she trailed behind her as her stern sank lower in the sea and the turtle-back curve of her bow lifted.
Smith said to Sanders, “Pass the word: I expect we’ll be in action within the hour.” That would only be confirmation. The rumour must have flown long ago.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The clock that Eleanor Hurst had set ticking when she translated ‘spring tide’ had not yet stopped. But soon it would.
For a time the CMB kept company abeam; for her twenty knots was just cruising. Then after ten or fifteen minutes she eased and slowed, stopped. The day was close on them now, the light growing. Smith watched her and lifted a hand as she fell astern of Sparrow and saw a hand lifted above her cockpit, waving. He turned away. When he looked again she was well astern and he had to search to find her. Without her bow wave and wash to mark her she was a slender splinter on the surface of the sea.
Sparrow ran on. Sanders had returned to the bridge and like Smith was using glasses to search the horizon to the south-west but that horizon was still a false one and close, limited by the light. The true horizon lay far beyond.
But still they searched as Sparrow ran out to sea and slowly the day came and the visibility lengthened until it was close to sunrise. Now the horizon was real enough but the heat and the storm had left a mist as the world steamed so a haze lay along that horizon. Then the tip of the sun showed and the first rays set the quiet sea to sparkling. And Sanders said, “Smoke on the beam, sir!”
“Seen,” Smith answered. He could just make out the stain of it above the haze and lowered the glasses to rest his eyes, rubbed at them. They were sore. He wished he had ordered Brodie to brew more tea; his mouth was dry. He said, “Port five.” Sparrow turned until her bow pointed at the distant smoke. “Meet her…steer that.”
Gow reported, “Steady — two-one-five, sir.”
Smith said quietly, “Just keep her head on that smoke.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
No one was sleeping now. The men stood to the guns. They were quiet, waiting, blinking tired eyes.
The clock was running down now and these last minutes passed with awful slowness. The smoke spread on the horizon. More than one ship. Of course. He swept the glasses around a quarter circle to seek Marshall Marmont but did not find her. Over half-an-hour’s steaming seaward had taken Sparrow twelve miles to the north-westward of her and she was hull-down over the horizon. Her control-top would be showing above that horizon but he could not see it because of the haze and the distance, it was just too small. The sun hurt his eyes.
They formed the three points of a triangle: the monitor inshore, Sparrow twelve miles to seaward and the battlecruiser steaming up to pass between them. She would be about ten or twelve miles from Sparrow and further from Marshall Marmont but still in range…
Sanders yelled, “Marshall Marmont’s just fired, sir!”
Smith answered again, “Seen.” He had also caught the wink of flame, the barest wisp of smoke. They would never bear the report above Sparrow’s engines nor see the burst over the horizon. He lowered the glasses. But whether those hells hit or fell short or over they would come as a nasty shock to the battlecruiser. She was under fire from the big guns of a ship she could not see; Marshall Marmont was making no smoke except from her guns and Smith and Sanders had seen that only because they were looking for it. And Marshall Marmont was still out of range of the battlecruiser’s twelve-inch guns.
Aboard the monitor Garrick would be sending the signal, “Am engaging enemy battlecruiser.” Giving her position, course and speed. Pakenham’s battlecruisers would be leaving the Firth of Forth, the Harwich force putting to sea and the destroyers of the Dover Patrol and the Dunkerque Squadron in hot pursuit of the battlecruiser. They would all be too late.