The initial bombardment lasted an hour all told, and by then we'd got close enough to the enemy for our destroyers to turn broadside and unleash torpedoes. Their torpedo tubes revolved and ripple-fired, while we dreadnoughts kept the artillery salvoes going.
What none of us had any idea of then was that a torpedo was coming our way, courtesy of a Setic sub half a mile to port. The captain of the Serapis had no idea either, though he bloody well should have. He should have been hunting down that sub with his sonar and depth-charging it to oblivion, instead of which he was fannying about doing something, anything, other than what he was fucking supposed to.
It hit us amidships, bang on the aft boiler room. It broke Immortal's keel in two — snapped her spine. It had to have been a fusion-head torpedo, to do that much damage. Red and purple ba uniting, the power of Set and Nephthys coming together, an even more volatile mix than that of Isis and Osiris. Any other kind of torpedo, striking anywhere else, and Immortal might have been able to carry on. The bulkhead seals would have contained the inrushing water and she'd have been reeling but still able to fight, like a punch-drunk boxer. But the engines were blown up, the hull lost integrity… the technical term for her status is ''fucked''.
And so the call came to abandon ship. Horns whooped. Men scarpered for the lifeboats, and believe me, I was scarpering as fast and as frantically as any of them. Disaster drill? Calm and orderly evacuation? Forget it. Everyone was trampling over everyone else to get the fuck out of there, clawing, scrabbling, fighting. Rank meant nothing. We were all of us equals in our terror. We clambered out onto deck, in our lifejackets, and Immortal was shrieking and groaning and shuddering. The whole of her midsection was engulfed in smoke and flames, and she was letting out these bellows of tormented metal, which mingled with the dull thudding detonations of exploding fuel holds.
Then — and this is the truly shit part — I felt the deck start to rise under me at an angle. Everyone around me was finding it hard to keep their balance. Me too. The bow of the ship was coming up out of the water. The stern was as well. Immortal was collapsing in on herself, her two halves bending together in a massive V, and not a single lifeboat had been launched yet, not a single crewman had got safely off her. It was all happening too fast. Suddenly the deck was canted at forty-five degrees and getting steeper, and men started slithering and tumbling down it, heading for the inferno at the crux of the V. I happened to be standing near the anchor capstan and I managed to grab on to it and clung on, but I knew I wasn't going to able to keep hold of it forever. And the ship was starting to sink. No, sink's too gentle a word. She was starting to plummet. This beautiful big boat that I'd come to trust, that I'd come to believe was the sturdiest thing in the world, was going down as swiftly as though something was dragging her below, some leviathan or kraken of myth, wrenching her down into the depths. I hurtled down with her, still clutching that capstan. The surface of the sea below me was boiling white, seething, steaming, with an orange glow deep within, the fuel holds still alight even underwater. I remember wondering whether the water was going to be scalding hot or freezing cold when I hit it, and I remember thinking I probably wouldn't know either way because at this speed the impact was bound to knock me out.
I did lose consciousness, but not quite that way. One moment I was descending. Next, a flash of light and I was flying. I had no idea at the time what was happening, but I've found out since, by reading eyewitness reports. The fire reached one of Immortal's for'ard magazines. Her bow end convulsed in this immense explosion that blew me off my perch and outward, away from the ship. I must have looked like a flea being flung off a shaking dog. I have this dim recollection of weightlessness, of not knowing which way was up or down. It was weirdly pleasant, like a funfair ride. Remember that time we went to the funfair, you and me? With Mrs Plomley. And we went on the waltzer ten times in a row, and at the end I got off and was sick down Mrs Plomley's coat. Felt a bit like that. The waltzer part, not the being sick part.
I have no memory of landing in the water. I have no memory of anything from the next few hours. I came round sometime towards evening. The sky was pink, clouds were swelling overhead, and I was floating in the water, my lifejacket like this constricting puffy collar around my neck. My brain felt fragmented, my thoughts all over the place and I couldn't pull them back together. I couldn't hear anything except the lapping of the water around me, the heave and surge of the sea.
Gradually I began making sense of things, and I listened out for the sound of guns, because I assumed the battle must be going on somewhere within earshot, even if somewhere meant ten miles away. But the battle had moved on. The fleets, the Nephs' and ours, had gone off in one direction and I'd gone off in another, and I was all alone out there on the ocean. Just me, the Aegean, and nothing else. Oh, a couple of corpses bobbing nearby, ratings from the Immortal, but they weren't much for company and we soon went our separate ways. Otherwise, alone.
I became aware of the left side of my face feeling odd. Tight. Stretched. Painful in a dull, tingly kind of way. I tried touching it to find out what was the matter but my fingers were numb. Been in the water so long they'd lost all sensitivity. I guessed I'd struck something or been struck by something, debris perhaps, and my face was swollen and bruised.
Night came. Rain started to fall — great hissing sheets of it. I lay there floating, thinking maybe I should try and make the effort to swim. But swim where? Which way? It would be a waste of energy. If I conserved my strength instead, I might just stay alive that little bit longer. I was probably in a current and the current would be taking me somewhere, maybe to land, maybe further out to sea. Whichever it was, swimming wasn't going to make a gnat's fart of difference. So I just hung there, suspended in the water, the rain rattling down on my head, drumming on the roof of my skull.
I'm not ashamed to admit I bawled like a baby several times during the first part of that night. I was lost and terrified, and the rain was doing what the sea couldn't and half-drowning me. I longed to be home, safe and dry, and see you again, and Mum, and even Dad. I'd have given anything for a chance to be with my family, everyone on good terms with everyone else, all differences set aside, forgiven, forgotten, a clean slate.
The rain stopped around midnight, I'd say. The sky cleared. The stars came out. By that point the pain from my face had faded, I couldn't feel my limbs at all, and I was shivering uncontrollably. Exposure, hypothermia, delayed shock — I knew I was suffering from any or all of them, and I knew, no two ways about it, I was going to die.
But the stars, Dave… I couldn't stop gazing up at them. They were so beautiful and so many. I identified the constellations. Astronomy was about the only lesson I ever paid any attention in at school. I knew all the names, both the old Roman ones and the modern ones. Orion's Belt, for instance, which we now call the Three Pyramids, with the Milky Way representing the Nile. And Draco, a.k.a. the Crocodile. And Leo, the Sphinx. They glittered above me and somehow it was hugely reassuring. Not in any spiritual way, just the fact that there were so many stars up there, so many millions of them. And here was little me down here, on my own, with just hours to live, if that, and the stars were sparing a fraction of their light to create this rich, brilliant display in the heavens, and they were doing it for me, that's how it seemed. I felt I was the only person who was appreciating or had ever appreciated the show they were putting on, and I was determined to enjoy it for as long, or as little, as I had left.