Then Mangin heard Drummond’s voice, “Full ahead together!”
A piece of metal struck the bridge and rattled down on the deck below.
Mangin listened only to the engine room bells, and then shouted up the voice-pipe, “Both engines full ahead, sir!”
Reaching out on either bow the land was at last coming alive, like a great beast awakening to an impudent intruder. Red and green tracer lifted and slashed down through the snow, and from further inland came the heavier bark of artillery. Shells shrieked overhead, and one exploded aboard an anchored tender, setting it ablaze from stem to stern and lighting up the scene like a picture of an inferno.
Some of the M.L.s had already landed their shore parties on the mole and along one of the great concrete slipways and were heading towards Warlock and Victor at full speed to collect the rest of the troops. One M.L. was listing badly, her low hull partly concealed in a mass of red sparks and smoke. The air was alive with gunfire, the Warlock’s four-inch weapons adding to the din as they poured a regular barrage into the defences beyond the submarine pens.
Drummond watched the nearest M.L. swinging round to run parallel.
“Half ahead together!”
He heard Sheridan yelling through a megaphone, and prayed that none of the soldiers would slip and fall between the pitching hulls at the one, brief contact.
Very lights and flares drifted overhead, and Drummond saw fresh lines of tracer probing down from the tops of warehouses and the pens themselves.
Rankin’s voice was harsh on the intercom. “Pom-poms and Oerlikons shift target. Machine gun at-” His words were lost in the immediate crack and thump of cannonfire as his crews poured a devastating fire towards either bow.
“Ventnor’s cracking on speed, sir!” Hillier was yelling like a madman. “Twenty knots at least!”
The old destroyer with the strange outline was pushing well ahead of the others, her churning wash and bow wave giving testimony of her increasing efforts to reach the target.
Slightly to starboard Lomond was being bracketed with shellbursts, and she was replying as best she could, although her gun crews must have been blinded by smoke from the shore and burning harbour craft alike.
Wingate exclaimed in a choking voice, “God, will you listen to that!”
An M.L. was thrashing clear of the side, her deck crammed with troops, some of whom were already firing Brens and other light automatic guns towards the shore. Above the insistent, earscraping clatter came the jubilant skirl of bagpipes.
Wingate said, “How can he play the damn things in all this?”
More metal clattered over the bridge and a lookout cried sharply, “Oh, Jesus!” Then he fell down on his face.
Ives snapped, “Dead. ” He dragged the body to the rear of the bridge, adding to one of his signalmen, “Well, don’t stare, lad! Take his bloody place!”
Drummond heard it all. The first of his company to die.
He levelled his night-glasses on the great mole and tried to find the command vessel. The blue light had gone, and the whole stretch of water seemed to be alive with darting M.L.s, drifting wrecks, a few men swimming towards the land.
“Direct hit on Ventnor, sir!”
An M. L. was already speeding after the destroyer which had slewed off course in a great curtain of falling spray and sparks.
Drummond let out a sigh as Ventnor swung drunkenly back on course. Nothing could prevent her from hitting the caisson now, unless her packed charges exploded prematurely. He watched the M. L., wondering briefly if she would be able to lift off Ventnor’s small steaming party.
A great flare exploded directly overhead, blinding him, and holding the ship between the glaring clouds and bright water like a vessel made of ice.
“Hard a-starboard!” He heard Wingate shouting in the voice-pipe. “Midships!” He winced as a shell exploded in the water alongside, raking the hull with splinters.
Aft, by X gun, Sub-lieutenant Tyson was clinging to a stanchion and straining his eyes through the smoke when the shell burst. Water and snow burst over him, choking him with salt and the stench of H.E. The communications rating was crouching beside him, pressing his headphones against his ears as he repeated what Rankin was telling him from the director.
“Shift target, sir! Shore battery at Red one-one-oh!”
A splinter slammed him in the chest and he sprawled over his seat, choking and gurgling, while Tyson stared at him with frantic horror.
The gunlayer swung his brass wheel and yelled, “Red oneone-oh!”
Another man slammed a shell into the breech and jumped clear as the gun roared back on its mounting, the bright shellcase clanging away unheeded amongst all the others.
The gunlayer paused in his efforts to look at Tyson. “That’s all we bloody well need now!” he shouted to his friend the trainer. “Dick’s gone for a burton and the sub is spewin’ ‘is guts out!” He tensed, his eye pressed to the sight. “Layer on!” He held his breath. “Shoot!”
Sheridan ran with his damage control party to check the towing gear. To make sure the last shell had not blasted it away. He mopped his face. Like the rest of his body, it was burning like fire, and yet there was thin ice forming on guardrails and along the depth-charge racks. He squinted at his luminous watch.
“God, we’ve only been under fire twenty minutes!” He shouted aloud, unable to believe that the battle had not been raging for hours.
He was thrown against the shield of Y gun, feeling his skin pushing over his jaw like a mask as a tremendous explosion tore the night apart.
A seaman called, “Ventnor’s blown up, sir!” But his voice was lost in the unending roar of the combined charges.
Men crouched like animals as the air became filled with flying fragments, and some were knocked senseless by metal and lumps of concrete which rained down through the glowing red ball of fire which had been the Ventnor.
Sheridan shaded his eyes against the glare, feeling the deck swaying this way and that as Drummond conned his ship wildly through the tell-tale waterspouts and criss-crossing tracer.
His brain was still able to record everything. The M.T.B.s snarling past the ship, guns hammering, as they charged into the attack, the leaders already firing their torpedoes towards the pens where the midget submarines were said to be moored.
He could see the Victor quite close by, her side glowing red and orange in the reflected explosions, her guns high angled as she fired again and again towards the warehouses and the riverside jetties of dockland where the Germans’ resistance was visibly strengthening.
He felt the Warlock shuddering as if in a great tide-race, and stared with amazement at the complete stern-half of a German supply ship which was being carried past on a torrent of seething water. The dock area must have been blasted wide open.
A man was shaking his arm. “Sir!” He was waving a handset. “Captain wants you!”
He pressed it to his ear, covering his other ear with his glove. Drummond sounded miles away. “We’re pulling out, Number One. General signal to break off the action immediately.”
Another great bang, and a section of the quartermaster’s lobby buckled inwards like wet cardboard.
Sheridan shouted, “What about Lomond?”
“Engine trouble. ” He sounded almost matter of fact. “We’ll grapple her and take her in tow if we can.”
Sheridan shifted his smarting eyes to the clutter of towing gear on and around the quarterdeck. It was just as if Drummondhad known all along.
Drummond added tersely, “Quick as you can. Ventnor’s done her part. The M. L. s are taking off the landing parties.” Sheridan asked, “Did they pick up any-“
“No. Ventnor received a direct hit as she rammed. Both she and her M. L. bought it.” The line went dead.