He felt the ship surge forward and down and a man yelled, “Tow ‘as bin slipped, sir!”
Then Rankin’s voice on the intercom. “Enemy in sight. Capital ship bearing Green one-one-oh. Range one-two-oh.”
Drummond glanced up at Rankin’s steel perch. Six miles. When the light strengthened still further the Germann gunnery officer would pick them off at leisure.
The voice of the senior radar operator was already confirming Rankin’s assessment. Except that despite the bad conditions he had located two smaller blips on his screen. The destroyers. Not that numbers meant anything now.
He said, “Make to Admiralty. Enemy in sight to the north of our present position.”
He walked aft again and saw Lomond steaming away very slowly, her hull rocking drunkenly on a steep roller. She would be an onlooker after all.
Ives watched him sternly. “That all, sir?”
Drummond shook his head and looked up at the two streaming ensigns above the bridge. How white they were. The only clean things today.
He said, “I am engaging.”
He turned to look at Wingate. “Increase to maximum revs. Alter course to two-six-five. He found that his mind was suddenly clear, although it could see nothing, feel nothing beyond this single moment. “Signal Victor to take station astern.”
Drummond strode to the table and threw the screen to one side. “By altering course we might head the enemy off long enough for the M.L.s to get clear. Those Jerry destroyers could catch ‘em in no time, or drive them into the Atlantic until they run out of fuel.”
Two tall waterspouts shot into the air directly ahead of Victor’s bows as she turned steeply to obey his signal.
She made a fine sight, he thought. Like we do from her decks. Dazzle-paint shining with flying spray as she worked up to full revs, her out-of-date lines momentarily lost in speed and purpose.
Beaumont intruded into his mind. He wanted me dead. Now, if he stayed out of range, he might be able to watch it happen.
He lifted his glasses, and for just a brief instant he saw the bright stab of gunfire through the horizon murk. Seconds passed, and then came great double explosions. He felt the ship buck beneath him, and tried not to think of the Moltke’s armament. Nine eleven-inch guns, ten five-point-nines. A heavier armament than the whole of the Scrapyard Flotilla put together. And now there were only two of them left to show defiance.
Rankin again. “Bearing Green nine-oh. Range one double oh.”
It was no use. The range was falling away rapidly, and Warlock’s gunners could not even mark the giant.
He shifted his attention to Victor. She was directly astern now, her bows making a giant moustache of creaming foam.
More shells hurled tall columns of water beyond the two destroyers. He saw the spray reaching out in vast white circles to mark the power of each one.
The Germans would be eager to destroy them, no matter how frail they were by comparison. Moltke’s captain had spent most of his war dodging the R.A.F. or sneaking out of his base to chase and destroy a rare convoy. He had almost certainly been informed by Group West that his hope of a safe dock had been denied him, just as he would know that these two relics of the Kaiser’s war were the culprits. What he would not expect was a direct challenge.
He found he was sweating badly.
“Make to Victor. Prepare to alter course ninety degrees to starboard. ” He saw the flags darting aloft and added shortly, “Hoist Flag Four.”
Wingate looked round as Ives snapped to his signalmen, “Flag Four. Engage with torpedoes.”
“Victor’s acknowledged, sir.”
Drummond trained his glasses astern and saw Roger North standing upright on his open bridge. Would his wife, the beautiful Elinor, blame him, too, for what was about to happen?
He snapped, “Execute!”
He heard the flags coming down the halliards and Wingate say, “Hard a-starboard!”
The ship tilted violently, pushed still further as more shells exploded near the bows. Drummond felt the splinters hammer ing along the hull and knew he had judged it to the split second.
Warlock should have been steaming where those last shells had fallen.
“Midships!”
Wingate was having to shout above the din of engines and fans as the ship swung in a tight arc and then steadied on a course towards the enemy. But not two long targets any more. They were on equal terms. Bow to bow.
“Steady as you go!”
Wingate was peering along his gyro, coughing as spray deluged over the screen.
Drummond said, “We will engage to starboard.” Wingate stared at him, his eyes without emotion. “Yes, sir.” He was probably thinking, six torpedoes between two ships.
If they reached that far.
The sky came apart as towering columns of spray roared above the forecastle. It was like a body-blow, the shells exploding almost as the stem sliced through the falling curtain of spray. In Galbraith’s engine room it would feel like a mine going off.
“Range oh-nine-oh.”
“Open fire!”
The two forward guns reacted immediately, hurling their puny shells through the rain and spray to burst in line with the enemy. Throughout the racing, trembling hull the men would know they were trying to hit back.
Rankin was shouting into his intercom. “Short! Deflection seven left! ” More distorted voices over the pipes and telephones and then, “Shoot!”
Abeam, her ensigns still stiff in the wind, Victor was also using her forward guns.
Drummond could see the oilskinned figures grouping around her triple-mounted torpedo tubes, the purposeful way they were even now turning athwartships.
More violent explosions announced the last fall of shot, and Drummond felt despair, in his heart as he watched the neat pattern of waterspouts.
The battlecruiser must have been using her two forward turrets alternately. Two by two. Feeling the range. Judging the moment.
Then it came, and he had to hold the rail with all his strength to prevent his being flung on his back. Choking spray and whistling fragments whirled above the bridge, and he heard the violent clatter of breaking glass as the radar lantern was blasted away. A man fell past the starboard Oerlikon, and was lost kicking and screaming in the water alongside. He could smell the stench of explosives, taste it in his lungs as if he were drowning in it.
But he could only stare at the Victor as she ploughed slower and slower into a great creaming backwash from the last shellbursts. She had lost twenty feet of her bows, and the sea was surging into the gaping, jagged hole like a high-pressure hose. If North could not stop his engines the sea would smash through the bulkheads like a battering ram and she would continue her brave charge right to the bottom.
More shells exploded on either side of her, bracketing her in a vice of iron. Holes appeared along her side, and her upper deck and superstructure seemed to wilt and shake as if in a great wind.
“Port ten.” Drummond could not take his eyes from her. “Midships.” To Wingate he added, “We will stand off a bit to show ourselves to the enemy. It may give Victor time to recover.”
There was a chorus of shouts as two shells exploded directly on the labouring destroyer. The effect was instantaneous and complete. Funnels and masts, boat davits and deck plating were hurled about like sticks in a gale, and then as some internal explosion sparked off her torpedoes, the Victor seemed to fold up, the stern half sinking immediately in a welter of spray and steam, the forward half, complete with bridge and one unmanned gun, remaining afloat for a few more desperate minutes before it, too, rolled over and vanished.
“Tell the chief to make smoke! ” He had to repeat the order as Wingate and the others stared dazedly at the vast circle of spreading oil.
More shells were falling now, creeping nearer and nearer while Drummond swung his ship towards the enemy on a narrow zigzag.