The rain had stopped and they could see the cold twinkling of stars through broadening rifts in the clouds. Mallory looked around him, could see Maidos broad off the port bow and the great bulk of Navarone slipping by to starboard. Aft, about a cable length away, he could just distinguish two other ships, high-curving bow-waves piled whitely against tenebrious silhouettes. Mallory turned to the captain.
«No transports, sir?»
«No transports.» Ryan felt a vague mixture of pleasure and embarrassment that this man should call him «sir.» «Destroyers only. This is going to be a smashand-grab job. No time for dawdlers to-night — and we're behind schedule already.»
«How long to clear the beaches?»
«Half an hour.»
«What! Twelve hundred men?» Mallory was incredulous.
«More.» Ryan sighed. «Half the ruddy inhabitants want to come with us, too. We could still do it in half an hour, but we'll probably take a bit longer. We'll embark all the mobile equipment we can.»
Mallory nodded, let his eye travel along the slender outlines of the Sirdar. «Where are you going to put 'em all, sir?»
«A fair question,» Ryan admitted. «5 p.m. on the London Underground will be nothing compared to this little lot But we'll pack them in somehow.»
Mallory nodded again and looked across the dark waters at Navarone. Two minutes, now, three at the most, and the fortress would open behind that headland. He felt a hand touch his arm, half-turned and smiled down at the sad-eyed little Greek by his side.
«Not long now, Louki,» he said quietly.
«The people, Major,» he murmured. «The people in the town. Will they be all right?»
«They'll be all right. Dusty says the roof of the cave will go straight up. Most of the stuff will fall into the harbour.»
«Yes, but the boats--?»
«Will you stop worrying! There's nobody aboard them — you know they have to leave at curfew time.» He looked round as someone touched his arm.
«Captain Mallory, this Is Lieutenant Beeston, my gunnery officer.» There was a slight coolness in Ryan's voice that made Mallory think that he wasn't overfond of his gunnery officer. «Lieutenant Beeston is worried.»
«I am worried!» The tone was cold, aloof, with an indefinable hint of condescension. «I understand that you have advised the captain not to offer any resistance?»
«You sound like a B.B.C. communiqu6,» Mallory said shortly. «But you're right. I did say that. You couldn't locate the guns except by searchlight and that would be fatal. Similarly with gunfire.»
«I'm afraid I don't understand.» One could almost see the lift of the eyebrows in the darkness.
«You'd give away your position,» Mallory said patiently. «They'd nail you first time. Give 'em two minutes and they'd nail you anyway. I have good reason to believe that the accuracy of their gunners is quite fantastic.»
«So has the Navy,» Ryan interjected quietly. «Their third shell got the Sybaris's B magazine.»
«Have you got any idea why this should be, Captain Mallory?» Beeston was quite unconvinced.
«Radar-controlled guns,» Mallory said briefly. «They have two huge scanners atop the fortress.»
«The Sirdar had radar installed last month,» Beeston said stiffly. «I imagine we could register some hits ourselves if—»
«You could hardly miss.» Miller drawled out the words, the tone dry and provocative. «It's a helluva big island, Mac.»
«Who — who are you?» Beeston was rattled. «What the devil do you mean?»
«Corporal Miller.» The American was unperturbed. «Must be a very selective instrument, Lootenant, that can pick out a cave in a hundred square miles of rock.»
There was a moment's silence, then Beeston muttered something and turned away.
«You've hurt the Guns's feelings, Corporal,» Ryan murmured. «He's very keen to have a go — but we'll hold our fire… . How long till we clear that point, Captain?»
«I'm not sure.» He turned. «What do you say, Casey?»
«A minute, sir. No more.»
Ryan nodded, said nothing. There was a silence on the bridge, a silence only intensified by the sibilant rushing of the waters, the weird, lonesome pinging of the Asdic. Above, the sky was steadily clearing, and the moon, palely luminous, was struggling to appear through a patch of thinning cloud. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. Mallory was conscious of the great bulk of Andrea beside him, of Miller, Brown and Louki behind. Born in the heart of the country, brought up on the foothills of the Southern Alps, Mallory knew himself as a landsman first and last, an alien to the sea and ships: but he had never felt so much at home in his life, never really known till now what it was to belong. He was more than happy, Mallory thought vaguely to himself, he was content. Andrea and his new friends and the impossible well done — how could a man but be content? They weren't all going home, Andy Stevens wasn't coming with them, but strangely he could feel no sorrow, only a gentle melancholy… . Almost as if he had divined what Mallory was thinking, Andrea leaned towards him, towering over him in the darkness.
«He should be here,» he murmured. «Andy Stevens should be here. That is what you are thinking, is it not?»
Mallory nodded and smiled, and said nothing.
«It doesn't really matter, does it, my Keith?» No anxiety, no questioning, just a statement of fact. «It doesn't really matter.»
«It doesn't matter at all.»
Even as he spoke, he looked up quickly. A light, a bright orange flame had lanced out from the sheering wall of the fortress; they had rounded the headland and be hadn't even noticed it. There was a whistling roar-- Mallory thought incongruously of an express train emerging from a tunnel — directly overhead, and the great shell had crashed into the sea just beyond them. Mallory compressed his lips, unconsciously tightened his clenched fists. It was easy now to see how the Sybaris had died.
He could hear the gunnery officer saying something to the captain, but the words failed to register. They were looking at him and he at them and he did not see them. His mind was strangely detached. Another shell, would that be next? Or would the roar of the gun-fire of that first shell come echoing across the sea? Or perhaps Once again, he was back in that dark magazine entombed in the rocks, only now he could see men down there, doomed, unknowing men, could see the overhead pulleys swinging the great shells and cartridges towards the well of the lift, could see the shell hoist descending slowly, the bared, waiting wires less than half an inch apart, the shining, spring-loaded wheel running smoothly down the gleaming rail, the gentle bump as the hoist…
A white pillar of flame streaked up hundreds of feet into the night sky as the tremendous detonation tore the heart out of the great fortress of Navarone. No after-fire of any kind, no dark, billowing clouds of smoke, only that one blinding white column that lit up the entire town for a single instant of time, reached up incredibly till it touched the clouds, vanished as if it had never been. And then, by and by, came the shock waves, the solitary thunderclap of the explosion, staggering even at that distance, and finally the deep-throated rumbling as thousands of tons of rock toppled majestically into the harbour — thousands of tons of rock and then the two great guns of Navarone.
The rumbling was still in their ears, the echoes fading away far out across the Aegean, when the clouds parted and the moon broke through, a full moon silvering the darkly-rippling waters to starboard, shining iridescently through the spun phosphorescence of the Sirdar's boiling wake. And dead ahead, bathed in the white moonlight, mysterious, remote, the island of Kheros lay sleeping on the surface of the sea.