Donoghue growled, “I didn’t commence hostilities. I said we would come out in case survivors needed assistance but once here I wasn’t going to sit on my butt and watch murder done. However. Order that gunboat to heave to or we’ll sink her. And make to Thunder: United States at war with Germany. Where are the enemy cruisers?”
On the signal bridge a yeoman with a telescope to his eye drawled, “Feller on top of — the bridge — I think. Signalling with a couple of white flags. He’s hellish slow, even for a limey.”
Smith was rusty.
The answer came to Donoghue. “Thunder replies, sir: ‘Sunk. Can you tow me?’
Corrigan said quietly, “Jesus Christ.”
Donoghue groped for some noble phrase, some stirring reply but this was an exercise alien to him and he remembered the slight, filthy, lonely figure on the quay naming himself simply, “Smith.”
And Donoghue said, “Affirmative.”
Smith fought off the lassitude of reaction and started the climb down to the deck. There was work for him to do but there would be help for all of them now, for Garrick, for Davies, for Albrecht and the men. For the ship. His mind already worked on the details of the tow, of the bulkheads that needed to be shored up. Kansas could lend them divers …
He found himself wondering about Sarah Benson and the destruction wrought this day. There was a good reason for that destruction, for him at least. When she had raised the pistol at arm’s length and fired — what was the reason? He had never asked her …
The battered hulk that was Thunder wallowed in the seaway. “One long roll …” On Kansas as she swept down on her every man who could find a spot where he was able to stare at that hulk, in silence.
The guns were silent.
Arnold Phizackerly stood in the stern of the dinghy at the mouth of the channel. He had waited there listening to the rumble of the distant guns and peering out at the far flaming that marked them. Now with the sun warm on his back he stared at the smoke on the horizon, unable to make out any ship, and wondered.
Sarah Benson listened to that silence, cold. And waited.
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to many people who helped me with this book and in particular David Lyon of the National Maritime Museum, Derek Pilley and Lieutenant Michael Pilley, R. N.
But any mistakes are mine!