Conway arrived panting with the Old Man’s shorts and, as Evans struggled into them, Mallard cut across and under our bows with heart-stopping elan, making the Old Man growl angrily under his breath: ‘Bugger all week-end bloody sailors!’
She still looked damned good though as she creamed along our side, in between the two cargo liners which dwarfed her. The long sleek forefoot dipped into the slight swell and the white bone in her teeth rose nearly to a level with the foc’slehead as she raced past. We could still hear the clamour of her attack alarm system, while steel-helmeted ratings moved swiftly and methodically around the thin shield of the foredeck gun, their white anti-flash hoods giving them the sinister appearance of avenging monks. Aft, her White Ensign streamed out over the boiling wake and the sub-lieutenant in charge of the depth-charge crew raised a hand in salute. A solitary white cap cover defiantly caught the sun among the cluster of steel helmets on her postage-stamp bridge and I guessed it belonged to our escort commander, Lieutenant Commander P. Braid. RN, otherwise laughingly known as Comescort. The Old Man and I had grinned when he heard them use that description first; it seemed a very grandiose title for a corvette captain sheep-dogging three freighters. In that case, Evans had remarked, with him being senior master, that sort of made him Comconvoy.
The Aldis spluttering from her bridge was obviously operated by a yeoman who held the signalling capabilities of the merchant navy in low esteem. It was so slow it was insulting. Mind you, it did also mean that our junior mates could read it first time without having to request a repeat. Brannigan spelled it out as the Old Man finished making fast the cavernous pair of shorts.
‘COMESCORT TO MASTER CYCLOPS: REPEAT TO MASTER ATHENIAN… MAINTAIN PRESENT COURSE AND FULL EMERGENCY REVOLUTIONS… U BOAT NOW PRESUMED ABAFT YOUR BEAM AND UNABLE TO MAKE FURTHER ATTACK… NO ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE TO PICK UP SURVIVORS COMMANDANT JOFFRE REPEAT NO ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE TO PICK UP SURVIVORS SIGNED BRAID END.’
I stared at Brannigan in horror. ‘Sure you got that right, Four Oh? They aren’t going to pick up the Frenchies?’
His face was very white. ‘Yes, Sir. Positive.’
I swung round on the Old Man. ‘The yellow bastard. We can’t leave them out here, nine hundred miles from anywhere.’
Evans looked back at the Commandant Joffre. The way was right off her now and she was lying almost flat on her side, slightly down by the head. We could see a swirl of white foam against the sluggishness of the encroaching sea as the foc’sle windlass broke surface, otherwise the oily placidity of the water was uninterrupted until it curled sullenly round the near vertical steel hatch coamings.
Some poor bloody sailor was still left standing on the top side of the spindly funnel, masked occasionally by the swirls of steam that trickled from it, while two boats were sculling frantically in the shadow of the dead hull like grey water-beetles, overloaded with survivors. Suddenly I tensed. The boats were splashing fruitlessly and apparently aimlessly, instead of pulling straight away from the bulk of the dying freighter. Something was terribly wrong.
I groped for the Barr and Stroud 10 x 50’s in the binocular box at my hand and lifted them, feeling a little sick. Those boats should have been well away by now, fighting for distance between them and the inevitable suction as thousands of tons of water poured into the cavity that would be left when the Commandant Joffre finally went. Instead they were paddling round in panic-stricken circles and getting nowhere fast. It was lunacy.
Then my nervous fingers found the knurled ranging wheel and the powerful lens fused into sharp focus. I found out why they were putting up such a pathetic attempt at self- survival — and it wasn’t anything to do with Gallic excitement.
The French ship was lying with her great masts almost brushing the water. I could make out the heavy forward jumbo derrick gear as it dangled ridiculously in the slight swell like some gigantic black-varnished fishing rod. Between the mastheads, now only a few inches from the oil-scummed surface, stretched her heavy jumper stay and H.T. wireless aerial. Together, they combined to form an impenetrable fence — a sort of nautical corral — with the Frenchman’s lifeboats trapped in the middle. They were trying to escape, though, with the desperation of the damned. One boat had nosed up to the stay and a gnome jerked frantically as he chopped at the heavy cables.
‘Bastards!’ I whispered bitterly, not really knowing if I meant the U-boat crew, the corvette’s exec’s or even the poor bloody Frogs and their pathetic attempts to save themselves.
Evans apparently thought I meant Mallard. ‘Braid has his orders, Mister Kent — to get us through to Adelaide, no matter what. If he stopped to pick up the Frenchmen he’d be a sitting target for the bugger that hit her. They’re still out there somewhere, still watching and waiting… and hoping we’re heroic-minded enough to put humanity before common bloody sense.’
I watched as Mallard performed another of her tail wags round the far side of the stricken ship, then came racing back dangerously close to the lopsided masts like an excited dog that’s just recovered his master’s walking-stick. Something splashed over her stern and, for one horrifying moment, I had the impression that she was depth-charging the area where the boats were, then I saw they were heaving over Carley Floats and yellow survival packs. Seemingly, Comescort Braid had it figured the same as me — that if any crewmen survived the inevitable massacre when the freighter sank, then they wouldn’t have any boats left to swim to.
‘Bastards,’ I said again, thinking this time specifically of Mallard—but then, I wasn’t feeling very logical, and I guess it’s easy to be gallant and stupid when you yourself are steaming away from danger at twenty knots.
Then something blew deep down in the entrails of the Commandant Joffre—probably her boilers — and everything seemed to come to an end all at once.
The starboard railway engine went first, crashing almost vertically down on to its part-submerged twin and, between them, creating a tidal wave that itself threatened to engulf the little boats. The resultant loss of weight made the dying ship jerkily recover a few degrees and we saw the man on the funnel take off into the air like a wad of blotting paper from a kiddie’s ruler before his tiny, spinning, star-shaped body crashed back somewhere round the after end of the promenade deck.
The funnel itself went next, keeling slowly forward and sideways, then crumpling into itself as it swept the bridge structure and monkey island into the hungry sea.
I had one brief, intimate glimpse right down the gaping hole where her stack had been, deep down into the pipe-webbed machinery space — then she monstrously turned turtle and everything was white foam and steel derricks rearing from the oilslicked sea like discarded matchsticks, and somewhere underneath it all were sixty-odd Frenchmen with bursting lungs and mangled limbs.
The rust-scarred double bottoms stared imploringly at the hot blue sky for one long, shocked appeal, then she went down by the head like an express train, while we listened to the lingering rumble of the internal explosions fading away as the boiling South Atlantic closed over the Commandant Joffre.
It became very quiet on the Cyclops’s bridge right then.
The Old Man moved first, slowly replacing his binoculars in the varnished box under the rail and turning away. He took the gold-braided cap off and looked sad, a slightly ridiculous fat man in a pair of baggy white shorts and a dried foam beard. Someone was sobbing behind me and, when I swivelled round, it was young Conway. He’d never seen a ship die before, and the Frenchman had died hard. It had kind of dulled his interest in watching flying fish.