I took one last, long look at him, thinking how much he still looked like a butterfly on a pin as the barrel of the 4.7 merged into the silhouetted blackness of his chest — then I started to get up.
I raised my arm hesitantly, feeling for a hand-hold above me while the sickness rose higher and higher in my throat.
When my groping hand found the firing lever it was cold to touch — just like the brass handles of the bridge telegraphs that time when the Frenchman went…
…and suddenly Larabee just ceased to exist. Or most of him did, anyway.
The rest of him remained for perhaps a milli-second longer — until the furnace-hot gases from Phyllis’s muzzle flash had crisped the white deck shoes and stockings and shorts to a crinkly brown — then Larabee’s legs, and pelvis, and quite a lot of his torso, folded into one another as they collapsed.
And the tears streamed down my face as I screamed with the first lick of the unbearable agony which was overcoming the morphine as it drained out of my system.
LAST WATCH
The events I have described seem to have taken place an eternity ago yet, in fact, I sense that only a few weeks have passed since the last but one crewman from Group H 24 S died so violently. I can’t be more specific about times and dates because so many days were spent in a twilight halfworld of shock-filled pain and semi-delirium immediately after that bloody gun on the poop fired her final salute.
The radio equipment is smashed beyond repair. Larabee has still wreaked his revenge on me because, unintentionally, he’s condemned me to the life of a Twentieth Century Ben Gunn — except that, instead of cheese, I’ve developed a desperate craving for morphine.
I thought, for a time, that I was going to get better. I’d eaten well, and rested for weeks while scribbling this log, and had even started to hope again. When I found I had the strength to patch up number four starboard boat and lower her, I really imagined I had a chance of escaping. I interred Curtis — and what parts of Larabee I could find. And young Brannigan from the shattered wheelhouse and the various parts of Charlie Shell and his gunners. Your little Bible did come in handy after all, Captain. And not simply as a story book.
But then, two days ago, I started to notice a curious, clinging, sickening odour that seemed to follow me wherever I went — a stench of living putrefaction — and I knew that the malevolent gangrene was going to kill me before I got even half way to the Cape.
Why did I write this fragment of history…? Well, I had to, didn’t I? As a duty to those shipmates of mine who are already dead, so that there will exist a record of their passing.
I’m leaving Cyclops now — if I can make it to the bottom of that damned accommodation ladder. It’s funny how you still cling to hope, even when you’ve used it all up a long time ago.
And, come to that, there’s another silly thing I find myself hoping for.
That — when this catalogue of agony is finally found — there’s going to be a small space left for quite a lot of names at the bottom of that war memorial of the Old Man’s…
EPILOGUE
The Commander sat for a long time after he had finished reading the last page of the yellowed, painfully scrawled manuscript. It wasn’t until he heard a discreet knock at his cabin door that he swivelled stiffly in his chair to notice with surprise that the early morning sunlight was streaming through the forward ports, lighting up the shrivelled, curled sandwiches and the cold, untouched coffee pot of the evening before.
‘Good God,’ he thought, ‘I’ve been sitting here all night.’
The First Lieutenant pushed the green curtain aside and stuck his tousled head through, looking at the unshaven Commander with respectfully concealed interest. ‘Morning, Sir. The work party’s ready to leave for Cyclops now. Do you have any instructions for them before they go?’
The Commander levered himself wincingly to his feet and looked out of the port, blinking in the warm sunlight. Three hundred yards away the old ship lay docilely at the end of her rusty cable, as she had done for so many decades. He turned to the young First Lieutenant.
‘You and I are going over too, Number One.’ He suddenly wondered about the little Bible — had Kent replaced it in the drawer of that deserted chartroom, under the shelf with the bearded Jack Tar tin? He hoped so — it would be fitting for what he intended to do.
He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin and glanced through the port again. There were a lot of dead men under those silent green waters. He knew they had a Red Ensign aboard, but did they have a German flag too? Either way, perhaps those long gone sailors from Cyclops and Athenian would like to see the Red Duster flying over their ships for the last time. He closed the manuscript and smiled sadly at his First Lieutenant.
‘Have the hands muster at eleven hundred, Number One. We have a duty to perform… before we disturb anything at all.’
A short time later — while the survey ship’s ratings assembled gravely on her after-deck, standing to attention in their gold-badged number one dress and with all eyes fixed on the simple ceremony being conducted on the aged ship’s poop — the Commander allowed his fingers to brush briefly against the breech of a very old gun called Phyllis.
And even while he was reading from the battered little book he still couldn’t stop snatches of long-forgotten sentences from drifting through his head. Like—‘Now you remember, Charlie Shell — only a little submarine, mind?’… and names like Breedie and Brannigan, and Evans, and Samson and McKenzie and Curtis…
…and Conway, and Eric Clint and Bill Henderson… Please God that a certain John Kent also entered that place where Chief Officers voyage eternally together…
And the Commander saluted the Red Ensign as it climbed slowly up the scarred staff and fluttered proudly once again over the rusted, silent ship resting forever in that distant inland sea.