Lindsay turned in the chair. ‘Pass the word to Lieutenant Barker to get some hot soup around the ship for all hands. Sandwiches as well.’
As Ritchie beckoned to a messenger Lindsay heard Stannard mutter, ‘He should have thought of that already himself!’
Lindsay turned and stared at the screen, the black blob of the ammunition ship’s stern which seemed to be pivoting on Benbecula’s jackstaff.
‘Pilot, come here.’
‘Sir?’ Stannard crossed to the chair.
Lindsay kept his voice very low. ‘You have the makings of a good officer, a naval officer I’m talking about now.’ God, how difficult it had become to keep his voice level. ‘You are a good navigating officer too, and God knows that’s something in a ship like this.’ He turned and studied Stannard’s face, pale in the darkness. ‘But try not to be too clever for your own good. Don’t get’ too hard or you’ll grow brittle. Brittle enough to break when you’re most needed.’
‘I only meant
‘I don’t give a damn what you meant! For all you know, Barker may be dealing with the men’s food right now. He may just as easily have fallen down a hatch and broken his neck.’
Stannard said abruptly, ‘I have apologised.’
‘That’s fine then.’ Lindsay turned back to the screen. ‘Just one thing more, and then carry on. If a piece of Krupp steel comes through that screen or a shell bursts above your head on Maxwell and his spotters, things could change for you and fast.’ He waited a few more seconds, feeling Stannard’s resentment and uncertainty. ‘You will be in command at that moment. Alone on this bridge maybe. Perhaps for just a few seconds until the next shell. Or maybe you’ll have to nurse this old tub a thousand miles without help from anyone.’
Stannard nodded slowly. ‘I think I do understand, sir. I’m sorry.’ He smiled sadly. ‘When you’ve always had a captain or someone to give orders and get you out of a jam it’s hard to see, yourself in that position.’
Lindsay nodded and took out his pipe. ‘We’ll say no more about it.’
But Stannard said, ‘I was wrong about Aikman, too. I’ll never forget how he looked when he left the ship.’
‘I was the one who made the mistake, Pilot.’ He heard Stannard’s quick intake of breath. ‘Surprised? That I can be wrong?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I used to think much the same about my first captain. He died at Narvik. He turned out to be just a man after all. Like the rest of us.’
Dancy called, ‘The first lieutenant’s on the phone, sir. Wants to know if he can fall out action stations.’
‘No.’ As Dancy turned back to his telephone he added quietly, ‘Cold and uncomfortable it may be. Cursing my name and birth they most certainly are. But if we catch a torpedo 7 want our people, or as many of them as possible, on deck, where they’ve- got a chance.’
Jupp appeared at the door behind the helmsman carrying a tray. “Ot cocoa, sir?’
Lindsay looked at Stannard, feeling the nervous tension dragging at his mind like one huge claw. ‘You see, Pilot? Someone remembered us!’
Stannard walked to the starboard side where Dancy was peering through his night-glasses at the ship ahead.
‘I wish you’d heard some of that, Sub.’ He kept.his voice very quiet. ‘Sometime in the future you could have tried to write it all down.’
Dancy lowered his glasses. ‘He cares, doesn’t he?’
Stannard nodded slowly. ‘By Christ, and how he cares. I saw his face when we steamed through those wretched devils in the drink back there. I’ve sailed with some skippers in my time, but never anyone like this.’
Dancy said simply, ‘I was scared to death.’
Stannard took a cup of. cocoa from Jupp and held it in his gloved hands. And so was he, he thought wearily. Lindsay was making himself watch those men die with
something like physical force. Testing his own reserves and hating what he was doing.
He thought suddenly of a captain he had once served in a ship on the meat-run from Australia. They had gone to assist a Portuguese vessel which had lost. her rudder in a storm off Cape Finisterre. And what a storm. Stannard had been a green third officer at the time, and the thought of standing by a crippled ship in such mountainous seas had made him swear it would be his last voyage,if he ever managed to ‘reach port. The old captain had stayed on the bridge for three days without a wink of sleep, never resting until they had lifted off every man from the stricken ship. And that was after several attempts to take her in tow.
There had been a doctor travelling as a passenger on board at the time and Stannard had heard him say to the skipper, ‘You must get some rest! Or your life will be in danger next!’
The skipper, a man of few words on most occasions, had regarded him indifferently. ‘My life, doctor?’ He had walked up the pitching deck to the screen again. ‘My life is obligations. Nothing else counts.’
Stannard had had his own troubles at the time and had not fully grasped the significance of those words.
He watched Lindsay as he craned over the gyro repeater, the unlit pipe still jutting from his mouth. But he understood now well’ enough. Perhaps, better than any
other man aboard.
13
Abandoned
Thirteen days out of Liverpool found the convoy steaming due south, with the Cape Verde Islands some three hundred miles on the port beam. All the colours had changed, yet few aboard the Benbecula had noticed the exact moment the transformation had come about. Instead of leaden grey the sea had altered its face to a deep blue, and above the spiralling mastheads the sky was of paler hue with just a few frayed banners of cloud to break its washed-out emptiness.
Lindsay sat in his chair feeling every movement as the ship heaved up and over in an uncomfortable corkscrewing motion. There was a stiff breeze to ruffle the blue water with a million busy cat’s-paws, and with a quarter sea to add to the ship’s plunging lifts and rolls he could feel the chair pressing into his body as if the bones were pushing through his skin.
Thirteen days. Long days and longer nights, with hardly a break for the men who came and went about their duties like dull-eyed robots.
Not only the weather had changed. The convoy was steaming in just two lines, and it was smaller. The day after the first ship had been torpedoed the Pole Star had received a’ similar fate. Except that the attack had been better planned and controlled, possibly by three U-boats simultaneously. She had taken two torpedoes in her side and had started to sink in minutes. Even before the bow-wave around her rust-streaked stem had died away a third torpedo had struck her dead amidships, blasting her into halves, the forepart sinking immediately, the stern section remaining afloat just long enough for a destroyer to scrape alongside and lift off the remaining survivors. That same day one of the escorts had been hit, the explosion shearing off her forecastle as cleanly as a giant welding torch, laying bare her inner hull for a few more minutes until she rolled over and disappeared with her straight white wake still marking where she had dived.
Encouraged by their success the U-boats had made a surface attack under cover of darkness, only to be caught and pinned down by starshells from one of the other destroyers. She had dropped far astern of the convoy to pick up some survivors sighted by the cruiser’s Walrus flying-boat. In fact, they were from some other convoy, and they had not survived. Eight men in a scarred lifeboat who had not waved or cheered as the destroyer had come to find them. They must have been dead for several weeks. Just drifting with the currents and winds, already forgotten by the living world they had left behind.
The destroyer had chased after the convoy and even as she had been about to make the recognition signal had detected the surfaced U-boats directly across her bows.