‘And now, sir?’
‘Now?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘Now, I don’t care. I don’t give a damn.’
He seemed to realise they were all staring at him and added curtly, ‘We will remain at action stations, but make sure the watchkeepers and lookouts are relieved as often as possible. Gun crews can sleep at their stations. And see what you can do about some hot food and have it sent around. There could be another U-boat about, although I doubt it.’
Stannard replied quietly, ‘I’ll do that, sir.’ He watched Lindsay stagger against the open door, feeling for him, imagining what the strain was doing to him. He hesitated, ‘And congratulations, sir. That was a bloody fine piece of work!’
Lindsay remained in the doorway, his face in shadow. ‘You did well, Pilot.’ He looked slowly around the darkened bridge. ‘You all did.’- Then he was gone.
Dancy moved to Stannard’s side and said softly, ‘I thought we’d had it.’
Stannard watched the pale arrowhead of foam riding back from the bows. ‘Me, too. Now that we’re still alive I don’t really know if I’m on my arse or my elbow!’
Dancy nodded and ran his fingers along the smooth teak rail beside Lindsay’s chair. It was impossible to understand. To grasp. In convoy he had been hard put to keep his fear from showing itself. Every minute had been an eternity. When on one occasion the ship’s company had stood down from action stations he had been unable to go to his cabin, when moments earlier it had seemed the most important, the most vital goal in his existence. Sheer terror had prevented his going. He had found himself thinking of the- brief Admiralty signals. Instead of six U-boats in the convoy’s vicinity he had begun to think of the men inside them.‘ Six submarines. That meant a total of some four hundred men. Four hundred Germans somewhere out there in the pitiless ocean, waiting, preparing to kill. To kill him. Even as he had crouched, sweating and wideawake below the bridge, he had imagined a torpedo already on its way. Silent and invisible, like those four hundred Germans.
The sudden action with the surfaced U-boat had, changed all that, although he could not explain why or how. It was as if he had been pushed beyond some old protective barrier into another world. A no-man’s-land. What was it the captain had called it? A killing ground. Sense, hope and reason were unimportant out here. Just the men near you. The ship around all of them. Nothing else counted.
Stannard said, ‘Go and check around the messdecks,
Sub. Make sure we’re not showing any lights.’
Dancy replied, ‘I could send someone.’
Stannard shook his head. ‘You go. Walkabout for a bit. It’ll do more good than standing up here thinking. You can think too much.’
Jupp came into the wheelhouse. ‘I’ve brought some sandwiches for the cap’n, sir.’
Stannard strode to the chart room and pulled open the door. Lindsay was sprawled across one of the lockers, one hand still reaching for a folio, his cap lying where it had fallen on the deck. He closed the door gently.
‘Leave them, Jupp. I’ll see he gets them later.’
Jupp nodded. ‘Yessir.’ Like Dancy, he did not seem to want to go.
Stannard said, ‘Let him rest while he can. Christ knows, he’s earned it.’
Steel scraped on steel and he heard Goss’s resonant voice “roaring along the promenade deck. He was at it already. Wires and strops, cable and jacks, it was something Goss had been doing all his life.
Stannard walked unsteadily across the gratings, massaging the ache in his limbs.. He must have been standing as stiffly and rigid as one of de Chair’s marines, he thought vaguely. You did well, Pilot. The words seemed to linger in his mind. Yet he could hardly-remember moving throughout the action, giving an order, anything. Once he had thought of the girl in London, had tried to see her face.
He sighed. There was still a long, long way to go before they reached Trincomalee in Ceylon. And after that, where?
A signalman said, ‘Ammo ship on the starboard bow, sir.’
Stannard shook his weariness away and hurried to the screen. Time enough to worry about a future when this lot was finished.
‘Port ten.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘Midships.’
The watch continued, and in the dimly lit chart room Lindsay slept undisturbed either by dreams or memory, his outflung arm moving regularly to the motion of his ship.
At first light the next day the business of passing a towline was started. It took all morning and most of the forenoon, with motor boats plying back and forth between the ships to keep an eye on the proceedings. It took hours of backbreaking work and endless patience, and while Lindsay conned his ship as close as he dared to the drifting Demodocus, Goss strode about the poop yelling instructions until his voice was almost a whisper. Twice the tow parted even as Benbecula’s engines began to take the strain, and each time the whole affair had to be started from scratch.
The after well deck and poop were scarred and littered by wires and heavy cable, and the twelve-pounder gun mounting soon took on the appearance of something which had been squeezed in a giant vice.
But the third time it worked.
Ritchie said, ‘Signal, sir. Tow secured.’ He sounded doubtful.
‘Slow ahead together.’
Once more the increasing vibration while very slowly the great length of towing cable accepted the strain.
Lindsay watched the other ship’s massive bulk through his glasses, his eyes on an officer in her bows who was holding the bright flag above his head. Seconds, then minutes passed, with the Demodocus still apparently immobile in the shallow troughs, as if gauging the exact moment to break free again.
Quite suddenly her angle began to alter, and Lindsay saw the bright flag start to move above the officer’s head in a small circle. Reluctantly the other vessel swung ponderously into the Benbecula’s small wake, her siren giving a loud toot as a mark of approval.
The tow did not part again, and when two destroyers found them on the following day both ships were still on course, the cable intact.
The senior destroyer made:°a complete. circle around the two ships and then cruised closer to use a loud-hailer.
‘Jolly glad we found you! It looks as if you’ve had a bad time!’
Lindsay raised his megaphone. ‘Have you a tug on way?’
‘Yes!’ The other captain brought his ship even closer, and Lindsay saw the seamen lining her guardrails to look at the jagged splinter holes along Benbecula’s side. He added, ‘You’re damn lucky to be afloat! There was a report of a surfaced U-boat shadowing the convoy. But we’ll take care of the bugger if she comes this way!’
Lindsay said quietly, ‘Bring them on deck, Sub.’
He did not speak again until the German seamen and their lieutenant had been hurried on to the forecastle and lined up in the bright sunlight. He waited just a few more seconds and then called, ‘We met up with her.’ He saw their heads turn to stare at the small group on the forecastle. ‘But thanks for the offer.’
Another day passed before a salvage tug appeared to take the crippled Demodocus in tow. They had made use of the time by ferrying ten badly wounded men to one of the destroyers. In Freetown they could get better attention, although it seemed to Lindsay as he watched them being lowered into the boats alongside that those who were conscious did not want to leave.
And when the tow was released he had that same feeling. He had still not met the ammunition ship’s master and probably never would. But as she wallowed slowly abeam while the tug’s massive hawser brought her under control Lindsay saw him standing on his bridge, his hand raised in salute. Along the upper deck his men waved and cheered or just watched the strange ship with a list to starboard and her dazzle paint pitted with splinter holes until she was lost in a‘sea haze.