Smith’s gaze drifted over his little flotilla and he reflected that this was a first test for all of them. He was watching them and they were watching him — while Trist had hurried on to Zeebrugge where he would not have to watch at all. Smith had taken Wildfire and Bloody Mary off his hands.
That was one worry less for a very worried man. Smith shook his head, sorry for Trist. But then he remembered Dunbar’s warning, that Trist’s caution could be dangerous to them.
The signal hoists broke out and were acknowledged by Garrick aboard the monitor, the leader of the motor launches and, belatedly, by the tug. As Marshall Marmont anchored so the launches anchored in a long-spread line between her and the shore and two or three cables from her. Smith watched them all as he conned Sparrow on her weaving patrol to seaward. The submerged mine-nets were their inshore defence against U-boats. On the southward leg of the patrol he saw the ‘Ready’ signal break out on the monitor. As Sparrow passed the tug she was steaming easily. Her master waved from the wheelhouse as the two ships passed and the dumpy figure in boilersuit and sea boots in the stern also lifted a hand. Smith thought absently that it was crazy for a woman to be at sea — and she had a line over the stern! Fishing! Dunbar had been frank about Victoria Baines’s faults as he saw them. “She’s got an edge to her tongue to take the skin off you and she can be pig-headed. But, by God! She’s a seaman and she’s doing a man’s job and doing it bloody well.”
Smith was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. But he reserved his verdict — a woman of sixty or more for God’s sake, effectively commanding one of H.M. tugs in time of war?
The signalman said, “Monitor reports ‘Ready’ sir.”
“Acknowledge.” And: “Where’s that aeroplane? It’s due.”
He was answered by a call from Buckley acting as look-out: “Four aircraft bearing green two-oh!” He saw the aircraft drifting below the cloud base and watched them through his glasses.
As the lower one approached Buckley called, “Harry Tate, sir!” That would be the RE8, that was to be the spotting aircraft for Marshall Marmont’s guns. Flying high above it were three Sopwith Triplanes, its escort. All of them were from the Royal Naval Air Service field at St. Pol outside Dunkerque. The escort would be needed.
Soon they were making a wide, slow circle overhead and the signalman reported, “From Marshall Marmont, sir: ‘Aircraft in wireless contact.’”
“Reply: ‘Open fire when ready.’ Signal the launches to make smoke.”
All straightforward so far, no hitches. This was a drill and they had done it before, knew what to expect. But they had not fired a round yet and this operation would follow a deadly dangerous, predictable course. A bombarding ship was always at risk, at a disadvantage against shore batteries if they were at all efficient and the batteries at Ostende were. Timing could mean the difference between life and death and it lay in his hands.
The RE8 buzzed away towards the coast with its escort climbing above it and the launches began making smoke with the smoke-making machines they carried. Dense clouds of it, mixed black and white poured out and rolled slowly downwind. It would hide them and the monitor from the shore batteries and was mixed black and white because when white smoke only had been used the black cordite of the monitor’s guns had marked their position for the shore batteries. He thought that but for the smoke it might have been a deceptively peaceful scene, the monitor lying at anchor, the tug chugging up and down and Sparrow patrolling at an easy twelve knots. But the monitor’s guns were trained on the shore, barrels at high elevation pointing skywards. Any moment now…
Marshall Marmont fired, a single gun thundering out, the flame jetting orange and smoke spurting black from the recoiling muzzle. The massive fifteen-inch shell, half a ton of it, went howling away into the clouds, soaring to nearly nine thousand feet high before starting on its downward path. It would fall in about forty-five seconds and some fifteen hundred yards short of Ostende. The spotting aircraft should be able to spot it there and order a correction.
Sparrow’s patrolling course had taken her clear of the smokescreen and before she turned he saw the Harry Tate twisting and turning off Ostende and all around it the cotton-wool puffs in the sky that were the bursting of anti-aircraft shells. He saw something else and lifted his glasses. Was that a balloon rising over Ostende, the silver skin of it catching what leaden light there was? He was sure of it and knew what it meant. Just as the Harry Tate spotted for the monitor, so the observer in the basket swinging below the balloon served the shore batteries. Smith and his flotilla would be under fire soon. It was time for Garrick to cross his fingers. He found his own were crossed and shoved his hands in his pockets. Superstitious nonsense. But he kept them crossed.
Sanders said, “Balloon’s gone up, sir.”
Smith grunted. “That it has. Go round Sub, and tell ’em all to keep their eyes skinned for U-boats. I know they’ve been told. Tell ’em again.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
A man could become bored staring at an empty sea and be distracted by the action elsewhere.
Smith was not bored. This was like walking out along a plank.
Marshall Marmont fired again.
So the observer in the Harry Tate had spotted the fall of the first shell and ordered a correction. Or he had not seen it and ordered a repeat. Sparrow patrolled her beat and each time she turned he had a view of the coast and the aircraft. Every two minutes or so Marshall Marmont fired a single, ranging round as the observer ordered corrections to bring the gun on for line and extended the range towards the target. Smith did not envy the observer his job, bucketing about in the cramped cockpit of the RE8 as it twisted and turned off Ostende. The German anti-aircraft gunners were banging away at him and he had to peer down over the side of the cockpit with the engine’s clamour deafening him and the oil spraying back, watch for the shell’s burst and then send his correction to the monitor.
The regular thumping slam! of the ranging gun marked the passage of time like the slow tick of a great clock. As Sparrow tacked up and down on her patrol and while he still concentrated on his command a part of Smith’s mind worried at the mystery thrust upon him. “Schwertträger…Hinterrücks anfallen.” ‘Sword-bearer’ — a code name, obviously, but for what? And ‘stab in the back’. That could mean the Atlantic shipping…There was another mystery. The patrol over De Haan that Morris had spoken of. Now he could see it.
He was jerked totally back to the present as the monitor fired a salvo, both guns. So she had ranged on to the target, the dockyard installations or a ship in the basin, or the lock gates. He saw the shock-wave send a shudder out across the sea.
The RE8 still circled and soared, though now the anti-aircraft guns had ceased firing. Instead there was a dog-fight going on involving half-a-dozen aircraft, the escorting Sopwiths and a flight of Albatros fighters swooping and climbing, diving, curling away. But he noticed one oddity. The single German aircraft to the north over De Haan had been joined by two others but they only patrolled, made no attempt to join the dog-fight. Strange, but –