“Port ten!” Dunbar ordered.
“Port ten, sir!” Gow answered.
Sparrow came steadily around.
“Meet her. Steer two-four-oh.”
“Two-four-oh, sir!”
Sparrow steadied on the southward leg of her patrol. Buckley had stood a trick at the helm but now Gow, the coxswain, was again at the wheel. Or over it. His big body curled over it like a question mark, head bent above the compass card, long arms gripping the spokes. Gow was a good cox’n.
Sparrow rode well enough in this quiet sea but the sky was darkening. In bad weather she would be a pig. These ships, this ship, kept the sea right through the gales and foul weather of winter, though they were not really fit for the task. They demanded, therefore, a special breed of seaman. Smith stared out at Marshall Marmont, a ship seen through the haze of the smoke from her guns’ firing and beyond her the rolling smoke of the screen. Flame, smoke and slam! as she fired. The barrels of the guns, the turret and her foredeck were stained black from the smoke of her firing.
His flotilla. One elderly, frail game chicken and one pot-bellied lame duck. They were his ships. But the men? Trist regarded both ships and their crews as problems. But Smith already had an affection for Sparrow and Garrick spoke well of Marshall Marmont’s crew. Garrick would always defend his crew but he was no fool and he was honest with Smith. So something could be, would be made of this flotilla…
He was still thinking about it when there was a whistling roar as a German salvo passed overhead and a second later burst in the sea in four massive spouts of upflung water. Well out to sea, well over, but that was a ranging salvo. The next would be shorter and these looked to be big shells, maybe eleven-inch, and they would be from the Tirpitz battery sited just south of Ostende. It was a well-hidden, well-protected battery. Over the last three years it had been shelled from the sea, from guns behind the lines at Nieuport, and the Royal Flying Corps had bombed it — but the Tirpitz battery was still intact and firing as well as ever.
The next salvo would be shorter — Smith called to the signalman, “Signal to Commodore: ‘Under fire from Tirpitz battery. Continuing bombardment.’”
The signalman ripped the sheet from the pad and slapped it in the hand of the bridge messenger who slid down the ladder to the iron deck and ran aft to the wireless shack between the first and second funnels.
Smith took two restless paces across the bridge and returned. He wished the Sopwith Triplanes could have shot down that balloon but they had their hands full with the Albatros V-strutters and now Smith could see another flight of the German fighters climbing. A commander in this kind of operation had to consider the safety of his ships and the lives of his men. At the same time the operation had to be carried out, the attack pressed home. Hazarding ships and men could bring a charge of negligence, while failure to press home the attack might be regarded as cowardice; your senior officer might think you had cut and run too soon. It depended on his point of view and in this case it was Trist’s point of view. Smith remembered Dunbar’s outburst: ‘We’re going to be put up like targets to be shot at!’ He shrugged uneasily. That was nonsense; this was just one more operation. But whatever Smith did, he had to be right. It was all a question of timing.
Brodie came up the ladder to the bridge with a biscuit-tin full of sandwiches, thick hunks of bread with cheese and pickles. The men were already eating at their posts and now Dunbar helped himself but Smith shook his head. He was not hungry.
Timing…
And here came the rain. A squall swept in from the sea, rain driven on the wind. From the look of the skyline, that, too, was only a ranging round and there was more to come. Dunbar called over his shoulder, “See if you can find me a spare oilskin. There should be one in my cabin.”
He spoke from a full mouth, was talking to the bridge messenger. But it was Buckley who answered, “Aye, aye, sir,” and dropped down the ladder to hurry aft as best he could on that cluttered deck.
Smith glanced absently across at Dunbar and noted that he already wore an oilskin, also that he was unshaven, pale under the blue-black stubble and his eyes were blood-shot. The bandage around his head was grimy now; you could not keep a bandage white on Sparrow’s bridge with the smoke and soot from her funnels rolling down over the bridge each time she turned. But appearances notwithstanding, Dunbar stood rocksteady and alert.
The next salvo from the Tirpitz battery came down nearer Marshall Marmont. So though the rain shrouded the ships it was obvious that the observer in the balloon, the bloody balloon, could see something. Enough. Sparrow was at the end of her southward patrol, clear of the smoke where the balloon and the darting aircraft showed still but the coast was hidden by rainclouds.
Dunbar ordered, “Port ten.” Sparrow started the turn.
The signalman said, “Signal from Marshall Marmont, sir. ‘Observer reports target obscured.’”
So the rain had reached Ostende. Smith could see nothing of it now because Sparrow was behind the smoke-screen again but he heard the salvo that howled in and plunged into the sea a bare cable to seaward, only two hundred yards from Marshall Marmont. He swallowed. That one must have lifted Garrick’s cap. The pace was hatting-up, growing too hot altogether and the monitor could do no good now the aircraft could not see the target. He ordered, “Make to all ships: ‘Discontinue the action. Weigh and take station as ordered.’”
He realised that Buckley was hovering behind him and holding up an oilskin — so Dunbar had sent for it for Smith. He pushed Buckley away impatiently. “Not now!” He wanted no distraction. He jammed hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the rain that fell solidly now, and watched, outwardly calm but inwardly chafing as Marshall Marmont laboriously weighed anchor and got under way, started to turn. Had he given the order in time or was a salvo — “What the hell is she doing?” The monitor was turning not to seaward but towards the line of launches, their smoke dispersing, themselves getting under way. “Signalman! — No, wait!”
A hoist broke out from the signal yard of Marshall Marmont. He could see bustle on her bridge, through his glasses he saw Garrick’s tall, bulky figure and his mouth opening and closing as he shouted his orders. The signalman read, “‘Starboard engine out of action. Rudder jammed.’”
Dunbar gave a humourless bark of laughter. “Good old Wildfire! Up to her tricks again!”
Smith snapped, “Signal the launches to take evading action! And tell the tug to stand by.” To Dunbar he said, “Close her a little. Not too close because we don’t want her ramming us.” But he wanted to be close enough to see through the fog of war, of smoke and spray and beating rain.
“Aye, aye, sir! Port ten, cox’n!”
“Port ten, sir.”
“Steady! Steer that!”
Smith muttered, “If one of those shells hits Marshall Marmont it’ll go clean through her deck and burst below.”
Dunbar said, “If one of them hits us there’ll be no deck or bottom or anything else!”
Sparrow closed the monitor and as she did so the salvo roared in and burst where Marshall Marmont had been anchored and dead ahead of Sparrow. Her bow lifted and dropped and they felt the tremor of it through the ship as if she had struck. She steamed on through hanging spray that stank of explosive and a sea that boiled. Smith wiped spray from his face. Well, he’d been right to shift the monitor. Now he had to get her out of this.