Smith had the coaster back on course. Finlay was climbing to his feet with the girl’s hand under his arm. “I can take her now, sir.”
“Sure you’re all right?”
“Ah’ve a right bloody headache but ah can steer.”
Smith turned the wheel over to him. To Eleanor Hurst he said, “Stay with him. If anything like that happens again, you yell.” She nodded, did not say that she had screamed at them as they shifted vague in the fire’s smoke and against the background of the running flames and they had been deaf to her. When they had come running for the sand at Lorimer’s hoarse bellowing they still had not heard her.
They were hit forward again, a thumping crash and a spurt of smoke. As he jumped down from the wheelhouse he saw Buckley leaning over the side again. He ran to join him and Buckley said, “Just below the water-line, sir. See?”
Smith saw the gaping hole. They could, would have to contrive to rig some sort of patch over it. He straightened and lifted his head to peer around him. There was Ostende and the Belgian coast, on the horizon now. The German shore batteries could see them but they had not fired, might not fire. The coaster had made a lot of ground and they might have got clear away but for that torpedo-boat. She would haul up on them now and sink the coaster or board her, take him and his men prisoner. And Eleanor Hurst? If she had looked to him then he had failed her. Christ! What a mess he’d made of it. And out there was the empty sea…
No, it wasn’t. He stumbled back to the wheelhouse, shouting for Buckley, grabbed at the telescope and set it to his eye. There was the smoke, and under it –
He lowered the telescope and snapped at Buckley, “Hoist Sparrow’s number! She’s there!” He pointed.
“Sparrow’s — Aye, aye, sir.”
There was a locker below the telescope’s clips. Smith opened it and found the signalling lamp, braced himself in the wheelhouse door and worked the lamp to wink his message at Sparrow. ‘Stand by to take us off. Smith!’
He lifted the telescope again, watching for an acknowledgment. He had to wait, but it came. He worked the lamp again, ‘Am under fire from TB.’
Again his signal was acknowledged. Sparrow’s silhouette fore-shortened as she turned towards them. Now he saw the flick of light and puff of smoke as her twelve-pounder fired. He ran to see the fall of shot; two long, lunging strides across the wheelhouse, cannoning off Finlay. And saw nothing but their own smoke rolling astern of them. He turned to Finlay. “How is she handling?”
Finlay scowled worriedly. “She’s getting very sluggish.”
With water pouring into her she would be. And there would be gradually mounting pressure on the engine-room bulkhead.
He lifted the cover on the voice pipe. “McGraw!”
“Sir?”
“Keep an eye on the for’ard bulkhead. We’re filling for’ard. And McGraw. Sparrow’s running down to us. We can expect to be taken off.”
“Sparrow! Aye, aye, sir!”
Smith leaned on the door of the wheelhouse and thought it would need to be soon. They would nurse her but they had to keep going. The sooner they reached Sparrow and the less time she spent in these waters, the better. She should not be here anyway. With that he thought of Trist and swore under his breath. But then he forgot Trist. Sparrow was big now, dashing down on them. Her gun had ceased firing and there had been no firing from the torpedo-boat for some minutes but now one huge water spout lifted astern and to port of Sparrow. It was a quarter-mile away but the shore batteries were seeking the range.
He ordered, “Starboard ten…Midships.” And to McGraw: “Stop engines and chase them all on deck.” To Lorimer: “Get the prisoners out.”
He stood on the deck of the coaster as it filled with the prisoners and his men. He found Eleanor Hurst beside him holding a steadying hand under the arm of Finlay who seemed shaky on his legs. Smith thought she looked dead-tired but then his eyes left her and went to Sparrow and he saw now that her forward funnel was holed and leaking smoke, the wireless shack had gone and she had a hole in her hull just below the bridge. But she was sliding alongside, screws thrashing briefly astern, stopping. The hands were there slinging fenders over the side and the lines came snaking over. The two ships rubbed together for only seconds as the prisoners were urged to climb up on to Sparrow’s deck and the men followed, taking Finlay with them. Smith handed Eleanor over and then followed himself, the last to leave the sinking coaster.
A salvo burst in the sea inshore of the coaster and still a quarter-mile away but they would soon lift the range.
Sanders was leaning out from the bridge. “Is that the lot, sir?” Smith lifted a hand and Sanders bellowed, “Cast off!” He vanished and a moment later Sparrow throbbed to the beat of her engines and she pulled away from the coaster. As she did so a squall came in from the north-west, rolling Sparrow’s smoke down to coil around the listing coaster like a winding-sheet. With it came the rain, and the coast and Ostende were lost as its grey curtain came down. The shore-batteries fired no more.
Smith went to the bridge, pausing for only seconds to stare at what was left of the wireless shack; a buckled frame, splintered planks and the wireless a chunk of scrap. He moved on, found Sanders on the bridge and said, “We’re very glad to see you. What happened?”
Sanders looked tired, drawn and pale. He spoke slowly, a sentence at a time as he remembered the incidents, getting his thoughts in order as he went. “We were patrolling, sir. Heading north. These two German boats came up on us from astern. We saw each other together, I think. The captain made a run for it and got away that time, but they hunted us, found us again when we tried to cut back. They fired at us and hit us, but we got away again. They still hunted us. Drove us right off station. When it was getting light and we could see they’d given up — probably thought we’d got round them somehow and gone home — the captain said we’d come back to look for you.”
“He was taking a risk.”
“Yes, sir. He said we had to. Couldn’t leave you and scoot off home.”
Smith thought they owed their freedom if not their lives to Dunbar. Nobody would have blamed him if he had refused to hazard his ship on the thin chance of finding Smith’s party. Sanders might prove a good officer in time but a decision like that…
He asked, “Where is the captain?”
Sanders looked at Gow where he hung over the wheel, long arms hanging to grip the spokes. Gow’s face was expressionless. Sanders said, “When they hit us they killed the two Sparks and wounded the captain but he stayed on the bridge. Shortly before we sighted you he collapsed and we took him below. He died about ten minutes ago. Brodie says it was shock and loss of blood.”
Smith looked at them, at the misery in Sanders’s face and the mask clamped on Gow’s. He said to them, “I’m very sorry. He — was a fine officer.”
He could find nothing more to say. He had got away with it, but not Dunbar. The man had said he owed Smith a lot. He had paid in full; far too much. And the two wireless operators. He thought of Dunbar’s private misery, never shown, never spoken of, but he knew it had been there. He did not believe this rubbish about dying of a broken heart. Men died for reasons like — loss of blood. Not a broken heart. Still…
He turned away from them to face forward. Eleanor Hurst was in the captain’s cabin and Dunbar and the dead wireless operators in the wardroom. There was nowhere Smith could go. The bridge was crowded as always with its staff and the crew of the twelve-pounder. There was barely room for him to take a pace either way. He stood with legs braced against the motion of the ship and wrapped his hands around the mug of tea that came up from the galley and sipped at it and hunched wearily under the rain, the never-ending rain.