But to those unknown men aboard the decoy one thing was certain. They were a deliberate target, and that quick exchange of signals was their only hope of survival.
Beaumont said, “Seems quiet enough. No wind to speak of. Easy swell.” He nodded, apparently satisfied. “Think I’ll take some supper.”
He left the bridge, and Salter said fervently, “God, what a man, eh? No wonder people look up to him.”
Drummond moved from his chair again. It was hopeless trying to think with Salter chattering all the time. He probably meant well, and in any case he was quite likely feeling a bit apprehensive now that there was some likelihood of trouble.
But Drummond needed to be alone. To think, to try and discover what was troubling him. Everything was going like a clock, just as Beaumont had predicted and planned. And yet there was something. Some flaw, like a false echo on a radar screen, or on an incomplete painting.
He said, “I’ll be in my sea cabin, Pilot. Have a sandwich or something sent up, will you?”
As he left the bridge Salter said, “I suppose he has to try and copy Captain Beaumont’s coolness.” He shook his head. “Must be a bit of a challenge to have a public hero- as your boss.”
Wingate studied him gravely. “We must all try and live up to it.”
Salter glared at him as the lieutenant started to chuckle. “I’m going below!” He was still muttering angrily as he clambered off the bridge.
Wingate wiped his night glasses with a piece of tissue before peering along the bearing where the decoy ship would be, if only she was visible again. Pompous bastard, he thought cheerfully. He felt the deck begin to roll in another series of uncomfortable troughs. Salter would get a shock when he reached the wardroom, or rather his guts would. Greasy sausages and overcooked potatoes. Just the job for the likes of him.
He saw Keyes hovering by the voice-pipes and said, “Now, Mid, I’ll tell you how it was when I joined, how about that?”
Keyes came out of his trance. He had been thinking of the signal, of Beaumont’s hand on his shoulder. Friendly. Like an equal. He liked the navigating officer, even if he was a bit crude at times. But it was wrong to make fun of Salter in front of the other watchkeepers. It was like hitting at. Beaumont.
He sighed and said, “You’ve already told me.” Wingate shook his head. “Bother.”
“Object in the water! Green four-five!” The lookout was crouching against the darkening sky like a carving on a church tower.
Wingate pushed past him, his glasses already trained above the screen.
Keyes called excitedly, “I can see it!” Then he added, “Oh, it’s only a piece of wood.”
Wingate walked deliberately along the gratings at the side of the bridge, his eyes never leaving the small, bobbing fragment until it was overturned and lost in Warlock’s wake. Part of a boat’s keel.
He swung round and said harshly, “Only a piece of wood, was it?” He saw Keyes recoil, surprised and hurt. “Well, it was a bloody lifeboat once!”
The other watchkeepers shifted uneasily and kept their eyes trained outboard. Only Parvin, the leading signalman, who had been in the ship when Wingate had first joined her, understood and felt something like pity for him.
He said quietly, “I’d call down to the wardroom, if I was you, Mr. Keyes, and check up with Owles about the skipper’s sandwiches. Just in case the old bugger shuts up the pantry for the night.” He saw Keyes nodding, still confused at Wingate’s anger.
Parvin returned to his thoughts. There was no point in trying to explain to Keyes. He would learn soon enough. Or go under, like the last Number One had done.
He knew quite a bit about Wingate. Gossip soon got round in small ships. He had been navigating officer in a sloop in Western Approaches. The ship had been torpedoed in a snow-squall, four hundred miles out in the Atlantic. Most of the survivors were picked up by another escort, but somehow they missed Wingate’s little boat. When a destroyer had found them four days later there were only half of the original ten men still alive. One had been frozen bodily against Wingate’s oilskin. It was said that it had been his best friend and had died soon after rescue.
Parvin heard him exclaim bitterly, “Don’t talk to me about heroes. I’ve seen too many of them.”
When Drummond returned to the bridge just before midnight the sea felt calmer, flatter, and through a high bank of fleecy clouds he caught occasional glimpses of the moon. He shivered slightly. A good night for it.
“Ready when you are, sir.
He glanced at Wingate, noting the dullness in his voice. Equally the lingering tension around the bridge. An argument. Assertion of discipline. Keyes making a mess of something.
He dismissed it from his thoughts. It did not matter now.
“Yes. Sound action stations, please.”
5
A Great Find
Drummond rested his elbows against the bridge screen and trained his powerful glasses beyond the port bow. It took steady concentration with the ship moving so sluggishly, and after a slow examination of the faint horizon he returned to his place beside the chart table.
Beaumont had taken over the bridge chair, and appeared to be sitting very erect, listening. In fact, the whole ship was like that.
It was nearly four in the morning, with the moon still playing tricks between the thin clouds and touching the crests of the long swells with silver, so that the troughs seemed far deeper than they actually were. The motion was sickening, for with her engines stopped, her fans almost stilled, Warlock idled and swayed over each low swell with all the intensity of a quartersea.
An hour earlier the lookouts had sighted a light, far away on the eastern horizon. It had moved slowly and then vanished. Radar had reported it as a ship, and it had seemed likely that the light had been the illuminated hull of a neutral. The Aragon, Beaumont had insisted forcefully. Now nobody was certain of anything, except that their own ship was drifting uneasily in moonlight which could make her a fine target, Drummond asked, “How is the decoy?”
More murmurings, a clink of metal as a lookout’s belt scraped against a locker. In the silence it sounded like the crash of an oven door.
“In position, sir. Now almost dead ahead. Range six thousand yards.”
“Damn °” Beaumont wriggled round in the chair, his face square against the sky. “We can’t crack on any speed or we’ll be up to her in no time.” He was calculating aloud. “That other bugger is probably listening or watching from somewhere. Waiting to see if the decoy stops or retraces his course.”
Drummond said nothing. If there was a spy-ship out there, her captain was cunning all right. Warlock could do little but wait. In the morning they would be too close to Spanish waters to take decisive action. And the trap might be sprung against them.
“Check with the W/T office.”
Drummond heard Hillier muttering into the voice-pipe at the rear of the bridge.
“Nothing, sir.”
Drummond groped for his pipe and put it between his teeth. He could see Wingate lolling against the chart table, the portly outline of Tucker, the yeoman of signals, at his elbow. Lookouts and bosun’s mates, and Sheridan on the opposite side of the bridge. In action he would be elsewhere with the damage control parties, but in this peculiar situation he might be required right here.
Wingate asked, “I wonder where the other destroyers are?”
Beaumont snapped, “Laughing their bloody heads off, I expect!”
Miles Salter edged around the compass platform, his hands groping before him like a blind man.
“Maybe they’ll try again later?”
Beaumont looked down at him. “Perhaps. But we will have to close with the decoy and get her out of it. She’s got a list, which her crew created by flooding. She looks the part, but it could be difficult to put her to rights for the next leg to Gib.”