The light through the steel shutters revealed a mercifully small picture across the fallen bodies, but it was enough to show the great spreading pattern of blood, the way one of the men was glaring at him, pleading in silence, the eyes dying even as he stared at them.
“Get up, Rigge!”
He turned, terrified, hearing a disembodied voice calling, “Send help! Direct hit!”
Then he realised that Rigge was not moving, that his skull had been smashed against the steel side and crushed like an eggshell. One eye was still open, amazed, hostile. The rest was gone in the force of the blast.
Keyes clung to the shattered plot, retching helplessly, trying to stop from bursting into tears.
He wanted to call her name, but when he found his voice he said brokenly, “Oh, Mother! Mother, what shall I do?”
A tattered apparition slipped through the shaft of smoky light and grabbed his arm. It was Mangin, although how he had survived it was impossible to know.
“Get up top! The bridge is a bloody potmess!” The coxswain seemed to realise that Keyes was on the verge of complete breakdown and added roughly, “Come on, son, jump about. You can manage. I’ll try an’ sort this lot out.”
A man groaned in the darkness. It was Jevers, pinned beneath a broken locker, but apparently unhurt. He sounded dazed as he croaked, “Christ, ‘Swain, are we done for?”
“Take the wheel!”
Mangin stepped deftly above a gaping corpse and peered at the compass. It was intact and ticking quietly amidst the death and despair.
“ ‘Old ‘er at due east, lad.” Mangin was already groping for a telephone beside the door. “I’m goin’ to call Jimmy th’ One.”
Keyes knocked off the clips and staggered over the coaming and into a seemingly blinding sunlight. An Oerlikon. gunner was hanging in his harness, gyrating jerkily as the ship plunged over the water, his face set in its last mask of agony, his shoulders smouldering from the impact of splinters.
Keyes pulled himself up the ladder, dreading what he might see. Shells exploded nearby, and once he was almost knocked from the ladder by a wall of falling water. It tasted more of cordite than salt.
He raised himself into the open bridge and peered round through half-slitted eyes, terrified, sick and helpless. He saw a figure moving away from the compass platform and dragging itself towards the voice-pipes. It was the captain.
Keyes ran to him, his eyes brimming with tears, blind even to the grotesque thing with the unlit cigarette in its mouth, or Hillier face-down on the deck across a bloodied signalman, of Tucker sitting with his back against the flag-locker, his hands interlaced across his stomach and the crimson mess which seemed to defy his fingers in its efforts to reach the deck.
Keyes sobbed, “Oh, sir! You’re all right!” He peered at his face, searching it as if still unable to accept he was no longer alone. “I came to help …”
Drummond gripped the voice-pipes, cutting his fingers on the torn brass where a splinter had banged through it like a bullet. He said, “I’m fine, Mid.”
He slipped one arm round the boy’s shoulder. To test his own legs, to stop Keyes from giving in to his terror. There was pain, but not enough to mean anything fatal.
Drummond gasped, “Wheelhouse?”
Keyes nodded. “levers is on the wheel, sir, the coxswain is taking charge.”
“Good.”
He tried to think, to react to the dull brown puffs of smoke above the island, the roar of fans as his ship continued her headlong charge.
Another voice croaked, “Christ, my bloody arm!” Wingate sat up and touched his elbow with a look of stunned surprise. “I’ve broken the bloody thing. ” The sight of Archer, the others sprawled nearby, seemed to change him into a piece of machinery. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he rasped, “Damage control party at the double!” He glared at Keyes, “Go down yourself and tell Number One we may be in trouble!” He forced a grin. “Or I’ll let on to Georgina you wear frilly pyjamas in bed!”
“But I don’t … ” Keyes seemed to realise what Wingate was trying to do and nodded violently. “I’ll go.” He ducked as more bangs echoed around the hull and steel clashed into the bridge like hail.
One splinter hit Tucker, but he did not change his expression.
Wingate said thickly, “Poor old Yeo has bought it, sir.”
“Yes. ” Drummond trained his glasses over the screen, drawing strength from a sense of movement. “Call up the chief. Stand by for full revs if we’re not badly holed.”
Voices were yelling below the bridge, and he heard axes and hammers as the damage control party blundered into the forecastle.
Keyes had certainly had a grim blooding, he thought.
He said, “Check each section.”
A signalman emerged from somewhere, dabbing blood from his forehead. He gaped at Tucker’s body and said, “I’ll take over, sir.”
Nobody answered, so he dragged a pile of bunting from the upturned locker and covered the yeoman as best he could.
“We can turn now, if you wish, Captain.”
Drummond stared. It was Lyngstad, just as before, with not even a scratch. The Norwegian glanced at Archer without expression.
“If you follow this side of the fjord you may steer for open sea. I suggest greater speed. The bombers will be alerted by now, even if my people were able to cut the telephone wires to the bases.”
Drummond nodded, his head throbbing with pain. “The gunfire has eased off a bit.”
Lyngstad sighed. “There is another battery on Arnoy Island. But if you use smoke you should be safe. The battery is for visitors, not those about to leave.” He said it without a smile Instead he looked at the splinter holes, the crude splashes of blood against the bridge, and added softly, “Our people will not only have seen your sacrifice. They will have shared it.”
Rankin’s voice cut through the other sounds. “Cease firing. Check … check … check.”
The cease-fire gong rattled around the various mountings, and the crews paused to stare at each other, the litter of used shell cases, the wounded who crouched, whimpering quietly while they waited for help to come.
Wingate held out the handset. “It’s the chief, sir.”
Drummond turned his back on the others, shutting out their pain, their dumb despair.
“Captain speaking.”
“You’re all right then, sir.” Galbraith seemed satisfied. “I’ve got my pumps going, but the intake seems fair enough. I’ve had a report from damage control that the shell exploded just inside the fo’c’sle and then spent itself downwards into the stokers’ messdeck. Bit too close to the fuel tanks for my liking. I gather there’s a fire blazing there, but the lads are having a crack at it now.”
“Thanks, Chief. ” If only the pain would go from his head. It was blinding him. “I’m glad you’re okay, too.”
“Aye. A few bruises, and the chief E.R.A.‘s got a nosebleed, but it’s none too bad.”
“Yes, Chief.” He replaced the handset.
No point in telling Galbraith there was a long way to go yet, and maybe much worse to endure. He knew without a lecture. He was ‘like that.
Sheridan pushed his way amongst the damage control party, his sea boots skidding on foam from fire-extinguishers, dripping spray, and a concoction of jam and butter which must have been blasted through one side of the main gallery. It now lay with all the litter of pots and pans, broken crockery and, incongruously, a dazzling bright apron which the cook must have hung to dry.
Smoke pumped past him, but was thinner than when he had first arrived in response to the coxswain’s call. He glanced quickly at Keyes, who had kept so close to him since he had brought the news that the captain was safe and in control, that he was like his own shadow.
The sight of Keyes’ white face, his nearness to incoherence and collapse, had made him think the worst. That Drummond was either dead or too badly wounded to retain command. For a few seconds he had been almost too numbed to think in sequence. All his old ideas of command, of some special gift which he had within him, had been lost in the bellow of gunfire, amidst the cries and curses from vague shapes who had rushed past him in the smoke towards the tall column of vapour which had followed that savage shellburst under the bridge.