“Follow me!”
He pushed a man out of his path and peered down the oval hatch which led to the lower deck, the stokers’ mess which had been turned into a shambles of blackened tables, smouldering clothing and hammocks. He hurried down the ladder, aware that the rail was still hot from the explosion, that there was far more light than there ought to be.
He paused, gripping the foot of the ladder, and stared at the gash in the side, the telltale splinter holes from some earlier damage. The white, frothy bow wave was streaming back from the stem and seemed only a foot or so below the gash in the hull. It made the familiar privacy of a messdeckfade, brought home to him the frailness of their daily protection.
“God, what a bloody mess!” He heard Keyes beside him. “But the fire’s out for a while.”
He knelt down and sniffed, catching the tang of oil fuel right beneath him. More punctures there, too. All around him there were other, more personal things scattered and burned, soaked in filth and foam. The large pin-up of a full-breasted girl in a sailor’s cap and nothing else. That belonged to Leading Stoker “Tosh” Harding. The picture had often called for a joke or a smutty remark when an officer did rounds in this cramped messdeck. There was a bundle of letters written in a shaky, untrained hand. A needle and thread still attached to a gold badge which someone had been sewing on a best uniform when the alarm bells had sounded. These sights, and others, made him suddenly bitter and angry, more even than those he had witnessed on the upper deck. It was an invasion of the men’s lives. God knows, they had precious little else.
He looked up the ladder. “Tell the bridge the fire’s out. I’ll get the buffer’s party to do something about this gash right away.”
Sheridan glanced at the midshipman. It was strange, he thought. That moment of unreasoning anger had helped to steady him. Yet it did not matter now. One more good battering and they would have to bale out.
But to Keyes he said, “This will be a dockyard job.”
One of the stokers in the damage control tearn stood staring emptily at his messdeck. But all he said was, “Good thing ole Badger went on a run ashore after all. ” He picked up a bundle of sodden letters and put them into a locker. “They won’t be read no more.”
Sheridan hauled himself up the ladder and strode along the opposite side of the forecastle. The forward messdeck seemed untouched, and he found two seamen having their wounds dressed by the S.B.A., and another who lay covered by an oilskin, one clenched fist sticking out as if to express his last moments of hate for those who had destroyed him.
He paused by the break in the forecastle, gulping in salt air, staring fixedly at the nearest strip of land, brown and green in the daylight, as it received the backwash of Warlock’s screws. He leaned over the rail below the whaler’s davits and saw Ventnor close astern, her battle ensigns white against the smoky sky, the big hole in her side very obvious even at this distance. There was a towering wall of black smoke around the nearest spit of land. Right up to the hill-tops and far beyond that. Thick, greasy, solid. It looked as if it would stay that way forever.
Their visit would be long remembered, he thought dully. All that burning fuel. It would have reached Waxwing’s stranded hulk by now. A suitable pyre for those who had been left behind.
A voice exclaimed, “Not me, sir!”
He turned and saw two men carrying a seaman on a stretcher whose arm was heavily bandaged. The doctor was striding beside the stretcher, his face expressionless.
The man tried to hold up his shattered arm. “You mustn’t, sir! Oh, dear God, why don’t they listen?” He fell unconscious, his head lolling across his cap which they had used as a pillow.
Vaughan saw Sheridan and said flatly, “It’s got to come off. Now.”
Sheridan looked at the man on the stretcher. A plain, homely face. One you would never notice at Divisions or when inspecting the libertymen. He found he was gripping his own arm. What would he do if it happened to him?
He said to Keyes, “Better go up to the bridge. Seems to be a lull.” He saw Keyes’ face as he stared after the little forlorn group which followed Vaughan’s white coat towards the screen door. He said, “Don’t think about it, Mid. I expect it was like this at Jutland. Trafalgar, too, probably.”
Sheridan found Drummond sitting in his chair, one leg thrust out stiffly and resting on a steel bracket.
“Finished your inspection, Number One?” He sounded calm. Too calm.
“Yes, sir. Six dead, fifteen wounded.” He thought of the man’s eyes as he had cried, “Oh, dear God, why don’t they listen?” Someone should. He looked round the stained bridge. “How many here?”
“Four. Two wounded.”
Wingate held up his arm which was wrapped in a crude sling. “They don’t call this a wound, apparently!” He grinned, the effort making his face even more strained.
Hillier was sitting on the steel step below the compass platform, his head in his hands.
Drummond added quietly, “Shock. He’ll be all right when he’s needed.”
“I’ve got some matches, sir.” The signalman stepped over the yeoman’s body and struck one carefully.
Drummond took it and held it to his new, shining pipe. It was amazing how steadily he could hold the little flame. Despite Warlock’s rise and plunge over the inshore current, the vibration from her engines, he could still do it. And yet he felt as if every fibre in his body was cringing and shaking, beyond control.
He saw the match flame reflected in each of Sheridan’s eyes. Like someone looking out from another mask.
He blew out a stream of smoke. It was strange. Cruelly unnerving. But he could not recall having enjoyed a pipe more.
Lyngstad called, “Another ten minutes, Captain.” He gestured towards the starboard beam at the smudgy shape of an island. “The battery there will try to hit you as you clear the swept channel.”
“Yes.” He tried to think. To stop enjoying the smoke. The firmness which the pipe seemed to give his whole body. “Tell the chief. We’ll need a thick screen. Good thing the wind’s in our favour, what there is of it.”
The signalman said, ” Ventnor’s on the station, sir. ” He was trying not to look down at Tucker’s feet. They had done so much together. So many watches, so many signals.
Rankin’s voice droned from an intercom. “All guns, load… load … load.” A pause as around the ship the weary crews stirred into life again. “Short-range weapon crews prepare to repel aircraft.”
Good thinking. It would keep them occupied.
A bosun’s mate lowered a telephone. “Petty Officer Owles is callin’ from aft, sir. Says he can fix some tea. Enough for the ole ship’s company, if he can ‘ave a couple of extra men.”
“See to it, Mid.” He watched the boy hurry away, looking neither right nor left. He was managing well, considering.
To port the other strip of land was curving away, losing its firm outline in the haze of persistent smoke and some stubborn patches of mist. Beyond it the sea looked like a great pewter wilderness. He tried not to shiver.
“Lomond in sight, sir!”
A lookout who had dashed to the bridge to replace one of the wounded, added vehemently, “Took ‘er long enough!”
Wingate snapped, “That’ll do! What are you, a bloody expert?”