“Easy, Captain. Give yourself time.”
He looked at him. “Time?” He smiled, the effort painful. “I don’t think that the choice is mine.”
“Torpedo ready, sir.”
“Very well.”
Hillier called, “They’ve picked up Whiplash’s commanding officer, sir. ” He was hanging over the screen, his hair steaming from the great heat across the strip of littered water.
“Send help for him.”
Drummond gripped the rail until the pain steadied him. He will want to come up here. He knows.
The other captain was a reservist like Selkirk. A merchant sailor who had found a place in war.
He was half carried up the internal ladder by the S.B.A. and a seaman. He was soaked in oil-scum and sea water, and there was dark red blood over his legs, mingling with the fuel.
Drummond helped to ease him into the bridge chair.
“Hello, Charles.” He looked at the S.B.A. “See what you can do.”
Cromwell groaned and tried to sit upright, the pain returning to freeze him motionless.
He gasped, “Sorry about this, Keith. But we did it. We hit the buggers, eh?”
The S.B.A. insisted, “I’ll have to get him below, sir.”
Cromwell shook his head. “Too late. Done for.” He coughed and more blood ran over his chin. “Put her down, Keith. For God’s sake, don’t let her lie there like that!”
Drummond looked at Wingate. The lieutenant said thickly, “Picked up everyone we could get near, sir.”
“Yes. Slow astern together. ” He waited, sensing the pain all around him. “Port fifteen.”
Cromwell was saying wearily, “My number one bought it. Lot of others, too.”
“Stop together.” Drummond wiped his eyes again, watching the other ship falling away as Warlock thrashed clear. “Fire torpedo.”
He felt the slight shudder as the torpedo leapt from its tube and started to cut through the oily water like a snake.
“Hard a-starboard. Full ahead together.”
Cromwell said desperately, “Lift me up!” He was scrabbling at the rail, his hands leaving stains of oil and blood.
The explosion rocked the hull as Warlock gathered way, her wash churning aside some wreckage and a few bobbing corpses.
Cromwell opened his mouth as if to shout, a last word perhaps. But his head fell forward and he said nothing.
The S.B.A. beckoned to his stretcher party. “Dead.” “Course to steer is three-three-five. ” Wingate watched as the dead man was taken from the bridge.
Drummond felt for his pipe. Ahead, through the thinning smoke, he could just see Whirlpool, getting closer as his own ship reduced the lead she had just made. When he glanced astern the other one had sunk.
He felt very cold and sick. Two down. Five to go.
Sheridan had returned to the bridge. “We picked up fifty, sir.” He looked round as if expecting to see Cromwell. “I’ve put most of them in the wardroom. There’s no more space.”
“Now go down to the messdecks and see how the repairs are coming along.,”
Over the rear of the bridge screen he saw Sub-Lieutenant Tyson crouching beside the pom-pom platform. He was wearing a steel helmet, and seemed about to be sick.
He wondered vaguely how Keyes was managing, and Galbraith. All of them.
Wingate said, “Must have really caught them on the hop. We’re building up a bit of distance.” He did not sound very convinced.
The signalman called, “From Lomond, sir. Keep closed up on me.”
“Acknowledge.”
Wingate raised his eyebrows. “But we’re going all out now, sir. I’ve never known the old girl move like this.”
“I know. ” And Beaumont knows it, too. He’s just got to say something. To show his control. “But we’ll keep with Whirlpool as originally ordered.” He trained his glasses on the other destroyer’s racks of mines. “He will have to dump those anyway., There was a drawn-out whistle and then a violent explosion, the sea bursting upwards within half a cable of the port side. “What the hell?”
Drummond crunched over broken glass to peer abeam. But the smoke was still too thick to ee anything. One shell, medium size. Fired blind perhaps.
Perhaps Sheridan was nearer the truth than he knew. Enemy surface ships from Altenfjord or Narvik, or an incoming patrol, It might even be Beaumont’s Moltke. Up here amongst them to settle the vendetta once and for all.
He knew he was dangerously near to laughing. Or weeping. “Tell Guns. No shooting until I say the word. Make a general signal to the flotilla. ” He was straining his eyes, willing himself to see through the smoke. “Am being fired on from south west.”
He heard it coming again. Whooooosh-Bang! The waterspout was no nearer.
Lyngstad said quickly, “I think it must be a patrol from outside the minefield. Older destroyers for the most part.” “Like us.” Drummond winced as a third shell detonated astern of Whirlpool, deluging her quarterdeck in spray. “From Lomond, sir. Close on me. Whirlpool will discharge mines forthwith.”
Hillier asked, “What does it mean?”
Wingate was leaning painfully on his chart table. “Captain Beaumont intends to leave a small field of mines to delay pursuit.” His eyes were hard as he looked up. “Right, sir?” “Yes.”
Drummond saw the frantic activity on Whirlpool’s decks, the falling away of her wash as she reduced to a safer speed for laying the mines.
“Ship at Red one-five-oh! Range oh-six-two!” Drummond said sharply, “Open fire!”
He saw the V-shaped cleft in the drifting wall of smoke which had been made either by a freak down-draught or some new off-shore wind. Through it, almost end-on, was the other ship.
Chunky, low-lying, and firing again, even as he watched. “Shoot!”
The jumbled voices across the intercom were drowned by the two aftermost guns firing together.
Drummond shouted, “Make to Whirlpool. Get rid of those mines now!”
A shell rumbled over the bridge like an express train and burst far away in the smoke left by the fading screen.
“Port ten!” Drummond gritted his teeth. “Midships.” He had to give the two forward guns a chance to bear on the target. Whooooosh Bang!
Splinters clinked on the deck, and one struck the motor boat with the sound of an axe.
Wingate called, “The first mine has been dropped, sir!”
Whirlpool had altered course, exposing her full broadside as she steamed at right angles to Beaumont’s little column. Splash. Another mine dipped and then vanished in Whirlpool’s wake.
“From Lomond, sir. Repeat. Close on me.”
They were all looking at him.
He said, “Disregard that signal.”
A shell exploded between the two destroyers, and seconds later Drummond saw several dead fish float to the surface.
“Shoot!”
Somebody yelled. “A hit!”
A bright orange eye showed itself in the centre of the other vessel’s low outline and then disappeared.
The mines were dropping from the little rails more rapidly now. The seamen had obviously been trained very well.
Just a few left and then…
Wingate said, “It might cause a delay, I suppose.” He looked at Hillier and added wearily, “I know. I just said that.”
Then came the explosion. It must have been heard for many miles. The great red glow which fanned out and surrounded the Whirlpool had such intensity and span that it looked like a hill of glowing lava.
When it had finally subsided there was nothing of the other ship to be seen.
Drummond felt the bridge closing in on him, crushing the life out of his body, his mind.
He said slowly, “Make a signal to Lomond. ” He stared at the churning patch of water until his eyes streamed. The shell must have burst amongst the last few mines. She had disintegrated. As if she had never been.