J. E. MacDonnell - 096, page 10
"I'm sure he did," Bentley murmured. "What was his name?"
"Eh?"
"What was his name?"
Hooky frowned. "Didn't I mention that? It was Aunty-y'know, Captain Sainsbury. But I don't suppose he remembers that night, so far back."
"So I was right," Bentley said obliquely. "You're that part of the resident source."
"Come again, sir?"
"Just thinking aloud, Hooky. But don't worry-he remembers that night, all right."
Remembering how he had come to know Sainsbury remembered his night's instruction, Bentley's tone was falsely grim. To Hooky it sounded simply grim. He didn't know how or why, but he and his story seemed to be the cause of it.
"Look, sir..." he started, then stopped.
"Yes?"
"It's none of my business," Hooky blurted, "and tear me off a strip if you like-but have I said the wrong thing? I mean, is there anything wrong between you and him?"
"What!" Bentley swung to stare into the tough weathered face of the man he would trust with his life, and more than once had. "Wrong? Good Lord no, Hooky. What on earth made you ask a thing like that?"
"Well, sir, you sounded a bit cheesed-off, sorta."
"On the contrary, I'm feeling very much cheesed-on, if there is such an expression in a matelot's vocabulary."
Hooky wagged his head. "You've lost me, sir."
"But found a potent weapon, old shipmate. One I shall keep honed for future use, thanks to you. What was that park you mentioned? The one with the odd name?"
"Skeleton Park," Hooky said reluctantly. "Why was it called that?" "I forget, sir." "Chief bosun's mate..."
"You think you've got me over a barrel, don't you?" "That's right. Talk"
"It's not right, swinging rank like that." "Talk."
"I never thought you'd come at this." "What's this Skeleton Park where you guzzled a dozen bottles?"
"I'm under duress. I'll whack in a complaint." "You do that-to the captain. Now talk." Hooky Calked. Bentley smacked his thigh. Like Hooky's had been, his laugh deep, but full of triumph.
"A cemetery," he choked. "Oh, my God. A cemetery!"
"Where I'll end up if the old bastard finds out I ratted," Hooky muttered.
"What's that, Buffer?"
Hooky was saved by the light, for suddenly Ferris started to talk, and he talked loud and clear.
"Message from Tempest, sir. `You are maintaining previous station. My orders were to take station two miles ahead. Please advise when and if you intend concurring with those orders'."
"Christ!" jerked Bentley. Reactively he glared at the officer of the watch, but Torps returned him a puzzled and noncomprehending expression. It was no fault of his, Bentley realised at once. In his preoccupation at getting the drop on Sainsbury he had clean forgotten those extra two miles.
"Sorry, Torps," he apologised for the glare, then his tone rapped. "Our new station is two miles ahead of the old. Smack it about, for God's sake!"
"Yessir!"
Torps rang on more revs and ordered a radar range of Tempest. Ferris came in with a reminder:
"He said please advise, sir..."
"Tell him you were dreaming about Skeleton Park," said a low and malicious voice.
"Get off the bridge, damn you!"
"At the rush! Aye aye, sir!"
"Make to Tempest," Bentley said, and hesitated, and thought about a place called Skeleton Park, and wisely forgot about it. He looked round the bridge, seeing no gaint shadow on it, then he continued:
"`Captain's error. Am taking up ordered position with all despatch.' That's all."
"Yes, sir. The flotilla, sir?" said Ferris carefully.
"Hell, yes!" Damn and blast that bloody Skeleton Park! Already Wind Rode was on the leap, and the flotilla would be wondering what the blazes he was up to. "Make to all ships in the screen: `Disregard my movements. Am taking station two miles ahead of normal position.' That's all."
"Yes, sir. Which signal goes first?"
"To Tempest, blast your eyes, you ought to know that!"
"Yes, sir." What the hell had Hooky been talking about? the yeoman wondered.
"Wait!" The flotilla might be increasing speed to conform with his movements; certainly captains would have been sent for. Sainsbury could wait. His bridge would read the signal anyway.
"Sorry, Yeoman. Signal the screen first, then Tempest."
"Aye aye, sir."
Halted halfway down the ladder, Hooky Walker grinned so that the bottoms of his ears were forced upward. Apologising twice to his bridge team in less than two minutes-that'd learn the bugger not to put him through the bloody third degree again!
Meanwhile, back at the scene of mayhem, the normally cheerful captain of Witch had never felt less like grinning in his life. His lips were stretched, but in a grimace of distaste and paradoxical sympathy. The sickbay was full, of course, while the decks were crammed, and clearly to the bridge carried the screams and even the groans of horribly mutilated men.
Trouble was, they were men, regardless of nationality and their earlier intention to reduce Witch's crew to their own present state, and with only a surgeon and his sick-berth petty-officer Benson could do little to ease the suffering of the scores of Japs he had brought inboard. He'd actually stuffed his ears with the rubber plugs issued to dull the sound of gunfire, but those other sounds, not as loud yet more piercing, still got through. They lacerated his nerves, and it gave him small comfort to know from their expressions that his bridge team felt the same.
But at least the job was done. He'd searched as thoroughly as possible across the dark, stinking sea, not daring nor even intending to use ten-inch lamps as searchlights-the bright white beams could be seen for miles, and submarines might have been attracted to the area by those massive transmitted blasts. Now, thank God, he could get under way again for the group, and maybe in the preoccupation of finding it his mind might be partially blocked from creating images out of what his ears received Certainly the 30-knot wind of her movement would carry off the sounds from abaft the bridge.
"Pilot," he said, conscious of having to raise his voice-being cooler than the iron-deck above the engine-room, the foc's'le was crammed; it was also close to the bridge. "Estimated position of the squadron."
Waiting for this, Pilot gave it at once, as well as the course to get them there.
"Put her on that," Benson ordered. "Go on to thirty knots."
"Aye aye, sir. But there's a bit of a lop," Pilot advised, and this time his despondency of tone went unnoticed; it fitted the scene too well. "They'll get spray on the foc's'le."
"Thirty knots. Salt water won't hurt `em."
Though even to himself Benson's words sounded brutal, they were nonetheless true. Men in such pain as to cry like that would hardly notice spray, while its cooling effect might help them, and salt water held some antiseptic properties. Thinking about this, Benson managed to smother in his mind the real reason for the high speed-to transfer across to the bigger and better equipped cruiser at least most of his load of agony.
Witch started to run, shuddering with thrust as she picked up pace. The air pushed against Benson's sweating face, cooling it, rising to a swift tide equalling almost gale force as she reached the ordered speed. And, blessedly, the screams dwindled in volume.
Pilot checked that she was properly on course, then he came over to stand beside him.
"All the gun mountings are cluttered with `em," he said, "even the torpedo tubes. There'd be hell to pay if we had to go into action. We wouldn't stand a chance."
"Jesus Christ Almighty!" Benson exploded, "haven't I got enough on my plate without your bloody whining?"
Pilot winced as if he'd been struck, and Benson got hold of himself. It hadn't been the actual situation outlined by the words-if trouble hove in sight a signal to the squadron would bring swift help- but the fact that the cheerless things had been uttered, and at a moment when for the first time since his work had started he'd begun to feel a measure of relief from its hideousness.
Some of those dreadful sounds had eased, only to be replaced by Pilot's oppressive offering.
"Sorry, sir, shouldn't have said that. And I didn't mean to whine."
He spoke stiffly. He was also a damned good navigator, and at any other time his melancholy visage and tone were a matter for fun.
He could hardly be expected to change either under conditions like these. So for the third time that night a captainly apology was offered.
Benson's hand gripped Pilot's arm. "Sorry old feller!- shouldn't have said that. Please forget it. The old nerves aren't so calm and collected. Okay?"
"That's all right, sir. It is rather a depressing situation."
At that adjective from a man who traded in depression as a gag-writer in jokes, Benson very nearly laughed out loud. He might have-if he thought it wouldn't develop into an uncontrollable cackle.
Right at that moment, suddenly, he was glad he hadn't taken the risk, for he saw it clearly-the figure rising on the foc's'le, lurching to the guardrails, then with a high wild scream of agony at the effort, heaving itself over.
There were armed sentries on the foc'sle. One of them lifted his voice in an urgent shout to the bridge.
"Man overboard, port side!"
The normal and instant reaction to a cry like that was to stop both engines, swing the ship's stern away from the victim and call away the lifeboat's crew. Benson shouted back:
"Who was it? One of ours?"
"No, sir, one of them."
"Very well."
That was all, and all the bridge team knew it was right. If the poor devil was so desperate as to do a thing like that, then he was better off back there, his agony ended by the port screw. If by some miracle he missed that mercy, then without being able to use searchlights they hadn't a hope in hell of finding him.
"You'd better log that, Pilot," Benson said in a husky tone, and that was the unknown sailor's epitaph.
Witch ran on fast to the north-west, blessedly clear water all the way, angling to intercept the squadron's line of advance, asdic home housed but search radar operating. On his way to the foc's'le after further bodies for his operating, the surgeon-lieutenant diverted from his objective a moment to tell the captain that ten survivors had died of wounds, and to ask what would be done about them.
Benson noted the weariness in his voice, but without any surge of compassion. No one on board was feeling sprightly, and it was seldom the surgeon was loaded with work like this.
"Where are they?"
"In the sickbay, sir. I need the space."
"Right, Doc, it's organised." The surgeon turned away and Benson spoke to Pilot, who happened to be officer of the watch. "Chief bosun's mate and ten men. Tell him to make sure they're all staid hands."
"Yes, sir. Over the side?"
"Over the side, and quick about it."
It was done, as the term has it, with all despatch. And it was done again, this time with six bodies, before radar reported it had made contact with a group of ships fine on the starboard bow. That was the expected bearing of the squadron, but Benson reacted cautiously-anything could have happened while he was away, like the hunting group being hunted by another group.
"Speed and course?" he asked the radar plot.
"We're getting it now, sir." A moment, while the bridge crew waited silent, barely hearing the sounds from forward: then: "Course 310, speed 20 knots."
That was near enough to north-west, which was 315, and the speed seemed to check-fast enough for asdic operation and to make a torpedo shot difficult, slow enough to allow Witch to catch up. Yet the first two values could apply just as validly to an enemy group. There was also the consideration that at her fast closing speed, Witch would shortly be in radar range of those other sets. There was no consideration at all about her breaking wireless silence; no matter who that was out there, she must remain totally mute.
"Come down to 20 knots," Benson ordered, and when this precaution was completed he spoke again to the radar plot. "Can you tell how many ships?"
"Not definitely, sir. We have three contacts, but if it's the squadron then both destroyers in the starb'd screen could be masked by Tempest."
"You're sure of that?"
"On this angle of approach, quite sure, sir."
"That's you, Tyler?"
"Yes, sir."
Unlike Dutchy Holland's big brute of a Jackal, Witch did not rate a specialist radar officer, but in Tyler Benson knew he had an experienced and reliable petty-officer operator. Coming up from the south at this angle to the squadron's line of advance, the two destroyers on the far side would be hidden behind Tempest's bulk and 550-ft. length. He had to trust Tyler's judgement; otherwise why carry him? And there was no doubt that that group of ships was almost precisely in the position where Pilot had estimated the squadron to be. Benson could sense the bridge team's impatience. He began to feel a bit foolish about all these precautions.
"Very well, Tyler. Report at once any change in speed or course of the contacts."
Now that was a damn fool thing to say to his senior radar operator, especially under present conditions. Ease up on the revs, boy, Benson warn himself; you've got a nasty load on board but that's no reason for letting the old nerves go.
"Aye aye, sir," Tyler answered, dutifully neutral; in fact, a bit too much that way. It was the recognition of this, though a minor thing in itself, that had Benson saying with crisp decisiveness:
"Go on to 33 knots. Bring her up off the port quarter of Tempest. She'll be the right-hand contact on the scan."
Suddenly there was movement on the bridge. The easing of tension was almost palpable. Pilot busied himself between the compass and the bridge's repeat radar scope showing the sausage-shaped blips of contact, along with their bearing and range, and Benson thumped down on his stool in the corner. Now that caution was done with and the decision made, he felt bone weary. The afternoon had been violent enough, not to mention he and Bentley being used as bait for a superior force, and his recent task had put an ugly cap on the night's events. He tried to shut his ears to the foc's'le sounds, now reduced mainly to moaning, and wondered instead if Bentley or Dalziel, or even Sainsbury, felt as tired as he did. Probably not, his experiences of those three told him, even though Sainsbury had done practically all of the fighting. What his experience did not tell him, or perhaps what he would not allow it to, was that his greater degree of weariness was due to his being younger than they. Youth has vigour and vitality; seasoned age has resilience and staying power.
Suddenly Benson felt less tired, for a voice spoke beside him, and incredibly it said:
"Everything's apples, sir. We're well within their radar range but their course and speed remain steady. It's the squadron all right, and soon we'll be under big brother's wing."
"Well, I'll be buggered," Benson muttered, but to himself. He was so pleased, and even more surprised, at what was relatively a ringing peal of cheerfulness that he played along with it, but maliciously on the opposing side.
"I still wouldn't be too sure about that, Pilot."
"Eh? But they can't be Japs. We'd have been blown out of the water by now!"
"Agreed. If, that is, they think we're enemy."
"If they're Japs, what the hell else can they think? Oh, come on!"
"Now hold your horses, old feller. Cast your mind back a few months. You must have read the story. Some fighter base in southern England. The weather was bad, the landing field almost socked-in solid.
Back home came the Spits and Hurricanes, glad to make it. Too bloody glad, in fact, too concentrated on just getting down in one piece-because right behind `em, tailing along unnoticed, or accepted as one of their own even if he was noticed, came a Messerschmitt. The weather was bad, remember, but not so bad that the Messerschmitt couldn't have a wild old field day shooting up those aircraft so nicely parked after they'd landed. I'm not sure, but I think he got something like six British fighters before the outhouse fell and they took off after him. By that time he was a speck dwindling fast into the murk over the channel.
