J. E. MacDonnell - 096, page 7
That was 100 yards. Not much, perhaps, when the ship itself was only a little more than 100 yards long, and with the group at speed. But the sea was calm, and the admonition had come from a senior officer to an officer who until yesterday had been his own lord and master, and still was of his flotilla.
Bentley glared at luckless Torps, officer of the forenoon watch. His mouth was shaped in the formation of a snarl-and then he remembered that most senior officers indicated their seniority, and thus by implication their ceaseless watchfulness, like this at the start of a mission; he could also imagine the private, vinegary humour exercising that mind back there, and so instead of snarling his condemnation Bentley said in a merely curt tone: "Ease her back, Torps. Watch your station-keeping." `Aye aye, sir!"
To Ferris, Bentley said, "Acknowledge." He thought of adding some half-humorous excuse or explanation, but decided against it. The admonition had been half-humorous, and it was unwise to try and cap your captain's little joke.
Joke or not, the effect was there. During the rest of that patrol, even with her captain down below, Wind Rode was to be never more than a few permissible yards out of station.
On that first day at sea the officers of watches got plenty of practice.
Bentley was halfway through his delayed breakfast when the signal flew for squadron manoeuvres. He cursed, at the same time as he sourly conceded that the enemy would not wait for a more convenient time. He hurried up to the compass platform, and the drill commenced.
For most of the day it went on. As Nutty Ferris was later and tiredly to growl. "The old bastard's hoisted bloody near every bloody Fleet Signal Book."
This was not strictly accurate. Sainsbury did not have his ships strike their topmasts, nor did he order the starboard screws unshipped and lashed down on the quarterdecks. But he made one or two other signals.
He carried out "blue turn," and hoisted the flags "blue 9". This indicated that all ships would turn 90 degrees to starboard. No sooner was this done than up went "Nine blue." Round they came in a 90degree turn to port.
These manoeuvres were for ships in line-abreast desiring-or being desired-to turn line-ahead. Once Sainsbury got them in line-ahead he swung them back to line-abreast- "red turn."
Then he increased speed and before the signalled pace was achieved he suddenly dropped them back to half of it. This required the utmost in skill and concentration to prevent a collision. It did not require, but gave birth to, many private curses.
Then he ordered a destroyer to take station astern of him, and at the same time another to take station ten miles on his port beam. Then he signalled them back, but before they made it he had once again changed the squadron's formation, so that it took a bit of dicey work on the part of Benson and Cartwright to regain station without fouling-up the group.
Then they spread out to perform a box search for a pretended submarine and then they closed-in to carry out an attack on it. They raced in in line abreast to loose torpedoes at a Jap cruiser squadron, and raced past a shore in line-ahead firing bombardment broadsides. They spread out to avoid falling bombs and closed in to circle a crippled merchantman.
At first, Bentley enjoyed it. All his skill was required and he was constantly worried-but that was compensated for by the exhilaration of a manoeuvre precisely executed at high speed. And all the time he was helped in his acceptance of the potentially dangerous work because of his knowledge that Sainsbury must have been a long time without a destroyer flotilla, and needed the practice in handling one.
But round about eleven-thirty, after more than three hours of it, he became fed up with the gyrations and wished to hell they would cease. At last came noon, which was dinner time, and meant an hour's rest at least, and then came Tempest's signal.
"Squadron manoeuvres successfully completed. Evolutions will commence at 1230."
Someone on the bridge groaned. Randall snarled, "Pipe down!"; his tone indicating his own feelings.
"Send the hands to dinner, Number One," ordered Bentley. "Warn them they will be required for evolutions in half an hour's time."
"Make an evolution of it" is a term freely used in the Service, and can apply to jobs ranging from scrubbing out a mess to painting its side. Used thus, the term means smack it about, or get the lead out, or pull your finger out, or get off your great arse and get stuck into it - in short, hurry.
But Captain Sainsbury's meaning of evolutions was entirely different. The only similarity was in his requirement of speed. His evolutions concerned shipboard drill. As each ship completed its given task it hoisted a signal to the effect-and so it was a competition, with the whole group able to see who was last.
There was much bellowing.
They fought fires in the tiller flat aft and the cable locker forward.
They prepared their ships for towing and they prepared their ships for being towed. They each had a man overboard and they had to lower a lifeboat to get him back, and the boat had to be hoisted. They lost a screw and had to manoeuvre with the remaining one. They provided collision mats and sheer-legs and closed watertight doors and rigged sounding booms and spread awnings. And all this time, well ahead of the cursing, griping, sweating hundreds back there, Benson's ship cruised on a zig-zag course ahead of the squadron's line of advance - scouting, hunting, and excused.
Benson, and Bentley, too, wondered if his sinking of that submarine off Pusan Point was behind his present immunity from ordeal; Benson gratefully, and Bentley enviously.
Then came the order: "Quarterdeckmen to dance on the foc's'le."
Now as this was an old senior officer's joke, or meant to be, they knew their travail was at last over. Savagely, Bentley said to Ferris:
"Make to Tempest: `Unable to concur your last evolution. My quarterdeckmen not fitted out with tutus'."
For possibly the first time in his life the yeoman had to ask for the spelling of a word, but then he got the signal off. Promptly, back came the answer:
"You inability to carry out last evolution acknowledged. In lieu, come alongside my port side and exercise fuelling procedure."
Ferris had called out the message. Everyone heard. Bentley glared round his bridge.
"One word," he gritted, "just one word...!"
There was no word - not spoken. "Number One!"
"Sir!"
"Prepare to fuel ship starb'd side. Pilot! Pilot! thirty! Bring her round on that old... on Tempest's port quarter!"
"Aye aye, sir."
Wind Rode was round, running back to make her come-alongside turn, and Hooky Walker in his best, or worst, chief bosun's mate's voice was saying things about wires and fenders and such, when a light blinked from the cruiser's bridge.
"Belay my last order," it said. "Resume station in the screen."
Ferris called that out, too. They all looked at Bentley, and all their eyes pleaded, "Please, for God's sake, no more cracks."
Bentley's stomach quivered with his inward chuckling.
"All right," he growled at them, "all right. Acknowledge Yeoman."
Wind Rode turned away to head for her spearhead position in the van. Presently the group was back in its normal steaming formation, with Benson's Witch, fresh and unsweated, last ship in the left-hand leg of the V. The time was just on four o'clock. Unfresh, sweating, the tortured went below for afternoon tea.
"Where are we, Pilot?" Bentley asked.
After a moment the navigator came back from the chart table. He gave the latitude and longitude, then added more explicitly:
"One hundred and thirty miles north-west of Manus, sir."
"Well I'm damned," muttered Bentley, while Pilot nodded his own appreciation.
The mental arithmetic was not difficult. Although at times it had been higher, the mean speed had been 20 knots, so that while they were fighting imaginary fires and cruisers, their asdic could still hunt for real submarines. They had been at sea for eight hours. That would have placed them 160 miles north-west of Manus. Yet, taking into account all that day's mad mucking about, the cunning old devil back there had them no more than thirty miles, an hour's run if necessary, behind normal schedule.
"He had the mean line of advance in mind all the time," said Pilot admiringly.
"What did you expect?" asked Bentley, who had not expected it-he had been too long away from his old mentor, forgetting the comprehension and agility of the brain behind that maiden-aunt face. Then he remembered just who he was discussing with a junior officer, and in a tone more curt than normally he would have used, Bentley asked:
"Who has the watch?"
"Me, sir," answered Pilot. "I'm looking-out for Number One while he has his tea."
"Right. Sea-cabin."
"Sea-cabin. Aye aye, sir."
CHAPTER SIX
CRAVEN, again: partly because he had been put at the masthead for the last hour of daylight, the important time, but mainly because with his ship ahead of the others he could see further than they.
There was another reason, but right now Craven was not interested in psychological advantages, only facts, and the facts were three topmasts, looking as if they might be the same he had sighted before. At such long range he could not be sure of this, but there was no doubt about his surety that under those thin sticks sailed three destroyers.
He spoke to the bridge.
Randall had come up to take over the dog-watches and his call brought Bentley up. They both used glasses, but from their lower level the horizon ahead showed unmarried by sticks or anything else, and their gesture was automatic.
Yet Bentley was sure of Craven. He himself had ordered him up there. He glanced at the sun, a big orange ball lowering itself off the port bow. Not much more than an hour of sunlight left, but with those masts approaching they would need less than an hour. Even so, this time they had plenty of fuel, and the group had fought at night before.
Bentley crossed to the radiotelephone.
"Tempest this is Wind Rode. Captain to captain."
Waiting, he was thinking that all bridges would be listening-in- idly expecting some unimportant domestic matter to be discussed. Consciously, he had to stop himself from having Ferris signal his four destroyers; he was not in command now.
A brittle voice came from the instrument.
"Sainsbury. What is it, Bentley?"
As is the pupil, so must be the master. This one answered correctly:
"Bearing right ahead, sir, topmasts of three destroyers." With the vital information given, Bentley added to it: "I think they're coming towards, sir-only the masthead has them in sight. I also think they might be our friends of the other day, intending to take a look at Seeadler Harbour late tonight."
"Right." There was only a short pause before Sainsbury's voice came again, crisp and decisive. "Those additional heavy units will be in harbour by now. They must not be seen. Neither must Tempest, for the moment. Take one destroyer on an intercepting course, I shall head to the westward. As of now, unless in an emergency, wireless silence is to be maintained. Over and out."
Bentley replaced the hand mike. Ferris was waiting, pencil at the ready.
"Make to Witch: `Disengage and take station on me, two miles astern. Standby to close and engage'."
Ferris blinked his Aldis lamp astern, for Witch was back there off the cruiser's port beam. Tempest's yeoman read the signal. Automatically, believing that any disposition signal would be of interest to the group's senior officer, he repeated it to him.
"Very well," Sainsbury acknowledged.
Commander Blaskayne acknowledged something else. He and Sainsbury were standing clear on the forebridge, and he could speak safely.
"That young feller's got his head screwed on right," muttered Blaskayne, nodding his own head in appreciation. "The Japs will sight only one topmast at first, and they'll probably close it at full speed to engage. That'll bring `em nicely into the trap."
"Yes, Tom."
"Cunning. But then you trained him, didn't you?"
"Yes, Tom." The thin mouth twitched a fraction.
Sainsbury would not have taken talk like that-nor answered it like that-from an officer like, say, Cowdray. But right now other talk was required.
"Officer of the watch!"
"Sir?"
"Navigating officer on the bridge. Port thirty, go on to 33 knots."
"Port thirty, 33 knots, aye aye, sir. Bosun's mate!"
"Port fifteen Pilot," said Benson. "Take her outside of the screen then line-up astern of the Leader, distance two miles."
"Aye aye, sir." And, when Witch was on the turn, lugubriously: "Why does it always have to be us?"
"Because we're junior ship, fathead." Benson was smiling tightly; those cocky bastards wouldn't get away this time, and in this stoush he wouldn't be on his own. "Or maybe," he went on casually, deceiving no one let alone himself, "the Leader reckons we're the best ship to have along with him."
"Yes," Pilot answered, but shaking his gaunt head gloomily, "and maybe it's because we're the last ship in the line, closer to that two miles distance he wants."
"Oh, pack up laughing," Benson grinned, and abruptly his grin snapped off and he jerked: "Watch out! Hard-a-starb'd! Get it on, for Christ sake!"
Benson had trained his crew but Sainsbury had trained Benson too, which was just as well. Pilot shouted down the voice pipe and the quarter-master made the wheel spokes whirr.
Power-operated, huge for her size, the rudder went over until its steel face met the rushing water at an angle of thirty-five degrees, the maximum for turning efficiency.
Witch needed it all. Her sharp driving stem wiped past a staring bridge, then a thin-skinned belly, then a quarterdeck packed with depth charges, and then at last her stem was in clear water. Not calm water; the tossing white of her sister's wake. Her sister was heading westward, though there was little enough sisterly about the dark and angered face which still glared at Benson as he drew clear.
"Dalziel," Pilot whispered.
Benson grinned. "Thank God," he said, "for wireless silence..."
"Now," Pilot gloomed. "But wait till we get back to Manus."
"Oh, for Pete's sake! Come on, straighten her up. We're heading for the bloody Panama Canal."
Witch swung back until her nose sniffed along that other, safer wake. Benson had to bring her speed well down to gain his ordered distance, for instead of racing to engage the Japs and possibly frighten them off a second time, Wind Rode was idling along at her earlier 20 knots so that engagement would be delayed and Tempest could get into her position.
"Range to the Leader two miles," Pilot reported at last.
"Fine. Don't get any closer or he'll have our guts for garters."
On his bridge Bentley still could see nothing. He went to the voice pipe.
"I've got both yardarms now, sir," Craven told him. "They're destroyers all right, and coming towards."
"Very well."
It was well. If the Japs had sighted his own topmast, which was likely, then they believed he was alone and were still coming on. As he came up from the voice pipe Bentley looked to the westward, and was glad that he had to squint his eyes. If he hadn't known the rest of the group was over there it would have been hard to pick them out against the glare of that great orange ball. Sainsbury had known what he was doing, heading west instead of east. At Tempest's full speed she was already more than halfway to the horizon, seven or eight miles further away from the Japs than Wind Rode, and increasing her distance every minute. The earth curved in all directions; it was unlikely that the enemy would sight her.
Bentley hoped they wouldn't. Two against three was somewhat different to that earlier five against three, and to have been selected to come so close to a base like Manus those Jap skippers must be old hands, not youngsters like Benson. Perhaps he should have brought Dalziel along.
But that wasn't fair or practical, Bentley castigated himself. Young Tubby could handle his ship and fight all right, and Dalziel had to be left in command of Tempest's anti-submarine protection. So forget it and trust to...
"What'll we do," Randall broke into his thoughts, "when we sight `em? Fight like tigers, or make like a scared rabbit and run?"
"What would you do, Roberto?" smiled Bentley; his decision had been made, and he was glad of the chance to talk through the waiting period.
"Belt the bastards!".
"But that might turn them..."
"Before they belt hell out of us," Randall continued. His face was hard.
"Don't like the odds, eh? I think you've got the wind up."
"Sure 1 have." Randall's grin was a thin-lipped stretch. "Man's got a wife to think of now, y'know."
