To Risks Unknown Read online

  Then they were inside their own screen, the sunlight blotted out, the bridge filled with smoke, making it difficult to breathe without coughing.

  Crespin stayed on the fore gratings, his eyes pressed against one of the last remaining pieces of glass as he tried to see beyond the bows. But visibility ended within feet of the hawsepipes, and Shannon’s four-inch gun appeared to be floating on the smoke, completely detached from the deck below.

  He shouted, ‘Be ready to shoot! Don’t wait for any orders from me!’

  It would be very close this time. But Shannon seemed to be in complete control of his wits, for he saw him turn and grin up at him.

  The smoke was already thinning, so that small patches of blue sea stood out on either beam, the sunlight confined and mocking as the ship hurried past.

  Porteous was the first to see the enemy. He was standing with his bulky figure jammed against the port wing of the bridge where the torn steel curved inboard, the blackened edges twisted into fantastic shapes, like wet cardboard.

  ‘Enemy at red four-five, sir!’

  Crespin raised his glasses and then let them drop against his chest. There was no need for them this time. As the ship pushed steadily into the bright sunlight and the smoke thinned and peeled away like a mist, he saw the Nashorn less than two thousand yards away. She was directly across the port bow, steaming slowly towards the smoke, as if reluctant to take that last plunge into it. She was on a diverging course, so that her whole ugly length was quite clear in the glare, the dull grey paint reflecting on the water like a slab of rock. Abaft her armoured bridge the scarlet ensign with its large black swastika made a bright patch of colour, while the hull itself was still patched and daubed with red lead, evidence of the haste with which her captain had quit the dockyard.

  The four-inch fired immediately, and Crespin saw the shell burst right alongside, throwing a thin plume of spray and smoke right over the enemy’s bridge.

  Shannon was yelling, ‘Come on, man! Reload!’ A pause, then, ‘Shoot!’

  The second shell slammed into the Nashorn’s side, making a bright orange star and another small cloud of drifting smoke.

  But the ponderous ship steamed on, while from its massive shield forward of the bridge the big gun was already training round towards the corvette with something like tired irritation.

  The four-inch lurched back on its mounting, and Crespin felt the sharp detonation scraping the inside of his skull like a hot needle. But it was no use. He watched the shell burst behind the enemy’s bridge, the fragments of steel and wood lifting in the air like so much blown paper, but it was making no real impression at all.

  Then the Nashorn fired, and the shell seemed to explode almost before he heard the shot.

  She was turning very slowly, her false bow wave giving an impression of tremendous effort, and possibly for that reason alone the shell missed the Thistle’s forecastle by a matter of feet.

  Crespin felt the ship reel drunkenly and saw the sea surging over the port side in a creamy flood while the air came alive with screaming splinters. It seemed as if they would never stop, and he could hear the white-hot metal tearing into the hull, crashing through frail plating and ripping crazily into the empty forecastle where countless men had once lived, dreamed and hoped.

  ‘Port ten!’ He was conscious of the lightness in his limbs. There was no pain from the diagonal scar across his chest, and beneath his bandages he could not even feel his whole ribs, let alone the fractured one. It was like being under drugs, or mesmerized by some madman and forced to watch one’s own murder.

  The enemy was turning, too, so that both vessels were approaching each other on invisible parallel rails.

  God, Kapitan Lemke was that confident! He cared so little for the Thistle’s puny armament he was not even bothering to haul off and use his other big gun. He must be up there now behind those tiny slits in his armoured bridge, biding his time, knowing that whichever way his enemy turned or acted, he was finished. Once abeam he would use the secondary armament, but if one of his big shells hit the Thistle squarely before that moment he could just keep going, ramming her perhaps, and then brushing her aside with no more thought than a man who crushes a gnat.

  What was he feeling? Crespin wondered. Elation or contempt? Admiration for an enemy, outgunned and overwhelmed by his own ship, or just the cold satisfaction of seeing them die? Remembering perhaps all those years of brooding over that other defeat and wiping away the bitterness in the Thistle’s death agony?

  He shook himself out of his fixed concentration and shouted, ‘Tell the secondary armament to open fire.’

  The port Oerlikons and then the pom-pom responded at once, but like the four-inch gun on the forecastle they seemed ineffectual and totally useless against the other ship’s massive armour. The tracers were ripping and ricocheting in every direction, the gunners yelling and sobbing as they fired magazine after magazine, until the muzzles were glowing with heat, the decks littered with expended shells and cartridge cases.

  The Nashorn’s next shell burst in the air almost level with the bridge. It was probably old, like the gun which had fired it, or maybe in their haste the German gunners had mismanaged the fuse, otherwise it would have blown most of the structure into scrap.

  But it was bad enough, almost too much for the ship to take. Crespin had been bending over the wheelhouse voice-pipe and felt the blast searing over his shoulders like flames from an open furnace. Splinters were smashing into the side of the bridge, and he saw a man’s arm whirling above the screen along the sheared-off barrel of an Oerlikon. Smoke and fumes were everywhere, and all around he could hear men crying out, screaming and calling to each other, their voices mingling into one confused chorus.

  He saw Wemyss struggling to his feet and ran quickly to the rear of the bridge. It was a miracle that anyone could live through this. But as he peered down through the smoke he saw seamen with axes and extinguishers climbing over the littered deck, and Lennox’s blood-spattered white coat bobbing amongst them like a ghost.

  There was an Oerlikon gunner just below the bridge, strapped to his weapon but fighting it with his hands and feet, his words rising to a scream as Lennox scrambled up beside him.

  ‘Help me! I’m blind! Oh, Jesus bloody Christ, I’m blind!’

  It’s no use. We’re finished. Crespin did not know if it was a thought or if he had spoken aloud. One Oerlikon was still firing steadily from aft, the bright tracer fading in the smoke above the sea which still shone so placidly in the cruel sunlight.

  The four-inch, which had fallen silent after the explosion, reopened fire, but the intervals between shots seemed longer and disjointed. Not that it mattered now, he thought wearily. The enemy would soon engage with her automatic weapons and drive the rest of the Thistle’s men back and down into the shattered hull before ending her hopeless fight, finally and without mercy.

  As he stared over the rim of the bridge he saw her outline looming through the smoke, made larger and more formidable because of it. A solitary machine-gun had already started to fire from somewhere below her boat deck, and he heard the heavy calibre bullets smacking into steel and whimpering viciously through the swirling smoke above his head.

  Forward of the bridge Shannon twisted on his steel seat and stared wild-eyed at the crumpled figures around the gun.

  ‘Kidd! Clear the breech!’ But the gun captain was lying back over the side of the rail, his mouth open, his face screwed into shocked agony and frozen there in a death-mask. Robbins, the trayworker, was on his knees, one gloved hand still reaching up for the breech, the other pressed to his stomach. He, too, was dead.

  Shannon screamed, ‘Reload! Jump to it, you bastards!’ With crazed desperation he threw himself round the gun and dragged open the breech. The empty cartridge case clanged past him, sending the dead Robbins sprawling, but he hardly noticed as he lifted another shell from the rack and thrust it into the smoking breech.

  Muttering and cursing to himself Shannon ran to
the trainer’s position and pulled the huddled man bodily from his stool. When he pressed his eye against the sight he felt blood sticking to his forehead, and saw a bright scar on the steel where a flying splinter had cut the trainer down.

  Breathing fast he adjusted the sight and then scurried back around the gun to his own seat. He had to blink several times to clear his vision and his head felt as if it was bursting.

  More than anything else he was filled with an overwhelming anger. This was the moment he had waited for, but just when he needed everything to run like clockwork he had been left to manage on his own. The drills and the reprimands, the persistent instruction of men who seemed incapable of following his quick mind, were all in vain.

  He looked round at the silent shapes and yelled, ‘Useless! You’re all bloody useless!’

  The communications rating was still sitting in his little steel compartment beside the ammunition hatch, his earphones knocked askew across his head and one eye hanging from its socket.

  Shannon saw all and none of these things. He pressed his head to the rubber pad again and watched as the Nashorn’s hull misted over in the sight, hardened and then settled firmly on the crosswires. He would make it at last. Hang on to this moment which he could now share with no one. It was, after all, the only shell within reach. Perhaps the very last one in the ship.

  The range was down to a thousand yards, maybe less. In the confusion of shell-fire and smoke it was impossible to judge any more.

  As one more water-spout shot above the starboard side Crespin looked at Wemyss and asked, ‘How long?’

  Wemyss knew what he meant. The expression on Crespin’s face was enough.

  ‘It’ll be half an hour yet before Coutts and the others can reach safety, sir.’

  Crespin said bitterly, ‘Then we’re dying for nothing, after all!’

  Wemyss dragged himself across the bridge, his face grey with effort and shock.

  ‘We tried, sir!’ He shivered as another explosion cracked against the hull. ‘God, we tried!’

  Crespin turned away, almost afraid to look as Porteous shouted, ‘Sir! On the port beam!’ He was cracking with disbelief. ‘It’s a boat!’

  Crespin wiped his face with his sleeve and tried to understand what he saw. At first he thought Porteous’s new strength had at last failed, or that he himself was finally breaking under the strain.

  The little motor boat was coming steadily out of the smoke, her small bow wave cutting a neat arrowhead as she turned slightly and headed towards the Nashorn.

  Every gun fell silent, and as the two ships continued towards each other Crespin saw tiny figures appearing on the Nashorn’s upper deck for the first time. They were running towards the foredeck, and as he watched a machine-gun began to stammer from one wing of the upper bridge.

  He could see bullets splashing around the motor boat, but whatever damage they were doing seemed to make no difference either to her speed or direction.

  Wemyss said thickly, ‘God, it’s bloody Scarlett! He must be raving mad!’

  Crespin lifted his glasses. It was Scarlett. In the lenses of the powerful glasses he could see him crouched beside the tiller, his oak-leaved cap pulled hard down over his eyes as he stared fixedly across the small cockpit. Perhaps in his crazed mind he had not realized that the Thistle had turned to re-engage the Nashorn. He might have cast off the motor boat and steered astern in order to catch up with Coutts and the others, only to find as he broke through the wall of smoke that he was heading straight for the enemy. Or it could be one more wild gesture, one last effort to prove himself. But whatever his earlier intention might have been, there was no mistaking his present one.

  As more bullets spattered around the boat Scarlett half-rose to his feet, and Crespin realized he was firing his revolver directly at the enemy’s bows. Scarlett’s mouth was tight with concentration, and he did not even duck as pieces of the gunwale were splintered in another burst of machine-gun fire.

  Porteous yelled, ‘Look! There are more men coming on deck!’

  Crespin saw the German seamen for just a few seconds before they vanished below the big gun mounting. It was useless to shoot at them. They were on the opposite side of the ship by now, no doubt marksmen sent by Kapitan Lemke to finish off the motor boat before it got any nearer.

  Wemyss muttered, ‘He’ll never make it!’

  Crespin held his breath as Scarlett reeled back over the gunwale, one hand clutching his shoulder. He could see the blood spreading down his side, the useless way his arm and the empty revolver hung straight down by the tiller. More bullets smashed into the small hull, but Scarlett was dragging himself across the cockpit, his mouth opening wide as he yelled something at the Nashorn which was now within thirty yards of him.

  Surely the Germans must have realized this was something other than the madness of one man? The Nashorn’s bow wave increased slightly, and she began to turn slowly and heavily to starboard.

  Crespin lowered his glasses. Scarlett was bleeding from several wounds and his agony was terrible to watch. The motor boat was losing way, the engine silenced at last by the machine-gun.

  Wemyss said quietly, ‘He’s down, sir. I think he’s bought it.’ He, too, lowered his glasses. ‘The poor, crazy bastard!’

  Porteous was saying, ‘They couldn’t even leave him like that, could they?’ The words were torn from his lips.

  Crespin’s reeling mind seemed to fasten on his words like a blind man feeling something old and once familiar. He raised his glasses, his brain registering what Porteous meant and remembering what Soskic had once told him about the Nashorn ramming defenceless boats. Just for the hell of it. He could feel the cold realization running through him like ice and he had to force himself to move and act.

  ‘Stand by on the four-inch!’

  He seized Porteous’s arm and shook it, pulling him from his sickened concentration on the bobbing motor boat with its bloodied helmsman as it waited to meet the Nashorn’s towering bows.

  ‘He’s going to ram the boat!’ He shook him savagely. ‘Don’t you see, that was Lemke’s weakness!’ He ran back to the screen and yelled, ‘One shell on her poop!’ He saw Shannon staring at him. ‘The Nashorn was afraid to turn and use her other gun!’

  Why was it taking so long to make them understand? Lemke’s one real weakness was his cruelty. It was blinding him to the danger of those depth-charges and to the real menace of those mines he always carried. The mines on their little poop railway which Crespin and Coutts had once seen and sketched as the ship had steamed contemptuously past Gradz every day on the same punctual hour.

  Perhaps even now Lemke had realized his one and only error. Smoke gushed from the twin funnels, while from beneath the counter the screws threw up a great welter of foam as the engines went to full astern.

  The motor boat had disappeared, hidden by the great wedge of the swinging bows, but its pitiful progress could be judged by the moving heads of the German seamen on the fore deck, the sudden panic as they at last understood the truth of their small conquest.

  The actual explosion was quite dull and muffled, but the shockwave rumbled against the Thistle’s bilges, keeping time with the great pinnacle of water which rose high above the Nashorn’s bridge before falling back slowly alongside.

  Crespin felt his eyes watering with strain and concentration. ‘Half ahead!’ He must not close the range now. The enemy was still turning, her upper deck wreathed in smoke and darting flames. Across the narrowing strip of water he could hear a strange grating sound, and guessed that one of the coal bunkers had fractured, and with the ship turning at the moment of the explosion it was ripping the inner plates away like paper.

  While the Nashorn continued to turn the big after-gun swung slowly on its mounting, the long barrel shining in the sunlight as it reached out towards the small ship which still managed to stay afloat.

  Wemyss said between his teeth, ‘It’s a race!’ He cursed as a line of tracer darted from the enemy’s bridge and
ripped along the Thistle’s upper deck. He banged the plating with his fist, murmuring fiercely, ‘Come on, old girl! Come on!’

  Crespin watched the gun. It was trained as far round as it would bear, and as soon as the ship completed her turn it would fire. From a corner of his eye he saw some black specks drifting near the German’s hull and guessed they were fragments of Scarlett’s boat. He had probably died long before the boat had reached the enemy’s side. That was a pity, for this was something Scarlett would have undoubtedly enjoyed, he thought bitterly.

  Shannon let out a sudden yell. ‘Got it!’

  Crespin shifted the glasses, seeing the big gun muzzle pointing almost directly towards him. He was just in time to see the lip of the enemy’s small railway appearing beyond the poop ladder before Shannon squeezed the trigger.

  The German fired a split second later, the shell exploding some fifty feet from the Thistle’s port bow. Maybe the Nashorn’s gunnery officer had been concentrating so hard that Shannon’s sudden challenge had made him react too soon.

  Crespin heard the splinters clashing against the hull plates, but was too stricken even to take cover. He saw Shannon’s last shell explode with little more than a puff of smoke and a few pieces of whirling wreckage from the poop. Then, as he turned to face Wemyss to acknowledge that he had failed, the world seemed to come apart in one prolonged and ear-splitting explosion.

  Smoke tinged with orange fires, spray and fragments had completely hidden the other ship from view. And as dazed men poured from bridge and guns alike, Crespin saw a miniature tidal wave sweeping towards his ship, lifting her almost carelessly before cruising away towards the nearest island.

  Like something from a nightmare the Nashorn moved slowly out of the smoke. In actual fact she was quite stationary now and only the smoke was moving. But for those few minutes it seemed as if she was still as unbreakable and terrible as ever. Until the smoke at last cleared her bridge and revealed that there was no more of her to see.