Send a Gunboat (1960) (22 page)

Rolfe watched as if turned to stone. Too late he had realized the Communists’ clever ruse. He had watched their invasion fleet enter the harbour unmolested, protected by the guns of their enemies!

There was a sharp clank, followed by a splash. “All gone aft!” Herridge called faintly, his voice hardly carrying above the awful din.

He braced his legs and stood with his arms wrapped around the binnacle and voice pipes.

“Slow astern port, slow ahead starboard! Hard a-port!” His words rang hollowly in the brass pipe.

The jetty was wreathed in blue smoke now and blotted out by the running soldiers. More and more boats bumped alongside, spewing out their deadly cargo. An anonymous brown sea swept down the wall, pitted with a thousand stabbing lights as their guns swept the General’s soldiers away like corn before a scythe.

Slowly the gunboat began to pivot round, the painted Union Jacks shining on her grey sides and reflecting the countless orange flashes.

“Half ahead together! Midships!” He didn’t listen for the helmsman’s voice repeating his orders, he watched the blunt bows of the gunboat with solid concentration, trying to close his ears to all else.

Fallow gasped loudly at his elbow. “Fer God’s sake, look at ’em!”

The gunboat steadied and gathered speed, a mounting froth rising at her square stern.

Two seamen stared aghast from the quarterdeck, their eyes wide with horror.

“Get those men off the upper deck!” Fallow suddenly bellowed like a wild bull, his fear forgotten. “Keep yer ’eads down, fer Christ’s sake!”

The noise was indescribable and sapped the sanity from their bodies, and the air was filled with a chorus of high-pitched whistling, and the nerve-jarring blare of the bugle.

Alone on the end of the jetty, marooned by the human sea, Colonel Kyung fell from his car and stood uncertainly on the
edge above the water. An unheard shot brought him scrabbling to his knees and he screamed again as a bayonet pierced his chest.

The General seemed to have recovered from the initial shock, and a withering fire was being returned from the cliffs, cutting through the packed infantry with terrible results.

Rolfe tore his eyes away, as two fishing boats swung clumsily towards the
Wagtail,
their decks filling with soldiers, even as he watched. The bayonets glittered and without warning, a spray of bullets pattered and rang along the bridge plating below Rolfe’s feet. He felt naked and defenceless on his open platform, but he gritted his teeth, the sweat cold on his back.

“Can we return fire?” Fallow dropped heavily on one knee. “Can we, sir?”

Rolfe watched the narrowing gap between the vessels. “No!” he spat. “But keep down, all of you!” He lowered his lips to the voice pipe, “Make a signal!” he shouted hoarsely, “to Admiralty! Operation commenced at . . .” He ducked involuntarily as something whined hotly past his cheek. “Give the time. And say that Communist invasion has started! Got that?” A frightened voice quivered up the pipe. “Good! I’ll give you another signal when I can! Now hurry up and send that Plain Language!”

Blast the signalman! Let’s hope he doesn’t lose his head!

He saw the nearest boat cant over as the soldiers swarmed to one side. Their intention was obvious.

He spoke slowly and carefully, imagining Louch in the engine-room, his ear cupped to the pipe, and wondering what the hell was breaking above his head. “Chief, give me all you’ve got! Emergency!”

Vincent, hanging to the rail, heard the order “Full Ahead”, and felt the little ship dig her stem deep into the threshing water. Everything in the bridge was vibrating and rocking as the revolutions mounted, and the spidery engine-room dials crept towards and past the red line of danger.

The first fishing boat saw the danger too late and swung hastily away from the creaming steel bows.

With a jarring crash the gunboat’s stem struck the wooden hull, and for a moment the two ships hung together, the grey
steel of the gunboat rising up on to the slanting deck, as if to gnaw at the feet of the toppling soldiers. Then the
Wagtail
broke past, scattering timber and decking over her own hull in a deluge of wreckage.

Rolfe watched from his jolting platform, suddenly calm and resigned, handling the gunboat like a battering ram, and swinging her round with all the speed the ancient boilers could manage, to keep the sinking boat between him and the other one, the deck of which still rippled with automatic fire.

A seaman at his side cried out sharply and fell on his back, blood already soaking through his jacket, while from below he heard the ring of steel as the bullets rattled harmlessly off the tough plating.

The smoke suddenly thinned, and as the rocks slid past unnoticed, Rolfe scrambled down to the wheelhouse, his eyes still on the distant shapes of the two waiting landing craft.

The bridge was dark and smelling of smoke and sweat as he groped through the steel shutters.

“Hoist battle ensigns!” he snapped. “If we’re going to fight, I don’t want any mistakes!”

The sea was dark now, the small waves pitted with shadows as the bottom edge of the sun dipped into the horizon. The
Wagtail
, her scraped bows lifting in a surge of unsuspected power, steamed out of the smoke from the harbour, her funnel streaming out an oily trail behind her.

As she tacked around the last reef, two enormous White Ensigns broke at her stumpy masts and waved defiantly over her pitching deck.

The two dark shapes ahead of her, their outlines uncertain in the red path of the sunk belched fire in unison and almost immediately Rolfe heard the abbreviated whistle and saw two columns of water rise like ghosts on either side of him. He clamped his jaw on the unlit pipe. A straddle with the first shot, he breathed. But they had fired first, that was important to everyone else but the seamen of the
Wagtail
.

Chase gulped excitedly as the gong rang at his side. “Open Fire!” he bawled, and the long six-pounder roared out in answer, the slim barrel jerking back to spew out the empty cylinder on the metal deck. The gunners sweated and chanted
quietly as they went through their drill. The breech clanged shut, and as the cross wires of the gunlayer’s sight hovered across the squat bridge of the nearest ship, another flash showed their tense faces in stark clarity.

The Oerlikon joined the battle with its high-pitched rattle, and a stream of tracer shells bounced and clawed their way across the shortening range.

The gunboat shuddered and a sharp, metallic bang rocked the bridge. Vincent fell to his knees, his ears ringing with the explosion. He saw Rolfe’s mouth moving, but he could hear only the thud of his own heart.

He tried to rise to his feet, but the pent-up fear burst over him like flood water breaking through a dam, and he crouched on the rocking deck, his fingers crooked over the grating on which the helmsman still stood, his feet braced, and his head bent watchfully over the compass. He knew that the gunboat had been hit, but he had no past experience to tell him how bad was the damage. He only knew that if he dared to lift his frightened eyes, he would see the angry tongues of red flame licking hungrily under the wireless room door, and filling the wheelhouse with an unearthly glow. Above all else, came the repeated crash of the six-pounder over his head, and as the gun recoiled on its mounting, it sent a savage tremor straight down the framework of the bridge, as if trying to tear the whole structure from the ship. His eyes smarted painfully from the smoke and the stench of cordite and burning paintwork, and as if in a dream, he saw Herridge drive a long axe through the wireless room door, each blow widening the gap, a window into an inferno. Two Chinese seamen, staggering under the weight of a giant foam extinguisher, brushed against his arched body without a glance, their almond eyes fixed on their objective. As the foam gushed into the shattered door, the stench grew worse, and the helmsman doubled over the wheel, his face contorted with a fit of coughing.

Herridge stood back from the door, tearing off his jacket and mopping the sweat from his naked chest. He felt he could hardly breathe in the air, yet in the steel box of the shuttered wheelhouse, there was little enough for anyone, and he bit his lip, biting back the coughing, which he knew would reduce him to a useless piece of obstruction for the others. He saw Rolfe turning
back to the business of handling his ship and was thankful for his trust. The Captain’s eyes were slitted against the smoke, but were still calm and unemotional.

The seamen stood back, waiting for orders, and heedless of Vincent’s low moan and the sudden renewed firing, Herridge pushed back the blackened door and surveyed the damage.

A shell had struck the side of the superstructure and burst against the interior bulkhead, filling the small steel room with a deluge of white-hot splinters, and setting fire to wood and paintwork in one searing flash.

Herridge slipped and skidded across the foam-slimed deck as a sudden alteration of rudder made the ship heel over, and groped his way to the pile of shattered metal boxes and tubing which represented the remains of the radio equipment. He licked his lips, which were quite dry and cracked, as his eye fell on the bundle of shredded rags and flesh, half of which was crushed beneath the toppled, transmitter, and the rest splotched and smeared across the buckled plating. Poor Little, he thought, smashed down at his post without even a second’s warning. He turned his eyes to the gaping hole in the side of the cabin, its blackened edges bent inwards like wet cardboard. Fresh air breathed in at him and through the gap he saw the distant flashes of gunfire. He breathed deeply, conscious of the hideous mess behind him, which had once been the spruce little Cockney telegraphist. You bastards! he choked inwardly. I hope you get something for this!

He shut off his mind like a trap and began a careful examination to ensure that there was no more likelihood of fire, or other outside damage.

He leaned on the door supports, the metal still warm under his palms. Rolfe had opened one of the shutters and was watching the dark sea through his glasses. Without turning, he said, “Much damage, Chief?”

“Radio’s knocked out, sir! Little’s dead!”

Rolfe lowered his glasses momentarily, his face suddenly tired. “Too bad!” Then, as if the matter was dropped, he barked, “Port twenty!” The wheel creaked round and Rolfe watched the bows begin to swing. “Come on, old girl,” he whispered softly, “don’t let them catch you now!”

As if in answer to his words, they heard Chase yell excitedly from the upper bridge. “A hit! A hit! Take that, you bloody sods!”

Herridge craned over the Captain’s shoulder and saw the bright orange glow flickering across the still water. It was blotted out almost immediately by what he took to be the smoke of gunfire, but he heard Rolfe’s grunt of satisfaction, “Smoke screen again! They’re pulling away!”

A ragged cheer echoed along the darkened decks, and another as the Oerlikon sent a parting stream of shells screaming into the smoke, the tracers following the burning ship like a host of hornets.

Herridge smiled grimly. Good old lady! The Captain felt the same way about her, too, he knew that now.

The cease fire gong rang tinnily, and the ship steadied on a straight course, the telegraph in the engine-room signalling a reduction of speed.

Louch eyed the dials and sighed deeply. “Not a moment too soon!” he muttered. A Chinese stoker grinned vacantly from behind the gleaming rods, as they thrust strongly in their steam-filled beds.

“Pretty big speed?” he shouted.

Louch grinned back, in spite of his tingling nerves. “I’ll pretty big you in a minute, you yellow heathen!”

He leaned back against the hot grating, feeling for his cigarettes. The
Wagtail
could still do it, he reflected. He’d have something to wipe the supercilious grins off his mates in the Fleet Canteen when he got back to the base. Them an’ their bloody great frigates! He ran his tongue along the edge of the cigarette paper. Them new ships were built of plating as thin as paper. A bout of this sort of caper would have ’em in the dockyard for a year! He cursed as the voice pipe shrilled in his ear.

“Captain here! Well done, Chief! The landing craft have run for it!”

Louch snapped down the cover and pulled out his matches. So that’s what we were fighting. From the din I thought we were mixin’ it with the whole Chinese navy!

Rolfe watched the steel shutters being lowered and sucked in the clean salt air. It had been short and sharp, but they had
come out on top. He smiled bleakly. If the two Communists had known their stuff, they could have made things much worse by keeping well apart, and dividing the
Wagtail
’s scanty armament between them. With their powerful guns and low-lying hulls, they would soon have made a dangerous impression.

During the action they had moved to the north of Santu, and as he swivelled his glasses over the ebony sea he saw the distorted flash of distant weapons glowing eerily through an invisible smoke barrier. A lump rose in his throat, and he had difficulty in preventing his eyes from misting over.

Somewhere back there, Judith and her brother would be waiting in their little hospital. I’ll be back for you, Judith, he had told her. Now the sea, and a war, lay between them. He remembered the brown-clad soldiers and their fanatical advance along the jetty. They had seemed so confident and so utterly ruthless that the General and his chessmen became a mockery and a part of the past.

Why had the Communists attacked the gunboat? Why had they been so eager to entangle themselves with another power, when they were already dealing with a complicated operation of their own?

Damn them, he thought wretchedly, what did they matter, or the people he had so clumsily removed from the path of the savage invasion. Judith had been more than a mere promise of happiness for him, and not just an escape. As the island slipped away in the darkness astern, he knew that she, above all, deserved to live and had truly earned the right to be freed from her island prison.

He leaned his head on his arms, his voice muffled. “Steer Oh-nine-oh!”