The Lion at Sea (41 page)

‘We’ve lost steam on Number Two,’ Wellbeloved said. ‘I can give you fifteen knots on the others.’

‘How long before we can move off?’

‘You can move off now, but give me a few minutes and I can give you full power on both boilers.’

‘Make it fast. It seems bloody unhealthy round here.’

The engineer nodded. ‘We shan’t be long and then we’ll give you all the emergency speed you want.’

The bridge had been cleared now. The wood and steelwork were scorched and pitted with holes; the canvas dodger, fluttering in ribbons, was splashed with blood.

The pain in Kelly’s head seemed unbearable and the waiting seemed interminable but, after a while, he heard the thrumming of the boiler room fans, and a gout of black smoke was superseded first by grey then by a whitish, almost transparent gust of vapour.

The navyphone screeched. ‘Both engines ready, sir.’

‘Thank you.’ Kelly looked round him. The North Sea seemed suddenly empty. ‘Slow ahead together.’

A sick berth attendant arrived. He was very young and looked terrified. ‘Christ, sir,’ he said, peering at Kelly’s face with a torch.

‘What’s happened to it?’

Kelly was standing against the binnacle, his face covered with blood. The sick berth attendant peered at him with a worried look on his face.

‘You ought to be in your bunk, sir.’

‘No.’

‘A splinter’s caught your cheekbone, sir. It’s probably broken. It’s also cut open the left side of your forehead. There’s a flap of flesh hanging down over your eye.’

‘That’ll spoil my beauty, won’t it? Fix it.’

As the SBA nervously struggled to adjust a bandage over his eye, Kelly’s mind was roving ahead of their present situation. They still had the torpedo tubes and one gun amidships that would fire. As the SBA finished, he brushed him aside.

‘Let’s go,’ he said to Naylor. ‘Push her up to half revolutions. We’ll find out what’s happening before we shove our noses into it.’

As they headed south-west, steering by the remains of a patched-up chart, they passed the stern of a large ship sticking out of the water.

‘What ship’s that?’

It was impossible to tell and they circled the wreckage looking for survivors, but other ships had been there before them and they saw only floating bodies.

It was quite dark as they pushed up the revolutions again and searchlights began to criss-cross on the western horizon. On the port quarter a flash showed up over the horizon and a star shell hovered in the sky. Then another, greater flash followed and to starboard of it a great tower of flame flared up into the sky, died down and reared up afresh. The whole of the sea seemed to be rippling and flashing with fire. Then the searchlights, rising and falling like the antennae of a blinded animal, fixed their implacable light on a group of distant destroyers rushing up the bright path of the beams. White splashes lifted all round them, then a lurid fire started in one of them and spread to a vast explosion of fierce white flame that made even the searchlights seem pale. Immediately the lights were extinguished and the attack died out, and everything was dark again, except for the glowing point of fire.

Higgins, the wardroom steward, appeared with bully beef sandwiches and cocoa, and they were eating quietly when Rumbelo muttered. ‘Ships on the port quarter, sir.’

Kelly stared at them through his night glasses and there was a whispered discussion as to what they were. It didn’t occur to them for a minute that it was the wing tip of the German Fleet trying to break through the British line at its weakest point.

‘Light cruisers,’ Naylor said.

‘Yes,’ Kelly agreed. ‘But whose? Ours or theirs? Challenge.’

As the signal lamp began to clack, coloured lights appeared at the fore yardarms of the other ships and a searchlight snapped on. A gun fired and
Mordant
rolled as a shell smashed into her above the water line.

‘Full ahead!’ Kelly yelled as the solitary gun by the funnel crashed out.

The shell smashed into the opposing ship just below the bridge and seemed to tear her open even as Kelly rang for full revolutions and turned his tail to the Germans to present the smallest possible target. A second shell struck
Mordant
near the base of the funnel as they plunged into a bank of mist, riddling the metal, and Kelly spun round and fell as a searing pain scored across his back and the blast whipped away the bandage from his forehead.

Dragging himself to his feet, he saw the quartermaster had been hit. ‘Take the wheel, Rumbelo,’ he yelled. ‘And let’s have an SBA up here!’

Shells were still whistling past; as they emerged from the other side of the mist, they were illuminated once more by a searchlight and within two minutes a storm of fire swept the ship. The range was so close the German shots went high enough to burst on the upper deck, and round the superstructure of the bridge where all the flesh and blood was. An enormous blaze started just abaft the torpedo tubes where shell fragments had whipped across the deck and mowed men down like corn before a sickle. A second shell burst amidships and the fragments sliced across the waist like hail, scouring out the inside of the shield of the midships gun and igniting cordite charges.

The ship heeled as she turned away, empty brass cartridge cases rattling and rolling into the scuppers. The foredeck was a swirling mass of angry flames making an unearthly red glow in the darkness and giving a crimson tinge to the black smoke and white steam. A pillar of fire was roaring up the foremast from one blaze; a second reached above the top of the funnel.

Fortunately the German ships were more concerned with their own fleet than with doing damage and they thundered off into the darkness, leaving
Mordant
rolling on the swell, a wreck. The action had lasted no more than a minute then they had plunged thankfully into a fresh bank of white haze. Staring back, Kelly saw a huge flare of flame rising beyond the mist, lighting it with a red glow.

Hatchard appeared, grinning. ‘Torpedoed one of the sods,’ he yelled. ‘Let the whole salvo go. Couldn’t miss. Thanks for turning away when you did.’

‘I was thinking of my skin,’ Kelly said shortly. ‘Did you sink her?’

‘Probably not, but she’ll have an awful headache!’

‘What about casualties?’

Hatchard’s grin died. ‘We seem to have lost the last of our guns, together with all its crew, I’m afraid.’

‘Get a report from the engine room on their damage. They must have some this time.’

Hatchard stared at him. ‘You’re in need of attention,’ he said.

‘No, I can see now.’

Reports started coming to the bridge from other parts of the ship. Splinters had cut the freshly-repaired electric leads and steam pipes. Naylor appeared and, amid the deafening noise of steam escaping and the smoke and heat blowing back from the fires a few feet away, he had to shout to make himself heard.

‘There’s a fire amidships,’ he stammered. ‘It’s the motor boat.’

‘I can see it,’ Kelly snapped, his voice diamond-hard. ‘Put the bloody thing out!’

A splinter had severed the connection to the upper deck fire main and the flames were increasing.

‘Let’s have a good hose up here,’ Kelly yelled and Higgins, the wardroom steward, appeared dragging one with him. ‘Get up,’ he was yelling at the wounded men. ‘Get up and bloody help!’

Those who could dragged themselves to their feet, and a man with his clothes blown off and his skin hanging in strips led a file of blackened scarecrows away to the sick bay, one of them, with his ears charred off and burned from head to foot, dragged along by two of his shipmates. Lying by the funnel was a still-living gunner who had been ripped open by a splinter, his inside spilling out on to the deck, and the ship resounded with the mournful cry of ‘Stretcher bearers.’ A sailor who had lost both arms was begging his friends to throw him overboard, and all round the deck among the huge holes where fires flickered and grey smoke leaked men were vomiting with shock and disgust. A stoker trapped beyond a jammed hatch was burning to death, screaming his life out while his friends, who could do nothing to help him, could only try to shut their ears to his agony.

Naylor had already turned his attention to the fire by the foremast and Hatchard hurried to help him. There was no point in giving them orders or getting in their way. Hatchard had been in the Navy long enough to know what to do. As the sick berth attendant who had arrived finished bandaging the quartermaster, he looked up at Kelly. He was a petty officer this time and was unimpressed by Kelly’s rank.

‘You’ve been hit, sir,’ he said and turned him round without a by-your leave.

‘Good God, sir,’ he went on. ‘It’s ripped your bridge coat, jacket and shirt, even severed your bloody braces! You’re bleeding like
a stuck pig.’

‘Bandage it,’ Kelly said.

The sick berth tiffy shook his head. ‘Bandaging won’t do any good to that, sir. It needs stitches. A lot of stitches. Your eye, too.’

He spoke with authority and confidence and Kelly longed to let him take over, but the pillar of flame was still roaring up the foremast and the ready ammunition for the midships gun kept exploding in a shower of sparks and shreds of blazing cordite. He noticed that the heat of the fire was strong enough to scorch his cheek and began to wonder what it would be like to be blown up. More than once that day he’d seen huge ships disintegrate and he wondered if
Mordant,
being smaller, would go more gently.

Then, beyond the struggling men, he saw the whiteness begin to go from the pillar of flame, and as it decreased, wavered, lengthened again, and finally began to die, he allowed himself to listen to the pleas of the sick berth tiffy.

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Do as you like. Get the surgeon up here.’

‘Sir, the doctor’s dead. He was on deck attending to the wounded when that last lot got us.’

‘Very well. Can you stitch it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Put ’em in.’

As he spoke, Kelly was aware that he sounded like a
Chums
impression of a destroyer officer, brusque, rude and laconic. But it was chiefly because it was hard work thinking and harder still having to issue orders.

The sick berth tiffy frowned. ‘Sir, I’ll have to give you morphine.’

‘No!’ Kelly brushed him aside. ‘Do it without or not at all. Save the morphine for the others.’

Hatchard appeared. ‘It’ll hurt like hell,’ he said.

‘Rumbelo can sit on my head and you can sit on my feet. I expect we’ll manage. I’m not having morphine. There’s no one else and nobody’s putting me to sleep till I know we’re safe. Let’s go and see what’s happened.’

Leaving the bridge, he stumbled over a body at the bottom of the ladder and Hatchard dragged it aside. Before he could reach the fire by the funnel, it wavered and died away and they were in darkness again, a strange darkness full of heat and smoke and the groans of wounded men. The deck was strewn with bodies so that he kept falling over them as he moved about, but by the aid of matches and torches the deck was searched.

‘Keep those lights down,’ Kelly ordered. ‘We have no idea where the Germans are.’

He bent over a boy seaman torn by sickening injuries and covered with blood, splintered bones showing through his flesh. The boy smiled. ‘It’s no good worrying about me, sir,’ he said. ‘I can’t feel much pain, anyway.’

The cooks who had closed up as sick berth attendants had rigged up a temporary operating theatre in the stokers’ bathroom, using a table from the wardroom. The steel walls ran with sweat, but Wellbeloved had hung a cluster of lights from the shower and a bucket of water stood handy to swill the blood down the drain in the tiled floor. The sick berth tiffy had just cut off an unconscious stoker’s hand at the wrist and was tying up the ligaments. He looked up as he saw Kelly but didn’t stop.

‘Know how to do it?’ Kelly asked.

‘I’ve seen it done before, sir. If I don’t he’ll bleed to death.’

As the stoker was lifted off the table, Kelly lay down on it. The sick berth tiffy sounded apologetic.

‘Sir, this morphine–’

‘Get on with it!’

‘It’s going to be bloody painful, sir.’

‘Just get on with it, for God’s sake!’

Hatchard appeared. He seemed to pop up and down like the Demon King in a pantomime. ‘Better drink this,’ he said.

‘What is it?’

‘Rum. Nelson’s blood.’

‘I won’t say no to that.’

As Kelly swallowed the raw spirit, it burned his throat and made him cough. The spasms seemed to tear at the wound in his back but he felt better at once and almost ready to have himself sawn in two. ‘Who’s sitting on my head?’ he asked.

A cook with a bandaged head looked embarrassed. ‘Me, sir.’

‘I bet it’s the first time you’ve ever sat on your captain’s head,’ Kelly said and was pleased to see the cook grin.

They stripped him of his shirt and he felt the cook put his hands on his shoulders and press down with a weight that drove the breath out of his body. Someone else lay across his legs.

‘We’ll do your eye first,’ the sick berth tiffy said. ‘Hold him.’

As he felt the jab of the needle, it was as if they were trying to pierce him through with a cutlass. Biting at his lip until it bled, he refrained from making a noise until at last a great groan broke away from him.

‘Soon be finished, sir.’

They seemed to be sewing him up with marline spikes and wire hawser but at last the weight lifted off his legs.

‘Sorry if it hurt, sir.’

Someone stuck a lighted cigarette in his mouth, then they poured iodine on his shrinking flesh, bandaged him and helped him into his torn clothing. For a while he sat still, recovering his breath, then he dragged himself upright with an effort.

‘Since I’m here,’ he said, struggling to keep his voice steady, ‘I’ll have a word with the wounded.’

The wardroom, its door splintered and buckled, was full of men, all lying very still and very white. One of the cooks was at work there and four stokers were just lifting the body of a sailor from the bench. There was a hole in the ship’s side that admitted water which sloshed about their feet as the ship rolled, and in it swilled bloodstained bandages and debris. It was hard to move his arms but he managed to extract cigarettes from his pocket and hand them round. The worst cases were flash burns.