Island of Death (12 page)

The Skipper’s reaction to his midshipman’s discovery of the description of their destination was categorical.

‘That’s it, then,’ he’d said when Pete Andrews had taken the bad news to his cabin. ‘I’ve no intention of sailing nearly two and a half thousand miles in the wrong direction, just to turn round and sail back again, on the say-so of some sort of phoney sw... swami in a white nightie. The sooner we’re back in Blighty and rid of this old tub the better, as far as I’m concerned. ‘S time we all rejoined the real Navy. Back to Bombay!’

And he personally turned back to the gin bottle.

‘Heaven preserve me from arrogant fools!’ said the Doctor in an undertone to the Brigadier, when Pete arrived back on the bridge with the news. ‘Doesn’t he realise that this is the only lead we’ve got? Wasn’t he listening when I told him that the very survival of the human race was at stake?’

‘Starboard ten...’

‘Starboard ten, sir... Ten of starboard wheel on, sir.’

The Brigadier gave a worried glance over at the First Lieutenant, who had just given the order to the quartermaster to turn the ship. The Commanding Officer was the only one of the crew who had been told the whole story.

‘Not to worry, Doctor,’ he said quietly. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll soon settle the young clot’s hash!’

‘May I remind you, Lieutenant-Commander Hogben, that as a brigadier I outrank you by a considerable margin. Even a four-ring captain would only be the equivalent of a colonel.

Or am I wrong?’

‘And may I remind you. Brigadier, that as... as Commanding Officer of this ship, I have abso... absolute authority over it and everybody on board. And that includes you, sir.’

Only the occasional hesitation served to confirm the Brigadier’s diagnosis that Hogben would have been neck and neck in a drinking competition with an alcoholic newt.

He tried again. ‘What were your orders from London?’

‘To put myself at the dis... disposal of the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce in all respects.’

‘That’s what I understood. You are proposing to disobey those orders?’ The anger in the Brigadier’s voice hung in the air.

There was a long pause.

‘This is getting out of hand,’ said Hogben. ‘Sit down, Brigadier. Have a drink...’

For a moment, the Brigadier was tempted to give the young fool the benefit of his long experience in taming cocky young subalterns who felt they could get away with anything short of murder. But then... there was more than one way to skin a hare, as his dad used to say. And he could do with a dram.

‘A wee one, I said,’ he protested as Hogben poured out nearly half a tumbler of Scotch.

Hogben took a sip of his equally full tumbler of gin. He had seemed to be sobering up, thought the Brigadier. It wouldn’t last long if he drank that lot.

The CO took another sip before he spoke. ‘I don’t think you quite realise how much power the skipper of any vessel has -

let alone a Royal Navy ship.’

‘I certainly...’

The CO held up his hand to stop the Brigadier. ‘There’s a story we were told in our last year at Dartmouth on this very point. The evacuation of Crete during the war...’

Now the Brigadier started to listen. He’d been amongst the first troops ashore when Crete was later retaken.

‘There was a midshipman who’d been given the job of ferrying troops - in a small landing craft. Taking them to Egypt. He had on board as many as he thought he could safely manage - as you can imagine, they were queuing up like Saturday night at the Odeon, but the sea was getting nasty. And as he was about to slip, a major-general arrived and demanded to be taken too.’

You could see what was coming.

‘Yes, the midshipman refused. Even when the general ordered him, he still wouldn’t let him aboard. The day after he got to Egypt, he had a signal to report to the commander-in-chief’s cabin. When he got there, there was the general.

The admiral asked him if the story was true. And he said it was. And do you know what the admiral said? “Well done.”

That’s what he said. He said, “I’m glad to know that my officers know how to do their duty...”‘

There was another long pause.

‘I take your point,’ said the Brigadier, quietly. ‘So you think the ship is in danger.’

‘Well...’

‘And you’ll be willing to defend your action? For make no mistake, I shall see that you face a court martial.’ He picked up his whisky. ‘Cheers,’ he said.

The Doctor and Bob Simkins were discussing the effect the deep ocean ridges near the island might have on tidal currents, with Sarah a rather bemused listener. Every head turned as the door burst open and in came Lieutenant-Commander Eugene Hogben, followed by the Brigadier.

The Doctor raised his eyebrows in a mute question. The Brigadier gave a little nod and a satisfied twitch of a smile.

The Commanding Officer of HMS
Hallaton
looked at the steering compass to check the course. He gave the First Lieutenant a furtive glance. He turned to the helmsman.

‘Port ten,’ he said.

Just after 3 30 in the afternoon, Whitbread came to his senses. A seaman who doubled as the Captain’s steward –

‘Blackie’ Blackmore by name - had been put on Alex watch, and promptly fetched the Brigadier.

But when he was confronted with the description in the pilot book, Alex insisted that the book was wrong.

‘Why the devil should I get you to take me to a place like that?’ he said. ‘Use the little intelligence the Almighty blessed you with. Just you wait and see. I tell you, you’re going to find a paradise.’ And he gave a feeble parody of a laugh. Then his face changed. ‘Are you going to give me some food? Or would it be more convenient if I were to starve to death?’

They had just over two thousand nautical miles to go. That was just about two thousand three hundred common-or-garden land miles, Sarah worked out. If they went at the
Hallaton’s
maximum speed, which Pete Andrews had told her was seventeen knots, they would be there in five days.

‘Sorry, love,’ he said, when she produced this magnificently nautical calculation at the dinner table in the wardroom that night. ‘The Old Man has insisted on our going at the normal cruising speed.’

At the moment the CO was on the bridge as Officer of the Watch, with Chris as his sidekick.

‘And what is the normal cruising speed?’ asked the Brigadier. He pushed aside, unfinished, his plate of sausage and mash (with a thick onion gravy that had an odd but familiar taste that Sarah couldn’t place).

‘Pretty slow, I’m afraid. Twelve knots. He’s right in a way.

It’s only a couple of days more, when all’s said and done. No point in thrashing the engines if we’re not in any hurry.’

Sarah glanced across the table. Surely it was time for the Number One to be told the whole story? But the Doctor seemed more interested in his food.

‘You have a Chinese cook, I take it,’ he said.

Of course! Sarah recognised the flavour now. She had a quick flash of her favourite Chinese restaurant in Shaftesbury Avenue.

‘Why yes,’ said a surprised Bob, who had polished off his own bangers already. ‘I signed him up in Hong Kong, just for the voyage home. I’m victualling officer, you see. We’d have ended up with one of the stokers otherwise.’

Pete turned back to the Brigadier. ‘In any case, in the long run, it saves us time to travel more slowly. Gene wanted to stop off at Diego Garcia to refuel. But I pointed out that if we’re going at the engines’ economical speed, we’ll have plenty. They put in extra tanks when she was building, you see, because of the OPEC oil crisis. He was obviously quite chocker about it. Looking forward to a run ashore, I suppose.’

Chocker. Sarah knew that one. Sailor talk for fed-up.

The Brigadier gave one of his grunts. ‘Wanted to top up his supply of gin, I expect,’ he said.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, and the two officers turned their eyes firmly to their plates.

But had Sarah caught a tiny glance from Pete Andrews, and an even tinier wink?

Sarah decided to make the most of it. Her little cabin was quite luxurious, with a wide and comfortable bunk. The millpond sea and the sky were both a deep and heavenly blue. There was a shelf-full of thrillers in the wardroom, there was a well-stocked drinks cupboard (they’d agreed to pay their way, but it was duty-free after all), and she’d remembered to bring her costume and a bottle of sun-lotion for tanning purposes. Apart from a swimming pool and an on-board casino, there were all the ingredients of a luxury cruise. And she could justify her self-indulgence by writing up her notes and taking some shots of the ship.

The next morning, bikini-clad, she found herself accepting a hand-up from Able-Seaman ‘Ginger’ Gorleston from Norwich (who couldn’t believe his luck) onto the top of a locker on the quarterdeck. From this vantage point, she could get a smashing shot of the Brigadier standing in the stern, staring moodily at the wake streaming out in a straight line to the northern horizon.

Never mind the flipping Skang lot. She was going to enjoy herself. She’d got a whole week.

But the weather had other ideas.

The first sign of trouble ahead came at breakfast-time the next day. When she walked down the corridor (which the sailors strangely called a ‘flat’) towards the wardroom to get her breakfast, Sarah felt the odd sensation of being off-balance on a floor that, to the eye, was perfectly stable and horizontal, and a queasiness behind her eyes.

The wardroom was empty except for the plump figure of Chris.

‘Morning, morning,’ said he cheerfully but indistinctly, his mouth being somewhat full. ‘Blowing up a bit, isn’t it?’

Following a forced diagonal course to the table, she grabbed a chair and just managed to sit down before she fell over.

‘Yeah,’ said Chris, watching her, ‘she’s a right bitch in any sort of sea. You’ll get used to it. Remember, one hand for the ship and one for yourself.’

Now that Sarah could see out, it was clear that the ship was rolling quite noticeably. The horizon was invisible, being masked by considerable waves that swooped out of sight to be replaced by an ominous sky, only to reappear a moment later.

‘It’s a real gale, isn’t it?’ she said, as the steward - a young seaman by the name of Miller, who’d volunteered for the job (so Sarah had gathered) largely to get out of weather like today’s - appeared in the doorway and ducked out of sight when he saw her.

‘Half a gale, perhaps,’ said Chris.

She averted her eyes as he wiped the remains of his fried egg onto a large piece of fatty bacon.

‘About a force seven, I reckon. You wait till it gets to nine!’

No, thanks. Seven would do very nicely, thank you.

With some difficulty, she poured herself three-quarters of a cup of coffee - all she could manage, the way it sloshed around - and kept her eyes down as Chris plastered a large dollop of marmalade on his last bit of fried bread.

‘There you are, miss,’ said Miller, plonking a full plate in front of her. ‘You’ll soon feel better once you get that down you.’

What was he talking about? She was an experienced sailor, wasn’t she? Though the choppy lurches of a small sailing dinghy were vastly different from this. To start with, they never left your stomach behind, halfway to the ceiling...

correction, halfway to the deck-head. It might not have been so bad if it had been a regular motion, but there seemed to be all sorts of extras superimposed on the main swinging roll.

She looked at the greasy fry-up, picked up her knife and fork, put them down again and said carefully, ‘I think...’

What she thought Chris was never to know, for she stood up suddenly, saying Excuse me...’ and lurched out of the room with her hand clapped over her mouth.

‘Isn’t this magnificent?’

The Doctor was jammed into the corner of the port wing of the bridge, his usually impeccable hair streaming in the wind, and his cloak flapping behind him like a giant wing, as if he was about to take off.

The Brigadier let the door slam behind him, and grabbed a safe hold. ‘I’m glad you think so,’ he shouted. ‘I’m just thankful that my father was a colonel, not an admiral.’

His words were blown away like the spume from the crest of a breaking wave.

The Doctor had long since abandoned his post at the stem of the ship. Not only had his friends the dolphins vanished at the first sign of a rising sea, but also the
Hallaton
kept burying her nose and most of her foredeck in the oncoming waves, as she pitched and yawed with the eighty-knot squalls that were bringing what was by now a force ten gale that much nearer to a real storm.

‘Listen,’ shouted the Brigadier. ‘It’s the CO...’

‘What’s up? Is he in liquor again?’ Although he hardly seemed to raise it, the Doctor’s precise voice could be clearly heard above the howling of the wind.

‘Didn’t seem to be. Probably why he’s been in such a filthy mood. I could hear him from my cabin. Bawling out Pete Andrews, as far as I could gather. No, it’s not that. He’s turned back. I checked the compass. And when I tried to tackle him about it, the wretched man just ignored me. He’s sailing 020 degrees, not far off due north.’