Ship of Force (23 page)

She bobbled off along the quay, bag dangling from one lacegloved hand, grey bun showing under the flowery hat. The picture of a respectable lady of advancing years and modest means. A nanny or a granny. Then the umbrella blew inside out and he heard the crisp oath, and smiled.

* * *

He rapped at the door and a minute later was talking to Midshipman Johnson who came down to him in the hall, sleepily and with a greatcoat over his pyjamas, the overlong legs of which concertina’d above his slippered feet. Smith looked at him and thought, They seem to be getting younger.

He said, “You’re early to bed.”

Johnson’s hair stuck up in spikes. He said, “The old lady here was going to bring my supper up to me. She fusses over me a bit, sir.” Smith could imagine it, looking at Johnson, who added defensively, “We’ve got all night in, sir.”

“I’m afraid you haven’t. Can you reach Mr. Curtis?”

“He’s over at St. Pol, sir. Went over there for dinner but he left a note. There’s a telephone there and —”

“Then telephone him. Ask him —” He stopped. That wasn’t right. This was Smith’s responsibility, he wanted that to be clear. He said, “Tell him he is to get straight over here. You know where
Sparrow
is lying?”

Johnson was wide-awake now. “Across from the shipyard.”

“That’s right.” Smith wrote rapidly in his notebook, tore out the page and handed it to Johnson. “Clear?”

Johnson read it carefully, blinked in surprise but said, “Yes, sir. I’ll telephone Mr. Curtis and bring the boat alongside
Sparrow
and he can join her there.”

“Get dressed and get on with it then.”

Smith watched him run up the stairs, tripping over the bottoms of the pyjamas, sighed and shook his head and went out.

As he approached
Sparrow
he felt the wind on his face, coming off the sea and thought it was a fair wind. He saw them gathering on
Sparrow
’s cluttered little quarter-deck, Garrick’s tall figure, Lorimer short and stocky and Sanders slim. The quartermaster on the side had obviously had orders to warn them of his coming.

As he stepped aboard he asked, “Ready to slip?”

“Yes, sir.” answered Sanders.

“Lower the whaler.” And then: “Now, gentlemen. First: Wireless silence until further orders. Understood?”

Sanders said, “We haven’t got any wireless, sir.”

Smith remembered that was so; there was just the gap between the first and second funnels where the shack had stood. He looked at Garrick, who nodded acknowledgment. So Smith went on to give them detailed orders. And — like Johnson and Mrs. Baines before them — they stared…

* * *

Marshall Marmont’s
pinnace slid past the lighthouse and headed along the channel towards the sea. She towed
Sparrow
’s whaler and had the crew of the whaler and Buckley aboard. Smith stood in the cockpit with Garrick as a light challenged them from the shore and the signalman clicked his lamp in reply. He knew Garrick was uneasy by the worried glances he shot at Smith, who ignored them because the only way he could lift that worry from Garrick’s mind was to cancel the orders he had just given. He would not do that. It was not easy for Garrick, or Sanders. They were under his command but their orders were unusual, to say the least. He had offered to put them in writing, said he would accept their formal written objections if they wished. They had refused.

He wondered why they trusted him so.

They were challenged again in the Roads. There were a dozen ships anchored there and all of them wary of intruders. They passed ship after ship that loomed out of the rain, towered over them then slipped astern. Until
Marshall Marmont’s
squat profile showed blurred, hardened and the pinnace swung in alongside her and hooked on. Smith and Garrick boarded her and Smith walked forward past the bridge and the tall turret with the huge fifteen-inch guns. He heard Garrick rasping his orders and then the pipes shrilled and the ship came alive.

He stopped just forward of the turret and stood under the muzzles of the guns, watching as the men streamed past him into the bow. The rain was driving now. He looked at his watch, shifted impatiently and peered out into the murk. Nothing. He would have liked the night to cover him now but he could not wait. Time was against him and this rain-filled dusk would have to serve. He looked over his shoulder past the guns at
Marshall Marmont’s
single tall mast with its control top and the strung aerial of the wireless. If anyone called her she would hear but Smith had stilled her tongue; they would get no reply. They would acknowledge no orders that would countermand those he had in his pocket.

He turned forward, looked again at his watch and up — There she was! She came creeping in on them over the rain-swept sea, the tug
Lively Lady
, turning slowly on her heel then nuzzling her stern close in under the monitor’s bow. He watched as the tow was passed and reported secure, winced as the capstan hammered and
Marshall Marmont’s
anchor was raised. The yell came: “
Anchor’s aweigh
!”

The tug was moving ahead. There was a jerk as the loop of the tow became shallow and then
Marshall Marmont
was moving. The party still worked forward, securing the anchor for sea. He saw the motor-launch foam out of the night and swing alongside
Lively Lady
and he ran forward to stand in the bow.

The Lieutenant commanding the patrolling launch called through a megaphone, “I understood
Marshall Marmont
was to sail in the morning.”

Smith held his breath. He saw Victoria Baines’s dumpy figure on the deck of the tug and her bellow came back to him on the wind. “So did I! Till they got me outa me bed to tell me otherwise! Bloody Navy! You bluejackets are all the same! Work a poor old woman to death for the sake of a lot o’ red tape an’ paper work while you run around asking damn fool questions! Why don’t you ask him back there?” She jerked a thumb at the monitor. “I reckon he’ll give you an answer if I’m any judge of his temper!”

But the Lieutenant was not going to cross the hawse of a captain in a foul mood on a dirty night. He answered, “Goodnight, Mrs. Baines.” The motor-launch sheered off and was lost in the premature dusk.

Smith blew out his pent breath. God bless Mrs. Baines! The Lieutenant would make a report, of course, but that would be too late.

He turned and strode aft, looking up at the open bridge, lifting an arm. He saw Garrick up there give an answering wave but then he was past. Aft, the whaler was hauled up short, her crew aboard her where she was towed along at the side of the monitor as she moved slowly ahead. They were holding her off from the side, bow and stern. The mast was shipped, the sail ready to hoist. Buckley sat in the stern sheets. Smith climbed down into her, sat by Buckley and the tow was slipped and the men at the oars tugged briefly to take the whaler out of the lee of the monitor then hoisted the sail. They had fallen astern of
Marshall Marmont
but they crept up past her with Smith at the helm and sailed up alongside the tug. Peering through the rain Smith could make out a figure at the wheelhouse door, the pale splash of a face. He called, “Thank you! Well done!”

“Good luck!” The call came back softly. Maybe Victoria was subdued now, impressed with the secrecy of their slipping away. And there was the tumbling water between, the thumping beat of the tug’s engines and the churn of her screws.

He put over the helm and the whaler turned away from the tug and pointed her nodding stem at the port. The tug and the monitor had a long, weary haul ahead of them. Soon they were only vague shapes and then lost entirely. But he saw them once more as thunder growled and lightning stabbed down at them, saw them in the blink of an eye, the plodding tug and the unwieldy mass of
Marshall Marmont
, then the rain closed in. Victoria Baines had stared incredulously at him on the quay and muttered, “I hope you know what you’re doing — or they’ll hang the pair of us. You can’t steal a warship from the Navy.”

Couldn’t he? Thunder rumbled again and he shivered again though he was not cold. He was soaked and the rain washed his face as the whaler soared and plunged, driving towards Dunkerque with that fair wind, but he was not cold. Buckley was whistling softly through his teeth and he and the crew of the whaler watched Smith covertly but he was unaware of it.

* * *

Jack Curtis waited for him aboard
Sparrow
in oilskins and seaboots, His CMB was tied up alongside the thirty-knotter. Smith glanced at it and saw that his orders had been carried out. As the sail came down and the whaler slid in against
Sparrow
, Smith saw that Curtis was talking with Sanders, the tall American and the shorter Scotsman side by side. They were of the same rank and age. Excited? He tried to remember how he had felt at that age and briefly felt a hundred years old but then he was climbing the ladder.

He called Curtis aside. “I want you and your boat to sail with me now.”

“Yes, sir. That’s what your note said.” Curtis was understandably guarded. Smith was a superior officer giving him an order. On the other hand the CMB was not seconded or attached to Smith’s command.

Smith asked, “No one will question your sailing?”

“No, sir. We’re still on this detached duty. Colonel Hacker, sir.”

Smith said, “Colonel Hacker will have no objection.” He smiled wryly. “But you must have some questions.”

Curtis grinned sheepishly. “Well, yes, sir. I sure do.” He paused and shifted his weight from one leg to the other, wondering where to start. “Well. What are we going to do?”

“That calls for a fairly long answer and I’ll give you details later. But briefly, I intend to find out what is hidden in the woods south of De Haan. And then — what was that phrase of yours? — shoot the hell out of it.”

Curtis stared at him, swallowed, then said, “Well, that seems to answer one question, sir.”

Smith said quietly, “Then I’ll ask one. I’m giving you an order. Suppose I made it a request? Would you go?”

Jack Curtis was silent a moment, looking at this Commander who seemed scarcely older than himself, that he knew little except by reputation and that reputation was of a stormy petrel; Smith and bloody action went together. He was a lonely, aloof figure, yet men followed him and Sanders and Buckley came close to hero-worship. Curtis wondered why and then heard himself say, “Sounds like a good idea, sir. I’m in.”

Smith said, “I’m sorry about your party at St. Pol.”

Curtis was silent a moment then answered, “It was cancelled anyway, sir. Seems there was a call for a reconnaissance flight that their Commander had said he wouldn’t let anybody fly but himself. But he’s away in hospital and my friend Morris pushed for it and they let him go. He was shot down by Archie over Ostende. I talked to one of the guys in the Triplanes that flew as escort. He said the Harry Tate went into the ground like a bomb, exploded and burned as it struck. There was Morris and an observer — some Army officer. Both gone.”

Hacker had tried to hedge his bets, tried to uncover the secret of the woods at De Haan by flying a reconnaissance because there were very long odds against Smith succeeding. The odds had proved no better for Hacker. Smith thought Curtis was not the only one to lose a friend this day.

Sparrow
went to sea with Jack Curtis’s CMB in tow, to save the motor-boat’s fuel.

Sparrow
was sliding furtively through the night now, a night that was oppressive, the air thick around them so she seemed to push through it over a sea like black glass, calm as if flattened by that pressure. The mine-net barrage lay far out in the darkness to port. It might have been a good idea to creep close to it. The enemy knew very well that it was there and so could be expected to steer clear of it. On the other hand there was always a fair chance that a destroyer and a mine-sweeper might be out to try to do it damage. The enemy might be anywhere. This course was closer to the coast but it saved time and time was short on these summer nights. De Haan was still more than forty nautical miles from Dunkerque and some of it shoal. One more risk to be calculated and accepted.
Sparrow
’s crew was at action stations and the look-outs strained their eyes into the darkness.

The signalman muttered, “Bleedin’ rain!” and hunched his shoulders at it. It was soft summer rain, almost warm, but it worked inside Smith’s clothes and left them clammy against his skin. He was glad of it. A fine summer night would have left
Sparrow
naked. He had that restlessness, that itch that almost always preceded action. And this time they weren’t searching blindly for they knew not what. They knew where they were going, if not what they would find.

It was hard to be restless in that tiny space that was more gunplatform than bridge, crowded with the crew of the twelvepounder and the bridge staff. Buckley stood right at the back below the searchlight platform. Smith took a couple of strides then forced himself to stand still on the gently heaving bridge and stare aft. He could just make out the CMB because her bow wave blended with
Sparrow
’s wash where the thirty-knotter towed her. Curtis’s little craft looked top heavy now with the hump of tarpaulin forward of her cockpit. He was glad Curtis commanded her. He had faith in that young man, trusted him. What was more important was that Curtis trusted him. Smith had told Curtis what he intended to do and the American had volunteered. Not rashly: he was a long way from being a fool and was well aware of the risks. So he must trust Smith.

Smith wondered why?

He turned forward and saw Sanders as restless as himself, the Sub’s fingers curling and twitching on the glasses that hung against his chest. It was no wonder that Sanders was nervous. He had done well when Dunbar was killed but he would have his hands full tonight. He was young…

The voice of Lorimer called through the pipe from the charttable where he was plotting their course, “Six minutes on this leg, sir. An’— and that’s it.”

“Thank you.” Smith answered absently, thinking that if Sanders was a boy, then what about the seventeen-year-old Lorimer? An infant. He felt again very old and muttered, “Don’t be a bloody fool.”

Sanders turned. “Sir?”

“Nothing. You know what you have to do?”

“Yes, sir. I patrol, passing your start-point every fifteen minutes.”

“For two hours. And then?”

“I go to wait at the rendezvous for
Marshall Marmont
and inform her captain that the force is to return to Dunkerque.”

Two hours was enough. “And if the enemy sights you?”

“I run like hell, sir.” Sanders sounded doleful.

“Correct.” Smith was quietly emphatic. It was not an order in the tradition of Nelson, but Sanders was not a Nelson and it was odds-on that any enemy boat would be twice
Sparrow
’s size. Smith flinched at the thought of Sanders becoming involved in any such night action.

He looked at his watch just as Lorimer called, “Time, sir.”

“Stop both!”

The engines slowed, stopped, but an instant later the engine of the CMB roared into life then throttled back to a throaty mutter. She cast off her tow and sidled alongside
Sparrow
. A grimy stoker passed a bucket down to the CMB. Smith climbed down the ladder into the cockpit beside Curtis who stood at the wheel. “Carry on.”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The CMB swung away from
Sparrow
and the mutter of the engines became a growl as she worked up speed. Smith, looking back caught a last glimpse of
Sparrow
and thought he saw her already moving ahead. Sanders was on his own now.

Curtis took the CMB up to only twelve knots and held her there, hardly cruising, but keeping the speed down kept down her bow-wave also and the wash that would otherwise mark her in the night. She slipped on through the sea, lifting and falling, bow smacking from wave to wave, so even at that speed and in that calm the spray came inboard.

To the south-east a flare hung in the sky, faded, died. A searchlight’s beam wandered, was still, went out. There were gun flashes. Those were the lines of the trenches at Nieuport. The British would be licking their wounds and re-grouping, the Germans consolidating the ground won and preparing themselves against the inevitable counter-attack. The same old stalemate, the armies wrestling back and forth across the lines of trenches, gaining a few yards here, losing them there. Losing men all the time. Smith was certain the attack on the lines at Nieuport, successful though it had been, was not
Schwertträger
. It was nothing new, just another attack.

But they were closing the shore now, though it was still unseen. He thought they could damn near run aground before they saw the dunes on a night like this. Then the engines slowed to a mutter and Curtis said huskily, “Lights, dead ahead.” Smith stared over the bow as it sank into the sea with the way coming off the boat. He saw the lights that blinked and were lost in the rain, come again so that they seemed to twinkle like distant stars or to move like fireflies but they were neither. They were lights on the shore or in the woods by De Haan.

He swallowed his excitement and kept his voice steady as he asked, “Are we on station?”

Curtis answered, “Almost, sir. I reckon we’re less than a mile from the beach.”

“Carry on.”

The CMB puttered on softly; all of them, Curtis in the cockpit and Smith and Midshipman Johnson alongside it, the two men manning the Vickers guns forward and aft, all watched the lights.

Until the seaman forward at the Vickers called hoarsely, urgently, “Ship fine on the starboard bow!”

Curtis spun the CMB to port. They saw the black lift of the ship but only because she stood against the lights on the shore. She was making only a thread of smoke and was anchored, showing no lights at all. As they swung away the rain hid her completely but she had seemed so close that Smith’s order was almost whispered. “Good enough. Stop her.”

The way fell off the CMB and she lay hardly moving on that dead calm sea under the beat and hiss of the rain with the engines grumbling below. Had the lookouts on the enemy ship seen them? The CMB had seemed right on top of her but then Smith thought how the rain was falling and the CMB had made hardly any bow-wave or wash and had been throttled right back. No challenge came. No gun blazed at them out of the night and he said softly, “Let’s get on with it.”

Curtis turned over the wheel to Johnson. “You’ve got her, Mid.” His two seamen set to work forward, casting off the lashings that held the tarpaulined hump on the fore-deck. It was Curtis’s Red Indian canoe that he had made out of canvas and ply and paddled around Dunkerque harbour.

Smith and Curtis threw aside their oilskins and dragged off their boots. One of the seamen handling the canoe slipped and staggered as the CMB rolled gently under their shifting weight. Curtis called softly, pained, “Christ! Be careful! That’s not a whaler you’re banging about there!”

Smith dipped his hands into the bucket by his feet. It was a present from
Sparrow
’s stoke-hold and it held grease and soot. He smeared the blackness over his face and hands and Curtis did the same. It was a rough expedient but it served. All of them kept one eye and both ears cocked towards the unseen ship that yet was so close. Smith told Johnson, “When we’ve gone, haul clear of that ship, anchor and wait for us with the engines running, ready to slip if you have to make a bolt for it. Got that?”

The midshipman nodded, swallowed.

The canoe dropped into the sea and one seaman held it alongside while Curtis lowered himself gingerly into the stern and Smith cautiously followed in stockinged feet and sat down ahead of him. To Smith, used to dinghy and whaler, the canoe sat lightly on top of the water, seemed ready to dance on the surface of the sea. He took the compass and the paddle a seaman passed him but Curtis said, “Better if you just hang on to that paddle in case, sir, and let me do the work. There’s a knack to this.”

Smith nodded. Curtis said, “Shove off.”

The seaman pushed the canoe out from the CMB and it bobbed there alarmingly until Curtis dug in his paddle and it slid forward. The CMB was lost in the darkness and they were alone on the dark sea though it was a minute or so before the mutter of the engines finally faded behind them. The canoe was a new experience for Smith, so light and so low in the water that it was as if he were swimming. She rode the quiet sea well enough but inevitably water slopped in. Curtis used the paddle with an experienced economy of movement, steadily and without a deal of splashing that would have made a white blaze in the dark, pointing the bow of the canoe at the pin-pricks of lights on the shore. He was heading to the north of them so as not to lose ground to the tide that was streaming south-west now. They were not alone for long. The enemy ship was first a shadow that blotted out some of the lights and then a silhouette, taking shape against them. She was still seen only fuzzily through the rain but she was so close! Smith gestured with his left hand and Curtis wheeled the canoe to port to take them past the stern of the ship. Smith could make out a gun forward, two funnels, another gun amidships and a third right aft. She was a big boat, even allowing for the tricks played by darkness and his position right down on the sea. He thought she might be one of the S class boats and those guns would be four-inch. As the canoe slipped on she came abeam. She was anchored fore and aft to hold her against the tide.

“Sir!” Curtis’s hiss snapped Smith’s head around and he saw a second ship to port. Her stem lifted tall out of the sea where she too was anchored and that stem was little more than a cable’s length from the first destroyer in line ahead. The canoe was slipping between them but was only a shadow on a sea filled with shadows. He could see the barrel of the gun on the destroyer’s foredeck, behind it the lift of the bridge and the tracery of mast and rigging.

Two of them. At anchor. If they had been at sea and met
Sparrow
! Were there others ahead or astern of them?

Why were they anchored here?

The canoe slipped on as Curtis thrust steadily with the paddle. There was water slapping around Smith’s thighs now and he used his cupped hands to bail but only for a few moments. The destroyers were barely lost behind them when Curtis swung the bow of the canoe to port again. Another ship grew out of the night ahead of them, lower in the water this one and smaller, with one tall funnel amidships and a box of a wheelhouse before it. A tug. They swung around her stern and she, too, was anchored fore and aft and as they swept almost under her counter, light spilled across her deck and the sea as a hatch was opened. They heard the wheeze of a concertina and a man singing slowly, sadly, then the hatch closed and chopped off the light and the voice. For long seconds their night vision was destroyed, then slowly the lights grew out of the darkness again as Curtis drove the canoe on towards the shore. Smith watched the lights come up, thinking. Two big destroyers anchored close inshore, so close inshore as to have precious little water under them at low tide though the tide was flowing now. Were there more? A tug anchored a cable’s length inshore of the destroyers. Was she alone or was there another?

But now he could see more than just the lights, unaware that he was leaning far forward, bent almost double in his eagerness. He could see among them and beyond them and he heard the startled intake of breath behind him as Curtis also stared ahead at the beach and the scene took on shape and life as the canoe closed the shore, as if a curtain were lifted on a stage.

The stage was set. Smith thought:
Schwertträger
!

The lights were like fireflies, not like stars now because they darted and hovered and he could see the hurrying figures of the men who carried them. But he did not look at the men or the lights but at what they showed. He could see them in the dancing light of the electric torches, and count them. He counted twenty but thought there were more further along the beach that he could not make out, the rain blurring them. The twenty he had counted lay at the water’s edge, stern to the sea and so close to each other they were almost touching. They were square-ended lighters and looked to be around thirty to forty feet long and over ten feet wide. Morris, the airman, had said, ‘Like a shoebox’.

There were others still coming down to the sea. A team of horses, six of them harnessed two by two, laboured down the beach under a cracking whip, hauling a wide-wheeled bogey on which rested another of the lighters. Behind it was another team and another lighter. Morris had said they were hauling the boat in. No doubt they had been. But before that they had hauled it
out
to the water’s edge, the engineers rehearsing their parts for this, the performance. They were hauling the lighters down through a gap in the wall of the dunes from the woods where they had been collected and hidden. Smith turned to look at Curtis and saw his face glistening oily black under the rain with the whites of the eyes showing and a flash of teeth. He was not paddling but breathing softly through his mouth as if even the sound of his breathing might give them away. Smith called softly, “Closer.”

Curtis glanced at him, then at the beach that already seemed too close for comfort, then back at Smith. But Smith was certain the rain and the darkness would hide them from the engineers who swarmed on the beach, who were working like demons against the clock because they had to beat the tide. And the tugs and destroyers were too far out to spot the tiny black shadow on the sea that was the canoe.