Thunder at Dawn (14 page)

“Make to
Elizabeth
Bell
: ‘Copy my changes of course’.” The signal was hoisted and broke out then the minutes dragged by as Knight muttered under his breath but finally reported. “
Elizabeth
Bell
acknowledges, sir.”

The reports were finished and the ship was quiet, her decks deserted.

The sea was moderating, still heavy but nowhere near as bad as the night and improving every second. It was a lovely evening but Smith took no pleasure in it.
Thunder
could be running now but she was tied to the eight knots plug of
Elizabeth
Bell
.

Smith stared at the two four-funnelled ships, eyes narrowed against the sun but still able to make them out under the thick black smoke. God! They were steaming! He wished
Thunder
was making smoke like that. He heard Wakely say to Knight, “Wonder how long before we get a shot at ’em?”

Smith lowered the glasses, rubbed at his eyes, looked again and answered the question himself: “Probably not very long now.” Light sparked from the bows of the cruisers, smoke puffed brown and was whipped thinly away. “Steer four points to starboard.”

“Four points of starboard wheel on, sir.”

Thunder’s
bow swung through the arc, pointing away from
Elizabeth
Bell
.

“Midships.”

“Midships, sir.”

Thunder
steadied on the new course. Smith glanced at the
Elizabeth
Bell
, opened his mouth to snap the order at Knight to signal her, then clamped it shut. She was turning to parallel
Thunder’s
course and was now on the port bow. Smith saw light flicker on the cruisers again and smoke shred. The first salvo would be falling now, past the culminating point of its trajectory three thousand feet up and plunging down on the target. On
Thunder
.

The report came down from the rangefinder on the upper bridge: “Range one-three-four-double-oh.” And as Smith thought: ‘Maximum range’, the first salvo howled down from the atmosphere and the sea erupted astern of
Thunder
in four tall columns and crashing bursts.

“Hard aport!”

“Hard aport, sir!”

“Midships!”

“Midships, sir!’’

Now
Thunder
was on the opposite leg of the zig-zag.
Elizabeth
Bell
should follow. She had not. Had that salvo shaken them out of their senses? Smith snarled, “Come on, damn you!”

Knight stared at him, startled. The second salvo was on its way, plunging now. Smith snapped, “Make to
Elizabeth
Bell —
”

He did not get the chance to finish. The second salvo rushed over them and burst, water lifting, noise beating at them. And Knight shouted, “Christ! She’s copped one!” The
Elizabeth
Bell
had taken a direct hit amidships and another forward, each from a two-hundred-and-forty pound projectile plunging at a near vertical angle. She listed immediately and her bow went down; smoke billowed, sparks flying in it and flames leaping beneath it.

“Hard astarboard!” And: “Midships!” And
Thunder
raced down on the
Elizabeth
Bell
, now laying like a log and going down by the head. Smith rattled off orders to a string of rapid acknowledgments. “Slow ahead both! Dead slow! I want to edge alongside …! Mr. Knight, I want lines over the side and strong men on them. Warn the Doctor to expect survivors.”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

“Open fire!”

He heard that last passed to Garrick. Seconds later the after 9.2 recoiled, spat flame and smoke and the
crack
! racketed through them, the shudder ran through the ship.

Thunder
closed the wreck of the
Elizabeth
Bell
, slowing. He could see a party on her superstructure just forward of the gaping hole in her deck that poured forth smoke. They were trying to lower a boat and making a hash of it in the smoke as the ship tilted under them, her bows already under water and the sea reaching up greedily for the superstructure. He snatched the megaphone and ran out to the port wing of the bridge. Close now. “Starboard a point!”

“Starboard a point, sir!”

“Midships!” He lifted the megaphone as a salvo crashed down and plummeted into the sea beyond
Elizabeth
Bell
, hurling more tons of water aboard her and starting a few more plates to hasten still further her already horribly swift end. She was awash as far aft as the superstructure and sinking before his eyes.
Thunder’s
bow slid by her stern, creeping along her starboard side.
Thunder
rolled in the beam sea but the little tramp lay steady with the stillness of a corpse.
Thunder’s
funnel smoke coiled down around them and she rubbed against the other ship and ground along her side to side. Knight and his men were swarming along the rails right forward and hurling the lines far ahead, fishing for the survivors on the tramp’s heeling settling superstructure. Smith picked out the flutter of a skirt. The Benson girl. He bellowed through the megaphone, “Take the lines! We’ll haul you aboard!”

He moved up to them, over them, as
Thunder
, dead slow, ground forward. Through the swirling blanketing smoke from
Thunder’s
four funnels and the huge hole in the deck of
Elizabeth
Bell
he saw the skirt fly like a flag then flicked away on the wind and the girl seized a line.

The after 9.2 roared again. The stern of the
Elizabeth
Bell
lifted and Smith saw Sarah Benson tying the line around a man who lay on the deck. He saw through the smoke another man leave the deck of
Thunder
at the end of a line and walk down her side, or rather ran, going down in great bounding leaps as the seamen above him paid out the line. It was Somers and Smith saw him lunge at the girl as the man she helped was whipped away from her on the line and as the stern of the tramp reared and she went down.

A salvo burst and Wakely said behind him, “Short!” And: “That one was short, sir!”

They had dawdled only minutes but that was too long, far too long.

The
Elizabeth
Bell
went down as the 9.2 shook their ringing ears. She stood on her head with her rusty stern and idle screw perpendicular, slid down with a roar of escaping steam and dull thumping internal explosions. Leaning far out he could see only six, no seven, figures swinging on the lines as they were hauled in and one of them was Somers and the other Sarah Benson.

The salvo roared over and burst in the sea in high spouts of upflung water, off the port bow and over by less than a hundred yards.

One under, one over. It was time; high time. He bellowed through the megaphone, “Mr Knight! Get ’em
aboard
!” Knight and the men with him were doing their best but he could give them not a second more. “Full ahead both! Hard a’starboard!” He strode across the bridge as the helm went over.

*

Corporal Hill had fumed and chafed internally from the moment the after-turret closed up through the long waiting when the glimpses he had of the big cruisers showed them overhauling
Thunder
hand over fist. He only caught glimpses because spray burst continually across the deck, misting his layer’s telescope and because
Thunder
was trailing her own smoke, wreathing and rolling around the after-turret, blinding him. But finally the speed fell away until
Thunder
rolled in the swell and the spray was less. The crew of the turret eyed each other, not understanding it, not liking it. Why were they lying like this, a sitting target? Then the concussion came throbbing through the hull to reach them in the turret as a tremble of steel under their hands.

Somebody asked, “What was that?”

And somebody replied, “They dropped one close.”

Day, Lieutenant in command of the after-turret, snapped edgily, “Shut up!” But then the order to open fire broke the tension.

Hill’s long fingers laid the gun, eye clapped to his telescope, swearing softly as the target came in view, was obliterated by smoke, swam blearily into the telescope again. Bowker, the trainer on the other side of the breech, glared into his own telescope and matched Hill’s cursing.

They fired three times, when Hill and Bowker could see the target and lay and train the gun. Slam of discharge, hiss of recoil, the acrid stench of the coiling fumes, the clang of the breech and the whirr and rattle of the hoist bringing up projectiles and charges from handing room and magazine in the bowels of the ship.

In the fore-top Garrick strained his eyes to spot the fall of shot and succeeded, bitterly. “Short.” And again: “Short.” And for the third time: “Blast and bloody hell! Short! They’ve got the range of us.” He had expected it because it was a mathematical certainty;
Thunder’s
guns were old but even when she was new her guns had not matched those of the German cruisers. It was still a bitter pill. Garrick had less trouble with the smoke than did Hill and Bowker but the light was bad, the setting sun glaring redly into his eyes.

In the fore-turret Farmer Bates, the layer, settled comfortably on his little seat and rested his chin on his arms, giving easily to the motion of the ship, whistling softly, absently. Chalky White grumbled, “That Hill won’t hit bugger all. He’s a useless layer.”

Bates said placidly, “He isn’t useless. He’s not bad.”

“If we was —”

“If we was firing we wouldn’t hit nothing either.” The ranges were repeated in the fore-turret. “On account of we couldn’t reach the bastards any more’n he can. At this range we stand as much chance farting at ’em.”

They felt the increased beat of
Thunder’s
engines and then the heel of the deck to starboard.

Chalky White said, “’Ullo! Now mebbe —”

“Mebbe. But I doubt it.”

That was when the shell burst right before the fore-turret.

*

As
Thunder
hauled away from the few scraps of flotsam that marked the last of the
Elizabeth
Bell
, Smith saw at least one survivor hauled in over the side. Then the salvo screamed down, but this time, a split second before the waterspouts rose,
Thunder
was hit. The impact was a hammer-blow, shaking the ship, deafening. The flash seared the eyes and splinters whined and droned and caromed around the upper-works of the ship. Smith was thrown against the telegraph, bounced off, staggered, grabbed at his cap. There was smoke and he could see flames but he could also see the fore-turret and it seemed intact, but forward of the turret the deck was ripped open and bent back as if some giant had hacked at it inexpertly with a tin-opener. Miles and his damage control and fire-fighting party came running towards the hole, canvas hoses snaking behind them.

Wakely squeaked, “Engine-room reports no damage, sir!”

“Very good. What about the fore-turret?” And: “
Messenger
! Ask Mr. Miles for a report on the damage forward, and quick!”

Hit or no hit,
Thunder
was working up speed now that she was without the
Elizabeth
Bell
. Smith swallowed sickly. Had he wished her sunk? That was nonsense. He knew it was and told himself so, impatiently, but he knew it was a doubt that would return to rack him. Now he thrust it away, turned to peer through the smoke astern and saw the cruisers grown larger, orange flashes prickling together, smoke puffing, shredding. “Hard aport!” … “Midships!”

From the wing of the bridge he could see Knight and his party and the survivors from the
Elizabeth
Bell
. Sarah Benson was there, down on her knees on the deck, bent over someone lying there. Knight knelt beside her.

Smith bellowed, “Mister Knight!”

Knight jumped to his feet. “Sir?”

“What the
hell
are you doing there?”

“One of the survivors, sir. A splinter got him. I think he’s dead.”

“You won’t do anything for him laying on hands! The Doctor’s below. Get them all down to him and yourself up here.” Sarah Benson’s white face turned up to him, outraged. Smith bellowed, “This ship is in
action
, for God’s sake!”

To underline his words the after 9.2 out-bellowed him and another salvo howled down into the sea to starboard, close enough to hurl water in tons across
Thunder’s
deck, knocking the damage control party from their feet but helping to put out the fire they fought.

Smith swung back to the centre of the bridge. “Hard astarboard!”