J. E. MacDonnell - 070 Read online

  But the Flag-Lieutenant, insofar as manners and the receipt of orders were concerned, was well trained. He allowed no distemper at this mention of his shorebound duties to show on his face.

  "Aye aye, sir," he said. Yet as he turned away in obedience he could not help the question:

  "When are they sailing, sir?"

  Nor could Truman help his smile. "All hands should be on board by tonight. She sails at six in the morning."

  CHAPTER TWO

  The three of them stood on the pier, not feeling the heat of the February sun. They were looking out more than up, for Jackal, so soon to sail, was berthed outboard of the other two Fleet destroyers. From ahead of her they could see the high sharp bow, the two forrard gun mountings and then the bridge. The bridge was rounded for streamlining, and topped by the gunnery director with its wide slim radar aerial. Above this were the legs of the tripod mast merging into the single reach of the topmast.

  What they could see of her looked solid and speedy; and identical with the Australian Quiberon alongside of which she was berthed. Both ships, in fact, had been together before, in their conception and birth. They came from the same experienced dockyard on the banks of the Clyde, the birthplace of so much of Britain's seapower.

  Silent, they gazed.

  If you are as devoted as you should be, you have been sailing for some time in destroyers, and perhaps one destroyer is like another. If so, please turn this page of description.

  But to these three men she was more than a destroyer. This quiet grey length of seventeen-hundred tons was at the same time the culmination and the end of years of inferiority. They had loved their first two ships, but in spite of, not because of their age and slowness. Theirs had been a forced pride, the feeling of a man with a battered Morris Minor who is forced to associate with that gleaming Jaguar next door.

  Now their pride and love could be natural-unforced, freely given, deserved. For to them, four though she was, Jackal was brand-new. Everything-as you may remember-is relative.

  They went aboard.

  To his surprise, for the ship had seemed deserted, Dutchy was piped aboard. When he saw the face behind the bosun's call surprise altered to relief. Dutchy's face remained solemn, as though he was used every day to taking command of ships like these, and being piped aboard by the coxswain.

  "Morning, Swain," he greeted. "You've joined early."

  "Five minutes ago, sir. Forty-two hands aboard, sir."

  Dutchy had last seen his coxswain only three weeks ago at the start of long leave, but now he looked at him with disguised pleasure. Chief Petty-officer Toddy Verril (christened, but seldom named, Hubert) was a small, quick man with a totally bald head and a staccato voice to match the vitality of his movements. He had looked after the discipline of Pelican and Utmost, and steered them in action or whenever adjacent to navigational dangers, and he would perform the same functions in Jackal. He was a stanchion of strength; with him added to Matheson, and Baxter, Dutchy felt there could be no wrong in the world.

  "Forty-two?" he said now.

  "Fine. The rest will be joining today."

  "Yessir."

  Dutchy trusted this man; he knew him much better than did Verril's own mother. With no hesitation he informed:

  "I don't know exactly when we're sailing, but it shouldn't be long."

  "Yessir."

  "While we're here it might be a good idea to see that the men are in the correct rig of the day at all times."

  Rear-admiral Truman would have appreciated the implication of those words, and the grins. No captain, of course, should, especially in a large port like Sydney, have to warn his men about an elementary thing like that. Automatically they should have been in caps and shirts and shorts and long socks and polished shoes. But Dutchy's pirates had been automatically used to shorts and sandals and naught else. Jackal's youth and power had changed all that.

  Or had it? Dutchy wondered as he walked beside Matheson past the two banks of quadruple torpedo tubes. Not only tigers were characterised by the unchangeability of their habits and natures. It might be inadvisable to try and alter certain habits of certain men. Jackal after all was only a ship, designed and dedicated to destruction, and his team of reprobates had proved themselves not inapt at that. But for the moment, under the eye of the Flag-Officer on the hill, they would have to conform.

  "Eight tubes," Matheson murmured.

  "Handy." Dutchy nodded. Some destroyers, such as the Wind Rode-class, mounted ten. But then Pelican had rated only six, and Utmost none at all. He was eminently satisfied with eight.

  The tubes were mounted on top of the engine-room. The conjunction stirred Dutchy's mind.

  "Where's Baxter?" he asked.

  "Can't you guess?"

  Dutchy didn't have to. "Just the same," he growled, "he might have requested permission to go below, or at least mentioned it."

  "Of course," Matheson returned easily, "except for one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "You trained him. Independence, remember? Act on your own initiative, remember?"

  Dutchy glowered at the fair smiling face. "I can't say I've bloody well trained you to any degree of respect!"

  "No, sir."

  "There's still plenty of time for a new First-Lieutenant to join."

  "Yes, sir. Until he does, I'm the gunnery-officer. I'd like to have a look at the main armament."

  Dutchy straddled his bow legs on the bare steel. "You think you're bloody well safe, don't you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You think I couldn't have a second-dickey aboard here..." he snapped his fingers, "like that?"

  "No, sir. But there's a difficulty."

  "Oh?"

  "He wouldn't last a dog-watch. He wouldn't believe it. He'd go stark-raving bonkers. He'd jump over the side. You couldn't inflict that on an innocent young lieutenant."

  Dutchy turned slowly his face from Matheson's grin and looked patiently up towards the crow's nest. Slowly he shook his bullet head.

  "I'm sorry, Bertie. I'm really sorry for you."

  "Why is that, sir?"

  "If ever you leave me, if ever you get into another ship, they'll bloody well keelhaul you. I suppose, in a way, it's my own fault."

  "Precisely, sir. So I'll just have to stick around. Now can we inspect the cannons?"

  A wonderful, beautiful morning, Dutchy thought, as with a grin behind the mask of his face he walked forrard beside the youngster he loved.

  There were four 4.7-inchers as opposed to Wind Rode's six, but these would be more than sufficient against merchant supply-ships, and there was a compensation mounted abaft the funnel-a massive two-pounder pom-pom with eight barrels. An aircraft caught in its outpouring was finished. Its thousand shells a minute, as Matheson suggested, would also be handy for keeping an eager Jap away from the merchantman's wireless-office or a gun, while the main armament dealt with the waterline.

  For the rest there were the usual quick-firing oerlikons and the depth-charge arrangements on the quarter-deck. These, like the 4.7's, were familiar appurtenances. Less so was the bridge's equipment.

  "Hell's bells," Matheson muttered as he stepped on to the compass platform behind Dutchy. "What's all this lot?"

  Dutchy stared at the banks of phones and voice-pipes and dials; at the viewer which he guessed looked down upon a plot he had hardly used, certainly not in his last two commands, where there had been none; and at the repeat radar scan mounted beside the chart-table-this, too, a stranger. He said nothing. In his concern at such comparative lavishness of equipment his eyes settled gratefully on the old faithfuls-the binnacle with its gyro compass and the flanking iron spheres, the voice-pipe to the wheelhouse, the speed dial of the log. These things he knew, and these were all he needed to get this fancy brute of a ship clear of watching eyes so that he could learn the functions of the more exotic instruments.

  "I think," Matheson said, not smiling, "we need a working-up period. Bit frightening, isn't it?"

&n
bsp; "Be damned to that," Dutchy said valiantly, "she's only a ship."

  "Oh, we'll get to handle her all right," Matheson said, confidently from the depths of his junior responsibility. "I was thinking of money. A ship like this would cost not much under half a million."

  "And you think I might pile her up like the others?"

  "There's always a third time."

  But the words were spoken jocularly. Youth is a wonderful antidote against superstition and pointless worry. Dutchy read his deputy accurately. His tone was not offended.

  "There'd better not be a third time," he growled. "A man can stretch his luck so far. Come on, I'm thirsty."

  "No argument. But the bar mightn't be stocked yet."

  "We'll see." Dutchy was not surprised to find that the ship's store of liquor was complete. Truman's was a thorough hand. Jackal might go to sea with a tyro bridge team, but she would be otherwise ready in all respects to help them.

  They drank beer, served by a familiar face; but only two glasses each, for there was much to be seen and done. Then another familiar poked his face in.

  "Thirty-three more hands joined, sir," Verril reported. "Torpedogunner's mate, gunner's mate, Buffer..."

  "All the old hands?" Dutchy asked.

  "Not all, sir. Some of `em are radar ratings."

  "Thank the Lord for that," Matheson muttered.

  "Then there's a couple for the plot."

  "Ditto," Matheson said.

  "Thank you, Swain," Dutchy nodded. "Keep me listed."

  "Aye aye, sir."

  "D'you know?" Matheson said thoughtfully, "that those ratings will know more about that plot and that damned radar than I do?"

  "Then you'll have to pull your socks up and do something about it, won't you?"

  "It had occurred to me."

  Dutchy got up and walked slowly across the ship-wide wardroom. Still looking through the scuttle towards Pinchgut he turned his head a little and spoke over his shoulder. His voice was serious, a slight rasp to it. Matheson's face sobered.

  "Bertie. I know you feel the same about this appointment as I do. Back there, we knew everything there was to know. We knew it blindfold." Matheson nodded. "But there's a hell of a difference here. We have to learn. We have to learn from specialist ratings. Remember that. If you don't know, ask. We'll have new men on board, specialists. Whatever else they might be they're not fools. They'll want an officer to know his job. They'll respect one who asks, they'll despise one who doesn't, rank regardless." Dutchy turned from the scuttle. "You're with me?"

  "All the way, sir."

  "We have to learn how to handle every aspect of this ship, and fast. Pass that on to every officer."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Right, here endeth the lesson. I want to see a watchbill by 1800. Now I'm going down to the engine-room."

  Unconsciously formal under the captain's tone, Matheson stood up and made his acknowledgement in an unusually crisp voice:

  "Aye aye, sir!"

  Mr. Baxter, commissioned-engineer, had handled the truth a trifle carelessly when he'd claimed no knowledge of the innards of a Rotherham-class destroyer.

  This one had Parsons geared turbines on two propeller shafts, two Admiralty three-drum-type boilers and a shaft horsepower of 40,000; there were sprayers and fuel-pumps and condensers and feed-backs to boilers, and with all these things Mr. Baxter was quite familiar. They were newer and modified and more powerful than those he was used to working with, but these qualities served only to please their engineer. He was impressed, but not awed. After all, as his captain had earlier opined, Jackal was still only a ship, and ships Mr. Baxter knew something about. So that he was able to answer Dutchy's query with a casually confident:

  "All well, sir. We've got the hang of her. When you're ready they'll spin."

  Dutchy's engineering knowledge was as small as his seamanship experience was large. Yet his eyes followed with interest the wave of Baxter's hand to the twin mounds of metal encasing the high-speed turbines. They looked innocuous enough apart from their size, but it was what came out of their after ends which betrayed their strength and purpose. Side by side perhaps twenty feet apart, the driving shafts were thick and long and smooth, and in the electric light they gleamed. They looked enormously strong; Dutchy knew they must be to lift along almost two-thousand tons of steel.

  Baxter smiled a little. "You don't often find your way down here, sir."

  "I don't find you sleeping on the bridge."

  Old friends, these, though Baxter was his junior by more than ten years.

  "It's really all pretty simple in its essentials," the engineer said. "The steam from the boilers is not only damn hot, it's under high pressure. It's directed by guide vanes against blades fixed to the outer surface of a drum. In passing through them the steam gives up its kinetic energy to the blades. The drum spins. Then the steam is allowed to expand in passing through another set of guide vanes- these are stationary, of course-and jets on to a second bank of moving blades, and so on. In this way we control the expansion of the steam through all stages. Simple, really."

  "Quite," Dutchy agreed, deadpan. He actually had much more to engage him than the engine-room, and now that he knew Baxter was happy with his job the main object of his visit was achieved. He was ready to leave. Luckily he was denied clairvoyance, else his passing interest in Baxter's domain would have been very greatly enlarged.

  "You'd like to see the boiler-room, sir?" Baxter asked politely.

  Dutchy could not help his grin. He read that tone precisely, and knew that Baxter, busy, found his presence a nuisance.

  "Some other time," he said easily, and turned for the tall steel ladder. At its foot he halted, malice in his eyes.

  "Tell me, Chief-how long have you been in the Service?"

  Baxter frowned slightly. "Well, now... close on sixteen years."

  "I see." Dutchy began climbing.

  "Why?" Baxter called after him.

  "Nothing really. I was just wondering," Dutchy said, still climbing, "if you'd ever owned a pair of dirty overalls."

  And that, Dutchy thought as he chuckled and saw Baxter glance down in instant concern at his immaculate overalls, makes up for your bloody "simple" explanation of a turbine's mechanics.

  Dutchy walked forrard to his sea cabin in the bridge structure. On the way, his face set in its habitual scowl of hardness, he was delighted to see men on the decks, and others making their way under hammock and kitbag along the pier. Some of the faces were new, but most he knew as well as his own, and most of these, as they saw him, were grinning. Dutchy scowled harder.

  But abreast the base of the funnel he halted.

  Those of you old or careless enough to know the joys of the pattering of little feet, and the concomitant pleasures of chicken-pox and measles and mumps they bring, will agree that even in the best-ordered families there is a favourite, perhaps two?

  Dutchy now had a family of almost two hundred, and most of them-via the virtues of courage and loyalty and shared dangers- he loved. But here now were three who sparked in his tough old breast a slightly enlarged degree of affection; here now, one skinny son digging another in the ribs with an elbow sharp as an ice-pick, whispering, turning their heads. Together, as if at the commanding sweep of a conductor's baton, they grinned. Dutchy halted.

  "So," he scowled. The grins did not lessen. Dutchy's eyes trained from face to face-from Bludger Bent, layer of the pom-pom, to redheaded, cold-eyed Olaf Jackson, his trainer, and on to the chubby brown Eskimo face of Norm Claxton, likewise pom-pom. He knew their names, their rates of pay, their alcoholic and sexual propensities, their very natures. Oh yes, he knew these three.

  "One of the larger advantages of losing a ship," Dutchy said, his mouth snarling, "is that usually you lose the crew as well. Usually. You three fowls are, of course, simply on board to visit." Bludger Bent, as he knew he would, made answer. His voice, used to rising above the cacophony of four blasting barrels, had something of the dulcet susurr
ation of a tip-truck unloading blue metal.

  "That's right, sir. We just come to see you off. But we might be talked into handlin' the pom-pom for you."

  "You've been trying to `see your mother off' ever since the pitiful day she bore you," the captain said. "Not to mention your messmates. How much did your leave cost you. I suppose you had to buy your own breakfast."

  Now this was less than fair. The acquisitive propensities which had given birth to Bludger's nickname were confined wholly to the garnering of his messmates' cigarettes. He possessed a pathological aversion to smoking his own. Bludger was hurt.