HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) by Nicholas Monsarrat Read Free Book Online

carry on with cleaning up.’
    ‘The doctor may want some help down there, sir.’
    ‘Yes – see about that too … Keep two look-outs on the upper deck for the rest of tonight: tell them they’re listening for aircraft as well. We’ll show an Aldis lamp if we hear anything, and chance it being hostile. You’d better put the signalman up here, with those instructions; and pick out the most intelligent coder, and have him work watch-and-watch with the signalman. That’s about all, I think. See that I’m called if anything happens.’
    ‘Do you want a hand to watch that bulkhead, sir?’
    ‘No. The engine room will cover that: they’re nearest. About meals ... ’ The Captain scratched his chin. ‘We’ll just have to do our best with the wardroom pantry. There were some dry provisions in the after store, weren’t there?’
    ‘Corned beef and biscuits, sir, and some tinned milk, I think. And there’s plenty of tea. We’ll not go short.’
    ‘Right … That’ll do for tonight, then. I’ll see what things are like in the morning: there’ll be plenty of squaring up to do. You’ll have to get those bodies sewn up, too. If we do get under way again,’ the Captain tried and failed, to say this in a normal voice, ‘you’ll have to work out a scheme of guns’ crews and look-outs and quartermasters.’
    ‘Better take the wheel myself, sir.’
    The Captain smiled. ‘It won’t exactly be fleet manoeuvres, Adams.’
    The expected question came at last. ‘How much chance have we got, sir?’
    ‘Hard to say.’ He answered it as unemotionally as he could. ‘You saw the state that bulkhead was in. It might go any time, or it might hold indefinitely. But even very slow headway would make a big difference to the strain on it, unless the bows stay rigid where they are, and take most of the weight. Almost everything depends on the weather.’
    As he said this, the arrangements he had been making with Adams receded into the background, and he became aware of the ship again, and of her sluggish motion under his feet. She was quieter now, certainly: no shock or grinding from below, no advertisement of distress. But he could feel, as if it were going on inside his own body, the strain on the whole ship, the anguish of that slow cumbersome roll downwind. Earlier she had seemed to be dying: this now was the rallying process, infinitely painful both to endure and to watch. Long after Adams had left the bridge, the Captain still stood there, suffering all that the ship suffered, aware that the only effective anaesthetic was death.
    It was an idea which at any other time he would have dismissed as fanciful and ridiculous, unseamanlike as a poet talking of his soul. Now it was natural, deeply felt and deeply resented. His professional responsibility for Marlborough was transformed: he felt for her nothing save anger and pity.
    Just before he turned in, Chief came up from below to report progress. He stood at the top of the ladder, a tired but not dispirited figure, and his voice had the old downright confidence on which the Captain had come to rely. He had been in Marlborough for nearly three years; as an engineering lieutenant he, too, could probably have got a better job, but he had never shown any signs of wanting one.
    ‘We’ve made a good start on the switchboard, sir,’ he began. ‘We ought to get the fans going some time tomorrow.’ There was nothing in his tone to suggest the danger, which he must have felt all the time, of working deep down below decks at a time like this. ‘The boiler room’s in a bit of a mess – there’s a lot or water about – but we’ll clear that up as soon as we can get pressure on the pumps.’
    ‘What about the bulkhead, Chief?’
    ‘It’s about the same, sir, I’ve been in once myself, and I’ve a hand listening all the time outside the next watertight door. There’s nothing to report there.’ He turned, and looked behind him down the length of the ship, and then up at the