Ship of Force by Alan Evans Read Free Book Online Page B

Wooden. Formal.
    It irritated Smith. Dunbar wasn’t going to make excuses and he was being stiff-necked. Then Smith with his uncomfortable habit of self-criticism remembered somebody else who could take refuge in being stiff-necked and formal. He smiled wryly and said, “Sanders kept the log. All routine stuff, taking me aboard and so on. You’ll need to make it up.” The log seen by Trist would be completed by Dunbar and signed by him, showing him as being in command throughout.
    “Aye, aye, sir.” Dunbar was silent a moment as he took it in, then: “Thank you, sir.”
    Smith said nothing. That was the end of it so far as he was concerned but he knew it was not the end for Dunbar. The loss of his wife and child would haunt him for God only knew how long. Smith had not been hurt that way but he had been hurt. As a naval cadet he had been the odd man out, a solitary introspective small boy in a rough, extrovert society. He had been hurt physically and mentally but he had survived. Later there had been love affairs when he was a very young officer with only his pay, a ship and a career to fight his way through. No family, no home. Not a marriage prospect. Young women had hurt him then as the young always hurt each other. He was sorry for Dunbar but there was nothing that he could do.
    There was silence on the crowded bridge, an edgy, taut-nerved silence. All of them peered into the night, searching for the airmen but with little hope. They were also looking for the enemy because
Sparrow
was in the Germans’ backyard now. In one way the Royal Navy’s command of the sea gave the Germans an advantage because they knew that any ship they met must be an enemy and so could shoot on sight while the Navy had to assume another ship was most likely friendly, and had to challenge. If
Sparrow
used her signal-lamp to challenge in these waters it was possible the only reply would be a shell screaming out of the night.
    Smith said, “There’s a drifter,
Judy
, out on the Bank somewhere.”
    He saw Dunbar nod and heard him answer, “I know her. That helps but there could be a score of us out here and still not find those airmen.”
    Smith thought of the men out there, if they
were
still alive out there, and wished to God that he could use a light.
    It was as if his prayer was answered. For ahead of them came a spark of light that immediately blossomed and grew into a ball of fire that lit up the underside of the clouded sky, the dark sea and the tar-black shape of the drifter on which the flare burned. It burned from the foremast and in its light and with his glasses Smith could see her little gun and the men shifting about her deck. She was moving slowly across
Sparrow
’s course and a mile or so ahead.
    Gow said, “God!”
    Dunbar groaned, “Geordie Byers! Bloody fool!”
    “Maybe he’s seen something,” ventured Sanders.
    “And maybe somebody’ll see him!”
    “Quiet!” Smith rapped it and lifted his voice. “Keep a sharp look-out!” They might as well make use of the light now it was burning.
    And there came a yell from the starboard look-out: “Twenty on the starboard bow! Right on the edge o’ the light! There’s summat in the water and I thought I saw it move!”
    Smith used his glasses. There was something. Wreckage? And a man? He saw the movement that might have been one more shadow from the flare but it was an arm, he was certain, and there was a head. It was lost as it sank into the greater darkness of a trough then seen again as it lifted on a wave. A shape square-cut that would be wreckage, a pale splash above it that was the face.
    Smith lowered the glasses. “It’s a man. Skipper Byers must have seen him because the drifter’s turned towards him.”
    The flare was burning low but it had served its purpose. Smith wished it was out, and swore softly. He could guess the cause of the skipper’s rashness. Geordie Byers must have found some flotsam from the RE8 and known that a man might be close by.