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  In recognition of his bravery in piloting a midget submarine into a harbour thick with the Japanese, and sending one of the Japs’ largest battleships to the bottom of the sea, Peter Bentley was given command of H.M.A.S. Wind Rode. It should have been a proud moment for the young lieutenant-commander … but Wind Rode was a sorry-looking destroyer. Everything about her had been allowed to slide.

  Peter had his work cut out for him, bringing her up to the standards he’d grown used to aboard his old ship, the Scimitar. And it was a job he couldn’t do alone.

  His old commander, Bruce Sainsbury V.C., recognized this and acted at once. He sent Bentley a new Number One, Bob Randall. And of course the one and only Hooky Walker as his buffer. With their support, Bentley was going to bring Wind Rode up to scratch, or the merciless enemy was going to send them down to Davy Jones’ locker …

  J. E. MACDONNELL 5: COMMAND

  By J E Macdonnell

  First published by Horwitz Publications in 1959

  ©1959, 2022 by J E Macdonnell

  First Electronic Edition: December 2022

  Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by means (electronic, digital, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book

  Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate

  Series Editor: Janet Whitehead

  Text © Piccadilly Publishing

  Visit www.piccadillypublishing.org to read more about our books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  IT WAS QUITE probable that, if his plane had not been an hour early, destroyer Wind Rode would have sent a boat across the Brisbane River to bring her new captain on board.

  Probable, but not completely definite, Lieutenant-Commander Peter Bentley was to decide an hour after he had joined his new command. But at this time, four o’clock on a scorching Brisbane afternoon, Bentley felt no qualms in his capacious boxer’s breast—he was filled only with a sense of impatience to get across the muddy stream and step on board the destroyer he could see inboard of a corvette, moored at a long pier of the fitting-out yard below the soaring arch of the Storey Bridge.

  The aircraft on the flight up from Sydney had been clean and cool, so Bentley’s khaki shirt and shorts still looked freshly ironed. It would be months of sea-time before the brand-new two and a half gold rings on his shoulders took on their patina of use and experience.

  He could have seated himself in the small ferry-passenger shed on the wharf, but he chose to pace up and down the wooden planks. Every few seconds his lean, tanned face would swing and he would stare across the river. Then he would glance at his watch.

  His straight lips twisted in a self-conscious grin; he had another half-hour to wait before the expected time of his arrival, before he could hope for a boat across. He turned at the head of the pier and came back along its edge more slowly.

  Above him, through a barricade of buildings, came the muted roar of the Queen Street traffic. From somewhere down the twisting river pierced out, strident yet mournful, two blasts on a steamship’s siren. Automatically his mind registered that she was turning to port. And then, consciously, his thoughts turned back to those last drinks in his old captain’s cabin aboard the modern Fleet destroyer Scimitar.

  “And now, my boy,” Captain Sainsbury had said to him, his vulturine head lowered so that he looked up at his erstwhile first-lieutenant through lidded eyes, “here comes the advice. A new broom, of course, sweeps clean. But there are a hell of a lot of corners in a ship. Some of them have gathered dust, perhaps. But sometimes it is a good thing if one leaves certain dust undisturbed.”

  His pinched lips had extended themselves a fraction in the closest his vinegary face ever got to a smile. “You follow me?”

  Bentley had grinned back at him, affectionately.

  “There are times when the Nelsonian blind eye can still be used?”

  “Precisely. Now that we are—um—captains together, I feel I can disclose that in this ship I have more than once turned a blind eye on certain doings. You were not aware of that?”

  “Not actually aware of specific instances, sir. But I gathered that you had a few clues as to what went on.”

  “M’mm. Well, my boy. I’m sure you must be anxious to be off and see what Wind Rode looks like.

  “No doubt you’ll have your own ideas on how she should be handled. Take things easy for a bit. They’re used to their old captain. Give ’em time to get used to you. Bring in your innovations gradually. And remember this—for the first month or so they’ll be watching you like hawks. From the ordinary-seaman second-class to the first-lieutenant.”

  Sainsbury had stood up, his thin hand out. He did not say “Don’t worry,” or “You’ll be all right,” or anything equally platitudinous.

  He said, quite simply, as a brief statement of fact: “You’ve been well trained.”

  He had been well trained, Bentley mused, his eye on an indeterminate boat which had shot from astern of the corvette. Trained by an expert seaman and a ruthless fighter trained so well that destroyer Wind Rode’s crew would have to come his way, and not he theirs.

  He grinned mentally at the fierceness of the thought. He was in precisely the wrong attitude to step aboard his new command—his first command, if you didn’t count the midget submarine whose handling under a Jap cruiser in Sabang Harbour had brought him his new half-ring and the sonorous-sounding tide of “Commanding Officer, H.M.A.S. Wind Rode.” 1

  Take it easy, old Aunty Sainsbury had advised him. He would. And with that thought in his mind he noticed, now that she was closer, that it was a destroyer’s boat which had emerged from astern of the corvette, and that she was filled with liberty men.

  He should have known there would be a liberty boat at four—when the Navy night began, the duty watch on board shifted into night-clothing and the watch ashore cleaned into Number One suits for the evening’s carousal. He ceased his pacing and waited at the head of the pier steps for the boat to come alongside.

  He heard the voices while the boat was still almost in midstream. It was something so foreign to his experience that he thought at first something must be wrong with the crowd of men. ‘Silence in the boat’ when going ashore was a rigid injunction.

  He peered with his intent gaze, but could see nothing untoward in the boat, except that it was filled with a laughing, loud-talking crowd of roisterers. Bentley’s jaw came forward a little.

  A thin, penetrating voice came into his consciousness, as if its owner had been standing beside him.

  “Take it easy.”

  He took another look at the boat, now a few yards off and noticed that the men seemed to be dressed neatly enough. Then he turned his back and walked deliberately away from the steps, partly to avoid the reprimand his training urged him to deliver, and partly to save himself the trouble of returning the salutes of twenty-odd men. In any case, the person most at fault was the boat’s coxswain: a leading-seaman in charge of a boat away from the ship had almost as much autocratic power
as the captain himself.

  Timing his slow walk, he was back at the steps watching as the last liberty man jumped ashore, passed a ribald comment to the cox’n, and then ran to catch up with his mates. Bentley paused at the top of the steps and stared down at the man holding the boat’s tiller. The coxswain looked up, dropped his gaze as the watering sun shone in his eyes, and then jerked his head up again as he remembered the rings on the strange officer’s shoulders, looking at him with a sort of dull interest.

  He was big and broad, and everything about him had a heavy swagger that was as aggressive as a clenched fist. The waistband of his stained khaki shorts hung below his pendulous belly, and the tail of his shirt was almost out at the back. Bentley’s intent gaze flicked from the coxswain’s coarse face and took in the boat.

  A ship is known by her boats. The grey paint was blistering off the wood, and uneven patches of colour showed where new paint had been daubed over old without scraping. Even on the pier he smelt it—the sour, oily smell of unpumped bilge water.

  Take it easy …

  “Get my gear into the boat, Coxswain,” he ordered courteously.

  The leading-seaman coxswain stared back up at Bentley almost aggressively. A thin furrow formed above the officer’s nose. He was about to speak again when the cox’n mumbled “Aye, aye, sir”, and swung his head to the bowman, who was holding the boat in against the pier with a boat-hook.

  “All right, you ’eard! Secure yer bow and give us a hand here.”

  The bowman was also staring at his new captain with undisguised interest. Now he hastily flung a rope over a bollard, secured it with a few turns round a cleat, and then jumped on to the steps. While they carried down his big wooden chest and two suitcases Bentley paced a few steps along to the boat’s bow, and back again, his head turned to look down into her.

  He was appalled at what he saw. Not only Scimitar’s, but the boats of every ship be had served in, had been kept spotless. A ship’s boats are her shore-touching ambassadors. They speak in clear and definite language to a seaman. This filthy craft shouted to Bentley in terms of sloth, disinterest and lack of supervision.

  “Is that the lot, sir?”

  Bentley turned his head. The coxswain stood before him, his face dull and heavy and tokenly polite. Bentley’s eyes began to narrow in distaste before he checked the movement. He could actually smell the man—the sour, unwashed odour of sweat.

  “That’s all, yes,” he said, his voice clipped. “Return to the ship.”

  The coxswain hitched up his shorts, wriggling his belly.

  “We was told to wait, sir.”

  “For how long? Who for?”

  “For the first-lieutenant. He ought be here any tick now.”

  “Very well,” Bentley decided quickly. The destroyer would probably have only one boat in the water, and he might as well meet his second-in-command now. “We’ll wait ten minutes.”

  “Yes, sir,” the other mumbled.

  He hesitated, then when Bentley said no more, rolled down the steps and into the boat. The new captain resumed his leisured pacing. He knew that both of the boat’s crew were eyeing him surreptitiously, and he kept the worry he felt out of his face. He excused the state of the boat on the grounds that the ship was in dockyard routine; but that reasoning collapsed when he admitted to himself that it was only the ship that was in dockyard hands. With his ship unavoidably dirty, a zealous first-lieutenant would have seen to it that his boats were, by contrast, kept even cleaner than normal.

  At the exact moment when the ten minutes were up Bentley tossed his cigarette into the stream and ran lightly down the steps. The coxswain saluted him into the boat.

  “Cast off, sir?”

  Bentley nodded.

  He knew that the coxswain had had no way of formally warning the officer of the day or the quarter-master that their new captain was unexpectedly in the boat. Nor did he try to get the important information across to the destroyer’s low quarter-deck in any of the time honoured ways—by swinging his boat wide, so that the quarter-deck staff could see the passenger, or by slyly holding his hand up with four fingers extended to mean four captain’s rings. He simply brought his craft straight up to the starb’d gangway, edging it in between the sterns of destroyer and corvette.

  Bentley jumped nimbly on to the platform and ran up the ladder.

  The officer of the day was Sub-Lieutenant Hanson. He was young, and lanky, and loose-limbed, with thin, sandy hair, a few strands of which poked down below the edge of his cap. This was the quietest part of the day, with ship’s work stopped and the first boat of liberty men sent ashore.

  He was leaning against the gangway desk, idly scanning the deck-log before departing down to the cooler wardroom, when a brown shirt with two and a half gold stripes rose beneath the guard-rails, followed by the bronzed face and wide shoulders of Lieutenant-Commander Bentley.

  Hanson was not alarmed. Officers of such rank, and higher, often came aboard, usually engineers from the dockyard. And the captain was not expected for almost an hour. He casually closed the log book and sauntered to the head of the ladder.

  The newcomer saluted the quarter-deck, and it was that gesture which first tingled the beginnings of suspicion in Hanson’s mind. The big hand with long fingers had snapped up in a salute which no engineer, or any officer not of the gunnery branch, could have hoped to achieve.

  So Hanson’s own fingers, which had started to rise slackly and wide apart in the return salute, suddenly stretched themselves into a straight rigid line by the time they reached the peak of his cap.

  “Good afternoon,” said a deep, pleasant voice. “My name is Bentley.”

  Hanson’s whole frame stiffened. He gulped, and was uncertain whether to hold out his hand. Bentley saw the indecision, and with a natural gesture held out his own hand. Hanson felt his fingers gripped hard and briefly.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” Hanson mumbled. “I didn’t recognise you.”

  “No reason why you should. You’ve never seen me before.”

  “No, sir. I haven’t.” Then, feeling that this revelation had its limits, and noting that the new captain was still standing there, smiling a little, waiting. Hanson hurried on:

  “Captain’s not on deck—wasn’t expecting you yet, sir. I’ll take you to his cabin.”

  He whirled his skinny frame round, and at that moment the boat coxswain came into sight at the head of the gangway.

  “Orders for the motor-boat, sir?”

  “Eh? Oh, yes. Secure the boat.”

  “First-lieutenant’s not back yet, sir.”

  The coxswain’s voice was resigned: as though he thought he was dealing with a clot, Bentley decided. He waited with intent to see how Hanson put the fellow in his place.

  “Oh yes, of course,” Hanson said mildly. “All right, Cox’n, go back in and wait for him.”

  The big seaman stood there.

  “We been runnin’ a lot today, sir,” he grumbled. “We didn’t even finish our tea when the liberty boat was called away.”

  “Keep silent! Get back into your boat and do as you’re told.”

  Hard with command, Bentley’s voice cut across the quiet quarter-deck and jerked the coxswain’s head up. He stared into an eye as hard and cold as an ice pick. His own gaze lowered.

  “Aye, aye, sir,” he answered, and with no further attempt at procrastination ran down the gangway and jumped into his boat.

  “What is that man’s name?” Bentley asked coldly.

  “Leading-Seaman Snade, sir,” Hanson answered, his eyes wide. He added, as though he were anxious to appease this newly-revealed martinet with more information, “He does a lot of wrestling.”

  Bentley was not impressed. In fact, he seemed to have forgotten the incident. His voice was pleasant.

  “Now, if you please, the captain’s cabin.”

  “Certainly, sir!”

  Glad to be relieved of further intimate contact
with such disciplined hardness aboard what had been up to now a soft berth, the officer of the day hurried forward on his thin legs. Bentley paced with long strides behind him.

  The new captain tried not to see the appalling state of Wind Rode’s upper deck—the stinking cabbage crates, the yellowed sheets of newspapers pressed against the base of the funnel by the wind, the line of washing strung between the torpedo tubes, the pile of life-jackets from the sea boat used as a smokeoh-nest by greasy dockyard workers, the oily filth of the whole steel deck.

  He kept telling himself that it was due to being in dockyard hands. But he had been in dockyard hands before, and he knew he was deluding himself.

  Hanson seemed to have suddenly discovered how his ship must look to eyes used to better things. His head swung from side to side as they approached each pile of offal, and once he spoke to a petty-officer who stood slackly to attention as the two officers passed.

  “I want you on the quarter-deck, Buffer,” Bentley heard him say.

  Bentley’s intense stare flicked over the man’s face as he went by him. So this was the Buffer; the chief bosun’s mate, the man responsible to the first-lieutenant for the cleanliness and efficiency of everything on the upper-deck, the counterpart of Bentley’s Buffer in Scimitar, Hooky Walker. My God! Bentley thought.

  Then Hanson stopped, as an officer appeared on the fo’c’sle deck above them and came walking to the ladder which led down to where they were, near the galley. Even if the gold rings on the officer’s shoulders had not told him, Bentley would have known he was the captain by the diffident way in which Hanson half-turned his head back to him.

  Bentley stopped a few feet from the foot of the ladder, looking up at the man he had come to relieve.

  Lieutenant-Commander Danvers was a man of about fifty, large and rambling in his gait as he came up to the ladder, with a capless, bald head and a veiled grey eye. His mouth, which embraced the stem of an old pipe, kept screwing round and round from side to side, as he looked sagaciously and affably at the stranger.