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  Lieutenant-Commander Bentley was crouched behind his binnacle. His stare was fixed with unblinking intensity on the stem of the leading cruiser. Both big ships were racing at them side by side—even if they had had time to swerve apart in the few seconds which had elapsed since Wind Rode had burst from the smoke, it is doubtful if they would have bothered; who would expect a lone destroyer to close the range of three cruisers and a destroyer flotilla?

  The same terrible instinct of judgment which stood behind him in the boxing-ring told Bentley in advance what the cruiser would do. His rangefinder eyes balanced its speed and direction, his right hand flicked up above his head, he whipped his hand down and his voice rang out in the ominous silence;

  “Fire!”

  J E MACDONNELL 7: THE WEAK LINK

  By J E Macdonnell

  First published by Horwitz Publications in 1959

  ©1959, 2022 by J E Macdonnell

  First electronic edition: February 2023

  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

  LIKE THE HOT potato under the mare’s tail, the incident was trivial in itself, but the results it sparked aboard H.M.A. Destroyer Wind Rode were not.

  As reported earlier in these chronicles of Lieutenant-Commander Peter Bentley and his old but spunky destroyer, Sub-Lieutenant Hanson was a long, thin man with a long, thin nose, and even with rather long, thin hair. This last appurtenance was sandy in colour, a shade which could be identified at any time by the few straggly strands of it that poked down below the edge of his cap.

  He had a solemn, anxious face and wistful eyes like a questioning spaniel. His solemnity and anxiety were definitely caused by his lack of sea experience and seamanship knowledge; the reason for his spaniel look was not so obvious. It will be easiest to charge his mother with that responsibility.

  Lieutenant-Commander Bentley knew that appearances are sometimes deceptive, and now and again when he had nothing better to do, and he gazed at his sub-lieutenant, Bentley found himself hoping that the old saw was true in this case. So far little had happened to turn his hope into conviction.

  Hanson had not yet committed any serious breaches, because in the order of things naval he was almost constantly under experienced supervision. Also in the order of things naval was the fact that a captain must be constantly planning ahead to allow for every possible contingency: so that Peter Bentley sometimes wondered how Sub-Lieutenant Hanson would conduct himself if ever it came about that he were in command of the ship, alone on the bridge, with his experienced supervision down in the wardroom or in the first-lieutenant’s cabin.

  At the moment it seemed unlikely that Bentley would have his wonderings enlightened. Wind Rode was steaming across a peaceful sea, on her own—though, as the sea which bore her long low length was named The Mediterranean, it was perfectly possible that she might not be alone for long.

  However, at this moment of a humid afternoon, she was alone. And with no specific duty to perform. She had been ordered to sea by the senior officer of her destroyer flotilla to carry out a routine sweep, the object of her orders being to nose around and see what she could see in the way of enemy movements, trusting to her speed to get her out of trouble if she should be so unfortunate as to sight any of his cruisers or battleships.

  Her other object was to engage and sink any enemy craft of her own weight—but she did not need senior-officer orders for that.

  The whole ship was a scene of quiet efficiency and contentment. The flat, polished Mediterranean, gleaming like bronze under the cloud-filtered rays of the afternoon sun came steadily on to meet Wind Rode’s sharp stem, parted and shone suddenly white, and slid with casual indifference out again from under her stern.

  For a mile or so back, the road of the destroyer’s passage marked the face of the sea; then the vast breathing swell smoothed out this insignificant scar, and the empty sea stretched far back to the even weld of sky and water.

  A seaman in overalls stepped carefully over the foot-high coaming leading from the fo’c’sle mess-deck, a bucket of dirty scrubbing water in his right hand. He stood a moment on the steel upper-deck near the port sea boat, breathing appreciatively.

  The sweat glistened in globules on his brown face. He looked up at the brown haze streaming flat from the funnel-lip, noted that it was carried over his head, and walked to the nearby guard-rail. He swung the solid, heavy bucket up and pitched its contents into the sea.

  For a moment he watched, idly, the brown stain drifting down the ship’s side, tossed and shredded by the toppling bow-wave—there was nothing else on all the sea to look at. Then he blew his nose over the side, wiped it with his bare brown forearm, and, whistling monotonously, stepped back into the humid half-light whence he’d come.

  Further forrard, and above the first seaman, up where the steel ladder mounted to the break of the fo’c’sle, another seaman sat in the middle of a large canvas-covered Carley float, poised on its latticed launching platform directly below the bridge.

  He was smoking; or, rather, had a lighted cigarette in his mouth, its ash half an inch long. He, too, had little interest in the bronze sea about him or the hot, cloud-piled sky above him; he was bent forward, his fingers twisting and forcing nimbly, splicing new handlines on the outer edge of the life-saving Carley float.

  Now and again he removed his cigarette and spat out the accumulated spittle. Invariably, before he spat, he looked up at the bridge above him—partly through a respectful delicacy, partly because the captain did not like spitting in his ship, although no man had been actually punished for it. And invariably, before he resumed work after spitting, he glanced casually ahead, in an embracing and automatic gesture, just to make sure that the empty sea was still empty.

  A few feet above the diligent splicer Sub-Lieutenant Hanson paced the bridge and stared dutifully out across the sea each time he made his turn. This afternoon-watch Hanson was on his own—he had the ship, with the captain in his sea cabin, the first-lieutenant on some inspection of his own on the quarterdeck mess-deck, and the rest of Wind Rode’s executive officers, off-duty, with their minds as far as possible away from the bridge.

  Though he would never admit it, not even to himself, Hanson was quite happy about the cloudy sky. The sun was hidden, and he was not yet completely proficient in taking navigational sights. It did not occur to his young and lazy mind that proficiency comes with practice ...

  He stopped his walk behind the binnacle, pulling at his long nose with his thumb and forefinger, and climbed leisurely on to the scrubbed wooden grating surrounding it—leisurely, because the sub-lieutenant had to prove to the bosun’s mate, the s
ignalman and the torpedoman on the depth-charge release levers, that he was quite comfortable in his job as officer of the watch.

  He was, this afternoon. On all sides the horizon wheeled round the ship in an uninterrupted circle; there was little he had to do but watch the course, keep a good lookout, see that the search radar was operating, and mark on the white chart with a black cross every fifteen minutes the ship’s estimated position by dead reckoning.

  Hanson noted that the helmsman was dead on course, waited a moment to see it was not accidental, then walked to the fore windbreak. He leaned his arms on the grey-painted copper, arching his back luxuriously, and staring dreamily at the hypnotic effect of calm, gleaming sea coming steadily on to meet the ship’s stern.

  Then he straightened his negligent posture abruptly, and stood erect, his hands clasped behind his back, his legs straddled to meet Wind Rode’s slight roll. He was on the bridge, and Lieutenant-Commander Bentley had intimated to him once how he expected his officers to comport themselves while on watch. Once had been enough.

  The unwelcome injection of the captain’s image into Hanson’s vacant mind started a train of thought, dutiful thought.

  He remembered clearly that paragraph in the seamanship manual which told its aspiring students that the officer of the watch had full control of the ship while he was on duty—subject always, of course, to the captain’s Standing Orders and his requirement that he must know any untoward alteration of course.

  And so Sub-Lieutenant Hanson’s disengaged mind began to think along leisurely lines of what he could do to discharge the power now vested in him. Something nice and uncomplicated, through which he could get into no trouble himself, and yet which would at the same time exemplify his zeal to those senior officers most likely to reward him for it.

  He turned and looked aft, and his roving eye fell upon the port sea boat. And at once he knew what he wanted to do. He turned to the bosun’s mate and ordered:

  “Exercise lifeboat’s crew!”

  In his unaccustomed role of zealous disciplinarian, Hanson’s voice was deliberately snappy—the words were rapped out. Now the word “exercise” takes some saying clearly at any time; when it is bitten out abruptly, and spoken from one side of the bridge to where the bosun’s mate was lounging on the other, the word is barely recognisable. But there were two things which registered plainly enough on the messenger’s mind—the words “lifeboat’s crew” and the urgency in the voice which uttered them.

  The urgency of the words communicated themselves to the bosun’s mate’s intelligence. He whipped out his pipe and leaped for the bridge ladder, and he was blowing a piercing cadence on his pipe and bellowing before he hit the foot of the ladder.

  Pleasantly surprised at the immediate reaction to his order, Hanson wandered to the rear of the bridge to see how quickly his testing order would be carried out. He was not disappointed.

  Almost before he reached his vantage point above the sea boat there was a flurry of running men about it. It is doubtful if in all the pipes carried out aboard a ship at sea there is one which commands such instant reaction, and jumps the heart so abruptly, as the pipe “Away lifeboat’s crew!” And that was what the hurrying bosun’s mate was piping.

  “Liberty men to clean,” or “All watches of the hands fall in,” or even “Hands will go to action stations in five minutes’ time,” are routine pipes, which you obey quickly enough. But the lifeboat being called away, as opposed to a motorboat or a sea boat, means only one thing—one of your shipmates has gone overboard. And the irrevocable order when that call is piped requires every man, no matter what his branch or job, to get into the sea boat just as quickly as his legs will allow him.

  So Sub-Lieutenant Hanson was not disappointed in the result of his casual intention to exercise the boat.

  He watched a huge leading-seaman leap from the deck into the boat in two jumps and grab for the tiller; he heard him exhorting the others to hurry, as he cast his stare out over the guiltless sea, searching for the unfortunate and involuntary swimmer.

  Then Hanson saw the massive figure of Hooky Walker, the chief bosun’s mate, come racing along the deck and, with one jerk of his steel hook, bring down the rope fall from the reel on the superstructure opposite the boat.

  Hanson smiled in appreciation, and then he wiped the smile from his fair young face—he was the officer who had ordered this, and his job was to watch with an eagle eye and note the faults of the men working down there below him at their urgent task.

  He saw the gripes knocked off the boat, and saw it sway outboard as the securing ropes let go; he saw the big leading-seaman bend down, do something with his right hand, come upright and shout, “Plug’s in!”

  And then he saw Hooky Walker, with another petty-officer on the other fall, begin to lower the boat towards the water creaming past at twenty knots below it.

  Up till this time Sub-Lieutenant Hanson had felt an inward glow, caused by the realisation that he was part of this snap-second efficiency—not more than ten seconds had passed since the bosun’s mate’s first pipe. He was more than part of it—he was the tip of the pyramid, the officer who had ordered it, who would later pronounce upon the efficiency of the exercise.

  But as he saw the boat begin to lower, he began to think that the leading-seaman in the boat, and Hooky Walker paying out the falls, were taking things a bit too realistically. If by some accident of urgency the dropping gear were slipped, the boat would drop into the water, and if dropped into the water while the ship was doing twenty knots, there most certainly would be one boat upended end for end, and possibly a few broken arms or legs.

  His mouth was open to yell when he heard a voice behind him on the bridge, brisk and competent and demanding.

  “Where is he? Stop both engines! You there—up aloft in the crow’s nest! Find him and keep him in sight!”

  And with the advent of that commanding voice on the bridge, all the simple pleasure Sub-Lieutenant Hanson had been deriving from his little exercise evaporated with something the same speed as a slight fog in Hades.

  He swung round, to meet the intent stare of his captain.

  “Where is he?” Bentley snapped, while he leaned sideways to the binnacle, feeling for his binoculars slung on their strap around it.

  “He—he—” Hanson gulped, and he saw two thin lines furrow themselves vertically above Bentley’s nose. “There’s nobody overboard, sir. It’s—it’s for exercise.”

  Bentley opened his tight lips as he received this explanation. Then he shut his mouth without speaking and leaped for the rear end of the bridge.

  “Avast lowering below!”

  The commanding bellow soared high above Hooky’s undulcet exhortations to lower faster. The weather beaten chief stared up and saw the captain staring down.

  Hooky’s bewilderment was understandable. Earlier, he had glimpsed the face of the officer of the watch watching their haste from the bridge; then he had heard the engine-room bells, and had felt the vibration of the ship lessening as she slowed—preparatory to dropping the boat into the water, of course. He did not know that Bentley had stopped the engines to prevent the screws slicing up the man overboard.

  Hooky craned his head back so that his neck muscles ridged over his collar and answered crisply, even through his surprise.

  “Avast lowering aye, aye, sir!”

  “Get those men out of the boat. Up the lifelines,” Bentley ordered. “Then secure the boat for sea.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Hooky repeated. It was an embracing reply, that one of hoary tradition.

  The lowerers had already ceased paying out on the falls, and the boat was hanging in mid-air, swaying with the roll of the ship, with all faces in it turned up to Hooky on the bridge.

  Hooky gave his orders, and turns were taken with the falls round the cleats. Then he swung round to the bosun’s mate, who, his part of the job done, was watching with interest.

  “You piped ‘Away
lifeboat’s crew’?” Hooky glowered at the youth.

  “Yes, Chief,” he answered confidently. “Officer of the watch’s orders. What’s up now?”

  Hooky ignored the quest for information.

  “I didn’t imagine you thought of it all by yourself,” he growled. “You’re sure he ordered that pipe?”

  “Of course, Chief. It don’t sound like ‘Out all offal,’ now does it?”

  Hooky quelled that facetiousness with a look.

  “Pipe ‘Clear lower-deck, up sea boat’,” he ordered. “Then report back to the bridge. And smack it about!”

  Secure in what he imagined to be his innocence, the bosun’s mate went hurrying on his way, the shrill cadence of his pipe fading aft towards the quarterdeck.

  It needed less than his own vast experience to tell Hooky things were tense on the bridge when he climbed the ladder and stepped on to the holy of holies. The captain was over against the starb’d side, and he was speaking forcefully to the officer of the watch. He swung round when he heard footsteps, and spoke at once, as though he knew it would be the chief bosun’s mate.

  “Over here, Buffer.”

  Hooky crossed quickly, with the rest of the bridge team trying hard and unsuccessfully to give the impression they were concerned only with the normal running of the ship.

  “Why did you lower the sea boat?” Bentley asked, without preamble.

  “Because I heard the lifeboat piped away, sir,” Hooky answered as quickly.

  “The lifeboat was not piped away!” Hanson spoke quickly and jerkily, before Bentley could comment. “It was piped for exercise only.”

  “For exercise?” Hooky stared at him blankly.

  “The lifeboat for exercise, sir? But the lifeboat’s never piped for exercise. It’s always the sea boat. When it’s lifeboat away, that means someone’s over the side.”

  Hooky stopped, realising he was giving an officer a lesson in elementary seamanship and officer of the watch duties. He had been forced into it by this revelation of stupidity and ignorance which had shocked his seaman’s heart.