Stand by to Ram! Read online

  “You’re here, sir!” Looking up sideways at his tall, heavy length, Sainsbury saw the swift look he darted at the sub lieutenant. Fair enough, the captain thought. The sub should have immediately gone out and told him the captain was present in the mess. But, then, the sub probably thought he had better wait for the toast. But that look convinced Sainsbury that Snelling’s absence was accidental.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Afraid you caught me with my pants down, sort of thing. Literally. Thanks,” to the steward who had come in with his private pewter tankard. He smiled down at the captain. “We’re going to toast the old battle-wagon, sir?”

  “You’re a little late, Number One. I’m afraid we’ve done that. By the way... ” to ease his deputy’s obvious discomfiture, “our sailing orders came while I was dressing.” He pulled out a long signal. “You’ve seen this?”

  “No, sir. Hasn’t reached me yet.” He took the signal in his big hands, and Sainsbury’s fastidious nature noted with faint and completely unwarranted distaste, the thick hair which grew in black clusters on the back of his fingers. Snelling read quickly, and handed the pink form back.

  “Looks interesting, sir. And plenty of yakka.”

  Sainsbury nodded. He felt the intensity of the interest on the watching faces. No harm in telling them. They’d have enough sense to keep it to themselves, even though the gold on some sleeves was as new as the ship itself. He cleared his throat with two or three sharp little coughs. “We’re sailing tomorrow,” he told them, quietly, and noted the pantry door was closed. “Hervey Bay. We’ll work-up there. The admiral has given us six weeks. Short enough, believe me. It’ll mean we’re flat-out from the word go.”

  He paused, and the voice—young, diffident—came clearly in the silence.

  “Hervey Bay, sir?” It was the surgeon-lieutenant. “Is that far from here?”

  God, thought Sainsbury, not that green, surely! He looked at the surgeon’s face—young, freckled, a bow-wave of fair hair curling down over his forehead. And shortly the ship would be going into action...

  “No, Doc, not far,” the captain answered equably. “You’ll need to get your first-aid party into shape pretty quickly. We may have need of ’em soon.” And then, because he did not want this celebration dinner to develop into a lecture, he grinned his creased smile at the first-lieutenant.

  “I think I could go the other half, Number One.”

  “Of course, sir!” and Snelling leaned back and pressed the pantry buzzer.

  The dinner passed off pleasantly enough—Auntie could be engaging when he wanted to. Gradually, by the time the port was passed, tongues began to loosen. At the head of the table, Snelling facing him at the far end, Sainsbury watched them, passing a word now and then to Guns on his left hand. They seemed a keen enough crowd—but all of them young. But it was a young man’s war, this, especially at sea; an electronic war that needed keen, educated young brains to manipulate the complexities of gunnery and radar control. And in a ship like this they were legion. Frightening almost, the maze of dials in the radar control room and the transmitting-station, the nerve centre of all big guns. The bridge itself—an aircraft’s panel was like a billiard table compared to the masses of dial-faces staring at him from the windbreak. But they had six weeks.

  He did not linger long after they had eaten. He had two more beers, put his glass down, grunted “Well,” and rose. The mess rose with him. He smiled at them, muttered something about age catching up with him, said, more clearly, “Watch your stomachs. It could be rough outside tomorrow,” and with a smile and a nod to Snelling stepped out of the wardroom.

  They waited, by unspoken consent, until the clattering on the ladder had ceased. Then the talk buzzed out.

  “Seems not a bad old stick, eh?” grinned the asdic-officer, known universally as “Ping.” This was because of the pinging sound his submarine-detection set made as it shafted out its sound waves. “Though a bit old-maidish. What d’you reckon, Guns? You’ve shipped with him before.”

  The gunner, who was at sea when the asdic-officer was still in triangular trousers, scowled at him.

  “At least he’s an old maid,” he grunted.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Ping grinned impudently. “But give me time. I’ll grow. Come on, then. What d’you know about him?”

  The gunner waited. Clearly it was the first-lieutenant’s duty, particularly while he was present in the mess, to scotch this junior-officer discussion of the commanding officer. But Snelling was grinning as he lowered his bulk into the most comfortable chair against the bulkhead. Once down, he reached behind him for the buzzer, found it, and pressed hard.

  “All right,” Hutchens growled. “I’ll tell you about him. First of all, he’s a destroyer-man. And that means he’s forgotten more about seamanship than the boys in the big ships know. I was with him in the old Swordsman. Towing an oil-lighter heavy as us from Darwin to Fremantle. On the edge of a cyclone. Tow parted seven times. Seven times the Old Man re-passed it. Ship rolling her guts out. And never even scraped the paintwork!”

  “All right, all right, Guns,” Snelling grinned. “Ease down, old boy. We’ know the Old... the captain knows his drill. But that was Swordsman. She’s a cockleshell compared to this hooker. The real test is still to come.”

  The gunner swivelled. He stared at Snelling in astonishment. What sort of bloke was this? The whole mess—young, raw—was listening. Hutchens shut his mouth.

  When he opened it his voice was bitter.

  “There’s gonna be a test for a lot of us in this ship,” he growled. “But I’m not worried about how the Old Man comes through his.”

  Snelling’s eyes narrowed at the tone. But he kept his voice even.

  “That’s right, Guns. We’ve all got a lot to learn.” Then, because he could not afford to tangle with the gunner, yet—he was too valuable—Snelling laughed.

  “What the hell’s up with you pikers? This is a celebration! Now, then—who’s going to buy me a beer?” He looked directly at the surgeon.

  “Why, yes, of course, Number One,” the surgeon said hastily. He raised his voice. “Waiter?”

  Waiter! The gunner choked in his beer. He finished it, then got up.

  “I’ll leave it to you young shavers,” he growled, and made for his cabin.

  In his sea-cabin under the bridge the captain undressed slowly. He rubbed his eyes, and took a deep breath. It had been a heavy day; he was dead tired and his bunk lay invitingly. Resting his head on the pillow, he remembered that here he could feel against his ear, when the ship was under way, the pulsation of the engines, like the beating of the ship’s heart. Lying in the stillness, the ship quiet at her buoy, he thought that the engines were the ship’s heart, working their steel limbs of pistons and pumps headlong or slow with a silent, determined smoothness.

  He lay there tallying his forces as a poker player would consider the laws of chance in a deck of cards. He had a powerful, brand-new destroyer and 300 men, half of them trained men, half of them recruits from Flinders Naval Base. Yesterday he had browsed through their Service certificates. Of his men, he remembered one had been a grocer’s assistant, another a railway porter; there was a tram conductor and a car sprayer, a public schoolboy, a shoemaker and a lad from Brisbane who put patterns on silk for ladies’ dresses.

  But he had a set of tough petty-officers, the backbone of his command. They would do the drilling. He had some good officers; he had a few who were green.

  This was how the captain weighed his orders, the ability of his ship, the enemy up north. This was what command meant; not the flamboyant dash of a 30-knot greyhound, but this insistent consideration of a hundred changing elements. At thirty-eight, it was a burden that kept him awake at night and formed his mouth into a long, thin line. It was a thing you couldn’t tell anybody; it was something a man knew only after long years of experience.

  Sainsbury inhaled deeply, and threw his head back; he blew the breath out in a long, slow hiss. Sometimes—as now, in the loneliness of his cabin—the magnitude of the job ahead daunted him. The ship was so new! He turned on his side and closed his eyes, deliberately relaxing the muscles of his whole body. He tried to sleep, but his mind couldn’t relax. There came into his memory the scene he had witnessed yesterday, before breakfast.

  He had been on the bridge, looking for a copy of the tide-tables of Hervey Bay. Below, on B-gun, he had heard voices—the gunner and his gunner’s mate, the man chiefly responsible for gunnery drill.

  “No, Hutch,” the petty-officer said. “Never seen anythin’ like ’em before.”

  Sainsbury ignored the familiar “Hutch,” addressed to one of his officers. He knew that gunner and petty-officer had been messmates before the gunner was commissioned. He knew also that that “Hutch” would be strictly confined to the deserted gun-deck. The gunner’s deep voice growled back:

  “Me either. Bloody things! Look as big as a cruiser’s turret. Okay, then, let’s get into it. Open the book. I’ll pull levers and we’ll see what happens.”

  Never before had the rawness of his ship’s company been brought home to him with such force. Here were two of his most experienced men inspecting one of the big guns—pulling levers to see what would happen. Sainsbury stepped forward and peered down over the edge of the windbreak.

  His last destroyer’s guns had been single-gun four-inchers, trained and laid by hand. These two below him, at the flick of a switch, could be trained with your little finger at a speed fast enough to follow a Jap fighter crossing your bows. With their long snouts, bores glistening with oil, the thick sliding breeches set side by side, and above them heavy recoil cylinders ready to receive the shock of discharge, they looked vicious, and deadly. They were the absolute latest in destroyer guns, and Scimitar carried six of them: and not a man who was familiar with their working.

  Sainsbury had left them to it. He collected his book and quietly left the bridge.

  Now, sleepless in his cabin, he thought again—six weeks! He had no doubt that the gunner and gunner’s mate would have their crews drilled to perfection in that time—provided their working-up period was not interrupted by an urgent order to join the Fleet. He was not sure which bothered him more—the danger to the ship from taking her into action unprepared, or the embarrassment almost shame, which would attend on their making a cock of some manoeuvre or firing in the eyes of the battle-wise Fleet.

  He mentally shrugged. Too bad. Other captains must go through this. But that was small comfort. He was the captain here, and this was his band-box of a ship. Then he thought of the compliment that had been paid his experience when they had given him command of her. He smiled, and in the pale blue light from the police-light in the cabin the gesture relaxed the strain and worry from his burned face. He was still thinking of programmes and drills when he dozed off.

  Next day dawned grey and blustery. The walls of his cabin were barely visible in the early morning light when Sainsbury woke. He lay still in his bunk, listening automatically for the sounds that speak to a seaman in clear and definite language. The wind stirred the brown curtains fringing the cabin’s two portholes; the water lapped companionably, without malice, against her side. He heard one of die watch-keepers padding in sandshoes along the foc’s’le deck, whistling softly. He also heard the whine of the wind in the rigging, and knew from the direction of the curtains’ swinging that it was north-east. They would be bucking into it, then. A nice wet run, which would help to shake the tram-conductors and baker’s boys down. He got up and had breakfast.

  He heard the first-lieutenant’s voice from the bottom of the bridge ladder. With his usual quiet, deliberate step Sainsbury mounted the iron ladder, so that he was not heard. His quick glance took in the little tableau on the port side of the bridge—Snelling, striking one open palm with his clenched fist to give emphasis to his words, and, facing him, his face respectful, but red, the signal yeoman, a seasoned petty-officer.

  “I don’t give a damn if I was under the shower!” Snelling said, obviously in answer to the yeoman’s excuse. “The messenger should have left the signal in my cabin, and told me he had!”

  “Yes, sir. But he’s a bit green yet, sir.”

  “He’s green, is he? Then whose fault is that? You’re carried in the ship to wipe off the greenness! Or do you feel your petty-officer’s rate is too much for you to carry? Eh?”

  “No, sir. I’ll get on to him right away.”

  “You do that! And smack it about! If this happens again you’ll find... oh, good morning, sir. All right, Sanders. Don’t let it happen again,”

  “No, sir.”

  Avoiding his captain’s eyes—it was a long time since he had been bawled out in public like that—Petty-officer Sanders hurried past the captain and clattered down the ladder. Sainsbury drew Snelling over to him with a look. “What’s that all about, Number One?”

  “Slackness, sir, downright slackness.” Snelling’s voice was loaded with self-righteousness. “Important signal. Messenger saw I was under the shower, left without telling me about it. I’ve just had a piece of Sanders about it.”

  “So I heard, Number One. So did the whole bridge team. Next time you might be a little more circumspect with a petty-officer.”

  “Sir? But he’s responsible for ...”

  “I know what he’s responsible for, Number One.” Sainsbury’s voice was quiet, so that the bridge would not hear. “He’s also responsible for maintaining discipline in his branch. With a raw crew like this we’ve got to back him up in that. You understand? I have no quarrel with your remarks—only the place in which you delivered them. All right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Now. We’re ready to slip?”

  Naturally, you bloody old woman! Snelling’s flushed face said. His voice answered: “Yes, sir. All hands on board. Singled up forrard and aft. Main engines tested.”

  “Thank you. We’ll move off, then. Send our departure signal.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Snelling bawled “Signalman!” and ordered the scared youth to semaphore their departure to Garden Island.

  “I’ll really have to get rid of you,” Sainsbury thought as he looked about him gauging the wind and tide, and the distance to the cruiser behind him. “Unless you shake down better than this. Maybe it’s over keenness—feels his rawness, too.”

  Then he forgot Snelling—forgot everything else but what he had to do; get 300 ft. of power-packed hull cleanly away from the pier, with the cruiser obviously watching him, and the admiral almost certainly doing the same from the heights of Garden Island. Yesterday, with the ship in dockyard hands, they had used a tug to get clear. But a destroyer captain in a fully-commissioned ship would as soon think of using a tug as would a skiff’s coxswain. He bent to the wheelhouse voice-pipe.

  “Stand by, cox’n.”

  In the wheelhouse directly below the coxswain stood at the wooden, spoked wheel, his legs straddled. He was a tall, rather elderly man, with quiet confidence and surety stamped all over his thin, keen face. He was the senior man on the lower deck, the confidant of captains, the in-corruptible link between wardroom and lower-deck. He was the chief of the ship’s police, responsible for discipline, and when the ship approached land or went into action he took the wheel, remaining there while danger lasted, whether it was an hour or a day. He had been in the Navy longer than any man on board, and was a petty-officer when Midshipman Sainsbury, before the war, took the oath to serve his King in a small, awed voice. He leaned forward, so that his face was well inside the wide bell-mouth of the bridge voice-pipe. His voice was clear and confident.

  “Stand by, sir,” he repeated the order. He paused, then added, quietly, so that his voice would not carry too far. “Like old times, sir.”

  A feeling of the most intense gratitude flooded through Sainsbury as he heard the simple words. They knew each other well, these two; Sainsbury had had him transferred from their last ship. In the coxswain’s simple phrase was a world of understanding and sympathy; there was also the implication that whatever the captain ordered would be carried out to the last meticulous letter.

  “Yes,” Sainsbury said, his voice clipped. “Pass the word to the engine-room.”

  “Word to the engine-room, sir,” and now the coxswain’s voice was also clipped, competent. The brief moment of intimacy had been offered, accepted, and forgotten. He nodded to the young telegraph man standing alertly beside his instrument. In four seconds the message had been passed to the waiting engine-room.

  Most of the bridge team was experienced—not so in other parts of the ship. Down aft the quarter-deck men were waiting to slip, the two lines of shivering men drawn up under the watchful, and not at all satisfied, eye of the captain of the top, a burly, thick-necked petty-officer, named Bullen.

  Bullen took his somewhat disgusted gaze from his “men” and looked forrard and up to the bridge, waiting the signal to slip. Sensing the time was near, he turned and said: “You on the end there. What’s your name?”

  A well-modulated voice answered:

  “Stephenson, sir.”

  “Don’t call me ‘sir.’ Jump over and cast off that spring racking.”

  “I beg pardon—chief? I didn’t quite catch your order.”

  “Cast off that spring racking. And quiet with it.”

  “The racking? Oh, yes. Right you are.”

  Bullen leaned over the guard-rails near the quintuple torpedo-tubes until he could see the first-lieutenant on the bridge. In a minute or two Snelling waved his arms in the peculiar gesture common to seamen, which means “Let go everything,” and then retired from the edge of the bridge to report to the captain. Bullen shouted to Stephenson in the waist:

  “Right! Slip that spring!”

  He waited. Nothing happened. Again he shouted: “Slip that bloody spring!”