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  “Bit obvious, sir, eh?” Randall said to Bentley, his voice bitter.

  “All right. Bob,” Bentley said, his voice calm. “Take it easy.”

  And then he saw Pomeroy, his brow-hung eyes on Randall, the stranger in their midst, making his way towards them.

  “Take it easy,” Bentley cautioned again, and took a deep breath of smoke into his lungs.

  “Strange dials,” Pomeroy’s deep voice boomed in their ears, “are always welcome in this forsaken hole. My name’s Pomeroy—answer to nothing but Pommy.” He shoved out a ham of a hand.

  “How do you do?” Bentley answered politely. “Bentley. This is Lieutenant Randall, my first-lieutenant.”

  Afterwards, Bentley remembered how Bromage must have felt, and he felt sorry for him. For now the flotilla-leader said hastily:

  “What the hell are you doing here, Pommy? Isn’t there any work for you loafers out in a certain desert? Or has Rommel packed up—I don’t think!”

  Pomeroy ignored him, apart from a brief lengthening of his lips around his pipe stem. He turned to Randall.

  “I was talking about Australians. In this show I’ve always found it pays to pass on your own experience—might save a bloke’s life some time. I tell you this, chum …” He look his pipe out and aimed it at Randall’s taut face like a cannon. “If you ever have anything to do with Australians—don’t. Steer well clear. Unless you like to be let down when the pressure’s on.” He swallowed a large mouthful of beer and licked his lips. “But you birds are lucky. Not likely to be mixed up with ’em at all. Brother, what you’re not missing! Take that stink I heard you fellers got mixed up in last night—don’t know much about it, but we got a bit of a whisper ashore. Bit touchy, eh? But you were all British ships. Hence your presence here now, swilling this filthy stuff.”

  He looked down at the deck, shaking his heavy head. Then he looked up at Randall, and did not seem to notice that the lieutenant’s mouth was set like a ridge of granite.

  “If ever you do have to work with Australians,” Pomeroy went on, his voice serious, with a lecturing quality about it, “make sure you keep ’em well away from any position of importance or responsibility. They’ll crack, you know. No discipline.” He drained his glass. “I know! Fellers should never have been brought over here. A waste of good transports.”

  Pomeroy finished, and looked around for the steward. When he had started, Bentley’s main attention had been on Randall. But as the Array man talked on, the incredulity faded out of Bentley’s features before a spreading hardness of cold calculating anger. He swallowed once, and his chin settled down on his chest.

  He tried to keep it in. He knew he should keep it in, for the sake of Bromage and Thomas, his hosts. Then he thought that restraint would serve only to perpetuate the impression this over-size galoot had of men who had come fifteen thousand miles to help fight in his battle. His head came up, and he looked at Pomeroy. His voice was brittle.

  “Major Pomeroy!”

  The other’s head swung at the tone. He stared at the cold face before him; Bentley’s straight solid eyes drove at him like fists. Geniality tightened into instinctive caution on Pomeroy’s face.

  “I am an Australian,” Bentley said. He had hold of himself now, his intention was clear in his mind. His features were a flat mask of impassively regulated scenery behind his long straight nose. “My first- lieutenant is an Australian. We sail in an Australian ship. She was in the night action you mentioned. You are entitled, I suppose, to your opinion of us. What surprises me is that an officer of your rank should express it with such fatuous imbecility.”

  Surprise had changed to quick anger in Pomeroy’s heavy face. His mouth opened.

  “We are a lot of strange nations banded together in this war,” Bentley’s voice went on remorselessly. “Obviously talk like yours will tend to alienate the bond between us. I repeat—I am surprised that I have to point out to a man of your age the crass stupidity of his actions.”

  There was complete silence in the crowded room; it was hardly broken by a breath. The two officers stood facing each other. Pomeroy big and hard and heavy, Bentley as big, but with a lithe look missing in the other’s heaviness. Pomeroy’s teeth were gripped round his pipe stem, and the corners of his mouth were twisted down under the force of the emotion struggling for release in his face. It seemed as if he might burst abruptly into a bellow of rage, but something—perhaps the cold quietness of the Australian’s tone—kept his voice down, so that it seemed to be half-strangled when he spoke.

  “I see. I did not know you were Australians.” He paused. Bromage’s face relaxed again into something more like its normal geniality.

  “If I had,” Pomeroy went on deliberately, “I should have spared myself the embarrassment of meeting you.”

  Bromage’s face tightened. Earlier he had felt apprehension, the insignificant worry of a host who knows he has brought together men of differing ideas. Now, with Pomeroy’s last words, his face hardened into anger. He stared at the major, and he knew that Pomeroy was having difficulty in holding himself in. And he knew why. Before Bromage could do anything about it, the dam burst.

  “I don’t know what you did out there last night!” Pomeroy snapped. “I wasn’t there. But I was in Greece. And I bloody well nearly went for a Burton because of blasted Australians! I and my men! Crass stupidity, eh? You’re so right. If I hadn’t been so stupid I’d have put the lot of ’em up against a wall and shot the mongrels!”

  “Major Pomeroy!”

  The voice had a whipcrack in it. It came from neither Bentley nor Bromage, but from the slight frame of Lieutenant-Commander Thomas, the ship’s captain. Pomeroy’s head jerked round. He saw Thomas standing a few feet away, his hands down at his sides, and his eyes like gimlets in the weather-toughened face.

  “You already are aware that these two officers are my guests. You still chose to insult them.”

  “What about me?” Pomeroy almost snarled. “I’m not a guest?”

  He glared at the little captain but his gaze was returned from an eye like an ice-pick. Thomas did not answer his question; and every second that passed without that answer served to make the answer more definite. Pomeroy was not a guest—he had come on board uninvited.

  The realisation of this, of what they must be thinking, sent a scarlet tide flooding up into his face. He turned his head from Thomas and stared at Bentley, and now his brown face had gone hard as polished teak.

  “My opinion hasn’t altered,” he said, and swung about abruptly and left the room.

  Bentley lit a cigarette and lowered himself into a chair through a leisured breath of smoke. The move seemed to break the tension. Talk broke out, matches flared, and Bromage sat down beside Bentley.

  “I’m damned sorry,” he said. “I was frightened that might happen,” he went on frankly, “knowing the bloke and his phobia. But I never dreamed he’d go on with it once he knew who you were.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” Bentley smiled sideways at him.

  “I am worried about it,” Bromage answered. He scraped the end of his cigarette around the edge of the tall ashtray near his feet. “What you said has made me realise what the result could be, of talk like that. We know him of old, you know. Quite a nice feller, really. Always spouting about Australians and how useless they are. In here, among us, it didn’t matter. If his story is true, he’s got some reason to beef. But we’re a pretty heterogeneous bunch, as you said—and talk like that won’t help to cement us together.”

  “What is his story?” Bentley asked.

  Bromage hooked a chair round with one foot and nodded to Randall. The first-lieutenant sat down without speaking.

  “Greece,” Bromage started. “Some pass or defile or something. Pomeroy had a platoon then—pretty beaten up, I believe. They’d been on the run southwards to the evacuation beaches for days. Pomeroy detailed an Australian gun-crew to hold the pass while he got his own crowd dug-in to receive the tanks they knew were after ’em.”

  Bromage look up his beer and sipped it. He laid the glass down slowly.

  “It appears that your chaps took one shot at the German tanks then beat it for their lives. Two things make our late friend ropable—he wouldn’t have worried so much if the Aussies had held ’em off long enough for him io dig-in: second, they left the breechblock in the 25-pounder. So there he was caught out in the open more or less, and being fired on with ammo made in Birmingham. I’m afraid it left a nasty taste.”

  “I see.” Bentley drew the last smoke of his cigarette deep into his lungs, and shed the butt in the ashtray. “That would make him more than a bit shirty.”

  “Yes. His crowd were pretty well cut up, I believe. Pomeroy and two others got away.”

  “What I meant,” Bentley persisted, “was that a thing like that would make a man rather browned off towards the gun-crew. But why the hell does he assume the whole race of Diggers are mongrels? They’ve had a stoush or two out there in the desert, you know.”

  “And out there at sea.” Bromage’s face crinkled. “I see your point. But the gun-crew had been Pomeroy’s only contact with your chaps. He’s had no experience of how the rest of you can stoush.”

  “Which makes him even more juvenile than I thought,” Bentley growled. Randall said nothing, but the lift of his brows as he looked at his captain shouted agreement. “He made it clear that he wouldn’t like to fight under or with Australians again. For their sake, I hope they don’t have to. The man’s mind is about as broad as a marlin spike.”

  “Anyway,” Bromage said, who was secretly pleased that this hard-faced couple were taking the insult so well, “that still leaves our little problem unresolved. We’re still a dozen or so bottles unbroached. Heaven knows when we’ll get any more, so … steward!”

  Bromage and Thomas did their best, aided by Beveridge, the lank skipper of Griffin, the fourth boat of the flotilla, but the party never quite regained its earlier spontaneity. It became animated for a time when they re-fought the previous night’s action, and Randall saw the junior British officers looking with something like awe at Bentley as Bromage outlined Wind Rode’s part in the violent hour. The Australian was much younger than his brother captains, and they judged him now with added interest after hearing Pomeroy’s emphatic assessment of this captain’s countrymen.

  It will be a long time before that big lout gets invited into this wardroom, Randall thought with relish.

  The party broke up when Bromage looked at his watch and growled:

  “All right for you young fellers, but I need my sleep. We’ve a job on tomorrow, anyway. Thanks, Tommo—a hell of a nice ding.”

  It was not an order, but it was as good as ... They downed their ones for the gangway and took up their caps. Bentley walked to the head of the gangway with Bromage. The cool night air was welcome after the fug below.

  “What’s on tomorrow, sir?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

  “Nothing serious,” Bromage said. “A sweep westward with a brace of cruisers—see what we can flush out. Pity I hadn’t caught a salvo in my funnel. When will you be ready?”

  “Not much more than a week, sir. My team has cleared things up. As soon as the dockyard people get aboard they’ll be able to hop straight into it.”

  “Good. Well, good night, Bentley. You might like to dine with me when we get back?”

  “Delighted, sir.” It was the conventional junior-to-senior answer, but Bentley meant it. He was coming to like this chubby fighter; and already he felt a definite leaning towards Thomas for the way he had handled the belligerent Pomeroy. He hadn’t seen much of Beveridge, the remaining captain. He seemed pleasant enough. Bromage had a good team with him, Bentley decided. He hoped he could continue to keep his end up.

  “Good night, old chap,” said Thomas’s thin voice beside him. He shook Bentley’s hand, and peered up into his face, dimly lit by the shaded gangway light.

  “I shouldn’t hesitate to come over again,” Thomas told him. “There’ll be no repeat performance of tonight’s little unpleasantness.”

  “I’m not worried about it. I hope you’re not.” Bentley gave him a warm, quick smile. Thomas, the host, must be feeling the unfortunate scene acutely. “I won’t be seeing Pomeroy again, I imagine. Coming, Bob?”

  “Yes, sir.” Randall answered. “Good night, sir,” he said to Thomas.

  “Cheers, Number One. We must give your lads a game of football when we get back.”

  “They’ll be in that,” Randall grinned, and stepped on to the little platform at the head of the gangway.

  At that moment the first bombs fell.

  Chapter Two

  THE BOMBERS CAME in very high: one would have had to listen acutely to have heard their approach, but what they carried—the messengers they unleashed on the ships below—were easily heard.

  It seemed the sound began directly above the heads of the group at the gangway—as though a tunnel had been bored through space downwards on them, and the bombs rolled over and down. Then the water off Greyhound’s starboard bow leapt upwards in a ghostly column, rising abruptly to a peak, holding, standing there arrested in motion, before being hurled swiftly in shreds back whence it came. The force of the explosion struck at the destroyer’s thin hull and rang throughout her length.

  Randall leaped down the ladder, with Bentley so close to him he could feel the brush of his clothes. The motorboat sheered away from the ship’s side before they were seated, so that they rocked violently back and forth like marionettes before they found balance. Two other boats were racing away from Greyhound’s side.

  In the black sky searchlights swung, the hard white streams of light crossing restlessly back and forth, probing. One found a bomber, held, while its twin streaked in and held it fixed. Along these upward- reaching roads of light the anti-aircraft tracer shells ran, each bursting in black puffs with a vivid heart of red.

  But the bombers were so high and so small from this viewpoint, it was impossible to tell whether any hits or near-misses had been scored. The bedlam which arises from such sudden attacks had grown now from one of surprised activity to the steady but still chaotic response to the surprise attack. Men were moving at once crazily yet deftly, positively to where they should be.

  By the time the boat reached Wind Rode’s gangway the supporting groups of bombers had arrived: the harbour was alive with water-spouts flinging up to meet the echoing sky. In between the thudding concussions of bomb bursts they could hear the sound of aircraft engines, a high massed thunder.

  The Fleet had joined in the shore defences. The allocation of buoys and berths had been done deliberately, and now the grey ships, strategically placed, were putting up the famed Alexandria box-barrage—a protective rectangular umbrella composed of steel and thunder.

  Hanson received them on board, his fair face nervously alert.

  “Watertight doors closed, sir,” he reported at once. “Ship closed-up for action.”

  “All hands on board?” Bentley was already walking quickly towards the bridge.

  “Yes, sir. Leave was up at eleven o’clock ...” Hanson trailed off—the captain knew this. Bentley did. He spared a moment to reflect that the enemy aircraft should have arrived at ten o’clock: then they would have caught half the Fleet ashore.

  Randall clattered behind him up to the bridge. They stood there, watching the fireworks. There was nothing they could do—Wind Rode was stuck there for at least a week, until her repairs from the nightaction had been completed.

  “Greyhound and Havock under way,” Randall reported quietly.

  Bentley nodded. He stared out at the two long grey shapes slipping ghostlike through the torn water. The alcoholic slackness in his mind had been crushed down by his will and the extraneous circumstances, and his eyes were steady and clear. He watched Havock, Bromage’s ship, and the one nearest to them, swing her length into the channel and spawn a smother of white from her tail as she increased speed to get outside—the battleships and cruisers were looking after the box-barrage.

  Then Randall swore beside him, a single tense epithet that was lost in the thunder that reached them from Havock.

  Beside her, all around her, shutting her completely from their sight, a vast forest of white water was hurled up. The curtain swelled up, higher than her masts, then shredded into a veil of thinning spray. Through it their astonished eyes saw the flotilla leader still intact, still steaming. In five seconds all that remained to tell of her miraculous escape was a streaming circle of white on the surface of the water astern.

  “Brother!” said Randall, and the fervour in his voice expressed the feelings of all of them.

  The roar of the barrage was loud and continuous, above the crack of the cruisers’ anti-aircraft guns the duller, heavier explosions of the battleships’ five-point-fives. High above them, like fireflies pinned against a background of black velvet, the rapid winking of red eyes showed where the shells were bursting. No aircraft could plunge down through that explosive curtain and live.

  A sudden vicious spang of metal from the side of the bridge.

  “That shrapnel’s coming down like rain,” Bentley growled. “Clear the bridge!”

  While Randall ushered the bridge team below, Bentley picked up the microphone.

  “This is the captain speaking. I doubt if we will open fire. The barrage is keeping them too high. All exposed personnel on the upper-deck take cover. Remain in the vicinity of your weapons. Fire and repair parties stand by. That’s all.”

  “Chart-house, Peter?” Randall asked. They were alone on the bridge now.

  “Yes. We can’t do any good up here.”

  They started for the head of the ladder, walking quickly, for the bridge was lighted by the cones of searchlights. When the flash came, Bentley thought, under the first impulse of its enormity, that it was a battleship’s magazine gone up. A violent peak of red-hot flame screamed into the sky from behind their stern. It towered over the harbour, towered over the crouched city, turned the night into fierce, red light.