The Ship Read online

  It might be said that while the ship was at sea the Captain never went more than five paces from his stool; at night he lay on an air mattress laid on the steel deck with a blanket over him, or a tarpaulin when it rained. Jerningham had known him to sleep for as much as four hours at a stretch like that, with the rain rattling down upon him, a fold of the stiff tarpaulin keeping the rain from actually falling on his face. It was marvellous that any man could sleep in those conditions; it was marvellous that any man bearing that load of responsibility could sleep at all; but, that being granted, it was also marvellous that a man once asleep could rouse himself so instantly to action. At a touch on his shoulder the Captain would raise his head to hear a report and would issue his orders without a moment in which to recover himself.

  The Captain was tough both mentally and physically, hard like steel – a picked man, Jerningham reminded himself. And no man could last long in command of a light cruiser in the Mediterranean if he were not tough. Yet toughness was only one essential requisite in the make-up of a cruiser captain. He had to be a man of the most sensitive and delicate reflexes, too, ready to react instantly to any stimulus. Mere vulgar physical courage was common enough, thought Jerningham, regretfully, even if he did not possess it himself, but in the Captain’s case it had to be combined with everything else, with moral courage, with the widest technical knowledge, with flexibility of mind and rapidity of thought and physical endurance – all this merely to command the ship in action, and that was only part of it. Before the ship could be brought into action it had to be made into an efficient fighting unit. Six hundred officers and men had to be trained to their work, and fitted into the intricate scheme of organization as complex as any jigsaw puzzle, and, once trained and organized, had to be maintained at fighting pitch. There were plenty of men who made reputations by successfully managing a big department store; managing a big ship of war was as great an achievement, even if not greater.

  Jerningham, with nearly three years of experience, knew a great deal about the Navy now, and yet his temperament and his early life and his duties in the ship still enabled him to look on the service dispassionately as a disinterested observer. He knew better than anyone else in the ship’s company how little work the Captain seemed to do when it came to routine business, how freely he delegated his power, and having delegated it, how cheerfully he trusted his subordinates, with none of those after-thoughts and fussinesses which Jerningham had seen in city offices. That was partly moral courage, of course, again, the ability to abide by a decision once having made it. But partly it was the result of the man’s own ability. His judgement was so sound, his sense of justice so exact, his foresight so keen, that everyone could rely on him. Jerningham suspected that there might be ships whose captains had not these advantages and who yet were not plagued with detail because officers and men united in keeping detail from them knowing that the decisions uttered would not be of help. Those would be unhappy ships. But the kind of captain under which he served was also not plagued with detail, because officers and men knew that when they should appeal to him the decisions that would be handed down to them would be correct, human, intelligent. In that case officers and men went on cheerfully working out their own destiny, secure in the knowledge that there was an ability greater than their own ready to help them should it become necessary. That would mean a happy, efficient ship like Artemis.

  Jerningham’s envy of the Captain’s capacity flared out anew as he thought about all this. It was a most remarkable sensation for Jerningham to feel that someone was a better man than he – Jerningham’s sublime egotism of pre-war days had survived uncounted setbacks. Lost games of tennis or golf, failure to convince an advertising manager that the copy laid before him was ideal for its purpose, could be discounted on the grounds of their relative unimportance, or because of bad luck, or the mental blindness of the advertising manager. In this case there was no excuse of that sort to be found. Jerningham had never yet met an advertising manager whose work he did not think he could do better himself; the same applied to office heads – and to husbands. But Jerningham had to admit to himself that the Captain was better fitted than he was to command a light cruiser, and it was no mitigation that he did not want to command a light cruiser.

  To recover his self-respect he called back into his mind again the fact that he had been quicker than the Captain in the identification of the Italian cruisers, and he went on to tell himself that the Captain would not stand a chance in competition with him for the affections of the young women of his set, with – not Dora Darby (Jerningham’s mind shied away from that subject hastily) – but with Dorothy Clough or Cicely French, say. That was a comforting line of thought. The Captain might be the finest light cruiser captain, actual or potential, on the Seven Seas – Jerningham thought he was – but he was not to compare with Jerningham in anything else, in the social graces, or in appreciation of art or literature. The man had probably never seen beauty in anything. And it was quite laughable to think of him trying to woo Cicely French the way Jerningham had, finding her in a tantrum of temper, and subtly coaxing her out of it with womanish sympathy, and playing deftly on her reaction to win her regard, and telepathically noting the play of her mood so as to seize the right moment for the final advance. The very thought of the Captain trying to do anything like that made Jerningham smile through all his misery as he met the Captain’s eye.

  The Captain smiled back, and stopped in his walk at Jerningham’s side.

  ‘Was it a surprise to you, their running away like that?’ asked the Captain.

  Jerningham had to think swiftly to get himself back on board Artemis today from a Paddington flat three years ago.

  ‘No, sir,’ he said. ‘Not very much.’

  That was the truth, inasmuch as he had had no preconceived tactical theories so as to be surprised at all.

  ‘It may be just a trick to get us away from the convoy,’ said the Captain. ‘Then their planes would have a chance. But I don’t think so.’

  ‘No, sir?’ said Jerningham.

  ‘There’s something bigger than cruisers out today, I fancy. They may be trying to head us into a trap.’

  The Captain’s eye was still everywhere. He saw at that moment, and Jerningham’s glance following him saw too, the flagship leading around in a sixteen-point turn.

  ‘Starboard fifteen,’ said the Navigating Lieutenant, and the deck canted hugely as Artemis followed her next ahead round. She plunged deeply half a dozen times as she crashed across the stern waves thrown up first by her predecessors and then by herself, and white water foamed across her forecastle.

  ‘Flagship’s signalling to convoy, sir,’ said the Chief Yeoman of Signals, ‘ “Resume previous course”.’

  ‘We’re staying between the Eyeties and the convoy,’ remarked the Captain, ‘and every minute brings us nearer to Malta.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Jerningham. He cast frantically about in his mind for some contribution to make to this conversation other than ‘Yes, sir,’ and ‘No, sir.’ He wanted to appear bright.

  ‘And night is coming,’ said Jerningham, grasping desperately at inspiration.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Captain. ‘The Eyeties are losing time. The most valuable asset they have, and they’re squandering it.’

  Jerningham looked at the Satanic eyebrows drawing together over the curved nose, the full lips compressed into a gash, and his telepathic sympathies told him how the Captain was thinking to himself what he would do if he commanded the Italian squadron, the resolution with which he would come plunging down into battle. And then the eyebrows separated again, and the lips softened into a smile.

  ‘The commonest mistake to make in war,’ said the Captain, ‘is to think that because a certain course seems to you to be the best for the enemy, that is the course he will take. He may not think it the best, or there may be some reason against it which you don’t know about.’

  ‘That’s true, sir,’ said Jerningham. It was not an aspect of w
ar he had ever thought about before; most of his thoughts in action were usually taken up by wondering what his own personal fate would be.

  Ordinary Seaman Whipple was climbing the difficult ladder to the crow’s nest to relieve the lookout there. The Captain allowed himself to watch the changeover being effected, and Jerningham saw him put back his head and inflate his chest to hail the masthead, and then he relaxed again with the words unspoken.

  ‘And the next commonest mistake,’ grinned the Captain, ‘is to give unnecessary orders. Whipple up there will keep a sharp lookout without my telling him. He knows that’s what he’s there for.’

  Jerningham gaped at him, wordless now, despite his efforts to appear bright. This was an aspect of the Captain’s character which he had never seen before, this courteous gentleman with his smiling common sense and insight into character. It crossed Jerningham’s mind, insanely at that moment, that perhaps the Captain after all might be able to make some progress with Cicely French if he wanted to.

  8

  From the Captain’s Report

  …the enemy’s cruisers were then joined by a fresh force consisting of two battleships of the ‘Littorio’ class and another cruiser of the ‘Bolzano’ class…

  Ordinary Seaman Albert Whipple was a crusader. Like most crusaders he was inclined to take himself a little too seriously, and that made him something of a butt to his friends. When he took over from Quimsby the latter grinned tolerantly and poked him in the ribs while pointing out to him the things in sight – the smoke of the Italian cruiser squadron, and their funnels just visible over the horizon, the distant shapes of the convoy wallowing doggedly along towards Malta.

  ‘An’ that thing in the front of the line is the flagship,’ concluded Quimsby with heavy-handed humour. ‘Give my regards to the Admiral when you get your commission.’

  For one of the theories that the lower deck maintained about Whipple’s seriousness was that he wanted promotion, aspiring to the quarterdeck, for Whipple had a secondary school education. The lower deck was wrong about this. All that Whipple wanted to do was to fight the enemy as efficiently as was in his power, in accordance with the precepts of his mother.

  Albert was the youngest of a large family, and his elder brothers and sisters were quite unlike him, big and burly, given to the drinking of beer and to riotous Saturday nights; they had all gone out to work at fourteen, and it was partly because of the consequent relief to the family finances that Albert had been able to set his foot on the lower rungs of the higher education. The brothers and sisters had not objected, had shown no jealousy that the youngest should have had better treatment than they; in fact, they had been mildly proud of him when he came home and reported proudly that he had won the scholarship which might be the beginning of a career. Albert was white-faced and skinny, like his mother, and desperately serious. The brothers and sisters had never paid any attention to their mother’s queer behaviour; their work in the tannery and the toy factory had made them good union members, but they had no sympathy with her further aspirations, with her desperate interest in the League of Nations, in the Japanese invasion of China and Franco’s rebellion in Spain. They had laughed, as their father had learned to do before they were born. Their father could remember as far back as 1914, when the eldest child – George – was on the way, finding her standing on the kerb watching the soldiers of the new army marching down the street, bands playing and people cheering, and yet she had tears running down her cheeks at the sight of it. Mr Whipple had clapped her on the back and told her to cheer up, and as soon as George was born had gone off and joined the army and had done his bit in Mespot. And when he had come back, long after the war was over, he had found her all worked up about the Treaty of Versailles, and when it was not the Treaty of Versailles it was some new worry about the Balkans or the militarization of the Rhine or something.

  She had tried to capture the interest of each of her children in turn regarding the problems of the world, and she had failed with each until Albert began to grow up. He listened to her; it was a help that during his formative years he came home to dinner while the rest ate sandwiches at the factory. Those tête-à-têtes across the kitchen table, the skinny little son listening rapt to the burning words of his skinny little mother, had had their effect. Albert had it in mind when he was still quite young that when he grew up it would be his mission to reform the world; he was a little priggish about it, feeling marked out from the rest of humanity, and this conception of himself had been accentuated by the fact that unlike his brothers and sisters he had started a secondary education, and that he passed, the summer in which war began, his school examination a year younger than the average of his fellows and with distinctions innumerable.

  The brothers had joined the Air Force or the Army, but with pitiably small sense of its being a sacred duty; they did not hold with Hitler’s goings on, and it was time something was done about it, but they did not think of themselves as crusaders and would have laughed at anyone who called them that. And Albert had stayed with his mother, while his father worked double shifts at the tannery, until after a few months Albert and his mother talked over the fact that now he was old enough to join one of the Services at least – a poster had told them how boys could join the Royal Navy. Mrs Whipple kept back her tears as they talked about it; in fact, she jealously hugged her pain to her breast, womanlike. At the back of her mind there was the thought of atonement, of a bloody sacrifice of what she held dearest in the world, to make amends for her country’s earlier lethargy and indifference. She was giving up her best loved son, but to him she talked only of his duty, of how his call had come to him when he was hardly old enough for the glory of it. And Albert had answered the call, and his confident certainty in the rightness of his mission had carried him through homesickness and seasickness, had left him unspotted by his messmates’ spoken filth and casual blasphemies. He had endured serenely their amused tolerance of his queer ways and priggish demeanour, and he devoted himself to the work in hand with a fanaticism which had raised the eyebrows of the petty officers of HMS Collingwood so that now he was Ordinary Seaman in Artemis and noted down in the Commander’s mental books – and in those of the Captain, too – as certain to make a good Leading Seaman in time.

  Sea service weathered his complexion to a healthy tan, but neither good food nor exercise had filled him out at all. Perhaps the thought of his mission kept him thin. He was still hollow-cheeked, and his comparatively wide forehead above his hollow cheeks and his little pointed chin made his face strangely wedge-shaped, which intensified the gleam in his eyes sunk deep under their brows. All his movements were quick and eager; he grabbed feverishly at the binoculars resting in their frame before his face, so anxious was he to take up his duties again, to resume his task of avenging Abyssinia and hastening the coming of the millennium. Lying in a hospital at that moment, her legs shattered by the ruins that a bomb from a German aeroplane had brought down, his mother was thinking of him, two thousand miles away; either through space or through time it was her spirit which was animating him.

  Whipple searched the horizon carefully, section by section, from the starboard beam to right ahead and then round to the port beam and back again; there was nothing to report, nothing in sight beyond what Quimsby had pointed out to him. He swivelled back again to the Italian squadron; his hatred might have been focused through lenses and prisms like some death-dealing ray, so intense was it. There were only the funnels of the cruisers to see, and the pall of smoke above them stretching back behind them in a dwindling plume. He swivelled slowly forward again, and checked his motion abruptly. There was a hint of smoke on the horizon at a point forward of the Italians, almost nothing to speak of, and yet a definite trace of smoke, all the same, and clearly it was no residual fragment of the smoke of any of the ships which Whipple had in sight. For five seconds Whipple watched it grow before he pressed the buzzer.

  The Captain’s secretary answered it – a man Whipple had never cared for. He
suspected him of he knew not what, but he had also seen him drunk, only just able to stagger along the brow back into the ship, and Whipple had no use for a man who let himself get drunk when there was work to be done, while there was a mission still unfulfilled. But Whipple did not allow his dislike to interfere with his duty. If anything, it made him more careful than ever with his enunciation, more painstaking to make an exact report of what he could see.

  ‘Forebridge,’ said Jerningham.

  ‘Masthead. More smoke visible on the port bow,’ said Whipple pedantically. ‘Beyond the enemy cruisers. Green three-eight.’

  He repeated himself just as pedantically. Back through the voice pipe, before Jerningham closed it, he could hear his report being relayed to the Captain, and that gave him the comforting assurance that Jerningham had got it right. He swept the horizon, rapidly and thoroughly, before looking at the new smoke again; it was always as well to take every possible precaution. But there was nothing further to report except as regards the new smoke. He pressed the buzzer again.

  ‘Masthead,’ he said. ‘The new lot of smoke is closing us. The same bearing. No, green three-nine.’

  A bigger wave than usual, or a combination of waves, lifted Artemis ten feet vertically at the same moment as beyond the horizon another combination of waves lifted the Italian battleship Legnano ten feet also. In that crystal clear air against the blue sky, Whipple caught a glimpse of solid grey – funnel tops and upperworks, the latter apparently the top storey of a massive gunnery control tower. It came and went almost instantaneously, but Whipple knew what it was, and felt a wave of fierce excitement pass over him like a flame. Yet excitement could not shake the cold fixity of his purpose to do his duty with exactitude.

  ‘Masthead,’ he said down the tube, dryly and unemotionally. ‘Battleship in sight. Green four-o.’