Brown on Resolution Page 8
But Charybdis was a dying ship, even though the thrust of her screws still drove her madly through the water. Her side was torn open; she would have been wrapped in flame were it not that the shells pitching close alongside sometimes threw tons of water on board and extinguished some of the fire. The merciless shells had riven and wrenched her frail upper works until the dead there outnumbered the living. Her guns still spoke spasmodically through the smoke; the White Ensign still flew overhead, challenging the interloping Black Cross on a white ground which flunted itself from Ziethen. When the oldest navy met the newest, pride left no room for surrender; barbaric victory or barbaric death were the only chances open to the iron men in their iron ships. Feebly spoke Charybdis’ guns, and for every single shell which was flung at Ziethen a full salvo came winging back, five shells at a time, directed by an uninjured central control, with the range known to a yard. Even as Charybdis made her last hit her death was in the air. It smote her hard upon her injured side; it reached and detonated the starboard magazine so that a crashing explosion tore the ship across. The hungry sea boiled in; the stokers and the artificers and the engineers whom the explosion had not killed died in their scores as the water trapped them below decks. Even as the boilers exploded, even as the ship drove madly below the surface, Ziethen’s last salvo smote her and burst amid the chaos caused by its predecessors. In thirty seconds Charybdis had passed from a living thing to a dead, from a fighting ship to a twisted tangle of iron falling through the sunlit upper waters of the Pacific down into the freezing darkness of the unfathomed bottom. Above her the circling whirlpools lived their scanty minute amid the vast bubbles which came boiling up to the surface; a smear of oil and coal dust marred the azure beauty of the Pacific, and at its centre floated a little gathering of wreckage, human and inhuman, living and dead—nearly all dead.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE RECORD OF Brown’s doings while Charybdis fought Ziethen is not material to this history. He was only a part of a whole, and whatever he did the credit belongs not to him, but to the Navy, the tremendous institution which had trained him and disciplined him. If in the last few desperate moments he fought his gun without superior direction, that was because handling a 4.7 under all conditions had been grained into his nature; the credit should rather go to the whiskered admirals of an earlier epoch who had laid down the instructions for gun drill. Brown was a brave man, and he did not flinch from his post, but many men less brave than he would have done the same had they been parts of the same whole. It was the Navy of the unrivalled past which gained glory from the defeat of this, an inconsiderable fraction of itself just as that same Navy must bear the blame, if blame there is. That is as it should be, but at the same time the argument hands over to Brown all the glory and honour for what he did on Resolution, and to Brown as an individual must be given the credit for the eventual destruction of Ziethen. For he acted on Resolution without orders, on his own keen initiative, under conditions where neither discipline nor training could help him.
That was all still in the future, however, and not one of the German boat’s crew which picked him up as they pulled through the scattered wreckage knew that they would soon meet their deaths through the agency of this shaken fragment of humanity. Very thoroughly did the boat’s crew search, rowing hither and yon over the oil-streaked water, but they found little. There were two dead men—one of them so shattered that he hardly appeared human—two or three wounded, and one merely half-stunned; this last was a stoutly-built fellow of medium height, very freckled, with hard grey eyes and light-brown hair, inclined to be as rebellious as was possible within the narrow limits of its close crop. He was very badly shaken, having been blown from the deck to the water when the magazine exploded and he was hardly conscious of holding on to a stray rolled hammock which came to the surface providentially near him when Charybdis sank. He lay limp in the bottom of the boat as it rowed back to Ziethen, and he had to be assisted to the ship’s deck.
All he wanted at that time was to allow his weakness to overcome him, to fall to the deck and sleep heavily, but the exigencies of war would not allow him that luxury. He was the only one of the three survivors of Charybdis who was even half conscious, and Captain Lutz, bearing on his shoulders the responsibility for Ziethen and her hundreds of men, must know at once how Charybdis came to be where she was; whether she had consorts near who could have heard her wireless, whether the meeting was intentional or accidental—everything, in fact, which would enable him to spin out his little hour in being. They did not treat Brown unkindly; they dried him and gave him spirits and wrapped him in a comfortable woollen nightshirt and allowed him to sit in a chair in the dispensary beside the sick-bay while he was being questioned.
Brown rolled dazed eyes over his questioners as he sat huddled in his chair. The bearded officer with the four rings of gold lace must be Ziethen’s captain, he knew; the young officer was a sub-lieutenant; the shirt-sleeved man was the Surgeon (who had been doing gory work on the half-dozen wounded Charybdis’ shells had injured), and the naval rating in the background was the sick-bay steward.
Fierce and keen were the Captain’s questions, uttered in a guttural and toneless English; occasionally the Captain would turn and speak explosively in German to the Sub-Lieutenant, who in turn would address Brown in an English far purer and without a trace of accent. Brown made halting replies, his eyelids drooping with weariness. He told of Charybdis’ slow progress through the Carolines and Marshalls, and steady course eastwards across the Pacific, No, he did not know of any other English ship near. He had heard nothing of any concentration against the German squadron. It was at this point that the Captain called upon the Sub-Lieutenant to interpret, and the Sub-Lieutenant duly informed Brown in passionless tones that a prisoner who made false statements was guilty of espionage, and as such was liable to be shot, and undoubtedly in this instance would be shot.
“Yes,” said Brown.
“Was Charybdis expecting to encounter Ziethen?”
“I don’t know,” said Brown.
“What was her course and destination at the time of meeting?”
“I don’t know,” said Brown.
Now, did he want to be well treated while he was on board?
“Yes,” said Brown.
Then let him answer their questions sensibly. Whither was Charybdis bound?
“I don’t know,” said Brown, and at this point the medical officer intervened, and Captain Lutz left him testily. Brown had been speaking the truth when he said he did not know; but he had a shrewd idea all the same, and had he told Captain Lutz of his suspicions he might have relieved that officer of a great burden of worry. But that was no way Brown’s business—on the contrary. Captain Lutz’s ill-timed threat had reminded him of the fact at the very moment when, in his half-dazed condition, he was likely in reply to kindly questioning to have told all he knew or thought.
The Surgeon spoke to the sick-bay steward, who summoned a colleague, and between them they tucked Brown into a cot in the sick-bay, put a hot bottle at his feet (shock had left him cold and weak) and allowed him to fall away into that deep, intense sleep for which his every fibre seemed to be clamouring. And while Brown slept Ziethen came round on her heel and headed back eastwards.
For Charybdis had not gone to the bottom quite without exacting some compensation. One of her 4.7-inch shells had struck Ziethen fair and true a foot above the waterline, and a yard forward of the limits of her armour belt. There the shell had burst, smashing a great hole through which the sea raced in such a volume that the pumps were hard put to it to keep the water from gaining until, after the battle, a sweating work party had got a collision mat over the hole, while inside the stokers cleared the bunker, into which the hole opened, of the coal which interfered with the work of the pumps. Examination of the damage showed it to be extensive. Nowhere else on all the side of the ship could a shell of that calibre have been put to better use. The forward armour plate, starboard side, was slightly buckl
ed and loose on its rivets; there was a hole in the skin ten feet across, one-third of it below water, and, worst of all, the bulkhead and watertight door between the injured compartment and the next (the boiler compartment, and largest of all) were involved in the damage as well. The ship was actually in danger; in smooth water she had nothing to fear, but, given a Pacific gale and Pacific rollers, the collision mat inevitably torn off and the pumps choked with coal dust, two compartments might fill and Ziethen would go to join Charybdis on the bottom.
Clearly it meant the postponement of Ziethen’s projected raid. The New Zealand meat ships and the Australian convoys would be left in peace for the time. No captain would risk his ship on a long voyage in such a condition, least of all the captain of a German warship with no friends within five thousand miles, with the constant possibility of a battle at any moment, and the certainty of one sooner or later. Ziethen must find a harbour, a haven of some sort, where she could rest while her shattered hull was being patched and that without delay. A neutral port would mean almost certain internment, the most ignominious ending possible to a voyage; or if by any miracle she was not interned, her presence would be broadcast far and wide, and on her exit from neutral waters she would find awaiting her an overwhelming force of the enemy. So that ports with docks and stores and necessaries were barred to her. She must find somewhere a deserted piece of land from which news would not spread, where she would be able to find shelter while her own artificers forged and fixed new plates, and where it was unlikely that enemy warships would find her or inquisitive Government officials complain of breaches of neutrality. In the Pacific there was more than one such haven, but the nearest was far superior to all others; Captain Lutz knew the answer to the question he set himself before even he had found it by consultation of charts and sailing directions. Resolution Island, that last, most northerly outlier of the Galapagos Archipelago, would suit him best of all. So Ziethen set her course for Resolution Island, a thousand miles away, her pumps at work, while a relay of sweating artificers down in the Stygian depths of her toiled to keep them clear. Browne slept the heavy, exhausted sleep of profound shock the while Ziethen’s propellers beat their monotonous rhythm, driving her onwards to where Brown’s fate awaited him.
He slept all the rest of the day and most of the night. And though he had the sailor’s habit of sound sleep and the readiness of sleep of the strong-minded, towards morning he was wakened more than once by a painful, unexplainable noise, a bubbling howl which in his sleepy condition appeared to him to be neither human nor connected with the ship. It died away each time, however, and he slept again, but in the morning, when he was fully awake, he heard it again. It seemed to come from the other side of the bulkhead, and he could not explain it to himself. He looked about him; he was alone, although there was another empty cot in the cabin. The interior was a cool white, and a whirling electric fan helped out the portholes in their business of ventilation, but the air which came in hardly seemed to cool the cabin. For Ziethen was almost on the Equator, and iron decks and iron bulkheads mean a sweltering heat, under a vertical sun. The heat was dry and redolent of hot metal, but Brown was used to it; two years on the lower deck in the tropics had made such a state of affairs almost normal to him.
Brown had not much time to think before the sick-bay steward he remembered from yesterday entered the cabin. His jolly German face creased into a smile as he saw Brown normal and conscious again. He put a thermometer into Brown’s mouth, and smiled again as he read it and noted the result on the chart at the head of the cot. He spoke to him amicably, and grinned as he realized that Brown did not understand a word he said. He made Brown comfortable as dexterously as a nurse might, twitched the blankets into place and smoothed the bedclothes and waddled away with a friendly look over his shoulder. Ten minutes later he returned with the Surgeon.
“Bedder, eh?” said that officer with a glance at the chart. Automatically he took Brown’s wrist and produced his watch simultaneously, felt his pulse and nodded.
“Any bain any blace?” he asked.
“No, sir,” said Brown.
“Feeling all right, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You can haf breagfast, den.”
The Surgeon spoke to the steward, who vanished and returned almost at once. He brought good grey bread and tinned butter, and coffee which was not as good as either; but Brown relished it all. As the Surgeon retired the steward brought him a bundle of clothes—shirt and jumper and loose trousers, and socks and shoes; they were the white duck uniform of a German sailor, and Brown put them on, a little troubled by the minor differences between it and the English naval uniform—the collar, for example, had to be buttoned awkwardly inside—but the general fit was not too bad. The plump steward still grinned in elephantine friendliness.
The rest of the morning passed. The Commander, cold-eyed and detached, came in on a round of inspection, ran his eye over him and went his way without a word. Then he was led once more into the presence of the Captain and searchingly questioned. Brown did his best not to give information; he fell back when hard-pressed upon a stolid, brainless stupidity, and the most penetrating questions rattled harmlessly from his ‘I don’t knows’. And since it was extremely probable that a mere leading seaman from an isolated cruiser should know nothing, the Captain in the end dropped the inquisition. And, after all, it is doubtful if anything Brown could have told him would have added to Captain von Lutz’s information. The Captain was about to dismiss him when the Sub-Lieutenant interposed with a respectful question. The Captain thought for a moment, exchanged a few sentences with the Sub-Lieutenant, and uttered his verdict. It was a verdict settling Brown’s fate—and the fate of Ziethen too, but no one was to know that.
Brown heard of the decision on his return to the sick bay.
“You are to helb here,” said the Surgeon to him.
Brown could only stare without understanding, and the Surgeon (with enormous condescension on the part of an officer towards a man in ordinary seaman’s uniform) explained in a fatherly manner.
“What are we to do wit you on board here?” he asked. “Pud you in prison? Prison is not good in the dropigs. You gan ztay and helb nurse your vrients. You will not run away, we know.”
And he laughed throatily; Brown did not realize how exceedingly condescending it was on the part even of a non-combatant German officer to crack a joke with a seaman.
It was thus that Brown learned the explanation of the groaning noise of the night before. The plump steward led him into the adjoining ward of the sick-bay. There on two cots lay two wrecks of men. One had his head half swathed in bandages, through which once more a red stain was beginning to show. He lay on his back in the cot with his fingers writhing, and through a shapeless hole in the bandages over his mouth there came a continued low, bubbling groan—low now, but clearly likely to rise at any moment to that higher penetrating pitch Brown remembered so well. Half a forehead and one eye remained uncovered to show Brown that beneath the bandages lay what had once been the homely, friendly features of Ginger Harris, a messmate of his and a bosom friend of two years’ standing. There was no hint of recognition in that one eye of Ginger’s when it opened; all Ginger’s thoughts were at present concentrated upon himself. Later, when Brown saw what was beneath the bandages, he was not surprised.
The second cot was occupied by a leading signalman whom Brown did not know at all well, and he hardly recognized him because of the marble-like pallor which had overspread his face; he was so thin and so exceedingly pale—even his lips were white—that he was more like a soulless visitor from another world as he lay motionless in the cot. Brown wondered what was the injury from which he was suffering, and looked inquiringly at the fat steward. The latter soon enlightened him; he indicated a bulge beneath the bedclothes, whirled his arms round like a windmill, said ‘Sh-sh,’ and tapped his leg. Brown grasped his meaning; the leading signalman had come within reach of one of Charybdis’ gigantic propellers as she
sank and had lost his leg. Perhaps he had been lucky in that the whirling blades had not cut him to mincemeat instead of merely hacking off a limb, but Brown realized that there could be two opinions about that.
So that he and these two wrecks were the sole survivors of the four hundred and odd men who had constituted the crew of Charybdis. Four hundred dead men were drifting in the middle depths of the Pacific, a prey for the shark and the squid. It had been a vain, frantic sacrifice, part of the price the Navy must pay for the glory of keeping the bellies of an unthinking population charged with their accustomed meat and bread. Brown could picture back in England, the arrival of the news of the loss of Charybdis with all-hands. The tea parties would say, ‘Dear me, how sad!’ and go on talking about cancer of the womb; and the business offices would say, ‘Mismanagement somewhere, of course,’ and revert to the Cesarewitch or the delinquencies of office boys. Brown had no illusions about that. He knew how little the people for whom he was fighting appreciated his services and those of his fellows. They might inflate themselves with pride over having the largest Navy in the world, and sing little songs about ‘Britannia, the Pride of the Ocean,’ and stand a bluejacket a drink, and the better read might talk hazily about ‘the command of the sea’; but of the irresistible strength of sea power, of the profundity of study and research and self-sacrifice necessary to employ it—or of what lay beneath Ginger Harris’s bandages—they knew nothing. Brown’s upper lip rose a little, and his blunt chin came forward at the same time. None of that affected his determination to do his duty; his duty to the Navy, to himself and (although he would not think of it in those words) to the memory of his mother. He would help feed the babbling mob of civilians, if he could, but not for the civilians’ sake.