Alan Evans: Thunder at Dawn

Smith shrugged; these things did not matter. Thunder would drag out her last days beating up and down this coast then return to home waters to become a depot-ship- back to the dockyard wall. What mattered was that he had his duty and he would do it. He heard a scrape of a boot on the ladder and saw the clinging figure scrambling unsteadily up to the bridge and thought these last days and weeks would be long ones. It was his sentence and there would be no reprieve.

He stepped forward as the Captain stumbled on to the bridge and fetched up against the rail. Before Smith could speak he growled, “Get on with it!”

“Aye, aye, sir.”

Now instead of tension there was an unease on the bridge. Smith saw Aitkyne’s mouth twisted with disgust and saw the navigator turning away to hide it. A look-out yelled, the guns trained, the lights blazed out at the pinnace then died and the darkness returned.

The Captain turned slowly on Smith and said thickly, “Waste of time.” And added an obscenity. Smith did not answer. The Captain pushed past him to the head of the ladder and fell head first to the deck below.

It sounded like a sack of coal hitting the deck.

Smith shouted, “The Captain’s fallen!” He dropped down the ladder and knelt by the Captain. The Captain’s cap still rolled on the deck till Smith set his hand on it. Aitkyne leaned over him. “I shouldn’t touch him, sir. Doctor’s on his way.”

Smith shook his head and fumbled in the pocket of his bridge coat for a torch.

Albrecht the surgeon came, breathing heavily and dropped to his knees beside the Captain. His examination was swift. When he gently and carefully lifted the Captain’s head in the light of Smith’s torch they all saw the terrible wound at the back of the skull where it hit the deck. A party gently carried the Captain down to the sick-bay and Smith waited there until Albrecht made his report. “Massive concussion. God knows what damage may have been done to the brain.”

“He has a chance of recovery?”

“I wouldn’t have been surprised if an injury like that had killed him instantly. Add to that the effects of shock and …” He did not need to finish; the gin reeked.

Smith went to his cabin. He managed to sleep only once and only then to jerk awake, running with sweat. He had not dreamed of the Captain, the fall and the sickening end of that falling. It was the old dream again of the two great ships growing huge out of the dark to hurl the fires of hell at him. He made his way forward through the sleeping ship to the sick-bay, and found Albrecht alone. Smith raised his eyebrows in enquiry and the Doctor shook his head. “No change.”

They stood in silence watching the Captain until Smith asked, it was more question than statement, “An unusual name, Albrecht.”

Albrecht’s lips twitched sardonically. “In this Navy, yes. My grandfather came over from Germany in ’forty-eight. He became British; I was born British. When this war started and the mobs threw bricks at shops with German names I thought I might change my name. But I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ashamed of it. And then it seemed if I had called myself Atkins they would still have chased me but with white feathers because I wasn’t in uniform. So I decided they could all go to hell and joined the Navy for the duration.” He smiled faintly. “The lower deck call me the ’orrible ’un.” The smile faded. “But I didn’t want anything to do with the war. I didn’t want to join the Navy, I just ran away to it. I think the war is stupid and ought to be stopped —” He broke off.

Smith said, “That’s a view that takes some courage with a name like Albrecht.”

The Doctor shrugged. “No. When you’re a ministering angel it’s different. If was a sea-officer —” Again he stopped but now embarrassed for Smith who smiled coldly.

“If you were and you had any sense you would keep your mouth shut.”

Albrecht stared at him. “You are not a pacifist?”

Smith said deliberately, “I think wars are better won than lost, better avoided than won. They’re not an excuse for stupidity and carelessness.”

Albrecht blinked. “That’s scarcely the philosophy of a fire-eater.”

Fire-eater. Smith knew he was not that. Someone must have described him thus to Albrecht, though God knew why.

“It’s the philosophy of a man who has been shot over.”

“More than once.”

“Yes.”

“And likely to be again.” Albrecht shook his head, baffled, intrigued.

“If you see a risk that has to be taken, you , Doctor, take it and cut away. So do I.”

Albrecht grinned. “But my patients don’t cut back.”

Mention of patients sent his gaze back to the Captain. His feeble hold on life was slipping away with the night.

He died at daybreak.

They buried him at sea. Afterwards Smith confirmed the course he had ordered the previous night when the Captain fell. Then it had been an attempt to get the Captain to a hospital ashore but now it was to reach a telegraph office and inform the British Consul in Chile. Thunder had radio but the Navy’s signalling stations did not cover South American waters. Admiralty kept in touch with her by cables and she entered ports at intervals to collect them. The Consul had to be informed of the Captain’s death and that Smith had assumed command; he would advise Admiralty.

Now it came to him. The Captain was dead and he was in command. He was conscious of a lightening of the atmosphere in the ship but that, he believed, was not because he had assumed command but because the bitter presence aft had gone.

As if in mourning the weather was breaking and the wind rising. When they raised the coast of Chile in the early evening a bright sun still shone but astern the clouds were breeding black.

The sun had no warmth in it. Smith shivered. The Captain’s death was a bad start to a command and Smith was still not accepted, nor likely to be, he was certain.

The Signal Yeoman shattered his mood of introspection. “Signal from shore, sir! S.O.S.! Bearing red three-oh!”

Smith swung around and raised his glasses, berating himself for not having seen that winking light, for day-dreaming. Night was falling, the setting sun sending Thunder’s shadow stretching long towards the shore that was still bathed in that last light.

“T-H-D-R.” The Yeoman spelt out the slow flashes of the point of light. “Think they mean us , sir.”

What else could it mean? But who would know this ship?

The Yeoman: “S.O.S. again, sir. An’ it’s a light from a motor car. Front light.”

“Hard to see but I think it’s a 24/30 Buick tourer.” Midshipman Somers was on the bridge for some reason and had a telescope clapped to his eye. Excitement had wrung the comment from him. Now he realised his temerity and said meekly, “Sorry, sir.”

Smith scowled. He could barely make out that it was a motor car. “Don’t see that it matters, but what makes you so sure?”

“My father had one before the war, sir. But of course, when the war started he gave it to the Army with most of the others.”

Somers was undoubtedly the richest, or potentially richest man aboard. His father probably did have half-a-dozen motor cars including a Rolls-Royce. He was a tall, handsome boy, a fine athlete with a good brain. In spite of all these reasons for envy he was well-liked.

Smith ordered, “Port ten.” Thunder began to close the shore. Dusk had swept over them and now reached the blinking light that seemed to flicker in that dusk more brightly before it died.

Smith snapped, “Ask nature of emergency.”

Thunder’s signal-lamp clattered out but there was no answer.