Alan Evans - Thunder at Dawn

“Can do.”

“And last, but most important, the Gerda . The Chileans regard my action as indefensible, but if I can prove she was German they might change that to excusable.”

Cherry nodded agreement. “No doubt of it. They’d still hum and haw and they’d want an apology but the sting would be gone. Their old-fashioned looks would all be for the Herr Doktor.” He went on, “All her crew were in one hotel for one night only. Next day they were gone. I never had a chance to talk to any of them. I’ve sent word to Argentina but when, if, they find out anything there, it’ll be too late. I reckon the skipper might be in the German consulate but the others tucked away somewhere up-country, maybe on somebody’s farm so went out and scratched around but had no luck. I was on the way back tonight when I heard guns.”

Smith told Cherry the details of the boarding and sinking of the Gerda and the papers they had taken from her. “Somewhere aboard that ship there must be proof. Has a diver been down?”

Cherry shook his head, puzzled. “No. One of my men has been watching her. Nobody’s been near her.” He finished definitely, “But tomorrow I’ll see somebody goes down. If the proof is there we’ll have it.”

Cherry left, on his way to see Sarah Benson.

She was aboard Ariadne in a cabin of a comfortable size with a comfortable bunk. It called to her but she walked the deck away from its temptation and waited for Cherry, knowing he would come.

Smith had left her open-mouthed and speechless but when she went to Albrecht her protest was blistering. She received an icy reply, an apology, but: “The man didn’t know you were there for a start. He’d just fought a difficult and dangerous action, he’s been driven into a corner and there’s no help for him and he risked his ship to save yourself and a few more. On top of that he’d just learned that the boy who dragged you off the Elizabeth Bell had been killed. He may owe you an apology. You owe him a damned sight more than that, young lady.”

She had swallowed it, digested it, then meekly asked for more and he had told her about the desperate shortage of coal and about Kunashiri .

Now while she waited for Cherry she thought hard and when he came aboard he gave her more to think about. He told her what he had told Smith, was silent a moment, then said quietly, “They’ve given him just twenty-four hours. That’s all. But mark you, he didn’t ask for that. He asked for nothing. I was in the crowd and I saw him. He couldn’t see me, but, by God I saw him! Stood there on his own, coated in filth and dead beat, eyes like — like windows in a dark room with a fire back in there, somewhere.” He paused, then said self-consciously, “Well, that must have been a trick of the light but that’s how it looked. Stood there with his head up … One man.” He shook his head. “That’s an extraordinary man. Extraordinary.”

He asked her what had happened and she told him about the seaplane and Jim Bradley and Thackeray, but she was abstracted, merely reporting, her mind elsewhere.

There was a silence and he glanced at her. “Was it very bad?” He had to repeat the question before she heard it and then she looked at him blankly. He said, “On the ship — Thunder , mean.”

She shuddered. “It sounded like all hell let loose. It —” She stopped. “I can’t describe it.” But she could hear it and see it and she shuddered again.

They had set Gibb to work with the others in the clanging bedlam forward and every hammer blow was a nerve-wrenching echo of the hits on Thunder . There was no peace. And once he had found Rattray’s eyes on him and knew that Rattray only waited his time. Gibb walked away from it.

He needed solitude and he could only think of one place in the ship where he would find it. He slunk around and into the fore-turret and in the airless steel gloom he found the solitude of a cell. Light came in faint bands through narrow slits set high and reflected dully from the massive breech of the gun. There was the smell of oil and steel and the residual tang of burnt cordite that still clung from the recent action. He sniffed it, as he had sniffed the baking smell when he opened his mother’s front door but that was only an aching memory now. He felt hounded, bedevilled and the turret shut him in but there was nowhere else to go. He squatted on the deck under the breech of the gun, arms round his drawn-up knees, head down, eyes closed trying to blot it all out.

Rattray. It was quiet in the turret, there was that at least to be said for it and for the first time in hours his thoughts found some clarity. Or maybe it was only the crystallisation of one emotion from many. But he hated Rattray. He was no longer puzzled by, or wary of, or frightened by Rattray. Now it was one single, simple emotion: hate. And at that point light flicked briefly over him where he crouched in the gloom, a second’s searching beam of the light from outside that lit him up and then was gone. The door had quietly opened, clanged shut. Gibb blinked and focussed on the figure that stood smacking right fist into the palm of the left hand.

Rattray.

He took two long strides to stand over Gibb and he said with savage anticipation, “Home from home. Just you and me and a bit of peace and quiet where we can sort things out without a lot of interference from nosey parkers, nor your God Almighty Captain Smith.” The words meant nothing to Gibb.

Rattray reached down and grabbed Gibb by the front of his overalls, lifted him from his hiding place under the breech of the gun and swung him out. Gibb came slackly, stumbling, and Rattray thought there was something odd about his vacant stare, not showing fear, not showing anything. So he hesitated for a second with one hand gripping Gibb, the other pulled back, and in that second he saw Gibb’s face contort beyond recognition. It was a fatal second.

Gibb exploded in his hands. Gibb himself could never recall the few seconds that followed. It was a moment of black-out for his mind that under torment and stress briefly ran away from its duties. The body functioned on its own. It functioned without the meagre advantage of the little boxing science the Navy had striven to teach him.

Rattray’s own recollections were confused and curtailed. A flailing fist took him in the eye and another in the lower abdomen, a boot smashed against his right shin and knocked that prop from under him. Almost blinded, hurt and staggering he instinctively tried to hold on to something, anything. He held on to Gibb, clawing blindly now with the right hand and getting that also twisted in Gibb’s overalls. That was the second and final mistake. If he had fallen or hurriedly backed away he may have gained a breathing space both for himself and Gibb that might have brought hesitation to the latter or let his wildly flailing fists connect on nothing but air. But he held on, right on top of Gibb, within easy reach and vulnerable.

A fist hit him between the legs with excruciating agony, crippling. It was finished at that point but Gibb did not know it any more than he knew what he was doing. Another fist slammed into Rattray’s windpipe, choking, and another boot kicked his right leg away for good. Or ill. He had released Gibb, trying to curl over to hold himself and was falling, for an instant free of those thrashing fists and feet. Then his back banged against the breech of the gun and he bounced from it into another hail of blows and kicks that landed at first on his body and then, as he fell, on his face and head. He was already unconscious and toppled back limply, loose as an empty coal sack, tossed one way then the other as Gibb’s blows thrust him. He ended on his back, his head and shoulders propped awkwardly against the side of the turret.