Alan Evans - Thunder at Dawn

He pulled his head from his hands as Garrick knocked and was straight-faced though cold-eyed when the First Lieutenant said, “Burial party ready, sir.”

“Very well.”

“And Leading Seaman Bates and Sergeant Burton ask to see you on a personal matter, sir.”

“Now?”

“They say it’s urgent, sir.” They had been evasive and stubborn but both were old hands. Garrick had ceased probing.

Smith said, “Send them in.” And when they stood before him: “I hope this is a serious matter.”

Bates said, “It’s about young Gibb, sir. There’s more to it than meets the eye. I don’t reckon him as a deserter in the face o’ the enemy. ’Course, he had the wind up like all of us but I reckon there was more to it than that.”

“What?”

“Dunno, sir. But I reckon I could get him to tell me. If we could sneak ashore and bring him back, ’cause we know where he’ll be, I could get the truth out o’ him, give him a chance to speak up for himself. Please , sir.” Bates was pleading because Smith’s head was already moving in a slow negative.

It was too wild a scheme. Smith sympathised; he wanted Gibb back, hated the thought of one of his men labelled as a deserter or a coward and like Bates he sensed that Gibb was neither.

Burton broke in. “There’s only one place he can be, sir. Fizzy’s Bar. That’s the only place he’ll know and the only one as might hide him. We’d land downstream clear o’ the town and we could get to the place by the back way. We’ll wear old clothes. Should be easy but if we was stopped we’d say we jumped ship to get a few drinks and how about sending us aboard.”

Smith pushed up from his desk and shifted restlessly across the cabin to stand at the open scuttle staring out at his ship and the men as they worked. He stood there a long time until Burton said, chancing his arm, “It’s been known for a feller to slip ashore unbeknownst, sir.”

Smith’s lips twitched. They all knew about his escapade at Malaguay. But when he turned his face was serious. “It will not be as easy as you think. Now listen to me.”

When he took up his cap and sword and went on deck, he found the day again in mourning with scarcely a breath of wind and the sky overcast, grey. For once no smoke trailed from Thunder’s four funnels because Davies had put out all her fires and the stokers were cleaning them of clinker, one more periodic chore of a coal-burning ship. The flag-draped coffin rested aft by the accommodation ladder. The party was a small one. There were eight pall-bearers, seamen from Somers’s battery, at their own request. There was Kennedy and a boy bugler, sixteen years old, even younger than Somers had been. He was already nervous, pale.

Smith detected a slackening in the work throughout the ship. The sombre little group aft was having its effect. This was a duty to be done for a fellow officer. It was as well that it should be done without delay. The bugler sounded the ‘Still’, work ceased and the ship’s company froze into immobility.

The coffin had come off during the night; Cherry had arranged that. Aitkyne was officer of the watch at that time and had signed a receipt for it. The boat’s crew had gaped at Thunder and the signs of damage, the great wounds and the men working on them and in them under the lights. And they had stared at Aitkyne ‘as if they were measuring me, the mercenary bastards’. That had been macabrely amusing.

This was not.

They lowered the coffin into the pinnace and the burial party went ashore and disembarked on the quay under the eyes of a considerable crowd, who were curious but quiet. There was a glass-sided hearse pulled by a pair of blackplumed, black horses. There was a large escort of soldiers. The Chilean army was modelled on the German and the troops in their field-grey and spiked helmets seemed more guard than escort. And there was Cherry. As the seamen loaded the coffin into the hearse, Smith muttered to him, “I need more time.”

Cherry shook his head. “They won’t —”

“I think they might. My essential repairs will barely be completed at dusk. I want until six in the morning, but tell them I’ll move up to Stillwater Cove as soon as repairs are complete and I’ll leave the river by six.”

“It will be broad day!”

“What difference does it make? They have a gunboat patrolling the mouth of the river and I can’t pass her unseen, however dark the night.”

“It will make a difference to them , surely?” And Cherry was talking about the cruisers. “They will be able to lie off and engage you at extreme range, twelve guns to your two.”

“Then Muller won’t oppose such a request. And the Chileans don’t want a night engagement virtually on their doorstep.”

Cherry murmured thoughtfully, “Ye-es. It might well be …” He stopped, then finished apologetically: “Of course you know your own business best.”

“I hope so.”

The cortege was ready.

They marched behind the hearse out to the cemetery, that was the graveyard of the English church. Smith stood as the parson droned through the service, his mind absorbed in his plans. Then a phrase cut through that absorption: “… man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live … he cometh up and is cut down like a flower …”

Cut down. But not like a flower. “Cut him in half,” Garrick had said. Like a bloody tree-stump.

“… ashes to ashes, dust to dust …”

It was neither ashes nor dust but a horrible bloody mess on the deck. They had hosed it and scrubbed it away.

He had closed his eyes. He forced himself to open them.

Somers had gone into the hole.

The soldiers fired a salute. The bugler boy’s lip was trembling and big tears rolled down his cheeks. Kennedy snarled under his breath, a savage whisper that reached the boy alone and snapped him upright. The first notes quavered but then he got hold of it and did it well.

They marched back to the pinnace with Smith at their head, stone-faced.

The girl stumbled from the bed, pulled a robe around her and padded barefoot from the room.

In the kitchen she yawned as she brewed a pot of coffee and put it on a tray with two cups. Olsen asked, “You got an all-night job?”

“English sailor —” The truth slipped from her, half-asleep, and her hand went to her mouth.

Olsen said, “No sailor last night.” He kept the door. And anyway, he knew as everyone did the political climate in Guaya prohibited the British from landing.

She pleaded, “He came in by the window. Did I do wrong?”

Olsen stood up and shrugged. “You? No. But the sailor?” He grimaced and crossed to the door then paused to point a finger at her. “Take the coffee but tell him nothing.” He went upstairs to Phizackerly.

The sun was high but it was far too early for Phizackerly. Again. He woke reluctantly, bemused, to Olsen’s determined shaking of his shoulder. The previous night had been difficult. He had been torn between a desire to celebrate Thunder’s escape from the cruisers and an awful fear as to her predicament. He was in a position to enjoy both sensations because he was not personally involved. Whatever happened he was all right. But that nagged at him, too. He compromised by officially delegating all responsibility to Juanita and Olsen, who had it anyway, and drank himself into a melancholy stupor.

So he tried feebly, as a man wishing at least to be left to die in peace, to push Olsen’s hand away. He tried to turn over and burrow into the warm lee of the snoring Juanita but Olsen stolidly resisted both attempts, clamped both hands on Phizackerly’s bony shoulders and dragged him half-upright so he sat in the bed.