Alan Evans - Thunder at Dawn

Smith smiled bleakly and returned to the bridge. He stooped over the chart with Aitkyne and then ordered, “Steer three-four-oh.” He went to the voice-pipe and spoke to Davies in the engine room. “Chief, I’m going to want full speed ahead in a hurry.”

“Not now?” Davies knew they were clear of the channel, had slipped through the net.

“No. Revolutions for eight knots.” Smith turned away and far below in the clanging, roaring cavern of the stokehold the black gang spat on their hands and hefted their shovels.

He stood on the starboard wing of the bridge as Thunder headed out into the Pacific. Davies had thought they would be running full pelt for the north and safety but it was too soon for that. They had forced the channel and slipped the cruisers, but got clean away? That was too much to dare to hope for.

Smith swept the sea astern of Thunder once more with his glasses then lowered them and rubbed at his eyes. There was light astern but it was the glow against the cloud base that came from the lights of Guaya. And to starboard? He stared at the light between Thunder and the coast and Kennedy said, “That’s Manton, sir.”

Smith knew it. The pinnace was invisible at that distance but through his glasses Smith saw the light as a trail of sparks and a recurrent whiff of flame that pointed to her funnel and her position as plain as any pointing finger. It was a sign of appalling, careless stoking. Or a craft sacrificing any attempt at concealment for speed in flight.

Kennedy said involuntarily, “A bleating lamb.” And bit his lip.

Smith only said quietly, “Yes.” It was true enough. He had staked out the lamb. He would have to live with that decision. If any of them lived.

He ordered, “Starboard two points. Steer three-five-oh.”

Thunder came around until she was running north at eight knots, parallel to the coast and to the course that Manton steered; he could still see the pinnace, just, a pricking, blinking red light.

Smith asked, “Bearing and range to the pinnace?”

Kennedy reported, “Bearing green one-five!”

“Range eight-four-double oh!” came down from the rangetaker.

The figures coincided with Smith’s rough estimate. That estimate would have been good enough but the confirmation was useful and anyway, it did the rangetaker good to get his eye in. Smith worked out a little triangular problem in his head and got another rough answer: Manton led them by about eight thousand yards on a parallel course two thousand yards from that of Thunder . As Smith wanted him, and wanted Thunder .

He turned aft once more.

The ship was quiet now, closed up at action stations. Garrick had gone to the fore-top, and Smith held the bridge with Aitkyne, Kennedy, Knight and Wakely. Action stations. He was coldly aware once again that this ship, preparing to fight for her life, had not been intended to fight any such action. So her complement had been reduced. Now the eight guns on the main-deck were manned by scratch crews of off-watch stokers and others, though they had fired under Garrick, exercised under Smith. And the effective range of the six-inch guns was only six thousand yards.

He snapped irritably at Aitkyne, “Keep a good look-out astern!” And hid behind the glasses. Searching. Searching.

Was there a first faint lightening of the sky in the east? The sun rising now but still hidden behind the mountains of this mountainous coast?

They had been running for nearly fifty minutes.

Smith stood still, waiting, outwardly calm. Inwardly he was cherishing a wild hope, now. He had planned for one eventuality but now another, too ambitious to hope for, seemed a bare possibility: they might have got clean away. He still could not believe it. The chances of the decoy lights remaining undiscovered in Stillwater Cove dwindled as the night wore away and it was incredible they should not be discovered. Thunder was only matching the eight knots of the pinnace, she could run faster than this if she was going to run and now it looked as if the chance was there.

He had coal, just enough, to steam hard for a port in Peru to the north. There was a chance to escape annihilation, to coal and wait for the Japanese battle-cruiser, Kunashiri , and then sail south again with her …

It was time to commit himself but he still waited though no longer able to contain that familiar restlessness of his, forced to pace out along the bridge and return, sensing the tension that prickled between Kennedy and Wakely, Aitkyne, that seemed to still all life on the ship.

The voice cracked urgent from the masthead: “Smoke bearing green one-six-oh!”

The still figures on the bridge jerked to life. Smith croaked, nerves slurring his voice, “Full speed ahead!” His glasses swept an arc on the approximate bearing and found first the faintest blink of funnel flame that marked the smoke that climbed black against the glow of Guaya.

Aitkyne quietly reported, “Smoke bears green one-five-nine. Range six thousand.”

The smoke lay five-and-a-half thousand yards astern of Thunder , was on the same course as the pinnace and maybe thirteen thousand yards astern of her . He was sure the ship, whoever she was, would not see the pinnace — yet. He swept the glasses from right to left, from the smoke astern through a blur of darkness to settle on the funnel flame of the pinnace, fine on the starboard bow. He stared at her then lowered the glasses.

His voice sounded harsh to himself as he ordered, “Get that man down from the masthead!”

“Aye, aye, sir!”

The minutes ticked away and the softly called bearings and ranges marked the minutes like the hand of a clock as the bearing ticked around the compass as the cruisers made up on the pinnace and crept up more slowly on the accelerating Thunder and edged out to sea towards her.

“Bearing green one-five-five … Green one-five-oh … Green one-four-five, range three-thousand.”

Ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. All the time Thunder was working up to her full speed so the cruisers came up more slowly, and all the time he watched their smoke. His eyes were not playing tricks now. There was a lightening in the sky to the east so that the mountains now stood vague but black against the background of the coming dawn.

It would be a fine day.

He caught the flickering white of broken water that was bow-wave and wash below the pall of funnel smoke and the ships came up.

They were there. Two of them. Leopard , with less than half the cruisers’ speed, would be trailing far behind. He could make out their silhouettes, or rather one long, blurred silhouette because they were in line abreast, the farther a fraction astern of the closer, seaward vessel. So that both of them could see the chase ahead and both could fire. They had to see the pinnace now; they were about five thousand yards astern of her —

They fired! The long tongues of flame ripped the night and Smith snapped his eyes shut against that glare. “Starboard ten!” He opened his eyes and the flames had died and out of the dark came the slamming bellow of the cruisers’ guns. Thunder was heeling under him as he strained his eyes, peering for the cruisers and saw them take shape again off the starboard beam.

“Midships!”

Thunder was near her full speed and driving down on a course that would intersect that of the cruisers and take her across their bows, if held.

“Bearing green seven-oh! Range two thousand!”

The cruisers fired again, lighting up the dying night and this time he saw them lit in that split-second of brilliance, surging along at full speed, swift, powerful, deadly. They were still astern of Thunder but edging up to draw level with her. Unaware of her; intent on the target ahead. They could not see that target to identify it but were firing at the distant funnel flame, banking on the million-to-one chance that it could be no ship other than Thunder , a certainty.