Lynne Barrett-Lee - Able Seacat Simon

The minutes continued to pass, though, and with every mile we put between ourselves and whoever had fired on us, I began to feel a little less frightened. We’d soon be clear of the wayward battery and could relax, if only a little. Even so, my hackles kept rising and I refused to be reassured, and, ever conscious that the captain might need to take decisive action, I decided to go below again and get out of his way.

I jumped down from my box, and made my way down the ladder to the foredeck, passing Frank, who was hurrying up it past me, his eyes focused up and forward. He almost vaulted me, seemingly oblivious to my being there.

Other than that, I saw no one. The whole crew were on alert still, everyone manning their various stations. From the passageway that led to the captain’s cabin, which seemed as sensible a place to go as any, the thing I could feel, over and above everything else, was the vibration under my paws as the huge turbines toiled beneath me; powering the Amethyst at a speed I had yet to feel her go, and churning the water into an angry, boiling soup.

But it seemed there was more than one shore battery keeping watch on our progress, because no sooner had I hopped up onto the captain’s desk, in order to see out of the scuttle, than the Amethyst lurched violently to starboard, knocking me off my feet. I scrabbled back up, but no sooner had I got my balance once again than another blast – another shell ! – made the water foam in front of me. Just as I recognised that I should immediately take cover, I was ripped from my feet again, the air torn from my lungs, and the world swam away from me and disappeared.

When I woke I could hear nothing but the drone of a mosquito. For a time I simply focused on the low, monotone buzzing sound, and tried to work out where I was. I was lying on a bunk, so my first thought was that I was still in Captain Skinner’s cabin, but something felt wrong. I struggled to clear my head enough to work out what it was. I was definitely in a cabin, but which? Not the captain’s. I couldn’t be in the captain’s, because… because… because what ? Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to focus. I looked around me, sideways on, only one eye fully open, and at last my gaze came to rest on something that looked familiar – the collection of photographs pinned on the bulkhead opposite, which I recognised as belonging to Petty Officer Griffiths. I saw his locker then, as well. The place where he often parked his cap. But there was no cap. It was now open, the lid upright and some of the clothing spewing out of it, as if caught in the act of escaping.

I strained to listen; to pick up something other than the mosquito’s incessant whining, and realised that it wasn’t even a mosquito – the noise was a constant ringing inside my ears. But there was nothing to help me make sense of what had happened. I hadn’t the slightest idea of how I came to be here.

I tried to ferret in my mind for the last thing I could remember, but hard as I tried, I found I could not. There had been shouting, the clang of the ship’s bell – which resulted in more shouting – and yet more of those terrifying noises. Explosions and wheee sounds and deafening crumps that sounded like the ship was being ripped and gored and beaten, the licks of flame, the sting of smoke thick and acrid on the air.

And then… what? What had happened? How had I come to be here? How long had I been here? I knew it was light – well, more a dove grey, from what little that I could see through the scuttle – but I realised I had no idea of time, of what day it was; no idea how long I might have slept. I felt sluggish, stiff and listless, as if I’d been asleep for a long time – a deep, dreamless sleep – having lain in an awkward position.

I lifted my nose to sniff the air again and immediately regretted it. For some reason it hurt to move my head. It hurt a lot, in fact; a tentative stretch of my neck immediately confirmed it, pain streaking through my hind legs with such heat and intensity that I knew I must be very badly hurt.

I stayed still, concentrating as hard as I could on not moving; despite the constant urge to shake the noise out of my ears. It helped that I was too scared to even try to see my injuries, so I lay rigid but inert, waiting for both my heart and my head to stop pounding, and for the pain to subside to something I could deal with.

And I would have dealt with it, had my slow slide back into painless oblivion not been arrested by the sound of a single, anguished moan, which seemed to be coming from somewhere close by. I thought I recognised the voice, too. Was it Lieutenant Weston’s? Fear flooded in. Was he hurt? Had he been injured as well?

It all came back to me then, quickly, intensely and chillingly: the communists. The shells. The orders barked down the voice pipes. Bridge to wheelhouse. Full speed ahead! The Amethyst powering upriver, away from the first shore batteries, the captain not quite believing that what was happening could be happening; that we’d been anything other than simply caught in the crossfire between the communists and nationalists occupying the opposite shores.

And then the reality, quickly following the assumption that we’d passed the trouble: that, as we’d by now unfurled the Union Jacks the crew had made, there could be no question that they were firing on a British frigate. My padding down to the captain’s cabin, half believing we might be clear of it, then the terrible, terrible sound from just above me – the cabin door slamming shut, and then almost immediately bursting open – the mushroom cloud of choking black smoke surging in. The realisation that they had meant to fire on us – that they were firing on us now; that they meant us grievous harm. The shock of it. The terror. The sense of disbelief and outrage. Of hearing the captain – no, that was wrong – it had been the first lieutenant, hadn’t it? Of the first lieutenant, shouting… Return fire! Return fire! Bridge to wheelhouse! Return fire! Feet, thundering past me. Screams – so much screaming! Of the shouts and the cries – the desperate, keening cries – then the massive whump! close at hand, and the feeling that I was flying – of being lifted high, high, and higher, way up into the air, that same air then being violently snatched from my lungs…

The explosion ! I juddered involuntarily, causing a second wave of agony to streak through my body, and the darkness sucked me down once again.

When I woke the second time, in stifling heat now, feeling thirsty and dizzy, it was to a second, even scarier revelation. It was one that I sensed, rather than saw, sniffing a sharp note of charring in the still air of the cabin and having it suddenly hit me what the source of the smell might be.

My whiskers! Where were my whiskers? Had they been burned off completely? I felt sick. I wanted to be sick, and even felt myself retching. For, despite my prone position, and my having no immediate need of them, the realisation of their absence felt like a violent wound itself. It terrified me anew. Would they ever grow back again? And what other grievous injuries might I have sustained?

I tried to lift my paw, very gingerly, the better to establish what I’d been left with, but again, the slightest movement – of any part of me, it seemed – caused me intense pain, and sent waves of nausea coursing through me. And as I could see almost nothing, I had no choice but to try to lie as still as I could again. To try to find refuge in further sleep.

But it was hard to sleep. The sound in my ears was like a burrowing animal worming away at me, and with so many questions swirling round my head, my brain was equally buzzing. What was going on? Where was everyone? What had become of Lieutenant Weston? What was happening to the Amethyst ? Was she even moving?