‘But, sir, I’ve three men down there! Can’t you give them time?’

  ‘I can see the fire from up here, Eucken! Do you want to die? Flood it!’

  He felt the telephone fall dead in his hand. ‘Come with me, Pieck.’ He paused to look over the rim of the hatch. ‘Send for the spare ammunition party and broach the secondary magazine, Hellwege!’ He saw their expressionless faces. They knew what had to be done.

  He reached the bottom of the ladder in one jump, and stared fascinated at the wide brass wheel, which almost filled the small space. He laid his hands on it and screamed, his cry filling the steel shaft with pain. He thrust his torn hands under his armpits, and called to Pieck through his clenched teeth. ‘Turn the wheel, boy! Hold it with some rags, anything! But in God’s name hurry!’

  Pieck pulled off his jacket and laid it on the polished brass wheel. He stared as if mesmerised at the smoke which immediately rose from the folded cloth, and felt the searing heat through his hands. The wheel was stiff, and he was afraid his hands would blister before he could turn it. As it started to move he suddenly realised what he was doing. Eucken bit his lip with pain and nodded vigorously. ‘Turn it! Don’t think about it!’ They held each other’s eyes as the wheel squeaked round, and below their feet the sea-water surged in to flood the smouldering magazine and its three trapped inmates.

  * * * * *

  The destroyer had turned right round so that she was steaming on a parallel course with the German. Occasionally, she zigzagged so as to move closer, and then dart away to leave only a great torn mountain of cascading water where the Vulkan’s last salvo had fallen.

  Heuss crouched behind the steel shutters near the wireless compartment and strained his eyes through the smoke. The four-inch guns of the destroyer cracked like whips, and she had hit the Vulkan repeatedly. So far none of the shots had gone below the waterline, and the fire on the poop seemed to be under control. The American had received only three hits and seemed little the worse for them. It seemed incredible that such a frail ship could resist three heavy shells and survive. Around him the voice-pipes hummed and squeaked. Asking instructions, reporting damage and casualties. The bridge was misty with gun-smoke, and all of its occupants were specked with flaked paint brought down by the incessant vibration. Heuss felt ice-cold, and wanted to retch. He knew that if he allowed himself to think he was done for.

  A messenger reported, ‘After magazine flooded, sir!’

  Von Steiger wiped the lenses of his glasses with a handkerchief, and cocked his head as the poop gun reopened fire. He saw Heuss watching him and smiled crookedly. ‘It’s hot work, Heuss!’

  There was a bright flash behind the bridge, and the dummy funnel vanished in a single tongue of flame, leaving the wire stays dancing and humming like live things. There was a great shout from the deck below, and von Steiger lifted his glasses. Two of the destroyer’s four slender funnels had vanished, and in their place was a wide black crater from which came a sullen orange glow with surprisingly little smoke. He felt his heart tighten in his chest, and he knew that the worst was over.

  ‘She’s making a smoke-screen, Captain! She’s falling away!’

  A strangled cheer rippled along the torn decks and was carried even to the men in the inferno of the boiler-rooms below.

  Damrosch had to tear his eyes from the foremast to take in what the cheering meant. He had seen the long scarlet line running unchecked down the full length of the tall mast, to form a shining pool at the bottom, after a shell-splinter had passed through one side of the crow’s-nest and out the other. His glance fell on von Steiger, who had placed both his hands palms down on the ledge by the voice-pipes and was staring intently at nothing. His gold-flecked eyes were without expression and empty, and for an instant Damrosch thought he too was watching the blood on the mast.

  Heuss rapped out fresh orders to the fire party below the bridge, and ran back into the wheelhouse. They were drawing away from the warship. Von Steiger was breaking off the action. Now there was one urgent task to be done. They must find that whaleboat. He collided with Damrosch and glared at his colourless lips.

  ‘What’s the matter, Max?’

  Damrosch had difficulty in speaking, and his voice sounded brittle. ‘The Captain! He has been hit!’

  11

  APART FROM THE five oarsmen and the coxswain, six other seamen were crammed into the sternsheets, their uniforms already grey with salt and their bodies stiff with cold and wet.

  Caryl Brett had made herself as small as possible beside the coxswain, a thin, sick-looking man, who gripped the tiller with a hand like a claw, and peered over the heads of the oarsmen and watched for the next creaming wave-top.

  When the destroyer had first appeared round the bows of the Vulkan she had felt a lump rising in her throat and could sense the despair in the boat around her. The German seamen had watched dully, their hands limp on the oars, as the lithe grey hull had curtsied across the water, the white wave-crests reflected in her sleek raked bows. By comparison, the German raider had looked old-fashioned and clumsy, an amateur beside the professional. The warship looked so proud, so reassuring, that the helplessness of her own position and her inability to help had made her leap to her feet and wave her spray-drenched headscarf. A man had cursed her, and someone had pulled her backwards to the stern, just as the raider’s starboard battery swung into view and the German ensign soared up to the gaff. She had been terrified yet thrilled by the speed and viciousness of the action, and had watched the two ships firing at each other without a moment’s respite, and apparently heedless of the damage being done to both of them.

  The Vulkan appeared to be on fire in two places, and her tall black side was ripped open in three or four savage gashes, the red lead beneath the paint looking like blood in the grey light. Now that they had gone she felt sick and dazed by the suddenness of events. The very feel of the boat brought back the searing memory of the lifeboat and its cargo of slaughtered men. She was aware, too, of the bitter cold and the feel of the spray lashing against her unprotected body. Someone had handed her an oilskin as she was bundled into the boat, but she no longer had it. It had probably been whipped away by the wind as she had stared, transfixed, at the battle.

  She tried not to look at the seamen, but she could sense their eyes on her—bitter, resentful and hungry. They looked tired and dirty, their faces reddened by the wind and their movements lacking purpose or meaning. One of the men scrambled forward with what looked like a large canvas bucket on a long line. He paid it out over the bow so that it streamed away, the line taut and black against the dark-green water. The sea-anchor helped to steady the boat and keep its bow heading into the crushing water, and gave the oarsmen time to rest. As they lay panting on the looms the oars stuck out each side of the boat and looked like the bones of a gutted fish.

  She jumped as the coxswain said: ‘Good, eh? That will hold her for a bit!’ He grinned down at her, his thin pointed face creased like a mask.

  She pulled the sodden scarf about her shoulders and tried to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘You speak English? What do you think will happen now?’

  He watched her lips carefully. ‘Maybe they come back for us. Either the Captain or the American. Who knows which?’

  Her stomach seemed to crumble as the boat dropped sickeningly into a deep trough, but she forced herself to keep talking. It was as if she was afraid the coxswain would revert to his own tongue and once more alienate her from the hard resentment of the others. ‘Where did you learn English?’

  ‘I was steward in Hamburg Amerika Line before war, you understand? Plenty of opportunity there!’

  She looked at him more closely. He was too old for this, she realised. Nearly fifty, with his flesh stretched across his skull and his eyes aged by the harshness of this unnatural life. She thought of that gleaming warship and the soldiers she had seen in America. Clean, fresh and somehow invincible. To see this worn creature in his ill-fitting jacket and clumsy boots should have filled her with contempt, but she recognised the pity which came to her mind.

  ‘Where are we now? Will we be found out here?’

  He shrugged. ‘I dunno. I just do as I am told. We could be in China for all I can guess!’

  One of the seamen shouted from the bows and some of them laughed. The coxswain scowled and said to her: ‘Take no notice. They are afraid and do not know what they are saying.’

  She opened her mouth to reply, but saw the man nearest to her staring at her body, his eyes unblinking and unmasked. She knew that her clothing was plastered to her by the spray, that her blouse was moulded to her like another skin, and as she watched the hunger on his face she felt naked and defenceless. These men had been away from their homes for how long she could only guess. They had been sent to sea, bullied, half starved and threatened on every side by punishment or death. She had not thought of them as individuals before. They had been an anonymous background for men like von Steiger or Heuss. But now, as she felt the scrape of rough serge clothing against her body, she could sense the yearning and the primitive emotions of these very men.

  Hauptmann, the man who had called from the bow, glared at Schaffer, the coxswain, with sudden fury. ‘What’s the risk, you fool? Maybe we have been left to die, eh? What do you think of that?’ He turned to the others, made bold by the apprehension on the coxswain’s face. ‘What have we to lose, comrades? If we die, we die! But if the Vulkan finds us, we will say that the girl fell overboard! Come on, let us use her while we can! God, I have not had a woman for months!’

  Some of the men looked uneasy, but others murmured their assent.

  Hauptmann, a short, muscular ex-docker, showed his uneven teeth. ‘Agreed? One at a time, and we will find out what an officer’s woman is like!’

  Schaffer moved closer to the shivering girl. ‘I will kill the first man to come near!’ He unshipped the heavy tiller-bar. ‘I swear I will!’

  ‘You old fool, we can finish you as well!’

  In English Schaffer muttered: ‘Keep close by me! That one is like a madman!’

  She watched Hauptmann move down the middle of the boat towards them. He stepped carefully over the banked oars and the watching seamen, the motion of the pitching boat making his walk like a swagger. He was grinning broadly, but his eyes were like slits as he watched the tiller-bar in the coxswain’s hand. He stood swaying on the last thwart, his thumbs in his belt.

  She could sense the animal power in the man, and saw the contemptuous ease with which he maintained his balance in the madly tossing boat. She felt her nails biting into the palms of her hand. This was what she had expected would happen from the first. Von Steiger’s courtesy and Heuss’s eagerness were only a veneer to this.

  The man at the second oar suddenly laughed, a great hoarse bellow of sound, so that Hauptmann paused, uncertain and off his guard.

  Schiller leaned his elbows on his oar and laughed again. He saw the gratitude in Schaffer’s apprehensive eyes and the terror on the face of the girl. He had almost allowed Hauptmann to carry out his threat. It would be something to add to his list of memories. He had never seen a girl taken in a drifting boat before, but somehow Hauptmann was not the man. A useless ex-docker, who was more of a boaster than a seaman. He spat on the loom of his oar.

  ‘Sit down, bonehead!’

  Hauptmann faltered, aware of the others watching him. ‘What’s the matter? If he is scared we can manage him, too!’

  ‘That’s right, mates!’ Schiller grinned. ‘All you have to do is beat me and you can have the girl!’ He tapped the haft of his knife. ‘Who’s first?’

  A man shouted shakily, ‘Smoke! Look, lads! Smoke!’

  They were all on their feet in the madly swaying boat, trying to see the cause of the smoke-trail which occasionally showed itself above the wave-tops.

  Schaffer gestured with the tiller-bar. ‘Man your oars!’ He was in control again. To him it did not matter what the other ship was; there would be officers, discipline and safety.

  The oars creaked and bent under their concerted efforts, and as they moved painfully towards the smoke the Vulkan’s tall funnel and raked masts swept forward to greet them.

  All at once they were beneath the lee of her hull, and the men were snatching at the dangling falls to hook on their boat. They could see the scarred plates in her side, and smell the tang of cordite and burned timber. As the boat was hauled skywards towards the davits the raider began to move forward once more, and the men who laboured at the torn decks and doused the last piece of smouldering wreckage hardly gave a glance to the eager, whooping seamen who clambered down from the rescued boat.

  Caryl Brett turned to find the men who had been with her in the boat, but already they had been swallowed up by the rest of the crew. Only the coxswain stood patiently supervising the security of his boat. She started to thank him, but he stared past her, already part of that other world she could not share.

  As she made her way along the littered boatdeck she could hardly realise that this was the same ship she had left that morning. The white paint was blackened and blistered by fire, and several parts of the bridge were riddled with small, savage holes, which had burned away the steel plates and left the edges of the punctures smooth and bright like molten metal.

  An officer barred her way, and she gave a start as she realised that this tall, blackened figure was the normally spruce and youthful Damrosch.

  ‘Would you please go to the sick quarters! We have had many casualties, and Steuer cannot manage without your help.’ He stared at her soaked skirt and disordered hair. ‘But first you must get some dry clothing! I must apologise for not thinking of that!’

  ‘I do not have to help with your wounded.’ She lifted her chin and momentarily forgot the misery of her wet body and the experience she had just suffered. ‘I was forced to go as a decoy in your boat, I cannot be forced to help with any more of your chivalrous ideas!’

  She had expected him to strike her or to shout at her, but instead his face seemed to crumble, and his shoulders sagged with sudden despair. ‘You must do as you wish,’ he said. ‘I cannot blame you for your anger.’

  She stared at him, aware for the first time of the shock and misery in his eyes and the vague, disjointed movement of his hands as he spoke.

  At that moment Lieutenant Heuss appeared round the side of the bridge ladder, his eyes unnaturally bright and searching, his air almost jaunty as he hurried towards her. There was neither caution nor pretence in his tone, as brushing past the other officer he seized her cold hands in his and peered down into her face, his teeth white against the powder smoke which seemed to cover him from head to foot.

  ‘Thank God you are safe! I thought we should never find you!’ He ran his eyes over her soaked clothing, and the hair disordered across her forehead. ‘I cannot tell you how pleased I am. It has been hell enough here without worrying about you!’

  She wanted to protest, to pull away her hands from his, but something in his voice and in his manner prevented her and seemed to bring an ache to her mind, like an old memory.

  Heuss glanced at Damrosch, who still stared blankly at the confusion of scurrying seamen. ‘You get forward, Max,’ he said gently, ‘and keep an eye on the men up there.’ And then, in a slightly sharper note, ‘Hold on, comrade, it could have been worse.’ As Damrosch walked slowly away he turned back to the girl. ‘It could have been much worse!’

  She heard herself say, ‘They need me in the sick quarters?’

  He shook his head. ‘I think it better if you stay away from there. It is not a pleasant sight at the moment. No, it would be as well for you to keep away.’

  A thin cry floated along the deck, and she felt his grip tighten. ‘Poor devils,’ he said quietly, ‘they are not used to this.’

  She thought of all the things she had intended to say. About how it was paying them back for what they had done to others and for what they and their kind were doing in Europe. It all seemed too trite, too hollow, now. Instead she said, ‘I am glad you were safe, too.’

  He seemed to forget the ship and the battle, and his face was suddenly very intense. ‘Do you really mean that?’

  She stammered: ‘Yes, I do. You have been very kind to me. I do not think you really had to be.’

  ‘I should like to talk to you again. I should like that very much. But I have been told to escort you to the bridge. The Captain wishes to speak to you.’ He squeezed her hands tighter as he saw the fires light up in her eyes. ‘Please do not get angry. Von Steiger has asked for you to go. I think your going away in the boat has been on his conscience.’

  ‘Has he got a conscience? I think he is a law unto himself!’

  ‘Perhaps, but he is also responsible for all of us.’ He dropped his voice. ‘He has been Wounded. Yet he just sits there directing all of us, driving us until we hate him. Nothing can stop him.’ He grinned sheepishly. ‘He behaves like the devil, but does not have the decency to look like him!’

  A seaman came at the double, a thick bridge-coat in his hands.

  ‘Ah, here it is.’ Heuss helped her into it and lifted the high collar around her throat. ‘Are you ready?’

  She followed him up the ladder, shutting her eyes to the dark stains splashed across the planking and a still shape covered by a piece of canvas.

  The bridge lookouts stared at her with amazement as she stepped on to the sacred deck, forbidden to all but those with authority there.

  Inside the wheelhouse a man was already fixing a new plate of glass in a window, and another was sweeping up the mess of wood splinters and torn paintwork. Heuss paused outside the varnished door at the rear of the bridge, his eyes bright in the halt-light. ‘Ready?’ She nodded, and he knocked on the door.

  The small cabin was seemingly crowded with people. Niklas, the Chief Engineer, was squatting on the edge of the table, a pencil dashing across a notebook, and Sub-Lieutenant Seebohm, his arm in a sling, was stolidly reporting progress with repairs on the upper deck. Three petty officers waited by the bulkhead, either writing in their notebooks or merely awaiting instructions, and somehow, through this throng, Reeler, the steward, threaded his way, his expression rather disapproving as he refilled the cups from a large coffee-pot.