Victory at Sebastopol Page 8

  “Sweet Mother in Heaven!” Thompson whispered. “Oh, sweet Mother in Heaven … he must have grabbed hold of the trigger-lines or caught them with his boathook, poor little sod! I suppose …” he glanced, in white-faced uncertainty, at Phillip. “There’ll be no hope of finding him, sir?”

  Sick at heart, Phillip shook his head. “I doubt it but we shall have to try. Call the boat in, will you? Tell Driver to pick me up.” He went over the side, aware that it was a forlorn hope but driven by his own grief and pity to make the attempt. The intense cold of the water as he entered it afforded some relief to his pent-up feelings. He made a conscientious search, deliberately shutting his mind to everything but the task he had undertaken, refusing to let himself remember O’Hara’s voice as he had heard it a few moments before the thunder of the exploding bomb had silenced all other sounds.

  Memories would return to haunt him, he knew. He would hear the voice of his conscience, echoing that of the boy he had failed to save, until his own dying day; and there would be questions—unanswered and unanswerable questions—to torment him when his spirits were low and when the decisions inseparable from command had again to be made. He could not absolve himself of responsibility for O’Hara’s death or for young Wright’s or even for Ryan’s—they had been his men and he had sent them to their deaths—but now, whilst he still had orders to carry out, he dared not allow himself to think of them.

  When the boat picked him up, with the expected report of failure, he abandoned the search and ordered Boatswain’s Mate Driver to pull over to enable him to inspect the starboard paddle-wheel. Damage to it was slight and, relieved on this account at least, Phillip motioned towards the entry port.

  “All right, Bo’sun’s Mate, get your boat hoisted inboard and look lively—I want to get under way as soon as I can. You’ll take Mr O’Hara’s place and act as my second-in-command on deck.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Driver acknowledged. He was an ambitious young regular seaman but his voice expressed no pleasure at his temporary elevation in rank. All the boat’s crew were subdued, their faces glum—O’Hara had been popular with the lower deck and his loss had come as a shock to them, the more so, perhaps, because of the circumstances surrounding it.

  Back on board, Phillip lost no time in putting them to work and, with the return to accustomed routine, the habit of discipline reasserted itself and they set to with a will, their grief—like his own—thrust temporarily into abeyance. Only when the brig was on course for Ferrikale did he yield to Thompson’s urging and change into dry clothing borrowed, the gunner’s mate told him with a grin, from Captain Kirkoff.

  “No sign of life from the batteries, sir,” he added, his tone faintly puzzled. “But they must have heard the explosion.”

  They could hardly have failed to, Phillip thought grimly. He sent Thompson to stand by his gun and subjected the fog-shrouded coastline to a lengthy scrutiny from the mainmast crosstrees before coming to the same puzzling conclusion. There were lights, gleaming faintly through the fog, but no undue activity that he could make out and, having instructed Driver to prepare a signal lantern and to summon him immediately should there be a challenge from the shore, he went below to make a final study of the marked Russian chart.

  Higgins, on guard over the sullen Kirkoff, reported that the prisoner was lying on his bunk, apparently sleeping.

  “’E ain’t said much to me, sir,” the steward enlarged. “Except to call me one or two sorts o’ verminous animal and order me not to lay me filthy ’ands on ’im. So I left ’im be—if ’e can sleep through that there infernal device of ’is going off, then good luck to the booger … begging your pardon, sir.” He hesitated and then ventured diffidently, “Is it true that Mr O’Hara’s a goner, sir? You didn’t find ’im?”

  “It’s regrettably true,” Phillip confirmed, tight-lipped. “And we were unable to find him.” He bent over the chart, the contours and figures blurred and indistinct as he endeavoured to concentrate on them, and Higgins wisely returned to the subject of his prisoner.

  “You won’t get nuffink out of ’im, sir, not in ’is present mood, you won’t … that is, sir, if you was thinking of trying. ’E says as you’ve violated his rights as a prisoner-of-war.”

  “I probably have,” Phillip agreed, without contrition. He rolled up the chart and got wearily to his feet. “We are about to close the Ferrikale batteries, Higgins, and if they challenge us, we’ve no answer—make sure Captain Kirkoff knows that, will you please? And if we’re fired on, you can bring him on deck at the double, laying your filthy hands on any part of his person you find expedient in order to get him there.”

  Higgins grinned appreciatively. “Aye, aye, sir. I’ll see ’e knows that too, sir. But if you’ll permit me to offer you a word of advice—with respect, sir, I mean it—you’d be better off if you was to drop ’im overboard and let ’im swim for it, instead of ’anding ’im over to the Admiral.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, man!” Phillip exclaimed in exasperation. “This isn’t the time to indulge your sense of humour—I’m in no mood for jokes.”

  “I’m not joking, sir,” Higgins assured him. “That Russian bastard’s out to get you. ’E as good as told me that ’e’s going to make an official complaint against you, the first chance ’e gets, and—”

  “Well, he can try.” Phillip dismissed the suggestion with a shrug, too tired to take it seriously just then. “Carry on, Higgins,” he added sternly. “The prisoner is your responsibility and I don’t want any more trouble from him. I’ll have you on a charge if he even attempts to escape, do you understand?”

  “Yessir, very good, sir. I thought I ought to warn you, that’s all.” Higgins snapped smartly to attention, acknowledging the reproof without resentment.

  Phillip returned to the deck and promptly forgot the prisoner and his steward’s misgivings concerning him. There were other, more pressing matters to be dealt with than Captain Kirkoff’s future complaints; the brig was within range of the enemy shore batteries now and the success or failure of his mission in the balance.

  “We’ll stand in boldly,” he told Driver. “And try to fool them. Be ready with that signal lamp. If we’re challenged we shall have to make some sort of reply or they’ll fire on us. Hold the lamp low, so that it’s partly obscured, and make your signal slowly and awkwardly, as if you’re a poor hand at it.”

  “No trouble about that, sir,” the petty officer answered, with glum satisfaction. “I am a poor hand, sir, always was.” He looked pale, Phillip noticed, and his fingers, as they tested the signal-shutter, were not quite steady but he managed a grin at his own wry admission of his inadequacies as a signaller and padded purposefully forward to take up his position by the starboard rail.

  To Phillip’s consternation, the fog thinned as the distance between ship and shore gradually lessened. Glass to his eye, he was able to make out the distant silhouette of the fort of Ferrikale from the deck a second or two before the masthead look-out sang out a warning. Following Graham’s advice, he ordered the necessary change of course and stood out into mid-channel without reducing speed, so as to weather Ferrikale Point and the earthwork gun batteries positioned on its slopes. He expected at any moment to be challenged but, to his heartfelt relief, no challenge came.

  There were lights gleaming from the fort and he could dimly see men moving about the earthworks but either the gunners recognized the Constantine and supposed her to be going about her legitimate business or else the fog had lulled them into a sense of false security. For whatever reason, the disturbance in the bay and the sound of the exploding bomb did not appear to have alarmed them and they allowed the brig to pass unmolested. Finally satisfied that his ruse had succeeded, Phillip mopped the beads of sweat from his brow and sent Leading-Seaman Jackson to get the lead going in the fore-chains.

  “Right, Driver,” he ordered, when his new second-incommand joined him in response to his summons. “Take the two spare hands from the after-gun and start laying
out those marker-buoys. I’m going to reduce speed in a few minutes and steer by the chart … we’ve got nearly four miles of channel to mark, so you’ll have to be sparing with the buoys.” He gave detailed instructions and Driver, gaining in confidence now, nodded his understanding.

  “Aye, aye, sir. What about the signal lamp, sir?”

  “You can leave it with me,” Phillip told him. “We’re not likely to be challenged until we come abeam of the Yenikale fort—and with luck, perhaps not even then. But I shall have to take two more men off the guns because I shall need messengers. Pass the word for Gunner’s Mate Thompson, if you please.”

  Thompson appeared promptly, with the two men he had asked for and, having despatched one to the engine-room with the order to reduce speed, Phillip entrusted the task of relaying the leadsman’s calls to the other.

  “Your responsibility will be to look out for any more of those infernal floating bombs, Thompson,” he added. “I propose to destroy any which are likely to obstruct the channel on our return passage, if possible—I don’t want to delay now, in order to deal with them, if it can be avoided. For one thing, it would certainly draw the attention of the gunners in the fort to us and for another I want to lay out our buoys before the fog lifts. I’ll be steering by this chart of Captain Kirkoff’s, which has artificial obstructions marked, as you can see.” He spread out the chart on a hatchway cover and indicated the markings which Graham had copied so carefully. Thompson bent over it, listening attentively to his explanation, as Jackson’s voice sounded faintly from the fore-chains.

  “And a half six, sir!” the messenger repeated.

  Phillip rolled up the chart. He could discern a star almost directly overhead, he realized, and another to the northeast … the fog still swirled over the deck and lower yards but overhead it was clearing, rolling seaward from the dark bulk of the land and borne by a freshening off-shore breeze.

  “Fog’s lifting a bit, sir,” Thompson observed.

  “Well, that should make your job a little easier—and mine, too, come to that. All right, carry on, Gunner’s Mate.” Phillip laid a hand briefly on the seaman’s broad shoulder. “Do the best you can—I’m not expecting miracles. I know how hard these blasted bombs are to spot in the water.”

  “Suppose I don’t spot any, sir?”

  “Then that will be all to the good, because it will probably mean they’ve drifted on shore, out of the channel. But that’s too much to hope for, I’m afraid—Captain Kirkoff knew what he was doing when he dropped them off. All I hope is that we don’t run on to one ourselves.” Phillip sighed. “Put all your gun’s crew, except the captain, on look-out and make sure they keep their eyes skinned. One man had better lie out on the jib-boom, at least until the fog lifts.”

  “By the mark five, sir!” the messenger called, as Thompson returned to his station at a run. Then, a moment or so later, “And a half four, sir!”

  The channel was shoaling rapidly, Phillip’s mind registered. He barked an order to the quartermaster, feeling the tension start to build up inside himself again, and sent his second messenger to the engine-room to request a further reduction in speed.

  “Second buoy away, sir!” Driver reported, his words accompanied by an audible splash, as the threshing paddle-wheels slowed and the throb of the engines faded to a low pitched hum.

  “By the deep four, sir!” came the shout from the leadsman.

  “Steady as you go, Quartermaster,” Phillip said. He swung himself up into the mainmast shrouds, feeling the wind fresh on his cheeks as he climbed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The wind continued to freshen and back round, finally dispersing all except a few isolated patches of fog, which lingered at a little over deck height above the water. The night sky, though overcast, revealed occasional glimpses of an almost full moon, by whose fitful light Phillip was able to keep an observant eye on the high ground of the western shore.

  Seeing nothing to cause him alarm, he waited until the bristling gun emplacements of Ferrikale were left well astern and then ordered a cautious increase in speed. The little Constantine, miraculously unchallenged and apparently unnoticed, steamed slowly up the channel, sounding and laying out her buoys as she went. Conditions were ideal for his purpose, Phillip told himself—indeed, they were better by far than he had anticipated—yet he continued to feel tense and uneasy. He steered by Captain Kirkoff’s chart and set course for Yenikale, now barely three miles distant, constantly sweeping both sea and shore with his night glass. The inked-in markings on the chart still puzzled him; if they were intended to note the position of obstructions in the channel, the darkness hid these from him, but he gave each a wide berth, aware that he would have to make a more careful investigation before leaving the Strait.

  The first he sighted and was able to confirm was in the form of a sunken ship, lying on her side in the shallows, her splintered mainmast jutting skywards at an acute angle. She had almost certainly been driven on to the rocks in some long-forgotten storm and left to rot there, he decided, until the need to utilize any available object to block the narrow channel had led to her being dragged off, to find her last resting place on top of a sandbank, on the shore side of the channel. The only danger she appeared to present was to the unwary, in fog or darkness, but her position had been marked in red ink on Kirkoff’s chart and, for this reason, Phillip cut his engine speed to dead slow and steered well clear of her.

  He was thankful he had taken these precautions when, coming abeam of her, he noticed the two lengths of heavy chain cable which connected her battered bows to some unidentifiable sunken object—possibly another wreck—lying almost in mid-channel. An excited hail from Thompson, a moment later, drew his gaze to a bomb, wallowing in the disturbance caused by the Constantine’s paddles, and the gun captain spotted a second lying just beyond the barrier formed by the chains.

  Two bombs, Phillip thought, and felt the muscles in his throat tighten as he trained his glass on the flat, innocent-seeming wooden top of the nearer of the two evil contraptions—two out of a possible six, if Graham had been right in his interpretation of the Russian chart. If he had and if the red circles indicated the presence of bombs, then the rest had been dropped between here and Yenikale.

  He strode impatiently to a deck lantern and studied the chart again. There were two red circles below his present position—he and Thompson had missed them, so they would have to be located and put out of action on the return passage, as these two would, unless … he hesitated, the glass to his eye again. He was anxious to complete his mission but they had made good progress—more than half the four-mile length of channel had been buoyed—and this was a diabolical obstruction, one into which an over-eager Commander in Jack Lyons’s squadron might well blunder, even in daylight and in spite of the buoys, if he failed to remove it. And in these circumstances, he could not be sure that he would make the return passage unscathed or with time to spare …

  “Messenger!” he called. “Tell Mr Curtis to stop engines. Bo’sun’s Mate, avast heaving those buoys and stand by to let go the bower anchor. Pass the word for the gunner’s mate.”

  Thompson came running aft, a gleam in his dark eyes when Phillip told him of his change of plan. “I can do it, sir,” he answered promptly. “And I have charges prepared—I set Ellis to work on them as we came up-channel, thinking you’d want them, sir. The only thing I need to know is how long a delayed fuse you want.”

  “I’ll need fifteen minutes, to get us clear. Can you place the charges without any danger to yourself or the boat?”

  The gunner’s mate grinned. “That I can, sir—with a boathook. Poor young Mr O’Hara had the right idea but he … well, he didn’t quite go about it in the right way. Can I take Ellis with me, sir?”

  Phillip nodded. It went against the grain to leave this risky operation to his two seamen gunners but now he had no alternative, for there was no Officer to whom he could hand over command. “Carry on,” he said briefly. “But for pity’s sake, h
ave a care, lad!”

  “I will, sir,” Thompson assured him. The boat put off, five minutes later, with Driver’s two spare hands at the oars and Thompson and his gun captain crouching in the bows. Phillip waited, his mouth dry, following their every move with anxious eyes until the darkness swallowed them up. Within less time than he had believed possible, they were back and Thompson reported cheerfully that both charges had been placed in position.

  “It went without a hitch, sir. I had Ellis steady my arm, just to make sure, and they went on, sweet as you please, with the boat well away from both of them.”

  “Well done, Gunner’s Mate,” Phillip said, with sincerity. “Well done indeed! I’ll see that your conduct is brought to the Admiral’s notice as soon as we get back to the Fleet.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Thompson reddened and added practically, “With any luck, when those bombs go off they’ll take the wreck with them—they’ll take the cables for sure. And that’s a good job done, sir—I wouldn’t like to think what trouble that unholy contrivance might have caused to some of our ships, if it’d been left where it was. D’you reckon there’ll be any more like that one, sir?”

  Phillip shrugged. “Yes, I’m afraid there may be. But at least we know how to deal with them now—or I trust we do. All right, back to your station and don’t take your eyes off the water for a split second. Bo’sun’s Mate …” he gave his orders briskly, feeling some of his earlier optimism returning but, on course for Yenikale once more, he had to fight against the temptation to consult his pocket watch as the minutes ticked by and he listened tensely for the expected explosion. Fifteen minutes passed and the towering ramparts and tall watch towers of the fort of Yenikale were in sight, silhouetted against a lightening sky … yet still there was no sound save the throb of the Constantine’s engines and the rhythmic churning of her paddle-wheels, broken by an occasional shout from Driver, as he and his crew threw another marker-buoy over the stern.