Storm Below. Hugh Garner
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St. John’s, as it were, made things a little easier to bear.
Lieutenant Harris came down the companionway and entered the door. “The first lieutenant is having your signal sent, sir,” he said.
“Good. Where is the St. Helens?”
“She’s doing a search between the convoy ranks, sir.”
“Can she receive our flashing?”
“Yes, sir. She’s answering.”
“Thank you. Oh, by the way, have you read the stuff on the new German torpedo?”
“The sonic one, sir?” Harris asked, knowing that the captain only wanted to know by his mention of it whether he knew what he meant.
“Yes. Very clever, don’t you think? It’ll probably come shooting up our oscillator beam. Great thing for Allison to pick up on his asdic.”
“I thought that it was attracted by the noise of our screw, sir?” “It’s one or the other. We’ll find out before the war is much older, no doubt.”
“Yes, sir,” said Harris, taking his chair again at the small table. The captain picked up a sheaf of wireless signals from the top of the bookcase. He was reading through them when there was a knock against the door frame, and he looked up to see a seaman, cap in hand, standing there.
“Yes, Manders?” he asked.
“Sir, I was sent down here by Leading Seaman McCaffrey. Ordinary Seaman Clark is dead, sir,” he said.
“Dead!” cried Harris, swinging around.
The captain put down the signals and dismissed the seaman. “That puts a new light on things,” he said. He opened the bookcase and pulled out the heavy volume of King’s Regulations & Admiralty Instructions, and began thumbing through the close-packed pages.
CHAPTER FOUR
Stoker Petty Officer Jim Collet stood on the deck plates of the forward boiler room, and instructed Second Class Stoker “Frenchy” Turgeon in the changing of a broken water gauge glass. In his hand he was holding a gland nut, and was showing Frenchy how to fit new packing rings.
“Dis kid, he broke ’is arm, eh?” Frenchy asked.
“Yeah.”
“Dat’s de firs’ time I ever know somebody to die wit’ dis.”
“He didn’t die of a broken arm, stupid.”
“What ’e die of, den?”
“Old age,” said Jimmy, fitting the new glass.
Whenever there is an emergency upon a ship of war, there are men detailed to take care of it, and except for these men, the other members of the crew carry on with their normal routine. The job that Collet and Turgeon were doing this morning, down below in the boiler room, was a small one, and yet it was important to the lives of every man aboard.
A ship crossing the ocean in wartime, except in cases of dire necessity, cannot stop. The pulse of the engines is so vital, and so necessary, that the men begin to believe nothing can ever happen which will break down that inexorable forward thrust, which is so much a part of their lives afloat. Were the engines to stop, the ship immediately ceases to be a fighting unit, and becomes a floating hulk, prey to enemy action, and prey also to the vast seething sea lying beneath it, ever ready to boil and froth and suck this saucy thing of steel and wood and human bodies into its vortex.
Frenchy put some tools away before he said, “Dis kid was but — un jeune garçon — young boy. ’Ow could ’e die of old age?”
“Okay, make an argument out of it,” answered Jimmy.
“I don’t unnerstan’?”
“Neither does anybody else.”
Jimmy climbed up the vertical ladders from the stokehold and took the gauntlets from his hands in order to wipe the sweat from his forehead. He stood for a minute or two framed in the hatch, watching the approach of the destroyer St. Helens, as she came sliding up on the port side.
From beneath him he could hear the clang of the engine room telegraph, and the sound of Frenchy answering the voice pipe in the stokehold. Frenchy’s voice had an argumentative ring, with its French-Canadian accent and the Gallic inflections on the word endings. It wafted up through the hot air from the boilers, “Sure, wat you t’ink? Je’ Chris’! I shut him off ten minute ago!”
Poor Frenchy! He was the only one of his kind among seventy-seven jeering French-baiters. From morn until night he listened to the talk about the “pea-soupers” and the Quebec draft dodgers. The crew kidded him, laughed at his accent, and drove him almost to madness, yet there wasn’t a man aboard who wouldn’t have given him his shirt. And when they talked about the anti-war sentiment in Quebec (without quite knowing what it was all about) they made an exception of Frenchy.
Jim turned around, and lowering his head inside the hatch, yelled, “Quiet, you pea-souper, they can’t hear themselves on the bridge.”
Frenchy made an uncomplimentary remark about what they could do on the bridge if they didn’t like it.
Collet crossed to the railing around the engine room fiddley and leaned there watching the activity of the crew aboard the destroyer. They were lowering a boat from the davits, and with the ship still underway they were being careful that it did not capsize when it hit the water.
With a small cloud of spray, and some mad scrambling by, its crew to get rid of the lines, it was cast off, and the crew began pulling towards the Riverford. In the stern sheets sat two officers, one of them the surgeon and the other the officer in charge of the boat.
Jim let his eyes take in the destroyer crew who were lined along the weather deck. Standing abaft the torpedo tubes was a friend of his, a chief stoker, and he tried to get his attention by making motions as though he were hoisting a glass of beer. The other would not look in his direction, but centred his gaze on the boat.
It was a lot of use to send the MO aboard now, after the kid was dead. Why did the Old Man want to have the doctor come and tell him what everybody knew? It must be a formality or something, he thought.
Peebles, the leading cook, climbed up the ladder and stood beside him, his face glistening in the cold air. “Is this the MO coming aboard?” he asked.
“Yeah,” answered Jimmy curtly. He resented having to give Peebles a civil answer, who never to his knowledge had spoken civilly to anybody in his galley.
“It’s about time.”
“Yeah.”
“That kid died of internal hemorrhages,” Peebles said. “The tiffy should have known what to do.”
“How would he know?”
“He could have found out.”
“Oh, balls; he’s not a doctor! A person can’t know everything. For instance, you can’t bake bread,” he said, getting in his sting.
“I don’t see you chucking it over the side.”
“You don’t see me eating it either.”
They were quiet as the boat was made fast to the corvette’s side. A ladder was lowered and the surgeon, trying to appear accustomed to climbing out of small boats in the middle of the Atlantic, came inboard.
He was a tall, gangling young man of uncertain age, wearing glasses. He carried his head high with a hauteur which could have been due to his rank, or may have been caused by astigmatism. The first lieutenant met him and led him through the hatch to the captain’s flats. The doctor’s demeanour was a study in the effect of lieutenant’s stripes on a bedside manner. It looked as though he wanted to appear officious and businesslike, but was prevented by his professional charm.
“He looks as though he’s going to deliver a baby,” said