Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur. Страница 64

Bridge," said Kyller but the reply was lost in the deafening detonation of the first broadside, the long thunderous roll of heavy gun-fire. He jumped involuntarily, taken unawares, and then quickly lifted the binoculars from his chest to train them on the British merchantmen.

All attention, every eye on the bridge was concentrated ahead,

waiting for the fall of shot upon the doomed vessels.

In the comparative silence that followed the bellow of the broadside, a shriek from the masthead voice-pipe carried clearly.

"Warships! Enemy warships dead astern!" "Starboard ten." Von Kleine raised his voice a little louder than was his wont, and still under full power, Blitcher swerved away from the land, leaning out from the turn, with her wake curved like an ostrich plume on the surface of the sea behind her, and ran for the shelter of the fog banks, leaving the rich prize of cargo shipping unscathed.

On her bridge von Kleine and his officers were staring aft, the merchantmen forgotten as they searched for this new threat.

"Two warships." The masthead look-our was elaborating his sighting report. "A destroyer and a cruiser. Bearing ninety degrees. Range,

five-oh, seven-oh. Destroyer leading." In the spherical field of von

Kleine's binoculars the neat little triangle of the leading destroyer's superstructure popped up above the horizon. The cruiser was not yet in sight from the bridge.

"If they'd been an hour later," lamented Kyller, "we'd have finished the business and..

"What does masthead see of the cruiser?" von Kleine interrupted him impatiently. He had no time to mourn this chance of fate his only concern was to evaluate the force that was pursuing him, and then make the decision whether to run, or to turn back and engage them immediately.

"Cruiser is a medium, six or nine-inch. Either "O" class, or an

"R". She's four miles behind her escort. Both ships still out of range." The destroyer was of no consequence; he could run down on her and blast her into a burning wreck, before her feeble little 4.7-inch guns were able to drop a shell within a mile of Blitcher, but the cruiser was another matter entirely. To tackle her, Blitcher would be engaging with her own class; victory would only be won after a severe mauling, and she was six thousand miles from the nearest friendly port where she could effect major repairs.

There was a further consideration. These two British ships might be the vanguard of a battle squadron. If he turned now and challenged action, engaged the cruiser in a single ship action, he might suddenly find himself pitted against imponderable odds. There could very well be another cruiser, or two, or three even a battleship, below the southern horizon.

His duty and his orders dictated instant flight, avoiding action,

and so prolonging Blitcher's fighting life.

"Enemy are streaming their colours, sir," Kyller reported.

Von Kleine lifted his binoculars again. At the destroyer's masthead flew the tiny spots of white and red. This time he must leave the challenge to combat unanswered. "Very well," he said, and turned away to his stool in the corner of the bridge. He slumped into it and hunched his shoulders in thought. There were many interesting problems to occupy him, not least of them was how long he could run at full speed towards the north while his boilers devoured coal ravenously, and each minute widened the gap between Blitcher and Esther.

He swivelled his stool and looked back over his stern.

The destroyer was visible to the unaided eye now, and von Kleine frowned at it in irritation. She would yap at his heels like a terrier, clinging to him and shouting his Course and speed across the ether to the hungry British squadrons, that must even now be closing with him from every direction.

For days now he Could expect to see her sitting in his wake.

Come on! Come on!" Charles Little slapped his hand impatiently against the padded arm of his stool as he watched Orion.

For a night and a day he had watched her gaining on Blitcher but so infinitesimally slowly that it required his range finder to confirm the gain every thirty minutes.

Orion's bows were unnaturally high, and the waves she lifted with the passage of her hull through the water were the white wings of a seagull in the tropical sunlight; for Manderson, her captain, had

Pumped out her forward freshwater tanks and fired away half the shell and explosive Propellant from her forward magazines. Every man whose presence in the front half of the ship was not essential to her operation had been ordered aft to stand on the open deck as human ballast all this in an effort to lift Orion's bows and to coax another inch of speed from the cruiser.

Now she faced the most dangerous hour of her life, for she was creeping within extreme range of Blucher's terrible nine-inch armament,

and, taking into account the discrepancy in their speeds, it would be another hour before she could bring her own six-inch guns to bear.

During that time she would be under fire from Blucher's after turrets and would have no answer to them.

It was heart-breaking for Charles to watch the chase, for

Bloodhound had not once been asked to extend herself.

Below there was a reserve of speed that would allow her to close with Blucher in fifty minutes of steaming always -A provided she was not smashed into a fiery shambles long before.

Thus the three vessels fled towards the ever-receding northern horizon. The two long shapes of the cruisers flying arrow straight,

solid columns of reeking smoke pouring from the triple funnels to besmear the gay, glittering surface of the sea with a long double bank of black that dispersed only slowly on the easterly breeze; while, like a wwater beetle, the diminutive Bloodhound circled out to the side of Blitcher from where, when the time came, she could spot the fall of