Part 14 (2/2)

Once more, in the pitch-black darkness of the night, Sefton began to realize the responsibility of his position. Crosthwaite was now lying motionless--either he had fainted from loss of blood or else he was already dead. In spite of his anxiety on his skipper's behalf, Sefton was unable to lift a finger to help him. The sub was the only one left standing on the bridge, and whether the bridge was part of a sinking vessel he knew not. A strange silence brooded over the _Calder_, broken occasionally by the moans and groans of wounded men who littered her deck.

Yet Sefton's instructions were clear up to a certain point. He had to take the destroyer out of action. To all intents this part of his duty had been carried out. The _Calder_, in a damaged, perhaps foundering, condition, was alone on the wild North Sea.

The dark form of a bluejacket clambered up the twisted bridge-ladder, and, crossing to where Sefton stood, touched his shoulder.

”Where's the sub-lootenant, mate?” he asked.

”I'm here, Brown,” replied the young officer.

”Beg pardon, sir,” replied the A.B. ”Couldn't recognize you in the darkness. Thought I'd see if you was all right.”

”Thanks,” replied Sefton, touched by the man's devotion. ”How goes it on deck?”

”A clean sweep, sir,” replied Brown. ”A regular wipe-out. Copped us proper, the swine. Both tubes knocked out, after 4-inch blown clean over the side.”

”Do you know if we're making much water?” asked the sub anxiously, for the sluggish way in which the destroyer laboured through the water gave rise to considerable apprehension in that respect.

”Can't say, sir.”

”Then pa.s.s the word for the senior petty officer to report to me.”

The A.B. hurried off, muttering curiously expressed words of thanksgiving at his young officer's escape. Grat.i.tude had been a hitherto undeveloped trait in Brown's nature, until that memorable occasion when Sefton risked his life, if not exactly to save, to be with him when he found himself in the ”ditch”.

Groping for the voice-tube from the bridge to the engine-room, for the telegraph had disappeared, Sefton attempted to call up the engineer-lieutenant, but in vain. This means of communication with the engine-room was completely interrupted.

It seemed an interminable time before the desired petty officer reported himself to the bridge. He was a short, lightly-built man, holding the rank of gunner's mate, and was a capable and fairly well-educated specimen of the lower deck. Yet, had it been daylight, and he had been dumped down just as he was in the streets of a naval town, he would have been promptly run in by the police as a vagrant. His features were literally hidden in soot mingled with blood, for a sh.e.l.l had hurled him face downwards upon a jagged steel grating, which had harrowed his face in a disfiguring though not dangerous fas.h.i.+on. His scanty uniform was in ribbons, and smelt strongly of smouldering embers, while a black scarf tied tightly round his left leg below the knee failed to stop a steady trickle from a shrapnel wound.

Briefly and to the point the petty officer made his report. The _Calder_ had been hulled in more than twenty places, but only three holes were betwixt wind and water. These had already admitted a considerable quant.i.ty of water, but temporary repairs were already in hand. The steam-pumps had been damaged, but were capable of being set right, while the use of the hand-pumps enabled the sorry remnant of the destroyer's crew to keep the leaks well under control.

Nevertheless the _Calder_ no longer rose buoyantly to the waves. A sullen, listless movement told its own tale. Not without a grim, determined struggle would her crew be able successfully to combat the joint effects of war and rough weather.

On deck most of the fittings had been swept clear. Of the funnel only seven feet of jagged stump remained. The rest had vanished. Both masts had been shot away close to the deck. Of the conning-tower only the base was left; the rest had been blown away almost with the last sh.e.l.l fired at point-blank range. The _Calder's_ raised fo'c'sle no longer existed. From two feet close to the water-line at the stem, and rising obliquely to the foot of the bridge, there was nothing left but an inclined plane of bent and perforated steel plates.

”Our own mother wouldn't know us, sir,” concluded the petty officer.

”Let us hope she'll have the chance,” rejoined Sefton, wondering whether it was humanly possible once more to bring the crippled vessel alongside her parent s.h.i.+p, or whether the _Calder_ would again berth alongside the jetty at far-off Rosyth.

The arrival of half a dozen men enabled Sefton to have the commanding officer removed below. Anxiously the sub awaited Stirling's verdict.

The report was long in coming, but the doctor's hands were full to overflowing. During that terrible night many a man owed his life, under Providence, to the administrations of the young medico. Indifferent to his own peril, although the crippled destroyer was straining badly in the heavy seas, Pills toiled like a galley-slave in the semi-darkness, for the electric light had failed, and the temporary operating-room, crowded with ghastly cases, was illuminated only by the glimmer of three oil-lamps.

”That you, Pills?” enquired Sefton anxiously, as an officer, distinguishable only by his uniform cap stuck at a comical angle on the top of his head, clambered upon the bridge.

”No--Boxspanner,” replied that worthy. ”At least what's left of him.

Where's the skipper?”

”Knocked out.”

”Done in?”

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