Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 68

"God protect you, my darling husband," she had whispered. "Please

God bring you back safely to us." And now he was afraid for her and the daughter he had never seen

"Hold your course, damn you!" he snapped at Herbert Cryer, the helmsman.

"Aye, aye, sir," Herbert Cryer replied with just a trace of injured innocence in his tone. No man could hold Bloodhound true when she hurled herself from swell to swell with such abandoned violence,

she must yaw and throw her head that fraction before the helm could correct her. The reprimand was unjustified, Littered in fear and tension.

"Give it a flipping break, mate," Herbert retorted silently.

"You're not the only one who is going to catch it. Tighten up the old arse hole like a bloody officer and a ruddy gentleman." In these wordless exchanges of repartee with his officers, Herbert Cryer was never bested. They were wonderful release for resentments and pent-up emotion, and now because he was also afraid, he became silently lyrical.

"Climb-aboard-Romeo's one-way express to flipping glory."

Commander Little's reputation with the ladies had resulted in him being irreverently but affectionately baptized by his crew. "Come along with us. We're off to shout at the devil, while Charlie kisses his daughter." Herbert glanced sideways at his commander and grinned.

Fear made the grin wolfish, and Charles Little saw it and misinterpreted it. He read it as a tri ark of the same berserk fury that possessed him. The two of them grinned at each other for an instant in complete misunderstanding, before Herbert refocused his attention on Bloodhound's next wild crabbing lunge.

Charles was afraid as well. He was afraid of finding a weakness in himself but this was the fear that had walked at his right hand all his life, close beside him, whispering to him. You must do it you must do it quicker, or bigger than they do, or they'll laugh at you.

You mustn't fail not in one thing, not for one moment, you mustn't fail. You mustn't fail! "This fear was the eternal companion and partner in every venture on which he embarked.

It had stood beside the thirteen-year-old Charles in a duck blind,

while he fired a twelve-gauge shotgun, and wept slow fat tears of agony every time the recoil smashed. into his bruised bicep and shoulder.

It had stooped over him as he lay in the mud hugging a broken collar bone. "Get up!" it hissed at him. "Get up!" It had forced him to his feet and led him back to the unbroken colt to mount again, and again, and again.

So conditioned was he to respond to its voice that when it crouched beside him now, twisted and misshapen on the foot plates of the bridge, its presence almost tangible, and croaked so Charles alone could hear it, "Prove it!" Prove it!"

there was only one course open to Charles Little; a peregrine stooping at a golden eagle, he took his ship in against, the Blitcher.

his turn to starboard was a feint." Otto von Kleine spoke with certainty, staring out to where the dusk had obliterated the frail silhouette of the English destroyer. "Even now he is turning again to cross our stern.

He will attack on our port side."

"Captain, it could be the double bluff," Kyller answered dubiously.

"No." Von Kleine shook his golden beard. "He must try to outline us against the last of the light from the sunset.

He will attack from the east. "A moment longer he frowned in thought, as he anticipated his opponent's moves across the chessboard of the ocean. Kyller, plot me his course, assuming a speed of twenty-five knots, a turn fOUr points to port three minutes after our last sighting, a run of fifteen miles across our stern, and then a turn of four points to starboard. If we hold our present course and speed,

where will he be in relation to us, in ninety minutes" time? Working quickly, Kyller completed the problem. Von Kleine had been mentally checking every step of the calculation. "Yes," he agreed with Kyller's solution, and already he had formulated the orders for change Of Course and speed to place Bloodhound in ambush.

Under full power, Bbloodhound threw a bow -wave ten feet high, and a wake that boiled out for a quarter of a mile behind her, a long,

faintly phosphorescent smear in the darkness.

Aboard Blitcher a hundred pairs of eyes were straining out in to the night, watching for that phosphorescence.

Behind the battle lights on her upper works men waited, in the dimly-lit turrets men waited, on the open bridge, at the masthead, deep in her belly, the crew of Blitcher waited.

Von Kleine had reduced speed to lessen his own wake, and turned away from the land at an angle of forty-five degrees. He wanted to catch the Englishman on his starboard beam, out of torpedo range.

He stood peering out across the dark sea, with the fur lined collar of his overcoat drawn up to his ears. The night was cool. The sea was a black immensity, vast as the sky that was lined in glowing ivory by the whorls and smears of the star patterns.

A dozen men saw it at the same instant; pale, ethereal, seeming to float upon the darkness of the sea like a plume of iridescent mist the wake of the Englishman.

"Star shell!" Von Kleine snapped the order to the waiting guns.

He was alarmed by the English destroyer's proximity.

He had hoped to spot-her at greater range.

High above the ocean, the star shells burst white, so intensely bright as to sear the retina of the eye that looked directly at them. Beneath them the surface of the sea was polished ebony,