Sunset by Douglas Reeman Page A

the voicepipes and telephones muttered like hidden spectators while Brooke, his wash and shave forgotten, levelled his powerful glasses above the spray-dappled glass screen.
    â€˜Cox’n on the wheel, sir!’
    â€˜All short-range weapons closed up, sir!’
    Brooke heard but ignored them. He was watching the vast span of unbroken ocean ahead of the bows, undulating in a regular, steady swell as if the sea were breathing. Glistening and endless, with the horizon too bright and blinding to look at.
    Kerr was beside him, his eyes keen and questioning.
    Brooke said, ‘Probably nothing, Number One, but I’m putting down the sea-boat. See to it, will you?’
    Kerr hesitated and then raised his own binoculars before he slid down the ladder again.
    Someone unused to the ocean and its ways would see nothing to begin with. And then . . . He turned back to the ladder and caught one of Onslow’s young signalmen staring at him, biting his lip nervously. From bow to bow there were a million tiny fragments, lifting and falling on the swell, black in the blinding light.
    Brooke crossed to the port side and leaned against the screen.
    â€˜Tell the Chief. Dead slow.’ Dead was right. He leaned over the side of the bridge and saw Kerr already down there by the whaler’s davits, the boat’s crew sitting on their thwarts in oilskins and life-jackets. The boat-handlers were loosening the falls around the gleaming staghorn bollards, crouching like athletes, waiting for the order. Kerr was speaking with Fox, the chief boatswain’s mate, his right arm when it came to seamanship.
    Brooke raised his glasses again. He said, ‘Who is the senior Asdic operator?’
    Calvert would not know. Yet. But Onslow called, ‘Raingold, sir.’
    â€˜Get him for me.’
    A boatswain’s mate handed him a handset and Brooke said shortly, ‘Captain. Sweep from bow to bow. We are approaching wreckage. More than one ship by the look of it.’
    â€˜Aye, sir. I’ll begin now.’
    Calvert asked, ‘U-boat, sir?’
    â€˜Unlikely, Pilot.’ He sounded completely absorbed. ‘That bastard’ll be off after the rest of the convoy. If there’s any left.’ He looked at Calvert’s tense face. Of course, he would have little experience of this; his would have been the bird’s-eye view.
    â€˜When a ship goes down after being tin-fished she’ll sometimes capsize, and if the bulkheads and hatches hold she can assume neutral buoyancy – like a submarine, right?’
    He turned and waved down to Kerr and saw the flurry of hands around the boat’s falls.
    â€˜Even at this speed, a wreck like that could take out our keel like the string from an orange.’
    Calvert watched him. So calmly said. Not to impress; there was no bravado.
    â€˜Turns for lowering!’ Kerr’s voice was quite clear even up here. There was not a breath of wind, unusual out here on this empty ocean.
    â€˜Lower away!’
    Calvert dragged his eyes from the sea of drifting fragments and concentrated instead on the boat jerking down the ship’s side towards the small, frothing bow-wave.
    â€˜Avast lowering!
Out pins!
’
    The whaler’s coxswain and bowman held up the retaining pins to prove they were removed from the falls. In times of terrible emergency it was not unknown for one man to overlook this, so that when the boat was dropped into the water only one end would be freed. The crew and passengers, if there were any, would be flung into the water and probably sucked into the screws.
    â€˜Slip!’
    Kerr had timed it perfectly. The boat made barely a splash as it dropped on to the small bow-wave and then veered away on its rope, the oarsmen already thrusting out their blades. Brooke found time to wonder how many times he had lowered the sea-boat like this.
    Calvert asked, ‘How long since it happened, sir?’
    â€˜A few days, no more. No leaking fuel