Sunset by Douglas Reeman Page B

about, but the flotsam is still too close together for it to have been much longer.’
    Calvert stood and watched as
Serpent
’s straight stem pushed slowly through the scattered remains. A mile or so of tightly lashed bales, cotton or wool, perhaps for uniforms in England. Broken life-rafts which had never been lowered, an upturned boat towards which the whaler was pulling strongly. To get the vessel’s name and registry: to ignore the rest. Several corpses rolling over in their life-jackets, faces destroyed, blackened and bruised by the explosion, and by the sea birds if any other flesh remained. Splintered hatch-covers, a couple of life-buoys: it stretched in either direction. More human remains bobbed along the side, trailing their scarlet weed. Perhaps the ship had been carrying explosives too.
    â€˜Boat’s calling us up, sir!’ Onslow’s face was like stone. The whaler’s coxswain was standing in the sternsheets using only his hands to semaphore across the water. How good
Serpent
must look to him at this moment, Brooke thought. ‘She was the
Mary Livingstone,
registered in Sydney.’
    Brooke felt for his pipe, but it was down in the hatch.
    â€˜Log it, Pilot.’
Why can I never get used to it?
    The whaler was right amongst the bigger fragments but was still clinging to the useless life-boat.
    The hands were waving again and Onslow exclaimed, ‘There’s a woman and kid under the boat, sir.’
    Their eyes met across the crowded bridge. Like a cry for help, or an unspoken bond.
    A bridge messenger asked, ‘Are they dead, Yeo?’
    Onslow swung on him, his eyes blazing with fury.
    â€˜Of course they’re fucking dead, you stupid little bugger!’ The rage faded as quickly as it had arisen, and Onslow said, ‘They want to know what to do, sir.’
    Calvert stood very still, deeply aware of the importance of this moment. Two men looking at each other, held together by circumstances.
    The captain said in the same level voice, ‘Tell them to fetch them aboard, Yeo. It’s the least we can do.’
    Calvert said, ‘That was a fine thing to do, sir.’ He waited, half expecting Brooke to turn on him.
    Brooke was watching the whaler returning slowly towards the ship, the oars rising and falling like tired wings.
    â€˜It’s important to him, Pilot. They’re not just victims. To him they’re what he’s lost.’
    â€˜Clear lower deck! Up whaler!’
    Routine was taking over again.
    When Calvert looked again the whaler was snug against the davits, the seamen going about their business.
    Brooke said, ‘Bring her back on course, Pilot, one-one-zero revolutions. Tell Number One we shall exercise damage-control before
Up spirits
.’
    That night, with Lisbon somewhere far abeam, the destroyer
Serpent
stopped her engines once more.
    In one canvas bundle the unknown woman and her child were buried at sea, as they had died, together.
    The Staff Operations Officer, roundly built and wearing an open-necked white shirt which was far too tight, was reaching up with a walking-stick to jab at one of the old-fashioned revolving fans. Except that it was not revolving.
    In between pokes he gasped, ‘Like a bloody oven in here when the generators pack up!’
    Brooke sat without speaking, still tired from the final approach and entry into Gibraltar’s broad anchorage. Every kind of ship, he thought, from cruisers to landing-craft, hospital ships to troopers, the latter with every inch of rigging spread with khaki washing.
    He was always impressed by Gibraltar: the Rock. Towering and somehow reassuring, the fortress at the Mediterranean’s gateway. From one window he could see the sunshine glittering on ten thousand windows: Algeciras. No doubt eyes had watched
Serpent
’s arrival, Spanish and German. What Churchill would denounce as one-sided neutrality in a country from which the enemy could and did spy on their