A Flock of Ships by Brian Callison

Author:Brian Callison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ostara Publishing
Published: 2010-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

I saw the old petty officer on Mallard’s after end look up momentarily from his crouch over the depth-charge primers as his half ship fell away astern. His arm went up briefly to the lowering sky, then he bent back down again to his self-imposed task. Was it a gesture of supplication…? No. I closed my eyes in silent prayer as I realised he had been saluting us — a final absolution from a man who knew what war was all about… A Royal Navyman!

And I knew, too late, there was no room for the contempt of differences between Us and Them.

* * *

Evans came to stand beside me again and, together, we watched numbly as the forepart of Mallard slid into view from the previous shield of our port side. We didn’t speak as the two halves of the little ship almost incredibly met again in our wake. For one unbelievable moment it looked, in the distorted half light, as though she was about to rise whole from the waiting sea; to resurrect her cloven hull and her already dead, trapped, mangled sailors.

Then suddenly, without warning, the stern section seemed to fall forward, the still whirring propellers bit hard into the water, and the whole after end — with the old torpedoman still working under her White Ensign — drove down and down into the black depths below.

And, even yet, she wasn’t completely dead. I heard someone sobbing great gouts of indrawn breath until I realised that it was I who was crying, and then, fantastically, the bright stuttering beam of her Aldis blinked for the last time from the doomed forepart.

GOODBYE DO NOT STOP TO RESCUE SURVI…!

…before shadowy white columns of water rose high in the air as the smashing blast of the explosions thundered across the water towards us. Time after time the flashes spread through the sea, first the milli-second of bright yellow incandescence from the depths, then a sudden contraction of the brilliance followed by those terrible mushrooms of atomised spray climbing higher and higher. Then another convulsion, and another and another, until the whole sea between us and the black horizon seemed to be tortured and ripped by the hellish firestorm. I caught a never-forgotten glimpse of Athenian, a long grey bulk on our starboard quarter, flickering and illuminated by that awesome light while, all the time, the explosions went on and on an' bloody ON!

…until, suddenly, the submarine holocaust ceased and the last mountain of spray fell back to the surface with an eerie, audible hiss, and everything was quiet again aboard Cyclops. It was completely dark now, with the pupils of our eyes contracted by the glare of Mallard’s funeral pyres, so we just stood there, staring blindly aft, for a very long time. We didn’t even move when the noise of a scuffle carried from the after well deck and a hysterical voice screamed, ‘Bugger you, Evans, you bloody murderin’ gutless bastard!’, then the sound of a man sobbing as he was forcibly led below.

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