Battle Ensign by J.E. Macdonnell

Author:J.E. Macdonnell [Macdonnell, J.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: martime, Naval Fiction, Royal Australian Navy, naval warfare, World War II Royal Australia Navy Fiction, Australian writer
Publisher: Piccadilly
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

When Lieutenant Bentley had experienced his first typhoon, tic had been a midshipman in a twelve thousand-ton cruiser. Then he had looked forward to it; from what he had read of them in his youth, there had seemed to be something majestic in the concept—a titanic struggle between pagan gods in some far-off realm. But he had been disappointed. The cruiser was big and powerful, and, luckily for her, they had touched only the fringe of the turbulence. So that young Bentley’s main memory of those three rough days was of enormous seas and almost continuous seasickness.

This was different. He was older now, and he was in a two thousand-ton destroyer. Even the wind seemed different. Perhaps it was because he could judge its force more accurately now. But movement was hellishly difficult. Only by a superhuman effort was he able to maintain his balance.

He stopped abreast the funnel, and, hanging on to the lifelines which Hooky had rigged from end to end of the deck, listened. The noise of the gale roared in his ears to the exclusion of all other sound. It was as if no other sound existed in the world. Perhaps it had been like that from the beginning of time. Bentley didn’t know. How could he know? It was all so encompassing—so immediate. And yet there were wisps of something impermeable threading through the monstrous block of liquid sound. Bentley listened, but whatever it was had slipped away, sucked back into the eternal shiftings of time. Bentley shook his head. He must have been imagining it, but to him, for a fraction of a second, it had sounded as if someone—someone? No, grander than that, if even “grand” was a word to be used in such a noble context—were plucking the strings of a gigantic harp. Bentley almost laughed out loud. What an imagination. No, no, it wouldn’t do—it wouldn’t do at all.

The ship plunged and reeled, the bow-waves pushing their white evidence far against the night on either side. And now it was the sea itself that riveted the awestruck young lieutenant’s attention. It looked like nothing he had ever seen in his life before—one enormous mass, stretching as far as eye could see, of roaring foam, which gave the appearance of actually sticking as the wind ripped away great sheets of spray from the top of the waves. And, like myriad upon myriad of tiny bullets, the rain struck the water then jumped back up again to live a split-second before being blown out of existence. And the rain still pelted down.

Then there was a great flash of lightning, snaking across the sky like a taut cable suddenly cut loose, and it brought the sea into even more vivid relief.

He hurried along the tossing deck to complete his job of securing the guns.

All the officers were back on the bridge now, and had made their reports to the captain. According to them—and he had to trust their word, for now he would not

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