In the Line of Fire (A Donald Cameron Naval Thriller) by Philip McCutchan

Author:Philip McCutchan [McCutchan, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2014-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Leading-Seaman Farrow was now acting in the room of the drowned Petty Officer of the iron-deck division, men known collectively as iron-deckmen. He had a word with Cameron while the latter was at work around Number Three gun.

‘Reckon you did all right, lad,’ he said. ‘Gettin’ out the spars… it was good work, was that.’

‘I’ve seen them used before.’

‘Maybe. Well, I reckon you saved the ship —’

‘Oh, not—’

Farrow put a hand on his shoulder. ‘I don’t believe anyone else was going to think of it, lad. Me — I should have done, for one. I didn’t. You did. Might even say the skipper should have done or Jimmy. I reckon we was all taken flat aback as you might say.’ He paused. ‘Anyhow, I’ve had a word with the ‘swain. He’ll see that Jimmy knows where the credit’s due.’ He slid down the ladder to the quarterdeck, vanishing before thanks could be uttered. Cameron appreciated what Farrow had said and what he had done, too. It was utterly unselfish: Farrow, as a long-service RN rating having to stand by and see an HO ordinary seaman vault over his head to a commission, might well have sucked his teeth and said nothing to anyone. It would have been understandable, but it hadn’t happened. Cameron got on with his work which, this early morning, was to help in clearing up the general debris of a terrible night. There was mess and confusion everywhere; and during that morning watch some of the ratings had the shattering experience of finding limbs buried beneath the remains of the masts and top hamper. Cameron himself was one of these: his gruesome find was an arm still in a seaman’s blue jumper-sleeve, both arm and sleeve ripped off at the shoulder. It was a right arm, as could be seen from the red woollen non-substantive badge upon it: it had belonged to a seaman torpedoman second class. Was he dead, or was he below in the wardroom, now acting as an overflow sick-bay? It didn’t really matter which, Cameron supposed. Arms couldn’t be stitched back on again, muscle, sinew, bones, nerves, flesh… one day perhaps, but not yet. Whoever it belonged to, the arm was just ‘gash’ now, seagull food.

Cameron pushed it overboard along with the rest. A sea took it and surged it for’ard, tossing it above the sunken fo’c’sle and those other dead in the submerged stokers’ messdeck. It was a bloody awful war, all right.

Just then Stripey Tomkins manifested behind Cameron. ‘I ‘eard what the killick said, Your Lordship —’

‘Put a sock in it, Stripey. The joke’s an old one by now and you’re getting tedious.’

‘Tedious?’ Tomkins’ mouth sagged open; the action revealed that he stood in need of a toothbrush. ‘What’s that, then?’

‘What you are — boring.’

‘Now look ‘ere,’ Tomkins began belligerently. ‘Boring! No one calls me that an’ gets away with it, no one. You, you’re just a puffed up little bleedin’ poofter wot thinks ‘e can stamp over everyone’s ‘eads

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