HMS Saracen by Douglas Reeman

Author:Douglas Reeman [Reeman, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Historical Naval Fiction
ISBN: 9780099062608
Google: NT1hD3hoOHsC
Amazon: B00413PIW2
Barnesnoble: B00413PIW2
Publisher: HUTCHINSON
Published: 1965-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Spray danced across the pinnace’s canopy as it lifted gaily on the sparkling water. Chesnaye staggered and put out his hand to steady himself against the motion. On the long voyage from England he had noticed how unprepared he had become for all the mannerisms and tests of seaboard life. The restless sea, the daily routine, all seemed vaguely strange and unnerving. The convoy had slipped through Gibraltar Straits and had been attacked soon afterwards. Appalled, Chesnaye had watched ship after ship blasted to fragments by the enemy bombers which appeared to fill the sky. The destroyer escort in which he had been a passenger was commanded by an Australian who had done little to hide his irritation at Chesnaye’s constant presence on his bridge. Once he had snapped : `Jesus, Captain, you’ll get enough of this later-on! Why don’t you get your head down?’ But Chesnaye had found the Australian accent somehow reassuring, as it reminded him of the life in New Zealand. He wondered how that captain had fared in the night’s air raid.

He instantly dismissed the convoy and everything else from his thoughts as he watched the sharpening shape of the monitor. Eagerly, hungrily, his eyes darted up and down her length, as if afraid to miss some scar or mark, as a mother will look at a grown-up son. She was older, but the same. There were streaks of rust around her hawse-pipe and more than one dent along her bulging hull, but nothing that he could not put right.

The Doctor spoke from the cockpit. `I’d like to ask you aboard for a noggin, but it’s a bit early.’

The boat drew nearer, and Chesnaye saw the familiar scurry and frantic preparations which culminated in a rigid knot of figures at the head of the long varnished gangway.

His eyes misted, and over the years he heard Lieutenant Hogarth’s high-pitched voice screaming down threats to the flustered Pickles. And later when Pickles had warned him of the Captain. `He hates everybody, especially midship)nen !’

Is that how they are thinking of me? he wondered.

The boat lost way and idled towards the gangway, the I polished boathook poised and ready.

Wickersley called, `Jolly decent of you to drop me here!’

Chesnaye looked down at him, knowing that he was glad he had had company for those last few agonising yards. `Actually, I’m coming aboard myself!’

The Doctor’s eyes widened. `Oh?’ Then, as the realisation flooded his mind, `Oh!’

Chcsnaye straightened his back and stepped on to the gangway. He tried not to count the wide, well-worn steps, his mind blank to all else but the whirl of events which had at last overtaken him. His head lifted above the deck, and his brain only half registered the line of tanned faces, the raised hands, and then the shrill twitter of pipes which washed across him like floodwater. A few mumbled words, more salutes, a guard presenting arms and the flash of a sword.

One face seemed to swim out of the mist. A calm, youthful voice said the words he had waited so long to hear.

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