Free The Glory Boys by Douglas Reeman Page B

between the converging craft, and in the searing light all pretence was gone.
    “Hard a-port!” Kearton felt the deck lean over, watching the two-pounder shells ripping across the leading craft like hammers of hell. The twin Oerlikons had been brought to bear with their sudden, sweeping turn, and flames were ripping from the low bridge. There was a single, muffled explosion.
    He saw the tracer rising and cutting through the smoke, now plunging down and tearing across the water, glaring bright in the last of the drifting flare.
    “Shift target!” He felt his fists, clenched like steel as some of the shots thudded against the hull. Another explosion, deep down, then part of the other vessel’s bows like a black arrowhead against the glare, and more flames, falling astern as they swung toward the second. The machine-guns on the bridge wing opened fire again, and stopped, and Kearton could hear the gunner yelling like a madman, his fury drowned as the guns responded. Must have jammed … Nothing mattered but the flashes on the remaining craft. Hit badly, she was turning away, one gun still firing through the smoke.
    “Cease firing!”
    One of the men had to be punched in the shoulder to make him understand.
    “Half ahead!”
    Like a curtain falling, they were suddenly in darkness again. Pieces of wreckage bumped alongside and then vanished astern. No fire, no explosions. Only the stench remained.
    Kearton licked his dry lips.
    “Course and speed, Pilot.” He did not wait for a response. “Report damage and casualties.”
    “Engineroom, no damage, sir.” A pause, recovering. “Chief says it was bloody noisy!”
    Someone even laughed.
    He stood at Turnbull’s shoulder and felt the hull respond to helm and thrust, heard voices calling out to Spiers as he made his way aft, spent ammunition rattling underfoot. But all he could grasp was the nearness of disaster. Instinct, experience, luck? Some things never left you. Like the sound of a particular engine at sea.
    His first boat in Coastal Forces had been a small Vosper M.T.B., lively and fast, and like some of the early boats powered by fault-free Isotta-Franschini petrol engines, before Italy had allied itself with Hitler. He had never forgotten the excitement of those sorties, on exercise and then in deadly earnest. Or that same pitch of the engines, heard less than an hour ago.
    Ainslie said, “Course to steer, South-seventy-East. Fourteen knots.” He faltered and had to clear his throat; his first taste of close action had just hit him.
    Turnbull eased the spokes and glanced at the compass.
    “Steady she goes, sir.” Half to himself. “That made ’em jump!”
    Kearton listened to the engines, level and unhurried. No emergency pumps, or even the sound of gear being moved to uncover serious damage. A few bullet scars. Jethro and his men would have heard the gunfire and probably seen the flashes, and known how close it had been. Coincidence or part of a plan, but their old schooner would have stood no chance at all.
    Ainslie said, “Here’s Number One. He was quick.”
    Spiers brushed by him and said, “One casualty, I’m afraid. Ordinary Seamen Irwin.” He was shaking his head, and the white scarf had come undone across his coat. “Couldn’t have felt much. Probably a ricochet.”
    Kearton said, “Take over. I’ll go down.”
    “There’s no need, sir.” The movement might have been a shrug. “He’s by the Oerlikons.” He stood aside for Kearton and added, “No damage we can’t handle.”
    Kearton jumped down to the deck, the words still in his ears. Not worth a man’s life was nearer the truth.
    There were a few shapes by the Oerlikons, others, peering from their stations, melting away as he approached.
    Leading Seaman Dawson’s voice was gruff and unusually patient.
    “You’ve made yer point, Larry—now stow it, eh? It ’appens and you accepts it in this job, or you goes under yerself.”
    Another voice, younger. “But we’d done what we