Free A Ship Must Die (1981) by Douglas Reeman Page B

man!
’ Just as quickly his voice dropped. ‘But he’s going to need you, make no mistake. He’s like the ship, you can’t go on driving, driving, driving without something giving way.’
    His yeoman re-entered with a jug of coffee and Villar said offhandedly, ‘Just thought I’d mention it.’ He grinned. ‘Sir.’
    Fairfax left the chartroom and paused in the passageway, his hand resting on a clip as the ship plunged and swayed through the outer darkness.
    God, they were right about this ship, he thought. A legend. No wonder it was hard for outsiders to understand.
    He saw the small door with the word Captain above it and shook his head.
Andromeda
could give, but she demanded much from those who served her.
    Blake wrapped a towel around his neck and trained his binoculars over the screen. The sea’s face had changed yet again, and with dawn so close it gave an impression of endless movement and power. The
Leander
class cruisers had sacrificed only one thing in their design to appear so graceful. They were notoriously ‘wet’ ships, and as Blake lowered his glasses to dab his eyes with the already sodden towel he sawthe sea boiling up through the hawse-pipes and along the forecastle like a tide-race.
    Villar called, ‘Steady on new course, sir. Ship’s head is three-three-zero.’
    Blake waited for Fairfax to join him by the salt-smeared screen. Although the ship was and had been at action stations for a full hour, Fairfax had remained on the bridge. If they were called to fight, the commander’s place was well away from the bridge and its open vulnerability. As
Andromeda
’s last captain had once told Blake, there was no point in putting both eggs in one basket. Fairfax would be with damage control, keeping the ship afloat and working, no matter what.
    Blake said, ‘Soon now.’ He peered up at the sky. Instead of blue dawn there was scudding cloud, low and hostile.
    Fairfax asked, ‘Will we use the plane, sir?’
    Blake nodded. ‘Otherwise we could lose the German completely.’
    He had a mad picture of
Andromeda
opening fire on Stagg’s
Fremantle
while the enemy slipped past them both. He thought too of his talk with Lieutenant Jeremy Masters, the Seafox’s pilot. A temporary RNVR officer, Masters was the one real odd-ball in
Andromeda
’s wardroom. He was never happier than when he was risking his neck, and as far as Blake could gather he had spent most of his life doing just that. He had flown in pre-war air races in his own plane and had raced cars at Brooklands. He had an outsized private income, but for all that was easy-going and well liked by his men, who nicknamed him Bertie Wooster. His young observer, Lieutenant Jimmy Duncan, another reservist, was his exact opposite. Serious, over-conscientious, and if he had a sense of humour at all nobody had discovered it in the past two years. He and Masters got along like a house on fire.
    Blake had explained the difficulty of pinning down a single ship in such an expanse of ocean, and bearing in mind that the fragile Seafox had a maximum endurance of four and a half hours and a range of only four hundred miles and a bit, it did not leave much room for error.
    Masters had listened with his face set in its usual attentive and blank mask.
    Then he had said cheerfully, ‘Piece of cake, sir. No bother.’
    Feeble light played across the bridge, the intent faces, the eyes of men screwed up against the spray and wind. The spray drifted over the screens like bits of glass and felt much the same.
    Blake said, ‘Slow ahead both engines.’ He stood upright, steadying himself against the rough motion as he peered aft at the whipping ensign and the tongue of smoke above the trunked funnel. ‘Port ten.’
    He felt the ship rising to respond to the alteration of speed and rudder, saw the sea’s roughness ease away as the cruiser continued in a slow turn to make some sort of barrier to leeward.
    There was a coughing roar from aft and he knew that Masters was