Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [123]
After that Matthew was occupied with signals, messages flashing back and forth. The whole High Seas Fleet was engaged.
He saw smoke on the starboard bow, and a few long, dragged-out minutes later he could hear the gunfire. There appeared to be at least two light cruiser squadrons coming across their bows. The roar of gunfire was now almost incessant, and great plumes of water shot into the air, up to two hundred feet high where the shells exploded upon hitting the surface.
Matthew found himself shivering uncontrollably, but there was a strange kind of excitement inside him as well, a mixture of fear and a driving hunger to be involved, part of the action striking back.
They were plowing through the water at tremendous speed. There was gunfire, heavy and continuous, somewhere to the rear, but through the clouds of smoke and the towers of water in all directions, it was hard to have any clear idea what was happening.
Twice he saw torpedo tracks racing toward them, and the ship swung hard, screws thrashing, hull juddering under the strain as infinitely slowly they turned in the tightest circle possible. He heard a shout and saw through a break in the chaos the vast shape of a battle cruiser, bow high, stern wallowing. He was unaware of crying out. The thing was sinking, belching smoke, forward guns still blazing. It was struck again and the bow lifted higher, steam roaring, flame yellow as the magazine caught. He was sick with the horror of it, vomit bitter in his mouth.
Shot fell only six hundred yards short of the Cormorant and he saw the water drench the deck, bridge, and signal house.
“Bloody close!” Ragland said tersely.
The next instant Matthew felt the lurch and jolt as a shell hit the upper deck and exploded. He swung around, instinct driving him to do something, anything. He felt Ragland’s hand on his arm hard enough to hurt.
“Not yet!” he shouted in the noise of returning gunfire from their own turrets. “Sounds like the boys’ mess deck, or the after dressing station. Others will attend to it. There’ll be enough here for you to do if the signals get hit.”
Matthew made an intense effort to control himself. His brain told him he had his own job to do and people relied on him to be in place and keep the communications open at all times.
They were past where the cruiser was sinking. He swiveled to look, but he couldn’t see it. It must be behind the smoke.
Another shot fell five hundred yards short of them and again the bridge and signal house were drenched with black, foul-smelling water.
“It’s gone!” Ragland told him.
Matthew was stunned.
“It was German!” Ragland added. “Pay attention to what you’re doing!”
“Yes, sir.”
Again they changed course sharply and this time Matthew could see that they were steering straight into the area where the previous shots had landed. It seemed to work. He looked ahead to the bridge but he could not see Archie. He must be there, knowing everything depended on his judgment.
There were ships all around them. One moment he could see the German ships ahead and the British fleet to the port and starboard—dreadnoughts, hard gray outlines knifing through the water, spurting flame. The next moment he was blinded again.
The noise was almost unbearable—the roar and crash of shot, the churning of the sea, and the screaming vibration of the engines. There was oil and water everywhere, towering into the air, crashing on the deck, splinters of shell flying from shots exploded on the sea, and clouds of mist and smoke.
Matthew worked in the signal house, hearing the intermittent bleep of the radio, voices on the telephone, shouts. He had to concentrate to make sense of it, disentangle one message from another.
Then came one that turned his stomach cold. The British battle cruiser Indefatigable had been sunk, all hands lost. It was hideously real. In the noise and the violence men were dying, crushed, torn apart, burned, and drowned.
Time passed in violence, half-blindness, and mind-bruising noise. The ships moved with what seemed like