Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [126]
Ragland peered forward. Then Matthew saw it as well, a German cruiser coming straight toward them. He realized what Archie’s order had been—“Clear the foc’sle!”
The next instant they crashed together with an impact that hurled Matthew off his feet and the whole room seemed to pitch over on one side and then right itself and send him back again, staggering against the table. The ship rolled over to starboard, and the next moment there was the roar and crack of fire raking the length of the ship.
Matthew clambered to his feet, shaken and hurt. Ragland was doing the same, but with more presence of mind, he made for the door, threw his weight against it and burst it open. Matthew followed him. The front glass was shattered; only then did he see on the port side the vast, towering bow of the German cruiser almost cleaving them amidships, buckling and ripping off the steel plating.
“God Almighty!” Ragland gasped, standing momentarily rooted to the deck.
Very slowly the German ship eased back into the sea and the Cormorant rocked violently and righted itself a little, wallowing hard in the water.
The German guns had cleared the decks. The foremast was toppling, the for’ard searchlight had fallen from the fire-bridge down to the deck, and the funnel was blown back until it rested between the two foremost ventilation cowls. The boats had come down and even the davits were torn out of their sockets. The cruiser’s guns must have been elevated too high to rip open the deck, or they would have been on fire by now, and settling in the water.
Matthew knew it before the order came to man the boats: They were sinking. There was no way to save her. A wild terror assailed him that Archie would go down with her. He swung around, looking for him, but the bridge was invisible through the smoke.
Someone was manning the guns, firing with everything they had at the German ship, spewing shell, flame, smoke in choking clouds. They’d go down locked together!
Except that the German ship was not holed. It was still well afloat.
One of the boy sailors, not much older than Tom, came scrambling up the steps, shouting something. Matthew tried to read his lips and the meaning in his wildly swinging arms.
“The brig’s burst open!” the boy yelled, the words piercing a sudden moment’s lull.
Hannassey! He’d go for the prototype. He didn’t know it was no good. And perhaps it wasn’t. The Germans might be able to finish it!
There was no point in trying to explain anything to Ragland. The roar of the guns had started again and he would hear nothing anyway. Matthew pushed past him and plunged down the steps, now twisted and torn loose at the bottom.
Men were running up. Smoke caught in his nose and throat, half blinding him, making him cough and his eyes stream, but he was determined to catch Hannassey, at all costs. If they were going down, all of them—Archie, Ragland, all the men and boys he had eaten with, worked beside, and whose courage and good humor he had known—then Hannassey was bloody well going down with them. He was not going to escape to the German ship that had rammed them, not even for a few minutes before it too sank. Perhaps it wouldn’t. Maybe someone would survive, and it was not going to be the Peacemaker!
Where would he go when the brig burst open? To the prototype, surely. He wouldn’t leave the Cormorant without at least trying to get it. He was not a man to save his own skin without playing the last card!
He swiveled in his tracks and went toward the torpedo room where the prototype was stored, theoretically ready for testing.
It was difficult to keep his balance; the list to starboard was growing worse. He kept sliding, losing his footing and having to catch himself, one hand against the bulkhead, then an elbow, then a shoulder as he ran. He stumbled over bodies and wreckage. The guns were still roaring, as if the crews were determined to take the German ship with them. There was shattered glass on the floor and the air was