Ship of Force Read Online Free PDF

light at the head of the brow. He halted out in the darkness to look at her.
Sparrow
was armed with one twelve-pounder on her bridge, five six-pounders and two torpedo-tubes. She looked long but only because she was low and narrow. A man could have crossed her deck in half a dozen long steps except that it was so scattered with guns, boats, torpedo-tubes, ventilators and hatches that you couldn’t take two long strides in any direction, let alone six. She was a little ship and fifty-eight men were crammed into her.
    Now she and her men were Smith’s.
    He strode out of the dark and up the brow. A quartermaster stood on watch at the head of it and Smith demanded, “Where’s your captain?”
    “He’s — I’ll call the coxswain, sir.” The man was rattled, caught off-guard by Smith’s sudden appearance. Guilty? Of what? Had he been dozing? Pulling at a cigarette? Or was there something else? Smith sensed the man was hiding something, or trying to. He was Scots with a thick Glaswegian brogue.
    Smith snapped, “Never mind the coxswain — and stand still!” The quartermaster had taken a quick step aft towards the wardroom hatch. “Mister Dunbar is below?”
    “Er — yes, sir.”
    Smith stepped past him, stalked aft around the six-pounder and dropped down through the hatch that led to the wardroom below. At the foot of the ladder he almost stepped on Gow, the coxswain. He was a big man with long arms and a premature stoop that Smith supposed came from living aboard thirty-knotters. His hands seemed to hang by his knees. His head was bent under the deckhead now and he stood between Smith and the curtain that served as a door to the wardroom.
    Gow whispered huskily, inevitably Scots, “Sir, if I could just say —”
    “Later.” Smith tried to step forward but it only brought him chest to chest with the coxswain, their faces only inches apart because Gow held his ground. Smith sniffed, smelt whisky on Gow’s breath, and asked, “You’ve been drinking?”
    “Just the one I couldn’t help.” Gow’s long face was drawn longer with misery. “Sir —” Beyond him glass shattered in the wardroom and his face twitched.
    Smith said, “What the
hell
is going on here, cox’n?”
    “Ah’m trying to explain —”
    But Smith had had enough. He jammed a shoulder into the coxswain, rocked him off balance and aside and took a stride. Gow’s voice came behind him, still in that agonised whisper but higher. “He had some bad news about his wife and bairn. He was awfu’ fond o’ them, sir.”
    Smith was still a moment and heard a low voice pleading. It was the voice of Sanders the young Sub-Lieutenant. Then Dunbar’s came, thick but clear enough. “Get out! Get the hell out and leave me alone!”
    Smith said, “All right.” He pushed through the curtain into the wardroom. Dunbar sat on one of the couches that ran down each side, elbows spread on the table. His cap lay beside him on the couch. He was a thick-set man with a weather-beaten, tough face but now the mouth was slack and the eyes vague. He held a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other and he was pouring the last of the bottle into the glass. Sanders stood by the table and turned now to blink worriedly at Smith, his boots crunching glass that was scattered on the deck.
    Sanders said, “Sir? Good evening, sir.”
    Dunbar looked up, blearily startled, climbed to his feet and stood swaying. He shook the bottle and peered at it. “Empty. Join me in a drink, sir. ’Nother bottle, steward.
Brodie
!”
    “Aye, aye, sir.” The steward’s face showed white in the doorway. He had a bottle in his hand but Smith’s slow shake of the head sent him sliding away out of sight.
    Smith said, “Thanks. But not just now.” And: “All right, Sub. You’ll be needed on deck.”
    Sanders edged around him and away. Dunbar swayed too far and sat down again, slopping whisky and dropping the bottle. He fumbled for it as it rolled across the couch but it escaped his