Without a navy to guard the shipping lanes, to evacuate the army from France, to prevent the German army landing on the beaches of Britain, the war was lost. In a month, two months, the fields and trees of England could be trampled by German boots, burned, torn up, destroyed by an occupying army.
What then? Retreat to the hills of Wales, Scotland? Fight in the forests and fens until there was no one left? Or submit, sue for peace and some kind of survival? On what terms? Would that be to betray the dead who had already paid so high a price, only to have it thrown away now? Or the living, who had to make the best of what was left? At what point was it no longer worth fighting?
He listened to the signals coming in with a kind of grim despair. He thought of Hannah and the children, the village, the fields under the great, silent elms. Were they better destroyed in the last battle, or conquered, surviving, and changed forever?
He was still thinking of that, angry and tormented, his ears deadened by the noise, when he heard shouting and saw Archie waving his arms, signaling frantically to the men on the deck below him.
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
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
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 thick with the stench of gun smoke, burning oil, and rubber from the corticine. And it was getting hotter all the time as he got closer to the fires.
There was another explosion, a tearing thunder of sound, and the whole ship juddered and sank lower, throwing Matthew forward onto his hands and knees, then rolling him over, bruised and wounded, hands cut, burned, streaming blood. He clambered to his feet again, gasping and coughing, retching to catch his breath.
Was Hannassey still somewhere ahead of him? What if he was wrong, and he had abandoned the prototype and was even now saving his own life by jumping to the German ship? It would be possible. It was lower in the water now, at least from the raised port side.
He hesitated. Which way?
The ship lurched again. Was it even lower? There seemed to be smoke everywhere, and the heat was intense! Were they on fire? Please God, if they were, they would explode! Better to be consumed in a fireball, blown apart in an instant, than to sink knowingly, wide awake, into the darkness and the crushing weight of the ocean, struggling for breath, or drowned as the water poured in, black and ice-cold from the lightless depths.
But he’d get Hannassey first! If he’d already got the prototype, and was struggling to carry it, which way would he go?
Portside, of course. It was higher. If she listed any more there was a risk the starboard side would actually be below water level, and if it was holed either by enemy shot or their own gun turrets or magazines exploding, that would be the end.
It was not his imagination; it was getting hotter. His hands hurt from the broken glass. Somewhere there was burning. It could reach the magazine any minute. He had no idea where it was, or how bad. A voice inside him screamed to go up, toward the light and the air! Escape . . . escape . . . escape!
The smoke was thicker. He was having trouble breathing. His eyes were streaming, he could hardly see. He fell over another body, inert and wet with blood.
But he would get the Peacemaker, and die knowing for certain that he had destroyed him. It was worth it. Don’t die for nothing. He just wished he could have told Joseph that he’d done it.
And Judith and Hannah—they deserved to know, too. Especially Judith. He could not tell Detta, he could never tell her, but she deserved to know, for the way he had used and broken her also, and taken from them both what they could have had.
He went to the port side, sliding on the floor as the tilt became steeper, grabbing at anything he could reach to help himself, and finding it slick with oil. The noise was roaring in his ears, the engines racing, the shrill hiss of steam, the crash and boom of guns.
Then he saw Hannassey about five yards in front of him. He was balanced with the prototype in his arms. He saw Matthew at the same instant.
“Told you you’d go down,” he shouted above the din. “Never had time to use your marvelous invention, did you!” His teeth gleamed in what was left of the lights. Then his face changed. All triumph vanished in a snarl of rage and furious, complete understanding. “It doesn’t bloody work!” he screamed. He hurled it from him, toward Matthew as if he could hit him with it. “The goddamn thing’s no use! You didn’t use it because you can’t! Mother of God! All this for—nothing!”
Matthew avoided it easily, the pitch of the ship carrying it hard against the other wall, and Hannassey stumbled with the release of the weight.
“That’s right!” Matthew shouted back at him. “You came for nothing! You’ll die for nothing! You’ll never see
