Read Online The Horizon (1993) by Douglas Reeman - Free Book Online Page B

I want someone with a bit of seniority. They don’t know you like their own officers, and I think that’s all to the good. Get familiar with them and they take advantage, and any kind of softness I will not tolerate.’ He seemed to expect some sort of argument, but when Jonathan remained silent he said, ‘The admiral was right. This is the flagship. People will be looking to us!’
    That night, his head throbbing from excitement and heavy drinking in the mess, Jonathan climbed to the upper bridge in search of some cooling breeze from the sea. The bridge was only shadow, the superstructure and funnels merely darker shapes against the thousands of tiny stars. He could hear the muted stammer of morse from the wireless room, the occasional scrape of feet from a lookout or the duty signalman. A door slid open and shut and he heard the commander’s shoes on the scrubbed gratings, which would soon be baking in the sun again.
    ‘Can’t you sleep, Jono? That was quite a party! Like peacetime again.’ He laughed and felt for his cigarette case in his mess jacket. Then he stared across the screento where a hospital ship lay like a phantom in her white livery. ‘That couldn’t be thunder, could it? That would just about put the lid on any landings.’
    Jonathan climbed up beside him, glad of the darkness.
    ‘No. Not thunder.’ He remembered the bombardments in France: on and on, until he could neither think nor even be afraid. It had been beyond even fear. ‘It’s guns. Our ships or their coastal batteries.’ It was like a threat, a terrible warning. Someone had told him that in southern England on quiet nights, they could hear the roar of artillery from the Western Front.
    He thought of Rear-Admiral Purves, of Beaky Waring and the captain, recalling Soutter’s comment that the peninsula could have been seized and occupied with few casualties if they had not delayed so long, and the reinforcements from France had not been denied him.
    He was reminded of this fine ship’s crest and motto.
We will never give in
. He spoke aloud.
    ‘So be it then.’ But when he looked, the commander had gone, his cigarette still unlit.
    In his mind he saw Hawks Hill as it had been in that dream, with the girl dipping bare feet in the stream. But there was no stream just there.
    He found that he could still smile, despite the far-off thunder. No girl either.
    The mood quickly passed. Nor would there be, after all this.
    It was midnight, with just a gentle offshore breeze to fan the faces of the officers and men on
Reliant
’s upper bridge.
    Captain Soutter was in his chair, his shoulders swaying only slightly to the ship’s slow, corkscrew roll; he could have been asleep. Commander Coleridge stood on the opposite side, close to the hooded chart-table from which Lieutenant Rice’s considerable buttocks made a hump against the pale paintwork. Like interlopers, Lieutenant-Colonel Waring and Jonathan Blackwood, his new adjutant, watched the sea beyond the bows. The ship might have been steaming quite alone on some vast ocean: it was almost unnerving to realise that she was only a part of the fleet of transports and their escorts heading towards the Gallipoli Peninsula. Between decks
Reliant
had somehow absorbed all the extra marines who had arrived from other ships, as well as two companies of soldiers of the Australian Infantry. Despite the overcrowding and a cheerful rivalry between the Australians and the Royal Marines they had made the most of their time on board. If needed, they would disembark under cover of darkness and transfer to the clutter of boats towing astern of every major warship in the fleet.
    This tense stillness contrasted starkly with the very moving moment when they had weighed and steamed slowly from Mudros Bay. As they had passed abeam of each waiting transport and her mass of waving khaki figures,
Reliant
’s Royal Marine Band had formed a smart square on the quarterdeck, and after playing the national anthem of all