SV - 03 - Sergeant Verity Presents His Compliments Page 3

  'And the complement now?'

  'Four hundred men mustered, sir, all others lost below decks. Fifty crew, including Royal Marines on guard. All women and children safe, sir, one hundred and thirty of them all told.'

  Salmond straightened up from the rail on which he had been leaning.

  'My compliments to Colonel Seton. The boats must be lowered at once. Will he have the goodness to see the women and children safely into them? The men must stand fast or their numbers will swamp the boats.'

  As he spoke, the hull shifted again under their feet and there was a distant sound of crumbling wood and metal. Steam from the boilers was now escaping in a deafening hiss but Salmond was so absorbed in his task that he hardly seemed to notice such distractions. His officers looked down on the scene below where their men scurried to lower the two boats carried on the paddle-boxes. Ropes had been hoisted over one of the yard-arms to form makeshift davits for the port boat. Teams of pig-tailed sailors hauled on the lines until the boat swung up and over the ship's rail, suspended with the swell of the sea below it. As the little craft hung just under the level of the yard-arm there was an abrupt crack and the makeshift tackle snapped. The stem of the boat fell with a splintering of board on to the rail of the Birkenhead. Like actors in a grim farce, the sailors left the wrecked lifeboat and raced across to the starboard paddle-box to assist in lowering the other boat. The soldiers of the depot companies stood impassively at attention, their faces lit by the faint blue light of the rocket-floats.

  Salmond watched them swing the starboard boat up from its paddle-box and clear of the ship's rail. But he could see that the ropes were too thick and the blocks too small. This might not have mattered so much if the crane-pins and sheave-pins of the lowering gear had been scraped free of rust regularly and coated with tallow and black lead to preserve and lubricate the mechanism. But there was no time for such luxuries in the routine of a ship like the Birkenhead. The starboard lowering-gear creaked and then jammed hopelessly, leaving the lifeboat suspended at a steep angle half-way down the ship's side. There seemed no question of being able to free it in the time that was left.

  On the other side, however, the cutter had been lowered. Even there, when the boat was ten feet above the waves, the forward tackle gave, parting with a loud snap, so that the bows crashed to the water, spilling into the breakers the four men who had been paying out the tackle within the boat itself. By the time that the angle of the boat had been righted, there was no sign of the heads which had bobbed briefly among the waves.

  The gangway was open, the rope ladder thrown down the wet and pitching plates of the hull. Colonel Seton strode across to the rail with two of his officers and, to the surprise of the onlookers, the three of them drew their swords.

  'Let the women and children through,' he said Firmly. 'The women and children first.'

  Salmond heard him and thought to himself that the cutter would not hold a quarter of the women and children. One or two smaller boats might be got away in the time left. Perhaps they would hold the remainder of the men's families but it would be a damn close-run thing. For the men themselves there was nothing but to remain as they were on the sloping deck of the doomed ship, in regimental order as precise and well-disciplined as if it had been a review at Woolwich or in Windsor Park.

  The cutter was already full and pulling away from the ship's side under the command of a youthful midshipman. A huddle of women and crying children who had been left behind attracted Cornet Morant-Barham's attention. He watched them miserably. Presently a small pinnace was lowered and Colonel Seton, glancing down once to see that it was secured, called softly,

  'Down you go then! Smartly as you can!'

  When the women and their children had already overloaded the frail craft, he held his sword across the gangway opening.

  'No more in this one,' he said gently.

  Morant-Barham saw to his horror that one of the distraught women who had been turned back was Janet, and that she was coming towards him, weeping incoherently with fright. He moved to her, not knowing what to do. At that moment, the last of the fugitives to be permitted through, tousled, grimy and aged beyond her years, turned and saw the weeping girl. She ducked back under Seton's sword.

  'Ah'm staying wi' Atherton’ she said firmly, and limped away to find the Fusiliers so that she might take up her vigil as close to him as possible.

  Morant-Barham caught Janet by the arm, thrusting her forward. As he did so, he drew from his pocket a little wash-leather bag, heavy with the weight of sovereigns, and pressed it into her hand.

  'Now's your chance, old girl,' he said encouragingly. 'It ain't much of a chance, even if you get safe to England. But such as it is, you shall take it.'

  He thrust her past Seton and turned away again before she was helped down the rope ladder by the sailors.

  From the quarter-deck, Captain Salmond could see by the light of the flares that two of the little boats had pulled far enough away from the ship to be out of any danger, while a third was just casting off. There was a deep rumbling, far down in the hull of the Birkenhead, and the frame of the vessel shuddered more violently. Not a man of the ten depot companies moved. One of Salmond's midshipmen noticed a dozen women still waiting with several small children clinging to their skirts and howling. He called to an officer beside this forlorn little group.

  'The last of the boats is trimmed!'

  A captain of the Highlanders escorted them to their final hope of rescue from the sinking troop-ship. At this critical moment, for the first and last time, one of the ranks of a depot com pany broke. Three soldiers, madden ed by the fear of death and drowning, knew that their fate would be sealed in a minute more. They broke from their comrades and rushed the gangway opening where the rope ladder hung above the last of the boats. Morant-Barham turned to his groom at his side and took his pistol, which the man was holding for him. He aimed it carefully at the back of the nearest fugitive and fired. The soldier stopped suddenly as though he had run into an invisible wall, and fell. The sword of a lieutenant of Highlanders flashed dully in the gloom and a second man crumpled to his knees, his hand scrabbling feebly behind him at the long wound. The third man reached the rail and seeing the pinnace cast off, threw himself over the ship's side in an hysterical resolve to reach it. He fell into the water, his head bobbed briefly and then, with arms uplifted in a last appeal, he sank beneath the dark waves.

  There were no more boats to lower and the sudden inactivity produced an uneasy calm on the ship. The grinding of the bows on the reef, under the pressure of the long rolling swell, was heard clearly by those in the little boats. Then the men on the main-deck were thrown in a convulsive rolling movement as the Birkenhead's prow seemed to leap into the air and fall back. A long splintering of heavy timbers mingled with the demonic shriek of torn metal as the ripped bows of the ship broke clean away and subsided into the churning water to boil and foam by the reef.

  In the blue light of the distress flares the women and children in the boats could still see the regiments paraded on the deck. For all the crashing of the waves against the broken hull, it was possible for these survivors to catch some of the shouted commands as the men were marched aft to the greater safety of the ship's stern. Presently there was another sound, softer and more general. It grew in volume as more and more of the men on the decks took it up. It was not a prayer nor a hymn, but both prayer and hymn, and something more to the doomed regiments. The first words were lost but the women in the boats soon made out the rest and wept at the hopeless bravery of the men who defied their fate.

  . . . Send her victorious, Happy and glorious, Long to reign over us. . . .

  At that moment there was the crackling of a giant hand crumpling tinsel. The funnel of the Birkenhead snapped in two under its own inclining weight, the top half breaking from the restraining cables and crashing to the deck in a shower of sparks from burning soot. The angle of the ship was steeper now, the stern clear of the water, the rudder hanging in
mid-air, the paddles aloft like huge and idle mill-wheels. With the toppling of the funnel, nothing remained of the superstructure but the mainmast and main-topmast at the stern with sails reefed. Captain Salmond turned to the paraded regiments and cupped his hands.

  'All men who can swim, leap overboard and make towards the boats!'

  The men waited, expecting Colonel Seton's order. But Seton was in stern conference with his officers. A moment later he turned to the ranks of waiting soldiers.

  'Every man must understand,' he said firmly, 'that the boats containing the women and children are already full. It is our duty to stay steady here and give those others their chance of life. If the boats are swamped or capsized, then no man, woman, nor child will survive in the sea. By accepting our fate as Englishmen, by doing that duty which our Queen and country expect of us, we may at least save those whose lives must be dearer to us than our own. Let every man remember that the eyes of posterity are upon him and his conduct now. All regiments will stand fast!'

  The red lines of the foot soldiers in their white bl anco'd webbing, the blue and gold tunic'd files of cavalry, stood stiff and motionless. Not a rank was broken again. Subalterns and senior officers walked slowly before their companies, speaking encouragement during the last agony of the Birkenhead. Fifty men of the Royal Marines, part of Captain Salmond's complement, stood guard at their posts on the sloping deck. There was no knowing exactly how long the stern and midships section of the wreck might survive in the rising sea and the fresher wind which now whipped and snapped at loose rope-ends and chilled the men's faces. It might be half an hour, it would certainly not be an hour. The men concentrated their thoughts on the hope which remained for the women and children. They put sternly from their minds their own fates and those of the few men who survived trapped far below in the hull, gasping in the hot and fetid pockets of air while the foul bilge-water lapped round their shoulders and the remainder of their lives was measured in long aching breaths.

  The only stroke of mercy shown by the elements came in shortening the suffering of the men. Scarcely ten minutes after Colonel Seton's last order, the shattered hull of the Birkenhead was lifted by a powerful swell. A mighty crack reverberated like the parting of a great beam. Those in the lifeboats watched in silent terror as the ship slid into her final plunge, the men of the depot companies slithering forward and being drawn down in the strong suction of the water that closed over the dark hull. For a minute or two the maintopmast at the stern remained above water, a score of men clinging to the cold and slippery timber. One by one, they surrendered to the aching numbness in their hands and fell headlong into the sea.

  A general wail of despair and fear rose from the women and children in the boats as the Birkenhead went down. Then there was a complete and terrible silence with nothing visible on the broad surface of the sea but the heads of a few men who clung to the flotsam of beams, broken spars and decking which the first impact had torn from the ship. All their comrades had been dragged down in the whirl of the lethal undertow. The deep blue lights of the rocket floats began to flicker and then, each in turn, the flames dwindled and vanished. In the last moments of the faint blue light, the survivors heard the screams of men in a pain that was more swift and rending than the agony of drowning. It was a sound which caused some of the women to stop their ears, while others saw the sinister black peak of fins cutting the water, against the guttering blue light of the floats. Fast and sure, the sharks closed upon the debris of the wreck, weaving among the flotsam to snatch their human prey.

  There was no help that those in the heavily-laden boats could offer as they drifted away from the horror of Danger Rock, carried by the swift tide. The last boat to be launched, the little gig, drifted further and faster than the others until it was separated from them by almost a mile of ocean. There was just light enough from moon and stars for its occupants to make out the faces of their neighbours, some weeping and moaning, others sitting in deep, silent shock. Not twenty minutes after the Birkenhead had foundered, one of the women in the gig cried, 'Look! Look! Look here!' There was a confused struggle. At first her companions, searching the starlit sea for sign of rescue, had not realized that she was pointing to something in the boat. Then two or three of the others joined her, wrestling to tear the cloak which was wrapped tightly round one of the survivors.

  'Dear God!' said an old woman, 'it's one of the men! In a woman's cloak!'

  "e's a hofficer too!' said a young woman softly.

  'Saved 'isself in women's clothes, on'y kep' 'is tunic and breeches underneath!'

  There was a long, wailing, ululating cry, a communal howl of loathing, more chilling in its way than anything else in the terrible hour since the Birkenhead had struck Danger Rock.

  'Leave me!' shrieked the man. 'Listen to me! Hear me, for God's sake!'

  'You brute!' said the old woman. 'Our men died rather than do what you did!'

  'Look at 'im! Took a woman's place in the boat, and left her to die in the water!'

  'No!' cried the man. 'Never! I was detailed aboard the boat as guard by Colonel Seton! I swear it's the truth!'

  'And sat there, hid in a woman's cloak, and never said a word!'

  The derision grew around him. Not one of them wanted to believe the wretch.

  ' 'e must a-done for the poor soul to get 'er cloak!' 'He killed her to save 'isself!'

  'The bastard shan't be saved! Not if I swing for 'im!'

  The brawny sailor's woman, who spoke last, moved from the oars where she had been pulling and crouched forward at him.

  'It's my woman's cloak!' he shouted. 'Hear me! For God's sake!'

  But they seized him, a dozen of them, each as strong as the pampered young man who had cheated or murdered his way into the boat. As they bent his back over the side and his head almost touched water, his fear broke in a screaming and convulsive hysteria. He exhausted this and lay whimpering and trembling.

  'Get the brute's feet up and have his head under! ' 'Take a care with that,' said the sailor's woman, 'or the boat may be overset. Best roll him into the water easy. Now!'

  There was a final arching and struggling, and then a cry of defeat.

  'May he drown slow and hard,' said the old woman, while the others thought silently that even the sound of his cries would bring the black fins shearing the water towards him with deadly speed.

  'Save him,' said a young woman, as though to herself.

  'Too late, dearie. What's left of him ain't worth saving.'

  They huddled in the boat, hardly caring where the tide swept them. The faint light shone on cheeks moist with tears. Several children cried with fright. As cold streaks of day caught the wave-crests, there was no sign of flotsam nor of the three other boats, which had gone their own way. Worst of all, the faint outline of Point Danger and the African coast, which had appeared like a watercolour wash on the horizon the evening before, had now vanished completely. An early mist limited visibility to a few hundred yards but even when the damp piercing cold of the first hours of daylight gave way to a clear noon with the sea reflecting the fierce heat of the sun like a burning-mirror, there was still no horizon-trace of land, no sign of any other vessel.

  Among these survivors, the burly sailor-woman alone seemed undismayed. From the point of sunrise she knew the east, though as the day went by with no indication of the passage of time her sense of direction appeared less certain. Most of the children were crying in real distress and no longer from mere fright. The women, hardly hearing this any more, bowed their heads or sat staring vacantly ahead of them, lost in the depths of their own thoughts. But several of them still took the oars with the sailor-woman, whose bare muscular arms and broad sun-darkened face bore witness to her determination. Even in their self-absorbed reveries the others heard from time to time her urgent but resolute encouragement.

  'Row hearty, my dear souls! Row hearty!'

  A group of three of the Birkenhead's boats, which had contrived to remain in convoy, was picked up by a
coastal schooner, the Lioness. The search vessel HMS Rhadaman thus was despatched to the scene of the wreck soon after.

  There was little enough to be done there and the Rhadamanthus was soon detailed to confine her operations to a search of the long unexplored coastline where men who might have swum ashore from the wreck would now be wandering exhausted. Sixty-eight men of the five hundred troops on the Birkenhead were recovered.

  Two days after the Rhadamanthus abandoned her operation, the Portuguese trader San Francisco de Goa was eighteen miles south-west of Simon's Bay, homeward bound to Lisbon from the trading settlements of Portuguese India. Soon after first light the officer of the watch heard the look-out call, and bringing his spy-glass into focus saw the little gig with the name Birkenhead painted on its stern. The oarswomen were resting on their oars and the other occupants packed into the boat slumped upon one another.

  Captain Ignacio Ramon, called from his berth, brought the shabby little steamer close alongside and stood on deck while his first officer went down the wooden rungs of the rope ladder. The sea was calm and the manoeuvre was simple. Before he set foot on the stern of the gig, the first officer knew that he was boarding a vessel of the dead. The bodies of the oarswomen, faces already shrunk and taut, were hard as statues in their hunched postures. Their passengers were sprawled, half fallen from their seats, eyes open and jaws dropped, in this floating charnel-house. The first officer shuddered and turned his back, seeking the ladder again. Captain Ramon had no need to await the officer's report. The tragedy of the Birkenhead's gig was plain to see from the deck. Even in the cool openness of the early morning, the sweet, overblown odour of decay reached him. It crossed his mind that with a score of bodies there was little more the San Francisco de Goa could do than consign them to a mass grave in the ocean.