“Stand by to surface.”
The Captain stared into the periscope as he gave the order and the report came back from the compartments. They had closed in towards the beach, as close as they could go submerged. Number One turned to the Captain.
“Ready to surface, sir.”
The Captain took a final look all round, then stepped back, and Featherstone sent the periscope down.
“Surface!”
Sub was standing by in the wardroom with Bird and three other seamen. As soon as the Captain and the Signalman had vanished up the ladder into the Conning Tower, he brought his party into the Control Room where they stood waiting for the order to go aloft.
“Slow ahead together,” came the order from the bridge, and the messenger sprang to the telegraphs. They were moving in.
“Control Room!”
“Control Room.”
“Casing party on the bridge.” Sub jumped on to the ladder and his party scrambled up behind him.
On the bridge, he caught his breath at the unusual sight. They were right up to the beach, a short, low-lying piece of land with the ground on either side rising sharply into cliffs. There was no moon, but they were so close that the silhouette of the land was quite clear, the high cliffs towering over the submarine. He wondered if anyone on those cliffs might be watching, waiting.
“All right Sub. Carry on.” Over the side of the bridge, finding the cut-away footholes by long practice without having to grope. As he hurried for’ard along the casing he grabbed a wheel-spanner from Bird who was close behind him, jumped down the three steel steps on to the pressure-hull and banged three times on the hatch with the wheel-spanner. He heard the clatter inside as they took off the last clip: evidently the T.I. had lost no time, because almost immediately the big hatch swung open. Sub grabbed the block with the ropes running through it and hooked it quickly on an eyebolt on the casing outside the hatch. The bow of the first canoe rushed up towards him as the men down below heaved away on the tackle: he grabbed it, snatched off the spring-hook, and dropped the gear back into the hatch. Bird and another man were already lowering the first canoe over the side: it slid rasping down the side of the casing and rode alongside. The Major and his sergeant were on the casing, climbing down over the side, and thirty seconds after the time that the hatch swung open the soldiers released the lines holding the canoe and the first one had gone. The second canoe was on the casing, and down below in the forward compartment they were snapping the spring-hook on to the bow of the third. Nobody had said a word.
The pitch-black night swallowed the tiny craft with their circling paddles: the sounds they made were inaudible at more than ten yards’ range. The fourth and last canoe was gone: Bird threw all the lines and loose gear into the hatch, and he and his men jumped after it. Sub slammed it down and as he turned away to get back to the bridge he heard the men inside working at the clips.
The sea lay as flat as a slab of polished marble, the air warm and soft. The coastline rose black behind her as the submarine turned and headed slowly, silently, out into the Straits.
The Captain said, “All right, Sub, you go down. Tell Number One to go to Patrol Routine, and run all the fans. I’ll stay up here. We’ll dive in an hour.”
There was a feeling of anti-climax. The wardroom seemed almost deserted, with only the few submariners to share it. In the Petty Officers’ Mess the Cox’n looked round the tiny space and murmured, “Blimey – what’ll we do with all this flippin’ room?” Up forward, the seamen were putting their gear back in its place. All thoughts were with the soldiers, hoping for them and touching wood. They had made themselves many good friends in the past week, shown themselves as good messmates. On the bridge, the Captain stared at the coast, expecting at any moment to hear the sharp rattle of machine guns or see the dazzling swoop of an alarm-rocket. But all was quiet, as quiet as the grave.
The men were at their Diving Stations, the fans stopped. From the voice-pipe came the order, “Dive, dive, dive.” As the Captain shut the voice-pipe in the bridge and jumped into the hatch, Featherstone pulled out the levels that opened the vents, and the messenger shut the valve on the bottom of the voice-pipe.
Slowly, silently, the submarine sank on an even keel, no way on, just settling down towards the bottom. The Captain and Number One watched the depth-gauge, as Number One worked the order instrument and the internal tanks were gradually flooded to bring the submarine down to the bottom of the Straits.
“Another five feet, about.” She was still going down, very slowly, the needle crawling round the gauge. Then the slightest of bumps from for’ard, and she settled on the mud. Flood a little more in the for’ard trimming tank, the weight to act as an anchor. She was bottomed.
The Captain spoke quietly. “We’ll be staying here until midnight tomorrow night. Then we’ll surface for two hours and run the fans, and dive again until the next night when we pick up the Army.
“Any man who makes a noise of any sort will be for it in a big way. If one of your stokers, Chief, drops a wheel-spanner in the Engine Room, I’ll kick him to death. Any sound can give us away. There are to be no lights other than what’s absolutely necessary, and no unnecessary movement. I want everyone off watch to sleep, all the time if they can. That won’t be difficult, for some of you.” The Captain glanced at Chief again as he said it.
“Right, Number One. The hands can go into four watches. Officers of the Watch as usual. Carry on.”
It is always quiet in a dived submarine at Patrol Routine. Now, under these circumstances, there was not even the low hum of the motors, nor any noise from the air-conditioning plant. Silence, complete silence, such as a lone mountaineer knows and few others in a noisy world have ever encountered, settled through the compartments. A coarse whisper in the Control Room raised a smile in the wardroom. The silence was deadening, suffocating, as the heat began to build up in the steel tube which, lying in tepid, shallow water, would be like an oven when the sun rose in the morning.
Number One shook Chief violently by the shoulder to wake him up. Chief looked up angrily from his sweat-damp bunk.
“Lie on your side, damn you. You’ve been snoring. I thought it was the klaxon.”
The Captain lay on his bunk, smiling to himself as he thought about his last leave and Bird, the Second Cox’n. On their last evening he and Chief had quite a few bottles left intact, and so they hired a small room on the ground floor of the hotel and invited a score of the Seahound’s sailors, who were spending their leave in the local rest-camp, to come up. It turned out to be a riotous evening, with much singing as the spirits sank in the bottles and rose in the men. The Manageress, a little woman who could easily have been a blood-relation of a hen, met Bird when he was on the way to the lavatory. Bird was singing at the top of his voice, and she told him to be quiet. He was in no mood to be treated in that manner by a person whom he considered to be a “silly old geyser”, and after a certain amount of Billingsgate repartee he gave chase, brandishing the gong-stick and uttering threats.
As they flashed through the small lounge, the Captain observed, “She shows a remarkable turn of speed, for her age.”
Chief agreed. “‘m. But I’d put my money on Bird, from the point of view of endurance.”
“Oh, dear,” said the Captain. “I suppose I’d better do something. Shadwell – Parrot – go and catch Bird and put some sense into him.”
A few minutes later they brought him back, fed-up and depressed. “Proper flippin’ leave this is,” he complained.
Looking back, afterwards, on those two days spent lying on the bottom, none of them could produce very clear recollections. It took in their minds the form of a pipe-dream: it was seen through a haze of heat, an opaque, heavy curtain of heat that hung over the eyes and dulled the ears, choked and stifled any coherent thought about how the time had been spent. There were blurred recollections of waking in a bunk that was a pool of sweat, taking over a watch in a silent Turkish Bath of irritation, depression and impatience. There were vague memories of meals that consisted always of corned beef, corned beef that was unrecognisable because it had melted into a greasy soup which was eaten with dry bread because the butter ran like water and could only have been poured on from a jug. There were memories of the Captain and the First Lieutenant forcing men to put salt in their drinking water to replace the salt that they were losing in sweat, and the taste of the warm salted water mingled with the blanket of heat, until you felt that you could scream, but no screaming would have made any difference.
In the after Mess, a very young stoker began to giggle to himself, and he went on giggling for over an hour in spite of his messmates’ attempts to stop the horrible noise. After a time the Leading Stoker had a word with Stoker Johnson, who was a large, very powerful and kindly man, and Johnson stopped the giggling in the only possible way, a short, swift right-arm jab to the jaw that brought relief to everyone and was just in time to stop a few others giving way to the pressure in their brains.
In the middle of the night the nightmare was interrupted when they surfaced for two hours and ran the fans to clear the air. It was a relief, but the faces of the men as they stood open-mouthed gulping in the cool night air, noisily like pigs at a trough, bore expressions of weary apprehension, the faces of men whose torture would shortly be resumed, as resumed it was when at two in the morning the hatch crashed down and they sank to the bottom to do it all over again.
At eleven o’clock on the second night the Captain, wearing a strip of torn shirt round his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes, walked into the Control Room and said, “Diving Stations.” To the men who heard it, the order meant only one thing: relief, fresh air, cool air. To the Captain it meant much more. It meant that within an hour he would know whether they’d failed or succeeded, whether the Major and his men were dead or alive. If the party failed to appear at midnight, or by one o’clock, which was the agreed time-limit, his orders were to leave the area. It would mean, if the soldiers were not there, that they were either killed or captured, and that meant that the enemy would have an idea that a submarine was at the bottom of the Straits. In those circumstances his duty was to save his ship, and nothing else. This was the zero hour.
Number One disturbed his thoughts. “Ready to surface, sir.”
“Surface.” Water was pumped out of the trimming tanks, and after a few minutes they felt the submarine move. The needle jerked a little in the depth gauge, and began to circle slowly. At periscope depth the Captain ordered, “Up periscope,” and carefully searched round. He stayed at the periscope for five minutes, while Number One battled with the trim and the submarine moved slowly ahead on one motor.
“Surface!” The word was music.
The Signalman stands in the centre of the bridge, behind the Captain and the Sub-Lieutenant. The Captain’s glasses are motionless, fixed on the small strip of beach. Sub keeps an all-round lookout, continually resisting the temptation to stop his glasses on the shore and watch for the signal. Below, in the Control Room, Bird and his men wait under the hatch. Up for’ard, the T.I. and his torpedo-men sit in the empty Mess and wait.
Suddenly there’s a gasp from the Captain.
“Signalman!” The Signalman jumps to his side, the blue lamp ready. The Captain speaks again: “No – wait… Yes, by God! On the left edge of the beach. Two blue flashes… Give ’em two flashes, damn you!” The Signalman sights his lamp at the beach, presses the trigger twice. The Captain shouts down the voice-pipe.
“Tell the T.I. to stand by. Tell the First Lieutenant to be ready for any casualties. Slow ahead together. Casing party on the bridge.”
He straightens up, and says quietly to the Sub, “Go on down. Don’t open up until I give you the word.” A few minutes pass, and the Captain sees the first canoe, half-way between the shore and the submarine. He shouts over the front of the bridge, “Stand by! Open up, Sub!”
Out of the night shoots the first canoe: it slides alongside, and they grab hold of it, lying on the casing. The men scramble out and Bird and Parrot lift the canoe out of the water and slide it into the hatch where hands are waiting to receive it. The Major climbs down after it, but the man with him is no sergeant. He is small, grey-haired, a civilian in a crumpled, off-white suit. They are too busy to wonder about it as the next canoe comes alongside: it contains Captain Bowers and his sergeant. The third canoe is manned by only one sergeant, the other cockpit empty. The last one holds young Montgomery and his sergeant.
All the canoes are inside. “Down you go,” jerks out Sub, out of breath from the exercise: his men leap into the hatch, and he slams it shut and hurries aft along the casing to the bridge. He’s wondering who the little civilian is, and where are Captain Selby and one sergeant. At the same time he’s thinking “We’ve done it!”
The Major shook hands warmly with the Captain. He looked just about at the end of his tether, and so did his men. They had been burnt raw by the sun and looked as though they had had no sleep in all the forty-eight hours.
“This,” said the Major, “is Mr Jones.” The Captain shook hands with the little civilian.
Mr Jones, in spite of his dishevelled and careworn appearance, bore a certain dignity. It seemed possible to the Captain that he had another name and possibly even a uniform when he was elsewhere. The Major, at any rate, treated him with a comradely respect. They seemed to know each other well, and yet occasionally the Major took some trouble in stopping just short of the word “Sir”.
“Where are the other two, Major?” asked the Captain. The Major smiled.
“Oh, don’t worry about them.” The subject was closed.
After the soldiers and Mr Jones had eaten a large meal of corned beef, cold potatoes and mayonnaise sauce, followed by bread and cheese and coffee, the Captain pressed the buzzer for the table to be cleared. Then he reached into a locker and placed four tumblers on the table. He unlocked a cupboard and produced a new bottle of Scotch.
“It’s all yours, gentlemen.” The Major asked him, “Aren’t you going to join us?”
“No, thanks. We don’t at sea. Save up our thirsts until we get into Trinco.”
Presently the Major asked him whether he could give the sergeants a tot. Number One said, “The Cox’n’s looking after them, sir. Rum.”
“Oh,” said the Major. “Well, here’s to the Seahound. God bless you all.”
The diesels were taking them north, four hundred and twenty revolutions a minute up the Straits. They weren’t sorry to be on the move.
They stood on the bridge, the Captain, the Major, Mr Jones, and Number One who was the Officer of the Watch. The Seahound was out of the Straits and clear of the enemy, way out in the Indian Ocean.
The Landing Party were now fit again, well fed and rested, in boisterous spirits. Even Mr Jones’s emaciated form had new life in it.
The aircraft, a Catalina, swept round in a big arc as it eased itself down to the water, then straightened up and touched down gently, taxied towards the submarine that lay stopped and waiting. The Captain shouted down: “Send up the rest of the Army.”
The crew of the aircraft came out on the wings with cameras to take photographs of the submarine. The Major snarled:
“I’ll have all those films exposed, in ten minutes’ time.” Security, to the Major, was like air to a deep-sea diver.
The aircraft’s crew floated a rubber dinghy down to the submarine on a long line. One at a time, Mr Jones first and the Major last, the party was hauled across. The canoes were left in Seahound.
The Major and the Captain exchanged salutes, and shook hands. The farewells had all been said. They looked into each other’s faces, and were genuinely sorry that they might not meet again.
The Captain noticed that as Mr Jones climbed up into the Catalina, he was greeted with a considerable number of salutes.
With the signal that had ordered Seahound to meet the Catalina had come the order for their recall, and as soon as the Army men were safely transferred to the big flying-boat the Captain turned his ship on to the homeward course. Over the broadcasting system he congratulated the ship’s company on their conduct during the difficult time at the bottom of the Straits. “I’m proud of you,” he said, and he meant it. They settled down to the passage routine, looking forward to the rest that lay ahead of them, the baths and the other small comforts that were always luxuries for the first few days in harbour. The Captain looked forward to a letter from Cynthia, Sub thought about where he’d go for his leave and decided on Colombo, and Number One thought about Mary-Ann. They were sitting in the wardroom, Chief on his bunk as usual and the Navigator on watch, when Number One dropped his bombshell.
“Sir,” he asked the Captain, “what would you say if I asked permission to get married?”
“Good God! Are you serious?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well I don’t suppose it’d make the slightest difference what I said, would it?”
“Er – not really, sir. But I believe one has to ask.”
“I suppose she’s white?”
The Petty Officer Telegraphist handed the Captain a cipher. “Just received, sir.”
“Well, let’s see what it’s about. Here you are Chief, get moving.” Chief sat up, mumbling to himself about the lack of peace and quiet and some people having to do all the work. The Captain threw him a pencil and Number One shoved a signal-pad across the table. Chief began to thumb wearily through the book.
“God damn and blast!” he said, suddenly. Their recall was cancelled. A Japanese cruiser had left Singapore, was believed to be trying to reach Rangoon to attack the Allied shipping that was concentrating there. All submarines were dispersed to cover every possible avenue of approach: Seahound was being sent to patrol off Port Blair, in the Andaman Islands.
Chief flung the pencil down on the table and said, “Lot of bloody nonsense. The Japs wouldn’t be such fools as to send a cruiser this far west.”
The Captain didn’t agree.
“It’s just the sort of thing they would do, Chief. They know they’ve had it, and we’re closing in. So a quick suicide raid is very Jap-like. Sink a lot of ships and throw away a cruiser in the process.”
“Well,” said Chief, “all that this is going to mean is three boring bloody days off those horrible little islands. We’ll be back in Trinco three days later than we should have been, and we won’t have seen a thing. If there is a cruiser, and not just a Flying Dutchman or a pink elephant, you can be quite sure it won’t come anywhere near us.”
The Captain was not there to hear Chief’s last speech. He was ordering a new course and an increase in speed. Chief heard the quickened tempo of the engines: scowling, he rushed aft to the Engine Room.
Sub went for’ard to the Petty Officers’ Mess, to have a word with Chief Petty Officer Rawlinson.
“Want me, sir?” asked the T.I.
“D’you remember, T.I., saying a few days ago that there wouldn’t ever be a target worth a torpedo?”
“That’s right, sir. They don’t need me in this ship. They need a flippin’ artillery sergeant.”
“What would you say, T.I., if I told you that a Jap cruiser had left Singapore and might be coming this way?”
“Well, sir, begging your pardon, I’d say you was off your rocker.”
Nobody was very excited, and most of the men were fed-up to hear that their recall had been cancelled. Nobody was fool enough to think that anything as big as a cruiser would come their way: that sort of thing didn’t happen. Anyway, they had had all the excitement they wanted in this patrol, and the idea of hanging around the Andamans in the hope of a bit more was not popular.
“Flippin’ drudge, we are in this ship,” remarked Rogers as he clipped his toe-nails. “Any flippin’ job they ‘ave, they say, ‘Oh, give it ter Sea’ound, she’s the flippin’ sucker roun’ ’ere.’ I ’spect ole Fatty” (he referred to the Captain of the Submarine Flotilla) “looks at his flippin’ yeoman and says, ‘What’s this? The Sea’ound coming back to Trinco? Can’t ’ave that – send her a flippin’ signal and tell her to go and flip around the bleedin’ Andamans for a bit.’ An’ orf we go.”
“Well,” put in Shadwell, “it’d be nice to sink a flippin’ cruiser, wouldn’t it?”
“Don’t be barmy. There ain’t no flippin’ cruiser. They’ll find it was all a flippin’ great mistake. Some bastard had a drop too much and he got carried away, like. Gawd ’elp us – another flippin’ cake-an’-arse party off the perishin’ Andamans.”
“Me own opinion,” stated Hopkins, “is that it ain’t fair for us to go sinking cruisers out ’ere. We ought to leave ’em for the Yanks. We’ve had our share of cruisers an’ suchlike, in the Med., and up north. It’s only right to let the Yankies sink a couple, before the flippin’ war ends.”
All over the Indian Ocean submarines were preparing to intercept the raider. Setter was heading for the Nicobar Islands, Slayer was putting on full speed to patrol off Penang, others were already in their allotted areas. A flotilla of destroyers was being rushed from Trincomali to Rangoon to protect the shipping in case the cruiser did break through.
Seahound would be off Port Blair when she dived at dawn on the next morning. It was off the Andamans that she had spent her first patrol when she arrived in the Far East. It had been a boring three weeks, with only one trawler sunk and a long fruitless search for the crew of a shot-down bomber. They couldn’t imagine meeting anything worth sinking in that area, off the Andamans: it was always empty.
It was quiet and warm in the wardroom, while the Navigator kept the watch and they slept, most of them; only the Sub lay awake with his eyes shut letting his imagination run on the subject of sinking cruisers. He saw it happen, heard the torpedoes exploding, several hits one after the other, and he said a prayer in his mind: “God, let us meet the cruiser, and sink her.” He took it back: “No, God, let us meet her, that’s all.” It was up to you, the sinking part: if God lets you meet her, and you bungle it, you can’t blame Him.
It always feels wonderful to have sunk a really good target: you’re all so pleased with yourselves, and you know that when you get back to harbour they’ll be waiting to show you that in their opinion you’ve done a good job. The way they do that is to line the ships with men, and cheer you into your berth: for a really big sinking, any merchant ships that may be there blow their sirens, the “V” sign predominant, three short blasts and a long one, the little sign linked for all time with the greatest Englishman of the century.
It feels good to be cheered into harbour. To be cheered anywhere, in fact. The first time you ever had a cheer directed at yourself was when you were eight years old, and it was the village children that cheered you when you rode through the main street with the fox’s blood on your cheeks – your first kill, and the ceremony of “blooding”: there was no reason for the children to have cheered, because it was something that had happened to you and not something that you had done, but it was an old custom, as English as roast beef, and it was dear to their hearts and so they cheered. The next time that you got a cheer was when you were twelve, and this time it was in Switzerland when you finished a test in a very fast schluss that took you through the arch of the finishing-post like a streak of light. You were covered in snow and there were icicles hanging in your hair because you’d fallen so many times, but you’d made up the time and won the badge with two stars on it, and you were only twelve so the people cheered.
Thinking of the cruiser he drifted into sleep, and there it was, the cruiser, making a terrific bow-wave of snow as it crossed the hillside, and Chief was sliding down on a toboggan with blood all over his face. It looked as though they were bound to collide, Chief and the cruiser, and Sub tried to shout, to warn him, but the words wouldn’t come because his mouth was full of snow. The messenger was shaking him by the shoulder, saying, “Sub-Lieutenant, sir: five minutes to.” It was his turn to go on watch. The messenger, however, was used to shaking men for their watches, and he stood by until he knew that Sub was actually turning out and not going back to sleep again.
If the cruiser is coming this way, it means that she must have gone a long way round, maybe visiting the Nicobars first. That’s quite possible, of course. But this is wishful-thinking, because you know, as you shove your feet into the rubber-soled shoes, that the chances of your meeting a cruiser are very slight indeed. It’s like having a ticket in a sweepstake, and who ever wins a sweepstake except the other man?
The Navigator shows you the patrol-line on the chart, and the position which he has just fixed. Not trusting Navigators, you check the fix before you take over, because the submarine is close to the island and once you’ve taken over the watch the responsibility is all yours. He tells you the course, and you note that the telegraphs are at slow ahead together. “O.K.” you say, and the Pilot goes to his bunk, fed-up because he’d been hoping that the cruiser would come along during his watch. Everyone likes to make the sighting.
“Up periscope.” No periscope watch will ever have been more efficient than the one you’re going to keep during the next two hours. There’s the island, steep and bright green: the sight of it recalls the atmosphere of the first patrol, when you’d just arrived in the East and everything was new and unusual. There’s the entrance to the harbour of Port Blair, the entrance that the trawler came out of, the entrance that she limped back into, sinking and on fire. Behind the port the island rises to a conical hill which is so densely wooded that it looks as though it’s made of trees, an enormous bouquet of emerald green against the deep blue of the sky. There is the watch-tower, a white box on stilts, from which the Jap sentry watches for a glimpse of a periscope. At the inshore end of the patrol-line, using the magnification in the periscope, you can see the sentry standing in his box, and you feel an urge to be on the surface so that you can turn him inside-out with a burst from the Oerlikon. You feel it as personally as that. Along the coastline you can remember the places from where the coast artillery fired at you as you fought the trawler; their shooting had not been at all bad, and the Captain had been forced to zigzag about while you directed the gun: it made it awkward, with the range and deflection changing between every few shots.
“Down periscope.” You fiddle with the trim for a minute, then turn again and signal with a movement of your hands for the periscope. It rushes up and you sweep all round with the air-search first, to make sure that while you search the horizon there will be no aircraft diving on the periscope. The sky is clear, and you sweep the horizon, first quickly to check that there is nothing in the immediate vicinity, then slowly, very slowly, so as not to miss the slightest sign of an enemy. And there, on the starboard beam as you head out from the island, there on the horizon in the south, in the direction in which the Nicobar Islands lie, you see a tiny smudge on the horizon. Smoke.
“Captain in the Control Room.” He’s there so fast that you only have time to dip the periscope: it comes up again into his hands. As he looks, the men whose eyes are fixed anxiously on his face see a slow smile twist his lips. They have seen that look before.
“Diving Stations!” As Number One tumbles out of his bunk, he says, “My God – must be the cruiser!”
“Don’t be a silly flipper,” answers Chief. He’s never at his best when he’s woken abruptly. “Cruiser be damned.”
At Diving Stations, the submarine turns and heads towards the smoke. Number One is thinking, after he’s been told that it’s smoke, that it’ll turn out to be either a cloud or a mirage. But the Captain, watching through the periscope, knows better. It’s smoke, and the smoke of a big ship.
“Oh, hell. She’s escorted, by the looks of it.” He’s seen a second, a smaller smudge. Ten minutes pass slowly.
“I can see her, now. Stand by all tubes.” The order is passed for’ard, to the astonished T.I.
“Yes, it’s a cruiser. Two destroyers. Stand by to start the attack.” The Navigator is ready with a stopwatch in his hand.
“Start the attack. Bearing – that! Range – that! I’m fifteen on her starboard bow.”
Sub with his calculating machine, and the Navigator with his track-chart, soon have a picture of the cruiser’s movements. This is the Attack Team in action, the result of many practices on dummy targets in the depot-ship’s “Attack Teacher”, and of many dummy attacks during the “work up” period before they left Scotland. Each man knows that one slip, one inaccuracy on his part, could produce a wrong answer that would leave the cruiser afloat. Only the Captain sees anything but the figures and the track lines on the plotting diagram.
“How long has the attack been going?”
“Eleven minutes, sir.” In his mind Sub sees the cruiser as the Captain passes on the picture in figures. The enemy course and speed have been calculated, checked and rechecked each time a new range and bearing is taken, and added to the picture on the track chart.
“Starboard twenty.” The submarine turns on to her firing course, a course worked out in relation to the enemy’s course so that the torpedoes will approach her at an angle of ninety degrees, on her beam.
“Course two-two-five, sir.”
“Very good. Stand by!”
The order is flashed forward to the men at the tubes.
“Fire one!” Thud and shudder, a hiss and the rising pressure.
“Fire two!”
“Fire three!” Half the salvo is on its way. Saunders says:
“Torpedoes running, sir.”
“Fire four!” God, let them hit!
“Fire five!”
“Fire six! – Flood ‘Q’, a hundred and fifty feet, full ahead together, port twenty-five!”
Now to get out of it: the torpedoes are on their way, and whether they hit or miss is out of anyone’s hands. But the destroyers will be active in a minute.
“Shut off for depth-charging.” The words are hardly spoken and repeated by the man at the telephone when the submarine is rocked by the explosion of the first torpedo striking home into the cruiser, then another and yet a third. Three hits: a certain kill. In the Engine Room, Chief grins at the Stokers.
“Now we’re for it, lads.”
Before the submarine was shut off and the bulkhead doors shut, Sub went forward to be with the T.I. and the torpedo-men. The Officers’ stations for depth-charging were: Sub forward, the Navigator in the Accommodation Space, the Captain and Number One in the Control Room. Each compartment was sealed off by its watertight doors.
Sub grinned at the T.I. “Well, Rawlinson, we sank the bastard. Three hits – not bad, eh?”
“I still can’t believe it, sir. We expecting trouble, now?”
“Expect so. There are two destroyers up there.” As he spoke, they heard one of the destroyers race across overhead. Her propellers churning the water made a noise like an express train going past. The T.I. looked round at his men.
“Now, lads,” he said, “there’ll be some dirt flying in a moment. It always sounds worse than it is.”
“That’s all right, Nursey,” answered Shadwell. “We’ve all ’eard it before. Bring on the flippin’ dancing-girls.”
No charges had been dropped, that time, but a moment later they heard the screws again. They seemed to pass on the port side and fade away ahead. Just before the sound faded, the first pattern of charges went off, a tearing crash that was too close, a sort of zonk effect as the blast bounced off the hull.
“That ain’t no flippin’ good,” remarked a torpedo-man. “’Ave to do better ’n that, old chums.”
“Don’t call those buggers chums, or I’ll do yer,” muttered Shadwell. The second destroyer made her run, evidently across the stern. The explosions seemed to be astern, anyway, but closer than the first lot. The submarine was shaken, and cork chips rained down from the paint overhead.
“Gettin’ warmer,” said Parrot.
“They’re not a patch on the Gerries, or the Wops, are they, sir?” The T.I. was speculating on the relative efficiency of the Axis powers. “Why, I remember once in the Med., off Sicily, we—”
That lot was bad. Sub was thrown across the compartment, landed in a heap with the T.I. and Parrot. The submarine had been rolled over and her stern thrown up by the exploding charges. It wouldn’t have to be much nearer than that. The telephone buzzed, and Sub answered it. It was the Control Room, a message from the Captain: “Report the situation for’ard.”
“Everything’s in order,” said Sub. He put the receiver back and grabbed hold of a stanchion as another pattern deafened them, shaking the submarine as a terrier shakes a rat.
In the Control Room, Number One fought with the trim, bringing the submarine out of a dive at two hundred and seventy feet.
“Two hundred feet,” ordered the Captain. “Port thirty, full ahead together.” Twisting and turning, trying all the tricks, yet the enemy seemed not to be easily fooled. Another pattern exploded, but this time they hardly felt it.
“Rotten shot,” said the Captain. “These Japs are no good.”
The Cox’n muttered: “I don’t think my Mum would like me to be ‘ere.”
The next pattern was a long time coming, a pause of about five minutes, while Saunders reported that one of the destroyers had stopped and that the other was going away. Then he reported, “Bearing drawing left, sir.”
“Very good.” The Captain acknowledged the report.
“Coming towards, sir. She’s turned round.”
“Very good.” The Captain ordered an alteration of course: “Starboard fifteen.”
The other destroyer, stopped, was in contact. They could hear the pings, like a mouse squeaking on the hull.
“Hundred and fifty feet, Number One.”
“Hundred and fifty feet, sir.” The needle was only just steady at the new depth when they heard the destroyer passing close again.
“Starboard twenty.” The helmsman swung his wheel over, his face as expressionless as the bulkhead door. Charges were on their way down, by now. A few seconds passed, and they seemed to explode under their feet, throwing the submarine up like a cork. Men were flung about, those who had unwisely not been holding on to anything. Cork chips spattered on them, and the lights went out. Someone cursed: the emergency lighting glowed feebly, throwing deep shadows in the compartment. At ninety feet, Number One got the angle under control, and they began to get down again. The lights came on.
“Report from the Motor Room,” snapped the Captain. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief.
“All correct, sir. The switch threw off.”
“A hundred and fifty feet!”
“Hundred and fifty, sir.”
In the Engine Room, Chief and the Stoker Petty Officer sat on the steel step and swapped stories with the stokers. Stoker Johnson was just finishing one.
“‘Blimey’, she said, ‘so that’s what it’s for!’”
They all laughed, although Chief didn’t think it was particularly funny. He had heard lots of dirty stories, but he rarely thought any of them worth telling, and he thought that most were better not told at all. He could never remember the funny ones, the ones he wanted to remember. Only the stupid, sordid ones. He turned to the Stoker P.O.
“Have you heard the one,” he asked, “about the errand boy?”
“No,” answered the Petty Officer, “I don’t think so, sir.” He listened to it, right through to the end, through a pattern of depth-charges that sent the submarine down to three hundred and fifty feet, and at the end he joined in the general laughter. But he didn’t see anything funny in it, either; and in any case he had, actually, heard it before.
The hunt went on, and pattern after pattern exploded savagely round the submarine, which twisted and turned like an eel, twisted and turned in three dimensions as she altered depth sometimes deliberately and sometimes because the charges sent her temporarily out of control. In the for’ard Mess they had grown used to it, powerless to do anything but hang on and wait as the explosions came at more or less regular intervals and they felt the lift and tilt of the deck under their feet. The deck was carpeted in the cream-coloured chips of cork and paint. Shadwell stared at it gloomily.
“We’ll ’ave this flippin’ lot to clean up, I suppose, soon as them bastards get sick of droppin’ muck on us.” As he spoke a pattern exploded, a harsh, ringing crash. Sub, his eyes on the deckhead, could almost imagine that he saw the plates bulging inwards under the impact.
Chief Petty Officer Rawlinson’s hands, hidden in the pockets of his shorts, were clenched into fists. An experienced submariner, the survivor of dozens of such attacks, he knew that Seahound would not stand much more of this hammering. If the enemy held the contact, it would only be a matter of time. Ten minutes? … Half an hour? Nobody could tell when the last pattern would do its work. He looked up, and met the Sublieutenant’s eyes: through the mask that each of them had assumed, each could see that the other was under no delusions as to how things were going. Shadwell knew, too: he sat on the deck with his arms round his knees, singing softly, under his breath, a song about a lady of easy virtue.
Five minutes had passed since the last charges. Sub studied his watch, not letting himself give way to any premature hopes of escape. The T.I., seeing his action, pursed his lips and strained his ears for the sound of returning propellors. But all seemed quiet, still.
Ten minutes had passed. They looked at each other, and now in Rawlinson’s seasoned face was the dawn of relief. Five minutes later, when for a quarter of an hour the submarine had seemed to be steady and keeping an even depth while no explosions shattered the tense underwater silence, Sub looked round and grinned.
“Looks as though they’ve lost us, T.I.”
“Shouldn’t be surprised, sir.” Rawlinson was cleaning his nails with a small screwdriver.
As soon as Seahound surfaced that evening, the Petty Officer Telegraphist was busy tapping out a signal which Chief and Number One had spent the afternoon putting into cipher. When they had done it they gave it to the Captain to decipher, as a check, and they felt quite pleased with themselves when it came out into the original message again. The message announced the sinking with torpedoes of a Japanese cruiser of the Yashima class, the time and position of the sinking, and the fact that the escort of two destroyers were believed to have left the vicinity of the Andamans at 1300 hours on a course approximately North-East by East. It added that Seahound had suffered no damage.
The telegraphist was still tapping when the Captain joined the others in the wardroom. There wasn’t much to say: the success was too big, too obvious, for comment. The Captain addressed the First Lieutenant:
“Number One – were there any breakages?”
“One or two, sir. Nothing very serious.”
“The Cox’n’s Store – was a rum-jar broken, by any chance?”
Number One smiled an odd smile. “There could easily have been, sir.” The Captain pressed the buzzer for a messenger.
“Tell the Cox’n I want to see him.”
Chief Petty Officer Smith heaved happily into sight. “See me, sir?”
“Cox’n – I believe a jar of rum was smashed during the fun and games this morning.”
“No, sir – I mean, yes, I believe one was, sir.”
“Very good, Cox’n. I’ll write it off. And now – splice the mainbrace.”
“Aye aye, sir.” It meant a double issue of rum for all hands, including officers, rum that on paper did not exist, since the jar had been smashed during the depth-charging and its contents were now, officially, mingled with a certain amount of dirty water in the bilges.
These things had to be seen to in an official manner.
Supper was cleared away when the dots and dashes became audible from the wireless office, where the telegraphist on watch was receiving a signal. Chief was in such an unusual frame of mind that he started quite happily to gather his books together, and set to work humming to himself.
It was a signal acknowledging their last one, a signal of very hearty congratulations. The Captain read it out to the Ship’s Company, over the broadcasting system. It had not been unexpected.
They realised afterwards how it was that they’d been lucky enough to get away with it. The Japanese squadron had sailed in a hurry, on last-minute orders. The two destroyers had only a few depth-charges on board, and they only had time before they sailed to get another truck-load each. This was discovered a week later, after the destroyers had been sunk by British destroyers and some prisoners were interrogated.
All the same, the score-board in the wireless office, where the Telegraphists sat during the depth-charging and made a cross for each explosion, showed a hundred and nineteen crosses.
Sub was dreaming about Sheila, Sheila and he in a canoe, and just at the moment, the embarrassing moment, that he was about to kiss her and she turned into Major Worth, he found himself awake on his bunk with a smell of fried breakfast and coffee in the air. Chief, who had shaken him out of his dream, was sitting there grinning at him.
“Look,” asked the Sub. “What’s going on?”
The Captain said: “Many Happy Returns, Sub.” Chief said the same thing. Number One shook his hand and said, “Congratulations, Sub.”
He’d forgotten all about it. It was his 21st birthday. Twenty-one: he’d been fighting in the war at sea for four years.
Chief handed him something wrapped up in a lot of brown paper and string. Sub took a dirty knife from somebody’s used plate, and cut the string: he unwrapped the paper and found a huge key.
“Key of the door,” explained Chief. “Featherstone filed it up last night.”
During his off-watch period, the E.R.A. had filed this outsize key from a lump of metal.
“Chef was busy too, last night.” Number One spoke. “Made you a birthday cake. He says he’s never baked a cake before, and he’s worried about how it’ll turn out.”
These were the gifts that counted; they were the emblems of friendship and affection of men who gave neither lightly.
“How does it feel to be twenty-one, Sub?”
“All I feel at the moment is hungry. Wilkins!” – They all started, and as he shouted the name the memory hit him in the pit of his stomach and his head swam with the way it hurt, and the fool he felt was plain in his face.
“I’m sorry. I’m damned sorry.” He thought: well, twenty-one isn’t old enough, it seems. I’ll have to be forty before I stop making frightful, unforgivable mistakes like that. With the one shout he had wrenched savagely at the new scar on a fresh, painful wound, and he had seen the quick, shocked pain in three faces. Now, in his mind, he saw the way Wilkins drooped and slumped as his lungs came out through his sides and the blood, the ribs, and his grey broken face. Dear God, forgive…
“Sub.”
“Sir.”
“Your breakfast is getting cold. And don’t be a damn fool. Any of us could have done that.”
Yes, any of them could have, the habit of over a year of breakfasts combining with the sleepy brain. Any of them. The trouble was, it had been he. He thought to himself: it always is.
After the strain of watch-keeping in enemy waters, the watches on the surface on the way home across the Indian Ocean were a welcome relaxation. Clad only in a pair of shorts under the blazing sun the men recovered their tan, drank in fresh air and looked forward to the spell in harbour. They took things easily, and with the knowledge of the success behind them and the welcome ahead they were happy days.
Sub came off watch at noon, relieved by Number One while the Navigator took a noon sight of the sun. In this weather, taking a sight was simple: it was when the weather was really bad that the process became almost impossible, when as soon as the sextant reached the bridge, wrapped in a towel, a green wave hurled itself into the bridge and the wet sextant was useless. The terrific motion of the submarine was no help, either.
Sub had stepped off the ladder in the Control Room and turned round to make his way into the wardroom when Chief Petty Officer Rawlinson stopped him.
“Torpedo Officer, sir. There’s a buzz that it’s your twenty-first birthday today. That right, sir?”
“It is, T.I.” Sub’s hand was grasped in the other man’s, pumped vigorously up and down.
“All the best, sir. Could you spare a moment? We’d like you to come for’ard, for a moment.”
They walked for’ard together, to the Petty Officer’s Mess. The Cox’n and the Stoker Petty Officer greeted him warmly, and, after pulling the curtain across the entrance to the Mess, the Cox’n handed him a glass with an inch of dark brown rum in the bottom of it.
“Thanks, Cox’n.” Sub threw it down in one gulp, as a proper sailor should, and they watched with approval in their eyes. He shook hands with them all, hoping that the burn in his throat wouldn’t make his eyes water and let him down in front of these men whose assessment of a man was valuable. As he left the little Mess, Shadwell was standing outside, waiting for him.
“Torpedo Officer, sir – would you come for’ard for a minute, please?”
Oh, my God. The Sub blinked. “Certainly, Shadwell. What is it?” He pretended he didn’t know what it was all about.
About a dozen sailors were waiting for him in the for’ard Mess. Bird handed him a glass of rum, and Rogers said, “Dahn the ’atch, sir.” They watched him closely as he threw the rum back into his throat.
“Thank you, gentlemen. The best twenty-first I ever had.” They laughed, liking him. Rogers muttered, under his breath, “Proper toff, young Subby.” Sub went aft to his lunch. The rum was warm in his stomach. What was it they called rum? Nelson’s Blood. No wonder Nelson was a ball of fire, with this stuff in his veins.
After lunch, Sub lay on his bunk, and he saw a picture of Sussex and the party that there would have been if he’d been at home. He could see all the faces that would have been round the table that evening, and he knew that he and those faces would never really know each other again. That had been the centre, the focal point of his life: now Sussex was only the background, something soft to think about.
These men were the friends he wanted, and this was the life he wanted to lead. That was why he knew that the future was going to be no good for him: he didn’t want it. His young world was tottering on the precipice of peace.