With an extra long aim I could have touched Penguin Turning.
`Let her have her head, for the love of God!' I shouted. '
Let her go! Let her go!'
U-160 had managed it so many times on her own in the past, maybe she'd manage it this time without our fouling up whatever delicate underwater forces were in play. U-160 managed it. Just.
At her nearest point, I wasn't sure which was the end of her bow with the white water breaking, or which was Penguins Turning with white water breaking. An eddy seemed to take over at the last moment. Then suddenly we were past and swirling, churning, spinning in the whirlpool in the lee of the skietrots, among the races and overfalls and blinders and spray.
We left U-160 to make her own way. There wasn't anything else we could do. She-and we-went on swinging and turning like that: on and on-round and round. After the first few turns I began to get accustomed to the movement and pulled myself together enough to make an estimate whether we were making progress over the ground or staying in one place while we swung. We were progressing. But the drift was so imperceptible that it took fully half an hour to win clear of the merry-go-round and begin to follow roughly the northward line of the coast towards Possession.
C H A P T E R S I X T E E N
It didn't need a crystaJ ball to see that the upwell cell was breaking up. The gale was down to a mere stiff breeze and was changing direction. It wasn't hot any more because it was veering away from the desert seawards. By virtue of the fog's condensation, the muck was coming out of the sky like muddy rain and forming a coating over everything – decks-rigging, railings and U-160's conning-tower, which appeared rustier still because of it. The silver had completely disappeared from the sea.
I crossed to Gaok as soon as we had settled on a steadier course.
'We've something like four hours until sunrise,' I said to Kaptein Denny and Jutta. 'We're the nut in the cracker's jaws. One jaw is time, the other is Sang A. If we're going to achieve anything with the cutting equipment, now's the time.'
'We'll start in right away,' Denny replied.
It wasn't as simple as that. In the first place a thick skin of barnacles overlay the steel plating of the hatch on U-160's bridge. At first try Kaptein Denny used the cutting blowpipe on them, but the result was a loathsome fish-fry smell which choked us, in the confined space, without getting at the metal. So we set about smashing off the shellfish with hammers. Jutta also took a hand, but it was a reluctant, silent hand. We had to use the spotlight to see what we were doing. To me it had assumed the proportion of the biggest advertising sign in Piccadilly Circus.
Finally we cleared a patch and Kaptein Denny slipped on his anti-glare visor and attacked the steel itself with the torch. Without eyeshields, Jutta and I were forced to turn our backs on the brilliant blue-white flame but we couldn't miss the showers of sparks which went everywhere. If Sang A was around and hadn't spotted that Brock's Benefit, all I could think was that every man jack of them was on another trip. The length of time Kaptein Denny went on made me wonder whether his enthusiasm had taken him right down into 206 the U-boat's control-room.
'Through yet?' I asked.
He cut the flame. His eyes had a curious expression as though only part of him were there at all.
The incision wasn't through; it hadn't begun. Four inches of toughened steel scarcely showed a mark.
I made a quick calculating survey. Not only was the hatch itself secure but the frame surrounding it was distorted and sealed by rust. I experienced some of the frustration he himself must have known the first time, when he'd boarded U-160 all those years before and realized there was nothing he could do to get inside her. The situation didn't seem to have changed much. I knew in my heart that it was a dockyard job, but I wouldn't admit we were licked.
Both Kaptein Denny and Jutta were regarding me as though I had a solution ready: I hadn't. Jutla's eyes were very big and there were dark circles under them. The furrows in Denny's face were deeper.
'We're wasting our time with that thing,' I said. 'We'll use up all our gas without making a hole big enough to get your finger into. What we reaJly need is an explosive bolt fired through the pressure hull at the end of an air line. Then the hull should be pumped full of compressed air to give it buoyancy. The next requirement is a couple of powerful derricks to get rid of the mine and torpedoes-plus a skilled demolition squad. After that, relays of men with special gear to slice her open.'
Kaptein Denny looked stockier and grimmer on hearing my evaluation of the situation. When he looked at me, some sort of change was in process behind his eyes. His voice held a threat.
'Is that what you suggest?'
'Give me a chance to think.'
'Think then, because I want you to understand one thing very plainly: U-160 is never going to fall into Sang A's hands.'
With or without U-160, we looked like being the losers. I wasn't going to say that to him, though. My mind fumbled with the problem. Explosives. Mine. Torpedoes. There was an embarrassment of riches in that direction. Embarrassing enough lo blow a hole in the sea-bed..
The word sea-bed sparked a solution. The idea tumbled out rough-cut and unformed, because I hadn't had time to think it out.
'I've got it-we'll blow her open. We'll use the salvage bomb I filched from Sang A to do it with?
'Excellent!' Denny replied. The strange unseeing look went. from his eyes. 'Excellent! That's it! That's what we'll do!
Where's the bomb?'
'Still in the dinghy.'
'Struan – listen I' exclaimed Jutta, who had flinched at my suggestion. 'It won't work! A small bomb like that won't accomplish what a salvo of depth charges failed to do!
That hatch is fast. If you use the bomb anywhere else on the hull shell come apart at the seams and go down like a stone.'
`Jutta's right-' said Kaptein Denny unexpectedly. 'That doesn't mean to say the idea's basically unsound.' He indicated the mine. 'That could go up in sympathy with the bomb if we detonated it on the conning-tower. The torpedoes, likewise.'
For the second time a word gave me the clue to a solution. This time it was torpedo.
'I see a way!' I said quickly. 'We'll draw that half-fired torpedo out of its tube -we we can manage it in shaJlower water with a dragline attached to one of the cutters! All that will then stand between us and the interior of the sub will be the torpedo-tube door. The salvage bomb will take care of that!'
And send her to the bottom in the process,' objected Jutta. '
It won't work…'
'It wi! l,' retorted Denny. 'We'll make it work. We'll beach her, that's what we'll do. Well put her ashore on her side at the Bridge of Magpies – it's the only place hereabouts. We'll dump the mine in the channel. We can do that once she's ashore by using Gaok's mainboom as a derrick…'
It sounded good to me-not to Jutta.
`You both talk as if you expect the night is never going to end!' she exclaimed. 'What about Sang A while you're busy beaching her and blowing her open? What about…?'