Less than four cables between Athenian and the first submarine now. The end was very near. Suddenly I realised that Bert Samson had no intentions of running for it, he could never have hoped to manoeuvre round that deadly corner at the entrance at anything more than dead slow speed, controlled with the precision of a ballet dancer. Evans was right — no master was justified in throwing lives away so stupidly. Not unless…?
Three cables left and both U-boats firing rapidly by now. From where we watched the damage wasn’t easily apparent as we could only make out the after-end of her upper-works, but she was on fire forward somewhere, thick black smoke billowing aft over her bridge and super-structure and tumbling to the water to lie like some monstrous funeral shroud above the surface, hardly stirring with the complete absence of natural wind.
I dragged the binoculars up to apprehensive eyes for a last look and saw the port wing of her bridge disintegrate into a spinning scatter of torn wood and steel plates, then another shell burst right in her foremasthead and the whole topmast keeled over to avalanche down on to her forward hatch covers. She wasn’t beautiful anymore, now. Just a hurtling, ravaged shape under the command of a little, stubborn, angry old man.
‘He's trying to ram,’ I muttered, almost to myself.
Evans stood very still beside me and I could hear his heavy breathing even above the cacophony of gunfire. ‘You old bugger, Bert,’ he was whispering softly. ‘You’ll never make it. The bastards will slip out of your way before you can get there.’
I shook my head. ‘They can’t turn all that far. Not with that shelf there, they can’t.’
Almost on the lead boat now. Oh God! And I was right — the submerged shelf ran right along, almost parallel with the screening cliffs, leaving little room even for those slender cigar-shapes to take avoiding action. All the same, the Commander of the nearest sub must have had nerves of stressed steel as he conned his ship into the most advantageous position to meet the looming bulk of the crazily careering, burning British freighter. I watched as if hypnotized while the slim hull pointed almost straight at Athenian’s slicing bow, two vessels end to end, one carrying twelve hundred tons of high-explosive cargo, the other laden with some of the most devastating weapons in the world — torpedoes.
Evans choked, ‘God, but he’ll never catch that boat — not while she stays on that heading. It’s too narrow a target, Mister. Bert’ll lose sight of her under the flare of the bow…’
I didn’t answer because the pain in my throat was too intense as I watched Athenian slowly breaking up into flaming, anonymous splinters. Maybe Bill was already dead, or crying with terror in some corner of the deck. Then I thought back to that old Petty Officer as he worked steadily over the depth-charges on the sinking Mallard’s after-part and I knew that, whatever else he was doing, Bill wasn’t hiding. He was of the same mould as Bert Samson and Evans and Charlie Shell back there.
Then Athenian was right above the U-boat and we could see the gunnery ratings flinging themselves flat along her black, glistening casing, gripping desperately to the nearest handhold as they waited for the end while, high in her conning tower, a peaked white cap was inverted to judge the exact moment to act, to manoeuvre for salvation. Just waiting coolly for the critical few seconds when his ship would be hidden from Athenian’s bridge. My God, but that U-boat commander must have been one hell of a man.
Then the moment came and the white cap bobbed sharply. A splurge of white behind the pointed stern and the submarine nosed slightly to port, then a quick helm correction to bring her exactly in line with Athenian’s axis again and her bow was rising swiftly, relentlessly, on the swollen belly of water surging ahead of the merchantman. Up, up, up rose the black cigar with men glued fly-like to her decks, then slipping farther to port, away from Athenian’s seeking stem… and the huge, grey hull was slashing past with the white cap still staring unflinchingly up at the looming, torn bridge.
Someone behind me drew a shuddering, sobbing breath while the eyepiece of my binoculars grew suddenly opaque as a trickle of sweat ran into it from my brow. By the time I’d fumbled to wipe it off, Evans was saying in a shocked voice. ‘They’re clear, John. They’re clear of Bert. The poor old devil’s missed.’
But the most macabre incident of all occurred as I brought the glasses back to my eyes. While Athenian’s bridge was still sliding past the enemy submarine a diminutive figure appeared, leaning out over the still intact starboard wing. I saw Bert Samson — it could only have been Bert — either shake, or wave, a fist at the figure in the conning tower sixty feet below him, and then — with his own ratings still pinned to the deck in the attitudes of crucifixion — that calculating, white-capped man coolly raised an answering arm in a mockery of the Hitler salute. Then Athenian was past and the U-boat was left shaking herself viciously in the boiling water of her frustrated adversary’s wake.
Still afloat.
And still as lethal as ever.
As if to prove it her gunners scrambled to their feet and, almost before the stern of Athenian was clear, the foredeck gun slammed again and another column of dirty water rose, obscenely weed-flecked, from a point less than a cable’s length from our own bow while, at the same time, the one-pounder on the low platform at the rear of the German’s conning tower opened up with a monotonous pom-pom of fire. We could make out ripples of flame sparkling as the light shells burst haphazardly among the lifeboats and ventilators on the after end of Athenian’s centrecastle. Those U-boat men were as tough and methodical as automatons, and no more merciful.
Evans muttered, ‘They're signalling again, damn their eyes.’
The lamp blipped from the U-boat’s tower as casually as though Athenian, still less than two cables past her, had been of no more consequence than a railway train running through a suburban station. YOU PRESENT A CONVENIENT PROFILE FOR TORPEDOES CYCLOPS… TAKE MY SHOT AS A WARNING… ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR SURRENDER BY VISUAL MEANS ONLY… IMMEDIATE.
We blinked at each other in utter defeat while, all the time, the rumbling thunder of the disintegrating but still driving Athenian continued to drift across the green and blue water. Only God knew how many men were already dead aboard her… Please make it stop now. And Bert? Was he torn to bloody tatters on his sacrosanct bridge, conscious only of failure in his last subborn moments of life? And Bill, my friend of so many years of roaming the seas — was he with big Eric yet…? When, come to that, was that proud, once beautiful ship going to die herself? Fanned into howling fury by the wind of her last passage, those fires must be eating well down into her innards now, clawing for the tons of explosive in her belly… When would she go…?
Evans called sickly, ‘Mister Brannigan — Acknowledge!’
No one spoke as Brannigan slowly lifted the Aldis. He didn’t depress the trigger for a moment, just turned and looked appealingly at Evans — then the U-boat spat again and a second gout of water climbed in the air so close under our bow that tons of yellow putrescence smashed down on our foc’slehead to cascade back through the scuppers with a malevolent hiss into the iridescent sea below. Everyone ducked nervously except the Old Man. He just stood there gazing at his contemporary’s funeral pyre with a look of terrible weariness and grated harshly, ‘I said ACKNOWLEDGE, Mister Brannigan! Or do you want to kill more men just as bloody pointlessly?’