I went to the chart table and called John over. I pointed to the soundings.
"We are just here," I said, almost as if he didn't know as well as I did. "If you look along here, you'll see there is a rough line of equal soundings. Over towards Ischia the land intrudes and it makes, in fact, almost a shelf. Over the shelf is another deeper patch."
John leaned over and grinned wryly: "Only 110 feet."
"It's enough," I said curtly. "If we can get Trout into this little hollow, those Itie destroyers will have to come mighty close to get at us. The shelf will break the force of the depth-charges, and over here " — I stabbed the chart — "there'll be such an echo back from the land that their Asdic won't pick us up. Same thing with the hydrophones…"
There was a thump from outside Trout. Another. And another.
"Three hits, sir!" exclaimed young Peters. The tension broke. Everyone was all smiles.
"Well done, sir! "John was jubilant.
"Going up to have a look?" he inquired tentatively.
"No," I said briefly. "Unless you want us to get scuppered on the turn. I give it five minutes before the ashcans come."
Trout drove on towards her one slim chance of safety. Waiting for a depth-charge attack is probably as bad as the attack itself.
"H.E bearing dead astern sir," came the report.
We waited for it. The destroyer was on our tail all right. I wanted those extra minutes of the submarine's speed, however. I would wait till the last minute. The crash shook us all over. Pieces of cork fell down, but the lights remained on.
"One hundred feet. Slow ahead together. Silent routine."
Now I could hear, as everyone else in the boat could, the crash of propellers overhead. The destroyer was overshooting us, but soon the rest would be round us like flies.
I tore my thoughts away from the attack.
"No evasive action," I ordered.
That shelf and the shallow depression beyond were really my only hope. The water all round was too shallow to stave off an attack by eight or more destroyers, even given the luck. Three-quarters of a mile to relative safety. Three knots only. Only a whisper from the men. Overhead the crash of more propellers.
"Discontinue asdic bearings," I whispered.
The rating looked amazed. But my course was dead ahead. I wasn't going to try and outwit the destroyers — yet. With a little luck, they might plump for the evasive routine.
Crump!!!
A pattern of five reverberated, slightly on the port bow. The destroyers, now between us and the hole in the seabed, had believed I would turn away after the first attack.
He had chosen port, but he might as easily have made it starboard. It was anyone's guess. More thrashing of propellers slightly astern, followed almost at once by a pattern of five depth charges. This one would call up his fellows to make short work of us.
Haifa mile to go. I held Trout due east. Soon I would have to rise to eighty feet so as not to stick my nose into the shelf. Twenty precious feet — it could mean life or death.
They, were really on to us now. Three patterns broke all the lights, and the deadly cold little emergency lights came on. Dust seemed to come from everywhere.
"Eighty feet," I ordered in an undertone; John passed it on.
Young Peters blinked in astonishment. I could see what was in his mind — "no use going to meet it; why not stay down here?"
I had to risk the noise of the ballast tanks blowing. As they blew a deep pattern exploded next to Trout but, as luck would have it, the moment we rose. At our previous depth it would have been fatal. Trout glided over the hummock in the sea-bed.
"Hard-a-starboard!" I said tersely. "One hundred and ten feet."
Trout settled on the sea-bed. Three more patterns of depth-charges followed, but mercifully farther away to starboard. Trout would have to do better than just lie in a deep declivity. I pumped more water into the starboard ballast tank and she leaned over. Ten, fifteen degrees. As close as I could judge, I laid her against the shelf in the sea-bed, tilted against it like a man cowering for dear life behind a small bank. From the ragged and distant patterns it was clear the destroyers were out of touch with us. All that remained was to stick it out and hope for the best.
For nine hours the destroyers came close, over and beyond, but they never located us. For nine interminable hours came the crash and thump of heavy depth-charges. I think the Italians must have blown up everything between Trout and Capri.
Seldom were there fewer than five hunting, and often I think there must have been more.
Everything became strangely quiet. It was after midnight. I decided to give it an hour more in case the searchers were "playing possum." At one-thirty, tired, red-eyed, our ears still tingling in the unaccustomed quiet, I brought Trout to the surface. The night was dark, and if the destroyers were there, at least I couldn't see them, nor could they see me. I intended to beat it out of the Tyrrhenian Sea as quickly as I could.
I set course for Malta at full speed.
Malta gave Trout a heroes' welcome. We surfaced inside the deep minefield, made our recognition signal, and cruised slowly across the blue Mediterranean water towards the beleaguered island, looking strangely tranquil in the morning light. The crew, grinning hugely and thinking more of a run ashore in the rum shops than glory, were snodded up in their best; on the port side of the conning-tower, young Peters, overalls over his shore-going rig, was busy with a paint brush and pot adding to Trout's score. The main feature of this rather curious design was a hand, rather a strange-looking hand, which half cocked a snook at our tally of merchantmen and destroyers, and now the battleship.
Peters got the idea from the mascot I always carried with me — one of those things one sees in southern Germany, a rootfern, I think it was, contorted by nature into a replica of a human hand. I had seen it in a little village called Loffingen, near the Black — Forest, in the summer before the war. Loffingen is one of those tiny, quaint little places where an iron-work German eagle hangs on an iron lattice-work above a fountain in the market-place where a bronze boy, on some indefinable errand, clutches a spear. I went for a drink at the inn and, dodging the cluster of bicycles at the entrance, saw the "little lucky hand "(the German notice said) in a tiny shop window adjoining. I carried the little hand in action, and Peters had reproduced it (with liberties) on the conning-tower. Trout was even affectionately known as "The Hand "at the Lazaretto base.
I felt unutterably weary as I brought Trout alongside. The cheers, the sirens, and even the presence of the commander of the base and Dockyard failed to cheer me. Battle fatigue, I thought tiredly. It's when you feel like this that they get you. Even the thought of a long bath and a long gin did not lift the depression which had settled on my spirits.
"Wonderful work, Geoffrey!" exclaimed the C.O. as he came aboard, his quick ebullience spreading round him like an aura. "Come and tell me all about it — no hell man, don't worry about a written report yet. This is just for my private ear."
He looked at me keenly, noting probably the tight lines round the mouth, the stubble and the typical submariner's pallor.
"I've also got some news for your private ear."
He hustled me away, leaving John to do the donkey work
In his cabin he poured me a stiff gin. I sank into the so: cushions of his own favourite chair, the softness wrapping me round like a cloak.
He jerked out: "When I detailed you for the job, thought you might get her. But I didn't think you'd make it back."
I looked at the tonic fizzling slowly up in the glass. Like breaking surface on a dull morning, I thought. I wondered how many shells, or even how many lives, this one bottle of tonic had cost to bring to Malta.