Scott picked up his dividers and made some quick calculations. The submarine was only twenty-five miles from the bay and it was not a difficult task to plot a suitable course. He only wished he could be more certain about the tide.
‘Course zero-three-nine, sir. Speed five knots, reducing to four for the last hour’s running.’
‘So be it, Pilot. Take over the watch while I check the trim figures with Roger. And call me when the plot shows we’re five minutes before high water.’
FOUR
‘Captain to the control room!’
Hamilton pushed the slide rule to one side and considered the results of his revised calculations. Despite his lack of experience Mannon’s trim figures were mathematically correct – which meant the drain valve to the bow tubes was malfunctioning. And that was a dockyard matter.
‘You’ll have to shift the ballast in the for’ard section, Number One,’ he told Mannon as he put his pencil away. ‘It’s only a temporary expedient, but I can’t have the bows sinking every time we flood up the tubes. And if we find ourselves in an emergency situation there won’t be time to start balancing the trim.’ He pushed the wardroom curtain aside and made his way aft.
Scott was waiting in the control room. He looked pleased with himself. Underwater navigation could be a damned unreliable game of chance but, on this particular occasion, luck had been on his side.
‘We’re directly off the bay, sir. Three minutes to high water.’
‘Well done, Pilot.’ Hamilton turned to Baker, who was sitting at the hydro-phone equipment in his miniscule cabinet at the rear of the control room. ‘Any HE, Baker?’
‘Nothing, sir. Apart from the surf under the cliffs.’
‘And the Asdic?’
Baker leaned across and twisted a large red knob. The steady pulse revealed no answering echo. ‘No contacts, sir.’
‘Up periscope.’
Hamilton set the upper lens on to the bearing indicated by Scott and examined the narrow entrance to the bay. Steep tree-clad cliffs descended down to the sea on either side, and the bobbing orange colored floats of the boom were clearly visible on the surface. Not even the faintest breath of wind ruffled the waters of the bay, and the leaden sheen of the sky confirmed the storm warning he had received from the Fleet Met Officer on leaving Hong Kong. Hamilton was unable to decide whether bad weather was likely to be an advantage or a disadvantage. But one factor worried him. The forecast had shown the center of the storm as approaching from seaward and, like all experienced sailors, he had no desire to find himself trapped on a lee shore. Too many good ships had been lost that way.
‘Steer two points to starboard.’
The slight alteration of course brought Rapier into a position where he could see right inside the land-locked bay. The Japanese destroyer, purposeful and menacing in her dark grey war paint, was anchored close inshore on the right-hand side while, almost half a mile away to the left lay the white hulled gunboat◦– a wisp of smoke rising vertically from her buff colored funnel, her white ensign hanging limp and dejected in the still air. Nothing was happening. There was no sign of activity on either ship, no signals were passing and there was none of the usual small-boat traffic. Hamilton noted with relief, however, that the destroyer’s guns were safely pointing fore and aft and that was a reassuring sign.
‘Down periscope.’
Walking across to the chart table, Hamilton motioned Mannon and Scott to join him and, taking a clean sheet of paper, he drew a rough sketch of the bay and the position of the two warships. ‘I think our best place is inside the bay and alongside Firefly,’ he told them. ‘But we’ll have to gamble on passing through the entrance without being spotted. If it’s an anti-submarine defense boom, we won’t stand a chance. But the floats look too light to support a steel net so I think we’ll be okay. Any questions?’
‘What do you intend doing once we’re inside, sir?’ Mannon asked.
‘Wait and see,’ Hamilton said flatly. It sounded off-hand and impressive. But it was an empty promise. In reality Hamilton had no idea how he was going to handle the task that lay ahead. He was a man who disliked planning and following a set pattern. He preferred to exploit a situation as he found it, relying on his reactions under stress and his intuition. Once inside the bay something was bound to happen. And when it, did he hoped he would be able to turn it to their advantage.
‘We’ll go under the boom submerged,’ he told Mannon.
‘Apart from luck we’ll need two things◦– sufficient depth of water and inefficient look-outs on the Jap destroyer.’
‘I would think the latter requirement highly unlikely, sir,’ Mannon said primly.
‘And so do I, Number One. But my guess is they’ll be watching the surface. No one but a fool would try to take a submerged submarine into a landlocked bay with its only exit guarded by a destroyer. The Japanese are a logical race. They’ll have considered the possibility◦– and dismissed it.’
Scott looked up from the chart table where he had been studying a large-scale map of the mainland coast. It was not an official Admiralty chart, but a crudely drawn native map used by local fishermen. He had purchased it in a Hong Kong shop behind the harbor a few days earlier.
‘I reckon we’ll have fifty feet of water over the bar, sir. This map shows fish in the area that wouldn’t normally live in shallow water.’
Hamilton nodded approvingly. Scott was the type of officer he appreciated◦– a man who was anxious to use his brain and his initiative. He wondered how many other navigators would have thought of estimating the depth of the water by studying the type of fish inhabiting the sea. It reminded him of the time he had used the feeding habits of seagulls to steer Rapier through the shallows of the North Sea in pursuit of a U-boat.
‘We’ll have to go through blind,’ he explained. ‘If the Japs are watching the surface they’d spot a periscope immediately. And we’ll have to proceed at our slowest speed to avoid causing too much disturbance on the surface.’ He looked around the control room. ‘Is everyone ready?’
There was a murmur of assent and Hamilton clicked his fingers sharply. ‘Up periscope… down periscope!’
The lens had poked inquisitively up through the waves for no more than ten seconds. But it was sufficient for his skilled eye to estimate the bearings and distance involved. He decided to keep to the westerly side of the entrance so that Rapier was as far away from the destroyer as possible. Then, outwardly relaxed, he walked across to the gyro-repeater and checked the reading. He projected a mental picture of the entrance to the bay in his mind as he made his final calculation.
‘Steer three-zero-zero, Helmsman. Slow ahead both motors. Take her to forty feet.’
‘Three-zero-zero, sir.’
‘Down planes, level at forty feet.’
‘Forty feet, sir.’
‘Thank you, Cox’n. Hold her steady.’
There was nothing more to do but wait. Hamilton had already started his stopwatch and he followed the sweep of the second hand as Rapier crawled towards the boom. ‘Stop all fans and motors. Rig for silent running.’ Mannon tried to hide the tension gnawing in his belly by carefully studying the warning lights of the venting panel over Venables’ shoulder. As he did so, he mentally rehearsed which levers would have to be pulled to blow the appropriate ballast tanks◦– Numbers Six and Nine if the bows grounded. Numbers Twenty-two and Twenty-five if the stern touched bottom. He wiped the perspiration from the palms of his hands and stretched his fingers like a concert pianist preparing to play.