‘Number One and Coxswain to the bridge.’
‘Control Room, aye aye, sir.’
Turning away from the voice pipe, he paced the narrow circuit of the bridge area with his hands clasped together behind his back while he waited. He could hear the clatter of footsteps echoing inside the empty upper chamber of the conning tower, and stood away from the hatch opening as Roger Mannon and Chief Petty Officer Ernie Blood clambered through, out on to the deck.
Hamilton eyed his first officer coldly as he straightened up and saluted. Mannon had only joined Rapier a few weeks previously. He was young and eager. But the wavy gold rings on his uniform sleeves marked him down as an amateur and, in Hamilton’s opinion, the submarine service was strictly for professionals. It took years of training and service experience to make an efficient submarine officer. How the hell could a volunteer reserve officer, whose experience of the sea comprised a few hours of coastal sailing at weekends, qualify for the exacting disciplines required for submarine service.
Not that he blamed Mannon personally. Roger was keen enough. But it somehow seemed totally wrong to share the wardroom with a chartered accountant, who knew more about balance sheets and company law than buoyancy tanks and the King’s regulations. Admittedly he was learning. But that wasn’t enough when the life of every man in the boat depended on the skill and experience of his shipmates; and Hamilton felt himself duty bound to check and recheck everything Mannon did◦– an additional chore that became an onerous burden in the tropical heat.
He nodded his head towards the slumbering men sunbathing on the foredeck. ‘Get the sleeping beauties below, Cox’n. I want a tiddley ship when we enter harbor.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
‘And then muster the fo’c’sle party in number six rig. I’ll show the China Station that we haven’t forgotten how to do things Bristol fashion, even if we have been fighting their bloody war for them over the past two years.’
Blood leaned over the conning tower coaming and hurried the off-duty watch below, in a voice that reflected his years of service as a gunnery instructor at Whale Island. Then, having checked that the foredeck casing was clear and the gun hatch closed, he made his way back to the bowels of the submarine to gather up the fo’c’sle party. Hamilton moved to the voice pipe.
‘All hands to harbor stations!’ He glanced at Mannon as he closed the cover of the speaking tube. ‘Ever been through the peacetime drill for harbor stations before Number One?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, keep your eyes skinned and you’ll learn something. It’s a bit different from the sort of lash-up you’ve been used to with the Malta flotillas.’
‘But not so exciting, sir.’
‘It’s exciting enough if something goes wrong,’ Hamilton corrected him crisply. ‘You’ve obviously never served in a ship that’s been ordered back to sea and told to return and berth in a seamanlike manner. I once saw it happen to a Rear Admiral before the war. It took him a long time to live it down.’
Blood emerged from the conning tower hatch, his face gleaming with perspiration after a few brief minutes inside the steaming-hot submarine. ‘Fo’c’sle party fallen in, sir,’ he reported punctiliously.
‘Thank you, Cox’n. Take over the helm.’
Blood relieved Finnegan at the wheel. It was customary for the coxswain, the senior petty officer, to take the helm on entering or leaving the harbor, and Blood enjoyed the responsibility of conning Rapier to her berth. When the boat was closed up at diving stations, his place was at the controls of the aft hydroplanes, where he was responsible for maintaining the submarine’s depth◦– a critical duty during a torpedo attack. But although a dedicated submariner, Ernie Blood always preferred to be at the helm. It made him the most important man on the boat next to the skipper and he took a quiet pride in the fact.
‘Steering zero-two-zero, sir,’ he repeated as Finnegan passed over the course.
Hamilton glanced down at the chart. There were no landmarks in sight yet, but he felt confident of their position.
‘Ease her to zero-one-eight, Cox’n. Full ahead both.’
‘Zero-one-eight, sir. Full ahead both.’
‘Aircraft approaching on port bow! Height 5000!’
Only a few weeks earlier, the look-out’s warning would have cleared the bridge in seconds and Rapier would have quickly thrust her bows beneath the surface, like a fox going to ground. However, Hamilton showed little concern, despite the instinctive tensions of the other men on the bridge. Walking casually to the port side, he raised his glasses and scanned the blue sky to the north-west.
Three small black dots flying in arrowhead formation were approaching from the direction of the Chinese mainland; but they were still too far away to identify with any degree of certainty. He lowered his glasses.
‘Probably our welcoming committee from Hong Kong. Maintain course and speed.’
Mannon continued studying the aircraft intently through his binoculars. The planes had appeared too far to the west to have come from the Colony, and there seemed something vaguely threatening in their purposeful approach.
‘Do we have any two-engine machines on the China Station, sir?’ he asked.
Hamilton shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea, Number One,’ he admitted. ‘I suppose we might have some Blenheims or a few Marylands serving with the RAF. Why?’
Mannon didn’t answer the question. ‘They’re changing course, sir. Heading towards us by the look of it.’
Hamilton raised his binoculars again. Mannon was too jumpy. And he didn’t want the rest of the crew to be affected. Nerves could be highly contagious in a submarine. That was the worst of the Wavy Navy◦– good chaps in their own way, but no experience. He located the formation and brought his lenses into critical focus.
Rapier’s skipper was the first to admit that he was no expert on aircraft recognition, but there was certainly something strangely familiar about these three. The silvered wings glinting in the sunlight seemed oddly unreal after the drab colors of European combat aircraft, and he wondered momentarily whether they were carrier planes from the US Pacific Fleet. He dismissed the thought as quickly as it entered his head. Despite the enormous size of their vessels, even the Yanks still had to find a way of operating twin-engined machines from carrier decks. He held the aircraft steadily in his binoculars and, as one suddenly peeled away from the formation, he saw the red blob of the Rising Sun on the underside of its starboard wing.
‘Japanese,’ he informed Mannon curtly. ‘Nothing to worry about. Probably having a quick look-see to check we’re not a Chinese boat.’
‘But the Chinese don’t have any submarines, sir,’ Mannon objected.
‘Perhaps they haven’t, Number One. But a submarine running at speed on the surface is difficult to identify from the air. When you’re looking down from five thousand feet it could be anything from a motor torpedo boat to a destroyer. Once they realize their mistake, they’ll leave us alone.’
Mannon did not share his skipper’s optimism. He had a strange feeling of foreboding about the approaching aircraft and raised his glasses to study them again. Selecting the leading plane, he examined it closely in search of evidence to substantiate his unease. What he saw was enough. ‘They’re opening the bomb doors, sir!’