"Hard-a-starboard."
Below, the men sweated to obey, heaving around the heavy wheel whose low gearing required many turns of the wheel before the rudder could be moved from one side to the other.
The Hecate's knife-edged bow was poised threateningly above the low hull of the U-boat as it lay in the trough. The wave that had slued the destroyer's stern and in passing under had raised her bow now flung up the hull of U-121 at the same moment that its forward motion allowed the Hecate's bow to slice down.
With a searing crash and a scream of tortured steel, the bow bit deeply into the metal flank of the submarine. As it cut through the ballast tanks and stove in the hull, the U-boat heeled. The German officer's arm shot up. For a moment before the man was tumbled into the sea, the Captain glimpsed a revolver aimed at himself. He was almost sorry that he had stopped the signalman from firing.
The Hecate had dealt her enemy a mortal wound; but it was a glancing blow, and it should have been a straight one. The U-boat was forced around by her assailant until the two ships lay side by side and beam-on to the sea. The sharp port hydroplane at the U-boat's stern penetrated the plating of the destroyer's second, and largest, boiler room. Rolling apart as the waves' crest passed under them, the two vessels were flung together again in the succeeding trough. With her momentum the Hecate had moved forward; and this time the hydroplane, like a deadly fang, punctured the plating of the engine room.
The Captain, on the bridge, was aware of the disaster. It was only the extent of the damage that remained in doubt. He moved hurriedly to the after end of the bridge, where the long ladders rose in two flights from the main deck thirty feet below. Members of the boiler-room and engine-room crews were already standing between the funnels, and more and more of their mates joined them. The U-boat's men, too, were now pouring out of her, abandoning their vessel in yellow rubber dinghies, some of which were already pushing off from the far side.
From the bridge the Captain saw the urgent figure of the engineer pushing through the crowd. The Chief paused at the foot of the ladder and, looking up, saw the Captain above him.
"What chance, Chief?" the Captain called.
"Without full steam to work the ejectors, absolutely none, sir."
"How many compartments will flood?"
"Number one and two boiler rooms and the engine room."
"We'll not be able to keep her afloat."
"I don't reckon so, sir."
"We'll abandon ship, Chief." The Captain turned back to the front of the bridge: "Get your sick cases on deck, Doctor — port side. Yeoman, get the motorboat alongside to take them off." And to the signalman, "Tell Johnson to make an SOS to Acheron on the emergency set and then abandon ship."
He saw the navigator beside him. "Pilot, have stations for abandoning ship piped, and then get down to the main deck and give a hand getting the lifesaving equipment over the side."
He was alone on the bridge with nothing more to do. He glanced over the side at the U-boat, which was now obviously sinking. His own ship felt heavier and less lively, wallowing drunkenly in the swell. The last of the U-boat's men were leaving her, and already his own men were starting to go over the side.
He was tired, too tired even to feel anger against the enemy. Slowly he went down to the main deck.
The sea was full of bobbing heads when both the destroyer and U-boat had sunk beneath the waves. In the center of the crowd the yellow dinghies from the submarine and the gray Carley Floats from the destroyer rose and fell in the seas. In them the two crews were inextricably mixed, and men of both nations helped each other to clamber into a boat, or swam companionably alongside men whom they had been indirectly trying to slay a moment before.
The Captain swam to a Carley Float and climbed in. There were four other men in the raft, three sailors from the destroyer and one German. Another hand appeared, grasping desperately alongside.
"Get him in," the Captain said. "He's got no life jacket." The man was hauled into the boat. The two and a half gold stripes and the star on his cuffs told their own tale. The two Captains were in the same raft.
At the moment when the Captain recognized the still-panting German, he was himself identified. The newcomer struggled to his feet as the British Captain sat down.
"Korvetten-kapitan Peter von Stolberg," the Kapitan said stiffly. The raft rolled as it passed over the top of a swell, and von Stolberg nearly went over the side. He made sure of his balance and placed his legs far apart. "We have sunk ourselves," he announced.
"More correctly, I sank you, and then was fool enough to let my ship be driven into yours."
The German shrugged.
"Won't you sit down?"
"I prefer to stand."
"You've kept me awake for the last two nights. Excuse me if I do not join you."
Finally, despite himself, von Stolberg sat down on the opposite side of the raft. As it rocked over the waves and the two Captains adjusted their balance, they had the ludicrous appearance of a couple of mandarins bowing to each other.
"Herr Captain," von Stolberg began again. "We have business to discuss."
"Oh, not really! All I expect from you is that you will keep discipline among your men, and I'll look after mine. Not that any of them look as if they're going to cause trouble." The Captain glanced round at the mixed nationalities that bobbed and floated all around. "But I do wish you'd tell me where you were going. I promised my Doctor that I'd ask you that."
"Herr Captain, I have arrived."
"Congratulations! You know, I said to my navigator only this morning that I thought you might have done so. Of course I — "
The German, speaking sharply, interrupted him. "Herr Captain. Your ship's name, if you please?"
"My ship is — was — His Majesty's Destroyer Hecate. And the number of your U-boat?" the Captain asked, supposing that he must overlook the peremptory tone of the German's question.
"Herr Captain, I am not at liberty to disclose the number of my U-boat."
The Englishman was genuinely puzzled by this apparently discourteous and unreasonable reply. He tried again. "You know, von Stolberg, you are adopting a peculiar attitude."
The German rose solemnly to his feet, almost going overboard again. Balancing carefully, he spoke. "Herr Captain, I think you overlook something. I must make myself plain. You are my prisoner."
"I am your what?" The Captain was shocked into sitting bolt upright.
"You are my prisoner. The German armed cruiser Cecilie meets me here at noon today. She has many Allied prisoners. You and your men will join them. I ask you to give me your parole."
The Captain longed to tell this piece of Junkerdom that if the Cecilie had been invited to a party at 5° North 32° West, he also had asked guests. Instead, he said, "Look, if you want a fight, you can have one. If I were to tell my lads to chuck the whole lot of you into the ditch — they'd do it. I don't want that to happen, but if I have one more word about my being your prisoner — I'll slap your ears back myself. Now sit down before I knock you down."
Incredulous, and sustained by confidence in the early arrival of the Cecilie, von Stolberg answered slowly: "Herr Captain, you are going to be my prisoner."
"Come and get me then." The Captain had not felt so physically angry since he had left school. He rose to his feet. Leading Seaman Thomas rose with him.
"No, no, Thomas. He's my bird. I'm going to dust his pants for him." The Captain put his hand on the sailor's shoulder and forced him to sit again.
"Sock 'im hard, sir." Thomas sounded gleeful.
The Captain did so. The German stumbled on the rocking raft and came back madly like a bull.
Whether or not the British sailors would have left the two to fight it out alone, no one will ever know; because in the next raft Kunz seized a paddle and flung it heavily across the intervening stretch of water. It caught the British Captain between the shoulder blades.