“I suspect you have a concussion. You need to rest. Johann Hertz has taken command for the moment.”
Krauser forcefully got himself out of bed, and shook his head lightly. “I’m sorry doctor, but I cannot leave my men now. I have to go find Hertz and get a damage report.”
Arnold shrugged. “I suspect it will do no harm. Not now.”
Krauser paused at the door, surprised to see the doctor so downbeat. “What do you mean?”
“Captain, the U-616 is sinking.”
-FOURTEEN-
Krauser staggered his way through the cramped corridors of the submarine, buffeted by the men and assaulted by the heat. He finally made his way to the control room and walked directly into Hertz, stumbling back a step or two. The second in command caught him before he fell and steadied him. “Captain Krauser? I was not expecting you back on duty so soon.”
Krauser blinked away the bleariness from his eyes. “Neither was I, but I don’t think this is a time that any of us can afford to spend resting. What are we dealing with?”
“Captain, the situation is exceedingly dire. The hydroplanes are stuck, and one of them has even been sheared off completely. We can’t submerge; and even if we did, we couldn’t surface again.”
Krauser swore. “That’s the last thing we need. That White Ghost is coming back, we have no weapons, and we can’t hide should a plane or a destroyer happen to chance upon us.”
“White Ghost?”
The Captain shrugged. “Just a name that came to me for it. It’s so old it’s not really grey anymore, you know? It looks faded and wraith like. It’s as if all the dead of the ocean had come together to make a ghost.”
Hertz raised an eyebrow.
“Cut me some slack, I’ve hit my head pretty hard. It doesn’t matter, anyway. So, we have no weapons and no way of hiding should we need to?”
The older man nodded. “I’ve been talking to the men. We’ve been preparing a line of defence against the… White Ghost… and I’ll come to that in a moment. It’s just that there’s something more than the hydroplanes, sir.”
Krauser braced himself. What could possibly be worse than the hydroplanes? “Go on.”
“The hull is cracked down the port side. We’re taking in a lot of water. I’ve got the men working the pumps to try and bail us out but… it’s not going to work for long, sir.”
Krauser sighed and nodded. “How fast can we go?”
“I’d estimate we’re limping along at around five to seven knots, sir.”
Krauser pulled a cigarette from his pocket and headed to the ladder. “Come join me on deck.”
Simply getting out of the dark humidity of the submarine and standing up on the deck seemed to help in blowing the cobwebs from his brain. His vision still pulsed strangely every now and again like a bad hangover, but it was starting to fade. The deck was listing at a slight angle – not enough to make you lose your footing, but once you noticed it, it became impossible to ignore. Some of the men were attempting minor repairs to the anti-aircraft gun and some surface damage. After a couple of drags on his cigarette, he noticed Dahlen. The Norwegian man was sat cross legged by the deck gun, working on something in his lap.
Dahlen didn’t notice Krauser and Hertz approaching, and it was only when Krauser gave him a playful nudge with his boot that he looked up. “Captain!” he smiled, “It is very good to see you up and about! How are you feeling?”
Krauser smiled back. “I’ve been better, but I am better than I was when I first woke, thank you. What is that you are working on, my friend?”
Dahlen clambered to his feet, and the two Germans saw that he was holding a length of steel pipe, about two metres long, around the end of which he had lashed a serrated knife that he had obviously looted from the kitchen. “Mr Hertz here said that there was a lack of weapons with which to fight off our shark. So, I improvised.”
Krauser laughed. “I must say that I like your thinking, Mr Dahlen. Torpedoes and anti-aircraft weapons will do us no good, so here we must fight like our ancestors. Fishing with sticks and stones!”
Dahlen did not laugh and simply handed the makeshift spear to the U-Boat captain. “Yes. Like our ancestors. Your ancestors destroyed the Roman Empire – the greatest empire the world has ever seen, and far greater than I fear your Mister Hitler will accomplish. And mine? Mine were the Vikings, who plundered and massacred their way across the known world and beyond. Tell me, Captain and Mr Hertz. Can the descendants of Vikings and Goths stand up to one little sea monster? I say we can, even if it be Jörmungandr himself!”
Krauser was amused, and a little stirred by the man’s brief speech. He was right. They were in these waters because they were warriors of their people and they would not be brought low by a mere fish! He accepted the spear graciously. Dahlen handed one more to Hertz, and held the third for himself.
Hertz smiled wryly. “I think I still have faith in the deck gun, Mr Dahlen.”
Dahlen chuckled and hefted his spear. “I think we shall have to use whatever weapons are available to us.”
The three men turned quickly at a shout from the other side of the deck. It took them a moment to realise what was happening, as three of the crew jumped up and down, pointing and screaming ceaselessly.
“It’s back…” breathed Krauser. “This is the last time, friends.”
About five or six hundred metres out, a wake was visible in the water, and speeding towards them rapidly.
“It’s a torpedo…” whispered Hertz.
“Mr Hertz, do you really believe that yourself?” asked Dahlen, banging the butt of his spear on the deck and advancing towards the crew.
Five hundred metres out from U-616, the monster bore down upon its prey as it had done since birth. It was their shark. It was Krauser’s White Ghost and Dahlen’s Jörmungandr. To the sailors that had come before them, it was The Sea Monster. It was The Kraken. It was Carcharocles Megalodon. In its time it had sunk boats of steel, and galleons of wood. It had taken men in uniform, and it had taken men in furs. It had taken dolphin, walrus, shark and whale, in equal measure.
It hunted the submarine the same as it had hunted its prey for unmeasured years. It would debilitate, first of all – crushing the soft appendages – and then delivering a crushing blow to the ribcage of its prey. There its teeth would crush and rend and maul the organs within. The fish – be it metal or wood or meat – would flail and it would flounder and it would be consumed.
The shark had suffered many wounds, and it knew that it would suffer many more. Many years past, another sea monster – all scales and teeth, the spirit of a crocodile with the shape of an eel – had taken a chunk from its tail. A brave human, clad in bronze armor and a red crested helmet, had taken its eye with its spear. Both the sea monster and the brave human had been consumed eventually, and since then it had learned to take its time with any prey.
The boat had been chased for long enough now. He had taken some of its soldiers. He had cracked the puny fish’s dorsal fins, and smashed its ribs with its mammoth jaws.
It was – at last – time to feed.
-FIFTEEN-
Time seemed to slow down for Krauser, as he watched the Norwegian reach the crew. Dahlen pulled the men back and shoved them behind him, urging them to head towards the entrance hatch. The men staggered and stumbled away from the approaching shark, but Dahlen stood ready, his spear gripped in two hands, pointed towards his enemy. The wake of the shark came closer – two hundred metres, one fifty – until suddenly it sank from view.