Krauser screamed after it, but this had even less effect than the bullets had.
The U-616 was almost capsized in the water, their weapons were all useless, his men were dying, and the shark was still hungry.
-SIXTEEN-
Krauser acted without thinking, and ran across and down the tilting deck, diving into the water after Dahlen. Hertz screamed after him to stop, but he had never listened to the man before, so why should he start now? He just knew that it didn’t seem fair that Dahlen should perish this time; not when he had been through and survived so much. How could he have survived the sinking of the Freyr, and his own lifeboat, only to die now?
The shock of entering the ice cold water hit him like a punch to the chest. He felt his whole body momentarily seize up, and stiffen – refusing even to breathe or for his eyes to blink or his heart to beat. After this half a second long nightmare, he recovered a little, and ducked under the water, eyes wide open, desperate to see a sign of Dahlen.
What he saw instead, a mere six feet away from him, was his White Ghost.
It had to be at least thirty metres long, and it swam oh so slowly past him. He had to fight desperately to suppress a sob of pure terror as this antediluvian nightmare, this vile cousin of the Great White, slowly passed him in the dark blue of the ocean. He felt the motion as it pushed its bulk through the water and was buffeted in the underwater crosswinds of its passing.
It was the agonising slowness of its passing that got to him. The shark was not trying to fight him. The shark was not trying to chase him. The shark was not even trying to avoid him. He was insignificant to it. It did not fear him, hate him, want him or desire him. He was nothing to this creature that had patrolled these waters for god only knows how long or how far. He became aware of how small humanity was in the grand scheme of the history of the planet, and how little he meant even to that. He remembered thinking earlier in his bunk that in the grand scheme of the war he was merely an ash on the fire that consumed the world. In truth, the fire that consumed the world was no more than a spark – no, an ember – on the rock of history.
Alone, unarmed, bobbing in the ice cold waters of the North Sea, he was on the verge of tears.
When, after what seemed a lifetime, the tattered, scarred tail of the thing swam past his eyes, Krauser desperately came to the surface for air, gasping in two deep lungfuls of it, before quickly ducking under in search of Dahlen.
Johann Hertz skidded down the ladder into the control room, almost falling directly on top of Kleiner. Grabbing the engineer by the shirt, he screamed. “Are the ballast tanks functional?”
Kleiner went white under the mad glare of the officer. “What? Sir, that’s… that’s lunacy! You want us to go deeper into the water? With that thing? Sir, it’ll destroy us!”
“I don’t want us to dive. I want us to blow all the water out of the ballast tanks. Even if they’re empty, blow them again. I want to keep this boat as upright as possible. I’m taking command.”
“Captain Krauser?”
“Captain Krauser fell into the ocean with that thing.” Hertz paused and smiled. “I am in command of the U-616 now, Engineer Kleiner, and I want this boat ready and upright. That thing’s going to come in for another run at us, and when it does, I want to fire all torpedoes, and the deck gun. I don’t care how big and tough it is, it’s not big and tough enough to survive a salvo from the U-616.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll give the order right away,” muttered Kleiner, shaken by the news of the death of his captain.
Hertz dismissed the man and issued another order. “I want all forwards torpedo tubes locked and loaded. I’m going up top. I need two men with me. As soon as we catch sight of where that thing is, I want us taking aim and getting ready to blow it back to the Pleistocene Era.”
The surviving crew of the U-616 ran, carrying out Hertz’s order as quickly as possible. The news of Captain August Krauser’s death spread quickly, and some tears were shed, though they did not pause to grieve. They had a job to do, and the time to remember the good captain would come later.
The crew working the pumps moved at double time, cranking and pumping harder and faster than ever before, until they actually convinced themselves that they could feel the boat rising from the water; that they could – yes – they could feel the U-616 righting itself on its axis, so that it was as ready as it had ever been!
They convinced themselves that there was only one God given Hunter of the North Sea, and that it was the Kriegsmarine!
Hertz was startled in the control room by Dr Arnold. “Captain?”
“Yes, Doctor. What can I do for you?”
“I want to help. I have made all the injured as comfortable as possible, but I am now growing restless. I’m not an engineer, but… there must be something I can do.”
“Yes. Do you own binoculars?”
The doctor was more than a little unnerved by the wide-eyed and manic stare of the Lieutenant Hertz, but knew better than to say anything. “Yes, I’m certain I can rustle up a pair.”
Hertz turned from him and continued reloading his revolver. “Good. Head up onto the deck when you have a pair. I’ll need as many eyes on the ocean as I can get. I’m heading up now, myself.”
Dr Arnold dashed off to find his binoculars, as Hertz clambered up onto the deck.
Hertz was amazed how much damage the shark had managed to do. Struts and railings were mangled and destroyed. Tooth indentations marred the length of the hull as it had tried to chew its way in to the submarine. He supposed that to the shark, the U-616 was just an especially belligerent shellfish. He posted one man to the aft, one to port and one to starboard and – when he arrived – the good doctor to the fore. Hertz himself stood by the deck gun, doing his best to look in all directions. He had three men ready and working the deck gun, knowing that should the shark approach from the sides, this would be their only means of defence.
Krauser was having to swim further and further from the U-616. Now he was far and away to the rear of the boat, and had lost all hope of ever finding Dahlen – his friend had to be either drowned or eaten. He was keen to get back to his submarine – and likely to wrestle command back from Hertz – but every time he had tried to swim back, he had ended up exhausted, struggling against a strong current – or he had had to freeze to avoid running directly into the shark again. He had read somewhere that sharks are able to hunt their prey by the motions they made while swimming, and he had no reason to suppose that this monster hunted by any other method.
Once he had actually felt the thing graze against him, and was sure that he had been detected. Its skin had felt rough, like a cat’s tongue, and covered with lumpy, bulbous scar tissue. What little damage they had caused the thing earlier with Dahlen’s makeshift spears seemed to have been shrugged off already. There was no sign of injury to the monster.
When next he surfaced for air, he took the time to look all around him, and was surprised to see something on the horizon. It could have been a mile away or more, but it looked to him like… yes, it was a boat! He didn’t know if they were friendly, or neutral or enemy, but he knew that he had a better chance of making it to them, than he did to the submarine. Could he abandon his ship and his men? What would his wife think? The Kriegsmarine?
His wife would want him home and safe, and he knew that the cold, hard Kriegsmarine would rather have a captain alive than dead. He could always be assigned to a new U-Boat; you couldn’t assign a boat to a dead captain.