Sanders repeated the order in a high yell, “All guns load!”
The killick, the leading-seaman gunner on the twelve-pounder echoed “- load!” The breech was thrown open, the shell rammed and the charge in its case inserted.
Dunbar swore. “Bluidy wars!” He shouted at Sanders, “Any word of Jerry having destroyers at sea?”
“No, sir!”
“It could still be a destroyer. If it’s one o’ those big boats…”
Dunbar did not finish but Smith knew what he was thinking. If that shell had come from one of the big, new German destroyers with four-inch guns then God help Sparrow. The enemy would not have seen Sparrow beyond the lake of light cast by the drifter’s flare, the thirty-knotter being hidden in the outer darkness. So far. But Sparrow was racing down on that lake of light. A turn to starboard or port and she could run for her life. Nobody would ask her to take on one of those big, modern boats. It was ridiculous. But neither could she leave the drifter to her fate.
Another gun flash. A second between the flash and the flaming, thumping crash! as the shell exploded in Judy, and hurled blazing timbers into the sky in a shower of sparks and set new fires burning and rolling down smoke across the sea. Aboard Sparrow they heard the popping of the drifter’s three-pounder. Judy was a wooden boat. She burned and in the light of her burning they could see the men working the gun.
Time of flight of the shell about one second, Smith thought, so range between one and two thousand yards and closing. About twenty seconds between rounds so only one gun firing. Why? It could be a destroyer bows-on to the drifter so that only the one gun on the foredeck would bear but he didn’t believe it. Why didn’t she turn to fire broadsides? But if it was a destroyer then Sparrow was roaring up to shove her head in the lion’s mouth and it wouldn’t come out again. Smith could lose half his flotilla right now. And he was commanding Sparrow, in the excitement he’d almost forgotten that. He gulped and somehow managed to drawl out. “Stand by to depth-charge.”
Dunbar glanced at him but Sanders shouted into the voice pipe that led to the torpedo-gunner aft, “Stand by to depthcharge!”
Smith said to Dunbar, “I think it’s a U-boat on the surface.” It had to be. “If it is then he will see us before we see him.”
Sparrow stood high out of the sea while the U-boat would be almost awash except for the conning-tower. And Sparrow was working up to fifteen knots now, throwing up a big white bowwave, and in seconds she would be running into the light from the burning drifter. Smith went on, “So try the searchlight. Dead ahead.” To Sanders he said, “Range about one thousand I think.”
He heard Sanders repeat it to the killick, and yell it to the six-pounders below the bridge as Dunbar shouted up at the rating on the searchlight platform at the back of and above the bridge. The carbons in the searchlight glowed and crackled as they struck arc and then the beam cut a path through the night ahead of Sparrow. It wavered, swept, then settled.
The U-boat lay in the beam, almost still, cruising but so slowly there was barely a ripple at her bow. No sign that she was preparing to submerge. There were men in the conning-tower and the four-inch gun forward was manned…
The twelve-pounder slammed and recoiled and its smoke whipped past Smith’s face on the wind. Smith saw the shell burst in the sea and Sanders shouted, “Short!” He did not add a correction; Sparrow was closing the range at fifteen knots. The gun’s crew jumped in on the twelve-pounder as the killick yelled and the breech-worker yanked at the handle. The breech opened and the fumes spilled out, the stink of cordite swirled across the bridge.
Dunbar shouted, “Must ha’ been running on the surface to sneak past the barrage in the night. Bound for the Atlantic. Then came on Judy.”
Smith nodded. U-boats from the German bases often went north-about around Scotland but those from the Flanders ports of Zeebrugge and Ostende could reach their Atlantic killing ground quicker by running on the surface at night and slipping over the mine-net barrage that was meant to bar their exit through the Channel.
He saw the wink of flame from the barrel of the gun on the U-boat and as he blinked the rip! became a roar! The blast threw him back into Buckley and both of them hard against the searchlight platform. Lights wheeled about Smith’s head but then he was aware and clawing to his feet, Buckley thrusting him up. Gow still stood at the wheel. Sanders was pulling himself up by the screen and the crew of the twelve-pounder were on hands and knees but the killick was yelling at them, hauling them on to their feet. The searchlight still blazed, lighting them all. There was no sign of Dunbar.
Smith wavered forward and fetched up against the screen. He could see a tangle of twisted rails and a dent or a scar on the portside of the turtle-back below him. The shell must have exploded on impact, not penetrating. There were ragged holes in the splinter mattresses around the bridge. If there had been only a canvas screen those splinters would have scythed through the bridge staff and left a bloody shambles.
He looked up.
Sparrow was tearing through the circle of light shed by the fire that was Judy and now the drifter lay on the starboard beam. But right ahead lay the U-boat, the range was down to a bare five hundred yards and her gun was not manned. He fumbled at the glasses, set them to his eyes. There was no one in the conning-tower…He swung on Sanders. “She’s diving! Tell the gunner!”
Sanders croaked down the voice pipe “Gunner! Yes, we’re all OK up here except the skipper took a knock. Listen, Gunner! The sub’s diving. We’re going to depth-charge.”
Smith called, “Where’s Dunbar, Sub?”
Sanders turned to him a face painted yellow and black by light and shadow, excited. “On the deck at the foot of the ladder, sir. Blast must have blown him over. Brodie’s down there with him though, and he gave me a ‘thumb’s up!’” Sanders stayed by the voice pipe.
Sparrow ran down on the U-boat that now was only a plunging conning-tower. Then that was gone and the searchlight’s beam showed only the churned circle of water where the submarine had dived. Smith’s eyes were fixed on that circle, watched it slip up to Sparrow’s stem, under it. He shouted, “Let go One!”
“Let go One!” repeated Sanders into the voice pipe.
The canister fat with three-hundred pounds of explosive rolled down the chute and plumped into the sea off Sparrow’s stern.
“Hard aport,” ordered Smith. Sparrow swung into the turn and as Gow held it there came the thump! of the depth charge exploding and a tall column of water was hurled up from the boiling sea. The sweeping searchlight settled on it, the beam fidgeting like a blind man’s searching fingers, looking for oil or the U-boat surfacing. Sparrow still turned. Smith said, “Ease to five! Steady! Steer that!”
Sparrow was heading back towards the blazing drifter but Smith did not see her, his eyes on the sea on the spot where he thought the U-boat might be if she had maintained her course. Sparrow plunged towards it. That was all Smith could do: try to anticipate the U-boat. New-fangled hydrophones were fitted in some ships but not in Sparrow. In any event they would only pick up the sound of a U-boat when the ship itself was stopped and there were no other engine noises about. They were useless for this kind of hunt.