“Would be.”
“Would be, if what?”
The roar of the sea is the only answer, the roar of the sea and the way it laughs while it dances.
It is two days later and the Navigator is on watch, on the surface still, the time five-thirty, in the morning watch. In the Night Order Book the Captain has ordered, “Call me at five-thirty.”
Tommy bends down to the voice-pipe.
“Control Room!”
“Control Room.”
“Shake the Captain.”
“Shake the Captain, sir.”
A few minutes later he appears out of the hatch and stares out over the port bow, where as soon as light comes they expect to see the Andaman Islands. These islands, once a leper colony, are now the limit of Japanese expansion in the Indian Ocean. The steep green shores rise sharply from the blue water: the earth, where trees have been felled to make roads, is reddish in colour.
“Morning, sir.”
“Morning, Pilot. We’ll dive in about twenty minutes’ time.”
Just before six, when up top the first grey streaks of light are breaking through, the klaxon roars harshly, once, twice, the signal to dive. Men still half-asleep are flying out of their bunks before the Captain has taken his thumb off the push-button in the Conning Tower, and by the time he has clamped the hatch over his head and clambered down into the Control Room all hands are at their stations and the needle in the depth-gauge is swinging slowly past the 20-foot mark.
“Thirty feet,” orders the Captain.
“Thirty feet,” says Number One, both as acknowledgement of the order and as an order to the two men who, sitting in front of him on the port side of the Control Room, operate the controls of the hydroplanes.
Hydroplanes are horizontal rudders, one set forward and one set aft, which are tilted to alter the submarine’s depth or to keep her steady at the depth ordered. Each man works his own control wheel, his eyes on the depth-gauge, and the bubble in the spirit-level.
The fore planesman, Bird the Second Cox’n, swings his wheel to the midships position, and mutters, “Thirty feet, sir.”
At the order “Watch Diving” the men disperse, leaving the men of the watch on duty to keep the ship at periscope depth on a north-easterly course, speed four knots towards the patrol area off Rangoon. Time for some sleep before breakfast.
“Whose watch?” asks the Captain.
“Mine, sir.” The Sub can’t deny it.
“It’ll be light inside half-an-hour, Sub. Keep a good lookout, and if you think we’re going too near the island, call me. In fact, call me when it’s light enough to get a fix.”
“Aye aye, sir. Up periscope.”
“After planes relieved, sir. Thirty feet.”
“Very good.”
“Fore planes relieved, sir. Thirty feet.”
“Very good.”
“Helmsman relieved, sir, course oh-six-oh, telegraphs half ahead together.”
“Very good.”
The watch settles down, and nobody else is left in the Control Room. As the crew go for’ard to their quarters, the submarine’s trim is upset; she becomes lighter in the stern, heavier in the bow. The Officer of the Watch adjusts this, indicating on an electric transmitter to men on watch elsewhere in the boat that they must flood water into the stern and amidships tanks, and pump water out forward. When the planesmen can keep their planes level, with the bubble in the centre of the spirit-level and the needle of the depth-gauge at the right depth, then the boat is more or less in trim. Flick off the indicator lights, move across to the periscope-well and jerk your hands upwards: the periscope, controlled from a level operated by the Engine Room Artificer of the watch, slides up. Grab the handles, pull them down, watch for the dawn, the island and the enemy.
The day passed, like ninety per cent of all days on patrol, without incident. Watch relieved watch, meal followed meal, and only once was the Captain interrupted. This was during Number One’s watch, in the forenoon, when he spotted an aircraft, a Jap seaplane flying south.
“Enemy aircraft, Red four five, sir, moving left to right.”
They kept an eye on it, through the small periscope, until it was lost to sight on the starboard bow. There were two periscopes, the big one for normal use, and a small one, not much thicker than a cigar at the top end, which had no magnification but made less track in the water and was less easily seen. It was used mainly during torpedo attacks, when the submarine was close to the target or to its escorts.
The Captain went back to his bunk.
He was worrying, though none of his officers would have known it. He was thinking about Japanese soldiers: if they met some, in Landing Craft, and they surrendered, what the hell could he do with them? There might be fifty, or a hundred, or more, and it wouldn’t be possible to take more than ten into the submarine. Even five would be more than enough. Five, in fact, would be the limit. That might leave, say, a hundred and ninety-five men with their hands up. It was a tricky problem, and his future career could depend on it. It might be no use saying, “I could only take five.” Someone might say, in Whitehall, “A hundred and ninety-five men is a mass killing and that sort of thing just isn’t done.” On the other hand, he’d be court-martialled if he left a Landing Craft afloat.
He’d take five, and the rest could drown. But they wouldn’t drown, of course: the barracuda would see to that. You could always leave it to the fish, in these waters.
In the forward compartment, where the seamen lived, Wilkins lay in his hammock, wide awake. Sleep didn’t come. All that came was a sort of cinema show, over and over again. He and his wife were in the first reel, on his last leave. It wasn’t much of a leave, only a long weekend, three days, three nights in London. On the morning after his third night he had woken early when the alarm-clock rang, groped for it and pressed the button that stopped the noise. She hadn’t woken, only smiled her cat’s smile and murmured “darling” in her sleep. He kissed her and still she slept, wearing the same soft smile, so he slid out of bed and shaved and dressed, then put the kettle on and brought two cups of tea on the tin tray and woke her up in a special way that she liked.
He left her crying in the bed, and he caught his train with her tear-wet face in his mind. Nobody, as far back as he could remember, had ever cried for him like that.
Then the letters were fewer, became formal and had no warmth. And the gossip in the other letters came instead.
In the last reel he saw her with the Pole, a lithe, amorous swine with plenty of money and a nice soft job in London. The words “The End” flashed on the screen and he thought, “This is where I came in.”
“Call the Red watch,” came the order, and Wilkins slid out of his hammock, quite ready to go on watch because he hadn’t even taken his shoes off since the last one.
“Well,” observed Chief, “if the Japs have evacuated Rangoon I reckon they’ve done it in rickshas. Five bloody days, and not a thing… unless you people have had your eyes shut, of course.”
“When a man’s just opened his eyes for the first time in five days, he’s got a hell of a nerve to start making insinuations about other people’s watch-keeping.”
“It does begin to look like no evacuation,” admitted the Captain.
“A blasted flop,” agreed Number One. “This whole war’s a bit of a flop, really. Nothing worth sinking anywhere.”
The submarine was on the surface, charging her batteries and making a slow progress up and down the ever-empty patrol area.
The Captain yawned. “Well,” he murmured, “perhaps, one day, we’ll be allowed further down the Straits. Should be some pickings, at the bottom end.”