“What about the mines? Do we just pretend they aren’t there?”
“They’ll have to be passed, one day, won’t they? The war can’t end here.” Chief looked up quickly.
“They can give some other sucker that job. I prefer to go on breathing as long as possible.”
The Navigator appeared from the direction of the Control Room, his bare feet flip-flopping on the deck. “Cipher coming through, sir,” he announced.
“Get your books ready, Chief.”
“Oh, Christ!” Chief heaved himself into a sitting position and fished about at the end of his bunk for the cipher books.
“I’ll give you a hand,” volunteered the Navigator.
“Frightfully generous of you, old boy.” The signal was brought in, and they began to unravel the code.
“Good show!” exclaimed the Navigator, brightening up.
“What is it?”
“So far we’ve got, ‘Proceed – establish patrol –’”
“Come on, Chief – where?”
It turned out to be an area off the north-western tip of Sumatra.
“Doesn’t sound very exciting.”
“Who the hell wants excitement?” asked Chief. “Anyway, it can’t be worse than this bloody place, can it?”
There was more to be deciphered, and this was more like it. A convoy of a dozen junks had left Singapore the day before, and Intelligence reported that they were heading up the outside of the island of Sumatra. Seahound’s orders were to intercept. The convoy was reported to have an escort of two anti-submarine launches.
“Come on, Pilot!” snapped the Captain. “What course?”
He was thinking: “About five hundred miles. To get there in time I must stay on the surface all the way. It’s a risk, but I’ll have to take it.”
“Chief.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Maximum revs, Chief, for thirty-six hours – will your engines stand it?”
“Doubt it, sir.”
“Well, they’ll bloody well have to, anyway!” He pressed the buzzer for the Control Room messenger.
“Sir?”
“Tell the Officer of the Watch to come round to 200 degrees.”
“Two hundred degrees, sir. Aye aye, sir.” The Sub-Lieutenant answered the voice-pipe.
“Bridge.”
“From the Captain, sir, come round to two-double-oh.”
“Very good. Starboard fifteen.”
“Starboard fifteen, sir. Fifteen of starboard wheel on, sir.”
“Steer two-double-oh.”
“Steer two-double-oh, sir.”
“Bridge!”
“Bridge.”
“Course two-double-oh, sir.”
“Very good. Tell the Captain.”
Presently the Captain came on the bridge. “Four hundred revs, Sub. The charge is broken.”
“Aye aye, sir. Control Room!”
“Control Room.”
“Four hundred revolutions.”
“Four hundred revolutions, sir. Four hundred revolutions on, sir.”
The Navigator shouted up that the course should be two-oh-three degrees, and they steered the new course.
“Where are we going, sir?”
“Somewhere off Sabang. Junk convoy coming up, escorted.”
“Escorted, sir?”
“That’s what I said. Four-two-oh revs.”
“Four-two-oh revs, sir.”
In the Engine Room, Chief was biting his finger-nails. He was sure his engines would fall to bits before they got there.
“God damn it!” he muttered, as he passed through the Control Room on his way back to the Ward-room.
E. R. A. Featherstone looked at him sympathetically.
“They’re always the bloody same, sir. Full speed, and flip the bloody engines. I dunno.”
“Come here, Sub.”
The Captain had been sitting deep in thought at the Wardroom table, drawing things occasionally on a piece of signal pad. Sub took a seat beside him and waited.
“Convoy of junks. Two escorts. The escorts probably have nothing bigger than some of pom-poms. Probably some point fives. We’ll surface on the bow of the convoy, stern towards them and draw the escorts off. Engage one over our quarter with the three-inch, keeping the range steady, and use the Oerlikon on the other if it’s in range. Both the escorts’ll have to be knocked off before we go for the junks, and we’ll have to be bloody quick, and I’ll take you from one to the other as fast as I can.”
“There’ll be a lot of Chinese crew to look after, sir.”
“Yes – we’ll leave the smallest junk to the last, and leave all the crews in her. You won’t have to board that one. All clear?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll brief the Gunlayer and Wilkins.”
“May I be permitted to ask a question?” asked Chief, in a sarcastic tone of voice.
They looked at him. “Well?”
“Why don’t we surface bows on to the target?”
“Because, you bloody fool, our only advantage is the range of the three-inch. If we attack bows on, we get closer, and at close range they can give us hell. Not only that: when we get to a certain point we have to turn away, and that gives them a nice big target.”
Chief had no comment.
The Sub pulled a tin of Players out of his drawer, extracted a cigarette. He waved the tin towards Tommy, the Navigator.
“Smoke?”
“No, thanks.” The Navigator was sitting in a corner of the Wardroom, fiddling with a piece of string. He often sat like that, doing nothing, a dreamy look on his face. He’s a nice fellow, thought the Sub, and a good navigator: but he’s so damn quiet that sometimes he gives me the creeps. Anyone could see that the man was too old for his job: he should have been a First Lieutenant at least, by now.
“Tommy: why don’t you ever talk about the time you were sunk, about the escape?”
“There’s nothing to tell.” The Navigator spoke quickly, not looking at the Sub. “We were sunk, that’s alclass="underline" I got out with eight men.”
The submarine was on the surface, racing southwards through the night. The Captain and Number One were on the bridge: Chief was nursing his engines. Sub and the Navigator sat alone in the Wardroom.
“H’m. I wish you’d tell me all about it. I often wonder what it’d be like in real earnest: it’s easy enough in the tank at Blockhouse, of course, but I always wonder if it’s so damn simple when you have to do it from a submarine.”
“There’s nothing to worry about: it’s just a matter of keeping your head and carrying out the drill, that’s all. It’s easy when you come to do it.”
Again the Navigator spoke fast, tonelessly, as though he was repeating a formula.
“There’s nothing to worry about.” As he spoke, his mind went back as it did so often, always in the nightmare when he slept and now sometimes as a daydream, too. In every detail he relived the sinking and the escape… three years ago, yet it might have happened yesterday.
In the for’ard compartment, between the reload torpedoes in their racks, he watched the angle increase as the submarine shot towards the bottom. The crash of the collision still rang deafeningly in his ears, he clung to one of the curved bars that held the torpedoes in their racks, and he thought to himself, This is it, it’s happened. Now I’ll know the answer. He was shut off in the compartment, a water-tight door clamped between it and the rest of the submarine. He had with him a Petty Officer Higham, and seven seamen. They were on their way to the bottom, stern first, the after part of the submarine flooded and dragging them down. His men stood clinging to the sides, their eyes on his face, hopeless eyes in everything except their one, slight hope: himself.
It hadn’t been difficult, being a submariner, except for the doubt that came occasionally: If this happened, could I see it through? Would I keep my head, justify my training and my existence as an officer? Well, it had come, here it was, and the thud was soft, dull, as the stern of the submarine bit into the mud. The submarine quivered, staggered, and the men’s eyes searched the bulkheads expecting to see the plates open, cracks appear, expecting the rush of pressure and the quick but not necessarily pleasant end. Slowly the angle lessened as the submarine’s bow sank: she steadied with an angle of only five degrees fore-and-aft.