“They’re running away, by God!” muttered the Captain.
“Right eight, up four hundred, shoot!”
But the launch was not running away: that swerve was only panic, or an error by the helmsman. Now she was swinging back again, heading straight for the submarine.
“Down two hundred, shoot!”
The other launch was also coming towards them, from the port quarter. Wilkins tried his Oerlikon for range, but the only splashes he could see were a long way short. He waited, watching his target.
The third shot fell close to the first launch.
“Down one hundred, shoot!” A few moments passed before they saw the shell explode in the launch’s bridge. A second hit, and the enemy was on fire. One more, and they could leave her where she was for the time being and pay a little attention to the other one.
The Captain put his mouth to the mouth-pipe.
“Slow ahead together!” he bellowed. He was going to let the second escort close in while the gun was trained round to the new target.
Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly, and I’ll blast you over my port quarter.
“Steer two-nine-oh.”
The fourth shot was a hit, so was the sixth and the seventh and eighth, and that was enough, more than enough for the second enemy, who lay stopped and sinking.
It was odd, this voice business: when he had been shouting at the Gun’s Crew, over the combined noise of the diesels, the Captain’s orders, the gun’s firing and the roar of the Oerlikon as Wilkins tried the range, Sub found that he couldn’t hear his own voice any more. After a few actions, though, when he found that the men on the gun had heard every word, he realised that it was his own ears and not his voice that was to blame.
“She’s going, sir!” As he spoke, the second launch slowly disappeared. There were no survivors that anyone could see.
“Starboard twenty, half ahead together. Stand by, Boarding Party.” The Captain straightened up from the voice-pipe, and shouted up at the Sub as he sat on the front edge of the bridge, “We’ll see if there are any survivors in that wreck, before we round up the junks.” He pointed at the first launch, now low in the water, stopped and smouldering.
It had been ridiculously easy, thanks to a well-trained Gun’s Crew. It was often like that: when you expected something to be rough, it came smooth and simple, and when you came up for an easy little shoot some damn thing like an aeroplane turned up and queered the pitch.
The launch had sunk several feet lower in the water. The shattered bridge had bodies and parts of bodies strewn about it. One dead sailor, evidently killed at his gun, lay slumped grotesquely across it.
“Slow together,” ordered the Captain into the voice-pipe. “Put one shot into his water-line as we pass, Sub.”
Sub shouted to the Gun’s Crew: “No deflection, no range – one shot into the water-line amidships, as we pass.”
“Aye aye, sir,” sang out the Gunlayer, and the Loader shoved a shell into the breech. The Gun’s Crew were black with cordite-smoke, the whites of their eyes bright in their dark faces. The Gunlayer bent to his telescope, his hand on the trigger, and it was as the submarine drew level, about thirty yards away from the wreck, that it happened. The twisted figure in the sinking craft straightened itself on the gun, which was something like an Oerlikon, and a stream of explosive bullets lashed across the gap. The wounded man’s aim was bad, and the burst flew high. On Seahound’s bridge the Vickers machine-gunner brought his sights on and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. His gun was jammed. In a last effort the Jap forced up on the shoulder-rests of his gun, and at the moment that the three-inch shell burst and blew out the side of the enemy launch, Able Seaman Wilkins was cut almost in half.
Now for the junks, scattered, except for a nucleus of five that hung together like frightened sheep seeking comfort in numbers, and these could safely be left to wait until the odd ones had been rounded up.
One had been sunk, and in one the charge had just exploded so that she had begun to settle in the water, when the unexpected happened again. Sub and his five men were in number three, one of the biggest. Except for Bird, they were all down below. The submarine lay alongside, seven Chinese from the first two junks squatting on the casing, guarded by the Gunlayer who had a revolver in one of his enormous fists.
Suddenly the Captain shouted from the submarine’s bridge: “Get those men into the junk – I’m going to dive!”
The Gunlayer rushed his Chinese forward and over the side, waving his gun and shouting abuse which they could hardly be expected to understand in detail but which was plain enough in effect.
“Gar, you shower of flippin’ sods! Get on, you flippin’ fowls, I’ll make you jump!”
Bird, on the junk’s deck, raised his eyebrows and murmured a protest as he cast off the line and the Gunlayer leaped across the gap, just in time. The submarine backed away, full speed astern on the motors; the bridge was empty and the vents crashed open, the air roared out and she dived stern first.
Sub was on deck in time to see the bridge disappear, and looking around for a reason for this remarkable manoeuvre he saw it at once. An aircraft was approaching at a height of about two thousand feet from the direction of Sumatra.
“Put the extra Chinks down below, Bird. Boarding Party go below, all of you. Keep an eye on the Chinks and if any of them make any trouble, kill them.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The Boarding Party vanished.
The junks’ crew, three men, sat around on deck looking quite normal except at close quarters, when their expressions were those of rabbits with a snake in their hutch. Sub was crouching under the poop, his .38 revolver well in view, aimed at the senior member.
The aircraft lost height, and circled slowly. To save time, Sub indicated to the crew that they were to sail towards the nearest junk.
The airman could see nothing unusual. The escorts had been sunk: the submarine had dived, and presumably he had frightened it away. There was nothing he could do! Banking sharply, be straightened his course and headed away to report back to his base in Sumatra.
“Bird!”
“Sir?”
“All clear. Leave two hands to watch them. You, Shadwell and Parrot come up here.”
The three men appeared out of the musty hatch. The Gunlayer followed them, looking hurt that he hadn’t been mentioned. Sub pointed to the nearest junk, a hundred yards away.
“We’ll take that one now. She’s smaller and easier to handle, so we’ll transfer to her and sink this one. Then we’ll go around the fleet leaving our cards.”
The junk’s crew were no seamen, and ran their junk alongside the other with a crash of straining timbers. The Chinese were sent over into the smaller craft, and after placing the charge Sub sent his men over. He fired the charge and followed them. They cast off, and headed for the bunch of five junks that still hung together, waiting their turn in a conveniently close formation.
Bird eased himself into a languid position in the bow of the junk, and remarked that it reminded him of his last season at Cowes.
“Simply spiffin’ old boy, it was,” he told the Gunlayer.
“Silly bastard.”
Bird began to sing the Eton boating song.
Parrot came for’ard and looked down at Bird. “Shut up,” he said, quietly. Bird stopped singing, a look of surprise on his big face.
“‘Oo d’you think yer talking to, eh?”
“You came up through the Guntower hatch, didn’t you, same as Guns ‘ere?”
“I did – what of it?”
“You didn’t see Wilky, did yer?”
“No – what d’yer mean?”
“I mean he’s dead. I mean ’is guts are all over the flippin’ bridge. That’s what I mean.”