There was a bang from the junk which they had just left; rocking slightly, she began to sink.
Chapter 4
“Not a bad job you did, Sub.”
From the Captain, that was a startling recommend.
The submarine was dived again, waiting for dark.
Number One said, “If any officer in Naval history has lost his first nine commands quite so fast, I’d be very surprised.”
The Captain was thinking that on paper, in the patrol report, it looked well enough. Two anti-submarine launches, nine junks, a couple of dozen Japanese sailors and a few officers. Against that, one British sailor. Yes, it looked like a battle won. But to Arthur Hallet’s private mind he’d have given a year’s seniority not to have met that convoy. In an operational submarine, discipline was real. It meant complete understanding between officer and man, the sacrifice of any personal feelings when they counted against efficiency, the discarding of any formality that counted against the general welfare. Nobody was just a name and a number. Every man was a complete individual, a separate, vital component of the fighting machine.
“Basher” Wilkins, as they called him in the seamen’s mess, had been one of them, part of Seahound herself. Now what remained of him was on the bottom, heavily weighted, wrapped in a Union Jack. No man who had stood in the Control Room while the Captain read the simple prayers, no man who had been on the bridge when “Basher” took his last, solitary dive, would ever forget this day, nor ever make peace with a Jap.
“Where do we go from here, sir?” Number One asked the question as the Captain turned back from the chart table. He brought the chart with him, spread it on the wardroom table.
Off the extreme north-western tip of Sumatra is an island called Sabang. Inside the island, through a narrow bottleneck entrance, is a wide enclosed bay. The Captain pointed his pencil at the mainland coast inside the bay.
“In there,” he said, “are jetties with cranes on them, storage sheds and an oil tank. I think we’ll nip in tomorrow and shake ’em up.”
Chief sat up quickly.
“But sir! How do we get out, afterwards?”
“Who’s to stop us?”
“They may have a patrol-boat, or aircraft. May be shore batteries. Think of my wife!”
“Either we’ll get out dived, or we’ll stay in until dark and get out on the surface at night. And that’s enough comment from you. Pilot!”
“Sir?”
“Lay off a course to pass close outside Sabang, to enter from the East.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Sub!”
“Sir?”
“Is the Gunlayer doing a routine on the gun tonight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How much ammunition left?”
“Only used about twenty rounds, sir.”
“I asked how much was left, not how much you’d used.”
“I’ll check up, sir.”
“You ought to bloody well know.”
Chief, who knew trouble when he smelt it, wandered quietly off to the Engine Room.
“Signal coming through, sir.”
When it was deciphered, it was not received with any warmth. It was an Air/Sea Rescue signal, a report of an American bomber shot down, an order to proceed to a certain position and look for the survivors who, it was hoped, were still alive in a rubber dinghy. These signals were not at all unusual, and as most of them resulted in fruitless search because of an incorrectly reported position, nobody ever got very excited.
“God damn and blast,” said the Captain. “All right, Pilot, put it on the chart and let’s see.”
It meant all night at full speed again, and Chief shut his eyes as though the thought hurt him more than it would his engines. He lay down and pretended to go to sleep: there was less likelihood of being asked to do anything.
“Say,” began the aviator whose aircraft had bought it over Bangkok. “Say, do you guys know how to shoot crap?”
Chief opened one eye. The Americans were sitting round the wardroom table.
“No,” said the Chief, and closed the eye.
“Gen’lemen,” said the Yank, looking round at the men in their bunks, “I guess we’re gonna have to i-nitiate you into a fine old American custom. Shootin’ crap.”
“If you refer to the game you seem to have been playing all night,” said the Chief, “I may as well tell you that I have not the slightest intention of having anything to do with it.”
“Tell me now,” asked the American, a look of friendly interest in his face, “do you have anything in partic’lar against us guys? Or would you be what I heard a guy described as, once, ‘ant-i-social’?”
Chief grunted, and tried to go on sleeping.
“No, listen, now – er, what do the guys call you – Chief? – Tell me, now, what do you really think of us Americans?”
“That’s not an easy question. But I once heard an Indian answer it rather well. He said: America is the only country in history that has passed from a state of barbarism to a state of decadence without first going through a state of civilisation. That answer your question?”
“Uh-huh. I guess so. Didja hear the story about the G.I. and the English Tommy in London, Chiefy?”
“Go on.”
“Wal, seems the Britisher says to the G.I., the trouble with you Yanks, he says, is that you’re over-paid, over-sexed and over here.”
“Hear hear,” murmured the Chief.
“So the G.I. says to the Limey: The trouble with you is you’re under-paid, under-sexed, and under Eisenhower. How’s that, boy?”
Chief drew himself out to his full length.
“I am not,” he said, “a boy.”
“Guess he must be a goil,” said the Lootenant.
They had found the dinghy straight off with no difficulty. A signal had been sent with the names of the four survivors, and in reply had come an order to rendezvous with a Catalina flying-boat which would take the airmen home to their base in India.
For once, some lives had been saved and not lost or taken. It was quite a change.
When they left, the Yankees shook Chief warmly by the hand.
“S’long, Chiefy. If you get leave, one day, come up and see us. We’ll show you around, be glad to.”
“Thanks very much,” replied Chief. “It’s been nice having you.”
Everyone stared at them in amazement.
Chief’s jaws were moving rhythmically up and down. He was chewing gum, or at any rate pretending to.
Over the dead-flat water the early morning mist was thick, blue-grey; an eerie light as the submarine nosed her way at periscope depth into the gap between the island and the mainland. There was not much room to spare, and the Captain himself was keeping the periscope watch, the Navigator standing ready to put a position on the chart as soon as the mist cleared enough to see the edges of the island. The feeling in the submarine was more tense than usuaclass="underline" the last submarine that the flotilla had lost was believed to have been lost in this placid, peaceful-looking bay.
“Clearing a bit. Take down these bearings.”
The fix on the chart showed that they were through the bottleneck, in the eastern end of the land-locked bay.
“All right, Pilot. Take over the watch.”
At the far end of the bay, on the coast of Sumatra, was the little harbour that was to be their target later in the day.
“Show as little periscope as possible.”
“Aye aye, sir.” In the warm silence the submarine crept steadily in between the smiling hills.
A messenger stood in the Wardroom entrance.
“From the First Lieutenant, sir, would you please come into the Control Room.”
The Captain swallowed a last forkful of corned beef, and joined Number One.