“Circling over the harbour area, sir.”
The Captain thought: Perhaps the idiots think we’re still hanging around at that end. Actually the submarine had been going her best speed towards the exit: a fairly obvious move, it would have seemed.
“Where are they now, Saunders?”
Saunders twiddled the wheel on his set: his ears looked so big that it might have been only the headphones that kept them from flapping.
“One right ahead, sir. Second one: I can’t find the second one, sir. Must be stopped.”
The Captain glanced at the clock: dusk now, dark in an hour.
Saunders spoke: “H.E., sir, right ahead, closing. Second H.E., sir, green two-oh. Closing, sir, moving slowly left to right.”
Those little bastards had to pass overhead: they had to pass overhead without detecting the submarine. God knows where they came from, the Captain thought: he hadn’t any idea that there was anything of the sort in the area. He hoped there weren’t any others in the bay.
Cat and mouse, creep quietly along, no sound, no sight. Eyes on Saunders: eyes on the Captain. The Captain turned to the Navigator at the chart table.
“There aren’t any gun batteries on the point, are there, Pilot?”
“Nothing we know of, sir.” Was he thinking of trying to get out on the surface, with a Jap aircraft overhead?
Saunders looked up from the dial on his instrument.
“First one about to pass overhead, sir. Second one green seven-five, moving right.”
In the next five minutes they’d either pick up the submarine, or they’d have passed over and missed her. Engine-room Artificer Featherstone stared ruminatively up at the deckhead, as though he was trying to imagine the scene on the surface: he was wondering whether or not there’d be any charges dropped, in the next few minutes.
Saunders said, “One passed over, sir, right astern, opening. Second one green nine-two, sir, moving right.”
The Captain turned to Number One.
“Sounds healthier,” he said. “We’ll keep on like this for an hour, then we’ll surface and get out in the dark.”
“Aye aye, sir.” As long as something else didn’t turn up, thought Number One, as long as those launches didn’t come back again and pick them up.
Nothing else turned up. An hour later Seahound surfaced, left the bay at full speed on her diesels. Sub was on the bridge with the Captain: the land towered black over them on either side, fell away astern. They were out.
The Captain said quietly, “All right, Sub. I’ll tell you when to come round to the new course.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Just as the Captain joined Number One and the others in the Wardroom, they felt a series of heavy explosions. The Captain hurried back into the Control Room. “What was that?” he asked the man who had relieved Saunders of the headphones.
“Right astern, sir. Depth-charges, I think.”
The Cox’n laughed. “They must be dropping charges on some flippin’ rock, sir.”
The Captain thought: Yes, or on poor old Stringent’s wreck. Stringent was the last submarine to have entered the Bay, and she’d been there ever since.
Is a man mad to talk to the stars, or, in the stillness of the empty night, to hold a conversation with the sea? When the sea leaps, and the stars are hidden, is he insane that he answers the thunder of the wind? Or is it possible that such things can be excused in a man who spends many hours alone, with only these for company?
He asks no man to excuse him, he offers no excuses for his actions. He knows that in the hand of the sea are the lives of men and the fate of nations, the happiness of millions and the future of the world. He knows also that under the sight of the stars the world was made, and in their light the miserable things called men are caused to be born, allowed mercifully to live, and forced, struggling like frantic animals, to die. Between the sea and the stars, he has seen it.
The seaman’s soul knows the vastness of the universe and the overwhelming savagery of forces that are uncaring of the suffering that they cause. He puts his trust in the things to which he owes allegiance. Do not laugh at the faith of such men, whose lives are bound in the ways of the elements: for if you do, you only snigger at yourselves and at your God.
Chapter 5
Stoker Johnson wiped the blade which he had just removed from his razor, and replaced it in the wrapper of blue paper. He stroked his large, smooth chin, admired it in the mirror on the wall of the after heads.
“Can’t see why you all get so excited,” he remarked. “Just because we’re gettin’ back to that bloody ’ole, Trinco, you act like a lot of flippin’ kids off on ’oliday.”
Nobby Clark, the Leading Stoker, took his place at the basin and began to wash out the suds that Johnson had left in it.
“Well,” he said, “it’s better ’n being at sea, ain’t it?”
“No it ain’t, not to my way of thinking. At sea you know where you are, like: it ain’t comfortable, but you don’t expect the Ritz. You gets back to Trinco, and where are yer? Shouted at to do this an’ that, no big cats, no flippin’ room on the messdeck, queue up for a flippin’ bath, clean the bugger up afterwards. An’ what’s the use o’ going ashore in Trinco? You can swim better over the side. First time I goes ashore, I thinks to meself I’m going to ’ave a bit o’ fun. What do I get? Flip-all, that’s what. Not a woman in the ’ole flippin’ area, and if you see one she’s with an officer. An’ mark you, Nobby, a man like me needs a woman.”
“Why you an’ not me?”
“Well, I’m married, see. An’ my wife ’as what you might call an appetite. So I’m used to it. Flippin’ well need it, see? Not like you single bastards, take it when it’s there an’ forget it when it ain’t. I’m used to ’avin’ it when I want it, nice an’ regular, see? Trinco: blimey, I’d be chasing the flippin’ monkeys if we were in longer ’n a couple o’ weeks.”
In the bar of the Depot Ship’s wardroom, Number One and the Sub looked at their empty glasses and called for two more pink gins.
On the way in from patrol, everyone thinks the same thing: early night, turn in straight after dinner. But the first thing that comes is a bath, and the bath makes a difference. It washes off the smell of shale oil, eases out the tiredness in your body and your mind. You lie back in the bath, and sing: there are four baths in the bathroom, so it’s quite a big sing. In the course of it, you forget the early night plan and you develop a thirst. As soon as you’ve changed, feel clean and smart after a long time of feeling dirty and unkempt, you find yourself quenching that thirst in the bar, one foot on the brass rail and a glass in your hand that has something in common with the widow’s cruse.
“The Seahounds are back! Party tonight, boys!”
“We’re turning in early.”
“The two of you, dears?”
“Tiny, if you want a kick where it hurts, just say that again.”
“I’ve been kicked there so often that it doesn’t hurt any more. Now, what am I going to have?”
“A baby, by the look of you.”
The remark came from Arthur Hallet, who had just entered the bar with two other C.O.’s. Tiny, who was certainly on the large size, murmured to Number One, “You know, I don’t think I like your Captain very much.”
“You don’t? Well, that’s all right. You don’t have to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean as long as you keep any criticisms to yourself.”
“Oh. Like that, is it?”
“It’s like that, Tiny.”
The bar was filling up as the bathrooms and cabins emptied themselves. A few odd pieces of soap clung to the soap-racks, discarded shirts and shorts littered the empty cabins. Below, in the cabin and bathroom flats, the singing was over.