‘Warning us that we’re making for the rocks off Knausnes. Only a few kilometres ahead.’
‘Tell him to keep clear. Say we know what we are doing.’
Krasnov relayed the message. Again a shouted reply drifted over the water.
Krasnov said, ‘He says we must be mad, Captain.’
Yenev swore softly. ‘Don’t blame him. But tell him to keep clear. Say we are full of explosives. That’ll frighten him off.’
It did. The fishing boat passed astern, chugged away into the dark night. Yenev saw that it was making for Fyrbergnes. He said, ‘Returning to Kolfjord, I expect.’ He knew that the story of a giant submarine without navigation lights heading for the rocks off Knausnes would soon be out. But there was nothing he could do about that. More urgent matters demanded attention.
When Kulchev reported the rockshelf to be only three and a half kilometres ahead, Yenev ordered, ‘Stop main engines. Keep her steady on one-four-zero.’
In the control-room the coxswain repeated the orders and the rhythmic hum of the turbines ceased. The sound of breakers ahead could be heard clearly on the bridge. From the chart recess Kulchev called, ‘Two and a half kilometres to go, Captain.’
Yenev said, ‘Carry on in the skimmer, Kulchev. You know what to do.’
The navigating officer left the bridge. Yenev ordered the signalman to train an Aldis lamp along the fore-casing. Although he’d expected it, he was alarmed at the extent to which the submarine was down by the bows. The forward hydroplanes were no longer visible and sea swirled around the foot of the huge sail-like fin.
If confirmation were needed that the submarine was sinking there it was.
When Kulchev reached the after-casing he found it almost awash. Most of the crew had mustered there. Huddled in a long line in the darkness, they were holding on to a wire which had been rigged from the tail stabilizing fin to the after end of the conning-tower. It was evident to Kulchev that Zhukov was unlikely to remain afloat much longer.
The leading hand reported that the skimmer was ready for launching. Kulchev informed the bridge by radio berthing set. Yenev ordered, ‘Slow astern together.’ When way was almost off the submarine, the skimmer was lowered over the side. Kulchev and two seamen boarded her. With a sound like a buzz-saw the outboard engine came alive and the skimmer passed quickly up the side of Zhukov to take station ahead. From the submarine’s bridge nothing could be seen but the glow of the small craft’s stern light.
Yenev increased revolutions until Zhukov was moving through the water at three knots. He was talking to Kulchev by voice-radio when the bridge phone bleeped. It was Lomov. ‘We can’t keep her afloat much longer, Captain. We have perhaps only a few minutes.’
Yenev acknowledged, swore with anxiety and concentrated on the bobbing stern light ahead.
In the skimmer Kulchev switched on the Aldis lamp and searched the darkness with its powerful beam. The effect was dramatic. A chain of jagged rocks seemed suddenly to leap from the sea ahead and to port.
Yenev did not know that Vrakoy’s fishermen knew them as the Dragetennene — the Dragon’s teeth. Beyond them loomed the rocky cliffs of Knausnes. Around and to the south and west of the Dragetennene, the sea swirled and foamed on an invisible rockshelf. Kulchev steered for that part of it which lay in the lee of the rocks. There the sea was least disturbed.
Zhukov was now so deep in the water that she needed at least fourteen or fifteen metres under her keel if she were not to touch bottom before grounding. Using the signal lamp as a probe Kulchev edged the skimmer forward while providing Yenev with a running commentary by radio. ‘The leadsman has not found bottom yet,’ he reported. ‘But it won’t be long now. We’re coming to shoal water in the lee of the big rocks. I see what looks like a small cove between two lines of shallow rocks and am heading for it. Steer about ten degrees to starboard.’
Soon afterwards the seaman on the leadline called out, ‘Twenty-five metres, Lieutenant.’ Kulchev reported the sounding to Yenev. They had left the deep water and were now over the shelf. The broken shoal water shook and buffeted the skimmer, whirls and eddies making steering difficult. But Kulchev clung to the tiller, making for the centre of the cove. The leadsman, kneeling to steady himself, kept the lead going. The soundings he called revealed that the depths over the rockshelf had become fairly constant. The tallow in the heel of the lead kept showing sand. Because Kulchev knew that was of enormous importance, his voice rose when he reported, ‘We are in the cove now, Captain. The bottom is sand, repeat sand. We have already traversed half its length and so far the bottom is sand.’
Quickly Yenev asked, ‘How many metres is that, Kulchev?’
‘About two hundred, Captain. Depths over the first fifty metres were between twenty and twenty-five metres. After that between fifteen and sixteen metres. Still shoaling.’
‘Right,’ came the reply. ‘It’ll have to do. Stay in position over the point where you think our bows should ground.’
‘Will do, Captain.’
Moments later a beam of light from Zhukov’s bridge pierced the darkness, picked up the skimmer and held it.
To Yenev on the bridge the light revealed not only the skimmer but the chain of jagged rocks reaching out dark and sinister from Knausnes. Beyond them steep cliffs towered over the submarine as she edged her way in.
Zhukov was still in deep water, wallowing more than rolling in the north-westerly swell. Yenev steadied the bows on the skimmer’s white light and ordered, ‘Stop main engines.’ Then, ‘Slow astern.’ He waited in a sweat of anxiety as the shallow rocks lining the cove came slowly towards them. Several times he gave wheel and engine orders to keep the submarine heading up the centre of the cove. Much depended, he realized, upon the sand Kulchev had reported. Was it a thin layer over a rocky bottom, or was it something more? A really sandy bottom, perhaps. That would be the only good fortune which had come Zhukov’s way that night.
‘The water is shoaling rapidly now, Captain,’ came Kulchev’s urgent report. ‘We have covered about one hundred and fifty metres of the cove. I am stopping.’
Yenev acknowledged, stopped engines and waited, helpless. The Zhukov was committed. There was nothing more he could do. Soon she seemed almost to have stopped but the illusion was dispelled when the sunken bow lifted and she lurched, rumbled and shuddered along the bottom she’d touched sooner than expected. The bow-down trim and the swell had done that. The impact was softened by the sand but each incoming swell lifted the huge hull and pushed it forward, and with each onward lurch the submarine trembled as if in the grip of a giant hand. From the control-room beneath the bridge came the clatter and rattle of loose gear being thrown about.
To Yenev it seemed that the Zhukov would never come to rest. In fact less than two minutes elapsed between the first impact and the final grounding.
Having ordered Kulchev to take soundings round the submarine, Yenev went down to the control-room. The crew on the after-casing had returned to their normal stations and reports of damage state were coming in from various compartments. It was evident that the hull forward had suffered, but not as much as Yenev had feared. He concluded that the strength of the pressure hull and the apparent smoothness of the rockbed under the sand had combined to minimize the damage on impact.
He recorded in the log-book that the submarine had been stranded in a cove south of Knausnes at 0047 in accordance with the decision taken earlier. ‘The stern, for a distance of approximately twenty metres, is overhanging the edge of the rockshelf at the entrance to the cove,’ he wrote. ‘But she is not working unduly in the prevailing weather. It is now within a few minutes of high water.’