In a buzz of excitement men started to stream through the control room, pulling on life jackets as they went up the conning-tower ladder and aft to the casing. Rubber dinghies were laid out on the casings ready for inflation.
On the bridge Shadde found the first lieutenant had already joined Weddy, the officer of the watch. Signals were sent to FOS/M and to Danish naval headquarters in Copenhagen, giving Retaliates position, reporting that there was reason to think that an explosive device somewhere in the bows might detonate at any moment, and that sabotage was suspected. It was requested that a tug be sent out from Korsor to stand by.
Allistair was sent off with McPherson to the forward torpedo room to check whether the time interval between ticks had changed. Shadde believed that it would have. Since the ticks could only be heard very faintly in the fore-ends, and yet were not coming from any object there, they must be coming from outside the hull. A limpet charge, he felt sure, had been fixed to the bow below the water line while they were in dry dock in Stockholm.
If there were an arming device in the bow, reducing speed had been wise. The faster the submarine traveled through the water the quicker the device would arm itself. At the reduced speed Shadde would expect the intervals between ticks to have lengthened. They would soon know. But time was vital. At any moment the bow might erupt in a blinding flash of light.
Shadde looked at his watch; 1933—thirteen minutes since the noise had been reported. He called down to Symington in the control room for the distance to Korsor. "Five point three miles, sir," the reply came back.
Shadde realized suddenly that his fingernails were cutting into the palms of his hands. With a conscious effort he extended his fingers and started beating a tattoo on the bridge screen. Cold beads of perspiration rolled down the back of his neck. It annoyed him intensely that the first lieutenant, leaning against the bridge screen near him, should look so unruffled, almost bored.
As a matter of fact, the first lieutenant was feeling distinctly windy, but he had no intention of showing it. There was nothing he would like less than to be blown up, but he was determined to set an example of calmness. He wondered what chance he'd have on the bridge if the forward torpedo room went up in smoke. Probably get the full blast. He wished he wasn't there and he wished that Shadde would stop that senseless drumming.
Both men's thoughts were interrupted by Allistair, reporting that the time between ticks was now two seconds. This puzzled Shadde; he'd been so sure the interval would have lengthened. "I'm going out on the fore casing to see if anything's to be seen there," he said. "You look after the bridge, Number One."
Then he turned to Allistair. "You'd better come with me."
Allistair said, "Aye, aye, sir." He looked unhappy, but he had no option, so he followed the captain down the ladder inside the bridge casing until they reached the pressure hull. There they stripped to underpants, and retied their life jackets. Then they knocked loose the clips on the port door and swung it inboard. Suddenly the sea seemed unpleasantly close as it lapped and gurgled along the hull below them. Shadde went out first, with Allistair close behind.
From the bridge Cavan looked on with disapproval. This was undignified. Shadde should have sent Allistair and McPherson out on the casing; the captain's place was on the bridge. And why strip down to underpants? But this was like Shadde, dramatizing everything he did. Sardonically, Cavan watched them; Shadde with those long hairy legs, and Allistair insignificant beside him, no doubt bursting with apprehension. Soon they had made their way as far as they could go, to the point where the casing sloped down to form the whalenose bow, and the sea was beginning to lap at them. Now Shadde lay on the bows, leaning first to starboard and then to port, with Allistair astride his legs, acting as an anchor.
Damn funny, thought Cavan, if Allistair's not heavy enough and the shaggy baboon tips into the drink. He rather hoped it might happen; it would make Shadde ridiculous and give Cavan the kudos that goes with recovering your captain from the water.
Shadde was now pointing to something in the water on the port side. Allistair changed places with him and he now leaned over to port, peering at something below the water line. Minutes later Shadde was back on the bridge, his face white. "Slow astern!" he snapped, and when the way was off, "Stop the engines!" He took a quick look at the chart. "No sign of the tug?"
Cavan looked toward Korsor, now right ahead. "Not yet, sir. Did you find anything?"
Shadde's eyes were somber under black, bunched brows. "Yes, I did. An inch wire has fouled a shackle on an eye-plate below the water line. It leads aft into the water. Something heavy on the end. God knows what it is."
His underpants were wet and clinging now; above them his chest was a mass of tangled black hair. As he spoke he scratched it, and Cavan thought, My God! What an ape! Aloud he said, "What are you going to do, sir?"
"Look for it, of course. Get a dinghy inflated on the after casing. Shake it up!" he said sharply. "Every second counts."
A few minutes later Shadde and Allistair paddled off in a bright-yellow dinghy. As they pulled away, there was a high-pitched whistle from the after casing, where thirty or forty men were huddled in the cold. The whistle was followed by a cry of, "Any more for the shore?" Cavan could see from the jerk of Shadde's head that he had heard it.
Cavan summoned Keely to the bridge. "Find out who was responsible for that," he said angrily. "And if there's any more skylarking every man there will have his leave stopped."
The dinghy was nearing the bow now and soon it stopped on the port side. Shadde and Allistair could be seen leaning over the side, talking and pointing. Then they started pulling on something. The dinghy heeled over until it seemed it would capsize.
"It's the wire," said Weddy. "Hope there's nothing lethal on it."
The first lieutenant frowned. "Wonder what the hell it is?"
In the dinghy Shadde and Allistair had hauled in ten or twelve feet of wire when Shadde said: "Steady, I think I can see something on the end." He was peering, his face close to the surface of the water, but it was difficult to see. "Have to get it all the way up. Take it very easy," he cautioned. "Don't let it hit the side."
With the greatest care they pulled the wire up, inch by inch, until a dark, spherical object broke the surface.
For a few embarrassing moments they just looked at it. Finally, "Bloody dan-buoy sinker!" Shadde said with disgust. "That shackle must have been left by one of those workmen in Stockholm."
"Yes, sir." Allistair's relief was obvious. "We must have fouled a dan mooring put down by a fisherman."
It took another fifteen minutes to get the mooring wire, and the shackle into which it had jammed, clear of the eye-plate. They paddled back in silence. Allistair, in his relief, tried one or two cheerful remarks, but Shadde, tight-lipped and forbidding, merely glowered.
Without a word Shadde made his way through the men on the after casing to the bridge, where he told Weddy to resume course and speed for the passage through the Great Belt. Weddy reported that the tug had been sighted coming out from Korsor.
"Tell him by signal that we don't want him," Shadde said. "And thank him."
Then he handed Keely a signal to FOS/M to encipher, and that was the last any officer saw of the captain until after breakfast the next day.
It was twenty-seven minutes past four in the morning when Mr. Buddington decided that the moment had arrived to inspect the storerooms, the keys to which he had gotten from the captain. He knew that the watches changed at four, and it was still far too early for day-duty men to be about. Safely in the store, with the door locked, he switched on the light and had a good look around. The shelves were stacked with tinned foods and packaged foods. The only things there that weren't groceries were four silk lampshades on an upper shelf, conspicuous in their bright colors.