Two days later, the U-30 chugged out into the North Sea. The men ate like pigs. You had to get rid of the fresh food first, because it wouldn't keep. They'd go back to sausage and tinned sauerkraut and hard-baked bread soon enough-too soon, really. Boiled beef, stewed chicken, fresh cabbage, even some peaches… Lemp gobbled down his share. He might have eaten a little more than his share. He was the skipper, after all. But his pants still fit all right, so he couldn't have been too much of a greedyguts.
Gerhart Beilharz put the Schnorkel through its paces. Lemp was less nervous about the gadget than he had been when it first got installed. It hadn't misbehaved too badly, and it did come in handy every now and then. Lemp still would have liked it better if the brass had given it to him as a reward rather than a punishment.
The tall engineer said, "It's working the way it's supposed to, Skipper."
"All right." Lemp hoped it was. He was also more willing to believe Beilharz than he had been when the beanpole came aboard with the Schnorkel. Beilharz had to be two meters if he was a centimeter. He needed his Stahlhelm, all right. U-boats weren't built with people his size in mind.
This was a different kind of patrol. Instead of telling him to go out into the Atlantic to torpedo freighters traveling between the Americas and England, the orders over which he and Klaus had puzzled instructed him to stay in the North Sea and patrol north and south between two fixed parallels of latitude. He was to sink anything he saw, and to be especially alert for Royal Navy warships.
That codicil kept him scratching his chin. The Royal Navy wasn't in the habit of pushing into the North Sea. As long as it could keep German surface vessels bottled up-which it hadn't managed with the Admiral Scheer-it kept its distance, leery not only of U-boats but also of land-based airplanes.
So why did his orders talk about enemy warships as if expecting them to rush into the path of his patrol? It made for a nice strategic question, one that gave both officers and ratings something to chew on. Lemp had his own opinion-or rather, his own suspicion. He didn't voice it; even on a U-boat, people were often reluctant to contradict the skipper. He was amused to discover he wasn't the only one to arrive at that suspicion. Amused, yes, but not surprised. If you could read a map and thought a little about how and where the war was going, it was one of the things that seemed likely.
Likely, of course, didn't have to mean true. It might prove nothing but so much moonshine. Lemp knew how much he didn't know. The ratings sounded much more confident than he did. They didn't worry about what they didn't know. From his days in school, Lemp remembered Socrates going on about such things.
Socrates had got sunk for his trouble. Lemp intended to be on the other end of the bargain. At the moment, though, it looked like no bargain at all. No Royal Navy battleships or carriers, destroyers or corvettes-hell, no Royal Navy tugs or garbage scows-showed themselves in his patrol zone. From what the radio operator could pick up, things were also quiet elsewhere.
No freighters bound from Norway to England or the other way lumbered past, either. Petrels skimmed by the U-30. One landed on the radio aerial atop the conning tower. It seemed surprised to find an island in the middle of the sea. After a minute or two, it flew off.
One of the ratings on watch up there let his binoculars down onto his chest and grinned at Lemp. "Do we sink the sea birds, Skipper?" he asked. "They're the only things in the neighborhood."
"Bad luck!" another sailor said, and everybody else nodded. You didn't hurt petrels, not for anything.
"I was only kidding," the first man protested.
"Don't worry about it, Erich," Lemp said. "We know you didn't mean anything by it." By their expressions, not all the ratings agreed, but they let it lie-for now. Lemp wondered if Erich would get himself a set of lumps after he went below. He hoped the others wouldn't rack the sailor up to the point where he couldn't carry out his duties. A U-boat needed every man it carried.
He was also willing to bet that, as long as Erich was still able to walk, he wouldn't let out a peep about what had happened to him. Officers didn't need to know-and certainly didn't need to notice-everything that went on aboard a warship.
Or maybe the rating escaped his expected fate, because the very next day a sailor fishing from the conning tower caught an enormous cod. If that wasn't good luck, Lemp didn't know what would be. The sailors gutted the big fish and threw the offal overboard.
"Now what do we do with it?" somebody wondered.
"I know how to make codfish balls," another sailor said.
A wit piped up: "What do we do with the rest?"
"Funny, Michael," Lemp said amidst groans. "You should take it on the stage-or anywhere else a long way from here."
But, for lack of other suggestions, they let the volunteer have his way. And the codfish balls, eked out with flour, proved surprisingly good. Lemp put a commendation in the log. It might earn the amateur cook a promotion when the U-30 came home.
In the meantime, they patrolled. They saw ocean, and more ocean, and more ocean still. They saw petrels. Some were gray. Some were black. Some were gray and black. A birdwatcher probably would have gone into ecstasies about them. Lemp took them for granted, as long as no one talked about doing them in.
Still no freighters. No Royal Navy ships, either. Only long days and short, light nights. Twilight never quite left the northern sky, and the dimmer stars remained unseen. The weather was good-as good as it ever got in the North Sea, anyhow. It might almost have been a pleasure jaunt. If only the accommodations were fancier, Lemp thought. The Strength through Joy cruises do a better job.
It didn't take long for the patrolling to get to be first routine, then dull routine. Lemp fought that as best he could. Taking things for granted was one of the easiest ways to get yourself killed.
No ships. No planes. No suspicious smoke smudges on the horizon. No stalking a quarry. No crash dives when someone came stalking you, either. Back and forth. Back and forth again. Nothing. Lots of nothing. Lemp got bored, too. He worked all the harder on account of it. He made sure the crew did, too.
The U-30 didn't travel very far. It could stay at sea as long as it had fuel and food. No orders to do anything else came over the radio. Back and forth one more time, and then one more time after that. ARNO BAATZ GLOWERED at Willi Dernen. "I've got my eye on you," the corporal warned. "You may have fooled that SS fellow, but I know damn well you had something to do with Storch lighting out for the tall timber."
Awful Arno was right. So was a stopped clock, twice a day. Most days, that put it two up on Baatz. "I don't know what happened to Wolfgang," Willi said, for what had to be the hundredth time. "Maybe he did light out, but he was always a good soldier till people started giving him grief. Or maybe a shell came down right on top of him. We were catching hell from the Frenchies that day, remember. Sometimes there's nothing left to bury, you know?" He eyed his squad leader. "It could have happened to you."
"And you would have been happy if it did?"
"You said that. I didn't. I don't mean it, either." Willi didn't aim to let Awful Arno pin an insubordination rap on him. He also didn't particularly hope Baatz would get blown to nothingness on the instant. That would be too quick, too easy. If the sniper with the monster rifle nailed Awful Arno right in the knee, though…
A German sniper prowled the lines these days, too, hunting the Frenchman or Czech or whatever he was. A rifle made for knocking out panzers did horrid things to flesh and bone. Sometimes a hit on the arm or leg would kill just from the shock of the impact. The sooner the expert with the scope-sighted rifle-he was an Oberfeldwebel named Helmut Fegelein, a grizzled veteran of the last war-disposed of the bastard with the big rifle, the happier everybody would be.