Over his shoulder the Captain called, ‘Make our pennant numbers, Yeoman.’
The Yeoman aimed an Aldis lamp and its shutter began to click. An answering light blinked from the aircraft. The Yeoman passed the pennant numbers, the Catalina acknowledged, adding, ‘Any joy?’ The Yeoman repeated the message aloud.
Barratt said, ‘Make — Not yet but getting warmer. Strict W/T silence imperative. Please inform Captain (D).’
The shutter of Restless’s lamp chattered busily. The Catalina acknowledged with, ‘Will do. Can we assist?’
Barratt shook his head emphatically as the Yeoman repeated the message. ‘Make — Thanks but please keep clear. Your presence draws attention to us.’
With a final, ‘Will do,’ the Catalina climbed away on a southerly course.
In a quiet aside Geoffrey Lawson, the officer-of-the-watch who shared the bridge with Sean O’Brien, said, ‘Pretty unfriendly, weren’t we? The only thing that’s getting warmer is the weather.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t be knowing about that, Geoff, but I think the Old Man’s right in not wanting to advertise our whereabouts. In the Western Approaches we learnt…’ ‘Here we go again,’ interrupted Lawson. ‘And what was it we learnt in the Western Approaches?’
O’Brien looked across to where the Captain sat in his chair on the compass platform. ‘To keep a low profile if you hoped to find a submarine before it found you. Remember Max Horton’s golden rule? Cut the cackle?’
‘I wasn’t in the Western Approaches — and anyway he’s Admiral Sir Max Horton to you, my lad.’ Lawson raised a disapproving eyebrow. ‘Never forget — there are few more lowly forms of marine life than a Sub-Lieutenant RNVR.’
‘Ah, and that sounds like the good old RN,’ said O’Brien, one eye still on the Captain. ‘But it’s fine to know that some of us do it for the pleasure and not the money.’
The river had pushed a semi-circle of brown silt far out into Rovuma Bay, and it was there that Restless reversed course and began her search to the south.
The heat of an already oppressive day was tempered by a light breeze from the south-east which rustled the surface of the glittering sea. A few miles to starboard the coast showed thinly through the heat haze, the swell breaking on its offshore reefs throwing up sheets of white foam which seemed to hang lazily in the air.
With few exceptions the men on deck, their bodies deeply tanned, wore only white shorts. To those on duty on the bridge, however, no such licence was permitted. ‘I’m not having a lot of half-nude gorillas on my bridge,’ Barratt had informed the First Lieutenant on joining the ship in Colombo, thereby ending the dispensation granted by the previous captain.
Cape Delgado was rounded an hour after leaving Rovuma Bay, and the destroyer’s progress to the south became painstakingly slow. The many alterations of course and speed in the inshore passages between the islands and the mainland, and the stops to lower and recover the motorboat and skimmer, were responsible; the former was used to investigate promising islets and inlets, and the latter to question catamaran fishermen. For this task Peter Morrow, armed with a photograph of a submarine, was proving invaluable. The recently joined Sub-Lieutenant, born and brought up in Kenya, was fluent in Kiswahili, the lingua franca of the coast Africans. This, combined with an easy-going manner, ensured his rapport with the fishermen.
In the chartroom Dodds divided frowning attention between the plotting table where a stylus traced the destroyer’s course through the channels between the islands and the mainland — every reef and sandbank, every shoal and shallow for him a threat of imminent disaster — and the echo-sounder which recorded the depths of water through which Restless passed. And finally, the tide-tables which served only to compound his worries.
At noon, looking a vastly troubled man, he reported to the Captain that average speed made good since Cape Delgado was only 6.3 knots.
The Captain was in a wing of the bridge examining an Arab dhow through binoculars. ‘Not bad, Pilot,’ he said, ‘when you consider how we’ve been buggering about.’
With its lateen sail filled by the south-easter, the dhow was making up the coast in the narrow channel between the mainland and the islands off Cape Nondo where mangrove swamps gave way to bushclad slopes which in turn led to a hilltop where a baobab tree stood in solitary grandeur.
The Captain lowered his binoculars, pointed to it. ‘See that,’ he said. ‘I expect the skipper of that dhow uses it as a leading mark. Just as his Arab ancestors have done for the last thousand years.’
Not bad for the Old Man, thought Charlie Dodds, almost poetic. ‘I expect so, sir,’ was his dutiful reply.
Twelve
By early afternoon the pattern of the search had become established. The motorboat and skimmer were now no longer hoisted inboard on completion of a mission, experience having shown that time was saved if they were left in the water to follow Restless until needed to investigate; the destroyer’s speed reduced to that of the motorboat, the slowest of the trio.
Radar had been shut down after passing Cape Delgado on the journey south; to compensate for this the number of lookouts had been doubled. When near the small port of Mocimboa da Praia, a northbound coaster was sighted by the masthead lookout. Barratt altered course to seaward to avoid being seen inshore; not that he was unduly worried on that account. The ‘searching for survivors’ story could always be used.
Barratt was in the chartroom when Duckworth arrived in person to deliver a signal from Captain (D).
‘With W/T silence, I couldn’t acknowledge it,’ he explained as he handed it over.
‘Of course not, Duckworth. They’ll understand.’ Barratt read the signal and with an exclamation of annoyance put it in the chartroom clip. Addressed to Restless, repeated Deputy C-in-C, it read: Return here if no contact by sunset today.
Barratt raged inwardly. How on earth could he be expected to complete a thorough search of the coast in the twelve hours which had elapsed since Kilindini’s signal ordering it that morning. There were still fifty-five miles of coastline and islands to be checked before they reached Matemo Island, twenty miles off which Fort Nebraska had gone down. There
were another forty miles of coast south of that where a damaged submarine could have hidden. A worthwhile search was only possible in daylight. With almost a hundred miles still to be done, at an average speed of about six knots, there wasn’t a hope of finishing before sunset the following day.
The whole thing was preposterous. He saw the hand of the SOO behind the recall signal. Russel didn’t like him, they were on different wavelengths. And he didn’t much like Gloomy Russel for that matter. A dreary individual, decided Barratt. He suspected that the incident which had sparked mutual dislike had taken place soon after Restless arrived in Kilindini from Colombo with other units of the Eastern Fleet. He, Russel and others, had gone off to the flagship in the same motorboat. In accordance with custom the coxswain had gone alongside the starboard gangway to disembark the Captains of Restless and Resister who were piped on board and saluted by the officer-of-the-watch and his minions. Russel, though senior in rank to Barratt, had remained in the motorboat with several other officers until the coxswain took it round to the port gangway where they disembarked, their arrival on the quarter-deck not qualifying for the ceremonial ‘pipe’ since they did not command ships. Later, on the return journey to the shore, Russel had remarked, somewhat sardonically, that using different gangways for officers arriving at and departing from the flagship in the same boat struck him as a monumental waste of time, particularly with a war on.