by John Winton
“Something wrong, Dan?”
“I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong but I can’t get any sense out of the thing at all. Something’s jamming it. It won’t read anything beyond about fifty feet below us.”
“Perhaps it didn’t like having the scale altered?”
“No, that shouldn’t affect it. I do it every day when I’m calibrating it anyway. But it just won’t read beyond fifty feet now.”
“Perhaps...
Dangerous Dan started back towards the Coxswain’s store, stopped, and clapped a hand to his forehead.
“I’ve got it! How stupid of me! Of course there’s nothing the matter with it! It’s telling us what we want to know.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s where our friend is.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“That’s where our little Visitor is right now. He’s gliding along.... Fifty feet beneath us...”
The most profound silence of all settled over Seahorse. The Bodger ran his fingers through his hair. This was the end of the line. This was where the text-books stopped. The imaginations of those who compiled the Admiralty instructions on submarine tactics had never envisaged an enemy who shadowed his adversary fifty feet below him. The Bodger realized that he was now on his own.
“Let’s stir it up! Warn all compartments to expect large angles.”
Using full speed, maximum angles and full wheel, The Bodger put Seahorse through a series of submarine aquabatics which would have made her designers’ hair stand rigid. After each manoeuvre The Bodger slowed down and listened. Leading Seaman Gorbles reported an empty sea. The black box screen was blank.
“That’s foxed him,” The Bodger said with some satisfaction.
“... Visitor regained, one one zero, sir. . .“
“Damnation! What’s the battery now, Number One?”
“Last reading was thirty per cent left, sir,” said Wilfred. “Take another one.”
The electricians’ mates scrambled over the pilot cells with their hydrometers and took another reading of the density of the battery fluid.
“Twenty-five per cent, sir,” said Wilfred. “On the drop. We had to borrow the Chief Stoker’s hydrometer, sir. Ours wouldn’t read low enough!”
“It looks as though we’ll have to wrap this up very soon whether we like it or not,” The Bodger said. “We’ve tried circus tricks. Now we’ll try Grandmother’s Footsteps. Can you put on a stop trim, Derek?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry on then. Mid, you’d better watch this if you want to learn about trimming.”
The Midshipman stood at Derek’s shoulder while Derek approached the ultimate in trimming, the inner temple of the art. Using the classic method of putting wheel and planes amidships, Derek made a succession of minute adjustments to the trim, transferring only a few gallons at a time. Each time the hydroplanes resumed their functions, they appeared to have less and less to do, until Derek stopped the shafts and the submarine hung in the sea, motionless and level.
“Well done, Chief. Anything on sonar?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Anything on the black box, Dan?”
“Nothing Bodger.”
“That’ll give him something to think about,” said The Bodger.
The words had hardly left his lips when The Bodger felt Seahorse’s deck tilt, and slowly right itself again. Just as The Bodger had convinced himself that his sense of balance was playing tricks on him, the deck slowly tilted again. The Bodger felt the hair prickle on his scalp.
“Full astern together! Sorry about your trim, Chief. . . .”
The Bodger’s order had an immediate and dramatic effect. Seahorse heeled violently. Dangerous Dan’s black box blew all its fuses. Leading Seaman Gorbles gained contact at once and reeled off a string of bearings.
As the bearings were being plotted, The Bodger noticed that for the first time since the attack began the Visitor’s change of bearing suggested a steady course and speed.
“Stand by for a firing set-up! Slow ahead together. Bring all after tubes to the action state. Chop chop with the tubes! “
The Bodger’s best estimate of the Visitor’s course and speed was set up by the attack team. The firing bearing was computed. The tubes were reported in the action state. Wilfred gripped the handle which would release the first torpedo. The Bodger raised his stop watch.
“Stand by. . . . Stand . . . by. . .”
At the last moment, when The Bodger’s lips were actually framed to give the order to fire, the possible consequences of what he was about to do smote him. Seahorse’s action might be the crossing of the Rubicon. The torpedo they were about to fire might have the same effect upon the world as the first shot fired at Sarajevo. The Bodger hesitated, but did not dare to give the order to break off. He did not dare to make any sound whatever. The long weeks of training, the weary attack team drills, had led to this moment. At this stage of the attack there could now be no other order than that to fire. If The Bodger so much as coughed, if he did no more than clear his throat, Wilfred would fire.
The Bodger waited while the perspiration gathered in his eyebrows and trickled into his eyes, not even daring to raise his hand to wipe it away. The seconds passed, the firing bearing was reached and overshot. Still The Bodger made no movement nor sound. At last, after a minute, the attack team relaxed. It was obvious that the Captain had changed his mind.
The Bodger swallowed. “Do not fire,” he said hoarsely.
“. . Visitor surfaced, sir!”
“Are you certain?”
“Positive, sir,” said Leading Seaman Gorbles, scornfully. Think I don’t know when a bloody target’s surfaced? he said to himself.
“Right. Any other H.E.?”
“Negative, sir.”
“Sixty feet. Stand by to surface. Diving stations.”
As Seahorse rose to periscope depth, The Bodger ordered all the control room lighting switched on. The submarine had been dived for more than twenty hours and he had no wish to be blinded by the daylight.
At sixty feet, The Bodger swung the periscope, tensed to go deep again. When he reached a bearing on the port bow, Wilfred was interested to see a deep blush rise from The Bodger’s neck to his forehead.
“Surface.”
The Bodger followed Rusty and the Signalman up to the bridge. It was another beautiful day, with a calm sea and a bright sun.
But The Bodger was not interested in the weather. He searched the sea through his binoculars.
“There’s our Visitor,” he said, pointing.
Two miles off the port bow, a very large grey whale was disporting itself in the sea. As The Bodger watched, it sounded but, before it disappeared, The Bodger swore he saw one huge mammalian eye close in a wink.
Feeling like an old man, The Bodger pressed the button of the bridge action speaker.
“Wireless Office, this is the Captain. Make to Captain S/M: Have broken off navel engagement with amorous whale.”
The Signalman’s lip curled. “You sex mad monster,” he said bitterly.
12
The episode of the Amorous Whale was not mentioned in Seahorse again. Nobody on board wished to be reminded of a time when they had all been braced at action stations to fight off the erotic advances of an affectionate marine mammal. Even Dangerous Dan, who could have dined out for months on it, expunged the story from his conversation, realizing that true friendship often demands a true sacrifice. When Captain S/M examined Seahorse’s log at the end of the quarter and remarked on the day and the night during which H.M.S. Seahorse appeared to have been at war, The Bodger shrugged it off, saying that he thought the ship’s company had been getting stale and it seemed a good opportunity to liven them up a bit. But privately, in his own wardroom, The Bodger looked back on the episode in a mood of self-reproach.
“I was so obsessed by the idea that it was another submarine, when the damned animal was doing everything but tell us
he was only trying to be friendly. He even came up and nuzzled our ship’s side. When I think that I was within an ace of firing. . . . That would have been the most jilted whale this side of the Gosport ferry! But I suppose there’s a moral to be drawn from it. We live in such suspicious times that we’re apt to fly off the handle for anything. We’re like people who’re so scared of burglars we shoot the milkman dead.”
After the Whale, Dangerous Dan’s experiments seemed an anti-climax. Even the Black Box lost its appeal and everyone was glad when the experiments were completed and Seahorse headed towards South America.
The nearest representative of the Royal Navy was H.M.S. Beaufortshire, flying the flag of the Commodore Amazon & River Plate Estuaries who was on his way to pay an official visit to the Republic of SanGuana d’Annuncion. The Bodger received a signal ordering him to proceed to Cajalcocamara, the capital of the Republic, for fuel, water and mail.
“Cajalcocamara,” said The Bodger thoughtfully, when he read the signal. “That rings a bell.”
“What’s it like, sir?”
“Bloody good run ashore. We quelled a revolution there once, when I was in the Cadet Training Cruiser.”
“SanGuana? That rings a bell with me too,” said Dangerous Dan. “If I remember rightly, they have a very big motor race there at this time of the year. Let me look in my diary.”
Dangerous Dan took out a handsome green leather diary and opened it on the wardroom table. As Dangerous Dan thumbed through the pages, Dagwood could not help noticing that every day in Dangerous Dan’s year seemed to be marked by a prominent social or sporting occasion, from the Cheltenham Gold Cup through The Trooping of The Colour to the Chelsea Arts Ball, by way of the Braemar Gathering.
“Here we are. The International Targa Mango da SanGuana. It’s one of the big races of the year. It counts towards the World Racing Driver’s Championship.”
“When is it?” Derek asked.
“Next Sunday.”
“When are we due to get there, Gavin?”
“Friday morning. That’s if your donks don’t give any trouble.”
“Don’t worry,” said Derek. “They won’t if there’s any danger of me missing the race. I’ll speak to them kindly.”
“Taking it by and large, it should be a good time to visit the place,” The Bodger said.
It was an excellent time to visit Cajalcocamara. The city was already decorated for carnival in honour of the motor race, and the visit of two warships completed the SanGuana’s celebrations. The citizens of the young Republic had not forgotten the part the Navy had played in winning them their independence. As Seahorse approached her berth she was played in by two brass bands and a native SanGuana orchestra playing on reeds and gourds. The dock buildings were decked with flags and the jetty was a packed mass of beaming faces. On the jetty’s edge stood a welcoming committee of the city’s most important citizens, including the President of the Republic, Aquila Monterruez himself, his cabinet, the British Consul, the Mayor, the Gieves Representative, the Principal of SanGuana University, the Man from the Prudential and the sporting editor of The SanGuana, the official organ of the Republican party.
“I don’t see any sign of Beaufortshire?” said The Bodger.
“Golly, we’ve certainly got the first eleven out to meet us. Who would you say that little man in the yachting cap was?”
“The Admiralty Representative, sir,” said Wilfred.
“My God, I expect you’re right!”
The Bodger marvelled, as he had marvelled many times in the past, at the wideness of the Admiralty’s net.
“I bet if you paddled a canoe right up the bloody Amazon you’d find a little man from the Admiralty at the top waiting to come on board and tell you you’d already used up your year’s allocation of parrots! “
The Bodger barely had time to get down to the casing before Aquila Monterruez was on board.
“My dear Bodger!” he cried, advancing with hand outstretched. “How very refreshing to see you again! But how are you?”
“Very well indeed, Beaky,” said The Bodger. “And you?”
“Thriving, me dear fellow! Do you know, this is the first time I have ever been on board one of these inventions. Perhaps I’d better make the introductions. I won’t introduce my cabinet, they’re a very mundane lot. The British Consul, though. . . .”
The British Consul shook hands stiffly. He felt that his position had been usurped by the ebullient Aquila. He was a tall man with weary blue eyes and shaggy eyebrows. He reminded The Bodger of one of those indolent baboons at the zoo which lean up against the bars of their cages and ignore the passing public.
“And this little man who looks as though he’s carrying a heavy weight about on his head is one of yours, Bodger. The Admiralty Rep.”
Absent-mindedly patting the Admiralty Rep. on the head as he passed, Aquila followed Wilfred down to the wardroom.
“Very cosy,” he said when he saw it. The Bodger introduced his officers and Dangerous Dan. “Very cosy indeed. Is there room for a bar?”
Wilfred hesitated, but The Bodger nodded. It was a quarter past nine in the morning but The Bodger was not one to deny hospitality to a President in his own country.
Besides, now that he came to think of it, a drink would go down very well indeed. The Midshipman poured out gins and tonics all round except for the Admiralty Representative who asked for whisky and said unexpectedly: “Salud y pesetas y fors en las brigitas! “
“Hear hear,” said Aquila.
The Signalman, who was also the ship’s postman, appeared at the wardroom door.
“Mail, sir,” he said shortly. He passed The Bodger a bundle of private and official correspondence.
“Hullo?” The Bodger examined one letter. “A letter for the Midshipman postmarked Oozemouth! What’s all this, Mid?”
The Midshipman blushed delicately. “There’s a girl there who writes to me occasionally, sir,” he said.
“Voi che sapete, che cosa e amor?” hummed Dagwood.
“. . . And one for Pilot with a pink envelope and. . . The Bodger sniffed. “Perfume! You’ll be making the Steward jealous, Pilot.”
“Her letters are a lot more attractive than she is, sir,” said Gavin.
“Come, lad,” said The Bodger, sternly. “Think of the lovin’ ’ands wot penned this ’ere missive. A man hasn’t grown up until he’s been embarrassed by a few love letters.”
The Signalman reappeared. “Santa Claus has remembered you, sir,” he said to Derek.
“Has he?”
“Bloody great package on the casing, sir. They’re trying to get it through the fore hatch now.”
Aquila clapped his hands. “I’m dying to see what this is! It came a fortnight ago in the diplomatic bag and it’s been hanging around the British Consulate ever since.”
“How did you know that?” The British Consul inquired sourly.
“My dear Fruity, you’re so naive only the British would employ you. I’ve been keeping my Chief of Police, a crude man, off it ever since it arrived. He swore it was a time bomb but I reassured him. I told him that the British, like the Americans, only send time bombs to their friends. But open it Derek, do. I’m all agog! “
Just then the Chief Stoker and his store-keeper Ferguson staggered past the wardroom, bent under the weight of a large black wooden packing case. As he passed, the Chief Stoker directed at Derek a glance of such concentrated hatred that Derek hastily finished his drink and hurried out to the control room.
The packing case seemed to fill a good part of the control room. It lay between the periscopes, already surrounded by a crowd of curious sailors.
“What have we got here, Chief Stoker?” Derek asked cheerily and, in the opinion of the Chief Stoker, stupidly.
“Don’t know, sir.”
“It’s a spare Chief Stoker!” called Able Seaman Ripper.
“We already got one spare --- ,” replied another, anonymous, voice.
“Quiet there,” th
e Chief Stoker growled. “Got that crowbar?”
The top planks were prised off, uncovering strips of foam rubber which themselves enclosed another metal box with a screwed lid.
“Got a screw-driver?”
The lid was unscrewed and a further box wrapped in oiled paper appeared. The Chief Stoker set to work with the crowbar again.
“It’s getting smaller and smaller, anyway,” Derek said.
The Chief Stoker grunted and wrenched off the lid. A mass of straw spilled over the deck. Parting the straw, the Chief Stoker lifted out a brown paper parcel the size of a shoe box bound with transparent adhesive tape.
“Got a knife?”
Able Seaman Ripper produced a knife. The Chief Stoker slit the tape and, like a conjurer, produced a small cardboard box.
“Abracadabra.”
“You’d better open this, sir.”
Derek opened the box and took out a small brass gauge with a round dial six inches in diameter. It was a combined pressure and vacuum gauge of the kind used on submarine distillers.
“Was it a time bomb?” Aquila asked.
“No,” Derek said brusquely. “It was what is known as Preservation, Identification and Packing.”
The rest of the mail was by comparison undistinguished. All the wardroom received tailors’ bills which were all thrown into the waste-paper basket.
“Have another drink, Beaky,” said The Bodger.
“Thank you, Bodger. Talking of tailors’ bills. . . .”
“I remember getting a rude letter from my tailors when I was at Oxford,” said the Admiralty Representative, again unexpectedly. “I settled them quite simply. I told them that it was my custom to put all my outstanding bills in a hat at the end of the month, draw one out, and pay it. I told them that if I got another letter like that theirs wouldn’t even go into the hat!”
At that moment it occurred to Derek that if he wanted a good view of the motor race, Aquila was just the fellow to ask.
“How’s your glass, sir? Let me get you another.”
“What a very Christian idea, my dear Derek! “