Surface!

by Surface! (retail) (epub)

  Up for’ard, clear of the stream of shells, Rawlinson and Shadwell were checking their torpedo stores. In the Petty Officers’ Mess, the Cox’n was filling in a form about rum. In the wardroom, the Captain was talking to the First Lieutenant, the Navigator was sorting out copies of Notices to Mariners, and the Sub-Lieutenant was going over a file of correspondence. In the Engine-room, the Engineer Officer lay flat on his back, oil-stained, staring up at a large slice of trouble in the port diesel.

  It was as hot as hell.

  A telegraphist eased himself down the ladder from the Depot Ship, getting in the way of the flow of ammunition.

  “’Ere: ’oo the ‘ell are you shovin’?”

  “You’re not the only bastard with something to do. I got to get down to the flippin’ boat, see?”

  “Stupid flippin’ son of an oar! Choose yer time, don’t er?”

  “Come on, Sparky, out of the flippin’ way, or I’ll do yer!”

  “Takes two to do that sort of thing,” remarked the telegraphist, as he narrowly avoided a serious accident.

  “Why, I’d flippin’ well rape yer!”

  “You and ’oo else? Out o’ me way, you beast o’ burden.”

  A warrant officer, the belt of his khaki shorts supporting his stomach as well as the shorts, appeared on the top of the gangway.

  “That’s the lot!” he bellowed.

  “Thank Christ for that,” grunted a stoker who objected to having been drafted into a seaman’s work for the forenoon.

  “Why, dear?” asked Bird, in a high, pansy voice. “Are you feelin’ faint?”

  Next day, the line of men took their places again on the gangway, only this time it was provisions that they handled: meat, vegetables, bread, tins of sausages, butter, canned fruit, tinned soup, bacon, bags of sugar and flour, boxes of eggs, these and many other things passed down the line, to be checked and stowed away under the Cox’s careful supervision.

  On the same day Seahound took in fresh water and fuel, and that night while the diesels growled steadily away, charging the batteries, most of the ship’s company were writing letters home, letters that would be in England in a fortnight’s time: where they themselves would be in a fortnight’s time, none of them had the slightest idea.

  Chapter 3

  Sub climbed up into the bridge and saluted the Captain.

  “Casing secured, sir,” he reported.

  “Very good. Number One?”

  “Sir?” The First Lieutenant stepped up from the back of the bridge.

  “You can open up for diving. I’ll have a word over the Tannoy when I come down.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  Once again, Trincomali was astern, and getting farther away every minute. The same question was in every mind: Which area had they been given this time? Ten minutes later the Captain switched on the microphone in the Control Room, and the question was answered.

  “The Fourteenth Army are expected to take Rangoon within the next week. Nobody knows if the Japanese will try to get any men out by sea, but in case they do we’ll be waiting for them.

  “It’s likely that we’ll shift our billet after a few days, because it’ll soon be obvious whether or not there’s going to be an evacuation, and if there isn’t we’ll be sent elsewhere. If there is, it ought to be short and sharp. Two other submarines, Setter and Slayer, are already there, a bit higher up than we’ll be.

  “That’s all. Carry on.”

  “Go to Patrol Routine when you’re ready, Number One.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  The Captain walked forward to the Chart table, where the Navigator was already busy.

  * * *

  That evening the wind rose suddenly, as the barometer had promised, and for the first time in three patrols the submarine was rolling and pitching. Chief looked paler than usual as he pretended to eat his supper.

  “I hope to God,” he muttered, “that it’s not going to be like this for three bloody weeks.”

  “Not feeling so good, Chief?”

  “You shut up.”

  “This, no doubt,” murmured Number One, “is the good-humoured, cheerful, comradely spirit which the books say is essential in the close confines of a submarine.”

  “Not of a submarine. It’s something in the close confines of Chiefy’s tum-tum.”

  “What time, Sub, do you go on watch?” Chief eyed the Sub-Lieutenant malevolently as he asked the question.

  “In ten minutes.”

  “And next after that?”

  “Two o’clock. Why?”

  “When I hear you shaken, I’ll lean out of my bunk and scream with laughter.”

  “O.K. I’ll hold a basin for you.” Sub wasn’t feeling any too good himself, but he knew that all would be well as soon as he got up in the fresh air. There were only two places to be, in bad weather: either on the bridge, or flat on your bunk. When it was really bad, even the bunk was inclined to be unsatisfactory, but there was one position, on your side with your knees up and your feet jammed against the bulkhead, that was better than any. You gradually found out these little things that took the strain off life, or at any rate off your stomach.

  He looked at the chart and noted the run that would be covered in his watch, while the others slept down here and he was alone with the wind and the flying sea, along on the front of the bridge which was really only a platform sixteen feet above the level of the sea, when it was calm. When the sea was rough it was often much less than sixteen feet away, and the platform had brass-bound holes in it as well, to let the water out when the submarine surfaced, so that a watch in bad weather was inclined to be a wet two hours. The sea came over the front, sometimes just spray but sometimes solid green water, hard and heavy, and it was as much like riding a surf-board as keeping a watch in a ship of war.

  More than a ship of war, though: a weapon, as deadly as any in use, designed for the one purpose of destruction. Standing on the bridge and looking down on the gleaming black hull as it thrashes through the leaping waves you see it as it is, so lethal and sinister that to you it looks as beautiful as anything afloat. The sharp shark’s bow leads out from where the casing looks broader, where the hydroplane guards stand dripping, like the head of a snake, venomous and lovely, most certainly alive.

  * * *

  A straight course, no lights from which to fix the ship’s position, very little likelihood of anything like an enemy being anywhere near. Only the wind and the sea, the routine of look-outs being relieved, the helmsmen changing over.

  “Bridge!”

  “Bridge,” you answer, into the voice-pipe.

  “Helmsman relieved, sir. Course oh-eight-eight, three-eight-oh revolutions, running charge port.”

  “Very good.”

  The sea sweeps past, over and under.

  “Bridge!”

  “Bridge.”

  “Relieve lookout, sir?”

  “Yes, please.” A moment later a dark figure emerges from the hatch behind you, looks round for a moment and takes over from the man at the back of the bridge. Two minutes pass, and the relieved lookout stands at your shoulder.

  “Lookout relieved, sir. Nothing in sight.”

  “Right, Rivers.”

  “G’night, sir.”

  “Good-night.”

  In the bottom of the main ballast tanks are open holes. The water stays out because it is met by an equal pressure of air from the inside. The air is kept in because the vents at the top of the tanks are shut, only opened when it is necessary to flood the tanks to dive the submarine. In rough weather, however, some of the air escapes, and to keep the submarine as high up in the water as possible it is necessary from time to time to build up the pressure of air in the tanks.

  “Control Room!”

  “Control Room.”

  “Open all L.P. master blows.”

  “Open all L.P. master blows, sir.”

  Half a minute later, “Bridge!”

  “Bridge.”

  “One, two, thr
ee, four and five L.P. master blows open, sir.”

  “Start the blower.”

  “Start the blower, sir.”

  The stokers dislike this procedure. The blower is situated in the after compartment, where they sleep, and it makes a noise.

  “Control Room. Tell me when five minutes are up.”

  “Aye aye, sir, five minutes.”

  The time passes slowly in the great empty circle of the horizon.

  “Bridge! – five minutes, sir.”

  “Stop the blower, shut all L.P. master blows.”

  “Stop the blower, sir. Shut all L.P. master blows.”

  Down below they carry out the order.

  “Bridge!”

  “Bridge.”

  “Blower stopped, sir, all L.P. master blows shut.”

  “Very good. Shake the First Lieutenant.”

  In ten minutes’ time Jimmy will be up to take over, and you can get down that ladder, take your wet clothes off, and sleep for four hours. There should be no interruptions, tonight or tomorrow night.

  * * *

  Jimmy, the First Lieutenant, looks down on the straight, strong bow, and sees the life in the man-made steel as the hard, stinging spray lashes his face. Ships not only live, he thinks, but talk. Ships are the seamen, while we do our best to live up to their standards.

  “How does it feel, down there in the warm sea?”

  “Fine.”

  “Are you handled well?”

  “Well enough. Some of you are seamen.”

  “What do you know of seamen?”

  “Little. They are few, the great ones.”

  “Name some.”

  “There was Drake, and a queer little man called Nelson. One called Smith, of whom few men have ever heard, was the greatest of them all. Some of the finest, nearest to the greatest, are not long dead.”

  “Name them.”

  “They are not long dead. Their names are still a hurt in human minds. They will never live in history, like the old ones. The battles are too frequent, and the names too many.”

  “So many?”

  “You could count them on the fingers of two hands.”

  The bow crashes into a cleft in the sea, wiggles, and rises fast, towering higher than the bridge before it falls again.

  “Could I ever be numbered amongst them?”

  “You?”

  “Could I?”

  “You would be perhaps, in time.”

  “What do you mean by ‘would be’? Will I, or not? Damn you for an old cow!”

  “Would be.”

  “Would be, if what?”

  The roar of the sea is the only answer, the roar of the sea and the way it laughs while it dances.

  * * *

  It is two days later and the Navigator is on watch, on the surface still, the time five-thirty, in the morning watch. In the Night Order Book the Captain has ordered, “Call me at five-thirty.”

  Tommy bends down to the voice-pipe.

  “Control Room!”

  “Control Room.”

  “Shake the Captain.”

  “Shake the Captain, sir.”

  A few minutes later he appears out of the hatch and stares out over the port bow, where as soon as light comes they expect to see the Andaman Islands. These islands, once a leper colony, are now the limit of Japanese expansion in the Indian Ocean. The steep green shores rise sharply from the blue water: the earth, where trees have been felled to make roads, is reddish in colour.

  “Morning, sir.”

  “Morning, Pilot. We’ll dive in about twenty minutes’ time.”

  Just before six, when up top the first grey streaks of light are breaking through, the klaxon roars harshly, once, twice, the signal to dive. Men still half-asleep are flying out of their bunks before the Captain has taken his thumb off the push-button in the Conning Tower, and by the time he has clamped the hatch over his head and clambered down into the Control Room all hands are at their stations and the needle in the depth-gauge is swinging slowly past the 20-foot mark.

  “Thirty feet,” orders the Captain.

  “Thirty feet,” says Number One, both as acknowledgement of the order and as an order to the two men who, sitting in front of him on the port side of the Control Room, operate the controls of the hydroplanes.

  Hydroplanes are horizontal rudders, one set forward and one set aft, which are tilted to alter the submarine’s depth or to keep her steady at the depth ordered. Each man works his own control wheel, his eyes on the depth-gauge, and the bubble in the spirit-level.

  The fore planesman, Bird the Second Cox’n, swings his wheel to the midships position, and mutters, “Thirty feet, sir.”

  At the order “Watch Diving” the men disperse, leaving the men of the watch on duty to keep the ship at periscope depth on a north-easterly course, speed four knots towards the patrol area off Rangoon. Time for some sleep before breakfast.

  “Whose watch?” asks the Captain.

  “Mine, sir.” The Sub can’t deny it.

  “It’ll be light inside half-an-hour, Sub. Keep a good lookout, and if you think we’re going too near the island, call me. In fact, call me when it’s light enough to get a fix.”

  “Aye aye, sir. Up periscope.”

  “After planes relieved, sir. Thirty feet.”

  “Very good.”

  “Fore planes relieved, sir. Thirty feet.”

  “Very good.”

  “Helmsman relieved, sir, course oh-six-oh, telegraphs half ahead together.”

  “Very good.”

  The watch settles down, and nobody else is left in the Control Room. As the crew go for’ard to their quarters, the submarine’s trim is upset; she becomes lighter in the stern, heavier in the bow. The Officer of the Watch adjusts this, indicating on an electric transmitter to men on watch elsewhere in the boat that they must flood water into the stern and amidships tanks, and pump water out forward. When the planesmen can keep their planes level, with the bubble in the centre of the spirit-level and the needle of the depth-gauge at the right depth, then the boat is more or less in trim. Flick off the indicator lights, move across to the periscope-well and jerk your hands upwards: the periscope, controlled from a level operated by the Engine Room Artificer of the watch, slides up. Grab the handles, pull them down, watch for the dawn, the island and the enemy.

  * * *

  The day passed, like ninety per cent of all days on patrol, without incident. Watch relieved watch, meal followed meal, and only once was the Captain interrupted. This was during Number One’s watch, in the forenoon, when he spotted an aircraft, a Jap seaplane flying south.

  “Enemy aircraft, Red four five, sir, moving left to right.”

  They kept an eye on it, through the small periscope, until it was lost to sight on the starboard bow. There were two periscopes, the big one for normal use, and a small one, not much thicker than a cigar at the top end, which had no magnification but made less track in the water and was less easily seen. It was used mainly during torpedo attacks, when the submarine was close to the target or to its escorts.

  The Captain went back to his bunk.

  He was worrying, though none of his officers would have known it. He was thinking about Japanese soldiers: if they met some, in Landing Craft, and they surrendered, what the hell could he do with them? There might be fifty, or a hundred, or more, and it wouldn’t be possible to take more than ten into the submarine. Even five would be more than enough. Five, in fact, would be the limit. That might leave, say, a hundred and ninety-five men with their hands up. It was a tricky problem, and his future career could depend on it. It might be no use saying, “I could only take five.” Someone might say, in Whitehall, “A hundred and ninety-five men is a mass killing and that sort of thing just isn’t done.” On the other hand, he’d be court-martialled if he left a Landing Craft afloat.

  He’d take five, and the rest could drown. But they wouldn’t drown, of course: the barracuda would see to that. You could always leave it to the fi
sh, in these waters.

  In the forward compartment, where the seamen lived, Wilkins lay in his hammock, wide awake. Sleep didn’t come. All that came was a sort of cinema show, over and over again. He and his wife were in the first reel, on his last leave. It wasn’t much of a leave, only a long weekend, three days, three nights in London. On the morning after his third night he had woken early when the alarm-clock rang, groped for it and pressed the button that stopped the noise. She hadn’t woken, only smiled her cat’s smile and murmured “darling” in her sleep. He kissed her and still she slept, wearing the same soft smile, so he slid out of bed and shaved and dressed, then put the kettle on and brought two cups of tea on the tin tray and woke her up in a special way that she liked.

  He left her crying in the bed, and he caught his train with her tear-wet face in his mind. Nobody, as far back as he could remember, had ever cried for him like that.

  Then the letters were fewer, became formal and had no warmth. And the gossip in the other letters came instead.

  In the last reel he saw her with the Pole, a lithe, amorous swine with plenty of money and a nice soft job in London. The words “The End” flashed on the screen and he thought, “This is where I came in.”

  “Call the Red watch,” came the order, and Wilkins slid out of his hammock, quite ready to go on watch because he hadn’t even taken his shoes off since the last one.

  * * *

  “Well,” observed Chief, “if the Japs have evacuated Rangoon I reckon they’ve done it in rickshas. Five bloody days, and not a thing… unless you people have had your eyes shut, of course.”

  “When a man’s just opened his eyes for the first time in five days, he’s got a hell of a nerve to start making insinuations about other people’s watch-keeping.”