Surface!

by Surface! (retail) (epub)

  He heard it clang off a rung of the ladder, somewhere in front of his face, and he heard another clang as it hit the deck. He began slowly climbing down, feeling for the rungs below him at each step. He thought to himself, Take it easy, now: there’s no hurry. As he went down into the water, pulling himself down into the icy blackness right down on to his knees at the bottom of the ladder, he felt the pressure in his breathing-set increase until it stopped him breathing out. He breathed in, easily, but he couldn’t force his breath back into the bag. For a moment panic flared in his mind, then he remembered, opened the exhaust valve: the pressure fell away at once and he could breathe again. He began to grope around on the deck.

  It wasn’t there. He thought, I can’t go back into the compartment without having the job done. Still he couldn’t find the wheel-spanner: he started a new, systematic search, covering the deck area under the trunk methodically, strip by strip. He could only use one hand, because he needed the other for holding himself down. The wheel-spanner was not there. He paused, and his brain gave him the clue: it shouldn’t have clanged, not if it hit the deck! He ran his free hand over the lower rungs of the ladder; almost immediately he found it, hanging from the second rung by its hook. Slowly he began to climb back to the hatch, congratulated himself when he remembered to shut the exhaust valve before he came out of the water.

  This time he went one rung higher on the ladder: stooped as he was, it gave him a better purchase on the spanner. He pressed hard, and felt the vent begin to open. A minute later the water was rising, a tearing sound in his ears as the trapped air rushed out through the tiny aperture. When he knew that the trunking was flooded, he began numbly to work at the hatch. The pressure fought his breath again, and once more he opened the vent at the bottom corner of the bag, once more felt the relief of being able to breathe comfortably. His arms felt heavy, pain working up from the wrists: he could only just feel with his frozen fingers. He wondered how long he’d been working, whether they’d be getting worried in the compartment: he could imagine Payne preparing to come up and drag his body out of the way of the hatch.

  The hatch was free; he braced himself on the ladder, got his shoulders under the hatch, head bent forward, and he forced himself upwards. The hatch rose: he shifted, got the palms of his hands under it, pushed hard: it clanged back and over his head there was grey light filtering down from the surface, the black streak of the jumping-wire a quivering line across it. He thought, I must remember to warn them about that: when men let themselves go fast, straight from the hatch, they could hit the wire and either knock themselves out or have their sets torn off. He began to climb slowly down the ladder, rung by rung: felt the bottom of the trunking, eased himself under it: and rose to his feet in the dimly illuminated compartment.

  They looked as much surprised as relieved to see him back. When he had shut the valves and pulled the mouthpiece out of his mouth, he said, “Everything’s fine. The hatch is open, and we can’t be very deep. It’s quite light, when you look up. Remember to watch out for the jumping-wire: get on to the side of the casing before you let go, and use the apron on your sets to slow yourselves down.”

  He spoke in jerks, panting from the exertion. Looking at his fingers, he was surprised to see that they still belonged to him, connected with bones and flesh: he couldn’t feel them. There was no skin on his knuckles, the flesh showed pink and bloodless.

  “Right, Higham: you first. I’ll point at each of you in turn after that, at two-minute intervals. Payne, you’ll be last, except for me. All right?”

  They all nodded. He was keeping Payne to the last as a useful hand in case one of the others bungled it, got himself stuck.

  “Start breathing from your sets.” He watched them as they began to go through the drill. Then, a minute later, he nodded at Higham, pointed at the trunking. Higham vanished under the edge of the trunking. Every two minutes, Tommy sent another man after him: be checked the timing carefully, by counting.

  Last of all he nodded across at Payne. Payne grinned, held out his right hand: cursing the waste of time and the film-like gesture, Tommy shook hands with him. Then he withdrew his hand, pointed at the trunking. Payne nodded, lowered himself into the water.

  Tommy, alone in the compartment, made himself wait twice the interval of two minutes before he started. While he waited, there was no sense of success in his mind: outside the hatch, in the hatch, there could be a solid block of tangled bodies.

  For the second time, he lowered himself into the still black water: the lantern still shone quietly in the false and temporary breathing-space. He found the ladder, climbed: with an effort he made himself look up. The hatch was clear: he held the rungs with his hands curved under them, holding himself down from the upward rush that could kill him in the hatch.

  Grasping the edges, he rose through the hatch, stopped in the gap in the casing while he opened the valve on his oxygen bottle: the breath came more easily, and he wondered why at this, of all times, the goggles were keeping the water out of his eyes. He had never been through the practice tank without them leaking. He knelt on the casing, his fingers straining to keep him down, locked in the holes, and he edged to the side so that when he let himself go he’d miss the wire that stretched over his head. At other times, he had leant on that wire while he chatted in the sunlight.

  One hand still holding on, he used the other to free the rubber apron which would act as a sort of parachute in reverse: held out in both hands it would resist the water, slow his ascent to the surface.

  He let go, and at once floated clear of the casing: he arched his body, head back and chest out, his hands extending the apron. The jumping-wire flashed past him as he rose: his ears were blowing out of his head, the veins in his head were expanding, bursting as the pressure lessened: he was rising too fast and there was nothing he could do about it. The light grew, burst in his face as a wave hit him, rolled him over: his brain exploded in a million fragmented moments of the past two hours, and when the men in the rescue craft pulled him out of the water they thought that he was dead…

  Tommy looked up from where he sat slumped over the wardroom table. Sub had turned in. Tommy wondered if people noticed when he went through his daydream business. He thought, I went through that once, and you’d think that once was enough: now I go through it every ten days.

  There wasn’t much justice in it. There was only one consolation: having done that, having passed the highest test of submarining, he wanted nothing more. To him, there was no higher peak. He had lived his day, fought his war and won it. Now, all that he wanted was a quiet billet. He’d be on watch, in half an hour.

  * * *

  “Up periscope,” ordered the Sub. At the lift of the lever, the periscope rose quickly, hissing as the wires ran round the sheaves on the deckhead.

  “Stand by for a fix.” The messenger grabbed a signal-pad and poised a pencil over it.

  Sub took three bearings, and laid the position off on the chart. They were patrolling off the island, up and down an East–West line for three miles in each direction. It was the second day in the area, and so far they had seen nothing, except for seagulls that glided down on the wind and circled the periscope.

  Four o’clock came, and Number One took over the watch. Sub sat down to tea, buttered a piece of bread an inch thick and covered it with sardines. He had it half-way to his mouth when Number One’s voice came, sharp and urgent.

  “Captain, sir!”

  The Captain spilled his tea, and rushed into the Control Room. Sub lowered his sardines, and he and the Navigator looked at each other, wondering, hoping.

  “Diving stations!”

  The men were in their places, all eyes on the Captain, who hung on to the periscope, absorbed, silent. He moved it round, a little this way and that.

  Number One was intent on his own job, watching the depth and the trim.

  “Steer one-five-oh,” ordered the Captain. He swept round, all the horizon and the sky, then stopped again on the ta
rget, whatever it was. Suddenly he jerked the handles of the periscope up and stepped back, rubbing his chin, thoughtfully. As he stepped back, Featherstone pressed down the lever that sent the periscope back into its well.

  The Captain looked round.

  “It’s the convoy,” he said. “About a dozen junks. Can’t see any escort yet.” The low hum of the motors and the ticking of the electric log were the only sounds in the Control Room.

  Two minutes passed. “Up periscope.”

  “There they are. Two of them. Stand by Gun Action. Down periscope.”

  The routine swung into action, quickly and quietly.

  “Gun’s crew closed up, sir.”

  “Very good. Up periscope.” For a moment he searched the horizon all round. Then, back on the target, he said:

  “Target an M/L. Range five thousand yards. Bearing will be about green one-five-oh. Shoot.”

  “Deflection, sir?”

  “Set no deflection.” Sub passed the orders to the Gun’s crew. The Captain spoke again: “Wilkins.”

  “Sir?”

  “Your target is the other M/L. She’ll be right astern. You take the one to the right, understand?”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Starboard twenty, group up, fifty feet.”

  The submarine began to turn on to her attacking course, nosing down to fifty feet and increasing speed.

  “Steer three-one-five,” ordered the Captain.

  Wilkins’ eyes were hard and bright, his mouth a thin line. Jimmy was wishing he wasn’t a First Lieutenant, tied down to a job in the Control Room and only hearing the noise of the action. Tommy was checking the depth of the water, on the chart.

  Chief was thinking that this was one of the times when he’d rather be an executive officer than an engineer. To be down below, working blindly while the men on the gun and the bridge fought a battle, gave little satisfaction. He looked at the Sub, whose face showed only eagerness, impatience, and he thought, “Damned if I can understand that kid! He doesn’t know what the hell’s going to happen up there, he hasn’t even seen it. He’s like a terrier: get at it, boy, seek him out!”

  In most faces, looking round the Control Room, Chief saw tension, anxiety. Only the duller ones showed little feeling, and Sub was not by any means dull or insensitive. Chief thought that if this was an American film, Sub’s apparently fearless belligerence would be explained by his old mother having been raped by a Japanese soldier in Hong Kong. Chief knew of no such reason for the boy’s fanaticism.

  If the Sub had known that Chief regarded him as a fanatic, he would have laughed: not now, but later, he would have laughed. Now, his palms were running with sweat, his heart was pounding and in his mind he was saying a prayer: God, don’t let me lose my head. Don’t let them know that the last few minutes before we surface for a gun action are minutes of torture. He thought, If they saw how scared I was, they’d think that it was my skin that I was scared for, they’d think I was frightened of being killed. They wouldn’t believe that I was terrified of only one thing, of making a fool of myself, of messing up the shoot, letting down the Gun’s Crew, proving myself useless.

  At Dartmouth, he had been of little use, because he had disliked the life, the routine, the stiffness: now, at sea, he was proving to himself that he was not useless, that he could do anything as well as anyone else, that the Cadet at Dartmouth had not been John Ferris, but a John Ferris under the influence of Dartmouth.

  “Oh, Christ!” he thought, “Let’s get up there, get on with it!” After the first shot had been fired, the relief was always tremendous: between shouting directions to the Gun’s Crew and observing the fall of shot, he would wonder to himself what on earth he had been worrying about. This was easy: it always was.

  “Course three-one-five, sir,” reported the helmsman.

  “Fifty feet, sir,” growled the Second Cox’n.

  “Full ahead together.” The Captain had one foot on the bottom of the ladder. “Surface!”

  Number One had a whistle between his teeth. When the needle in the depth-gauge passed the fifteen-foot mark, he blew it, and the hatches were flung open as the boat surfaced.

  Blinding sunshine met them harshly after the soft artificial light in the submarine. There was the convoy, a straggle of nine or ten junks of varying sizes, just about right astern. Ahead of the convoy, broadside on to the submarine’s stern, was one of the anti-submarine launches. She was much the same size and shape as the usual British type of motor launch, the bridge high for her length, quick-firing guns dotted about her bridge and stern.

  Away from the island, between the convoy and the submarine and keeping abreast of the centre of the convoy, was a second craft of the same class.

  It took an effort to absorb this picture, so suddenly in view and so different from the picture that had been forming in their minds while they were waiting under water, but habit and the clear-cut orders overrode the momentary strangeness.

  The three-inch fired, and the enemy launch that had been ahead of the convoy swung away.

  “They’re running away, by God!” muttered the Captain.

  “Right eight, up four hundred, shoot!”

  But the launch was not running away: that swerve was only panic, or an error by the helmsman. Now she was swinging back again, heading straight for the submarine.

  “Down two hundred, shoot!”

  The other launch was also coming towards them, from the port quarter. Wilkins tried his Oerlikon for range, but the only splashes he could see were a long way short. He waited, watching his target.

  The third shot fell close to the first launch.

  “Down one hundred, shoot!” A few moments passed before they saw the shell explode in the launch’s bridge. A second hit, and the enemy was on fire. One more, and they could leave her where she was for the time being and pay a little attention to the other one.

  The Captain put his mouth to the mouth-pipe.

  “Slow ahead together!” he bellowed. He was going to let the second escort close in while the gun was trained round to the new target.

  Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly, and I’ll blast you over my port quarter.

  “Steer two-nine-oh.”

  The fourth shot was a hit, so was the sixth and the seventh and eighth, and that was enough, more than enough for the second enemy, who lay stopped and sinking.

  It was odd, this voice business: when he had been shouting at the Gun’s Crew, over the combined noise of the diesels, the Captain’s orders, the gun’s firing and the roar of the Oerlikon as Wilkins tried the range, Sub found that he couldn’t hear his own voice any more. After a few actions, though, when he found that the men on the gun had heard every word, he realised that it was his own ears and not his voice that was to blame.

  “She’s going, sir!” As he spoke, the second launch slowly disappeared. There were no survivors that anyone could see.

  “Starboard twenty, half ahead together. Stand by, Boarding Party.” The Captain straightened up from the voice-pipe, and shouted up at the Sub as he sat on the front edge of the bridge, “We’ll see if there are any survivors in that wreck, before we round up the junks.” He pointed at the first launch, now low in the water, stopped and smouldering.

  It had been ridiculously easy, thanks to a well-trained Gun’s Crew. It was often like that: when you expected something to be rough, it came smooth and simple, and when you came up for an easy little shoot some damn thing like an aeroplane turned up and queered the pitch.

  The launch had sunk several feet lower in the water. The shattered bridge had bodies and parts of bodies strewn about it. One dead sailor, evidently killed at his gun, lay slumped grotesquely across it.

  “Slow together,” ordered the Captain into the voice-pipe. “Put one shot into his water-line as we pass, Sub.”

  Sub shouted to the Gun’s Crew: “No deflection, no range – one shot into the water-line amidships, as we pass.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” sang out th
e Gunlayer, and the Loader shoved a shell into the breech. The Gun’s Crew were black with cordite-smoke, the whites of their eyes bright in their dark faces. The Gunlayer bent to his telescope, his hand on the trigger, and it was as the submarine drew level, about thirty yards away from the wreck, that it happened. The twisted figure in the sinking craft straightened itself on the gun, which was something like an Oerlikon, and a stream of explosive bullets lashed across the gap. The wounded man’s aim was bad, and the burst flew high. On Seahound’s bridge the Vickers machine-gunner brought his sights on and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. His gun was jammed. In a last effort the Jap forced up on the shoulder-rests of his gun, and at the moment that the three-inch shell burst and blew out the side of the enemy launch, Able Seaman Wilkins was cut almost in half.

  * * *

  Now for the junks, scattered, except for a nucleus of five that hung together like frightened sheep seeking comfort in numbers, and these could safely be left to wait until the odd ones had been rounded up.

  One had been sunk, and in one the charge had just exploded so that she had begun to settle in the water, when the unexpected happened again. Sub and his five men were in number three, one of the biggest. Except for Bird, they were all down below. The submarine lay alongside, seven Chinese from the first two junks squatting on the casing, guarded by the Gunlayer who had a revolver in one of his enormous fists.

  Suddenly the Captain shouted from the submarine’s bridge: “Get those men into the junk – I’m going to dive!”

  The Gunlayer rushed his Chinese forward and over the side, waving his gun and shouting abuse which they could hardly be expected to understand in detail but which was plain enough in effect.