* * *
The day was spent making a periscope reconnaissance of the beach and its surroundings. The Captain and the Major spent most of the time in the Control Room. It was a strange sensation, this proximity to the enemy for whom they felt such a personal loathing. Meals in the wardroom were haphazard, social intercourse was disorganised by constant interruptions, by the necessity for searching through a heap of maps for the butter, or removing the chart to fix the position of a knife and fork. The soldiers were restless, more so after each had been given a long look at their landing-place: Captain Selby had lost his glasses, but he seemed perfectly at home without them.
The soldiers were a source of great interest to the submarine officers, who watched them and talked to them rather as prison warders might behave towards men condemned to the gallows. Nothing was too much trouble. The objects of their sympathetic interest, though obviously anxious for the dark hours to come, appeared unaffected by the imminence of what seemed at any rate to Chief to be a certain death. Chief made himself particularly helpful to the guests, continually making suggestions and offering friendly advice as to the best manner of handling canoes. He was a yachtsman himself, he explained, and he knew quite a bit about handling small craft. He left little doubt, in the course of his suggestions, that it would only be a one-way journey.
After tea they put the maps away, and the Captain, after a final talk with the Major, said, “Right, Number One. We’ll surface at nine-thirty. All canoes will be away by nine-fifty at the latest, and we’ll dive again at about eleven. You can tell the hands.”
Supper was ready at six-thirty, finished and cleared away at seven. Number One pressed the buzzer for the messenger, sent for the Cox’n.
“Cox’n: tell the T.I. to have the for’ard Mess unrigged. Everything in the gangway and in the Leading Hands’ Mess.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The Hands turned to, taking hammocks, kitbags, the table and everything moveable out of the for’ard Mess.
At about eight, the Captain said, “Sub. Get the canoes and tackles ready up for’ard.”
“Aye aye, sir.” Sub climbed for’ard over the heaps of gear that now littered the gangway. He found the for’ard compartment bare, except for some disconsolate seamen.
“Right. We’ll get the canoes out of the racks. Shadwell: get the tackles ready.”
At half-past eight they were finished, the canoes lying on the deck ready to be hauled up to the hatch. A block was provided to be hooked on at the top of the hatch-way, the rope already rove through it and one end of the rope, fitted with a spring-hook, secured to the bow of the first canoe. Sub looked round at the preparations.
“All right, T.I.,” he said to Rawlinson. “It’s all yours. As soon as you hear me give three bangs on the outside of the hatch, open up fast. By the time it’s open you should have the first canoe right up behind it. If I blow one long blast on the whistle, you shut the hatch and clamp it, and it doesn’t matter who’s up top. You don’t wait for anyone to get inside. That clear?”
“Yes, sir. All clear.”
Sub reported to the Captain that all was ready. The Major turned to his officers and said, “Right. Get dressed.” The four of them went forward, collecting the sergeants on the way. Their packs were in the for’ard compartment with the canoes.
Shortly after nine o’clock, an unrecognisable Major returned to the wardroom. He was wearing an unusual sort of green battledress uniform, and all over him was strapped every sort of weapon from a knife to a Tommy-gun. His face and hands were blackened.
“We’re all set, Hallet,” he told the Captain. The latter stared at him, then turned to Number One. “Look out for me here, Number One. I’m going for’ard for a moment.”
In the for’ard Mess the Captain found seven other apparitions. He felt glad that he was not a guard on the beach: these quiet gentlemen who had sipped tea in the wardroom looked viciously efficient.
He said, “So long, you fellows; It’s been nice having you. See you in a couple of days, and I can speak for all this ship’s company when I say good luck. Au revoir, Major. Give ’em hell.” He shook their black hands, one by one, and he felt ridiculously emotional.
“Cheerio, old man,” said the Major. “You’ve done a thundering good job for us. Day after tomorrow: two blue flashes, eh?”
“Two blue flashes,” agreed the Captain, and he turned on his heel and made his way back to the Control Room.
“Red lighting,” he ordered. “Diving Stations in five minutes’ time.”
Chapter 7
“Stand by to surface.”
The Captain stared into the periscope as he gave the order and the report came back from the compartments. They had closed in towards the beach, as close as they could go submerged. Number One turned to the Captain.
“Ready to surface, sir.”
The Captain took a final look all round, then stepped back, and Featherstone sent the periscope down.
“Surface!”
Sub was standing by in the wardroom with Bird and three other seamen. As soon as the Captain and the Signalman had vanished up the ladder into the Conning Tower, he brought his party into the Control Room where they stood waiting for the order to go aloft.
“Slow ahead together,” came the order from the bridge, and the messenger sprang to the telegraphs. They were moving in.
“Control Room!”
“Control Room.”
“Casing party on the bridge.” Sub jumped on to the ladder and his party scrambled up behind him.
On the bridge, he caught his breath at the unusual sight. They were right up to the beach, a short, low-lying piece of land with the ground on either side rising sharply into cliffs. There was no moon, but they were so close that the silhouette of the land was quite clear, the high cliffs towering over the submarine. He wondered if anyone on those cliffs might be watching, waiting.
“All right Sub. Carry on.” Over the side of the bridge, finding the cut-away footholes by long practice without having to grope. As he hurried for’ard along the casing he grabbed a wheel-spanner from Bird who was close behind him, jumped down the three steel steps on to the pressure-hull and banged three times on the hatch with the wheel-spanner. He heard the clatter inside as they took off the last clip: evidently the T.I. had lost no time, because almost immediately the big hatch swung open. Sub grabbed the block with the ropes running through it and hooked it quickly on an eyebolt on the casing outside the hatch. The bow of the first canoe rushed up towards him as the men down below heaved away on the tackle: he grabbed it, snatched off the spring-hook, and dropped the gear back into the hatch. Bird and another man were already lowering the first canoe over the side: it slid rasping down the side of the casing and rode alongside. The Major and his sergeant were on the casing, climbing down over the side, and thirty seconds after the time that the hatch swung open the soldiers released the lines holding the canoe and the first one had gone. The second canoe was on the casing, and down below in the forward compartment they were snapping the spring-hook on to the bow of the third. Nobody had said a word.
The pitch-black night swallowed the tiny craft with their circling paddles: the sounds they made were inaudible at more than ten yards’ range. The fourth and last canoe was gone: Bird threw all the lines and loose gear into the hatch, and he and his men jumped after it. Sub slammed it down and as he turned away to get back to the bridge he heard the men inside working at the clips.
The sea lay as flat as a slab of polished marble, the air warm and soft. The coastline rose black behind her as the submarine turned and headed slowly, silently, out into the Straits.
The Captain said, “All right, Sub, you go down. Tell Number One to go to Patrol Routine, and run all the fans. I’ll stay up here. We’ll dive in an hour.”
There was a feeling of anti-climax. The wardroom seemed almost deserted, with only the few submariners to share it. In the Petty Officers’ Mess the Cox’n looked round the tiny space and murmured, “Blimey – what’l
l we do with all this flippin’ room?” Up forward, the seamen were putting their gear back in its place. All thoughts were with the soldiers, hoping for them and touching wood. They had made themselves many good friends in the past week, shown themselves as good messmates. On the bridge, the Captain stared at the coast, expecting at any moment to hear the sharp rattle of machine guns or see the dazzling swoop of an alarm-rocket. But all was quiet, as quiet as the grave.
* * *
The men were at their Diving Stations, the fans stopped. From the voice-pipe came the order, “Dive, dive, dive.” As the Captain shut the voice-pipe in the bridge and jumped into the hatch, Featherstone pulled out the levels that opened the vents, and the messenger shut the valve on the bottom of the voice-pipe.
Slowly, silently, the submarine sank on an even keel, no way on, just settling down towards the bottom. The Captain and Number One watched the depth-gauge, as Number One worked the order instrument and the internal tanks were gradually flooded to bring the submarine down to the bottom of the Straits.
“Another five feet, about.” She was still going down, very slowly, the needle crawling round the gauge. Then the slightest of bumps from for’ard, and she settled on the mud. Flood a little more in the for’ard trimming tank, the weight to act as an anchor. She was bottomed.
The Captain spoke quietly. “We’ll be staying here until midnight tomorrow night. Then we’ll surface for two hours and run the fans, and dive again until the next night when we pick up the Army.
“Any man who makes a noise of any sort will be for it in a big way. If one of your stokers, Chief, drops a wheel-spanner in the Engine Room, I’ll kick him to death. Any sound can give us away. There are to be no lights other than what’s absolutely necessary, and no unnecessary movement. I want everyone off watch to sleep, all the time if they can. That won’t be difficult, for some of you.” The Captain glanced at Chief again as he said it.
“Right, Number One. The hands can go into four watches. Officers of the Watch as usual. Carry on.”
It is always quiet in a dived submarine at Patrol Routine. Now, under these circumstances, there was not even the low hum of the motors, nor any noise from the air-conditioning plant. Silence, complete silence, such as a lone mountaineer knows and few others in a noisy world have ever encountered, settled through the compartments. A coarse whisper in the Control Room raised a smile in the wardroom. The silence was deadening, suffocating, as the heat began to build up in the steel tube which, lying in tepid, shallow water, would be like an oven when the sun rose in the morning.
Number One shook Chief violently by the shoulder to wake him up. Chief looked up angrily from his sweat-damp bunk.
“Lie on your side, damn you. You’ve been snoring. I thought it was the klaxon.”
* * *
The Captain lay on his bunk, smiling to himself as he thought about his last leave and Bird, the Second Cox’n. On their last evening he and Chief had quite a few bottles left intact, and so they hired a small room on the ground floor of the hotel and invited a score of the Seahound’s sailors, who were spending their leave in the local rest-camp, to come up. It turned out to be a riotous evening, with much singing as the spirits sank in the bottles and rose in the men. The Manageress, a little woman who could easily have been a blood-relation of a hen, met Bird when he was on the way to the lavatory. Bird was singing at the top of his voice, and she told him to be quiet. He was in no mood to be treated in that manner by a person whom he considered to be a “silly old geyser”, and after a certain amount of Billingsgate repartee he gave chase, brandishing the gong-stick and uttering threats.
As they flashed through the small lounge, the Captain observed, “She shows a remarkable turn of speed, for her age.”
Chief agreed. “‘m. But I’d put my money on Bird, from the point of view of endurance.”
“Oh, dear,” said the Captain. “I suppose I’d better do something. Shadwell – Parrot – go and catch Bird and put some sense into him.”
A few minutes later they brought him back, fed-up and depressed. “Proper flippin’ leave this is,” he complained.
* * *
Looking back, afterwards, on those two days spent lying on the bottom, none of them could produce very clear recollections. It took in their minds the form of a pipe-dream: it was seen through a haze of heat, an opaque, heavy curtain of heat that hung over the eyes and dulled the ears, choked and stifled any coherent thought about how the time had been spent. There were blurred recollections of waking in a bunk that was a pool of sweat, taking over a watch in a silent Turkish Bath of irritation, depression and impatience. There were vague memories of meals that consisted always of corned beef, corned beef that was unrecognisable because it had melted into a greasy soup which was eaten with dry bread because the butter ran like water and could only have been poured on from a jug. There were memories of the Captain and the First Lieutenant forcing men to put salt in their drinking water to replace the salt that they were losing in sweat, and the taste of the warm salted water mingled with the blanket of heat, until you felt that you could scream, but no screaming would have made any difference.
In the after Mess, a very young stoker began to giggle to himself, and he went on giggling for over an hour in spite of his messmates’ attempts to stop the horrible noise. After a time the Leading Stoker had a word with Stoker Johnson, who was a large, very powerful and kindly man, and Johnson stopped the giggling in the only possible way, a short, swift right-arm jab to the jaw that brought relief to everyone and was just in time to stop a few others giving way to the pressure in their brains.
In the middle of the night the nightmare was interrupted when they surfaced for two hours and ran the fans to clear the air. It was a relief, but the faces of the men as they stood open-mouthed gulping in the cool night air, noisily like pigs at a trough, bore expressions of weary apprehension, the faces of men whose torture would shortly be resumed, as resumed it was when at two in the morning the hatch crashed down and they sank to the bottom to do it all over again.
At eleven o’clock on the second night the Captain, wearing a strip of torn shirt round his head to keep the sweat out of his eyes, walked into the Control Room and said, “Diving Stations.” To the men who heard it, the order meant only one thing: relief, fresh air, cool air. To the Captain it meant much more. It meant that within an hour he would know whether they’d failed or succeeded, whether the Major and his men were dead or alive. If the party failed to appear at midnight, or by one o’clock, which was the agreed time-limit, his orders were to leave the area. It would mean, if the soldiers were not there, that they were either killed or captured, and that meant that the enemy would have an idea that a submarine was at the bottom of the Straits. In those circumstances his duty was to save his ship, and nothing else. This was the zero hour.
Number One disturbed his thoughts. “Ready to surface, sir.”
“Surface.” Water was pumped out of the trimming tanks, and after a few minutes they felt the submarine move. The needle jerked a little in the depth gauge, and began to circle slowly. At periscope depth the Captain ordered, “Up periscope,” and carefully searched round. He stayed at the periscope for five minutes, while Number One battled with the trim and the submarine moved slowly ahead on one motor.
“Surface!” The word was music.
* * *
The Signalman stands in the centre of the bridge, behind the Captain and the Sub-Lieutenant. The Captain’s glasses are motionless, fixed on the small strip of beach. Sub keeps an all-round lookout, continually resisting the temptation to stop his glasses on the shore and watch for the signal. Below, in the Control Room, Bird and his men wait under the hatch. Up for’ard, the T.I. and his torpedo-men sit in the empty Mess and wait.
Suddenly there’s a gasp from the Captain.
“Signalman!” The Signalman jumps to his side, the blue lamp ready. The Captain speaks again: “No – wait… Yes, by God! On the left edge of the beach. Two blue flashes… Give ’e
m two flashes, damn you!” The Signalman sights his lamp at the beach, presses the trigger twice. The Captain shouts down the voice-pipe.
“Tell the T.I. to stand by. Tell the First Lieutenant to be ready for any casualties. Slow ahead together. Casing party on the bridge.”
He straightens up, and says quietly to the Sub, “Go on down. Don’t open up until I give you the word.” A few minutes pass, and the Captain sees the first canoe, half-way between the shore and the submarine. He shouts over the front of the bridge, “Stand by! Open up, Sub!”
Out of the night shoots the first canoe: it slides alongside, and they grab hold of it, lying on the casing. The men scramble out and Bird and Parrot lift the canoe out of the water and slide it into the hatch where hands are waiting to receive it. The Major climbs down after it, but the man with him is no sergeant. He is small, grey-haired, a civilian in a crumpled, off-white suit. They are too busy to wonder about it as the next canoe comes alongside: it contains Captain Bowers and his sergeant. The third canoe is manned by only one sergeant, the other cockpit empty. The last one holds young Montgomery and his sergeant.
All the canoes are inside. “Down you go,” jerks out Sub, out of breath from the exercise: his men leap into the hatch, and he slams it shut and hurries aft along the casing to the bridge. He’s wondering who the little civilian is, and where are Captain Selby and one sergeant. At the same time he’s thinking “We’ve done it!”
Surface! Page 13