Sub grinned at the T.I. “Well, Rawlinson, we sank the bastard. Three hits – not bad, eh?”
“I still can’t believe it, sir. We expecting trouble, now?”
“Expect so. There are two destroyers up there.” As he spoke, they heard one of the destroyers race across overhead. Her propellers churning the water made a noise like an express train going past. The T.I. looked round at his men.
“Now, lads,” he said, “there’ll be some dirt flying in a moment. It always sounds worse than it is.”
“That’s all right, Nursey,” answered Shadwell. “We’ve all ’eard it before. Bring on the flippin’ dancing-girls.”
No charges had been dropped, that time, but a moment later they heard the screws again. They seemed to pass on the port side and fade away ahead. Just before the sound faded, the first pattern of charges went off, a tearing crash that was too close, a sort of zonk effect as the blast bounced off the hull.
“That ain’t no flippin’ good,” remarked a torpedo-man. “’Ave to do better ’n that, old chums.”
“Don’t call those buggers chums, or I’ll do yer,” muttered Shadwell. The second destroyer made her run, evidently across the stern. The explosions seemed to be astern, anyway, but closer than the first lot. The submarine was shaken, and cork chips rained down from the paint overhead.
“Gettin’ warmer,” said Parrot.
“They’re not a patch on the Gerries, or the Wops, are they, sir?” The T.I. was speculating on the relative efficiency of the Axis powers. “Why, I remember once in the Med., off Sicily, we—”
That lot was bad. Sub was thrown across the compartment, landed in a heap with the T.I. and Parrot. The submarine had been rolled over and her stern thrown up by the exploding charges. It wouldn’t have to be much nearer than that. The telephone buzzed, and Sub answered it. It was the Control Room, a message from the Captain: “Report the situation for’ard.”
“Everything’s in order,” said Sub. He put the receiver back and grabbed hold of a stanchion as another pattern deafened them, shaking the submarine as a terrier shakes a rat.
In the Control Room, Number One fought with the trim, bringing the submarine out of a dive at two hundred and seventy feet.
“Two hundred feet,” ordered the Captain. “Port thirty, full ahead together.” Twisting and turning, trying all the tricks, yet the enemy seemed not to be easily fooled. Another pattern exploded, but this time they hardly felt it.
“Rotten shot,” said the Captain. “These Japs are no good.”
The Cox’n muttered: “I don’t think my Mum would like me to be ‘ere.”
The next pattern was a long time coming, a pause of about five minutes, while Saunders reported that one of the destroyers had stopped and that the other was going away. Then he reported, “Bearing drawing left, sir.”
“Very good.” The Captain acknowledged the report.
“Coming towards, sir. She’s turned round.”
“Very good.” The Captain ordered an alteration of course: “Starboard fifteen.”
The other destroyer, stopped, was in contact. They could hear the pings, like a mouse squeaking on the hull.
“Hundred and fifty feet, Number One.”
“Hundred and fifty feet, sir.” The needle was only just steady at the new depth when they heard the destroyer passing close again.
“Starboard twenty.” The helmsman swung his wheel over, his face as expressionless as the bulkhead door. Charges were on their way down, by now. A few seconds passed, and they seemed to explode under their feet, throwing the submarine up like a cork. Men were flung about, those who had unwisely not been holding on to anything. Cork chips spattered on them, and the lights went out. Someone cursed: the emergency lighting glowed feebly, throwing deep shadows in the compartment. At ninety feet, Number One got the angle under control, and they began to get down again. The lights came on.
“Report from the Motor Room,” snapped the Captain. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, and he dabbed at it with a handkerchief.
“All correct, sir. The switch threw off.”
“A hundred and fifty feet!”
“Hundred and fifty, sir.”
In the Engine Room, Chief and the Stoker Petty Officer sat on the steel step and swapped stories with the stokers. Stoker Johnson was just finishing one.
“‘Blimey’, she said, ‘so that’s what it’s for!’”
They all laughed, although Chief didn’t think it was particularly funny. He had heard lots of dirty stories, but he rarely thought any of them worth telling, and he thought that most were better not told at all. He could never remember the funny ones, the ones he wanted to remember. Only the stupid, sordid ones. He turned to the Stoker P.O.
“Have you heard the one,” he asked, “about the errand boy?”
“No,” answered the Petty Officer, “I don’t think so, sir.” He listened to it, right through to the end, through a pattern of depth-charges that sent the submarine down to three hundred and fifty feet, and at the end he joined in the general laughter. But he didn’t see anything funny in it, either; and in any case he had, actually, heard it before.
The hunt went on, and pattern after pattern exploded savagely round the submarine, which twisted and turned like an eel, twisted and turned in three dimensions as she altered depth sometimes deliberately and sometimes because the charges sent her temporarily out of control. In the for’ard Mess they had grown used to it, powerless to do anything but hang on and wait as the explosions came at more or less regular intervals and they felt the lift and tilt of the deck under their feet. The deck was carpeted in the cream-coloured chips of cork and paint. Shadwell stared at it gloomily.
“We’ll ’ave this flippin’ lot to clean up, I suppose, soon as them bastards get sick of droppin’ muck on us.” As he spoke a pattern exploded, a harsh, ringing crash. Sub, his eyes on the deckhead, could almost imagine that he saw the plates bulging inwards under the impact.
Chief Petty Officer Rawlinson’s hands, hidden in the pockets of his shorts, were clenched into fists. An experienced submariner, the survivor of dozens of such attacks, he knew that Seahound would not stand much more of this hammering. If the enemy held the contact, it would only be a matter of time. Ten minutes? … Half an hour? Nobody could tell when the last pattern would do its work. He looked up, and met the Sublieutenant’s eyes: through the mask that each of them had assumed, each could see that the other was under no delusions as to how things were going. Shadwell knew, too: he sat on the deck with his arms round his knees, singing softly, under his breath, a song about a lady of easy virtue.
Five minutes had passed since the last charges. Sub studied his watch, not letting himself give way to any premature hopes of escape. The T.I., seeing his action, pursed his lips and strained his ears for the sound of returning propellors. But all seemed quiet, still.
Ten minutes had passed. They looked at each other, and now in Rawlinson’s seasoned face was the dawn of relief. Five minutes later, when for a quarter of an hour the submarine had seemed to be steady and keeping an even depth while no explosions shattered the tense underwater silence, Sub looked round and grinned.
“Looks as though they’ve lost us, T.I.”
“Shouldn’t be surprised, sir.” Rawlinson was cleaning his nails with a small screwdriver.
* * *
As soon as Seahound surfaced that evening, the Petty Officer Telegraphist was busy tapping out a signal which Chief and Number One had spent the afternoon putting into cipher. When they had done it they gave it to the Captain to decipher, as a check, and they felt quite pleased with themselves when it came out into the original message again. The message announced the sinking with torpedoes of a Japanese cruiser of the Yashima class, the time and position of the sinking, and the fact that the escort of two destroyers were believed to have left the vicinity of the Andamans at 1300 hours on a course approximately North-East by East. It added that Seahound had suffered no damage.
&nb
sp; The telegraphist was still tapping when the Captain joined the others in the wardroom. There wasn’t much to say: the success was too big, too obvious, for comment. The Captain addressed the First Lieutenant:
“Number One – were there any breakages?”
“One or two, sir. Nothing very serious.”
“The Cox’n’s Store – was a rum-jar broken, by any chance?”
Number One smiled an odd smile. “There could easily have been, sir.” The Captain pressed the buzzer for a messenger.
“Tell the Cox’n I want to see him.”
Chief Petty Officer Smith heaved happily into sight. “See me, sir?”
“Cox’n – I believe a jar of rum was smashed during the fun and games this morning.”
“No, sir – I mean, yes, I believe one was, sir.”
“Very good, Cox’n. I’ll write it off. And now – splice the mainbrace.”
“Aye aye, sir.” It meant a double issue of rum for all hands, including officers, rum that on paper did not exist, since the jar had been smashed during the depth-charging and its contents were now, officially, mingled with a certain amount of dirty water in the bilges.
These things had to be seen to in an official manner.
Supper was cleared away when the dots and dashes became audible from the wireless office, where the telegraphist on watch was receiving a signal. Chief was in such an unusual frame of mind that he started quite happily to gather his books together, and set to work humming to himself.
It was a signal acknowledging their last one, a signal of very hearty congratulations. The Captain read it out to the Ship’s Company, over the broadcasting system. It had not been unexpected.
* * *
They realised afterwards how it was that they’d been lucky enough to get away with it. The Japanese squadron had sailed in a hurry, on last-minute orders. The two destroyers had only a few depth-charges on board, and they only had time before they sailed to get another truck-load each. This was discovered a week later, after the destroyers had been sunk by British destroyers and some prisoners were interrogated.
All the same, the score-board in the wireless office, where the Telegraphists sat during the depth-charging and made a cross for each explosion, showed a hundred and nineteen crosses.
* * *
Sub was dreaming about Sheila, Sheila and he in a canoe, and just at the moment, the embarrassing moment, that he was about to kiss her and she turned into Major Worth, he found himself awake on his bunk with a smell of fried breakfast and coffee in the air. Chief, who had shaken him out of his dream, was sitting there grinning at him.
“Look,” asked the Sub. “What’s going on?”
The Captain said: “Many Happy Returns, Sub.” Chief said the same thing. Number One shook his hand and said, “Congratulations, Sub.”
He’d forgotten all about it. It was his 21st birthday. Twenty-one: he’d been fighting in the war at sea for four years.
Chief handed him something wrapped up in a lot of brown paper and string. Sub took a dirty knife from somebody’s used plate, and cut the string: he unwrapped the paper and found a huge key.
“Key of the door,” explained Chief. “Featherstone filed it up last night.”
During his off-watch period, the E.R.A. had filed this outsize key from a lump of metal.
“Chef was busy too, last night.” Number One spoke. “Made you a birthday cake. He says he’s never baked a cake before, and he’s worried about how it’ll turn out.”
These were the gifts that counted; they were the emblems of friendship and affection of men who gave neither lightly.
“How does it feel to be twenty-one, Sub?”
“All I feel at the moment is hungry. Wilkins!” – They all started, and as he shouted the name the memory hit him in the pit of his stomach and his head swam with the way it hurt, and the fool he felt was plain in his face.
“I’m sorry. I’m damned sorry.” He thought: well, twenty-one isn’t old enough, it seems. I’ll have to be forty before I stop making frightful, unforgivable mistakes like that. With the one shout he had wrenched savagely at the new scar on a fresh, painful wound, and he had seen the quick, shocked pain in three faces. Now, in his mind, he saw the way Wilkins drooped and slumped as his lungs came out through his sides and the blood, the ribs, and his grey broken face. Dear God, forgive…
“Sub.”
“Sir.”
“Your breakfast is getting cold. And don’t be a damn fool. Any of us could have done that.”
Yes, any of them could have, the habit of over a year of breakfasts combining with the sleepy brain. Any of them. The trouble was, it had been he. He thought to himself: it always is.
* * *
After the strain of watch-keeping in enemy waters, the watches on the surface on the way home across the Indian Ocean were a welcome relaxation. Clad only in a pair of shorts under the blazing sun the men recovered their tan, drank in fresh air and looked forward to the spell in harbour. They took things easily, and with the knowledge of the success behind them and the welcome ahead they were happy days.
Sub came off watch at noon, relieved by Number One while the Navigator took a noon sight of the sun. In this weather, taking a sight was simple: it was when the weather was really bad that the process became almost impossible, when as soon as the sextant reached the bridge, wrapped in a towel, a green wave hurled itself into the bridge and the wet sextant was useless. The terrific motion of the submarine was no help, either.
Sub had stepped off the ladder in the Control Room and turned round to make his way into the wardroom when Chief Petty Officer Rawlinson stopped him.
“Torpedo Officer, sir. There’s a buzz that it’s your twenty-first birthday today. That right, sir?”
“It is, T.I.” Sub’s hand was grasped in the other man’s, pumped vigorously up and down.
“All the best, sir. Could you spare a moment? We’d like you to come for’ard, for a moment.”
They walked for’ard together, to the Petty Officer’s Mess. The Cox’n and the Stoker Petty Officer greeted him warmly, and, after pulling the curtain across the entrance to the Mess, the Cox’n handed him a glass with an inch of dark brown rum in the bottom of it.
“Thanks, Cox’n.” Sub threw it down in one gulp, as a proper sailor should, and they watched with approval in their eyes. He shook hands with them all, hoping that the burn in his throat wouldn’t make his eyes water and let him down in front of these men whose assessment of a man was valuable. As he left the little Mess, Shadwell was standing outside, waiting for him.
“Torpedo Officer, sir – would you come for’ard for a minute, please?”
Oh, my God. The Sub blinked. “Certainly, Shadwell. What is it?” He pretended he didn’t know what it was all about.
About a dozen sailors were waiting for him in the for’ard Mess. Bird handed him a glass of rum, and Rogers said, “Dahn the ’atch, sir.” They watched him closely as he threw the rum back into his throat.
“Thank you, gentlemen. The best twenty-first I ever had.” They laughed, liking him. Rogers muttered, under his breath, “Proper toff, young Subby.” Sub went aft to his lunch. The rum was warm in his stomach. What was it they called rum? Nelson’s Blood. No wonder Nelson was a ball of fire, with this stuff in his veins.
After lunch, Sub lay on his bunk, and he saw a picture of Sussex and the party that there would have been if he’d been at home. He could see all the faces that would have been round the table that evening, and he knew that he and those faces would never really know each other again. That had been the centre, the focal point of his life: now Sussex was only the background, something soft to think about.
These men were the friends he wanted, and this was the life he wanted to lead. That was why he knew that the future was going to be no good for him: he didn’t want it. His young world was tottering on the precipice of peace.
Chapter 8
With the coast of Ceylon in sight, all hands were turned-to to mak
e Seahound look her best. This was to be their hour, probably Seahound’s last and greatest performance. Not the smallest piece of brass was left unpolished: by the time they were in the Bay, when Sub and the casing party came up, they felt as though they shouldn’t walk on the bridge or touch any part of it. The Gunlayer gave his beloved gun an admiring glance as he passed it.
“All right, sir?”
“Not at all bad, Layer.” No submarine gun had never looked better. Nobody would have thought that this submarine had been on patrol, and nobody would ever have dreamt that she had had such a rough handling. It was a strange thing, but understandable to a war-time flotilla, that a submarine arriving from her home port after a peaceful voyage could look weathered and battered, while the same submarine returning from a hard patrol could look like a showpiece for Navy Week.
Still out in the bay, they came in sight of the Depot Ship, and from her tall bridge a lamp flashed, a signal demanding that the submarine identify herself. The Signalman looked proud as he sent Seahound’s signal letter and number flashing across in answer. On the casing, Sub’s party had the gear ready for going along-side, and now the men were lined up fore-and-aft, their white uniforms gleaming cleanly in the evening sun.
Over the submarine’s bridge flew the Jolly Roger, their personal flag. Above and just to the left of the grinning skull was a new red bar that stood for the cruiser, and in the centre at the bottom was a white dagger, the sign of a Special Operation. Everything that they had done or destroyed was there on the flag, the record of their victories.
As Seahound swung into the gap in the boom defences, a shrill V-sign hooted from the siren of the little boom-vessel. On her grimy bridge stood an officer and three ratings, shouting and waving their caps. The Captain gave them a friendly wave as the submarine swept through and past: ahead lay the Depot Ship, her decks lined thickly with sailors. Seahound crossed the stern of the big ship, and the two exchanged salutes, the thin pipe and the lordly bugle-call in answer. As the last note of the bugle fell silvery across the harbour, a thousand men began to cheer, a barrage of applause, their caps raised high, a sea of white over the massed brown faces.
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