The Ocean Liner

by Marius Gabriel

  ‘Go below at once, Hufnagel. Or I will shoot you.’

  Hufnagel waited, staring at the shadowy figure of his captain. He had the conviction that the man confronting him was a coward, whose will was weaker than Hufnagel’s own. When Todt’s hand made no move towards the pistol at his side, he turned to the rating who was standing nervously by the signal lamp. ‘Signal her to stop.’ He spelled out the English words for the signalman: STOP SHIP.

  The frightened rating glanced at Todt. There was no response from him. The rating switched on the lamp. The dazzling beam speared through the darkness towards the ship. After waiting a few seconds for the ship to notice the light, the rating began to rattle the signal slats open and shut.

  SS Manhattan

  Commodore Randall had spent most of the night on the bridge. He had looked in on the talent show, but had not found anything very amusing to keep him. The feeling of anxiety would not leave him. He went back to the wheelhouse and made himself a nuisance there, keeping everyone on the qui vive. George Symonds persuaded him to turn in during the darkest hour before dawn, and he went along to his cabin, yawning.

  He had just fallen asleep when he was awoken by the sensation of his ship’s engines powering down. He was already pulling his uniform over his pyjamas when a rating began pounding on his cabin door.

  He reached the bridge a few minutes later to find George Symonds and his other officers staring at the flickering light of a communication lamp out in the darkness.

  ‘It’s a German submarine,’ Symonds said tersely. ‘She’s signalling us to stop the ship. I gave the “All Stop” order.’

  ‘You did the right thing. Signal back “American ship”. Keep signalling that at one-minute intervals. In the meantime, I want the radio completely silent. No transmissions at any cost. All watertight doors closed and all crew at action stations. Sound the general alarm and get all the passengers into the lifeboats.’

  Symonds did not question his captain’s orders. The cadet in charge of the signal blinker relayed the message rapidly to the unknown submarine. Manhattan’s alarm bells began to ring throughout the ship, in the crew’s quarters, in the public areas where the cots were set out in rows, and in every passenger cabin.

  Fanny Ward awoke in terror with a vision of the flames that had engulfed Dotty and Terence, hearing their dreadful screams in her ears. But the screams were the strident calls of an alarm that wouldn’t stop. She heaved off the heavy eiderdown and went to peer out of her door. The corridor was full of people in their nightclothes, and stewards shouting instructions about lifeboats.

  ‘Is it a drill?’ she asked of a man in uniform pushing past, her voice quavering.

  ‘No, Miss, it’s not a drill. Get your life jacket on and get to the lifeboats as quick as you can, and don’t take anything with you.’

  She groped her way to the chest of drawers and took out her jewellery box. It was massive and heavy, far too massive and heavy for her to carry very far. She unlocked it with unsteady fingers and opened the lid. Inside, tucked into the satin-lined shelves and compartments, was the best of her jewellery. She stared at the glittering array with watery eyes. The rings, the brooches. The heavy bracelets, the necklaces and collarets, the tiaras. Such a mass of gold and platinum, of diamonds, rubies, emeralds. Which should she take? The most valuable? The ones with most sentimental value?

  The shrilling of the alarm invaded her head. It wouldn’t let her think clearly. Blindly, she clutched at the glittering mass and pulled out two handfuls at random. She began thrusting bangles on to her wrists, rings on to her fingers.

  Thomas König had awoken instantly, knowing exactly what he must do. He rolled out of bed and grabbed his clothes and his life jacket, pulling them on over his pyjamas. Ignoring the confused Stravinsky, who was querulously asking what was going on, he went out of the door and ran towards the Morgenstern girls’ cabin. People were starting to spill out of their doors, choking the passageways, but he lowered his hard head and butted his way through, giving no quarter and asking none.

  Reaching their cabin, he hammered on the door, and then burst in. Less than three minutes had passed since the alarm had begun to sound, and the girls were still in their nightgowns, in a state of panic, pulling possessions out of their closets.

  ‘Leave all that,’ Thomas said sharply. ‘Get dressed quickly.’ They stared at him dazedly. ‘Get dressed,’ he commanded. ‘Leave everything. There may not be much time.’

  His voice, suddenly that of a young man, rather than a boy, seemed to penetrate their confusion. They began to pull on their clothes.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Rachel demanded.

  ‘We have to get to the lifeboats. Get dressed. Warm things. Put on warm things. Quickly.’ Masha snatched up her precious red leather coat while Thomas reached under their bunks and hauled out the life jackets that were stowed there.

  Toscanini had been dozing in a deckchair, wrapped up in three blankets against the biting Atlantic cold. He leaped to his feet, cursing, and hurried to the rail. Out in the blackness, a dazzling pinpoint of light was flickering. An enemy submarine! The ship was about to be torpedoed.

  ‘Carla!’ he exclaimed. He snatched up his cane and hurried off to find her. But he had no sooner reached the top of the companionway when a torrent of passengers emerged, driving him back. He tried to fight his way down through the throng, but he was far too frail to make any headway. He was pushed aside like a dry leaf, and found himself sitting on the deck, without his hat, his stick, or breath in his lungs.

  U-113

  U-113’s torpedoes had all been loaded into the launching tubes. The U-boat was now within two miles of the target. Since the ship had obligingly stopped, there could be no doubt about the bearing, speed or range. The vessel was the biggest and easiest target they had ever had.

  Todt had manoeuvred the U-boat into position off the other vessel’s port amidships, where her torpedoes would go straight into the engine room.

  Todt himself was at the master sight on the bridge. He had taken all the readings, and passed them to the target-bearing transmitter, an anonymous grey box which contained an advanced, high-powered calculator that had already fed the information into the brains of the three weapons. They would run true, homing to their target with deadly intent.

  Even a single strike at the water line would inflict a mortal wound: great loss of life, the sea pouring into the engine compartment, the ship starting to founder. Three strikes would be hard to survive.

  ‘Flood torpedo tubes one, three and four,’ Todt commanded.

  The answer came through the intercom. ‘Flooding tubes one, three and four.’

  The sound of water rushing into the tubes came to their ears.

  ‘I’m going to signal them to abandon ship,’ Hufnagel said.

  Todt did not take his face away from the aiming column. He had the cross hairs fixed on the centre of the ship. ‘I will give them ten minutes,’ he said.

  Hufnagel turned to the signalman who was waiting beside the blinker. ‘Send: “Will sink you. Ten minutes to abandon ship”.’

  ‘I don’t know how to send it in English,’ the rating said sheepishly.

  ‘I’ll write it out for you.’ Hufnagel took his notebook from his pocket and wrote the English words for the signalman. ‘Don’t make any mistakes.’

  SS Manhattan

  Commodore Randall was on the bridge when the new signal came in. He watched the blinking light impassively.

  ‘They’re giving us ten minutes to abandon ship,’ the rating stammered nervously but unnecessarily, for they had all understood the Morse Code.

  ‘Heave to,’ he commanded the helmsman. The great liner swung slowly to starboard, presenting the U-boat with its broad side.

  ‘You’re giving them a perfect target,’ Symonds said in dismay.

  ‘I’m giving them a good look at our funnel. Get as many lights on it as you can. And keep signalling, “American ship”.’

  He had deemed it best
not to order a lifeboat drill before now. The Manhattan was so heavily overcrowded that it would inevitably cause chaos. And the truth was that the ship’s sixteen passenger lifeboats, together with two for the crew, were inadequate for the number of souls that would have to be saved. The realising of this would have caused unnecessary dismay among those on board. Like the Titanic, there were going to be hundreds who would have to either jump or go down with the ship. He himself knew he would choose the latter option.

  ‘How is manning the lifeboats progressing?’ he asked.

  ‘Surprisingly little panic,’ Symonds replied. ‘It’s going to take longer than ten minutes, though. And there will be a lot of passengers left standing.’

  ‘We’ll put the excess passengers in the crew lifeboats. You agree?’

  ‘Aye-aye, Captain.’

  Randall grunted and trained his night-glasses on the location of the U-boat, around a mile and a quarter away. After that last, ominous signal, she had remained silent. He could just make out a light, presumably on her jackstaff.

  ‘Strange,’ he said in a conversational tone. ‘Here’s a group of boys eager to do the right thing by their country. Probably kind to animals and good to their mothers. If you met them at a baseball game they’d be fine fellows whose hands you would shake. Yet here they are, itching to kill us all, even though they know that doing that is going to break thousands of hearts just like their mothers’ hearts, and wreck thousands of innocent lives, just like their own lives. Can you figure that out, George?’

  ‘No, sir, I cannot.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘They’re signalling again,’ the cadet called.

  They watched in silence. This time the message was even shorter:

  ‘Ten minutes.’

  Randall turned to the signalman. ‘Change the message. Send: “Manhattan, American liner”. Keep sending that. Don’t stop.’

  ‘Sending,’ the cadet said, operating the blinker with arms that were by now starting to ache.

  ‘What if they don’t understand English?’ Symonds asked.

  ‘Then let’s keep them busy consulting their dictionaries, rather than calculating torpedo trajectories, George.’

  Nobody recognised Fanny Ward as the sailor pushed her on to her lifeboat. Her knobbly hands so loaded with rings and bangles that she could hardly lift them, her scrawny neck so weighted with necklaces that her head drooped, she stumbled over the thwarts and almost fell on to Mrs Kennedy.

  ‘Help the old lady,’ Mrs Kennedy snapped at Patricia. Pat grabbed Miss Ward’s arm and guided her to her seat. She collapsed into it with a gasp. Wigless, unpainted, she crumpled into her life jacket like an old tortoise drawing its head and limbs into its shell. Mrs Kennedy suddenly perceived that the old woman was the Eternal Beauty, wearing a fortune in heavy jewellery.

  If that old crone falls overboard, she thought to herself, she’ll go straight to the bottom with all her bullion.

  Madame Quo Tai-Chi was hampered, as she clambered into the lifeboat, by the Ming Dynasty vase she was clutching to her chest. The thing was huge, nearly half as big as she was, ornately (and auspiciously) painted with horses galloping over waves. It was four hundred years old, as priceless as it was fragile. But it caused resentment among the other occupants of the lifeboats, as did the second Ming vase, only slightly less huge, carried by her young son Edward, who followed close behind her.

  ‘You can’t bring those damned things on to the lifeboat,’ someone exclaimed. ‘Throw them overboard!’

  Mrs Quo, who had already had an argument with the rating who’d tried to wrest the thing out of her arms, ignored the complaint. ‘Make room,’ she commanded imperiously. She pushed herself into her rightful place, using her surprisingly sharp elbows to make room. As she settled down, it was revealed that, in addition to the Ming vase, she was also carrying, tucked into her life jacket, a large, signed and framed photograph of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek. Her son followed suit, inserting himself next to her. Holding tightly on to the vase, she and Madame Chiang stared grimly ahead.

  Thomas König helped Masha to pull the life preserver over her head. The thing was very bulky, made of rubberised fabric, a bilious yellow in colour, and festooned with a confusing tangle of toggles and straps. Thomas, however, seemed to understand how the thing was intended to work. He tied the tapes securely at her back, pulling them tight. Then he performed the same task for Rachel. Both young women were in a state of confused alarm, like everyone else; but Thomas appeared to know just what he was doing. He shepherded them out of their cabin and into the passageway, which was jammed with passengers. ‘That way,’ he commanded. The going was difficult. But halfway to the exit, Masha suddenly swung round.

  ‘Stravinsky’s manuscript. It’s still in the cabin!’

  ‘Forget it,’ Thomas said, pulling her arm, ‘we have to get to the lifeboats. The ship may go down at any moment.’

  But Masha burst into tears. ‘He trusted me with it. I can’t lose it!’

  ‘Stay here.’ Pushing the girls into an alcove, Thomas fought his way back along the corridor to the girls’ cabin. Bruised and breathless, he found the portfolio on the little writing desk, and snatched it up. He stuffed it into his own life jacket and went back to find Masha and Rachel.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ he said tersely as he reached them. ‘No more delays, come.’

  The lifeboat deck was chaotic, seething with hordes of passengers in livid-yellow life jackets trying to find salvation. Those who had been put in cabins had been allocated numbered seats on the boats. But all those who had been billeted in the public areas – many hundreds of people – had none. The crew were bawling orders through loudhailers, telling those who had no numbers to make for the crew lifeboats in the stern of the ship. But some were clambering into lifeboats not meant for them, and others were being pushed aside in the crush; and some, still under the impression that this was a drill, were asking whether they could go back to their cabins, now. But it was not a drill.

  Bleary-eyed children clutching dogs and cats trotted in the wake of fathers clutching babies. Mothers with little ones hanging on their skirts hunted frantically for their boats. They passed an elderly man being hauled out of his wheelchair and dumped unceremoniously into a boat.

  Alternately pulling and pushing the girls along, Thomas forged a path through the mob. ‘Thomas, where are you taking us?’ Rachel shouted.

  ‘Your boat is number sixteen. It’s the very last one at the rear of the ship, on this side.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ she demanded.

  He didn’t waste his breath replying. Reaching their lifeboat, he gave their names to the rating stationed there, and then helped them climb aboard.

  ‘Aren’t you coming?’ Masha called from her seat.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m going to get Monsieur Stravinsky.’

  ‘Thomas, no. Come back!’

  But he was already gone.

  Cubby Hubbard, bundled into his life preserver, was running from lifeboat to lifeboat, hunting for Rosemary. She was nowhere to be seen. But at last he caught sight of Mrs Kennedy, sitting in one of the boats with Teddy and Patricia. He hauled himself into the boat and clambered over the cursing passengers.

  ‘Where’s Rosemary?’ he demanded.

  Mrs Kennedy, who seemed dazed by events, turned to face him. ‘Rosemary?’ she repeated, as though hearing the name for the first time.

  ‘Yes, Rosemary. Where is she? I don’t see her anywhere!’

  Her eyes focused on Cubby, recognising him. Her expression hardened. ‘Rosemary’s not on the ship, you poor fool.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I sent her back to her father. Do you really think I would leave her to your tender mercies?’

  He stared at her blankly, thunderstruck. A rating laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘This isn’t your lifeboat, son. You have to get out of the way.’

  Stunned, Cubby allowed himself to be led away. Mrs Kennedy’s eyes followed him. She p
ut her arms around her children and held them tight. For all her care, for all her ceaseless struggle to strengthen and protect them, they were about to be set adrift on the wide, rough sea of the world, there to sink or swim as God and the fates decided.

  U-113

  ‘They’re manning the lifeboats,’ Hufnagel reported, watching through his night-glasses.

  ‘Ten minutes are almost up,’ Todt replied, hunched over the bridge aiming column beside him.

  ‘They need more time.’

  ‘Are any lifeboats in the water?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘A torpedo in their guts will hurry them up. I am ready to launch.’ His hand was on the torpedo launch lever.

  ‘Wait.’ Hufnagel moved forward, focusing his glasses and cursing the condensation in them. ‘I can see her funnels.’ His voice changed. ‘They’re red, white and blue.’

  ‘The British colours,’ Todt said impatiently.

  ‘Also the American ones. Duchess of Atholl’s funnels are yellow and black.’

  ‘For God’s sake, man. We can establish her identity from the survivors.’

  ‘She keeps signalling that she’s an American ship.’

  ‘Of course – to save herself.’

  ‘There’s also something painted on her sides. You’d better take a look.’

  Todt tore himself away from the aiming column with a curse. ‘You are wasting precious minutes, Hufnagel.’ He snatched the binoculars from his first officer and held them to his eyes.

  ‘You see?’ Hufnagel prompted.

  After a moment, Todt thrust the binoculars back at Hufnagel. ‘She is the Duchess of Atholl,’ he said curtly. ‘Prepare to fire.’

  SS Manhattan

  Thomas König had fought his way back to the cabin and had found Stravinsky sitting on his bunk in a clouded state, staring at his unlaced shoes. As he’d done on the very first morning, he now knelt at the composer’s feet and fastened the laces tightly.