“Oh, heaven!” cried Gregory above the din. “Get me out of this!”
The U-boat had been flung violently upward, then hurled to starboard, as though she were the plaything of an angry giant. Now, slightly tilted over on her port side, she was slowly sinking.
Gregory began to pound frantically on the steel door of his cell with his fists, yelling at the top of his voice: “Let me out! Let me out!”
Kuporovitch and the two sailors further along the row were all kicking on their doors and letting forth a spate of blasphemous curses.
They could hear running feet crashing on the steel flooring of the passage above, the alarm bells stopped; then came silence.
One by one they ceased to pound upon the doors of their cells and, after the uproar, the sudden absence of sound became more terrifying than the preceding pandemonium.
It was broken by another run of depth charges going off ahead of them, as the destroyer above raced on, not realising that she had already hit her mark. The concussions lifted the stricken submarine and tossed her about for a few minutes, as if she were in a heavy gale. Then she began to settle again, listing still more heavily to port.
Suddenly a faint blue light struck through the ventilator slits of the cells.
Gregory gave a gasp of thankfulness. After the pitch-black darkness those faint rays of light seemed positively heaven-sent, and from them he jumped to the conclusion that, after all, the U-boat was not irreparably damaged; but, in fact, the glimmer was caused only through the emergency lighting system having been switched on. Next moment he was cast down from astonished joy to new depths of fear.
For some minutes past he had been subconsciously aware of the sound of trickling water. Now, as he moved his foot slightly, he heard a faint splash. With a terrible contraction of the heart muscles he realised that he was crouching in an inch of it. The submarine was leaking; the bilge was already overflowing; the water had reached the level of the lower deck; the cell was slowly but surely filling up.
One of the sailors had evidently discovered the same thing, as he began to beat wildly on his cell door again. They all joined in and added their screams and curses, which rapidly blended into a soul-shaking overture of horror and distress.
A dull, rhythmic thumping brought a temporary cessation to their cries. The pumps were working and the sailor in cell number five, his difference in political opinion with Gregory now forgotten, joyfully called the news out to him. Yet the water was still rising. It was now up to their ankles.
In an agony of alternate hope and fear they waited to see what would happen next. To the throbbing another note was added. The engineers had got one of the engines going again. The U-boat, still half on her side, began to move slowly forward, then she took an upward slant. Instantly there was a rush of water towards her stern. In two minutes it had risen from their ankles to their knees.
Frantic with fear, Gregory and the sailors recommenced their shouts and prayers to be released; but, as the vessel suddenly began to lift upward bodily, Kuporovitch yelled:
“It’s all right. He’s blowing his tanks! He’s going to surface and surrender.”
But the conning-tower had not yet emerged above the waterline. Thump, thump, thump came the depth charges once more. The wounded submarine was hurled round yet again by the concussions and for a moment almost thrown up on end, nose uppermost.
With a hideous roar the water surged through her towards her stern. It almost filled the lower passage and came cascading in fierce jets through the ventilator slits, the keyholes and the hinge cracks of the cell doors. The upending of the ship had flung all the prisoners against the walls of their cells, then to the floor. Instantly they felt the water bubbling up all round them and squirting upon them from a dozen different directions they gave way to a fresh access of panic. Soaked, wild-eyed, panting, they scrambled to their feet to renew their cursing, shouting and hammering.
Swiftly now the water rose from knee to thigh and from thigh to waist level. The U-boat was gradually righting herself again as the effect of the shock subsided. Slowly her bow came down to about ten degrees above horizontal and she heeled over once more to port, but the water did not cease to rise in the cells; it forced its way up only a little less rapidly.
The alarm bell began to ring again; this time in short, strident spasms.
“They’re abandoning ship!” shouted the sailor in number five. “Lieber Gott, if they forget us!”
For an instant that wild cry gave Gregory new hope. He knew that it was a standing order in all navies that at the order to abandon ship an officer specially charged with the duty came down to the cells and liberated all prisoners, so that they should have an equal chance with the rest of the crew of saving their own lives.
But would the officer come? Perhaps in the excitement he would forget. Perhaps he had been injured or killed when the submarine had been hit. Perhaps he would realise that the after part of the lower deck was already three parts under water and think it too late to make the effort. Perhaps he would not be able to screw up his courage to the pitch of venturing down to that dark waterlogged hole in a sinking ship. Perhaps he had panicked himself, and regardless of all else was even now struggling for a place in the mass of men who must be fighting their way up through the conning-tower.
Then, like a physical blow, came the thought that even if the officer did come he would not release the two enemy prisoners. Grauber had made his orders unmistakably clear. If the U-boat was caught and destroyed they were to be left to go down with her.
The water was now well above their waists and still rising, but very gradually. From a roaring spate it had become a gentle, seeping flow with a still, oily surface. Outside there came a sound of splashing, then the pale bluish light was reinforced by a slightly stronger goldish gleam. Someone had splashed their way down the ladder and was now flashing a torch outside the cells.
All four of the prisoners realised simultaneously that it must be someone who had come to let them out, and redoubled their cries for help.
The splashing started again. A new voice was telling the sailors to be patient. Gregory caught something about the keyholes of the cells being under water which made it difficult to find them. The four prisoners suddenly fell silent, and it seemed a more tense silence than any that had yet occurred.
There was more splashing, then an exclamation of fervid thankfulness as one of the sailors was released. An agonising wait followed, then the splashing again and further cries of relief.
Gregory knew that the crucial moment had come. Were he and Stefan to be freed or left to drown? Once more he hammered on the door and cried: “Let me out! For Christ’s sake let me out!”
“All right, all right,” a voice replied irritably. “She won’t go down for another five minutes.”
Almost collapsing from relief, Gregory swayed and leaned for support against the side of his cell. It seemed an eternity before the man outside could find the keyhole, but at last a streak of light appeared down the side of the door as he sought to drag it open. Jerking his sodden furs about him, Gregory threw his weight against the panel and forced the door outward through the swirling waters.
When he lurched out into the passage he glimpsed the legs of the latter of the two sailors to be freed disappearing through the now strangely slanting trap-door, and saw that the officer, a young Leutnant with several days’ growth of dark stubble on his chin, was fumbling at the lock of Kuporovitch’s cell. His instinct was to dash for the ladder and scramble up it, but by the exercise of almost superhuman will-power, he forced himself to stand quietly there waiting for his friend.
With a jerk the officer wrenched the door of number one cell open a few inches. Next moment Kuporovitch brought his powerful shoulder against it with a crash and it gave a foot. Turning sideways he squeezed himself through the opening.
Having done his duty the officer did not wait for any thanks, or to see what happened to them. Jamming his torch into his pocket he seized the upp
er rung of the ladder and swung himself up through the trap-door like a monkey. Next moment his flying footsteps went clanging away as he raced along the steel corridor above.
“Up you go!” shouted Kuporovitch, and Gregory needed no second urging. Pushing his way through the chest-high water he grasped the ladder, fumbled with his foot, found a lower rung and thrust his shoulders up through the square hole. As he gained the upper passage, Kuporovitch was hard on his heels. Gregory leading, they ran with awkward lopsided steps up the now sloping and tilted corridor.
As they ran they saw that the crew had not yet all left the ship. Ahead of them a little group of sailors were crowded about the foot of the ladder that led up to the conning-tower. Their discipline had not broken under the strain of the action they had just been through, and they were standing there quietly waiting their turns to go up.
Among them Gregory suddenly caught sight of Kapitänleutnant Bötticher, evidently superintending this final parade of his crew before, as captain, being himself the last to leave the doomed ship.
At the sound of running footsteps he turned, and saw Gregory and Stefan. A look of angry amazement suddenly dawned in his pale blue eyes.
They knew what that look meant without any telling. The Kapitänleutnant had given no order for their release. They had been freed by his junior, who doubtless had known nothing about them and simply unlocked their cells as a matter of routine. Bötticher might have lost his ship but he was still a well-disciplined German, and he had not forgotten the order he had been given by a man who was not only in a position to break him for good and all, but with a scrawl of a pen could consign every member of his family to a concentration camp. That one look made it as clear as if he had shouted his thoughts aloud, that he meant to carry out the order he had been given and see to it that the two enemy prisoners, although now free from their cells, still went down with the ship.
The young Leutnant was now standing at the end of the queue. Bötticher exchanged a few swift words with him, then drew his big service pistol. Pushing past the remaining members of his crew, who now had no eyes except for the conning-tower hatch, he advanced purposefully towards Gregory and Stefan.
They had both halted automatically a little way down the corridor. Neither of them was armed. A few moments ago, on the ending of their terrible ordeal, they had thought that their lives had been spared and that escape was certain. Now, once again, they knew themselves to be in mortal peril.
As the Kapitänleutnant strode towards them the submarine suddenly lurched, and heeled over still further to port. Momentarily he lost his balance, and with his pistol still held out in front of him, reeled against the lower wall of the passage.
Gregory, all thought of claustrophobia now banished from his mind, sprang towards him in a desperate attempt to seize his gun. But he, too, stumbled on the sloping floor. The sailor, more accustomed to the swiftly changing planes of a ship’s deck, recovered quickest. In an instant he had regained his balance and had them squarely covered again.
Pointing to a door that stood open just beside them, he snapped: “Get in there, both of you!”
As he saw them hesitate he added, “Go on, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
They knew well enough that he was making no idle threat. Behind him all but two of the sailors and the Leutnant had now gone up the hatch. The last drunken lurch of the submarine showed that she was now rapidly filling with water, and might plunge to the bottom at any moment. He had only a few moments left in which to save himself. He meant exactly what he said. He was in deadly earnest.
Kuporovitch, with Russian fatalism, felt that the game was up. They had lost out after all, beaten at the eleventh hour, right on the post. Under the menace of the gun, he backed a few steps through the doorway of the cabin.
Gregory, watching his adversary like a lynx, followed suit, and stepped back over the skirting-board.
The Kapitänleutnant took two swift paces forward and stretched out his left hand to grasp the doorknob, so that he might slam the door shut and lock them in.
At the same instant Gregory thrust out his right hand and seized that of the German. As his grip tightened on the outstretched hand he flung himself backwards with all his force.
He crashed back against the side of a bunk but the pull of his weight brought the Kapitänleutnant flying after him into the cabin. The gun went off with a deafening report. The bullet thudded into a bulkhead. The violence of the movement had thrown both of them off their balance. They fell sprawling to the floor in a tangled heap.
As the back of Gregory’s head hit the deck the force of the blow knocked him almost unconscious. For a moment he felt a blinding pain while stars and circles flashed in front of his eyes, and he lay there helpless. The German was face down on top of him, his left hand still clutched in Gregory’s right; but in his right hand he still had hold of his gun. With a swift movement he twisted his wrist over on the deck so that the barrel of the pistol was pointing inward towards Gregory’s body.
Kuporovitch lifted his heavy boot and brought it down with all his weight on the hand that held the pistol. Three of the Kapitänleutnant’s fingers were crushed and mangled between the boot, the weapon and the deck. He let out a scream of pain.
Jerking himself up, he rolled off Gregory, snatched up the pistol with his left hand and, turning, thrust it upwards towards Kuporovitch. The Russian snatched up a water carafe by its neck from its swinging cradle beside the bunk.
Gregory tried to sit up. The pain in his head was excruciating. The cabin seemed to be going round and round. His eyes would not focus properly. He was now behind the German. He saw his mangled hand, with which he was supporting himself, and saw him raise his pistol in the other. Gregory thrust out his own hand. For a moment it wavered drunkenly, then it grasped the collar of the Kapitänleutnant’s jacket and jerked him back.
Again the gun exploded in the air, and the second wasted bullet clanged metallically as it struck a girder in the ceiling. The German was now strained back, his face turned upward. With all the weight of his powerful shoulders behind the blow Kuporovitch brought the water carafe smashing down upon it.
The heavy glass bottle shattered with the impact. The Kapitänleutnant’s nose was broken and crushed flat; his mouth was a jagged rent from which blood was pouring; his light blue eyes were starting from their sockets.
Gregory heaved him aside and staggered to his feet. He could see clearly again now, and for the first time in many hours he was smiling. Yet, as he stepped across the German’s body, he reeled against the bunk.
Seeing that he was still groggy Kuporovitch cried anxiously, “You all right?” At Gregory’s nod, the Russian added, “Come on then!” and grasped his arm.
As they turned towards the doorway the submarine gave another horrifying lurch that slumped her over until she was lying nearly on her side. The upper passage was now awash and the side of it opposite to them formed a V-like trench, one angle of which was formed by the bulkheads of another row of cabins and the other by the floor. Down it the oily water was eddying and swirling.
One glance towards the conning-tower hatch was enough to show that the little group which had been beneath it was no longer there. The few minutes of desperate conflict in the cabin had been enough for the remaining members of the crew to make their way up on deck.
As the victors of the fight stepped from the cabin they both slid on the slippery sloping plates and fell with a splash into the waterlogged channel.
At that instant the emergency lights went out. A new terror gripped them as, knee deep in water, they strove to find a footing in the darkness. For a few moments the blackness weighed upon them like a pall of death, then, as their eyes became accustomed to it, they realised that it was not completely dark. Away ahead of them there was a faint patch of greyness. It was the reflected moonlight coming down the conning-tower hatch.
Slipping, staggering, falling, they made towards it, then groped their way awkwardly up the sideways-t
ilted ladder. As they emerged from the hatch they saw that a Soviet destroyer was lying about a hundred yards off their port beam and that one of her boats was alongside the U-boat, taking off the last half dozen of her crew. A bright moon rode in a clear sky and by its light they could also see two other destroyers and several smaller warcraft in the near distance, slowly circling about their kill.
Clinging to the hand-rails, they hurried along the dangerously sloping deck to the boat and scrambled into it. The other survivors hardly gave them a glance, being too absorbed in their own misery at having just become prisoners. But suddenly, as the boat was about to push off, the Leutnant noticed Gregory and, starting up, exclaimed:
“What have you done with the Kapitänleutnant Where is he?”
Gregory stared him straight in the face, and replied: “He will not be coming. He is going down with his ship.”
“But it was you who were to go down with the ship!” cried the young German. “It was an order! He told me so, and that I had been wrong to release you.”
“That’s just too bad, isn’t it?” grinned Gregory. “Well, things didn’t pan out that way. My friend bust his face in with the wrong end of a bottle, and we felt no obligation to saddle ourselves with a Nazi murderer.”
Suddenly the Leutnant’s hand jerked down to his belt. The Russians had not yet disarmed their prisoners, and he pulled out his gun.
The Soviet sailor who had just pushed off the boat saw the gesture and hit him a sharp blow on the wrist with the end of the boat-hook. The gun fell from his hand and clattered on the bottom boards. For a second the young man stared at him open-mouthed, then he burst into tears.
“Come on,” said Gregory, not unkindly. “Take it easy. You’re only a youngster and you showed plenty of pluck in coming down to that stinking hole to let out the prisoners. Your trouble is that you’ve been brought up all wrong; but by the time you get back to Germany things will be different and you may become quite a decent citizen.”
Come into my Parlour Page 33