It was a question of how strong a net could be. Whether it could stand the extra weight and still hold her, even now.
Jake’s fists were side by side on the chart and he was holding his breath as he stared at their white knuckles. Then he was listening to something like machine-gun fire, from outside the hull, as wire strands parted. Bursting, snapping steel-wire rope: he’d let his breath out, and it was difficult not to cheer.
She’d torn free but she was still going down.
‘Stop together!’
‘Blow “A”, “B” and “Z” main ballast!’
McVeigh pushed those three vent-and-blow cocks to ‘blow’ and wrenched open the master valve. ‘“A”, “B” an’ “Z” blowin’, sir!’
‘Group down. Slow ahead together.’
The gauges showed that she was still sinking, passing a hundred and fifty; she was slowing her descent but still going down and it was a bow-down angle now. Crabb said, ‘Gone ’eavy for’ard, sir.’ He’d glanced at Morton; the second coxswain reported, ‘Fore ’planes ain’t movin’ proper, sir. Reckon there’s wire still round ’em.’
Wishart was behind him. ‘Do they move at all?’
‘Yessir. But – not the full travel, sir. And – stiff… Seems there could be – like weight there, sort of.’
‘Stop blowing “B” and “Z”.’
McVeigh shut them off. He said, ‘“A”’s out too, sir.’
‘Stop blowing “A” …’ The boat was hanging in a bow-down position at a hundred and seventy feet. Hobday asked Wishart, ‘May I put a puff in No. 1 main ballast, sir?’
‘What’s the state of the for’ard comp?’
‘Only half full, sir. Three-fifty gallons.’
‘Pump that out first.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ Morton still couldn’t move the fore ’planes except in a very limited arc and with great effort. Hobday got a pump sucking on No. 1 compensating tank. Wishart observed conversationally, ‘Most likely there’s a section of net hanging on the bow.’
‘Unless it’s the ’planes themselves, sir – if we’ve wrenched ’em out of kimber, bent the—’
‘There’s weight for’ard too, though.’ Wishart hesitated for another second; then he turned away, moving decisively as if he’d got it all worked out now. ‘Starboard fifteen. Stop port.’
Jake thought, Turning back?
He saw Nick Everard looking equally surprised. Nick had swung over on to his side and up on one elbow: like Burtenshaw, he seemed to be trying to follow and understand the various manoeuvres.
Roost and Agnew had repeated the helm and motor orders. Wishart explained, ‘We can’t carry on up-straits with the fore ’planes stuck and a load of wire up for’ard. Out of the question.’
He was right, of course, Jake thought. But to turn back—
‘And we can’t get rid of it without surfacing.’ Wishart was addressing Hobday. ‘Have to cut it off with hacksaws. Nothing much else we can do, is there … Pilot, what’s the reciprocal of our former course?’
Thirty-eight plus one-eighty: Jake told him, ‘Two-one-eight, sir.’
‘Steer two-one-eight, Roost.’
‘Two-one-eight, sir.’
CPO Crabb reported, ‘Bubble’s shiftin’ for’ard, sir.’ What he was telling them was that the angle was coming off her, that she was responding to the suction on the for’ard comp tank. Hobday told Morton, ‘Leave your fore ’planes alone now with that rise on … All right, cox’n?’
‘Aye aye, sir.’
Using the ’planes might damage them – the axle or the glands – or tighten the wire around them. The after hydroplanes could manage on their own, in Crabb’s experienced hands. Older classes of submarine, the C-class and ones before that, had no for’ard ’planes at all. ‘Course two-one-eight, sir.’
‘Very good. Slow ahead together … Number One – we’ll go back a couple of miles, get into the wider part so we’ll have some chance of not being spotted. Then we’ll surface – trimmed right down – and get rid of that rubbish that’s slung on us.’
Hobday said quickly, ‘That’ll be my job, sir!’
Leading Seaman Morton glanced round. Sweat was running in small streams down into his open collar. ‘Beg pardon, sir. Casing work oughter be second cox’n’s lot.’
‘And the casing officer’s.’ Jake wasn’t letting Hobday push him out of this. Work on the upper deck was the third hand’s responsibility – and, as Morton had pointed out, the second coxswain’s. He asked Wishart, ‘May I take charge of it, sir?’
Wishart nodded. ‘Need you on the trim anyway, Number One. And you’ll have your work cut out. I want the top hatch and the bow out of water and damn little else.’ He pointed at Jake: ‘You’ll have just one minute on the surface. One. That means ten seconds to get from the hatch to the fore ’planes, forty to do the job, ten more to get back. Hatch open – sixty seconds — hatch shut – dive.’
He added, ‘Unless of course you find you can do it more quickly.’
Leading Seaman Morton looked thoughtful. Jake had an uncomfortable feeling that Wishart would stick precisely to his time-table. He looked across at Hobday. ‘If you’d really like the job—’
Everybody chuckled. CPO Crabb suggested to Morton, ‘Take a cake o’ soap up while you’re at it?’
* * *
‘Stand by to surface!’
The reports came in: vents shut, LP air-line open to the main ballast tanks. High-pressure air was used to blow with, but it had to pass through reducers and the low-pressure line to reach the tanks.
Hobday had worked out a way to surface with not only the bridge-hatch out of water but also the for’ard end of the casing – the actual bow and the fore ’planes — which were well below the casing level. He reckoned he needed a bow-up angle of twelve degrees, so he was going to blow the for’ard pair of tanks until he’d got her to that angle, then puff water out of the next pair to them — three and four – to give her the buoyancy to stay up there.
They’d been up to twenty feet a few minutes ago, for a look round through the big periscope. Wishart had muttered, ‘Search-lights, damn it …’ Watching him as he swung around, Jake had seen a sudden brilliance that had made his eyes glow like a cat’s as a searchlight beam swept past, flooding its harsh glare down the tube and through the lenses: then it had swung on by, leaving Wishart with his head back, blinking, momentarily blinded. He muttered, ‘Have to chance ’em, that’s all.’ He snapped the handles up. ‘Fifty feet, Number One. Pilot – you and Morton ready?’
Jake said yes, they were. He found the passengers – not Robins, who’d retired to the cabinet again – watching him. Burtenshaw, as it happened, had offered to go up with them and lend a hand. The offer had been refused, of course. For half a dozen reasons it had been a silly suggestion to have made; either he’d made it recognising that, or he was more stupid than he looked.
Wishart was giving them their final instructions. ‘I’ll open the hatch and get out first. You, then Morton, jump out, go straight over the front of the bridge and pull yourselves along the jumping-wire to the bow. The gun will be awash and there’ll be four or five feet of water over the casing at this end, but the foremost thirty feet or so’ll be sticking out and the ’planes should be well clear. Once you’re there you’ll have just over half a minute. Understood?’
The control room was a hot, stuffy, yellowish-lit cavern full of men with tense, sweat-damp faces. The depth-gauges showed fifty feet. Jake and the second coxswain had hacksaws, wire-cutters, cold chisels and hammers slung from their webbing belts. Apart from the webbing, they wore only shorts, swimming collars and engineers’ gloves.
Hobday reported, ‘Ready to surface.’ Wishart gestured towards the lower hatch and Ellery unclipped it, pushed it up, the clang of its opening echoing in the hollow steel tube of the conning tower. Wishart told Jake and Morton, ‘If I blow this whistle, you two drop whatever you’re doing and run like riggers for the bridge. Straight into the hatch. Understand?�
� They nodded. He added, ‘Take no notice of the searchlights. We’re a long way out and our silhouette won’t be any bigger than a couple of floating barrels.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ He heard Burtenshaw say rather shyly, ‘Good luck.’ Jake winked at him. You needn’t worry for two seconds about me, you know… He hadn’t reckoned on searchlights. Then he thought, We’re the lucky ones. We don’t have to sit and wait. Months – years … Compared to what she has to go through, my life’s roses.
‘Let’s have that twelve-degree angle, Number One.’
‘Blow one and two main ballast!’
Wild-eyed – scrappy ginger beard bristling – oil-stained – lips drawn back over narrow, yellowish teeth: a first-rate man, was McVeigh, but if he’d walked into a Glasgow ’pub looking as he looked now the bar would have been evacuated in seconds … Air roaring: she’d already begun to tilt. Men were holding on, using anything solid to hang on to as the deck angled. Four degrees on the bubble: five …
Take no notice of the searchlights … The thing was, would the searchlights take notice of them?
Eight degrees. Nine … Wishart had one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder. Ten degrees. Depth-gauge needle circling faster now; one motor was driving her slowly ahead, and the angle of the boat was planing her upwards.
‘Stop port.’
‘Stop port, sir!’
Hobday glanced round at his captain. ‘Eleven degrees, sir.’
‘Surface!’
‘Blow three and four!’
McVeigh wrenched the blows open, and the increased rush of air was deafening. Wishart climbed quite slowly up the ladder into the tower. Jake started up behind him, keeping his head well back so as not to get heeled in the eye, and using the sides of the ladder, not the rungs, as handholds. He’d had his knuckles crushed more than once, on submarines’ ladders. He heard Hobday shout through the noise from down where Morton was crowding up behind him, ‘Stop blowing three and four!’ The conning tower smelt of wet metal and old boots. Wishart was taking the first clip off the top hatch; he called down, ‘Open the centre deadlight, pilot!’
The ports in the conning tower had lids – deadlights – that screwed down over them. Jake set to work on the one in the middle, which faced exactly for’ard. He loosened the brass butterfly nut and banged the clip off with the heel of his hand, and the cover dropped clear on its hinge. From below, Hobday shouted, ‘Twenty feet … eighteen …’
‘Sing out when your port’s clear, Cameron.’
‘Aye aye, sir.’ When this glass broke surface the top hatch would be well out. Surfacing as slowly as this and with so little positive buoyancy, it would be crazy to cut it too fine, in case something went wrong and she slipped back. If you went under with a hatch open and a man in the hatch – well … Hobday’s voice came thinly, ‘Twelve – eleven—’
The glass port in front of his face became suddenly alive with heaving frothing sea.
‘Port’s awash, sir!’
He heard Wishart push off the last clip and throw the hatch crashing back: air whooshed up through the tower like gas out of a bottle of beer. He was climbing, flinging himself up and out into the sloshing, seething bridge, the sea only a matter of a few feet away from him and boiling from the submarine’s emergence, sluicing round and breaking, splashing over, surging powerfully around the bridge: he jumped for the wire that ran from the periscope standards to the bow, launching himself over the front of the bridge into black water frothed with swirling white. Sea heaved around the gun: he stood on its breech for a moment, shifting his grip on the wire, then swung himself for’ard, hand over hand; a few yards more and then he had his feet on the sloping, submerged casing. The wire’s abrasive exterior – designed for cutting nets – ripped at his soaked wash-leather gloves as he dragged himself along it. Light – searchlight – a flash of it as it passed: well, it had passed. Morton close behind him, gasping and grunting. There were sharp edges to the gratings and he wished he’d worn plimsolls. The surface was quieter now, settling as the submarine settled too. The jumping-wire sloped right down to her sharp nose. Jake lay flat, clinging to flood-holes, peering down at the port hydroplane — horizontal, a dark ear-shaped thing with the gleam of starlight on its wet steel surface. No sign of any net or wire. He was straining his eyes to make sure there was nothing round it where its axle passed into the hull-gland; he heard Morton bellow, ‘Over ’ere, sir!’
He scrambled over. Glimpsing, without looking straight at them, half a dozen wavering searchlights on the southern, Asiatic coast. Small-looking though, far off, farther than he knew they were. Morton slid over the side, right down on to the ’plane itself, and Jake hung over the casing’s edge above him. Light swept over them: its brilliance hardened, lit everything: then it had passed, arcing across the sea, and Morton shouted, ‘Like a lot o’ bloody knittin’!’ Jake could see only his hunched back: there wasn’t room for two down there, and they were both big men. He heard Morton’s hacksaw rasping at wire-rope, and called down unnecessarily, ‘Room for me to help down there?’
‘No, sir, not—’ His voice rose: ‘She’s away, sir!’
He heard a clang. Then Morton’s face, a pale blob in the dark, turning up towards him: ‘Lost me bloody saw!’
‘Here!’ Hanging down half over the side, he caught a groping hand and pushed his own saw into it. The light’s beam washed over them again. It crossed the bow, swept on thirty yards, paused. It was sweeping back again. Jake thought, Oh God, now we’re in for it! Morton was sawing again — shouting – singing! The light picked them up briefly, and swung on. Glancing back, Jake saw it hover on the bridge, move on, stop again: he guessed they’d been spotted. Morton was standing, clinging to the side with one hand and heaving up a bight of wire in the other: ‘Work ’er for’ard as I clear ’er, sir?’ Dragging the bight with him, Jake crawled to the submarine’s sharp bow. Straddling the bull-ring, he got the wire over his shoulder and began lunging and jerking at it, shifting it for’ard inch by inch. Morton would be working the mesh outward, he imagined, over the hydroplane’s outboard curve. And – incredibly – Morton was singing! Gustily, panting the words out, a sea-song about a sailor and a tart: ‘Saying take this my darlin’ for the damage I have done, If it be a daughter or if it be a son …’ Gaining wire still, but too slowly, too damn slow by half. Light behind him, all around him: he wondered why Wishart hadn’t blown his whistle. Morton shouted, ‘Keep your weight on ’er, sir, she’s partin’, she’s near …’ Near something.
The light had left them again. It came from the northern shore and he knew he mustn’t look that way, that he’d be blinded if it turned on him … Nothing coming in now, the wire felt solid: Morton’s saw scraping and gasping spasms of that raucous song: ‘If it – be a son – send the bastard – off to sea!’ Light fixed on them, holding them: a hoarse ripping sound like canvas tearing and from the north a crack of gunfire. Another shell scrunched over and the light still held them: Jake thought they were in the intersection of two beams. He was throwing his whole weight against the wire’s resistance: a cross-piece, part of its mesh still intact, gave him a handhold. He was cursing, screaming at it. The sea leapt in a tall spout twenty yards off the bow, and another shell hurtled overhead. They were shooting faster now. Morton yelled, ‘Stand from under, let ’er go!’ Jake dropped his shoulder and twisted round, let the wire slide away, got his right leg up and out of it so the wire wouldn’t be tempted to take his foot with it. It was an enormous weight of net. The light’s dazzle was beaming from right ahead now; Wishart must have turned the submarine bow-on to it, so as to present a smaller target to the Turkish gunners. Morton’s voice screeched suddenly, ‘I’ll murder you, you bloody ’orror!’ Jake was where he’d been before, leaning out above him, trying to see what was happening. He heard clattering as Morton’s dark bulk shifted and he strained at the wire: then a long, metallic slither and Morton’s voice in its normal, deeper tone, ‘Well, well, fancy that…’ They’d been in darkness for several s
econds, with no shooting, but as the second coxswain stood up on the hydroplane the light came back, blinding, savage. Jake yelled downwards, ‘Is it clear?’
‘All gone, sir!’
Two or three shells whirred over and one burst short, exploding as it struck the water. Stinking vapour-reek: metal racketed off the bridge and whistled off into the dark. One puncture in the hull and they’d be done for. A lot of gunfire, yellow-red flashes on the shoreline. Morton was clambering up: he assisted him, shouted, ‘Back now – quick!’ The light helped: you could see the jumping-wire and the gun. Another burst, with bits of shell screaming over and something clanging against the casing – aft, he thought. Morton had reached the bridge. Another yard – Jake swung off from a foothold on the gun – and he’d be there himself. Gunfire noisier now: Wishart bawled, ‘Down below – down!’ Brilliant light: Wishart’s idea of helping someone into the bridge was to tear an arm or two out of its socket. Jake didn’t pause to thank him. A shell came scrunching over; he landed in the hatch on top of Morton and then Wishart came down on top of him like five tons of pig-iron, only harder. The klaxon roared, shattering his eardrums; cursing, he let go of the ladder and fell about ten rungs before Morton’s bulk cushioned his fall and allowed him to catch hold again, cracking one elbow and a kneecap; the hatch had slammed shut up there, and Wishart called down, ‘Fifty feet!’ Jake told Hobday as he landed in the control room, ‘Fifty feet. The ’planes are clear. Morton did it all.’ McVeigh had opened the vents of those four main ballast tanks, and Hobday was flooding the for’ard compensating tank which he’d emptied because of the weight of the net on their bow. Jake saw the depth-gauge needle passing fifteen – sixteen – eighteen feet: safe from the Turk gunners now. He noticed McVeigh staring at him interestedly; looking down at what seemed to be the target of the scrutiny he found a mess of blood running from lacerations on that shoulder. He hadn’t felt the net doing that to it. Morton was crouching in a pool of water with his head between his knees. Wishart came slowly down the ladder. He said, ‘Lucky they’re such rotten shots.’
Patrol to the Golden Horn Page 9