Patrol to the Golden Horn

by Patrol to the Golden Horn (epub)

  Wishart handed the headset back to Weatherspoon and backed out of the cabinet.

  ‘I can hear water noises all round. Doubt if there’s anything wrong with the gear. You’d better give yourself a break.’ He looked round: ‘Agnew – take over for a while. All right, leading tel?’

  ‘Aye aye, sir.’ Weatherspoon pressed his palms against his outsize ears, looking worried. But it was a relief to know the gear was working; without it they’d be deaf as well as blind. Wishart said, ‘Our friend up there’s waiting to see what floats up. Probably reckons we’re a dead duck. Thanks to Messrs Vickers, we aren’t, we’re a tough one.’ Men smiled, their faces glistening under films of sweat, eyes fighting not to show uncertainty. He told them, ‘While he stays there, all we can do is sit tight… Adams – Lewis – pass the word to all compartments: no hammering, no spanners, no row at all.’

  Adams had just clipped the door shut again behind Jake; now he passed that order through the voicepipe. Cole was shining a torch down one of the battery-tank sighting holes. Hobday had the port ballast pump working on ‘Z’ internal; he asked Bradshaw, ‘Getting anything out?’

  ‘Not much, sir.’ He was crouched over the pump, which had pressure gauges on it. ‘Relief-valve’s gagged an’ all.’

  You had to gag the relief, which was set to lift at fifty pounds to the square inch. Hobday told McVeigh, ‘Stand by to put some air in “Z”.’

  It was sea-pressure on the outlet valve that made the pump’s work difficult. Increasing the pressure in the tank would balance it. McVeigh had his hands on the HP air-valve and his eyes on Hobday; Hobday said, ‘Open … Shut!’ The ERA had sent a burst of air thumping down the line. Bradshaw looked up from the pump. ‘Lovely!’ Jake came back, and reported to Wishart. ‘Leech doesn’t think the shaft gland’ll get any worse, sir, and it’s nothing much. The heads were in a foul state — still are – but there’s no flooding now. The screw-down valve was shut, but not tight shut.’

  The heads were McVeigh’s bugbear. He growled, ginger beard wagging angrily, ‘They dinna blow ’em richt, so it’s solid muck they screw the valve doon on. Then ye get a whumpf like yon, an’ it a’ blows back an’—’ He waved his hands, indicating that high-pressured shower of foulness. Jake nodded. ‘I’m afraid it did.’ McVeigh muttered to Bradshaw, his mate, ‘Safer wi’ a stack o’ bedpans. It’s the puir bluidy outside ERA has tae go an’—’

  ‘Price you pay, McVeigh, for being a mechanical genius.’ Wishart was looking at the depth-gauge. ‘That tank must be about out by now.’

  Emptying a tank that held five-and-a-half tons of water when it was full, and must have had at least half that much in it before they’d started pumping, seemed to have made no difference. And that made no sense. It was like two and two making three. Hobday said, ‘I’ll take some out amidships, sir … Although the bubble has shifted slightly, hasn’t it, cox’n?’

  ‘Less’n half a degree, sir.’

  ‘Darn it.’ Mysteries were irritating, as well as threatening future embarrassment. ‘Stop the pump. Shut “Z” suction. Open “X” suction and inboard vent.’

  Wishart was at the door of the silent cabinet. ‘Hear anything, Agnew?’

  The boy tel pushed the headset off his ears. ‘Bit of a noise a minute ago, sir. Like – I dunno, sir, but I been thinkin’ might it ’a been a ship lettin’ ’er anchor go.’

  ‘Why didn’t you report it, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Did’n know what to call it, sir — I mean, I—’

  ‘Report everything you hear. Even a lobster gargling – I don’t care what you call it!’

  ‘Aye aye, sir. Sorry, sir.’

  Wishart leant with his back against the chart table. Hobday had just put some pressure into the midships tank, as he’d done for the other. Wishart began, thinking aloud, ‘I’ll accept it was the Turk anchoring. He’d have been following astern of us, with a good idea of where we were, and knowing — I’m guessing this — knowing they’d got a net ahead of us with controlled mines in it. Or not a net — just a line of mines wired to the shore. He’d have been signalling to his friends ashore – giving ’em lots of warning to be ready for us … Now he’s dropped a hook and he’ll sit up there until either he’s sure we’re done for or he hears us move.’

  Jake had been checking soundings on the chart. He told Wishart, ‘Shelves to eleven fathoms near the southern shore here, sir, and on the other side it varies between six and ten. He could be at anchor on either side and still be within a thousand yards of us.’

  CPO Crabb reported, ‘She’s shiftin’, sir!’

  ‘Stop the pump. Shut “X” suction … Anchor her for’ard, sir?’ Wishart nodded, and Hobday told Lewis, ‘Open “A” inboard vent.’ There was residual pressure still in ‘A’; when the vent was opened, air hissed into the boat, and you had to swallow to clear your ears. But you couldn’t flood water into a tank against pressure, and you couldn’t vent it outboard without sending up a bubble to the surface.

  A few seconds later Crabb reported that the spirit-level bubble was moving aft. Hobday stopped flooding the for’ard tank, and shut it off. Now the submarine’s bow was weighted down heavily enough to hold her anchored to the seabed while her afterpart and screws floated clear of it.

  Cole said – a mumble through his thick, black beard – ‘No acid in the battery tanks, sir.’

  ‘Good.’ But there was still a sense of unreality. The uncertainty about what had happened – where all the extra weight had suddenly appeared from – added to the strangeness. It was like an aftermath of dying, of having died … As if they weren’t intended to be alive, should not have been. But alive they were, and you couldn’t lose track of several tons of ballast and just ignore it, pretend it didn’t matter. You had to find out what had happened – before you found out the hard way, in an emergency, when it might be too late. It was like knowing there was a time-bomb somewhere, and searching and still not finding it. Wishart, of course, would be battling not only with that problem but with others too, the whole situation: the Turk sitting over them, and shore-controlled mines most likely covering the entire area – those were the external threats, and one had to consider them in conjunction with internal factors such as a battery that couldn’t have much life left in it and air that was becoming thin and foul. He had to decide on some move. Eyes in tired, sweaty faces followed him, waiting for the decision. Robins was stretched out on Wishart’s bunk, and Nick saw Wishart looking that way; he told him, ‘He’s all right now. Only had a bump.’ Wishart turned as the stoker PO arrived from aft and asked Hobday out of that ventriloquist’s mouth of his, ‘You want every tank dipped, sir, that right?’

  ‘Hang on, Leech.’ Wishart ordered, ‘Open watertight doors. Number One – we’ll stay here. One officer and one hand on control-room watch. Everyone else turn in. Only one light’s to be used in each compartment. No moving around at all.’ He looked at Leech. ‘Yes. Dip all the auxiliaries and check dry-stores, every space there is. And don’t drop a pin while you’re doing it, or I’ll shoot you, d’you hear?’

  ‘Can’t kill a Yorkshireman wi’ a bullet, sir.’ Leech looked quite serious about it. Wishart said, ‘All right, then, I’ll hang you.’ The stoker PO wagged his head, concurring. ‘Ah. That’s different.’

  * * *

  Robins, who’d admitted grudgingly that he’d sustained no lasting injury, asked Wishart what they’d do if the Turk sat tight – stayed up there, on top of them.

  ‘Then we sit tight too. If necessary until it’s dark again.’

  Robins was in the bottom, pull-out bunk. Wishart and Hobday were in their own, and Burtenshaw was stretched out on a blanket on the deck. Nick had accepted a blanket for the same purpose but for the time being he was comfortable enough in the armchair; he’d be able to doze, he thought, by leaning forward across the table with the folded blanket as a pillow on it. Plenty of deck-space anyway, since there’d be no one moving around.

  Wishart had explained to Robins that
they couldn’t move without making a periscope check of their position first. Which way or how far the boat had travelled between the explosion and bottoming was anybody’s guess.

  ‘You mean we’d lie here – what, twelve hours?’

  ‘Nearer sixteen, if we have to wait for darkness … All the more reason to pipe down now and go to sleep.’

  Jake Cameron had moved the telegraphists’ stool to a spot just outside the cabinet. The headset’s lead reached that far and the cabinet doorway served well as a back-rest. He’d be on watch for two hours now, and every half-hour he and his fellow watchkeeper, Stoker Burrage, would take turns on the listening gear. There’d be nothing else to do except keep quiet, stay awake, ensure that no noise was made from elsewhere in the boat. There’d been a period of noise-making, certainly, since the explosion, and the Turk would probably have heard some of it, but with any luck he might convince himself that he’d been listening to the submarine’s death throes.

  Making everyone lie down and do nothing was also the best way to conserve oxygen. It was stuffy in the compartments now, with a thick, oily, heads-reeking, submarine humidity. It wasn’t pleasant to breathe, and yet you needed to take deeper breaths than usual. By nightfall it might be fairly horrible, Jake thought. Six or seven hours ago they’d had that short spell on the surface, but unless the diesels were started up – which unfortunately they had not been – you didn’t get much fresh air into the boat just by opening a hatch. Hobday hadn’t run the fans, during that minute on the surface, either. Hindsight told one that he should have, but like everyone else he’d had his mind on the net that had fouled them and on the shore batteries and searchlights.

  All through the boat men slept, now. Asleep, you used less air, and minimal lighting saved power. Both commodities would be crucial to survival.

  Sixteen hours, Wishart had estimated. Add that to the fourteen since they’d dived. And then there were still fifteen more miles of the straits to get through, and nobody would be so rash as to count on it being a straightforward, uninterrupted fifteen-mile run either. Count, Jake thought, on nothing … A couple of times in recent hours there had been a premature, illusory feeling that the worst was over … He glanced round the gloomy, deep-shadowed compartment. If one could have foreseen being in this situation … As well, perhaps, that the future hid itself, that one could only take things as they came. In any case — he told himself – they were winning: they’d got this far, and the rest of it couldn’t be much rougher than some of the stages they’d already survived. Wishart was right to be cautious, to play for long-term safety rather than for a quicker breakthrough. The object was not to get into the Marmara in a hurry, it was to arrive there intact and fighting-fit.

  Warmth, and silence. The Turk up there wasn’t kicking any tin cans about either. Only soft water-sounds from outside the hull. Through the headphones the same sounds were greatly magnified. In many seas there’d be dead submarines lying much as this one was now, with dead men lying about, very much as E.57’s crew were lying now and similar sea-sounds whispering on and on … If it hadn’t been for the headphones one could easily have drifted into sleep. He could see that Burrage, blinking at the depth-gauges opposite him, was finding it hard to stay awake. Burrage was short, broadshouldered, curly-haired. If he’d been of lighter build you could have taken him for a jockey. He was sitting with his back against the HP compressor and he had his eyes open but switched off, as in a dream. Jake remembered ERA Geordie Knight telling him that Burrage’s major enthusiasm was for motor-racing, his hero the great S.F. Edge. You could guess that at this moment Burrage wasn’t here, trapped in silence at the bottom of the Dardanelles, but racketing along in a bedlam of roaring exhausts at Brooklands, risking his neck at speeds of up to sixty miles an hour.

  Burrage hung around Knight a lot and talked to him about that sort of thing because he wanted a job in the motor business, after the war, and he knew Knight’s father owned a garage.

  The bulkhead clock showed six-twenty. By the original reckoning they’d have been in the Marmara hours ago. Eight hours from the Kum Kale minefield, the estimate had been. He wondered how long the passage might have taken Louve; even whether the French boat had got through at all. She might have been lucky and slipped through without much trouble. The Frenchmen were efficient enough, according to Wishart and Hobday; E.57 and Louve had exercised together on the way from Mudros to Imbros, and Louve had seemed to be well up to scratch.

  When darkness came, the Turk might still be lying up there, like a cat over a mouse-hole. They’d have to be very canny, creep away from him. Not easy. Even less so if Wishart was right in his guess that the area might be sown with shore-controlled mines. If that was the case there’d be hydrophones ashore to pick up the sound of the boat’s motors when she moved. Screws approaching their mine-barrage would be what they’d react to. You could imagine the Turks ashore there in headphones with their fingers on the firing keys …

  Better not to.

  He told himself, It’s all guesswork. Pointless. Wait and see what happens, no good trying to anticipate it. He wished he could hit on some possible solution to the mystery of the trim. Leech had dipped all the auxiliaries – internal main ballasts, trim tanks, comps, buoyancy, WRTs, even the fresh water, oil-fuel, lub-oil and dirty-oil tanks. Bilges too, of course. Every other space — stores, magazine, every cubic foot of her – had been inspected. There was still no answer to that weight they’d had to shed. He remembered the flooding, rushing-water noise he’d heard. Or only imagined? He’d thought of himself as dead, or about to die, and one’s mind might play odd tricks. He shifted his position cautiously. His damaged shoulder – the one the net had lacerated – still ached and smarted. The coxswain had painted the abrasions with iodine for him. He wanted to breathe deeply and at the same time not breathe at all. He looked at the clock again. The bulkhead behind it, an oval of white enamel lit by the glow of the single lamp, ran with condensation. Six-thirty. In Mudros, Imbros, and aboard Terrapin in the Gulf of Xeros, everyone would be counting on their being in the Marmara by this time.

  * * *

  Nick was thinking about Reaper, who’d be in the gulf now, in Terrapin. Reaper wouldn’t hit it off with Truman, Terrapin’s captain, he thought. Truman had a pompous manner, a way of making his pronouncements sound weighty even when they were quite trivial. It wasn’t just his awful voice, it was his style in general. Reaper, on the other hand, was an unassuming, straight-thinking man with no time for blather and no sense whatever of his own importance. Those exchanges he’d had with Robins at the meeting aboard Harwich – Nick had thought about it, and he realised that Reaper hadn’t been quick to slap the man down for the sole reason that he wouldn’t have wanted to waste that much time and effort; he’d wanted only to get on with the briefing. In the same way, when Nick had let Reaper see, at Dover at the turn of this year, that he thought Reaper was letting him down, that he’d had the job done for him – the trawler sunk and its crew brought back as prisoners – and no longer cared what happened next to the man who’d done it for him, Reaper hadn’t said a word, he’d let Nick go off in that surly, let-down frame of mind, and left it to him to discover what had been done for him. His first command – of Bravo.

  (With air as foul as this already, Nick wondered, what would it be like by nightfall? But lacking submarine experience, he couldn’t tell how bad it was, or how much worse it could get and still be breathable. He shifted on the chair, pulled the rolled blanket closer and rested the other side of his head on it.)

  No sufferer of fools, was Reaper. He wouldn’t enjoy being cooped up with Truman, any more than Nick had; and being a destroyer CO himself he’d been treated as the captain’s guest, not the wardroom’s. For Reaper it would be worse, though, because loitering in the Gulf of Xeros and listening out for wireless messages wouldn’t involve Truman in much work; he’d have time to play host, entertain his guest. Reaper would be bored stiff, Nick thought.

  He had a French wireless expe
rt with him, for communications with Louve, and a leading telegraphist from the Mudros staff, as well as Terrapin’s own operators. He wouldn’t be expecting to hear anything from either of the submarines, but he’d have set a round-the-clock listening watch for shore transmissions – from the people the landing party were to tie-up with later – and after the landing he’d be expecting reports from Robins, and from Nick as well, through that same clandestine channel. Neither of the submarines was to break W/T silence except in a situation of drastic emergency; the hope was that the enemy in Constantinople wouldn’t suspect the presence of submarines in the Marmara. But they’d be able to receive messages, and Reaper had drawn up a time-table of broadcast periods, alternating in English and in French, during which they were supposed to listen out. Terrapin’s wireless would transmit orders or information, particularly if anything reached him from the shore contacts if it affected the submarine’s or the landing party’s plans.

  Reaper would be under strain, Nick thought. To sit there in Terrapin with no word from E.57 or from Louve, and knowing the hazards of this passage of the straits, and with the whole enterprise depending on their getting through. Then he’d be waiting for news from shore – from this Grey Lady and her friends – on some unreliable home-made wireless set …

  He had said something about the ‘Grey Lady’, before he’d gone on to some other subject. He’d asked Nick, half jokingly it had seemed, ‘Would you believe in an English maiden lady of middle age and impeccable social background having charge of our espionage and insurrectionary operations in Constantinople?’

  Thinking back on it, it was like a dream that came and went. Breathing through the blanket, face-downward, as if it might filter the foetid air. Might Sarah be lying awake now, thinking about him, thinking of him with his head in the fresh air – in sunshine even, because he’d told her he was heading for a warmer climate?