by D. A. Rayner
“How far to go?” the Kapitän asked.
“At six hours two minutes zone time this morning we had yet to make ninety-six miles, Herr Kapitän.”
“So that at four knots we shall be in position at six o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“That is so.”
“That leaves us still six hours to spare before noon tomorrow.”
“Provided our course and speed are maintained.”
“Yes, Otto, yes,” the other answered softly, “provided as you say, Herr Oberleutnant, that our course and speed are maintained.” His voice grew hard. “A thousand curses on this Britisher!” The two men looked at each other. His navigator was closer to the Kapitän than anyone else in the ship. Their families knew each other and cousins had intermarried. The Kapitän’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Otto, how could you have been so silly?” The emphasis on the word “you” not only made a distinction between Otto and the others but also showed that the others had been presumed to be capable of silliness all along.
“I don’t know. It was just one of those things. A fool’s paradise.”
The Kapitän turned away wearily. The control room was a huddle of well-trained men carrying out precise duties. For a while he had even forgotten to listen to the zip-zip of the asdic transmission. He must gather up the reins ready for the evasive action that he would take.
“Stand by pillenwerfer “ he ordered. He did not really expect it to perform the function for which it had been designed, but he hoped that it might confuse the issue, and at least it would give him the measure of the enemy that he was up against.
Muller had come from aft, having secured the stern caps of the tubes. The forward tubes could be reloaded when the U-boat was submerged, even though it took a long time, and the boat must be on an even keel if the heavy torpedoes were to be eased successfully into the tubes. But to reload the stern tubes they must surface, and that, under the present conditions, Muller knew to be impossible. Now, hearing the order to release a pillenwerfer, he went to the release gear and put his hand on the lever.
“Wait,” the Kapitän said to him, and to Braun at the hydrophones: “Braun, can you give me any idea of the range?”
“It is very difficult, Herr Kapitän. The enemy is astern of us, and there is much interference from the noise of our own propellers. He comes closer all the time. I think he is about one thousand meters.”
The Kapitän shrugged his shoulders and signaled to Muller. Muller’s hand came down. There was a slight but audible hiss as the pillenwerfer was ejected from its canister. “Let me know if the range increases,” von Stolberg said to Braun.
“Zum Befehl, Herr Kapitän.”
They waited in tense silence. The seconds ticked by, became minutes. “Well?” the Kapitän asked.
“The range still decreases, Herr Kapitän.”
“As I feared.”
Von Stolberg moved back to the center of the control room. To be depth-charged was, for him and for most of his crew, no new experience. The Kapitän had been at sea in command as long as, if not longer than, any other surviving U-boat Kapitän, and he was far too clever and experienced to be caught napping. If his sinkings were less than the score that had been credited to many others, at least he was still alive—and they were dead.
“I will wait until the destroyer is almost above me. Then I will turn to port to the reverse course. Full speed during the turn on the starboard engine. Then reduce to four knots. We will release two pillenwerfer as soon as the boat has turned, and hold the reverse course of oh-three-oh degrees for fifteen minutes. It is possible that we may shake him off. If we are successful, we will at the end of fifteen minutes alter course ninety degrees to starboard to one-two-oh degrees for a further forty-five minutes and then resume our course of two-one-oh degrees. That will mean”—he turned to the navigator—“that we shall end up on a parallel course three miles southeast of our present one. We shall lose almost one hour and a half. It is a great pity, but I do not see how it can be helped.”
“It cuts down the time in hand to four hours and a half.”
The Kapitän nodded. “I know—but I would like to lose this fellow. He is too close to that which he should not see.”
Kunz, who had listened throughout this speech, had felt that the Kapitän should have finished with a “Heil Hitler!” He was used to this form of exhortation and found the lack of it discouraging. Neither von Stolberg nor von Holem ever replied to his “Heils” when they were at sea because they were born of people who had been persons before his hero had come. Schwachofer, too, was far too cosmopolitan to indulge in the salute, although Kunz was aware of his sympathy when he himself was in trouble with the “vons.” There were deep and undeniable schisms among the officers of U-121; and among the men, too, there were both Nazis and those who were just Germans.
All in the boat could hear the throbbing beat of the propellers. It grew louder, like a freight train coming toward one through a tunnel.
“Port thirty. Full ahead starboard. Steady on oh-three-oh.”
The waiting men felt the boat begin to turn. The hum of the engines increased. In the dark depths she began to circle and to retrace her steps.
The destroyer ran on blind, to drop her charges.
“SWEEP ASTERN,” the Hecate’s Captain gave the order to the asdic cabinet.
“Sweep astern, sir,” Hopkins’ voice repeated back. Then: “Very confused echoes, sir. It looks as if it will take some time for the disturbance to subside.”
“I’ll open the range—it will give us more chance.”
The Hecate moved away from the circle of disturbed water. In three minutes she had left it fifteen hundred yards astern. There was still no echo that was recognizable as one that could have come from a U-boat.
Mystified, chagrined, and worried, the Captain brought his ship around to head back toward the position of the attack. The turn took a further three minutes. Had he but known it, the U-boat, which could turn more quickly than the destroyer, was now making off at her best speed behind the curtain of disturbed water, to which she had added her own two pillenwerfer. The boat was already sixteen hundred yards on the other side of the disturbance and out of asdic range.
“No contact,” the asdic cabinet announced.
“Carry out an all-around sweep.”
His enemy had eluded him. He had expected to find the real submarine echo coming out of the confusion of the bursting charges as a headland stands out of a fog. A hard outline appearing where before there had only been confused vapors. The U-boat must have turned and gone elsewhere, for the Captain was not so sanguine as to imagine that his one attack had achieved complete and instant destruction. He was a very worried man.
He was even more upset when he heard of the damage done to Ellis’ wrist. For this accident he blamed himself. He had asked too much in ordering a resetting of depths, once the automatic firing device had been set to function. He knew how angry he himself would have been if one of his officers in a practice drill had been the cause of a like accident occurring. Action obviously excused a great deal, but before the bar of his own judgment he found himself arraigned and condemned.
The Hecate was now steaming through the disturbance of her attack. The asdic beam, groping like the finger of a blind man, probed the sea around her.
“No contact, sir,” the asdic hut announced.
“Try again.”
“Sweep all around, sir,” Hopkins repeated.
The Captain went to the plot and bent over it.
“He’s given us the slip, Pilot. I’ll go to a position four miles to starboard of the attack and carry out an all-around sweep there. I’ll go fast with the asdic housed.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
The asdic hut said, “No contact, sir.”
“Stop transmitting. House the asdic,” and to the First Lieutenant: “Port twenty steer two-eight-oh. Three hundred revolutions.”
The ship heeled over sharply, both under the impetus of t
he rudder and the thrust of the big propellers that were now striving to work the ship’s speed up to thirty knots. She vibrated all over like an excited horse. The pitometer log ticked ever faster as her speed grew. A waft of hot funnel gas was blown round the bridge. The wake began to form a long, creaming line astern.
The Captain went back to the plot. “Let me know when we are five hundred yards short of the position.”
He climbed up on the plinth around the binnacle so that the cool morning wind should blow against his face. He felt tired and hungry and dispirited—but he could never show what he felt. Only nine minutes elapsed before the navigator called from the plot.
“Five hundred yards to go, sir.”
“One-five-oh revolutions. Steer two-one-oh degrees.”
The Hecate’s speed fell as quickly as it had been called for. Her Captain spoke to the asdic hut. “Lower the asdic. Commence transmission. Carry out an all-around sweep.”
He went back to the view plot. “Pilot, if we have no luck this side, I’ll try the other. I’m sure that he’ll try and get back to his old course of two-one-oh. I think that if he gives that up, he’s almost as much a beaten man as if he’d been sunk. Lay this off for me. Give the U-boat a turn to port from the diving position; then allow for him steering a reciprocal course to his old one for fifteen minutes at six knots. Then let him turn for forty minutes to a course of one-two-oh at four knots, and then bring him back to his old two-one-oh track.”
The asdic interrupted: “No contact, sir.”
To the asdic: “Try again,” and then turning once more to the navigator: “I’ll want a course and speed to intercept—something in the twenty-eight-knot class. He’ll not try to torpedo us at that speed.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The navigator bent busily to his task, pausing every now and then to consult his slide rule. The Captain watched for a moment, then paused to light a cigarette.
“No contact, sir,” Hopkins reported.
“Very well. Stop transmitting. Raise the asdic.” The Captain hurried back to the plot. “Ready with that course yet, Pilot?”
“One-five-two degrees at twenty-nine knots, sir.”
“Good lad! Let me know when we are five hundred from the point of interception,” and to the First Lieutenant: “Steer one-five-two. Two-nine-oh revolutions.”
Once more the Hecate heeled and throbbed. As soon as she was settled to her course, the bow wave began to rise. The stern sank and a plume of white froth rose fanlike along her wake, where the terrific disturbance created by thirty thousand horsepower was dissipated in the ocean. The Captain, looking aft at the wake-whitening astern, saw his steward leave the after deckhouse and brace himself against the roll as he hurried forward. In one hand he was carrying a sling. His passage was a series of zigzags along the deck, and once he had to pause to hold on. Soon he was mounting the long ladders that led to the bridge.
The Captain went to the chart table.
“Your breakfast, sir.”
“Robins, how did you know that I have just fifteen minutes in which I’ve a chance to eat?”
“That’s just luck, sir. It’s eight o’clock. Your breakfast time, sir. Nothing unusual about it at all. There, sir, bacon and scrambled egg. Reconstituted. All we’ve got left now, sir. Though it’s not too bad, really.”
He poured out a cup of coffee and stood it carefully among the pencils and rubber in the tray at the back of the table. Secretly the Captain went in terror of Robins, who treated him in much the same way a nannie will treat her young charges. When the Captain gave a dinner party in harbor, he was always half expecting, until the guests arrived, that Robins would inquire into the state of his hands or ask if he had washed behind the ears.
The Captain, seizing knife and fork, hastily began to put food in his mouth. Meals must be snatched, and the sooner the business of eating was over the better. He turned to the First Lieutenant. “Number One, I don’t know what we’ll do about the officers’ breakfast. I think the stewards had better carry the food around. We can send a quarter of the men at a time from each position to breakfast, but they’ll have to
come back at the double if we sound the alarm. It may take us some time to find the fellow again.”
“I don’t know how he managed to disappear like that.”
“He turned right around and left us only the smell. He’s a cunning one all right. He turns more quickly than we do. Now if I had my old corvette, I could turn more quickly than he and prevent him always offering me his tail. But then of course, if we were a corvette, he’d just surface and run away from us. We’re better to be what we are, if we are fighting single-ship. If you have speed you have length, and that means you can’t turn.”
The Captain finished his meal and took the cup of coffee in his hands.
“Forebridge.” The voice came from the plot.
“Forebridge.”
“Five hundred to go, sir.”
“Thank you, Pilot.”
The Captain nodded to the First Lieutenant. “Slow her down, Number One, and bring her round to two-one-oh.” Then to the asdic: “Lower asdic, commence transmission.”
“All around, sir?”
“Yes, all-around sweep.”
Once more the ping of the asdic was heard on the bridge as the ship’s speed dropped. Ping—Ping—Ping—ping—
PONG.
“Good God, we’re almost on top of him!”
The asdic was calling excitedly. “Captain, sir. Captain, sir.”
“Stop jabbering, Hopkins! I can hear it—fine on the port bow. What’s the range?”
“Four hundred. Bearing one-four-oh.”
“Have you time to attack?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry on. Set charges, two hundred and fifty feet. Stand by charges.”
“Aye aye, sir. Target drawing right.”
“Steer one-eight-oh.”
“Range three hundred”—followed immediately by: “Lost contact ahead, sir.”
The Captain pursed his lips. The whole episode was pure luck. Given that the deduction was correct, it was reasonable to suppose that contact would be regained somewhere within four square miles of where the Hecate then was. But to find himself suddenly over the U-boat was like finding a pin in a haystack by pricking himself with it. The attack had been far too hastily conceived to have any real chance of success. But luck might be on their side. To stop the charges from being fired—or to let them go? The seconds ticked by. If the pattern was fired—ten charges would go—and there would be ten less. Crossing his fingers, the Captain did not countermand the order.
The Hecate shivered as the charges exploded.
THE CHARGES that burst from the Hecate’s first attack had jolted and jarred the U-boat. But bursting at least a hundred feet above her, and with the center of the pattern well on her starboard beam, they were no worse than many others that had been delivered against her in previous forays.
U-121 had turned rapidly and was retracing her steps. The noise of the destroyer’s propellers was dying away—had gone. Her men could still sense, rather than hear, the swish of the asdic’s whip. But it reached them only through the disturbed water of the explosion, and they felt that a curtain protected them and their boat. Soon even this was lost to unaided ears, even when they were pressed to the hull of the boat, and only Braun with his delicate instruments could hear the transmissions from the British ship.
“Half ahead, four knots,” the Kapitän ordered when fifteen minutes had passed. “Steer one-two-oh.”
The whirr of the motors eased. The little vibration that there had been died away. The boat stole stealthily forward, suspended in a dim world above one that was darker yet—and cold as death.
Braun called the control room from his voice pipe.
“Herr Kapitän, the British transmissions have stopped and I have heard fast but distant propellers. They are going away, Herr Kapitän. I think the destroyer has gone somewhere very fast.”
Von Stolberg
thought quickly. It seemed indeed as if he had been successful in shaking off the enemy. At least temporarily. But why had the destroyer suddenly moved away? It was at variance both to the drill that he himself had previously experienced and to that which was confirmed by other U-boat captains. In general the Germans would criticize those who hunted them, saying that they stayed so long in one spot, going around and around, that a determined and careful man could slip away. Von Stolberg was enough of a realist to recognize that it was a one-sided statement, because obviously those who didn’t get away could make no comment. They were either dead or prisoners of war.
Either the British Captain was working some scheme of his own or something might have occurred up in the sun and air above that had drawn him off. Could it be that the Cecilie was early at her rendezvous—that, cruising in the area, she had unwittingly come across the destroyer attacking the U-boat that had been sent to meet her? Even now the success of the whole operation could be at stake—for although the armed merchant-cruiser could certainly sink the destroyer, she would never catch her if the latter should decide to keep out of gun range and wireless to the British Admiralty for assistance. The raider’s Captain would know that as well as anyone. He would pretend to be a harmless merchantman, and try to lure the destroyer within range of his hidden guns in order to deal her a lethal blow before ever she could make a signal. Von Stolberg wondered what ruse he’d try. The idea of asking for a doctor presented itself to his fertile imagination. He liked that idea. The sentimental English would fall easily for that one. He could imagine the destroyer lying stopped and close alongside the merchantman. The boat being lowered—swinging in the falls ready to be slipped. The destroyer’s crew would be lining the rails, watching. No one would suspect the supposed merchantman—until too late. He would like to be the German Captain at that moment.