The Enemy Below

by D. A. Rayner

  The damage in the boiler rooms could not be assessed until the fire had been put out in the first and the steam had been allowed to clear from the second. When at last an inspection was made, it was found that number one boiler could never be used because of the fractured steampipe; number two had been wrecked beyond repair by the shell; and only from number three could there be any hope of obtaining steam. But even to that boiler considerable damage had been done, not primarily by the shell itself but by the distortion of the boiler tubes during rapid cooling after the steam had left the boiler.

  The engineer officer, going to the bridge to make his report, found the Captain, rifle in hand, taking careful aim at the small target that lolloped lazily over the swell ahead of them.

  “Just keeping the enemy awake,” the Captain explained. “Well, Chief, what’s your report?”

  “I can probably get some sort of steam on number three in about an hour, sir. But it won’t be much—enough to move the ship. I can’t promise more than that, sir.”

  “You can’t do better than your best, anyway. Let me know when I can move her—then I’m going to ram the ruddy U-boat. That is, if it stays where it is. I’ve been looking at it through the binoculars. It seems to have a pretty good fire going in its after end—probably the batteries. One or two of their chaps have been trying to look down the after hatch—the one that all the smoke is coming from. But they don’t seem able to get below, so I assume that they can’t motor off.”

  The First Lieutenant joined them. He saluted the Captain. “Permission to take away the motorboat and whaler with a boarding party, sir?”

  The Captain thought for a moment. “Right, Chief,” he dismissed the engineer. “Ring the telegraphs when you’re ready.” Then, turning to his Executive Officer: “No, I don’t think so, Number One. There are at least forty very angry Herrenfolk in that tin cigar. They’d pick you off as easy as wink. If we could give you any real supporting fire from the ship, it would be a different matter. Then you could lay off and lob hand grenades down the fore hatch. But as things are, I don’t fancy it. With rifles at this range, we’d be as likely to hit the boats as the Ube. But I’ll tell you what you can do—if you feel that doing something is better than doing nothing—you can put the boats in the water and try to tow our stern around a bit so that the after gun can get a shot or two away. You’ve probably more chance of towing the stern upwind. Even if you can stop the stern from moving, maybe the bow will blow down and give us the twist we need. Better forget about the bow oar in the whaler and put two men on each of the other four. If the Chief can give us steam, I’ll not hoist in the boats before I ram the U-boat. They’ll be available then, either for picking up survivors or for a boarding party. So take some ammunition in the motorboat, a couple of rifles and revolvers, and good luck to you.”

  When the First Lieutenant’s feet had clattered down the ladder, the Captain had nothing immediately to claim his attention. Never since he had joined the Hecate five months before had there ever been such a deathly hush on the bridge. For with the loss of her steam the big dynamos had died; and without them there was no electricity, and hence nothing of those instruments that depended on that power. There was no asdic, no radar, and no wireless. Small effects like the clicking of the pitometer log were missed; and the little lights, used to denote that their part of the ship was ready to function correctly, no longer burned. The masterpieces of machinery, and the intricacies of the instruments, were dead and useless when the essential steam that fed them was no longer available.

  The Yeoman came to him. “Johnson has found the signal to Force M, sir.” He handed the Captain the message board.

  “Force M from Admiralty.

  “Detach Acheron, Marabout, Mastiff to join Hecate shadowing U-boat at 0800 in position 06° 35’ N. 30° 10’ W. Course 210° four knots. Anticipate U-boat may be attempting to rendezvous with Raider S or Raider M. Important to reduce wireless traffic to absolute minimum.”

  The Captain handed the pad back and said with a smile: “Such a minimum of traffic that they did not repeat the signal to us. I suppose this was just in case we should start chattering to Acheron to tell her what we were doing, and where we were doing it. For all that, I think we’d better call her up now on the emergency transmitter and tell her exactly where we are. Make to Acheron: ‘Have brought U-boat to surface. Am repairing shell damage preparatory to ramming. My position 5° N. 32° if.’ Be sure it’s coded.”

  “Aye aye, sir.” Willis took the pad and hurried from the bridge.

  The Captain’s spirits had been raised by the chance appearance of the Yeoman, for in that very ordinary transaction he saw a return to the normal conditions on the bridge.

  The next visitor was Robins.

  “I’m sorry we’re a little late today, sir,” he said to the astonished Captain, as he spread a clean white napkin on the chart table and began to unpack the breakfast plates and to set the knives and fork tidily beside them. ” ‘Fraid it’s reconstituted again, sir.”

  “Frankly, Robins, I think you’re a marvel. I hadn’t expected anything until this business was over.”

  “You never know when it will be over, do you, sir? Not with these Huns. Very determined people, Germans—ambitious too.”

  The Captain saw that his steward was looking ahead through the glass of the windshield.

  “Is that her, sir?”

  “That’s the cause of all the trouble. Take my glasses if you’d like a better look.”

  While Robins focused the glasses on the enemy from which the smoke still rose in lazy rolls, the Captain ate hurriedly. By the time he had finished the scrambled eggs, the Yeoman was back again. “Message passed, sir,” he reported.

  “Did she sound near?” the Captain asked.

  “Can’t say, sir. But the range of the emergency set isn’t all that great, and she ‘came up’ at once and as soon as we called her.”

  A telegraphist had come on the bridge with a signal that he gave to the Yeoman, who handed it to the Captain.

  The message read: “Acheron to Hecate. Expect to arrive your position 1200 today.”

  “That’s heartening to know anyway,” the Captain said as he handed it back.

  Both the boats were now in the water and were trying to haul the destroyer’s stern round. But the scend of the sea was proving too much for them to overcome; and it was soon only too obvious that they could accomplish nothing.

  Going to the loud-hailer to tell them to lay off, the Captain realized that that was just one more piece of equipment that would no longer work. As he had little hope of reaching the boats with a megaphone from the bridge, he went aft himself.

  Leaning over the guard rails, he shouted to the First Lieutenant. Having attracted his attention, he told him to bring the boats to lie under the ship’s lee.

  “It’s no good, Number One. You haven’t moved her more than a degree or two, and to be any use you’d have to shift her through at least twenty-five degrees. You’d better wait until I’ve found out from the Chief when he thinks he’ll have steam.” With that he hurried down to the boiler room.

  There the engineer was just flashing up a torch for the third boiler. “Well, Chief?”

  “Not too good, sir. Take a peep through the inspection port. You can see the tubes hanging in bights. But with luck we’ll be able to give you some sort of steam.”

  “I don’t want much. Just enough to ram the boat. Even three or four knots would be sufficient if we went at her down sea. We’d just push her under.”

  “With the tubes like that, I’ve got to take it gently. About twenty minutes, I reckon.”

  “That’ll have to do.”

  The Captain climbed the long ladders back to the deck.

  “Chief’s just flashing up now,” he shouted to the First Lieutenant. “He thinks that he can give us steam in twenty minutes.” He glanced at his watch. “That means about half-past ten. I think the boats had better take a box of grenades each, and lay about half
a mile off the U-boat. Send the motorboat upwind to the westward, and you take the whaler half a mile downwind of her. If she tries to move, the chances are that she won’t be able to go very fast, and you might be able to intercept her. Don’t start anything unless you have to—much better to let me ram her.”

  On his way back to the bridge he went forward into the sick bay. Ellis had been joined by the burned stokers from the forward boiler room. They were injected to the limit with morphine and lay swathed in bandages, sleeping the merciful sleep that science had given them.

  “Well, Doctor?”

  “Not so bad, sir. They’re terribly burned, and I’d like to get them into a proper hospital as soon as we can. But they’ll be all right for the moment. When can we steam, sir?”

  The question was not to be wondered at. There is no sensation more trying to a seaman than to be in a steel vessel whose engines have ceased to turn. In the moment that the metallic heartbeats die away, it is as if some part of one’s own body has ceased to function. Until the propellers stopped, it had seemed inevitable that this metal creature should reach its journey’s end. With their stopping, doubts were raised. Small at first, the fears mounted as silent hour followed silent hour. In time the strain would endanger reason more surely and more subtly than the worst of storms. A sailor’s trade, be he master or crew, is to move ships from one part of the world to another. Failure to do this will strike at the root of his being.

  “Very soon now, Doc. I’m going to ram as soon as the Chief has got steam on his kettle. If you’d like to come up and watch the fun, do so.”

  “Thanks. I will. As soon as I feel her move. I can’t do anything more for these chaps.”

  The Captain went back to the bridge. It had not seemed twenty minutes since he’d been in the boiler room. He had hardly arrived when the Coxswain was calling up the voice pipe. “Engine room’s rung the telegraphs, sir.”

  “Thank you, Coxswain.” He was panting after his climb. Suddenly he realized that he had been without sleep since eight o’clock on Tuesday morning, and it was now almost Thursday noon. Fifty hours. Strangely, he felt less tired than he had the previous day. “Coxswain, you’d better get down to the after-steering position. It is connected up. I’ll have to conn you by telephone. If you find her heavy on the wheel, you can get plenty of men from the depth-charge crews. Report on the telephone as soon as you’re ready.”

  VON STOLBERG and Schwachofer, driving their men like furies, had succeeded in reloading two bow tubes; but unless they could turn the boat around, they could still not fire them at the destroyer. With perspiration running down their faces they had gone back to the control room.

  “Kritz,” von Stolberg spoke to the engineer, “I want to see if there is anything left in the battery. The boat will turn more easily downwind. Use only the starboard engine.” And to the quartermaster, Schrader: “Put your rudder hard over to port.”

  “Hard-a-port,” Schrader repeated.

  The Kapitän nodded at the engineer.

  The switches were made. For a second that was agony to the men who had worked so hard, no sound came. Then very slowly a gentle purring noise was heard.

  “Starboard motor turning,” Kritz’s voice came in a whisper. The four Germans looked at each other and breathed deeply.

  The motion of the boat changed. The seas were astern of her. She hung poised on one and then her stern slid gracefully into the hollow. When it rose again the force of the next sea swung her around rapidly.

  “Stop the motor,” von Stolberg ordered, and trained the periscope.

  “Stand by tubes.” He gave the order to Schwachofer, and then for a moment took his eyes from the lenses and looked at his officers.

  “Gentlemen. We will sink him now. Ja. It is good. You are ready, Herr Oberleutnant?”

  “Numbers one and two tubes are ready, Herr Kapitän.”

  “Start the motor again; she will come around slowly. Ah—very soon now—very soon. Stand by, my dear Schwachofer—and stand by, you damn British . . .” A longer pause. “Du lieber Gott, he is moving! Kritz! Give her every bit of power you have.”

  “There is no more, Herr Kapitän.”

  “Port, you fool—hard-a-port.”

  “The rudder is hard over, Herr Kapitän.”

  “The motor has stopped, Herr Kapitän.”

  Von Stolberg raised his head and shoulders from the periscope. Schwachofer was astonished that any face could change so much in so short a time.

  “Can we not angle the torpedoes?” Kritz suggested.

  “What? Without electricity to set the attack table?” von Stolberg sneered.

  The three Germans looked at each other.

  “The Cecilie will be here in one hour and twenty minutes,” the Kapitän murmured.

  “I fear the destroyer may be here first,” Schwachofer said.

  “He cannot sink us by gunfire.” From Kritz.

  “He will ram us—if he has any sense,” the Kapitän said. On the ladder that led to the conning tower, he turned and added, “And I fear that he has. Unlock the revolver cabinet and take one each.” While one hand grasped the ladder he extended the other toward the engineer.

  As soon as the revolver had been handed to him, the Kapitän climbed up the ladder.

  “STARBOARD TWENTY,” the Captain spoke into the telephone handset.

  Slowly, very slowly, the destroyer began to move. Her head turned away from her enemy as she set out in a big quarter-circle. She would make her final approach on her opponent’s beam, where the blow that she intended to deal would be sure to be lethal.

  “Midships. Yeoman, signal to the boats to close in.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Port five. Pilot, tell the gunnery officer to open fire whenever he can.”

  “Aye aye, sir.”

  “Midships.”

  The after gun began to fire steadily. Shots once more fell about the U-boat, and two more hits were scored. Then the gun stopped as the Hecate began to turn toward her quarry.

  “Gunnery officer reports that target is obscured, sir.” The navigator had the phone.

  “Tell Guns that it’s cold steel now,” the Captain answered.

  Slowly and sedately the Hecate advanced. Coming downwind and sea, she moved gracefully, her high bow with its long knife-edge rising and falling as it cleft the seas in two.

  “Port twenty.” Sunlight flooded the scene. The blue-green waves were dancing; the graceful ship bowing to the swell; and so, too, the equally graceful, if serpentine, U-boat. Here was no battle fever—only the grim determination to wipe out an enemy craft, to avenge the damage done to herself and the death of her men. Was that all? The Captain wondered. No, it wasn’t all.

  He sensed rather than saw the Doctor beside him, and was glad of the company of his friend.

  “Starboard twenty.” At slow speed, down-sea, and with the rudder in the hand-steering that was so much slower than her steering engine, it was proving very difficult to keep the Hecate on a steady course. The Captain could imagine the sweating men working feverishly at the big hand wheel. Had he realized just how difficult it would be to steer her down the seas, he would have turned the other way and come upwind against the enemy. It was too late to change; and although he did not know it, the U-boat would have torpedoed him had he turned to port.

  Closing now. Very close. They could see the conning tower plainly and a flaxen-haired man standing there.

  “Port twenty.”

  Suddenly the Captain was aware of a rifle raised beside him. One of the signalmen had seized the weapon and was about to aim at the solitary figure that stood on the conning tower.

  The Captain leapt at the gun and seized it from the astonished sailor’s hand. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?—that’s murder.” Then realizing the apparent injustice of his act, when only a short while before he himself had been firing at the U-boat, he was forced to spend further time in explanation. “It’s quite different now, Higgins. Before,
there was a chance that they could get the boat under way and torpedo us. Now they haven’t an earthly—and in a moment they will be survivors.”

  The seconds that had flown by were precious ones, and they could have been otherwise employed. A wave, just sufficiently irregular in comparison with its fellows, rose a little to port of the destroyer’s stern. The destroyer was already carrying twenty degrees of port rudder, and the bow swung rapidly to port, passing the conning tower of the U-boat at which the Captain had been aiming.

  “Hard-a-starboard.”

  Below the men sweated to obey the order, heaving around the heavy wheel that, with its low gearing, meant so many turns must be made before the rudder could be moved from one side to the other.

  The Hecate’s knife-edged bow was poised threateningly above the low hull of the U-boat as it lay in the trough. The wave that had slewed the destroyer’s stern and in passing under her had raised her bow, now flung up the hull of U-121 at the same moment that its forward motion allowed the Hecate’s bow to slice down.

  With a seering crash and a scream of tortured steel, the bow bit deeply into the metal flank. The strong hull of the submarine could not withstand the blow that the destroyer had dealt—even if it had not been truly aimed.

  As the destroyer’s bow cut through the ballast tanks and stove in the inch-thick pressure hull, the U-boat heeled. The German officer’s arm shot up. For a moment before the man was tumbled into the sea, the Captain glimpsed a revolver aimed at himself. He was almost sorry that he had stopped the signalman from firing.

  The Hecate had dealt her enemy a mortal wound; but it was a glancing blow, and it should have been a straight one. The U-boat was forced around by her assailant until the two ships lay side by side and beam on to the sea. The sharp port hydroplane at the U-boat’s stern penetrated the plating of the destroyer’s second, and largest, boiler room. Rolling apart as the waves’ crest passed under them, the two vessels were flung together again in the succeeding trough. With her momentum the Hecate had moved forward; and this time the hydroplane, like a deadly fang, punctured the plating of the engine room.