All still and quiet again now, anyway. From the rush to diving stations with near-busted eardrums, men drifting back to their various berths and hammocks. Red watch, watch diving, was the broadcast order – and Cottenham had retired to his galley to conjure up an early breakfast. Ursa by now steadied on 250 degrees, with Gallo Head on her beam to port, Cape San Vito thirty on that bow. Both motors slow, grouped down. He told Danvers, who’d been cleaning the chart of yesterday’s position lines, ‘Might take a look into the Castellammare Gulf later on.’
‘Closer in than we were last time, perhaps?’
‘Well. See how it goes.’ He looked up, sniffed: ‘Might it be the exquisite aroma of soya links I’m getting?’
A nod. ‘Links, fried bread, powdered egg.’
‘Marvellous …’
Meant that, too – happened to like both soya skinless sausages and the much-maligned powdered egg.
* * *
Having had a good sleep last night, after breakfast he got stuck into the Scott Fitzgerald novel for an hour or two. Hadn’t been wildly enthusiastic about it to start with, in fact had more or less forced himself into it out of politeness to Aunt Jennie, but in this last hour had begun to find himself caught up in it, especially in the relationship between Stahl and Kathleen. Kathleen in particular appealing to him – he was beginning to think, a variety of Abigail? Not by Fitzgerald’s indications physically resembling her, or for that matter really sounding like her, but still this sense of empathy.
‘Tea’s wet, sir, if you’d like some?’
‘D’you know, Barnaby, I would?’
‘Keep body an’ soul together, as they say.’
‘I’m sure they’re right …’
McLeod’s forenoon watch, this, Jarvis and Danvers both flat out in their bunks. From next door, familiar small sounds of the periscope watch, backed by the motors’ low thrum, that went with the warmth and stillness.
Leave Kathleen to her own devices for a while, he thought, get some shut-eye.
‘Char, sir.’
‘Thanks.’ Dark-brown tea in the usual stained mug. ‘Can’t sleep, Barnaby?’
‘Crash it in a minute, sir, dare say.’
Time now eleven-fifteen. The tea was hot enough to wait while he paid a visit to the control room. Nods or friendly glances from watchkeepers McLeod, Swathely, Fraser, Ellery, Smithers, Barnet. Pausing at the chart – checking the pencilled course with an 1100 position on it. Familiar territory, of course – early Saturday, one had been here. Passing pretty well through the centre of the billet – slightly south of centre today, only just off the thirty-mile-wide opening of the Castellammare Golfo. On Saturday they’d dived with Gallo Head on roughly the same bearing as it had been a few hours ago, only further offshore: the other difference being that with a livelier wind and sea up top, and using both motors to make depth-keeping easier, you were achieving the dizzy speed of two knots instead of slightly less than one and a half. Pass San Vito around four p.m., he thought; might alter to due west for the last few hours of daylight – Marettimo on the bow then, at about twenty-five miles’ range.
He asked McLeod, ‘Visibility still good?’
‘Clear as a bell, sir.’
‘No schooners in there today.’
‘A few little widgers right inshore is all, sir.’
So – tea, then kip. And while at the tea, maybe another page of the Fitzgerald story. He’d stopped at a point where there’s some mix-up over a letter Kathleen’s left in Stahl’s car: she’s been out on a date with him that evening, he doesn’t know whether she’d intended him to find it or forgotten about it, maybe had second thoughts on whatever she’d put on paper earlier in the day. So whether or not he should open it –
‘Captain, sir.’
McLeod – in the gangway, a shoulder against the bulkhead dividing wardroom and control room. Mike recalled having heard him sending the periscope down a few seconds ago.
‘Uh?’
‘Some sort of activity inshore of us, sir. There’s a Cant circling over the gulf and with the stick right up I thought I saw a Mas-boat in there. Can’t now, and asdics haven’t, but –’
‘Let’s have a dekko.’
Time, 1125. Reminding himself on his way through that Castellammare would be about eighty on the bow, distance say seven and a half miles, i.e. 15,000 yards, in this sea-state rather long range for spotting Mas-boats. A nod to Ellery, ’scope purring up; needles on 28 feet. Handles down, and starting with an air-search. If Cants anywhere overhead, see the bastards before they see you – they or it. Not that you’d expect them to, with this broken, wind-whipped surface. He was on to it quickly in any case – small black excrescence against the clean blue between streaks and whorls of fast-travelling cloud. Well clear anyway, no immediate threat. A mutter to McLeod: ‘Your shagbat’s there, all right.’ Sky-search completed, following it with a medium- to long-range examination of the lively, dazzling-bright seascape. ’Scope well up, as McLeod had had it, on the bearing of Castellammare itself now.
No Mas-boats discernible. ‘Little widgers’, yes – fishing-boats …
Fraser blurted, upright suddenly on his stool, ‘HE, sir, red two-oh! Fast turbine. Destroyer, could be. True bearing –’ adjusting the knob on his gyro-linked bearing-ring, Mike swivelling fast, instantly aware that with the boat’s head on 250 anything twenty degrees on her port bow had to be roughly on the bearing of Cape San Vito – an area of sea which as it happened he’d just searched. Well – half a minute ago, he had. Getting back there quickly, and – ‘Christ …’ Destroyer, all right. He was about thirty on its port bow. Forty maybe. Destroyer under helm and naturally enough with a lot of movement on her, couple of miles ahead – no, three, could be – toy warship in sight and sound maybe within less than a minute of having rounded that point – helm over again now, pretty well on her ear in a morass of flying sea, making he guessed twenty-five, thirty knots.
Which wouldn’t be too comfortable. Had to be some justification – urgency …
‘Port fifteen. Steer one-seven-oh.’
‘– one-seven-oh, sir. Fifteen of port wheel on –’
Mike told McLeod, ‘Destroyer entering the gulf. Stop port.’ ‘Stop port, sir –’
‘Christ –’
‘I think – two of ’em, sir –’
‘Damn right, Fraser!’
Precursors of what?
‘Two hundred revs, sir. Two-one-oh.’
Shoving the handles up, periscope starting down. Fraser muttering to himself, shaking his head, beady eyes on the asdics’ bearing-ring. Smithers reporting, ‘Course one-seven-oh, sir.’ Mike with the two destroyers in clear sight but otherwise empty seascape all around, nothing else, thinking in answer to his own question Precursors of bugger-all, and in search of an explanation deciding to check on what if anything might be happening off Castellammare, where a second or two before Fraser had come up with this he’d thought he’d seen smoke. Meaning damn-all, maybe: dockyard, emission of smoke, so what? The more cogent questions being whether these destroyers might be escorting some other vessel so far astern of them it hadn’t yet rounded San Vito – which was improbable – or simply arriving on their own, Cant up there to ensure safe arrival, McLeod’s Mas-boat or Mas-boats real or imagined, but if real also in some way connected with this arrival? Or, destroyers here to collect /provide escort for some major unit that might shortly poke its nose out.
Wishful thinking again, with knobs on. But they were here for something. So was Ursa – even if it might be to sink a destroyer with a crew of something like a couple of hundred men. Or say two destroyers, four hundred men: nice spread of four fish across the pair of them. Double wishful thinking.
‘Slow ahead both motors.’ Then – ‘Thirty feet, Number One.’ Because twenty-eight would be a little tricky with the surface turbulence. Small movement of the hands, instant upward shimmer of the periscope. To Fraser – ‘Destroyers bearing?’
Slight pause while rechecking, then:
‘Green three-oh, sir – moving right to left – 210 revs –’
‘Two in line ahead?’
‘Yessir – I think –’
‘All right.’Three miles clear, even four, six to eight thousand yards. Bright, flickering light in his pupils while making another air-search. The Cant hadn’t been anywhere near them but it could be by now – or another could. Anyway, not observably. Back on as much as he could see of the destroyers – which were Navigatore class, he thought. Bigger than yesterday’s Folgores or Dardos, and really nothing like them – two funnels apiece, for a start. Not a hope of getting at them as things were right now – range minimally 6,000 yards and opening, and smallish, fast-moving targets. Would have been a lot better if he’d been inside the gulf, ahead of them, rather than trailing them in like this.
Realistically, get one of them on its way out maybe. If for instance they’d been deployed in connection with the Gib convoy, calling in here on their way back now, maybe for bunkers.
‘Slowing, sir – revs 150 –’
No great surprise in that: only that if their intention was to enter Castellammare, with still a few miles to go, you wouldn’t have expected them to reduce speed this soon.
‘One-three-five revs, sir.’
Maybe did not intend docking. In which case back to the guesswork, hope that lurked more or less eternal … Head back from the ’scope and pushing its handles up, telling Ellery, ‘Dip.’ Meaning duck it under and bring it smartly back up again: standard precautionary dodge when using a lot of periscope – some Wop pilot supposedly telling himself he’d only imagined having seen one. Right up again now anyway: and Fraser with a new surprise – ‘Stopped engines, sir!’
‘Have they, now …’
Because if Ursa could be got in there, into something like point-blank range, undetected, might get the pair of them. Forty feet, say, group up, half ahead, be in a firing position within about thirty or even twenty minutes. Two fish for each of them. No – one each: stationary targets, God’s sake – one each, retaining the other pair for whatever else might show up.
‘HE in short bursts like, low revs, sir –’
‘All right.’ In order to stay put, no doubt watching shore bearings. Not likely they’d sit there for as long as twenty minutes, but – get in there anyway, give it a go. Knock one or both of them off, alternatively some other, more important target, whatever they were here for. But sinking two Navigatores in one afternoon wouldn’t be anything to be exactly ashamed of.
He’d checked the line of sight, told Smithers, ‘Come three degrees to starboard.’
‘Three degrees to starboard, sir. One-seven-three …’
‘Down periscope. Forty feet. Group up, half ahead together. Diving stations.’
‘Diving stations!’
To have her settled and in trim, ready for action before it started. Clang of the telegraphs, hydroplane indicators tilting to put angle on her, motors reacting in no more than a hiccup as the LTOs back aft broke and re-engaged the big grouper switches.Ursa beginning to tremble under the increased thrust. McLeod had passed the diving-stations order over the Tannoy broadcast and the rush was already three-quarters over, the control-room team’s eyes as ever curious, expectant, hopeful. Danvers stooping over the chart as if he’d never left it, Jarvis blinking like an owl, McLeod reporting while still adjusting trim, ‘Both motors grouped up, half ahead, sir.’
‘Course one-seven-three, sir.’
Needles slowing in their movement around the gauges, dive-angle coming off her. McLeod’s flat ‘Forty feet, sir.’Time, 1142. Mike reached for the Tannoy microphone: ‘Hear, there? Captain speaking. Present state of affairs is we’re motoring into a bay – gulf, Golfo di Castellammare – Castellammare being a dockyard port on the bay’s southern shore. Two Italian destroyers have steamed in ahead of us and stopped engines in the middle. Take us about twenty minutes to get in there – either clobber them or go for whatever they’re waiting to escort away. If we go for the destroyers I’ll aim to put one fish in each – if they’re still lying stopped, that is – but you’d better have all four tubes ready, TI.’
He switched off, hung the mike up. Depth-settings on the fish would have to stay at fourteen feet no matter what, those now in the tubes being Mark IVs, not VIIIs. In general, though, play it off the cuff. There’d been no Intelligence that he recalled of any major target currently repairing in Castellammare;if there had been, Shrimp would have touched on it in his briefing.
1147 now. Give it until 1210. Quizzing Fraser meanwhile with a raised eyebrow, and the HSD shrugging: ‘No change, sir. Short bursts at low revs.’ Face changing in that moment – a hand jerking up to the headset. ‘Sounds like E-boats – Mas-boats, sir. Like them other three –’
First full day on the billet, off Palermo when he’d been waiting for the cruiser to come out, they’d raced off westward around Cape Gallo – reasons best known to themselves … ‘Bearing?’
‘South, sir. One-six-five, right to left. One-seven-five, one-eight-oh. Confused – not close, it’s –’
‘Beyond the destroyers? They moving?’
Shake of the head. ‘Inshore of ’em, but no, sir –’
‘All right.’
Eye on that ball, ignore distractions. 1152. Another thirteen minutes, say.
‘Sir – getting under way. Destroyers. Lost them others, but –’
‘Slow together. Group down.’ He’d restrained the curses. It had been a spur-of-the-moment, odds-against chance anyway – worth taking, might have come up trumps, but –
‘Both motors slow ahead grouped down, sir.’
‘Thirty feet. What’s new, Fraser?’
‘Milling around, sir, low revs. One moving left to right, revs increasing –’
‘Mas-boats?’
Beginnings of a headshake – but uncertain, hunting this way and that with his receiver without answering. Then: ‘Still inshore I think, sir.’ A catch of breath: ‘New HE – reciprocating –’ Counting revolutions, scowling in concentration: ‘One-eight-oh revs – reciprocating, freighter I’d say. Destroyers more like 240 – moving right …
‘Thirty feet, sir.’ Periscope slithering up, Mike’s hands ready for it while a tentative picture part-formed in his mind – how that lot might be sorting itself out. Asking Fraser, ‘New target’s bearing – and the destroyers’ still shifting left to right?’
‘All around 170, sir. 165 to 175 – yeah, seems range opening –’
‘All right.’ Periscope right up and his eyes at the lenses: initially, as confused visually as acoustically. ‘Twenty-eight feet, Number One!’
‘Twenty-eight –’
‘Steer one-seven-oh.’
Destroyers carving great mounds of white. At this moment, damn-all else, but – Cant, to the right of them at less than a thousand feet and flying east. Ignore him, for now – or get bloody nowhere, wasting time. Between the destroyers though – could be a mile back, into sight just in that moment and now out of it again – still had to be there, darn it!
‘Bearing of the new one, Fraser?’
‘Can’t rightly say, sir, it’s like –’
There. And as big as a house, in all that schemozzle – dazzling haze, dark centre to it, stuff flying in sheets. Battle-wagon, bow-on? No – nothing of the bloody sort, optical illusion – no fighting-top, only masts – at least, a mast – and yard, funnel smoke spiralling in the wind, certainly not helping – clearing again, thank God. Low, squat funnel: funnels, side by side and rectangular cross-sectioned? There, all right, solid, almost clear-cut image hard to make sense of but – training right quickly, and no problems in finding both destroyers well out on that side, three-quarter buried in the stuff they were ploughing up. Making say twenty knots and right into it. Just seconds on this assessment, then into air-search to find that Cant. In which no joy, so the hell with it, it’d be blind in the confusion of this seascape anyway – touch wood – and back in surprisingly greater clarity on what he’d called the new one
– blocky, specialist transport of some kind; and if it was worth an escort of two Navigatores, Mas-boats and a Cant it had to be worth sinking. Banging the handles up, and a nod to Ellery: ‘Dip.’ When routine precautions didn’t cost you anything, why not take them? Telling himself, snap-attack while the escorts are both conveniently out of the way on the San Vito side of it. Whatever the hell it is. Big, and probably in ballast, making say eighteen or twenty knots. Periscope back up: surprising them all then as he double-checked the whole assembly – including a sight of the Cant – a Cant, could be others – limping seaward out beyond the plunging Navigatores – before settling back on the heavyweight, surprising them with ‘Start the attack. Target a large steamer, bearing that.’ CERA McIver gnome-like behind him to read it off. ‘Range that.’ Basing it on a 65-foot mainmast, which was about how it looked. Guesswork, instinct. ‘Set enemy speed eighteen. I’m twenty on his port bow. Stand by numbers one, two and three tubes. This’ll be a close-range snap-attack.’ Head back, and to Ellery, ‘Dip.’
Close-range snap attack before the target put its helm over to fall in astern of its escorts – or they shifted over, or the whole outfit altered course – whatever. Periscope back up, his eyes at the lenses and its top glass in the froth as much as over it. Wondering about the Mas-boats, telling McLeod ‘Half ahead together. Keep her up, Christ’s sake. Depth now?’
‘Twenty-nine feet, sir, sorry. Half ahead both motors.’
‘Bearings of all HE, Fraser.’
Because of the possibility of Mas-boats, a surprise appearance on this side. Having certainly vanished, but having to be some damn place. Ignore them for now anyway, get this sod. Ignoring also the stuff Fraser was giving him, having the main elements of it visually in any case, as far as the sea-state permitted. Further data for the attack team meanwhile: ‘Bearing that. Range that. I’m – oh, thirty-five on his bow.’
Enemy course therefore –
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