by Alan Evans
He stopped then, waited, and Ross said slowly, ‘So we have to make the entire passage in one night, starting from about ten miles out at sunset, to be ten miles clear of the other end by first light.’
Smith nodded.
McLeod grumbled, not liking it. ‘That’s cutting it fine, ower bluidy fine. It’ll be a slow job working through the shoals at each end so we’ll need to make a good ten or twelve knots for all of that middle passage, forty-odd miles of it. And all by night.’
Smith asked, ‘What about the weather?’
Ross answered, ‘I think it’s going to change.’
McLeod nodded and added absently, eyes on the chart, ‘There might be some ice but it’s unlikely. Nothing to worry us, anyway.’
Smith asked, ‘Fog?’
The navigator shrugged broad shoulders. ‘There’s always a good chance of it at this time of year. You could wait for weeks before being sure of a clear night.’
But Smith couldn’t. ‘All right.’ He talked them through his plan stage by stage and when that was done, asked, ‘Any questions so far?’
Ross rubbed at his long jaw worriedly, the stubble rasping. ‘It’s going to be a close thing, even if everything goes right.’
And if it didn’t? If they ran aground, as one submarine did while attempting this passage back in 1914? If they strayed by a tiny error of navigation into a minefield? If they made not a single mistake yet ran into some mine that had broken loose and drifted? The risks were massive.
Smith gave orders for the gear to be made ready to haul Audacity off the ground by a kedge anchor if it became necessary, and a party detailed. He also ordered a damage-control party to be standing by to try to patch and shore up any hole made by a mine—though that was a forlorn hope; a mine would almost certainly sink her.
Finally he straightened from the table. He had tried to prepare for every eventuality he could foresee. Now he glanced at his watch and told Ross and McLeod, ‘I’m going to get some sleep. I suggest you follow my example when you’re off-watch. It’ll be a long, busy night.’
McLeod picked up the chart and left with Ross. Both men were silent and thoughtful. Smith stretched out on his bunk. He was not tired but strung to a tight pitch. With his eyes closed the plans he’d made unreeled again and again as he sought to find fault with them. When he’d turned away from watching the seaplane he saw the girl walking the deck forward of the bridge, the hood of her cape pulled up against the rain. She looked up and their glances locked. Now her face and her eyes came between him and his plans, filling his mind…
The tapping at the door woke him and he lifted on one elbow, drowsily, to see McLeod’s head poking around the door. The navigator said, ‘Sunset, sir.’
‘Coming.’ Smith rubbed at his eyes and sat up, swinging his boots to the deck.
McLeod had left the door ajar; his next words, to Ross, were low but audible: ‘Sleeping like a bairn, would you credit it? I couldn’t get a wink.’
And Ross’s muttered answer, ‘Nor me.’
Smith drew a wry satisfaction from that: they thought he was unworried. It was a good job they didn’t know the truth. He splashed water on his face, picked up his overcoat and cap and went out to the bridge.
McLeod told him the rain had ceased an hour before. Now they steamed beneath a lowering sky. The sun set astern of them, a dull orange ball as if seen through smoked glass. The night would be overcast, dark, and that at least was to the good.
The sun was down and it was nearly full dark when they sighted the point of the Kullen promontory. They closed it, well to port of the central channel, Audacity steaming slowly, showing no light, and passed it breathtakingly close with a man in the bow again, casting the lead and calling the soundings. There was a Swedish lighthouse on a tower at the tip of the promontory but the lamp was not burning. Most of the navigation markers had been put out for the duration of the war. The tower was astern of them, off the port quarter when the lookout called from the starboard wing, ‘Ship, sir! Starboard beam! I think she’s a destroyer!’
Smith used his glasses to pick out the furred silhouette in the darkness and Ross muttered at his shoulder, ‘Looks like a German destroyer to me.’ Smith grunted, watching the long, low vessel with her twin funnels trailing smoke and the hump of a gun forward. She was on an opposite course to Audacity. He thought the lookouts aboard the destroyer would not see his ship against the black loom of the land behind her and, steaming slowly like this, with no white water at bow and stern to give her away.
It was still a tense moment but the silhouette gradually lost shape as it receded, melted into the night and was gone.
Ross let out his breath in a sigh, then complained, ‘She was damn close in, well inside Swedish waters.’
True, but so was Audacity.
And all the while the man at the lead had kept up his chanting and Smith listened, as he did now: ‘By the mark, two!’
Two fathoms: twelve feet of water and Audacity drew just five.
They saw no other patrol. Then McLeod reported quietly, ‘Viken on the port bow.’ The light at Viken had not been put out.
Smith ordered, ‘Starboard ten,’ to take Audacity out of the shallows and into the deeper water of the shipping lane. They had passed the patrols and were in the Sound. Audacity turned to port to follow the lane and Smith ordered revolutions for ten knots.
Ten minutes later Ross swore. Smith kept his face impassive but spoke on the voice-pipe to McLeod, now on the flying bridge above the wheelhouse: ‘Fog, Mr. McLeod.’
‘Aye, seen, sir.’ Then the pilot cursed in his turn.
Smith stepped out of the wheelhouse to stare at the grey mist that had already reduced visibility to a half-mile or less. McLeod came dropping down the ladder from the flying bridge and Ross stood at the door of the wheelhouse, both of them watching him.
He asked, ‘Local, d’you think? Reckon we might run out of it in a minute or two?’
McLeod shook his head. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but not likely. If you recall, sir, I said we could expect fog.’
Smith nodded. The worst had happened. He had to be at Kirkko on the fifteenth. He had worried that fog might prevent him attempting the passage of the Sound and lose him a day or more in waiting for the weather to clear. But now he was into the Sound and he could not wait here. Should he try to return to the Kattegat? Getting this far had not been easy, but going back in fog would be worse. Then to lose a day and have it all to do again?
Time. Whether he went north or south he must be clear of the Sound and the patrols outside it by first light. Furthermore, if Audacity plodded on at a cautious snail’s pace they would be safe from collision but still in the Sound when the sun rose. To be well clear by then they needed to make ten or twelve knots for most of the hours of darkness. Turning back offered no advantage; this fog might hold for days.
Smith made his decision. ‘Maintain revolutions for ten knots. Mr. Ross! Double the lookouts and clear lower deck.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’
Standing outside the wheelhouse Smith watched the men come up on deck. Now, if Audacity were in collision with another vessel, the only men below would be those in the engine room. There was no shortage of lookouts and two were right forward in the eyes of the ship: whether they would see anything in time was another matter. The fog was patchy and one minute Smith could see for a mile ahead but the next, as the mist drifted, there was only an impenetrable grey wall beyond the fo’c’sle head.
McLeod bent over the chart table, head and shoulders pushed into the canopy rigged to prevent the light over the table showing outside. He emerged to say, ‘We should see Halsingborg or Helsingor any minute now.’ The two towns stood on either side of the narrow passage. Helsingor, with Hamlet’s castle, lay on the Danish side. Halsingborg on the Swedish.
‘Lights on the port bow, sir!’ That came from a lookout. Smith saw the spread glow as McLeod exclaimed, ‘Halsingborg!’ And then, prompting: ‘Change of course, sir?’ Smith
ordered, ‘Starboard ten.’
Audacity’s bow swung and settled on a course to take her the length of the Sound, rushing on through the fog. Once he turned and saw Elizabeth Ramsay standing at the back of the bridge on the port side by the motor-boat. The order ‘Clear lower deck’ had meant everybody, even her. She wore her cape but the hood was thrown back, her hair blowing in the wind. Her face was only a pale oval in the darkness. He did not know how long she had been there, never knew how long she stayed. He turned to face forward.
*
McLeod muttered, ‘We won’t see the Haken light.’
The beacon on the island of Hven was not lit. But they soon saw Hven itself, and raced by it close enough to glimpse the loom of the plateau before it was lost once more in the mist. Audacity pounded on, making good her ten knots and more. That was only her clear weather cruising speed but the mist magnified the velocity until they seemed to be tearing along like a train. Smith mused ironically that even the fog had its compensations: at least no Swedish or Danish patrol vessel would be groping about on a night like this.
But suppose some nervous merchant skipper had anchored in the fairway? Audacity would be on her before the order to turn away could be given. At ten knots her bow would be stove in, and that would be the end of the mission. Before she sank he would have to try to get the gold off and dumped well clear of the ship where divers would not find it. He and his crew would be interned.
Was the fog thickening? Ross swore under his breath then said aloud, ‘Can’t see a bloody thing!’
Then McLeod spoke, his voice coming muffled from inside the canopy: ‘I make it Copenhagen lies to starboard now, sir. Malmo on the port bow.’
A capital city with all its lights lay only ten miles away but they saw only the grey banks rolling and streaming past Audacity’s side. Smith ducked quickly inside the canopy beside McLeod, peered at the chart and the navigator’s calculations, then said quietly, ‘Yes, I see.’
He backed out, straightened, then turned and leaned easily against the screen. That was a pose, for the benefit of the bridge-staff. In fact he was sweating. If their dead reckoning was correct he should order a change of course very soon or he would run her aground on the Swedish shore. But if he turned too soon—if their calculations were wrong—he would drive her on to the island of Saltholm or into the minefield off Copenhagen. McLeod was standing behind him now and knew the decision his captain was facing.
Smith took it, looked at his watch and said, ‘I think we should hold on for another minute.’
‘Sir.’ McLeod prayed to God that his captain was right. The minute ran its course—and the portside lookout yelled, ‘Lights! Port bow!’
McLeod peered, then blew out his cheeks in relief and said, ‘Malmo, sir! No doubt of it!’
‘Starboard ten!’ Smith conned Audacity as she kept up that terrifying ten knots, past Limhamn where they saw lights gleaming, lights which were too close for comfort. They were on course for the Kogrund Passage, but that was mined and closed to them without a Swedish escort, so when the lookout picked up the glow of the light at Klagshamn Smith altered course to port and reduced Audacity’s speed to a crawl. Briefly they all breathed a little easier but they had only exchanged one terror for another. Smith was hoping to pick his way around the edge of the minefield through the shoals and shallows where no mines would be laid. Audacity, drawing only five feet, might do it.
That was the theory. The practice was like a blind man walking a tightrope. Smith ordered the motor-boat lowered and sent puttering ahead, taking the soundings and reporting them back to the ship in a muted hail. He had done this once before in the old cruiser Thunder but then there had been neither patrols nor mines. He strained his eyes against the fog as Audacity slipped slowly down the coast off Skanor with the shoals to port, sometimes barely a fathom under her, and the mines to starboard—somewhere.
Buckley, standing at the back of the wheelhouse, also remembered Thunder. He would never forget that night, leading the old cruiser down to the sea, nor the fight the next day. But he thought this night was a right bastard, too.
Smith stopped Audacity repeatedly when the hail from the motor-boat reported the bottom shoaling so even she could not pass, and took her out of it astern to seek another way through. He kept one eye on his watch because time was against them, ticking steadily while Audacity meandered slowly south. Her crew lined the rails, eyes narrowed to pierce the night and the fog as they searched for mines that might have broken loose and now be floating with the current. Nobody knew exactly how close the field itself was.
Until Ross said, ‘Lights, sir.’
And McLeod sighed, ‘We’re past Skanor. Thank God.’
The minefield lay astern of them now and Smith ordered, ‘Starboard ten!’ taking Audacity out of these shallows where she might run aground, to be held there until the dawn came and the patrols found her. The day would not be long in coming. The fog still wrapped them around, but he ordered, ‘Revolutions for ten knots.’
‘Ten knots, sir!’
Audacity was running again, bow shoving into the grey curtain that parted and streamed past the bridge like smoke, yet still rolled ahead of her. Smith speculated that if he could be sure this fog would hold into the day he would reduce speed now to a more cautious, saner progress and creep away from the Sound under its cover. But would it? He dared not be seen anywhere near the Sound when dawn broke.
‘Ship starboard bow!’…‘Ship!’…‘Ship!’
A score of voices yelled the warning and his shouted order came like an echo: ‘Port twenty!’ He saw a ghost ship, dark grey in the lighter greyness, long and low, riding lights glowing. In the second’s glimpse he had of her he saw that she was anchored and that she was a German destroyer. Then she was gone and only the fog remained.
He brought Audacity back on to her course. McLeod and Ross looked at him covertly, expectantly, but he did not order a reduction in speed. There was unlikely to be another destroyer on this Swedish side of the channel. There could be a merchantman anchored but that was a risk they had taken all through the Sound. Nothing had changed. The equation of time and distance was still the same: they must be out of sight of patrols when the day came.
It came with a steady shredding of the fog until all was gone except for a long bank of it falling astern. First there was twilight and then the first leaden light of day when they could see drawn faces and red eyes. And as the sun rose pale out of the east they peered astern and saw no ships, no land, only an empty sea. They had made the passage of the Sound.
Smith stooped over the chart with McLeod. ‘I want a course for Kirkko, Pilot. You know it?’
‘Know of it, sir. We once called at Kotka, not far away on that coast.’ He glanced behind Smith’s back at Ross, who raised his eyebrows and mouthed, ‘Kirkko?’
Smith had caught that turn of McLeod’s head and said drily, ‘It’s in the Gulf of Finland, Mr. Ross. We have to meet someone there, but I’ll tell you more about that later.’ Then he spoke to the navigator, ‘You’ve plotted the minefields ahead?’
McLeod stopped grinning at Ross. ‘Yes, sir.’
The chart was spattered with his pencilled hatchings. They worked together to lay off a course through them then Smith turned to Ross. ‘You have the watch?’
‘Yes, sir.’ He had been on the bridge all that long night and it showed in his eyes and the lines of tiredness at their corners.
But so had Smith and McLeod, and it was worse for them. This was Smith’s ship, his responsibility, while McLeod, as pilot, knew the risks they ran too well for his peace of mind. He looked an older man this morning and Smith ordered him to turn in.
McLeod did not argue, but produced his usual wide grin. ‘Aye, aye, sir.’
Smith walked through the wheelhouse to his cabin, saw Buckley standing at its door and asked, ‘What are you waiting for?’
‘‘Case you wanted anything, sir.’
‘Are you on watch?’
‘No, sir
.’
‘Don’t be a bloody fool, then. Turn in.’ He suspected that Buckley had waited there since dusk of the previous day, to try to save him if disaster struck. Buckley had waited like that before.
Smith lowered himself slowly to sprawl on his bunk. There was a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of gold stacked under him. Audacity was alone in a German sea. He heard McLeod out on the bridge, taking his leave of Ross: ‘Well, maybe that’s the worst over.’
The worst? Smith thought it had been bad enough. But though they had broken through into the Baltic, they still had to get out again. After Kirkko he had to get them out.
This was only the beginning.
4—A German Sea
When they called Smith to the bridge he looked blearily at his watch and saw he had slept for a bare two hours. Ross apologised: ‘Sorry, sir, but I knew you’d want to see this.’ He pointed with one hand, with the other unslung the glasses from around his neck and passed them to Smith. He focused them, looking out on the bearing Ross indicated, searching… There. The Zeppelin was off the port bow, something like ten miles away and headed from north to south. The Swedish coast lay over the horizon to the north, so…
He said, ‘Flying patrol. She probably left Kiel, or somewhere on the German coast, at dawn. Flew north as far as Sweden and now she’s on the return leg.’ The southern end of that leg might be Arkona. The neck of sea separating the German and Swedish coasts was only forty miles wide at that point.
Ross asked, ‘Could she be looking for us?’
Smith thought about it a moment, then: ‘We’ll see.’ He handed the glasses back to Ross and leaned his arms on the screen. ‘Let’s have some coffee up here.’
A messenger went hurrying and Smith watched the Zeppelin, tiny with distance, seeming to hang almost motionless between sea and sky but in fact making fifty knots or more. Was it searching for Audacity? Had the anchored German destroyer seen them and sent a wireless signal to bring this Zeppelin out for the hunt? He did not believe it, remembering that mere second’s glimpse he’d had of the destroyer. Any lookout aboard her would have had even less chance of seeing Audacity, a darkened ship.