by Alan Evans
He gasped, ‘Too far north! Turn around!’
Paddling with their feet and one free hand they hauled Seahorse around and started back the way they had come. More dragging minutes passed and then a rectangular black shape slowly formed out of the darkness. It had to be the northern mole because there was no boom outside it, and that which they followed ended at the mole, was secured there. That was better, Balestra told himself. Now they knew where they were, but — he peered at his watch. They were already behind time.
So they rested beside the mole for only a minute, feeling safe in the blackness at the foot of the concrete cliff which towered above them. Even if there was a sentry up there he wouldn’t hear them.
They moved on along the mole for two hundred yards and came to the southern end of it. Here was the entrance to the harbour, a gap sixty yards between this northern mole and that further south. Inside but still unseen was the gate, one section of which could be swung aside to let ships enter or leave, then closed again. They must pass through the gate. They pushed past the end of the mole, started to turn Seahorse into the current running out of the harbour mouth. Both of them swam desperately, trying in vain to shove Seahorse forward towards the gate. The current was carrying them relentlessly out to sea.
Balestra gasped, ‘Hang on! I’m starting the engine!’
Lombardo’s face turned towards him. ‘What if there’s a sentry?’
But Balestra remembered Smith had not seen sentries near the gate on his reconnaissance. Besides — ‘We’ve got to take a chance or we’ll never get in.’
He eased over the lever and the engine throbbed, the screw turned slowly then faster. Paddling with their feet they pointed the head of Seahorse at the gap between the north and south moles and now they were closing. They were passing between the moles, making slow headway against the current. Balestra heard the hiss from Lombardo, saw his finger point, looked where it pointed and saw the two guard-boats, the twin funnels of the old torpedo-boat where she lay inside the northern mole and the stubby outline of the tug lying inside the southern. Both ships showed drifts of smoke from their funnels. The tug was much the closer of the two but he could see no one on her deck. Probably whoever was on watch had taken shelter from the rain in her wheelhouse; there was a light in there. The torpedo-boat was too far away to see Seahorse.
He turned his head forward only just in time. Lombardo’s hand flapped. ‘Stop!’ The whisper came back to Balestra but he was already cutting the engine. A moment later Seahorse bumped against the gate and Lombardo grabbed hold, held her there.
The gate was a double line of long floating timbers linked by chains, with other beams connecting the lines at regular intervals. From these connecting beams projected steel spikes each three feet long, their points turned seaward. Balestra wiped at his face, caught his breath and thought that Flying-Fish would never have crawled over this, would have stuck on the spikes. Who had thought of them? Voss? But Seahorse was another matter, only fourteen inches wide and there was room and plenty for her to pass between the connecting beams with their spikes. He paddled forward again until he was opposite Lombardo at the nose and they worked Seahorse along the gate until they reached a submerged connecting chain then hauled Seahorse over it an inch at a time. Keeping very close to her they pushed her on between the spiked timbers to the second line, shoved her again over the chain then held on to her with one hand, to a timber with the other. They had passed through the gate.
They rested there again; they had to. The continual exertion had to some extent countered the bitter cold, but it had exhausted them. Balestra looked at his watch and swore softly with frustration. He whispered to Lombardo, ‘That current lost us more time, far too much time. We’re a long way behind schedule. Are you ready?’ Balestra himself was not, would have rested longer, but Salzburg lay far up the harbour. They had to move.
‘Ready when you are, Tenente.’ Lombardo’s voice came easily. If he was weary or nervous he did not show it.
Balestra thought, ‘Thank God for Angelo Lombardo!’ Aloud he said, ‘Good man.’
They started the motor and headed slowly into the harbour. The rain had stopped now and Balestra could see the land to the north and pick out the bay of Val Maggiore but it was impossible to judge distance. They had only been moving a minute or two when he found his compass had filled with water and was useless. Somewhere ahead of them were two more booms, one overlapping the other, the gap between them somewhere to the north. He thought the set of the current would still be towards the gate but at the same time it could be edging them sideways: Were they making headway against it? He could not tell. Bat it was a long time before Lombardo near the nose held up his hand again.
Balestra stopped the engine. Lombardo was holding on to another boom formed of three lines of buoys all joined together by steel nets hanging down below the surface with only the top strands of them visible. With time it might be possible to climb over them, but they did not have time and the nets could be wired to an alarm system and even mined. He said ‘We’ll move north.’
He started the engine again and they worked Seahorse northwards along the line of the boom. The current thrust them continually away from the boom so they were continually shoving and hauling Seahorse back on course. Balestra could see the loom of Cristo Point to the north. He knew there were two guard-boats there but could not see them. They laboured on, came at last to the end of the boom, rounded the big buoys there and headed once more into the darkness of the harbour.
Only to run into another, similar boom of nets. This one, according to the aerial photographs, overlapped that just left behind so this time they worked south, struggling wearily with Seahorse, mouths gaping wide as they gasped for breath and spat out seawater. Balestra wanted to rest, knew they should, that they were both on the point of collapse, but they were already very late. Another delay might mean…
The rest was forced on them. A spark of light came close ahead. Balestra stopped the engine and they each hung on to Seahorse with one hand, gripping the boom with the other. Now they could see the ship. They would have seen her before but for their preoccupation with wrestling with Seahorse and the current. She was an old sailing ship, moored to a buoy at the end of the boom; a guard-boat. The spark of light had been a match. They saw the man who had struck it, leaning on the rail of the ship, saw the glow of the cigarette as he drew on it.
They hung there, breathing shallowly through open mouths. Balestra thought the ship and the man were only twenty or thirty yards away. It was incredible that he had not seen them: he must have just come up from below and his eyes were not fully adjusted to the darkness.
If they moved now he would see them and give the alarm. They stayed still as death.
He too stayed, lit another cigarette from the stub of the first. Balestra heard Lombardo groan softly; himself he would have killed the man if he could. To have come so far only to be stopped by one man, one piece of ill luck...
*
Pietro Zacco, scowling with worry, looked again at his watch. ‘It is late.’
Smith nodded. The operation was far behind schedule: the night had dragged by and soon the day would be on them. He had waited as long as he dared but now he faced the unavoidable truth. Balestra was dead. He remembered the lieutenant’s determination aboard the Flying-Fish at the assault on Trieste; he would succeed or die. Voss had learned from that attempt and Smith was certain he was responsible for the network of booms defending Pola, and that Balestra and Lombardo had been caught on one of them. Both men were dead, drowned somewhere out there in the bitter darkness.
He told himself again, for the hundredth time, that he should not have sent them; the whole idea was too wild, impossible of achievement. There had to be another way to get at Salzburg but so far he had failed to find it and his failure would mean disaster in the Adriatic.
‘Sir?’
Smith realised Zacco had spoken to him and lost in his brooding he had not heard. ‘What did you say?’
‘The torpedomen are ready with the charges, sir.’
Now he had only the MAS boats. He looked across at the other two where they drifted close abeam, lying a mile or so out from the harbour entrance. He had moved his tiny force there to wait for some sign that Balestra’s mission had been successful. They had all run their electric motors for brief periods during the long hours of the night to keep station but now they were silent, still waiting. They looked very small, fragile, lying low in the sea. He said, ‘No.’ He would not order these men into a hopeless attack, to certain death. They deserved a fighting chance.
Zacco hesitated, then: ‘Sir, we are ready. You said we must not delay because Salzburg might escape. This could be our last chance —’
There came a low call from the seaman in the bow and Zacco turned to peer forward, said quickly, ‘Ship coming out!’
Smith saw her, growing out of the darkness, steaming slowly, quietly. A destroyer — no, she was an old twin-funnelled torpedo-boat like the one they had met outside Trieste. This would be the guard-boat that had been lying outside the entrance gate, just inside the mole. Should he fight her? No. The MAS boats’ torpedoes were not swung out and they would be out-gunned. Starting the engines would give them away and there was a chance, just a chance, that she might not see them. The boats lay low and black, still on the sea and no movement aboard them except for the slowly training barrels of the machine-guns as they followed the torpedo-boat. But she was going to pass close..
A tight winked aboard her and Smith heard the catch of Zacco’s breath. Smith whispered, ‘Still!’ If the Austrian was signalling them he might have taken the MAS for fishing-boats and be planning to steam on. Zacco was muttering softly as he read the stuttering flashes. They came from a very small lamp, possibly a shielded torch, and Smith wondered why they used…
Zacco said, ‘Amico.’ The light had stopped and so had the torpedo-boat, she now lay as still as the three MAS boats. He went on, puzzled and suspicious, ‘She sent just that: “Amico” — friend.’
Not a challenge. Just the one word, in Italian: friend: Smith stared across the sea at the ship. A trap? But why? If she wanted to: sink them she could have cracked on speed and blown the MAS out of the water. He could see her guns trained fore and aft, no threat to the boats, and then remembered something Zacco had told him back in Venice — he ordered, ‘Close her.’ But added quietly to Gallina and Pagani, ‘You two wait.’ There was no sense in leading all three boats into what was possibly a trap, though now he doubted it.
The motors hummed and Zacco’s MAS slid in towards the torpedo-boat until Smith could see a group of men on her deck forward of her bridge, their hands held high. Zacco took the boat sidling in alongside and stopped her at Smith’s order so she lay six feet away from the men lining the rail. One of them called nervously across the gap, voice high and quick, breathless.
Zacco burst out incredulously, ‘He wants to surrender!’
Smith asked, ‘Who is he?’ He listened, put questions to Zacco as the lieutenant drew the story from the man. He was a petty officer. He said most of the crew were Slays, sick of fighting for an Austrian Empire they held scanty allegiance to — Zacco had mentioned this unrest in the Austrian navy and so had Devereux in his first meeting with Smith. When the Slays had learned that the fleet was to sail for Cattaro and a more active role in the war, it had been the last straw.
‘What?’ Smith broke in there. ‘He’s certain? When?’ Zacco put the questions, said, ‘They had orders. The fleet sails at first light.’
‘Go on.’ So the rumours had been correct. Smith listened, mind racing, as Zacco got out of the PO the rest of his story. The crew had mutinied, locked their officers below and were now bound for Italy to surrender the ship. Despite the darkness they had recognised the cigar shapes of the MAS boats, all too familiar to them. Zacco winked at. Smith. ‘He says some friends were badly shot-up off Trieste by a madman in a MAS a week or so ago.’ And: ‘He asks if you’ll take the ship to Italy?’
Smith shook his head. ‘Tell him to make his own way, fly plenty of white flags when it’s light and steer south-west.’ That last to take the Austrian well clear of Hercules.
Zacco interpreted and the PO, hands lowered now, lifted one again but this time in acceptance. Zacco said, ‘He’s agreed but he says we should get away, that soon the fleet will sail. In less than half an hour there will be many destroyers.’
Smith nodded; he would bet on it. ‘Haul clear.’
The group aboard the torpedo-boat broke up, chattering among themselves. The MAS slid back to the others and Smith watched the torpedo-boat get under way and turn onto a course of south-west. He turned back to look across at the other boats and heard Zacco giving a rapid explanation to Gallina and Pagani. They were watching Smith. The fleet was coming out. There was no radio either on the MAS boats or out on Hercules to call for support, and no time anyway for Pickett’s cruisers and the Italian fleet to cross the Adriatic and intercept before the Austrians reached Cattaro. The screening destroyers would be first out and would sweep the MAS boats from the sea. The three captains knew all this. There seemed nothing they could do but run with their tails between their legs. Gallina growled angrily and Pagani swore.
Then Smith gave his orders, heard the low mutter of excitement and finished, ‘Keep those charges ready. Half ahead on the motors.’ Now suddenly they had a fighting chance.
The motors hummed and the screws turned slowly, silently, as they approached Pola. Smith used his glasses and picked out the long line of white phosphorescence where the sea broke against the southern mole, the shorter line against the northern mole. Between them was a black gap, the entrance to the harbour. He quietly ordered, ‘Port five.’ The stem of the boat edged around to point at the gap. They closed it slowly, then more slowly still, even though the electric motors were set full ahead, as they stemmed the current running out of the harbour. Smith’s eyes lifted from the moles to the far-off mountains behind Pola and saw the first pale edging of light there.
The moles loomed above them and now they saw lights inside barely a cable’s length ahead. The lights were moving aboard the stumpy outline of a tug, smoke streaming black from her funnel. Her bow pointed at the gap as if headed out to sea and water foamed at her stern, churned up by her screws, but she was hardly moving.
Zacco hissed, ‘She’s opening the gate!’
As Smith had told them when he gave his orders: ‘They’ll open the gate for the fleet — and for us!’ The tug was towing one end of a section of the boom a hundred yards long, pivoting it on its other end, anchored to the sea-bed. It was moving, though painfully slowly, like a door opening towards them. He saw the boarding party crouched ready on the foredeck of the MAS. All the time they were sliding quietly down on the tug. Her foredeck was deserted but figures were moving in the stern of her. They were men using the torches, the lights Smith had seen, watching the tow. They were close on the tug now and surely the boats must be seen. Buckley shoved a pistol into Smith’s hand. At that moment there was a muffled shout aboard the tug. From the skipper in her wheelhouse? But the MAS bumped against the tug’s port side and two Italian seamen leaped quietly up onto her deck with lines and held the boat alongside as the motors cut out.
Smith, Buckley and Azzara, the after machine-gunner, scrambled aboard the tug together. Smith ran on his toes for the ladder to the wheelhouse, took it in leaping strides and pushed in at the door. There were two men inside, blue-jerseyed, one at the wheel and the other fumbling at a rifle standing with others in a rack. He stopped as Smith’s pistol menaced him, stood gaping. Buckley crowded in behind Smith, who reached for the handles of the engine-room telegraph and rang them to ‘Stop engines’. The thunderous beat of the twin screws ceased.
Azzara appeared and Smith told him softly, ‘Watch them!’ He pointed at the men and Azzara lifted his rifle to cover them. Smith shoved out of the wheelhouse, closely followed by Buckley, dropped down the ladder to the deck and ran
aft. A group of men, the tug’s deck crew, huddled together in the stern with the forward machine-gun of the MAS trained on them. Smith smelt the engine-room smell of coal and oil on a further party of men as they were hustled to join the others by a man from Gallina’s boat. The men hurrying about the deck were all Italians and Smith saw Gallina’s boat secured now to the starboard side of the tug. Zacco’s torpedoman Udina was there and so was Gallina’s, both of them carrying the explosive charges that had been intended to blast a way through the booms. He told them, ‘Below!’ He pointed down at the deck then lifted his hands, spread the fingers. ‘Cinque minuti!’
‘Si.’ They nodded and padded away.
He turned on the tug’s crew and pointed at the boat slung aft on the starboard side. ‘Go!’ They stared at him, nervous and bewildered by the sudden attack out of the night, eyes sliding to the machine-gun. Then Zacco hissed at them and they understood. They set to work hauling out the boat and Smith told Buckley, ‘Fetch those other two up in the wheelhouse.’
‘Aye, aye, sir!’ And: ‘Engine-room’s cleared now, sir.’
Smith looked at his watch and then around him. Five minutes. Pagani’s boat lay off to starboard of Zacco’s. Beyond it he could see the gap in the boom opened by the tug, only a few yards across, but widening slowly as the current took them towards the harbour mouth. They had in tow a hundred yard length of the boom and the huge deadweight of it acted like a sea anchor.
He went to the rail and told Zacco. ‘Pagani is to go in!’ Zacco called softly across the narrow neck of water to Pagani and a moment later his boat edged forward and slipped through the gap into the harbour. Smith crossed to the other side and Buckley came aft, herding before him the two men from the wheelhouse. Smith gripped the skipper’s arm and waved his pistol at the crew now lowering the boat to smack into the sea. ‘All? Alles?’
