by Wilbur Smith
As the submarine broke through the surface, the internal air pressure blew the hatch open and Kurt sprang through it.
The wind lashed him immediately, tugging at his clothing and blowing spray into his face. All about him the sea was breaking and boiling, and the ship rolled and wallowed. Kurt had relied on the turmoil of waters to disguise the disturbance that the U-32 would make as she surfaced.
With one glance, he satisfied himself that the enemy was almost dead ahead and coming on swiftly and unswervingly. He bowed to the aiming table at the forward end of the bridge, unstoppered the voice pipe and spoke into it.
‘Prepare to attack! Stand by bow tubes.’
‘Bow tubes closed up,’ Horsthauzen answered him from below, and Kurt began to feed him the details of the range and bearing, while on the deck below, the lieutenant read off from the attack table the firing heading and passed it to the helmsman. The submarine’s bows swung gradually as the helmsman kept her on the exact aiming mark.
‘Range 2,500 metres,’ Kurt intoned. She was at extreme range now, but closing swiftly.
There were lights burning on her upper decks but apart from that she was merely a huge dark shape. There was no longer any definite silhouette against the night sky, although Kurt could make out the shapeless loom of her triple funnels.
The lights troubled Kurt. No Royal Naval captain should be so negligent of the most elementary precautions. He felt a small chill wind of doubt cool his excitement and battle ardour. He stared at the enormous vessel through the spray and darkness and for the first time in a hundred such dangerous nerve-racking situations, he felt himself hesitant and uncertain.
The vessel before him was in the exact position and on the exact course where he had expected to find the Inflexible. It was the right size, it had three funnels and a tripod superstructure, it was steaming at 22 knots – and yet it was showing lights.
‘Repeat range mark!’ Horsthauzen spoke through the voice tube, gently prodding him, and Kurt started. He had been staring at the chase, neglecting the rangefinder. Quickly he gave the decreasing range and then realized that within thirty seconds he would have to make his final decision.
‘I will shoot at 1,000 metres,’ he said into the voice tube.
It was point-blank range; even in this confused sea there was no question of missing with one of the long sharklike missiles.
Kurt stared into the lens of the rangefinder, watching the numerals decreasing steadily as hunter and hunted came together. He drew a deep breath like a diver about to plunge into the cold black waters and then he raised his voice for the first time.
‘Number one tube – los!’
Almost immediately Horsthauzen’s voice came back to him, with that slight catchy stutter that always afflicted him when he was over-excited.
‘Number one fired and running.’
There was no sound, nor recoil. No movement of the submarine’s hull to signal the release of the first torpedo.
In the darkness and the breaking white waters, Kurt could not even distinguish the wake of the speeding torpedo.
‘Number two tube – los!’
Kurt was firing a spread of torpedoes, each on a minutely diverging course – the first aimed forward, the second amidships, the third aft.
‘Number three tube – los!’
‘All three fired and running!’
Kurt raised his eyes from the aiming table and slitted them against the flying spray and the wind as he gazed down the track of his torpedoes. It was standard service procedure to crash dive immediately all torpedoes were fired and to await the explosions of the hits down in the safety of the depths, but this time Kurt felt compelled to remain on top and watch it happen.
‘Running time?’ he demanded of Horsthauzen, watching the tall bulk of his victim festooned with lights like a cruise ship, so that she paled out the fields of stars that sprinkled the black curtain of the sky behind her.
‘Two minutes fifteen seconds to run,’ Horsthauzen told him, and Kurt clicked down the button of his stopwatch.
Always in this time of waiting after his weapons were sped upon their way, the remorse assailed Kurt. Before the firing there was only the heat of the chase and the tingling excitement of the stalk, but now he thought of the brave men, brothers of the sea, whom he had consigned to the cold dark and merciless waters.
The seconds dragged, so that he had to check the luminous dial of his stopwatch to assure himself that his torpedoes had not sounded or swerved nor run past.
Then there was that vast blurt of sound which even when expected made him flinch, and he saw the pearly fountain of spray rise against the bulk of the battle cruiser, shining in the starlight and in the decklights with a beautiful iridescent radiance.
‘Number one – hit.’ Horsthauzen’s shout of triumph came from the voice pipe, followed immediately by another thunderous roar as though a mountain had fallen into the sea.
‘Number two – hit.’
And yet again, while the first two tall shining columns of spray still hovered, the third leapt high in the dark air beside them.
‘Number three – hit.’
As Kurt still watched, the columns of spray mingled, subsided and blew away on the wind, and the great ship ran on, seemingly unscathed.
‘Chase is losing speed,’ Horsthauzen exalted. ‘Altering course to starboard.’
The doomed ship began a wide aimless turn into the wind. It would not be necessary to fire their stern tubes.
‘Lieutenant Horsthauzen to the bridge,’ Kurt said into the voice tube. It was a reward for a task perfectly performed. He knew how avidly the young lieutenant would relate every detail of the sinking to his brother officers later. The memory of this victory would sustain them all through the long days and nights of privation and hardship that lay ahead. Horsthauzen burst from the hatch and stood shoulder to shoulder with his captain, peering at their monstrous victim.
‘She has stopped!’ he cried. The British ship lay like a rock in the sea.
‘We will move closer,’ Kurt decided, and relayed the order to the helmsman.
The U-32 crept forward, butting into the creaming waves, only her conning tower above the surface, closing the range gradually and gingerly. The cruiser’s guns might still be manned and only a single lucky shot was needed to hole the submarine’s thin plating.
‘Listen!’ Kurt ordered abruptly, turning his head to catch the sounds that came to them faintly above the clamour of the wind.
‘I hear nothing.’
‘Stop engines!’ Kurt ordered, and the vibration and hum of the diesels ceased. Now they could hear it more clearly.
‘Voices!’ Horsthauzen whispered. It was a pathetic chorus, borne to them on the wind. The shouts and cries of men in dire distress, rising and falling on the vagaries of the wind, punctuated by a wild scream as somebody fell or leapt from the high deck.
‘She is listing heavily.’ They were close enough to see her against the stars.
‘She’s sinking by the bows.’
The great stern was rearing out of the black.
‘She’s going quickly – very quickly.’
They could hear the crackle and rumble of her hull as the waters raced through her, and twisted and distorted her plating.
‘Man the searchlight,’ Kurt ordered, and Horsthauzen turned to stare at him.
‘Did you hear my order?’ Horsthauzen roused himself. It went against all a submariner’s instincts to betray himself so blatantly to the eyes of the enemy, but he crossed to the searchlight in the wing of the deck.
‘Switch on!’ Kurt urged him when he hesitated still, and the long white beam leapt out across half a mile of tempestuous sea and darkness. It struck the hull of the ship and was reflected in a dazzle of purest white.
Kurt threw himself across the bridge and shouldered his lieutenant from the searchlight. He gripped the handles and swung the solid beam across and down, slitting his eyes against the dazzling reflection from the ship’s
paintwork; he searched frantically and then froze, with his fingers hooked like claws over the searchlight handles.
In the perfect round circle of the searchlight beam, the scarlet arms of the huge painted cross were outflung, like the limbs of a condemned man upon the crucifix.
‘Mother of the Almighty God,’ Kurt whispered, ‘what have I done?’
With horrid fascination he moved the beam slowly from side to side. The decks of the white ship were canted steeply towards him, so he could see the clusters of human figures that scurried about them, trying to reach the lifeboats dangling from their davits. Some of them were dragging stretchers or leading stumbling figures dressed in long blue hospital robes, and their cries and supplications sounded like a colony of nesting birds at sunset.
As Kurt watched, the ship suddenly tipped towards him with a rush, and the men on the decks were sent sliding across them, piling up against the railings. Then singly and in clusters they began to fall overboard.
One of the lifeboats let go and dropped out of control to hit the water alongside the hull and immediately capsized. Still men were dropping from the high decks, and he could hear their faint shrieks above the wind, see the small spouts of white spray as they struck the water.
‘What can we do?’ Horsthauzen whispered beside Kurt, staring with him down the searchlight beam, his expression pale and appalled.
Kurt switched off the searchlight. After the intense light, the darkness was crushing.
‘Nothing,’ said Kurt in the darkness. ‘There is nothing we can do.’ And he turned and stumbled to the hatchway.
By the time he reached the bottom of the ladder, he had control of himself again, and his voice was flat and his expression stony as he gave his orders.
‘Lookouts to the bridge. Revolutions for 12 knots, new course 150 degrees.’
He stood at ease as they turned away from the sinking ship, fighting the urge to lift his hands to cover his ears. He knew he could not shut out the cries and shrieks that still echoed in his skull. He knew he would never be able to shut them out, and that he would hear them again at the hour of his own death.
‘Secure from action stations,’ he said with dead eyes, his waxen features wet with spray and sweat. ‘Resume patrol routine.’
Centaine was perched on the foot of the lowest bunk in her favourite ward on ‘C’ deck. She had the book open on her lap.
It was one of the large cabins, with eight bunks, and all the young men in the bunks were spinals. Not one of them would ever walk again, and almost in defiance of this fact they were the noisiest, gayest and most opinionated bunch on board the Protea Castle.
Every evening, during the hour before lights-out, Centaine read to them – or that was the intention. It usually only required a few minutes of the author’s opinions to trigger a spirited debate which ran unchecked until the dinner gong finally intervened.
Centaine enjoyed these sessions as much as any of them, and she invariably chose a book on a subject about which she wanted to know more, always an African theme.
This evening she had selected volume II of Levaillant’s Voyage dans l’interieur de l’Afrique in the original French. She translated directly from the page of Levaillant’s description of a hippopotamus hunt which her audience followed avidly, until she reached the description: ‘The female beast was flayed and cut up on the spot. I ordered a bowl to be brought me, which I filled with her milk. It appears to be much less disagreeable than that of the elephant and the next day had changed almost wholly to cream. It had an amphibious taste, and a filthy smell which gave disgust, but in coffee it was even pleasant.’
There were cries of revulsion from the bunks. ‘My God!’ somebody exclaimed. ‘Those Frenchies! Anybody who will drink hippo milk and eat frogs—’
Instantly they all turned upon him. ‘Sunshine is a Frenchy, you dog! Apologize immediately!’ and a barrage of pillows was hurled across the cabin at the offender.
Laughing, Centaine jumped up to restore order, and as she did so the deck bucked under her feet and she was hurled backwards on to the bunk again, and the blast of a massive explosion ripped through the ship.
Centaine struggled up and was knocked down again by another explosion more violent than the first.
‘What is happening?’ she screamed, and a third explosion plunged them into darkness and threw her from the bunk on to the deck. In the utter darkness somebody tumbled on top of her, pinning her in a welter of bedclothes.
She felt herself suffocating and she screamed again. The ship rang to other cries and shouts.
‘Get off me!’ Centaine fought to free herself, crawled to the doorway and pulled herself upright. The pandemonium all around her, the rush of bodies in the dark, the shouts and senseless bawling of orders, the sudden terrifying tilt of the deck under Centaine’s feet panicked her. She lashed out to protect herself as an unseen body crashed into her, and then groped her way down the long narrow corridor.
The alarm bells began to ring through the darkness, a shrill, nerve-ripping sound that added to the confusion, and a voice roared, ‘The ship is sinking – they are abandoning ship. We’ll be trapped down here.’
There was an immediate rush to the companionway, and Centaine found herself borne along helplessly, fighting to keep her balance, for she knew if she fell she would be trampled. Instinctively she tried to protect her belly, but she was sent reeling into the bulkhead with a force that clashed her teeth and she bit her own tongue. As she fell, her mouth filled with the slick metallic taste of blood; she flung out both hands and they closed on the guide rail of the companionway and she hung on with all her strength. She dragged herself up the staircase, sobbing with the effort to keep her feet in the crush of panic-stricken bodies.
‘My baby!’ She heard herself saying it aloud. ‘You can’t kill my baby.’
The ship lurched, and there was the crackle and shriek of metal on metal, the crash of breaking glass, and the renewed rush and trample of feet all around her.
‘It’s going down!’ shrieked a voice beside her. ‘We’ve got to get out! Let me out—’
The lights went on again, and she saw the companion-way to the upper deck choked with struggling, cursing men. She felt bruised and crushed and helpless.
‘My baby!’ she sobbed, as she was pinned against the bulkhead. The lights seemed to sober the men around her, shaming them out of their blind terror.
‘Here’s Sunshine!’ a voice bellowed. It was a big Afrikaner, one of her most fervent admirers, and he swung his crutch to forge an opening for her.
‘Let her through – stand back, you bastards, let Sunshine through.’
Hands seized her, and she was lifted off her feet.
‘Let Sunshine through!’
They passed her overhead, like a doll. She lost her veil and one of her shoes.
‘Here’s Sunshine, pass her up!’ She found herself sobbing as she was jostled and hard fingers seized her and bit painfully into her flesh, but she was borne swiftly upwards.
At the top of the companionway, other hands grabbed her and hustled her out on to the open deck. It was dark out here and the wind snatched at her hair and wrapped her skirts constrictingly about her legs. The deck was listing heavily, but as she stepped upon it, it canted even more viciously and she was hurled against a stanchion with a force that made her cry out.
Suddenly she thought about the helplessly maimed young men that she had left down there on ‘C’ deck.
‘I should have tried to help them,’ she told herself, and then she thought of Anna. Hesitating and confused she looked back. Men still swarmed up and out of the com-panionways. It would be impossible to move against that throng, and she knew that she did not have the strength needed to assist a man who could not walk himself.
All around her the officers were trying to restore order, but most of these men who had stoically borne the hell of the trenches were terrified witless by the thought of being trapped in a sinking ship, and their faces were contorted an
d their eyes wild with unreasoning terror. However, there were others who were dragging out the cripples and the blind and leading them to the lifeboats along the rail.
Clinging to the stanchion, Centaine was torn with indecision and fear and horror for the hundreds of men below who she knew would never reach the deck. Then beneath her the ship rumbled and belched in its death throes, air rushed from the holes beneath her waterline with the roarings of a sea monster and the sound decided Centaine.
‘My baby,’ she thought. ‘I have to save him, the others don’t matter – only my baby!’
‘Sunshine!’ One of the officers had seen her and he slid down the steep deck to her and put an arm around her protectively.
‘You’ve got to get to a lifeboat – the ship will go at any moment.’
With his free hand he ripped open the tapes that secured his bulky canvas lifejacket, and he pulled it off his shoulders and lifted it over Centaine’s head.
‘What happened?’ Centaine gasped as the knotted the tapes of the lifejacket under her chin and down her chest.
‘We’ve been torpedoed. Come on.’
He dragged her along with him, reaching for handholds, for it was impossible to stand unaided on the steep angle of the deck.
‘That lifeboat! We’ve got to get you into it.’
Just ahead of them a crowded lifeboat was swinging wildly on its davits, an officer was bellowing orders as they tried to clear the jammed tackle.
Looking down the ship’s side, Centaine saw the black sea boiling and foaming, and the wind blew her hair into her face and half-blinded her.
Then, from far out on the black waters, a solid white shaft of light burst over them, and they flung up their hands to protect their eyes from the cruel glare.
‘Submarine!’ shouted the officer who held Centaine in the crook of his arm. ‘The swine has come to gloat on his butchery.’
The beam of light left them and swivelled away down the side of the hull.
‘Come on, Sunshine.’ He dragged her towards the ship’s rail, but at that moment the tackle of the lifeboat gave way at the bows, and spilled its frantic cargo screaming into the pounding waves far below.
