by John Wingate
But Peter knew in his heart that this was all make-believe, and that the game was already over.
Bill was silent, intent on fanning into life a small fire which was well hidden by the rocks. Their two prisoners crouched around it and enjoyed the honour of being allowed to gut and cook the fish on pointed sticks.
“Ummmm, good,” mumbled Harry contentedly, as the fresh food filled his aching stomach. “That’s better, isn’t it, Peter?”
“Yes,” he replied as again his pointed finger swept along the horizon to the blurs on the skyline. “But what are you so devilish pleased about? Don’t you realise that there goes our last chance of escape?”
Bill looked at Harry anxiously.
“Oh no, it doesn’t, my boyos, not by a long chalk!” laughed Harry. “Come here, both of you, and I’ll tell you what I’ve discovered.”
CHAPTER 15
The Abyss
The submarine was now quite unmanageable. The faster she plunged, the steeper the bow-down angle became, for she was now standing on her ends. The after-planes were forcing her down … down … down … 240 feet … 280 feet … 300 feet … when the pointers came up against the stops. She was now well past her safe and tested diving depth.
The phone from the after-ends crackled. Keating’s agonised voice spoke.
“After-planes in hand, sir. After-ends reports much water coming in through the stern glands.”
“Very good.”
“Telemotor pump switch has been knocked off, sir!” shouted Saunders, the Outside E.R.A., at the top of his voice, and with one sweep of his right hand, he lunged at the switch handle.
Every man in the Control Room stood motionless, listening for the sweet sound of an electric motor whining into life. This was a moment of eternity. Hardly audible, a gentle whine whispered, then shrilled and shrieked into life as the pump-starter gave of its life-giving power. Slowly the pointer of the telemotor pressure gauge started to climb round its dial.
“I mustn’t blow main ballast,” Joe cried aloud. “They’ll only see our bubbles when we are forced to vent.”
The strained faces watching him now in this critical moment showed various stages of animal fear.
“Pressure’s on, sir!” Saunders yelled exuberantly.
But wasn’t it all too late, that fraction of a second too late? Surely they must be crushed now and fold up like a smashed eggshell? This was a moment when the stalwart shipbuilders’ skill was put to the test. One faulty rivet and she was gone…
“Planes are free, sir!” the Coxswain shouted gleefully as he wrenched the wheel round to hard-a-rise, the gleaming spokes glinting as they spun.
But the pointers on the depth gauges were still off the dial, when the phone from the fore-end shrieked.
Number One jumped and tore it from its holder.
“Control Room?”
“Water coming in through the pump space, sir!”
“Very good, hold on!”
“All right, Number One,” Joe acknowledged quietly.
So this was it! Nothing could save them now, for the seawater would seep into the batteries, and the chlorine gas which would be generated would creep through the boat like a miasma to choke them to death.
There was a gleam in Joe’s dark eyes.
“You swine!” he hissed at the ruthless enemy above.
Unnoticed, without anyone being aware of it, the bow-down angle had lessened — or had it really? Yes! Yes! Already men were beginning to stand upright as the little boat began to take on a bow-up angle. A fierce, glorious bow-up angle; away, away from the black, hungry depths!
“Thank God!” Sub-Lieutenant Benson whispered, as she started her mad career upwards. Tears of relief were on many a man’s face and the old Coxswain unashamedly crossed himself.
“May I pump, sir? I still can’t hold her,” asked Number One.
“Yes, if you have to,” Joe snapped, for although the noise would give them away, there was nothing else for it.
Suddenly the pointer on the depth gauges came to life. 300 feet … 280 feet … 250 feet…
The phones buzzed again. Both leaks had slowed to a trickle.
“Take over, Number One,” said Joe quietly as he scratched his head, “and don’t speed up. I’m afraid they won that round!”
The lights came on again as the electricians repaired the fuses, and a scene of indescribable chaos met the gaze of all in the compartment. Rugged had held tight and was still alive and slowly she was brought under control as each man righted what he could. The pointers settled at eighty feet once more, and an audible sigh rustled round the Control Room.
“I reckon that pattern was definitely short,” Joe laughed before giving his orders to Elliott. “All-round sweep, please.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Elliott automatically, sitting himself down once again at his stool by his set.
Tick-tick … tick-tick-tick … Joe’s heart sank.
“Destroyer in contact, sir. Green eight-oh.”
“To hell with them! Port ten.”
“Port ten, sir.”
Joe padded through the Control Room in his sandalled feet. He spoke aloud. “Well, men, the gunnery experts reckon that if they have one over and one short, the third one will be a straddle, and that would be that! But Rugged’s not beaten yet.” He was trying to infuse confidence, but for the first time in his experience of this game he was afraid, and there was no answering smile from his men around him.
“…the third must be a straddle” was in everyone’s mind, “… the third pattern must be a straddle.”
“Destroyer attacking, sir!” Elliott cried.
“Oh God!” Benson whispered as he looked at the clock. It had stopped at two-thirty exactly.
CHAPTER 16
The Owl and the Pussy Cat …
As dusk fell, the evening breeze softly sighed its offshore way, gently flecking the darkening seas. To the westward, a typically dramatic sunset painted the sky a burnished bronze. Bill kicked out the last embers of the flickering fire, while Harry and Peter bound each prisoner, now breeched in English trousers, to widely spaced rocks. Gagged and firmly tied, they offered no resistance as the three Britons thumped them reassuringly on their shoulders.
“Grazias,” grinned Harry. “Mucho grazias!”
The greasy-haired Italians nodded, and the fugitives, dressed roughly as Italian fishermen, slipped quietly into the twilight.
“There it is, men!” Harry whispered.
Crouched behind the low breakwater which curved out into the darkening sea like a scythe-blade, Harry pointed towards a little harbour which was fast taking its night’s rest. An occasional shaft of yellow light flashed carelessly from some open cottage door and they could just see the little fishing boats bobbing at their moorings in the groundswell.
“We’ll take that one, far out by the entrance. There’s a dinghy drawn up on the beach there, just below us on the breakwater,” Harry whispered.
Peter nodded, slipping cartridges into the chambers of his .45.
“You got the knife, Bill?” Harry asked.
“Me comforter!” he whispered and slapped his hip.
“All set to go?” Harry asked them quietly.
“All set,” Peter whispered.
The smell of appetising cooking wafted from the cottages and blue-grey plumes of smoke, blown by the evening breeze, trailed horizontally from the little chimneys.
“They’re having supper now, I reckon,” Peter said. “Come on, let’s go, Harry.”
The nearest hovel was thirty yards away from the inshore extremity of the breakwater, while the other cottages nestled shoulder to shoulder against each other around the little harbour.
Three dark shadows slipped across the cobbled breakwater and disappeared and then, in the blackness of the shadow below the stone wall, Peter, Harry and Bill crouched and listened anxiously, before starting for the small dinghy which was run up on the beach above high-water mark. They laid hold of each side of t
he gunwales and lifted the dinghy down to the water’s edge, to avoid the scrunching noise of keel over rock, and then Harry jumped noiselessly into the stern. Peter and Bill waded in, shoved the boat out stern first, and vaulted lightly over the bows.
No oars!
Harry yanked at the bottom boards, which came away suddenly in his hands, causing him to fall back on to Peter for support. His feet caught the after-thwart and the clatter rattled noisily across the water.
Using the boards, they spun the boat round and paddled out into the harbour, keeping as close as possible to the breakwater. The small fishing boat was only ten yards distant now, lobbing to the swell which gently rippled in through the harbour entrance. Peter fended off, and his hands greedily grasped the side of the boat. Taking the boards with them, Harry went over the stern, while Peter and Bill slipped over the bows. Peter let go the mooring and dropped the glass mooring buoy gently into the water.
“All gone!” he whispered to Harry who was reaching for the tiller.
A cottage door flung open and a white light shimmered across the water. A black figure stood waving, silhouetted against the amber light, and a deep voice hailed them across the harbour.
“Antonio! Luigi!”
The three fugitives held their breath.
“Leave it to me,” hissed Harold.
“Luigi! Antonio!” A note of urgency and interrogation was in the summons.
Harry stood up and waved his hand excitedly.
“Antonio!” The hailing figure started to walk towards them down the breakwater.
Peter swallowed, while a groan rumbled from Bill. So near and yet so far! Were they thus to be discovered at the last moment?
Harry waved again and, applying his hands to his mouth, shouted an unintelligible mumble shorewards, his voice rising and falling in the best Arkwright Italian, and ending with “Santa Maria!”
The figure ashore stopped in its tracks. For a long moment their fate seemed to hang in the balance or, rather, in the hands of the lone figure on the jetty. Peter hardly dared to breathe, and Harry sat down again in the stern, simulating an urgent interest in the tiller. Then, “Stand by, men,” he whispered, while Peter loosened the revolver at his hip. They did not watch the man, in case some telepathic message was transmitted to complete a circuit of suspicion, but Bill looked up to see him start towards the open door of his cottage. Then he stopped and scratched his head, turned about again and, with hands deep in his trousers, shuffled down the jetty towards the point where they had stolen the dinghy.
“Go and get him, both of you. I’ll reeve a slip-rope for a quick getaway,” Harry whispered as he flattened himself on the bottom boards. “There’s nothing else for it — he’s too suspicious.”
They let go the dinghy and, crooning the “Ave Maria” unmelodiously, Peter and Bill started paddling towards the shore.
“Oh-hez, Antonio!” the dark figure loomed above them on the breakwater.
“Oh-hez!” grumbled Peter’s deep voice from the stern, and then he started to whistle.
“Stand-by to fall overboard, Bill,” Peter whispered under his breath.
Bill grunted.
Five yards from the beach — four, three yards…
“Now!” hissed Peter.
Bill stood up in the bows, ready to leap ashore, head lowered. Then, pretending to stumble, he overbalanced backwards into the water.
Splash! The noise slapped the harbour.
“Santa Maria!” moaned the pretended Antonio excitedly, as he flailed his arms wildly in the air and went under for the first time.
“Santa Maria!” he screeched as he came up for air.
The body in the darkness threshed the water in a flurry of foam as Peter leaped over the dinghy, nearly capsizing it. The dark figure on the jetty galvanised into activity, clattered down the steps and rushed for the boat, wading to its prow. As he laid hold of the gunwales, a blond head emerged dripping from the water and then a straight left shot from an enormous pair of shoulders, with the whole weight of a powerful body behind it, took the Italian squarely between the eyes. Peter caught the man as he slumped backwards and Bill took the limp body and dumped it into the dinghy.
Peter leaped over the bows and shoved the boat back into the water again, while Bill repeated his horrible attempt at the “Ave Maria”. With the unconscious man between them on the bottom boards, they once more regained their fishing boat and as they bumped alongside, the inert body shook itself. Terrified eyes gleamed from a swarthy face as the Italian looked straight down the barrel of Peter’s .45 revolver.
“Pronto! Pronto!” Peter hissed at the Italian and, like a scalded cat, the man leaped into the sailing boat and landed with a clatter on the bottom boards. Harry secured the dinghy astern, Bill slipped the painter, and the small craft slowly drew out towards the entrance of the breakwater. As they rounded its extremity, their last glimpse of the harbour was a finger of light dancing across the black water from the open door.
Once outside the harbour, Harry slipped the dinghy and pushed it downwind with all his might.
Blackness enveloped them. Meeting a short swell as they reached the open sea, the little boat plumped and wallowed, the boom and rigging slatting clumsily.
The Italian soon realised that his task was to assist in setting sail, and, with encouragement from Harry’s revolver, the large spread of the mainsail soon unfurled above them. Harry then put the tiller hard down and the little craft heaved as the mainsail filled, heeling her to port, gunwales under. While they scrambled to starboard to right her, she gathered way, running before the wind, away, away, away from the black enemy shore, like a whippet loosed from the traps.
Peter bent on the foresail, and, with a whoop of joy, hoisted it skywards. The yawing immediately came under control, and the little boat creamed her happy way downwind, every second putting more water between them and the sinister island of Sicily.
The night wore on with deadly monotony. Peter sat in the eyes of the boat in an attempt at keeping a lookout, while Harry lay crouched in the sternsheets at the tiller. On top of the fishing nets, which lay cumbrously at the bottom of the boat, their unbidden guest lay prone, in an attempt at sleep. Occasionally, he rubbed the bruise on his forehead while Bill, who was crouched near him, grinned and rubbed his knuckles in silent glee, with a happy look of contentment on his face.
“One o’clock, Peter!” shouted Harry. “At four knots I reckon we’ve put a good twenty miles astern of us at this rate, don’t you?”
“Hope so, Harry. We can’t see Sicily any more. As long as the wind doesn’t shift and we don’t run into any destroyer patrols, we’ll be all right!”
“I’m trying to steer about south-east. I think that’s about right for Malta, don’t you?”
“I reckon so,” Peter replied, looking anxiously upwards at the night sky. We ought to be able to see Etna in the morning, if the weather doesn’t deteriorate.”
The Pole Star, by which Harry was laying his course, lay on their port quarter heaving and curvetting above them when visible, for low drifting clouds were scudding across the sky, often blanketing the stars. A slight haze seemed to drop on the horizon, portending dirty weather ahead.
“Thank Heaven we’ve got a breeze, but I hope it doesn’t freshen much more,” Harry shouted above the wind.
But by three o’clock the weather had worsened so much that the boat yawed perilously and was in danger of broaching-to, creaming round beam-on into the wind.
“We’ll broach-to if we’re not careful!” Harry yelled. “Down mainsail, and I’ll come up into the wind.”
With the boat pitching and plugging into the seas, it was no easy matter getting the canvas off her. The Italian was terrified at the way in which the little boat was being driven, and fear added greatly to his efforts at assistance.
At last the mainsail was gathered in, the boom lashed, and the terrifying way taken off her. Running now under her foresail only, she steered sweetly and rode the seas without
shipping them.
Daylight crept palely across the surging seas, turning the inky blackness into the welcome cold-grey of a humid Mediterranean dawn. Fatigue and cold seeped into the very marrow of their bones as, crouched below the gunwales, they surged and bucketed southwards. “She’s a grand old lady, Peter!” Harry shouted above the whine in the slapping rigging. “If the wind doesn’t veer, we might make Malta by tomorrow.”
It was a dim hope, but to each came the remembrance of that courageous man, St. Paul, who, so many years previously, had battled his way more than once through a Mediterranean gale. Unbeknown to each other, they kept the thought to themselves, a secret comfort in adversity.
Daylight stole upon them, giving hope to what had been a cheerless night. Nothing seemed quite so bad, once dawn had broken. The Mediterranean is a lady of fickle moods, and by ten o’clock the raging wind had died away, to leave them wallowing in a long swell on a flat-calm sea.
“This is worse than a full gale, Harry,” grinned Peter from a stubbly face.
Now there remained only a long, undulating swell to remind them of the night’s ordeal. The sun crept up the heavens, beating strongly down on the glassy sea, and reflecting its burning rays directly upon the exhausted men in the motionless boat. Even with all sail once again set, she wallowed on the mirror-like surface, with no way upon her, boom slatting idly from side to side. To the northward, they could just see the snowy whiteness of Mount Etna, showing above the line of billowy clouds which swept like galleons across the invisible island. Peter thought how ethereal the snowy crest seemed, poised unsupported above the squabbling earth. His eyes slowly swept the horizon, until his gaze riveted upon a black speck. His arm shot out to port.
“Aircraft on the horizon!”
