Patrol to the Golden Horn

by Patrol to the Golden Horn (epub)

  ‘Port ten.’

  ‘Port ten, sir.’ Roost, rock-like, moved his wheel around.

  ‘Ship’s head?’

  ‘North forty-five east, sir. Forty-six. Forty—’

  ‘Midships. Steer north fifty east. Pilot – before I altered course there was a headland with a sort of beacon or sawn-off lighthouse on it about one hundred yards on our port beam.’

  ‘One hundred—’

  ‘Now – high bulk of land bearing… red 132 degrees.’

  ‘Ship’s head north forty-eight east, sir!’

  Jake scribbled the figures down. On the big Grubb periscope a relative-bearing ring was etched on glass inside. Applying relative bearing to ship’s head at the same moment gave you compass bearings.

  ‘Hear anything, leading tel?’

  ‘Nothin’, sir.’

  Circling … That was the world, up there, that he was staring into. Open, dark, clean, with a wind to ripple the surface and drive the clouds: up there, you could fill your lungs, let it all out, fill them again … Difficult to imagine! ‘Pilot – other coast now – the highest bit of a longish line of ground, and the right-hand edge of it: bearing – green 93.’

  ‘North fifty east, sir!’

  And one more? No, he’d finished. Two position lines, plus what he’d said about being almost ashore on some headland. Compass variation of two degrees west. Lots of hills, mountains, edges on the chart: it was a matter of fitting those three items together so they’d make sense. He heard the periscope hissing down, and Wishart joined him.

  ‘Point here, sir – Karakova Burnu. Then we’d have this height here called Sarair Tepe – for the first bearing …’ He ran the parallel ruler across the chart from the compass rose. ‘And then – this?’ A longish ridge of high ground on the Asiatic coast, with an altitude of a thousand feet at its western end. It all fitted and there were no sensible alternatives; Jake ringed the point of intersection as a fix. They were close to the European shore and they’d come about two miles from where they’d lain bottomed all day. He laid off the present course of north fifty east.

  ‘Three quarters of an hour, then back ten degrees to port?’

  Wishart turned away.

  ‘Have to get past that Turk, if he’s still hanging about.’

  Jake was suffering quite badly from the thin air and the stink in it; he was conscious of the shortness of his breath and a sort of fuddle growing in his brain. When you had something positive to do you could push the discomfort to the back of your mind, but as soon as you stopped it closed in on you again. Wishart had just ordered, some way off, ‘Up periscope’. Jake told himself, Stay awake… Wishart asked Weatherspoon, ‘Anything?’ The leading telegraphist guessed what he was being asked, and shook his head. Drooping eyelids gave him a haughty look as he peered out from the cabinet. The periscope had thumped to a stop, Wishart had grabbed its handles and clicked it into low power, and he was making a rapid all-round search. In high power you had to sweep around more slowly, rather like using a telescope instead of binoculars; you saw further, in high power, with a narrower field of vision.

  ‘Down.’ He stepped back. ‘Can’t see much.’ He’d shut his eyes, screwing his whole face up and shaking his head as if to clear his ears of something. He’d be having to work hard, too, to think straight. The mind had a tendency to go dim, drift away. Jake wondered, We might surface, chance it? Better than playing safe and suffocating?

  ‘Seventy feet.’

  ‘Seventy, sir.’

  Wanting to get back into the lower tidal stream. Nick Everard, Jake saw, was lying on his back and reading Burtenshaw’s Tolstoy book. Or just holding it up over his face as an umbrella against the dripping deckhead. Burtenshaw was at the table, making card-houses that never got to be more than two storeys high. He’d offered Robins the bunk he’d been on for a short while, not long ago, and Robins had accepted with a grunt that might have been taken as some form of thanks. He was asleep now. Burtenshaw had admitted during their snack lunch, his tongue perhaps loosened by that tot of rum, that he wasn’t really getting much out of the Tolstoy. Jake had commented, ‘Conan Doyle’s my mark. Limit, just about.’ They’d all agreed on the fascination of Sherlock Holmes. The ship’s expert on the great detective, apparently, was Chief ERA Grumman; Hobday had said you couldn’t trip Grumman up, he knew every detail of every case. Burtenshaw had opened Tolstoy, read a line of it, sighed, shut it again; he’d asked them, ‘Anyone read the Guy Thorn book, When It Was Dark?’ Hobday, who’d had the watch and had been keeping an eye on things at the same time as he munched his corned beef and biscuit, said he’d read some of it. He hadn’t thought it worth his while to continue with it. ‘I don’t want some other fellow’s quirky notions about religion. A man who tries to push those kind of views on other people – well, the conceit of it, the sheer—’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Nick took up the argument on Burtenshaw’s behalf, since the Marine was looking embarrassed by Hobday’s vehemence. He seemed rather prone to this kind of awkwardness. Nick suggested to Hobday, ‘You’re objecting to it because you’re seeing it from the standpoint he’s proposing to reject. If your mind could allow the possibility that much of the stuff we’ve been taught to believe is up the pole—’

  ‘I don’t want it to, thanks!’

  Jake grinning at them both. Like many large-built men he was easygoing, and it amused him to see others stung to argument. Burtenshaw licking corned-beef fat off his fingers. The rum had flushed his boyish cheeks; nobody guessed what a kick there was in navy-issue rum until they tried it.

  ‘Seventy feet, sir.’

  Jake looked up with a start: jerkily, as if he’d been woken out of a dream. He was sitting on the deck, leaning against the chart table. He couldn’t recall the act of sitting down. Across on the other side Burtenshaw was dozing over the scattered cards. Nick Everard was still holding the book but it was resting pages-downwards on his chest, and his eyes were shut. His jaw was dark with stubble. Robins’s embryo beard was blueish, and it gave him a Middle-Eastern look. Armenian, he could have been. Better be careful, Jake thought, when he landed; the Turks had nailed horseshoes to Armenians’ feet, amongst other pleasantries. Everard had told him so, and Everard had had it from that chap Reaper. Robins, at the noon meal, had questioned Wishart about the rum issue. How officers could have been allowed it: and weren’t the sailors supposed to have it diluted in water, in the form known as ‘grog’?

  Wishart had told him, poker-faced, ‘Fresh water’s one of our biggest problems, on patrol.’

  ‘Hear anything, leading tel?’

  Weatherspoon must have shaken his head. He was in the door-way of the cabinet, where he could see and be seen. Anyway, there’d been no answer, and Wishart seemed to have been satisfied. The ticking of the log was extraordinarily loud: like a heartbeat in the silent, airless, greenhouse heat and acid, lifeless air. If the submarine had a heart it was down below this deck, the battery. A miracle that it still beat at all. When it ceased to do so they’d have no option but to blow themselves to the surface and face the Turkish guns: and for a lungful of clean air might not the price be too exorbitant? He heard a rasping noise that pulled him out of the fringes of a daydream; the retch had come from his own throat, and he tried to turn it into a cough. Wishart said, ‘Thirty feet.’

  Jake thought he’d said it. Wishart was clinging to the ladder with his arms up and spread. He must have ordered that change in depth: leaning forward and rising slightly, one could see up-angle on the ’planes, and the needle in the depth-gauge beginning to circle slowly. Was he thinking of surfacing? Morton, at the fore ’planes, was rocking to and fro, his torso shifting rhythmically from side to side, about an inch in each direction. Keeping himself awake. Hobday, standing behind Morton and the coxswain, kept jolting up and down on his toes – heels – toes … He could have sat down and still done his job all right, and used less air, Jake thought.

  Adjusting trim now as she rose, he’d stopped those irri
tating, jerky motions. Extraordinary to think of all that sea inside the tower. Observation ports blown in, probably. Perhaps Wishart hadn’t clamped the deadlight shut over the middle one after the struggle in the net. But – it was getting harder all the time to concentrate one’s thoughts – Jake thought he’d seen him doing it …

  ‘Thirty feet, sir.’

  Hobday had more or less whispered it.

  ‘Leading tel?’

  Weatherspoon’s ears were blocked off by his headphones, but he didn’t need to hear the question. He saw it, as Wishart glanced at him, and he shook his head. ‘Nothin’, sir.’

  ‘Twenty feet.’

  ‘Twenty feet, sir. Easy with her, now.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ No change in Crabb’s deep growling tone. Jake saw McVeigh drag himself upright, using the steel guard over the main vent levers as a handhold. Jake realised he might be wanted too, to take down some bearings. He had no idea, absolutely none, of how much time had passed since the last fix. When he was up on his feet he looked round to check the time by the bulkhead clock, but the clock was a whitish haze without hands or figures, more like a hazy full moon than – one lost track of one’s own thinking. He was shaking his head, blinking, using his fingertips to clear his fogged-up eyes.

  ‘Twenty-two feet, sir. Twenty—’

  ‘Up.’

  Hss – ss – ss … Thump.

  Clack of the handles banging down. Hobday’s report: ‘Twenty feet, sir.’

  ‘Well done, well done …’ Calm, easy-mannered, friendly. Marvellous chap, Aubrey Wishart. ‘Keep her up now though, don’t for Pete’s sake—’

  Muttering as he swung around, his arms hooked gorilla-fashion over the handles, his weight hanging there so that his legs and feet hardly seemed to be supporting him at all, just sort of shoving around the circumference of the well as he trained the big periscope around. ‘Better light now, I can—’

  He’d gasped: and he was still for a moment, frozen … ‘Down!’

  The handles clashed up, McVeigh pushed the steel lever over and the gleaming brass barrel jerked, flowed downwards. All eyes were on the captain: mouths open, sweat running, breaths short like the panting of men running uphill under load.

  ‘Seventy feet.’

  ‘Seventy, sir …’

  ’Planes turning, digging into the sea to pull her nosing into its depths. Wishart told them, ‘The Turk’s about fifty yards – thirty, perhaps – on our port bow. I think he’s anchored. It’s a gunboat, like a big yacht with one tall funnel. He’s showing a few lights through scuttles in his superstructure.’

  He and Hobday exchanged glances. Now Hobday had turned back to the gauge, the ’planesmen. Wishart muttered, ‘I could sink him, easily. One torpedo at close range – sitting duck.’ Hobday whipped round eagerly; CPO Crabb growled, ‘That’s the ticket, sir!’ Men were getting to their feet, wiping their eyes and blinking, happy. Jake quite suddenly felt better, really more or less back to normal. He slid open the chart-table drawer where he kept his navigational instruments, and took the attack stop-watch out of its box, so he’d be ready for the attack procedure when Wishart ordered it.

  But why go deep, he wondered vaguely, if you were about to start an attack?

  Wishart murmured, ‘Can’t do it, unfortunately, cox’n. Have to save all our fish for Goeben.’

  Light of excitement fading. Like so many children robbed suddenly of a treat. Hobday said dully, ‘Seventy feet, sir.’ Wishart glanced round the disappointed faces. ‘Not a squeak, now. Agnew, go aft very quietly, tell ’em I don’t want to hear a sound. Lewis – tell ’em that for’ard.’

  Object: sneak past Turk. Turk sitting up there in comfort, breathing fresh air. Jake had eased himself down to sit on the deck again. Condensation raining down everywhere. If you tasted it, it has a sweet, sickly rankness like human sweat. He found he had a stopwatch in his hand, for some reason. Must have picked it up without thinking. In the dream he reasoned carefully that not going for the Turk made sense, because if they could get past him and if he thought they’d been finished by that bloody mine, then they’d be creeping into the Marmara presently and the enemy wouldn’t know they’d got through. He heard Wishart order, ‘Twenty feet.’

  ‘Twenty feet, sir.’

  ‘Certain there’s been no sound from him?’

  Time had passed. He didn’t know how much. Time was mixed up with the reek of the gassing battery and men’s breath and sweat and the other stink wafting from the engine-room, from the row of covered sanitary buckets. The gas, of course, was hydrogen – described in the battery-maintenance manual as ‘not actually poisonous, but will not support respiration’. Another way of saying ‘It won’t kill you, but it won’t let you live.’ But it was all one stench: indivisible, disgusting. Wishart’s voice broke through: ‘Up periscope.’ It was part of the dream, it didn’t concern reality. Then he heard the thump as McVeigh replaced the lever in its ‘stop’ position and the ram stopped sliding because oil at high pressure blocked its motion. When the ram extended, it increased the distance between sheaves around which the wires ran; that was what pulled them and hauled the periscope up or down. You could exercise your mind on visualising a thing like that, and it was better than thinking about fresh air or a cool night breeze dimpling the surface of the straits. He was in the process of getting to his feet: a big man, heavy, lurching upwards. Stop-watch: he pulled the drawer open, and put the watch carefully in its box. Shutting the drawer again, he glanced up and focused on the bulkhead clock. Twenty-five past twelve. Morning of day three, for God’s sake! They’d been dived for – he made himself work it out – thirty-two hours … Submarine regulations still in force stipulated various impractical air-freshening routines after fourteen hours dived. They weren’t out of the straits yet.

  ‘We’ve passed him.’ Wishart had his eyes at the lenses and he was facing aft. ‘If it wasn’t for his cabin-lights I wouldn’t be able to see him. We’re past and clear.’ He began to swing himself slowly round, pausing now and then to study features of the shoreline. With only stars for illumination, you wouldn’t see much else. Jake told himself, wanting to believe in it but still needing to be convinced, We can go through now. Nothing left to stop us! Except – well, there could be more mine barrages, and nets. The fact they’d got past one Turkish gunboat didn’t mean it would be all plain sailing from here on. Wishart turned up the periscope’s handles and stepped back, and McVeigh sent it down.

  ‘We’re nicely out in the middle, pilot. What was that course you had us on?’

  ‘North forty-one east, sir.’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ He turned, and rested a hand on the helmsman’s shoulder. ‘Starboard five, old Roost.’

  ‘Starboard five, sir … Five o’ starboard wheel on, sir.’

  Roost was grinning, tickled by that prefix ‘old’. There were glimmers of happiness in other faces too: in Stone’s, Agnew’s, Adams’s, Knight’s … Premature, perhaps; but Wishart’s brighter tone and manner were infectious, and even a momentary lifting of spirits had its value. Wishart said, ‘Steer north forty-one east, old Roost.’

  ‘North forty-one east, sir.’

  ‘Seventy feet, Number One.’

  ‘Seventy feet, sir.’

  Wishart joined Jake at the chart table. Leaning on it beside him, he lurched heavily against him. Jake glanced at him in surprise; Wishart said, ‘Shove up, pilot. You’re getting too damn fat, d’you know that?’ He looked round over his shoulder: his face was bloodless, middle-aged. ‘Lewis. You’d better reduce the navigating officer’s rations.’

  Crabb said, ‘That’s an extra breakfas’ comes my way, Lewis.’ Jake told him, ‘You’ll need to be damn quick on your feet, cox’n!’

  Laughter …

  Wishart eased over, allowing him some room.

  ‘Now then. Let’s see where we think we are.’

  * * *

  Two-seventeen …

  There’d been the orders, routine actions and reports of preparing to surfa
ce. It was a dream, of course. You went along with it because there was always the hope it might come true.

  There had been other preparations too. Both ballast pumps were ready to start sucking on the control-room bilges, to pump out the water that would flood down from the tower. Wishart had said, ‘Stop her at six feet’, and Hobday had pointed out that she’d be unstable with the tower’s weight out of water. Jake had thought, Can’t drain it any other way, you stupid clown, but Wishart’s answer had been more practical; he’d said, ‘Blow port and starboard tanks separately if you need to. Just keep her upright till it’s empty. Won’t take many minutes.’ Around them, men did their jobs mechanically, listened to the orders, made their reports, waited for whatever might come next. They didn’t believe in it either, but he could see that like him they were ready to pretend they did. They were the faces of sick men who for some hours now had been breathing poison.

  ‘Blow three, four, five and six main ballast!’

  McVeigh snarling, panting like some wild beast as he sent air roaring to the saddle-tanks. Hydroplanes hard a-rise.

  Going up!

  Eighteen – fifteen – thirteen …

  Watching the needle circle round the gauge: and the bubbles, particularly the transverse one, as the list increased and she began to sway over as she rose — ten feet …

  ‘Stop blowing four and six!’

  Those were the port-side tanks. The list was to starboard.

  Eight feet. Seven. List coming off her now.

  ‘Start the pumps!’

  Deafening noise of expanding air: it filled the mind, allowed you to believe the dream was coming true while all the time you knew that at any second the whole procedure could be reversed by an order, ‘Seventy feet: get her down!’

  ‘Stop blowing one and three! Open the conning-tower drain!’ The noise of blowing was shut off suddenly with the air, and Geordie Knight jerked the drain-valve open, starting it with the wheel spanner and then wrenching the thing around by hand. Water pounding in the pipe. ‘Pumps are sucking, sir!’