McKendrick looked as if he thought his leg was being pulled. C.P.O. Willis, even, showed mild surprise – as he shifted his ’planes minutely, to counter the bubble’s tendency to wander. Hydroplanes, like a ship’s rudder, needed more or less constant adjustment this way and that, offsetting underwater currents and variations in the sea’s density. McKendrick staring at his skipper; rhythmic whirr of the echo-sounder, regular ticking of the log, the Asdic’s clicking as the operator inched it round. Behind all that, so familiar that you didn’t notice it, the main motors’ continuous hum.
‘If you’re sure, sir—’
‘Be in here all day, I expect. Make the most of it.’ He glanced at Fergusson, gestured for the periscope.
There could hardly have been a less interesting stretch of coastline to examine. Especially as the only parts of it that might have possibilities in terms of this reconnaissance couldn’t be approached at all closely because of the shallows. There were two narrow inlets, their entrances protected by rocks and islets, which might be used by small craft – including manned torpedoes – but if they were you’d never know it.
Anyway, it made sense to have a look.
Aircraft appeared twice during the forenoon. Both times he went down to forty feet for long enough to let them pass over. Grateful for the wind-ruffled surface, even at that depth, since in these clear waters dived submarines weren’t necessarily invisible to aircraft directly overhead. Not even when they were painted sea-blue, as Spartan was. Forty feet still didn’t feel deep enough for comfort, while one waited for the sky to clear. Leaning on the ladder’s slant, one foot on its bottom rung, eyes on the gauges over the ’planesmen’s heads: giving it five minutes, then two more for luck. Finally: ‘All right. Thirty feet.’
When the watch changed at eight he let Forbes take over for half an hour while he had some breakfast. Matt Bennett asked him when he’d finished and was on his way to take over again: ‘Isn’t there some old adage about keeping dogs and doing your own barking, sir?’
‘Yes, Chief, there is.’ He went through to the control room. It was a fact that his officers’ eyes were probably every bit as good as his own — or better if youth had anything to do with it – and he had no doubt they’d keep an efficient periscope watch. But he was going to have to make a positive statement in his patrol report as to the presence or absence of any signs of special activity in this gulf, and it was better for the opinion to be based on personal observation. It was a chancy thing anyway; and it was important, it mattered: if a sneak attack was about to be launched against the fleet, an attack which if it was successful might even change the course of the war, for God’s sake…
* * *
Lunch. Corned beef and chutney, and Teasdale being interrogated by Matt Bennett about his literary efforts, which Bennett called boomerangs because they all came back to him – from his favourite magazines, Men Only and Lilliput, to which he sent them in a fairly steady stream. Bennett asked him why he bothered, when his future was so clearly established as a manufacturer of footwear: ‘After all, people want boots and shoes – won’t send them back to you.’
Mitcheson asked him whether he’d tried writing any pieces about submarines. He hadn’t, he said, mainly because he thought the technicalities would be too much for the average reader to assimilate, and surely they’d need to have some idea of the basics if they were going to be able to follow any narrative.
‘Sock ’em with the mechanics on page one.’ This was Chief’s solution. ‘Then full ahead, and it’s up to them.’
‘Alternatively, try picking Number One’s brains.’ Mitcheson suggested: ‘He’d have a yarn or two for you, for sure.’
Forbes had gone to sea as a Merchant Navy apprentice when he’d been fifteen, in 1931. Then for some reason he’d worked ashore on the China coast, but by the summer of 1939 had been back at sea as second officer of some old rustbucket smuggling refugees out of Spain. He would have some stories, Mitcheson thought – on his way back to the control room, where at this moment Forbes had the stick up, was swivelling slowly with the daylight burning in his widespaced eyes. Mitcheson envied him – envied the life he’d led already, when he was only twenty-five now, six years Mitcheson’s own junior. Just as in the last month or two he’d also come rather to envy Josh Currie with his Foreign Office background – for the variety that Currie’s future promised, anyway. In comparison – with Forbes’ especially – one’s own past and future seemed so narrow. Dartmouth at thirteen, then through the pre-ordained hoops and up the promotion ladder rung by rung – until you became an admiral and eventually retired. Every step of the way absolutely predictable. All right, so you’d have fulfilled a purpose, and someone had to do the job; there’d be moments of satisfaction, achievement – all that, too… The fact remained that compared to the variety and degree of personal choice in those other lives – well, not Teasdale’s, the world of boots and shoes…
Why he had his urge to write, perhaps. Escape. And very understandable. More so, in fact, than this change in one’s own thinking. Until only a few weeks ago there’d been no doubts or misgivings whatsoever: had never been.
Lucia?
Forbes pushed up the handles, stepped back from the periscope as E.R.A. Halliday sent it down.
‘No change, sir – nothing.’
* * *
In the wardroom, McKendrick suggested to Teasdale, ‘Terrific new idea for you, Johnny. Write a Gone With the Wind of the Middle East. Pulsating romance – intrepid submarine skipper and—’
‘Sub.’
He broke off, stared at the engineer. ‘Huh?’
‘Shut up,’ Bennett told him quietly. ‘Shut your stupid bloody face.’
* * *
The western coastline of the gulf was as uninteresting as the rest of it had been. But that was it, finished – in one single day, thank God. It was six-thirty now and the headland – Ras et-Tin, not to be confused with Ras el-Tin, which was at Alexandria – was abeam to port at a range of six miles, with the lowering sun poised to drop right behind it. Mitcheson had handed over the periscope watch to McKendrick and was at the chart working out courses, speeds and times for Spartan’s transit tonight to her patrol position off Ras el-Hilal – across the line of approach from Italy to the port of Derna.
Derna was only twenty-five miles west of this headland, as it happened. But according to information contained in the patrol orders there was a new minefield between here and there. So – surface at 1930; it would be dark enough by then, and you’d be seven and a half miles offshore. Due north for say twenty-five miles; that would take you well clear, before turning west. The battery was nearly flat, so you’d need to be charging it, en route: lower speed of advance, therefore, part of the engines’ output being used to drive the motors as dynamos, pumping in the amperes. So – eight knots, say. Three hours’ transit north. Then due west: and that distance would be – just over fifty miles. Calling it fifty-six, seven hours. Total, ten hours. But if one wanted to dive before 0500…
Start again. Cut that corner; save about an hour.
He took a signal-pad and a pencil into the wardroom. ‘Diving stations at twenty past, Number One. Nine and a half hours’ running charge enough, d’you reckon?’
Forbes screwed his face up, thinking about it. The battery, like the trim, was his responsibility. He shrugged. ‘Just about. But—’
‘Might stop an hour short, and spend that hour with a standing charge?’
A firm nod. ‘Fine, sir.’
He pulled the chair back, and sat down. ‘Pilot, let’s have the codes out.’
‘Aye, sir. Gangway, Chief…’ Teasdale squeezed out past the engineer. The code-books were kept in the safe, in the control room. There’d be a signal to code up for transmission when they surfaced – reporting the lack of activity in the Bomba gulf and that Spartan was now shifting to the new location. He came back, dumping the heavy books on the table. They had lead-weighted covers so they’d sink if you had to ditch them in an em
ergency. Barney Forbes’ voice audible at this moment from the galley: ‘Surfacing half-seven, Sparrow, then supper. What’s on the menu?’
‘Ah, Chef’s Special tonight, sir…’
Bennett, who was reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory, which his wife had sent him from England, looked up from it scowling. ‘Corned beef hash, that means. Corned beef for bloody lunch, corned bloody beef for supper—’
‘Shouldn’t ’ve joined, Chief.’ Forbes edged in on the other side of the table. ‘Mind you, I’ll have yours if you don’t want it.’
Mitcheson had drafted his signal. He pushed the pad and pencil across the table to Teasdale. ‘Cipher that up, pilot.’
* * *
Spartan surfaced at 1930 and within a few minutes was heading north on her diesels. Mitcheson’s signal went out, and others were received and decoded. Matt Bennett ate all his corned beef hash. The BBC news at 2100 GMT mentioned that the Germans were still besieging Leningrad and had taken Kiev in the Ukraine. Forces’ Favourites, which followed, made easier listening, blaring from the loudspeakers throughout the evening games of Liar dice in the wardroom and Uckers in the fore ends and the stokers’ mess back aft. Uckers was a form of Ludo; there were regular tournaments between the various messes, and individual championships.
Mitcheson went up to the bridge just after ten; the corner-cutting was to start at a quarter past. Forbes had the watch. There was a clear, starry sky, wind from the west force three to four, and enough broken sea to promise well for the dived patrol tomorrow.
Forbes commented – with binoculars at his eyes, and sweeping slowly across the bow – ‘Visibility’s unusually good, sir.’
‘Good for them, too.’
A nod – still searching. ‘Did have that in mind, sir.’
This in fact was an area the enemy might well think worth patrolling, or hanging around in. Their anti-submarine launches sometimes did precisely that: lay doggo, drifting, guns and torpedoes ready. And against this and other threats – Italian or German submarines, for instance – a one-hundred per cent efficient looking-out routine was the only answer. It was a plain and simple fact that unless you saw an enemy before he saw you, you were dead.
So were the forty-odd men down below, who had only your eyes to trust in.
She was rolling a bit as well as pitching, on this course, but in the bridge it was dry enough, so far.
‘Bridge!’
Forbes put his face down to the voicepipe. ‘Bridge.’
‘Twenty-two fifteen, sir.’
‘Very good. Port ten.’
* * *
Just after 0400, ten miles short of the middle of what was to be the new patrol line, the running charge was broken, port tail clutch disengaged and a standing charge started on that side. Spartan was being driven by only her starboard screw then, making about five knots and zigzagging thirty degrees each side of her mean course, which was due west. The wind was down a bit but the sea was still adequately patched with white.
Forbes was on watch again, having had his four hours off. Mitcheson, who’d been up there with him for a spell, came down and put a DR on the chart for 0410. Thinking as he looked at it that they were in as good a position for covering the Derna approach as they would be ten miles further on. Or twenty. You could spin a coin. There was a sister-ship, Seadog, in which they span a dog; it was a stuffed dog, suspended from the wardroom deckhead, and when in doubt, they went whichever way its muzzle pointed. Seadog was a very successful submarine, at that. He sat down in the darkened wardroom to finish the mug of kye which C.P.O. Chanter had offered him. Chanter, a lean, veteran submariner with a lived-in face that made him seem older than his thirty-four years, was a Torpedo Gunner’s Mate, in charge of that department and next in seniority only to the coxswain.
His question to Mitcheson a few minutes ago, although differently phrased had been effectively the same as Lockwood’s last night. He’d asked him, handing him the mug of kye, ‘Likely billet this one, sir?’
More an expression of hope than a question, really. Hope plus anxiety, perhaps – the feeling that Spartan had had more than her share of luck, had to be in for a bad patch some time. It was a fact that she hadn’t had a blank patrol since arriving in the Med nearly five months ago; on every return to base she’d been able to wear her Jolly Roger, the black skull-and-crossbones flag which you flew only when you’d scored.
So you crossed fingers. Hoped. Prayed for your torpedoes to run straight.
They didn’t always. And if the six now resting in Spartan’s bow tubes didn’t come up to scratch it would be mortification for Mervyn Chanter. Whose question Mitcheson had answered with a philosophic ‘Lap of the Gods, T.I.’ (T.I. because a T.G.M. was more often known by the older term, Torpedo Instructor. It might be confusing for a newcomer, but nobody called him anything much else than ‘T.I.’)
By 0500 the battery was right up. The charge was broken, and Mitcheson called up the voicepipe to Forbes to dive her. The two lookouts came rattling down, main vents crashed open, and looking up through the lower hatch Mitcheson heard the top hatch slam shut and then Forbes’ report: ‘One clip on, sir.’ He told Chanter, who by this time was on the after ’planes, ‘Forty feet.’
* * *
They were at breakfast, Spartan at periscope depth by then, when McKendrick spotted an Italian seaplane.
‘Down periscope. Captain in the control room.’
He was there. Swallowing a mouthful of skinless sausage known as a soya link. McKendrick telling him: ‘Savoia Marchetti, sir, on green three-oh. Looks like it might be escorting something.’
Meaning it was lowish over the sea and making sweeps this way and that. Mitcheson had the periscope sliding up. ‘Thirty-two feet.’ So as not to risk showing too much stick. He’d grabbed the handles early too, only halfway up from deck-level; was crouching, probably with not much more than the top glass just breaking surface.
Motionless, now. Eyes bright with the daylight in them. Up a bit… and training slowly right.
‘Asdics – sweep between two-eight-oh and three-three-oh.’
A.B. Sewell – known as ‘Randy’ Sewell, for some reason – muttered acknowledgement and fiddled the set’s training-knob around. Lips pursed, hollowing his dark, unshaven cheeks. Mitcheson meanwhile completing a fast all-round check before settling again on that bearing. Training left, slowly… stopping.
‘Two of ’em, Sub. Savoias, you’re right. Must be some damn—’
Sewell croaked: ‘Fast HE on green five-five, sir!’
‘HE’ stood for Hydrophone Effect, the underwater sound made by a ship’s propellers.
Mitcheson grunted. Adjusting the ’scope to that bearing. Then: ‘Diving stations. Half ahead together. Starboard ten.’
Acknowledgements, reports, more orders, and a quick rush of men to their action stations; the increase in speed to half ahead is enough to hold her while Forbes gets the trim adjusted. The coxswain’s at the after ’planes now, Lockwood’s on the for’ard ones, A.B. Mackay at the wheel and E.R.A. Halliday on the diving panel and periscope control. Rowntree, the H.S.D., who’s taken over from Sewell, reports, ‘HE on green oh-nine and red one-five, sir. Fast turbines, both of them.’
‘Down.’
He’s only dipping the periscope: Halliday’s stopped it, at his signal, has it shooting up again.
‘Course three-one-oh, sir.’
‘Bloody seaplanes. Slow together.’
‘Slow together, sir. Both main motors slow ahead grouped down, sir.’
‘New HE green one-four, sir. Fast reciprocating. Other two are – green oh-eight and – red one-five, sir.’
Reciprocating engines, which are quite different in sound to rotary ones, turbines – they’ll be submarine chasers, destroyers or similar – suggest a larger ship, a potential target. Mitcheson’s muttering to himself; he can’t see it – yet – hasn’t seen any of them…
Still doesn’t want to show more periscope than he has to, though. Wi
th the Savoias overhead, sharp-eyed Wops up there.
‘Ah…’ He and the periscope are static, for a moment. ‘Small destroyer. Partinope class, could be.’ Shifting fast: then slowly again: stopping, training back, stopping again. ‘And there’s his playmate. They’re twins.’ Getting the picture into his mind – so far as it goes, at this stage. He knows the reciprocating HE has to be something worthwhile and can’t be far astern of these two escorts. Training left: and stopping abruptly. Grunt of satisfaction. ‘There, now. There you are. Oh, you beauty… Bearing is – that.’ The signalman, Jumbo Tremlett, reads it off the bearing ring on the deckhead. ‘Masthead height one hundred feet, say. Range is – that. Start the attack. Target is a tanker, about 6000 tons. I am about – twenty-five on his port bow. Down… Starboard fifteen. Group up, half ahead together. Forty feet. Blow up one, two, three and four tubes.’
The Electrical Artificer – Hart, at the torpedo-firing panel with a telephone headset linking him to C.P.O. Chanter in the tube space – passes that last order for’ard as Spartan noses downward, the thrum of her electric motors rising with the increase of power. ‘Blowing up’ tubes means that the torpedomen who’ve wedged themselves into that small bow compartment, most of which is filled by the tubes themselves and a mass of piping dripping with condensation, will on Chanter’s orders be opening certain valves then letting high-pressure air into a tank called the W.R.T. – Water Round Torpedoes – blowing water up to fill what until now has been air-space around them.
It’s done. Leading Torpedoman Hastings reports: ‘Two and four blown up, T.I.,’ and from the starboard side another of the team confirms, ‘One and three blown up.’ Chanter says into his telephone, ‘One, two, three and four tubes blown up.’
In the control room, Hart has repeated it to Mitcheson. Rowntree tells him at the same time: ‘Both escorts transmitting, sir.’ He means they’re using their Asdics, pinging.
Love For An Enemy Page 8
