by Nevil Shute
That the captain of the submarine was to blame for having departed from his time schedule without notification.
That sufficient care had not been exercised by Flying Officer Chambers in identifying the submarine before attack.
That no useful purpose would be served by attempting salvage operations before the conclusion of hostilities.
Captain Burnaby came out of the courtroom and walked with Rutherford across the grassy quadrangle of the submarine depot to the commander’s office. Rutherford said heavily, “Well, that’s the end of that.” He must get those letters written now, and then it would be over.
Burnaby said, “There’s one more thing. The Admiral wants us to draft the terms of the announcement for the Press Department.”
The commander made a gesture of distaste. “All right, let’s get that over now.”
They went into his bare little office. He took a signal pad and pencil from the desk. “How shall we put it?”
Captain Burnaby drew his brows together in a frown. “An accidental explosion, I should think.”
“I suppose that’s the thing to say.” The commander turned the pad over, and wrote rapidly upon the back of it. “Something like this?”
The Admiralty regrets to announce that H.M.S. Caranx, a submarine of the 1933 class, has been lost with all hands due to an accidental explosion while at sea.
Burnaby took the pad from him and read it over for himself. “That’ll do,” he said. “It’s true enough. The Press Department can re-word it if they don’t like that.”
He folded the sheet and put it in his pocket. Then he turned aside. “The thing to do now,” he said grimly, “is to make quite sure that this can never happen again.”
They discussed the methods of issuing time schedules for a few minutes. At the end, the captain said, “What’s this?”
The object was a large glass jar with a ground glass stopper, of the sort that small confectioners use to keep sweets in. It stood upon the desk. It was half full of a mixture of fuel oil and water, with a few bits of cloth submerged and floating in the liquid.
Rutherford said, “You know we were talking about surface tension the other night?”
“I remember. Whether cloth would take up oil or water from a mixture. Is this an experiment?”
Rutherford took up the jar. “I thought it would be interesting to see.”
“Which do they take up?”
“Water.” The commander took off the stopper, put his hand in, and pulled out a piece of cloth. He squeezed it, and a little stream of water ran out.
Captain Burnaby stared at it for a moment. Then he said, “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, sir. There are several points about this thing that I don’t understand.”
The captain turned away. “In any case, it’s all over now.”
The commander thought, all except those letters.
5
MARKET STANTON IS a village on the Yorkshire wolds, ten miles from the North Sea. In 1934 the population was about four hundred people, and there was some talk of an aerodrome to be constructed on the undulating farm land of the district. The population has increased of recent years, and now stands at about two thousand five hundred, mostly airmen.
It lies seven miles from Beverley, the nearest town of any consequence. Chambers got there in his little car in the fading light of a mid-winter afternoon, and thought that he had never seen a place so desolate.
Caranx to him now was only a dulled, shameful memory. His leave had extended over Christmas; he had been at his home in Clifton for over three weeks. It had not been a happy leave. He had not dared to tell his family about Caranx, and he had had to submit to a certain amount of mild hero worship in consequence. His mother had been particularly trying. She had taken him shopping with her in the mornings, trailing along behind her, tall and blushing, in order that she might show him off to her friends.
She was very proud of him. “You remember Roderick?” she would say. “He goes out flying every day to protect the convoys looking for submarines, you know.”
Usually the friend would say, “I hope he sinks them for us,” or words to that effect.
His mother would say triumphantly, “Of course he does. But you know, they aren’t allowed to say. We can’t get a thing out of him.”
This usually got him an admiring look.
She arranged tea-parties for him, two hours of the same purgatory. He was fond of his mother and bore with it stoically, but he wished she wouldn’t.
No, it had not been a happy leave. He had been restless and distracted over Mona. Their parting had been stilted and unsatisfactory. Immediately the Court of Enquiry had risen he had been seized with a blind urgency to get away, and there had been nothing to keep him. The Air Commodore had seen him for a quarter of an hour, and had wished him luck.
“I’m not entirely in agreement with the findings of that Court,” he had said. “I shall forward a note of my own with the papers for attachment to your personal record.”
Chambers had said, “Thank you, sir.”
“The best thing you can do now is to get off at once and forget about it.”
He had anticipated that, and had made all his arrangements. He had driven down to Portsmouth with the galleon balanced on the seat beside him. In daylight the little furniture shop looked squalid and depressing; the snow was melting on the pavement under a steady, persistent rain. He rang the bell of the side door and her mother had answered it, an untidy, pleasant-looking woman in a dirty apron, bulging out of her clothes.
He felt foolish, and had said, “I’m sorry — could I speak to Mona?”
In a quick, shrewd glance she had taken in the tall figure in the blue-grey coat, the fresh pink-and-white complexion, and she had approved. She had said, “Half a mo’, sir. I’ll just give her a call.”
The word sir had depressed him more than ever.
In a minute or two the girl had come to the door. He had said, “I’m going off this afternoon, Mona. I just brought you down the galleon.”
Desperately she had searched her mind for somewhere where she could see him alone. But there was nowhere; her father was in the shop and her mother in the kitchen. There was no parlour to the house. She had said, “It’s ever so sweet of you to give it to me, Jerry.”
He had taken it from the car and put it into her arms; she cradled it like a baby. “I can’t ask you in,” she had said unhappily. “There’s nowhere to go.”
“I couldn’t stay. I’m just going off on leave.”
“Going home?”
“Yes. I live in Bristol, you know.”
“Will you be coming back here after that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
There had been an awkward, unhappy pause. The rain dripped steadily upon the pavement at his feet.
He said, “If I get down to London any time, would you like to come up, and we’d do something together?”
She hesitated. The fare would mean that she would have to draw upon her tiny savings, but her mother might be able to help. She said, “I’d love to do that.”
He had smiled. “I’ll write to you and fix up something.”
So they had said good-bye, and he had driven off back to the aerodrome in the little roadster, to collect his bags and start for Bristol. Mona had taken the galleon up to her room and put it on the dressing-table, where it was in the way. Later in the day her mother, wistful for a daughter’s confidence, had said a little timidly, “I did think that officer looked ever such a nice boy, Mona.”
She had turned away. “I shan’t be seeing any more of him. He just came round to say good-bye. He’s going away.”
She had gone out to be alone, and had walked for two hours through the streets and down the rainswept, deserted seafront till the gathering darkness and the rain had driven her home, to change her shoes and stockings for her evening’s work in the snack bar.
It had not been possible for Chambers to get to
London before Christmas without worrying his mother, and his posting to Market Stanton came at a day’s notice.
He found Market Stanton cold comfort. The aerodrome was deep in snow and mud, alternately hard with frost and miserable with the thaw. The mess was a brick building reasonably warm and comfortable; the bedrooms were in wooden huts separated into cubicles of beaverboard, tiny and bleak and quite unheated. Chambers suffered it for a couple of nights, then motored seven miles in to Beverley to buy a paraffin heating stove and a can of oil. This warmed his cubicle sufficiently to enable him to unpack and erect his shortwave wireless set and re-establish radio communication with America. The occupation eased the lonely ache that he had suffered since he had left Emsworth. Presently, settling down, he wrote to London for the kit to make a model caravel.
He did not find the work exacting. The aerodrome accommodated several squadrons of Wellington heavy bombers, faster than the machines that he was used to, and a good deal larger, but intrinsically much the same. He flew one dual with a flight lieutenant for a couple of hours and learned to land it in the swept lanes of the aerodrome; then he flew it solo for a few hours more. Presently he was flying it confidently by night as well as by day, and was ready to go on service as a second pilot.
Towards the end of January he flew over Germany.
The flight was curious to him, because it was almost completely uneventful. It was just like any other night flight, lasting about eight hours. The squadron chose a fine, frosty, starry night for the raid, with a light northerly wind. The machines were loaded up with leaflets printed in German for distribution over enemy territory. Each Wellington had a different course to take. The full crew of five were on board and full ammunition, but the bomb racks were empty and the machines were loaded in the fuselage with the brick-like packets of the propaganda. Past raids of that sort had shown them that it was unlikely that they would encounter much resistance.
The pilots were amused and scornful of the job they had to do. “Hitler doesn’t give a —— for the stuff,” was the general opinion. “It’s not worth his while to waste his petrol sending up his fighters.” They expressed the view that the Führer welcomed the paper for sanitary reasons.
Nevertheless, there were excitement and tension in the aeroplanes as they took off.
They left the ground at about eleven o’clock at night, taking off singly at intervals of about three minutes. Each of the big monoplanes taxied to the end of the runway in practically complete darkness, guided only by the flicker of flash lamps. Engines were run up for a last test with the machines facing down the long swept path, the exhaust pipes streaming long spears of blue flame in the cloudless, starry night. Then when all was ready, the dim lights came on which showed the runway and the machine took off; immediately it was clear of the ground the lights were extinguished till the next machine was ready.
Chambers was in the third machine to go, serving as second pilot to a flight lieutenant called Dixon. The flight lieutenant piloted the monoplane for the takeoff; Chambers sat beside him in a little folding seat in the passage that gave access to the bomb aimer’s position in the nose. Behind them were the wireless operator and the corporal gunner, the latter sitting on the piles of propaganda leaflets. In the gun turret at the very tail of the machine a sergeant gunner sat alone.
They came to the end of the runway and swung round as the lights were extinguished and the second machine climbed slowly from the ground, vanishing into the starry night, its tail-light visible as a wandering star among the other stars. Dixon settled in his seat and slowly pushed one throttle forward. In the shaded orange lights over the instrument panels both pilots watched rev counter and boost gauge, the cylinder head temperatures, and the many pressure gauges. They tested the controllable propeller, and then closed down that engine and ran up the other.
In the end, Chambers raised his thumb. The pilot nodded. Chambers glanced back over his shoulder and nodded to the men behind, then flashed the signalling lamp on the underside of the fuselage. Immediately the lights came on, and the long runway stretched out straight ahead of them, nearly three quarters of a mile in length.
The pilot pressed the throttles forward, and the machine began to move. She gained speed slowly for the first few seconds; then the propellers took hold of the air and they went trundling down the runway, heavy with the fuel and load on board. At five hundred yards they were doing eighty on the airspeed indicator, and the big monoplane was starting to feel light upon the ground. The snow flew past them on each side. At ninety the pilot eased the wheel towards him with a firm, slight pull; the vibration from the runway ceased and they climbed very slowly from the ground. They crossed the hedge with about ten feet to spare and flicked the undercarriage switch; the hydraulic pumps groaned and clattered as the wheels retracted. Then the lights behind them were extinguished, and they went climbing up into the blue vault of the starry night.
Chambers left his seat, and went to the navigating table, stayed there for a moment, and came back and set the course upon the compass. Each of the machines had its own route to follow in the operations of the night, independent of the others. Chambers set a course direct for Cuxhaven.
They went climbing up into the night. Two or three minutes after they had crossed the coast they turned out the navigating lights and went on out over the sea, a dim shadow moving across the firmament. Already it was very cold in the machine. They shut up all the windows and turned on the heating full; even so the temperature in the cabin fell below freezing very soon. Chambers changed places with the flight lieutenant and took over the piloting. At fifteen thousand feet they adjusted the oxygen masks upon their faces and turned on the supply; immediately they felt warmer. At twenty thousand feet they levelled out, stopped climbing, and took up their normal cruising speed.
As they crossed the sea, seen dimly beneath them as a corrugated sheet, the moon came up ahead of them. Its light shone upon the cockpit and the wings and made them feel conspicuous; they would have preferred the shadow of the night. Once they saw a ship on the water, heading roughly north-east; they had no means of telling whose it was.
They saw land ahead of them at about a quarter to one, and picked up the outline of the estuary of the Elbe at Cuxhaven. They followed the river, checking their navigation by the ground to settle the direction of the wind, until they came to Hamburg.
There was no doubt about the city. All round it the snow covered the countryside; the city appeared as an untidy, speckled blotch upon a field of white. In the bright moonlight they could see the docks and the line of the river, and they made an effort to count the ships in sight along the quays. The streets were faintly lighted. There were no searchlights visible. They strained their eyes into the darkness for enemy fighters, but in vain. Each minute they expected gunfire, but no gunfire came.
To Chambers it was fantastic and unreal. It was incredible that that big town below him should be full of Germans, fanatically devoted to their Führer, hating England and the English with all the force of their warped, virile souls.
Dixon leaned his head towards him, and moved the oxygen mask from his mouth. “Not much wind,” he said. “Get about five miles over to the west, and we’ll drop the stuff there.”
He showed Chambers the map of the locality. The pilot nodded and swung the bomber round, staring intently at the dim ground below. Presently he found the wood that he was looking for and circled over it. He glanced over his shoulder. Dixon and the corporal were shoving the brick-like packets of leaflets down the chute. The pilot glanced over the side, but he could see nothing of the paper cloud.
The flight lieutenant came along to him. “Berlin next stop,” he said. He set the new course on the compass for the pilot. “We’ll probably run into searchlights pretty soon. Like me to take her?”
Chambers grinned, “I’m all right. You take a spell after Berlin.”
“All right.”
Half an hour later, sure enough, the searchlights blazed out ahead of them from
somewhere near Spandau. Most of them were white in colour, one or two were pale green and one or two violet. The machine flew on steadily towards them, flying at about twenty-two thousand feet. At that height they were very largely safe from searchlights; when the beams caught them, as they did from time to time, the illumination of the machine was not very great. The young men kept a keen, incessant lookout for enemy fighters. They saw nothing. Swiftly they passed above the line of searchlights, discovered a river and a dark, faintly glowing mass ahead, and so came to Berlin.
They made a wide circuit of the city, tense and anxious. There were no searchlights, no gunfire, no fighters. The main streets seemed to be faintly illuminated by shaded street lamps, and away on the outskirts to the east there was a pattern of light that they took to be the landing lights laid out upon an aerodrome. They flew towards the west again, discharged their leaflets at a spot where the wind would carry them down into the city, and set a course for Leipzig, relieved and faintly disappointed.
They got to Leipzig at about three o’clock in the morning; by that time the moon was high. There they were fired upon, without searchlights. Below them they could see the flashes of the guns, the long trails of tracer from the shells, and the vivid bursts about their level. Dixon was flying the machine, and climbed and dived alternately to change the height by a few hundred feet. The others concentrated intently on the work they had to do as the machine circled the city. None of the shells came near. Chambers watched the flashes of the guns intently from the forward gun position, marking the location of each battery upon a large-scale plan of the city. They scattered their leaflets, and set a course for Kassel.
Kassel was dark and silent; they circled it, dropped their leaflets, and turned northwards for home. At Hanover and at Bremen there were searchlights, and between Bremen and Wilhelmshaven there was an intense barrage of searchlights and of gunfire. Dixon was still at the controls and went through it in a series of dives and climbs coupled with forty-five degree turns to port and starboard, designed to confuse the sound locators and the gunners. One or two bursts came near them, and the next day they found a small gash in the fabric of the rear fuselage where a splinter had passed through, but they suffered no damage and set a course for home over the North Sea.
