by Nevil Shute
In the little, shabby bedroom over the furniture shop the truth of a naval tragedy came to the light. The German had sunk Caranx off Departure Point. The Dutch skipper in the newspaper had said the British sunk a German submarine, but that was wrong. He had seen Caranx sunk, perhaps torpedoed by the German, as she moved upon the surface.
That was why Porky Thomas said he saw a slick, with oil coming up, just off Departure Point. He had seen such a slick; he had steamed through the oil that came from the torn, shattered hull of a British submarine, and he had never dreamed of it.
This was the truth, naked and undeniable. The submarine that Jerry sunk had itself torpedoed Caranx an hour previously.
She lay reclining on her pillows for half an hour, turning this theory over in her mind. It must be true; there was no other way of it. And with that conviction, there came to her deep happiness. She could help Jerry, really help him in his work, in his career. He had not said much to her of the setback he had suffered, after that first evening. Then he had said that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to stay on in the Air Force after the war. She knew what that would mean to him; the end of his career. No more doing the work that he had chosen, that he was good at.
But that was over now. He hadn’t sunk Caranx, and she’d prove it. Mouldy James and Porky Thomas and every one should be brought in to help.
She lay back quietly, desperately happy. If she could help to rid him of the slur of having sunk a British submarine, it wouldn’t matter quite so much, perhaps, if he married a barmaid. With Caranx and a barmaid both upon his record, he’d never be able to stay in the service after the war. But if it were shown that he had really sunk a German submarine, then things were different. A German submarine would be an asset on his record, sufficient to outweigh even a barmaid, if she were very careful always to talk nicely, and to learn to do the right things with a visiting card. And that should not be very difficult to learn.
It was not Mona’s way to lie awake. When she was happy, she usually went to sleep, and she was sleeping quietly before so very long.
She caught her father in the shop next morning, after breakfast. “Dad,” she said, “what would you do if you was me?”
“I dunno, girl.”
“You know Jerry — Flying Officer Chambers, what takes me dancing sometimes.”
“I see him once,” he said cautiously.
“Did you know about his trouble, Dad?”
He shook his head.
“He sunk a British submarine, with bombs, when he was on patrol. That’s what the Court of Enquiry said, but it’s all wrong, Dad. Honest, it is.”
His brow darkened; he was first and foremost an old naval petty officer. “Let’s get this right, girl,” he said quietly. “What is it that you say he done?”
“He sunk a submarine called Caranx, so they said. But he didn’t do it, really and truly.”
It took him ten minutes to extract the story from her. It would have taken anybody else half an hour, but he spoke her language and could understand her processes of thought. In a quarter of an hour he had completely absorbed the whole story; he sat there rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
She said, “What ought I to do, Dad? I mean, some one ought to know about it.”
He said, “In a ship the officer of the watch would be the one to tell. But with this — I don’t know, I’m sure.”
She was silent.
“It’s not as if you know anything, really,” he said. “It’s just what you suppose.”
She said stubbornly, “I don’t see that, Dad. Seems to me that it’s the only way it could have happened.” There was a pause, and then she said, “That Court of Enquiry never saw Porky Thomas or Mouldy James, or any one. They never even knew about the clothes in the torpedo tube, because that’s only just been found out.”
“I dunno what to say,” he said weakly.
“Somebody ought to be told.”
“The only chap to tell would be the young chap himself. The one what takes you out.”
She stared out of the shop window to the street outside. “I’d rather tell some one different. He might not want to go raking it all up again. But it’s something that they ought to know.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” he said.
That morning the trawler went out again, with Burnaby and Legge on board, and a number of naval officers. As they went, Legge, tired and worried, lectured them on the modifications he proposed to put in hand for dealing with the battleship. They could not all follow his reasoning, though one or two were able to discourse with him intelligently. In half an hour he had satisfied them completely.
Burnaby said, “This seems to mean, then, that we’re practically home. When you get the new modulator installed, we’re ready for war.”
The civilian said hesitantly, “I think we shall be very near that stage. But only as regards the battleship, you know. There’ll be another set of conditions altogether for the cruiser.”
Burnaby said, “I quite appreciate that, Professor Legge. But as regards the battleship alone, we’re very nearly ready for service use?”
Legge said, “I think that is so.”
The naval captain said, “I do congratulate you, Professor, both on the thing itself and on the speed with which you’ve brought it along.”
The civilian flushed a little. “I wish we didn’t have to take such risks.”
“I know. But the solution for the battleship has justified the risks of accident.”
Legge said nothing. He could not bring himself to agree with that. In his private view, these officers were too impatient for results. Granted that the country was at war and that this device was needed more than most, he could not feel that this slapdash method of full-scale experiment so loved by the services was reasonable or scientifically right. He knew very well that an accident in the early stages would have turned them all against him, would have killed the weapon stone dead in their minds. That possibility was now removed by the partial success that he had had with the battleship, but that did not affect his view that the method of experiment was totally unsound. They would have done better to have spent more time upon research.
The trawler reached the area allotted for the trials and met the cruiser. For half an hour they lay rolling a few hundred yards apart. Then the bomber appeared flying from the land, the cinema photographers made the final adjustments to their cameras, and the Aldis lamp flashed for the trial to commence.
The machine approached the cruiser and flew over it. Nothing happened. It passed above the ship and began to turn away; on the trawler the officers relaxed the intensity of their observations.
Burnaby said, “That will be the modulation again, I suppose, Professor?”
Legge said, “I should think so, sir. We must expect it to be a matter of trial and error, just as with the battleship.”
The monoplane approached the ship again, flying steadily upon an even keel, but on a different course.
This time, the device worked.
The monoplane swept down upon the trawler, circled around her very low, the pilot waving merrily as she turned, and made off towards the land. On board the trawler there was great satisfaction. True, it had not worked first time, but it was generally realized that that was just a matter for adjustment. Professor Legge was treated with considerable respect. They made way for him in the little cuddy of the trawler at lunch time to give him the best seat at the little table; a second trial was to take place at two o’clock.
Back on the aerodrome, Chambers reported to Hewitt: “It worked all right, sir, at the second shot. They’re loading up again now for the trial this afternoon.”
The wing commander nodded. “Any particular reason why it didn’t work the first time?”
“None at all, that I could see, sir.” He paused. “As a matter of fact, it didn’t go a bit as the professor said. You know he said that the current on the milli-ammeter would go up suddenly, in two and a half seconds.”
The wing co
mmander said, “Yes. He was very worried about it.”
“Well, he’s got it all wrong. It just went creeping up, very slowly — much slower than the battleship. It must have taken seven or eight seconds. I switched off when it got to thirty-six.”
“That’s funny. He was all wrong about the rate of rise?”
“Yes, sir. It went up very slowly.” The pilot hesitated. “Do you think we ought to let him know?”
“Send him a code signal by radio, you mean. We can’t send that in clear.”
They glanced at each other. They had both had some experience of code signals in the hands of wireless operators in training. It might very well take three or four hours to get an intelligible answer to a cable of that sort.
The pilot said, “I should think it would be all right if we just carry on. After all, it only means there’s that much more time to cut the switch.”
The wing commander said, “That’s all it can mean. I should carry on, and tell him tonight.”
“Very good, sir.”
Chambers went off to the mess for a quick lunch. At the table somebody asked him, “How’s it going?”
“Not so bad,” he said. “Did the cruiser a bit of no good this morning — or would have done if the thing had been real.”
Somebody else said, “The Navy are all hot and bothered over it.”
“And well they may be.”
He walked back to the hangar. The machine was not quite ready; he put on his parachute harness and his Mae West and stood waiting on the tarmac. It was a fine, breezy, sunny afternoon; cold with the blustering cold of March, but invigorating with the promise of summer to come. The flight lieutenant came and stood by him.
“Bloody nice day,” he said. “Going to flirt with death again?”
Chambers grinned. “Nice day for the ceremony. I always think rain spoils a funeral.”
“How’s it going?”
“Not so bad. I think we’ve got it pretty well whacked now.”
The flight sergeant came up to them. “All ready now, sir.” The pilot turned, and got into the machine.
Presently he took off, and flew towards the coast, on the alert for other aircraft. As he passed out over the beach at about a thousand feet he was turning over in his mind the morning’s trial. He had a firm impression that this hit-and-miss business of experiment was quite unnecessary. There was some means of procedure that they could adopt, somewhere, somehow, that would make this rather tricky method of experiment obsolete. Some combination of the height and speed and modulation and frequency which would ring the bell each time, delivering the stick of chocolate with accuracy and regularity. He had a feeling that the problem contained within itself a neat and accurate solution, and a safe one, too. He knew that Professor Legge had the same instinct, but neither had been able to formulate it in words.
Presently, far ahead of him upon the sunny, corrugated sea, he saw the cruiser with the trawler lying at a little distance from her. He closed them rapidly and circled round above the trawler at about a thousand feet. In a minute the white flashes of the Aldis lamp showed from her bridge; he turned away and flew south for a couple of minutes, getting distance for his run towards the ship. Then he turned again, and made for the cruiser.
He switched on current to the apparatus at the main switch and pulled over the safety switch. The milli-ammeter showed sixteen or seventeen; that was about normal at the beginning of the run. He glanced quickly at the cruiser to check the direction, ruddering slightly to maintain his course.
Then he glanced back at the milli-ammeter. Still only about eighteen; it wasn’t rising as it should.
The run was going to be another failure.
He shot another quick glance at the ship, corrected slightly with his feet, and back to the dial of the ammeter.
The needle wasn’t there.
For a moment, perhaps the fifth of a second, he was bewildered; then his hand began to move towards the switch.
At the same moment he saw the needle in a different place, right up at the far end of the scale. It was over fifty.
Quick as he moved his hand, the current passed along the circuit wires more quickly. He never heard the detonation, or felt the burst of flame. He saw, but did not feel, the structure of the cockpit dissolve round him.
He felt no pain.
He saw the port engine fall out and go down, trailing a plume of black smoke in its fall. He saw the flaming wreckage of the wings collapse and leave him, and he saw but did not feel the fuselage rear up and go into its long, uneven plunge tail first towards the sea.
He thought, “This is being killed.”
And then he thought, “My God, we’ve been a pack of bloody fools.”
Clear in his mind was what they should have done. It was so easy, such a simple little trick. It would have freed the trials from all risk. It would have saved his life.
He was being killed, and nobody would know. Another pilot would come forward and would carry on the trials and he, too, would be killed. And then another, and another one. He could have stopped all that, but he was being killed.
As the wrecked fuselage plunged tail first into the sea one thought was paramount, pervading every fibre of his being.
He must, must, try and live, to tell Professor Legge.
It is a horrible thing to see an aeroplane destroyed by an explosion from within.
On the trawler, the naval officers stood stupefied. The detonation blew the belly of the machine out downwards, and a sheet of flame shot outwards from the fuselage, coloured a cherry red against the pale blue sky. The big monoplane staggered, practically stopped. Then a round mass that was an engine fell from the port wing and went down to the sea, leaving a great plume of black smoke behind it in its fall.
The wrecked bomber put its nose up, and the port wing burst into flame. Then the wing crumpled up and the whole port wing parted from the fuselage, and hung for a time suspended by the hot air of its own combustion. The remnants of the fuselage and the starboard wing dropped backwards in a tail slide, and plunged down to the water, gathering speed at every moment of its fall.
It hit the sea a few hundred yards from the cruiser, with a resounding crash and a great sheet of spray. It bobbed up to the surface in the middle of the foam of its own fall, and began sinking fairly slowly. Above it the port wing hovered flaming, dropping streams of blazing petrol to the sea. Then it, too, began to fall, quicker and quicker, till it hit the sea a little way away.
A motor pinnace splashed down heavily into the water from the cruiser, turned, and made for the sinking wreckage.
On the bridge of the trawler, Captain Burnaby stood staring at the disaster. He moved once to speak to the captain of the trawler; the R.N.V.R. lieutenant jumped for the telegraph and rang it to full speed. The trawler turned slowly, and made for the floating wreckage.
Burnaby stood staring at the wreck through field glasses, grim and silent.
By his side, Professor Legge stood white and sick, gripping the rail before him with both hands. He had seen a boy killed before his eyes, a boy that he had known, talked to, consulted with, a young man that he had admired for his light-hearted courage. And his one reaction was a feeling of relief.
Relief that it was over. The long, grinding tension of anxiety was finished, for the worst had happened. There would be no need now to lie awake at nights, worrying desperately if there was no more that he could do. There would be no more arguing and pleading with the officers for a more cautious programme, and no more rebuffs. This marked a period.
The tension of anxiety was snapped. Unnoticed a tear trickled down his cheek to his moustache, but he only felt relief, an immense thankfulness that it was over.
The motorboat was now beside the wreck.
9
IN THE SNACK bar that night, Miriam said:
“I don’t now what’s come over you. You’re looking pleased as a dog with two tails tonight. What’s it all about, anyway?”
Mona tossed her head
. “Nothing to do with you.”
The other smiled. “It’s that Air Force officer you go out with. Meeting him tonight?”
Mona shook her head. “He can’t get off till next week.”
“Well, then, what are you so pleased about? Got another one?”
“Don’t talk so soft. It’s nothing like that.”
Miriam sighed, unbelieving, and broke off to serve a couple of whiskies. The evening progressed along the usual lines. The bar was moderately full; as the months went by the proportion of women in the bar tended to increase. The W.A.A.F.s and the W.R.N.S. seemed to come more frequently; sometimes they came with naval or air force officers, but frequently they came in little groups of two or three of their own service. Then they would sit at a table by themselves, rather self-conscious in so masculine a place, drinking with care and feminine economy.
About eight o’clock Mona nudged Miriam. “There’s those Wren officers you know. The one in the middle, what you said was the daughter of the officer at the Navigating School.”
Miriam looked across the room. “Why, that’s right,” she said. “That’s Miss Hancock. I don’t know who them others are with her.”
“What’s that Miss Hancock like? Do you know her?”
The other shook her head. “I never spoke to her. My cousin Flora was in service there — that’s how I know her. Flora said she was all right. A bit stuck-up, like. But all officers’ daughters get like that.”
Mona said, “I suppose they do. Would she mind it if I went and spoke to her, do you think?”
The other girl stared at her. “Whatever for?”
Mona regretted she had made the suggestion. “Just something I was thinking about,” she said weakly.
Miriam looked at her kindly. “She’s all right,” she said. “She won’t bite your head off.” In her own mind, she had a very good idea what Mona wanted to talk to Miss Hancock about. She wanted to get into the Wrens, and she wanted some help. That was what she had been so excited over, earlier in the evening.
