Something in the Water

by Peter Scott

  “Where to?” She glanced at her watch.

  “To the shore. It won’t take but a few minutes; you won’t be late for school.”

  “Can’t you just tell me what it is?”

  “No,” he said. “You have to see it.”

  The fog bank that had hidden the moon in the night had retreated to the open sea, where it hid the sun but not the light that spread over it toward the land. Maggie followed him down the dewy path, past the pile of rotting lobster traps and broken barrels behind the fish shacks.

  “Gus, I haven’t even packed my lunch yet; I still have six more tests to grade.”

  “Please,” he said. He offered her his hand and led her across a plank behind Amos’s shack, over tar-covered boulders to a small path that led uphill into the spruces.

  “You have to duck to get through here.” He released her hand and disappeared into a tunnel of limbs. She hesitated, folded her arms across her chest, then shook her head and followed—like Alice, she thought, following the white rabbit.

  When she emerged from the scratchy tunnel, she found Gus standing in a small clearing next to a huge pile of dead brush, his hands behind his back like an impresario waiting for his audience to settle. She looked at her watch to get the show going, then stood impatiently while he removed the cover of fading branches from the mound to slowly reveal a tarred and tattered canvas. Beyond the trees behind her, the sound of a lobsterboat on its way south to the Turnip Yard reverberated in the cove.

  “What is it?” she demanded. She imagined a large machine—a boiler of some kind—with odd curves and awkward angles.

  “Help me with this tarp; it’s Christly heavy.” Gus wiped his face on his sleeve.

  On a rough base made of heavy hewn spruce and piling spikes, two blue fifty-five-gallon fuel drums rested on a slanted structure, one drum above the other, angled upward, each held in place on the runners by knee chocks and a wide plank. On top of the drums, tied in place with cod line, were coils of black cord painted with evenly spaced red stripes. Gus stood with his hands in his armpits while she walked the length, then the width, in a close inspection. It was Amos’s work, not Gus’s, she saw.

  “What’s in them?” she finally asked.

  “Black powder packed around a stick of dynamite. The fuses are waterproof; each of the marks is for ten fathoms. We worked out the timing with other drums filled with sand and gravel that we rolled overboard with measuring lines on them.”

  “Do you intend to use this on the Quahog?” She was surprised by the thought.

  “Why do you think he wanted a bigger boat?” he asked. “We measured a hundred times if we measured once to make sure it’s built to fit just right, and it is. See those holes in the runners? We’ll cut a path through the trees, then put a block and tackle on the launcher up here and a winch down below; at high tide, we’ll ease it down on log rollers, winch it aboard, and clench it down with lag bolts. Just like that.”

  “Just like that,” Maggie said. “And then set sail to do battle with a U-boat.”

  Gus nodded. “We’ll need luck to get over him and even more to hit him, but we’ve got the speed and—”

  “Exactly who is this we?” She knew too well.

  “You know,” he said.

  Maggie laughed. “Oh no,” she said, raising her palm to halt his talk. “We’re under orders to observe, to report—not to engage. You promised your mother. This would be ridiculous; it would be suicide; I won’t have any part of it.”

  Gus had prepared for her arguments, but was angry nevertheless. “It isn’t patrolling, and it’s not the Quahog anymore,” he said. “When Jake sees this and how well it’s rigged, he’ll go along with it.”

  Maggie didn’t understand what he meant about the name, but she knew where Jake would stand. “No he won’t. Nor will I. It’s out of the question.”

  “I’ll get Vergil to go with me,” he said. “I’ll go it alone if I have to, goddammit.”

  They locked eyes, and neither blinked.

  “I forbid it,” she said evenly. “The Quahog is my boat. The half share he left you was in the Tuna, before we bought this one. Do you dare dispute that?”

  “No,” he said, his face set against her. “The Quahog’s yours. And you’re going to be late to school.”

  She thought to respond in kind to the snide tone in his voice but would not. She turned her back on him and made her way down to the shore. As she passed between the shacks at the foot of the wharf, she noticed that the Quahog’s transom had been freshly painted; the brass letters had been removed and replaced with the name Amos Coombs.

  PART THREE

  The Battle of the Atlantic

  “But remember this. You’ll find it hard to perform your duty unless you risk your ship. There’s folly and there’s foolhardiness on one side, and there’s daring and calculation on the other. Make the right choice.”

  —Admiral Cornwallis to

  Commander Hornblower,

  HORNBLOWER AND THE HOTSPUR, C. S. Forester

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  U235 WAS OPERATING ON THE CONVOY ROUTE BETWEEN HALIFAX and St. John’s, patrolling slowly, running on one diesel engine at a time to conserve fuel. So far this had been Captain Reis-ing’s most disappointing patrol. The radio reports he had monitored from other U-boat captains boasted of the greatest successes anyone had yet heard of, but after four weeks out, U235 had fired only four of her torpedoes and sunk only three freighters for a total of 15,100 tons. Six months ago, three sinkings would have been remarkable, but now it was commonplace. Though he was determined to continue patrolling while he still had a little fuel left, Reising was worried about his crew: a fight had broken out in the torpedo room, half of them were wrenched with diarrhea, and even the-old timers were surly and grumbling. He hoped for one sighting, one radio report from another U-boat of a convoy, one stroke of good luck to send him back to Lorient with respectable tonnage. He would never match Prien and Kretchmer at this pace; he would never even make 100,000 tons.

  His officers collected every ounce of data and argued over their conclusions twice before they agreed that the boat could stay on patrol until 0700 hours the next day. At that time, all things taken into account, they would have to begin the return trip across the Atlantic. With the fuel they had left, they could travel on the surface with both diesels and make a relatively quick crossing. Even Obersteuerman Achen, who lived for the hunt, had turned his fierce eyes homeward. For two weeks, what food they had left had been running out, one commodity at a time; the loaves of black bread still strung in hammocks had turned so hoary with mold that the crew called them white rabbits. The men were lucky to have a thin soup that tasted of diesel fuel; they had long ago eaten the last of the canned meat. They smothered everything they ate with strawberry preserves, trying to kill the taste of diesel and decay.

  When word got around among the crew that they would be sailing home in the morning, the men began to smile for the first time in a week. Praeger resurrected his accordion. In the crew’s quarters, blond, wavy-haired Mardsden, who still had not managed to grow a beard, began cutting white pennants from his bedding. Kung and Siegemann, both naked but for a pair of shorts and both covered with grease like painted Indians, rigged a table on top of the two forward torpedoes. They painted the tonnage of each of their three kills on the pennants: 7,000; 4,000; and 4,100. When they came into Lorient, they would be proud to fly the pennants from the conning-tower cable. It might not be a record, or win the Knight’s Cross for the captain, but it was a successful patrol, and they had contributed that many more tons to the Third Reich’s goal of wringing England’s neck.

  That night, when things had settled back into routine, Liebe, the radioman, found Captain Reising asleep in the control room. He shook his superior’s shoulder gently and handed him the message he had just decoded. U235 was to break off its patrol immediately and proceed to grid square BC43, ninety-five miles east of the Newfoundland coast, there to rendezvous with U413, a mil
ch cow, for refueling and further orders. Captain Reising rubbed his face, adjusted his white cap, and told the radioman to send his watch officers to him straightaway.

  Huddled over the chart table in'the control room, he and his officers plotted their course in silence, each shutting down any hopes he may have had for going home.

  “Now we’ll have another chance,” Reising said. “And we’ll make the best of it. Our orders say only fuel; they don’t mention food or fresh water, so we must warn the men not to get their hopes up in that regard. Be firm with those who were most eager to return, especially the enlisted men. Tell them we’ll have more pennants to fly before we’re done.”

  In the designated grid square, where the cold Labrador current met the warmer Gulf Stream, the sea was riled but the air was warm for the North Atlantic. Banks of fog slid across the horizon. On the pitching bridge, Reising, Wiltzius, and two warrant officers scanned the sea for sight of the milch cow. Reising directed the steersman below him, visible through the hatch at his feet, maintaining a zigzagging search pattern, waiting impatiently for the supply boat to make radio contact or show himself.

  Wiltzius sighted the milch cow as she surfaced less than a mile away, her bridge outlined against a distant white bank of fog.

  “There, captain,” he said. “There at twenty degrees. It’s one of ours, clearly a Type IX; he must be our man.” Wiltzius had grown a thin red beard on the voyage.

  Though she measured over two hundred feet long and displaced almost eight hundred tons, U235 seemed diminished as she moved parallel to the milch cow, like one of the canoe boats they had seen in the Kiel harbor. The two submarines came together in a splashing dance, bowing and curtseying to one another as the captains and officers exchanged shouted greetings from the conning towers, twenty yards apart. The crews, awash on the narrow decks, struggled to secure the refueling lines and crossing cables, while the watchmen scanned the sky and horizon.

  The crew on the bridge of U235 nudged one another as the captain of the milch cow descended the ladder from his bridge and—with the help of two crewmen on lifelines—buckled himself into the bosun’s chair and gave the signal to be hauled across. When the first wave broke over him, he brayed like a steer and clamped his hat down. Reising called below for dry towels and reached out to hand the captain up onto his bridge. When he’d dried himself above the shoulders and replaced his cap, the round-faced commander of the milch cow shook himself, laughed, and did a little marching dance in his full boots. His roseate nose was of the variety that Wiltzius’s father called the Grog Blossom. He shook hands with Reising and his officers, introducing himself as Captain Kung. Wiltzius had met the man in a club in Lorient one drunken night—how could he forget that chafing laugh?—but he didn’t remember the circumstances and thought it clear that the captain didn’t remember meeting him.

  “God, what a stench!” Captain Kung laughed nervously, waving an arm back and forth over the open hatch. “How long have you been out, captain?”

  “Not long enough, thank you,” said Reising. “And you, sir, smell of tobacco; I believe I smelled it even as you were bathing just now. I think I smelled sausage, too, and fresh bread.”

  Captain Kung laughed again. He drew a waterproof envelope from inside his soggy coat and from it offered a pack of cigarettes. Reising thanked him and took one.

  “No,” Kung said. “Keep them. 1 can send a few extra over with your package. I wish I could do more. My orders are to refuel you and make the delivery—expeditiously. No mention was made of food. Are your supplies very low?”

  “Quite low,” Reising said.

  Captain Kung laughed. “You’re not a man to beg. Nor am I one to be stingy.” He cupped his hands and leaned toward his own boat. “Mierke!” he shouted. “Mierke! See to it that these men get all the food we can spare—and fresh water. There are hungry, filthy sailors over here; do what you can.”

  “Thank you,” said Reising.

  “Thank you, sir,” Wiltzius said.

  “But what is this delivery, this package, if not orders?” Reising asked. “I assumed you came across to deliver orders.”

  “Your package is a man, I’m afraid, and he’s carrying your orders,” said Kung.

  “I don’t have room for another man. Who the hell is he?”

  “He’s a pain in the neck, and I’m glad to be rid of him,” Kung said, laughing. “He’s a Nazi, a spy or saboteur is our guess, so you probably won’t have him long. For your sake I hope you get rid of him soon. He takes notes. He sniffs around looking for mistakes or incompetence, and makes notes in a little book. He tries to be chums with the enlisted men and feeds their discontent. I recommend that you keep him in your cabin, if he’ll agree.”

  “Agree?” Reising was wide-eyed. “Who the hell does he think he is?”

  “If you’re not a Nazi, be careful what you say around him. I’m afraid he heard me say things that could hurt me, and he wrote them down before I realized what he was doing, what he is.” Kung laughed again. “But we’ve decided that he’ll be caught and shot wherever it is he’s going. Merten thinks he will salute a nun or a firefighter; he’s not too subtle.”

  “I’ll be careful,” said Reising.

  “Here comes a load that looks to be food,” Kung said. “I’ll go back on this pass and send him over on the next. We’re sitting ducks out here. I’m off to the south, and I wish you good hunting.”

  He shook their hands, Wiltzius’s last. “And luck to you, too, Ensign Wiltzius. Perhaps we’ll meet again over a drink in Lori-ent. This time it will be my turn to buy.”

  That evening they ate boiled meat and potatoes, with fresh turnips. Some of the crew had as many as three helpings of buttered beans. Within an hour there was a scuffle between two torpedomen waiting to get into the head.

  “I’ll shit myself if I don’t go in next. I will!”

  “Good, then shit yourself. You couldn’t stink any worse than you do now.”

  The cook served Captain Reising, Wiltzius, and the new man in the captain’s cabin. Wiltzius was careful to eat slowly, relishing the taste of the meat, the firm texture of the sharp turnips. He held his face low over his plate, as low as politely possible, to smell only the food and nothing else. He tried to imagine his mother’s kitchen but could not. The new man declined food with a rude noise and waved the cook away as he would a fly, saying he wasn’t hungry. Wiltzius suspected that the stench of the boat had taken away his appetite, and the thought gave him some pleasure. The man’s German was perfect; he was a native speaker, probably from Berlin. Wiltzius wondered if his English could be as good.

  “Wilhelm Shaeffer,” Captain Reising chewed appreciatively while he read from the papers before him. The saboteur rose and closed the cabin curtain. Reising read to himself: he would not be joining a Wolf Pack, would not even go hunting. Instead he was to taxi an American Nazi to some rendezvous on the coast between two islands, and these orders were subject to revision at any time.

  “Gridsquare BA 95,” he read aloud. Wiltzius pointed to the sector on the chart with his fork, and Reising leaned over to see in the dull light. Then he continued reading. “There to meet with a vessel whose identity is to be verified by the bearer of these orders. What the hell?” Reising lifted his plate to rotate the chart on the table. “Do we have a class C chart of this area?”

  “I don’t think so,” Wiltzius said. “If we do it is—”

  “I have the chart,” said Shaeffer, unfolding it. “Tomorrow night we’re to meet with my contact here,” he pointed. “He will signal us with a light—on for four seconds, off for four seconds, three repetitions.”

  “What kind of vessel? Are we to transfer you? We can’t stay long so close to shore, to this lighthouse.”

  “I’m sorry,” Shaeffer said, easing back his little shoulders. He looked at Reising and Wiltzius, superior to both of them in his access to information, his devotion to his Fuerher, his indifference to fear. “I am not authorized to provide any more details
until we reach our destination. Where will you have me sleep, Captain?”

  “Here,” said Reising. “My cabin is yours. We’ll be busy in the control room.”

  “I can’t take your cabin.”

  “Please,” said Reising, collecting his chart and plate as Wiltzius ducked through the curtain. “I would be honored.”

  • • •

  September 22, 1942

  Dear Ruth,

  If I wax incoherent here, it’s not because I’ve been imbibing (I’m at my school desk listening to the children beating erasers). It’s because of two nearly sleepless nights and a rush of events that makes everything seem sped up, as in an old cinematograph. As a matter of fact, the Keystone Kops is an apt allusion for describing our bustling island these days. I hate noise and confusion, as you know, and especially wasted effort. If this island were my schoolroom (and it is, in a way, as I’ve taught half the inhabitants) I’d have everyone sitting quietly at his desk minding his own business. The knuckles I would rap!

  No, I don’t see Leah much, now that school has started. But I can tell you that she’s much improved. I think Cecil has stopped hectoring her, at least for the time being. She’ll be relieved—as will I—when Gus goes to school in Jonesport, where he won’t be out on the water.

  Did the Bangor paper mention the two trawlers that were sunk by U-boats and whose survivors came ashore here? Probably not, as it was only a tiny incident in this huge war and meant little or nothing to those ashore. But to our fishermen and their wives—indeed, to all of us out here, surrounded by the sea—it was as momentous an event as a bombing raid or amphibious invasion. They are after us. We feel so helpless, so vulnerable. We are tempted to hide, to pretend that nothing is happening, to pray for salvation. But I fear we must fight back, however futilely.

  Do I tell you often enough how much I love your letters? I take them home to read, so that I can have you all to myself. I loved your description of you and Jack at Michael’s school play—the awful music, and the tear of pride on Jack’s cheek.