Submariner (2008) (36 page)

‘Forty feet, sir.’

Hydroplanes tilting to put down-angle on her. Swathely on after ’planes, Walburton on the for’ard ones, Knox on asdics raising
a finger suddenly – ‘Comin’ over, sir.’ Audible then to everyone within about a minute – screws not exactly ‘coming over’, more
like belting across perhaps a cable’s length astern, the note rising towards a scream then peaking and the volume too beginning
at once to fade. Swathely growling to himself, ‘Easy come, easy go.’

‘Depth forty feet, sir.’

A matter of killing time and keeping track now – several hours of both, to culminate in
Ursa
surfacing in about four hours’ time ten miles southeast of Cape Scalambri. That was if he followed the orders which he himself
had originated but which had subsequently been revised by Broadbent the SOO at Shrimp’s behest, had left one now with
too much
time to kill. He asked Knox, ‘Hearing them still?’

‘Faint, sir. On one hundred, one-oh-three –’

‘All right.’ He told McLeod to bring her back up to
thirty feet; then gestured for the big periscope again, swept sky and horizon before taking bearings of the Scalambri light-tower, right-hand
edge of Cape Passero and smoke rising from Pozzallo. He sent the ’scope down, and the fix when charted was good enough to
believe in, only three-quarters of a mile from the DR. So – work on this … Aligning the parallel rule between this position
to the one ten miles southeast of Scalambri, which he’d marked on earlier in the day, he found the course to it would be 348
degrees, distance 3.9 miles, which at the current rate of progress – one knot – would take as near as dammit four hours. Might
have been pretty good if the light could have been expected to last that long – which of course it couldn’t.

‘Bring her to three-four-eight, Number One.’

‘Three-four-eight, sir.’ To Smithers, helmsman: ‘Starboard ten.’

‘Starboard ten, sir.’ Brass spokes flashing. Smithers of course chewing gum. ‘Ten o’ starboard wheel on, sir.’

‘See here, Jamie.’Touching the chart. ‘Position now. Won’t get a new fix for another couple of hours – at the outside – so
–’

McLeod cut in hurriedly to Smithers: ‘Midships, and steer three-four-eight. Sorry, sir –’

‘Need to float ’em off at or by 2200. And calling the safe limit for fixes – well, hour and a half, say – seven o’clock’d
be the time to get here –
here
– and bottom. Otherwise could end up flying blind. Come up to slow on both motors now.’

They were in position, or within a few yards of it, by 1900. The failing light had only permitted a fix, using two of those
points of reference, shortly after Jarvis had taken over the watch at 1815, hadn’t been good enough for any of those rather
long-distance bearings twenty minutes later; Mike had allowed her to run on until just before the hour, when the log showed
she’d covered the required distance, then sent the crew to diving
stations and stopped one motor, used the other only in short bursts while settling her on the bottom in what he’d expected
to be about ninety feet but turned out to be a hundred and fourteen. Having bottomed, he anchored her to the sand by flooding
‘Q’.

Seven-twenty now. As good a time as any for supper. He asked McLeod, ‘Which watch was it?’

‘White, sir.’

‘White … Well, hang on. Major Ormrod, spare me a minute?’

Ormrod came from the wardroom: ‘Stuck in the mud, are we?’

‘Sand bottom, hereabouts. If supper can be laid on for about eight, Major, how’d that be for your crowd?’

‘Excuse me, sir.’ At diving stations as they were now, Cottenham the cook was Spare Hand in the control room and currently
stationed on motor-room telegraphs. Mike looked at him, and he said, ‘Beg pardon, sir, but if you wanted I could dish up in
ten minutes.’

‘Could you, indeed.’ Back to Ormrod. ‘Same question, but –’

‘Gear’s on the top line, ditto canoes. A bit of personal tarting-up’s about all they’d need – face-blacking, so forth. In
fact if you wanted to get rid of us sooner –’

‘Suit you, would it?’

‘Make it nine instead of ten if you like. From our point of view, yes, be just the job. For instance, an hour in hand for
getting the boats really well cached, find or build a good one. If it suits
you
, skipper –’

‘You’re on. Float-off at 2100. Supper at –’ a glance at the clock – ‘seven forty-five. Blue watch sooner if that’s possible,
Cottenham. What are you giving us that’s so quick?’

‘The rest o’ that tongue, sir, and spuds I boiled last night, need ten minutes to hot up like.’

McLeod had the Tannoy microphone in his hand, clicked it on. ‘White watch, watch diving. Blue watch to the galley in ten minutes,
diving stations at eight.’

After the meal Mike went for’ard with Ormrod to say goodbye to the troops and out of curiosity see their equipment. Four canoes
on the deck now, middled between the torpedo-reload racks and crammed with gear ranging from paddles and bailers to tommy-guns,
food, drink, medical stores including Benzedrine, bombs of different kinds, grenades, fighting-knives with nine-inch blades,
entrenching tools, hand-guns according to individual choice – Ormrod’s choice for instance being a long-barrelled, silenced
.22 pistol.

Mike asked him, ‘What, no cheese-wire?’, and he nodded towards Colour-Sergeant Gant: ‘
His
speciality.’ A shrug: ‘Funny, everyone asks about cheese-wire.’

‘A leatherneck speciality, might say?’

Gant smiled politely. Leatherneck being slang for a Royal Marine, and cheese-wire in this context coming in a noose with wooden
handles that was primarily for silent assaults on sentries. Used skilfully, it amounted to beheading. Gant had a pleasant
smile, and looked young for his rank. Shrugging: ‘Bit of a knack to it, sir, really.’

Ormrod agreed: ‘Certainly is.’ He was buckling a waterproof luminous compass to his left forearm. He hadn’t blackened his face
yet or donned the dark-wool hat he’d shown them earlier, remarking ‘Absolute
must
for Ascot, this.’ They were dressed as they pleased,looking mostly like farm workers or mechanics, nothing like members of
any armed force. Mike shook hands with them all and wished them luck, told them he’d see them on Tuesday; and they were joined
at about this stage by the TI, Coltart, who’d be running things in this compartment when it came to removing the strong-back
from the hatch then getting it open and the boats out – up the ladder and
out on to the casing, where Jarvis with Tubby Hart and a few others would be waiting to assist as necessary.

‘All right, TI?’

A grin, and a mocking look at Gant: ‘
I’m
all right, sir …’

Ormrod muttered as they went for’ard, ‘Good fellow, that.’

‘Torpedo Gunner’s Mate, CPO. He was a boxer – fought for the Navy’s Portsmouth Division a year or two pre-war. More importantly,
knows what he’s doing and keeps on doing it.’

Ormrod had stopped, in the gangway opposite the POs’ and Leading Seamen’s mess, where for the moment they were on their own.
Speaking quietly – on the seabed with no machinery running it was
extremely
quiet – ‘One thing, skipper …’

‘Uh?’

‘If when you’re home you happen to run into that girl – as you might, uh?’

‘Not impossible, I suppose. Not likely either, but –’

‘Give her my love?’

‘Well …’

‘Just that, nothing else.’ He started forward again – between the galley and the heads now,still no one noticeably in earshot
– only Cottenham the master chef whistling between his teeth while dishing up, potatoes steaming in pans … Ormrod continuing,
‘
Should
you happen to run into her, Mike –’

‘I’d give her your love – in the unlikely event, et cetera – but no passing of messages either way.’

‘No, wouldn’t ask you to. How did you happen to meet her, though? I wouldn’t have thought you and Melhuish were the closest
of chums?’

‘I met them both in London at another submariner’s wedding, as it happens. But now listen – I wish you all the luck that’s
going.’ He put his hand out. ‘We’ll be saying prayers. Just bloody well
be
here on Tuesday – uh?’

* * *

She’d lifted off the sand a few minutes before nine p.m. and McLeod stopped her with fifty feet on the gauges while Harris
the HSD listened-out carefully all round and confirmed no HE, no foreign body hanging around to make a nuisance of itself.
Before they’d blown ‘Q’ and then some main ballast he’d reported he wasn’t getting anything, but on the bottom she’d been
lying with her snout in sand and weed, and the asdic dome was in her forefoot, the leading edge of her keel; he’d had to make
sure of it. He told McLeod now, ‘Surface!’, waited for Walburton to open the lower lid for him, climbed into the tower.

McLeod’s reports from below him, then: ‘Twenty feet – fifteen’: he had the first clip off the upper lid at the count of twelve,
and the second at ten, the signalman’s weight latched on to him and holding him down by the final shout of ‘Eight!’, and with
the aid of the internal pressure had the hatch open and slamming back, himself up and out, arriving solidly in the front of
the bridge: voice-pipe open, and yelling into it ‘Group up, half ahead, steer north’, then ‘Up casing party and folboats.’
Ursa
pitching a bit as well as rolling, in the white pool of her emergence, but the canoeists were ready for that, twenty-four
hours ago had been expecting worse. He was sweeping all round with binoculars – Walburton too, and stars well in evidence,
which would help the casing party as well as canoeists – casing party now in the still streaming bridge behind him, Jarvis
asking ‘Go on down, sir?’

‘Yes, please.’ Jarvis, Hart, Brooks and Barnaby, over the starboard side there, down the outside of the tower, necessarily
quick and sure-footed in not
quite
total darkness getting around it and for’ard past the gun, piling into the break in the casing that gave access to the hatch;
Jarvis’s rap on it with a wheel-spanner would have told the torpedomen and troops inside that they and the boats were awaited
topsides.

‘Hatch is open, sir!’

Walburton, sounding surprised. Well, it
had
been quick, well synchronised. Mike too had caught the splash of yellow light,and now a radiance partially obstructed by
bodies getting the canoes and in eight cases themselves out on to what was effectively a mobile steel platform with free-flood
holes in it, holes that would be serving as hand-holds as well as securing-points for ropes’ ends that would really come into
their own when the folboats were in position and manned. In a few seconds, that should be: one pair of them well forward of
the hatch,between the hydroplane guards – invaluable at this juncture – and the other pair abaft them, less easy to hold in
place – and movement around the hatch again – two of the casing party having slid into it, leaving only Jarvis and Hart
out
side, slamming it shut, extinguishing the yellow glow, a howl from Jarvis of ‘Fore-hatch shut!’, the pair of them then pounding
aft. Mike told Walburton, ‘Down you go’, and called into the pipe, ‘Stop both motors.’

‘Stop both, sir. Both motors stopped.’ Jarvis and Hart were back in the bridge, panting like dogs. ‘Fore-hatch shut, sir,
canoes ready to float off.’

‘Well done. Go on down.’ Into the pipe again then, ‘Open number two inboard vent.’

Main ballast tanks other than numbers one and six didn’t have outboard vents, you could
only
vent them inboard. With this conning-tower hatch open you weren’t building up any internal pressure, and you could stop the
venting and flooding process as you wanted – flooding number two now sufficiently to weigh her forepart down, drowning the
fore casing and allowing the boats to float off. Calling down ‘Shut number two main vent’ and watching them drift away, until
they were well enough clear of one another to use their paddles.

Tuesday now, Dog plus 2 as it had been, time 0120, McLeod in the course of being relieved as OOW by Jarvis, Mike down for
a break after spending recent hours up top. Crucial stage approaching,
Ursa
on her way inshore to make the 0300–0400 rendezvous. Please God. She was banging around a bit, wind north-by-west, on the
bow and making it damp on the bridge; he was hoping there’d be some degree of shelter further in, enabling one to embark the
men at least, though probably not the boats.
If
the men had made it to this point: the double uncertainty was what was making one bloody sweat. He’d been on the bridge most
of the time since they’d surfaced, would be up there again before much longer, was meanwhile taking this break at the wardroom
table with a mug of kye that had been organised for him by the PO Stoker, ‘Caruso’ Franklyn, who for some reason was standing
in for Hec Bull as PO of this watch.

McLeod came down: pausing in the control room to accept an offer of kye from Franklyn, who sent Newcomb to the galley for
it. Mike heard McLeod agreeing with something Franklyn had said: McLeod’s response being ‘Yes, Spo.
Bloody hell, yes.’ Responding to something like ‘Hope to God the poor sods’ve made it, sir’, no doubt. The same hope or fear
having been expressed at least a hundred times a day since the float-off. McLeod came on through then, shedding a wet Ursula
suit and looking for a cigarette, remarking as he accepted one of Mike’s, ‘Been a hell of a long three days, sir.’

‘Tiring, rather.’ He yawned. ‘Anxiety neurosis, could be.’

Actually three and a bit days, not three, since he’d watched the canoeists with their circling paddles getting clear of
Ursa
, then turned her seaward and restored her to a normal trim while putting another mile between her and the beach – on her
motors still, to keep her departure as quiet as her arrival had been. He’d had to wait longer than he’d expected for the blue-flash
signal confirming they were ashore, but it came all right; he’d started the generators and altered to southeast, with Cape
Passero thirty on the bow and revs to push her along at five knots as well as bring the box up.