The Cruel Sea (1951) (38 page)

‘Any signs of submarines, sir?’ asked Gracey after a pause. He was a Lancashire man: he pronounced the hated word as ‘soob-marines’, giving it a humorous air which robbed it of its sting. Said like that, it was hardly a submarine at all, just something out of a music hall, no more lethal than a mother-in-law or a dish of tripe. How nice, thought Morell, if that were true.

‘Nothing so far,’ he answered. ‘The convoy seems to be quite happy, too. But I don’t think we want to hang about here too long.’

Watts nodded. ‘Seems like we’re sitting up and asking for it,’ he said grimly. ‘If they don’t get us now, they never will.’

‘How much longer, Chief?’

‘Couple of hours, maybe.’

‘Longest job we’ve ever had,’ said Gracey. ‘You’d think it was a bloody battlewagon.’

‘Me for barracks, when we get in,’ said Broughton. ‘I’d rather run the boiler house at Chatham than this lot.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’ said Spurway, the smallest and usually the drunkest stoker. ‘
I’d
rather clean out the dockside heads, any day of the week.’

Morell suddenly realised how intensely nervous they had all become, how far they had been driven beyond the normal margins of behaviour. He said: ‘Good luck with it,’ and started up the ladder again. At the top, the stars greeted him, and then the black water. A small chill wind was stirring, sending quick ripples slapping against their side. Alone in the dark night,
Compass Rose
lay still, waiting.

In the cold hour that stretched between two and three a.m., with the moon clouded and the water black and fathomless as sable, a step on the bridge ladder. But now it was a different sort of step: cheerful, quick-mounting, no longer stealthy. It was Chief E.R.A. Watts.

‘Captain, sir!’ he called to the vague figure hunched over the front of the bridge.

Ericson, stiff and cold with his long vigil, turned awkwardly towards him. ‘Yes, Chief?’

‘Ready to move, sir.’

So that was that, thought Ericson, standing up and stretching gratefully: they could get going, they could leave at last this hated corner, they could make their escape. The relief was enormous, flooding in till it seemed to reach every part of his body: he felt like shouting his congratulation, seizing Watts’ hand and shaking it, giving way to his light-headed happiness. But all he said was: ‘Thank you, Chief. Very well done.’ And then, to the voice-pipe: ‘Wheelhouse!’

‘Wheelhouse, bridge, sir!’ came the quartermaster’s voice, startled from some dream of home.

‘Ring “Stand by, main engines”.’

Very soon they were off: steaming swiftly northward, chasing the convoy: the revolutions mounted, the whole ship grew warm and alive and full of hope again. There was no need to look back: they had, by all the luck in the world, left nothing of themselves behind and given nothing to the enemy.

At about six o’clock, with the first dawn lightening the sky to the eastwards, they ‘got’ the convoy on the very edge of the radar screen. Lockhart, who was Officer-of-the-Watch, looked at the blurred echo appreciatively: it was still many miles ahead, and they would not be in direct touch till mid-morning, but it put them on the map again – they were no longer alone on the waste of water that might have been their grave. He woke the Captain to tell him the news, as he had been ordered to: it seemed a shame to break into his sleep with so straightforward an item, which might well have been kept till later in the morning, but the orders had been explicit – and probably Ericson would sleep the easier for hearing that they were in touch again. Indeed, the sleepy grunt which came up the voice-pipe in answer to Lockhart’s information seemed to indicate that Ericson had only just risen to the surface, like a trout to a fly, to take in the news, before diving down fathoms deep to the luxury of sleep once more. Lockhart smiled as he snapped the voice-pipe cover shut again. After such a night, the Captain deserved his zizz.

The morning watch progressed; towards its ending at eight o’clock the light grew to the eastward, blanching the dark water: Tomlinson, the junior steward, foraging for the cups and sandwich plates of the night’s session, went soft-footed on the wet and dewy decks, like a new character in a suddenly cheerful third act. The engine revolutions were now set near their maximum:
Compass Rose’s
course was steady, aiming for the centre of the convoy ahead: Lockhart had nothing to do but stamp warmth into his feet and keep an appraising eye on the radar screen as the range closed and the pattern of ships hardened and took shape. It was good to see that compact blur of light, as welcome and as familiar as the deck under his seaboots, gaining strength and edging nearer to them: they had been away from it too long, they wanted, above all, an end to their loneliness, and here it was at last, tangible and expectant, like a family waiting to greet them at the finish of a journey . . . His thoughts wandered: he responded automatically as the quartermaster and the lookouts changed for the final half-hour of the watch:
Compass Rose,
breasting the long Atlantic swell and shifting gently under his feet, might have been a train rocking over the last set of points as it ran into Euston station. At the end of the platform there would be— he jerked to attention suddenly as the bell rang from the radar compartment.

‘Radar – bridge!’

Lockhart bent to the voice-pipe. ‘Bridge.’

The voice of the radar operator, level, rather tired, not excited, came up to him. ‘I’m getting a small echo astern of the convoy, sir. Can you see it on the repeater?’

Lockhart looked at the radar screen beside the voice-pipe, a replica of the one in the operator’s compartment, and nodded to himself. It was true. Between the convoy and themselves there was now a single small echo, flickering and fading on the screen like a candle guttering in a gentle draught. He watched it for half a minute before speaking. It was never more than a luminous pinpoint of light, but it always came up, it was persistently
there
all the time: it was a contact, and it had to be accounted for. He bent to the voice-pipe again.

‘Yes, I’ve got it . . . What do you make of it?’ Then, before the man could answer, he asked: ‘Who’s that on the set?’

‘Sellars, sir.’

Sellars, thought Lockhart: their Leading-Radar Mechanic, a reliable operator, a man worth asking questions . . . He said again: ‘What do you make of it?’

‘Hard to tell, sir,’ answered Sellars. ‘It’s small, but it’s there all the time, keeping pace with the convoy.’

‘Could it be a back echo off the ships?’

‘I don’t think so, sir.’ Sellars’ voice was dubious. ‘The angle’s wrong, for a start.’

‘Well, a straggler, then?’

‘It’s a bit small for a ship, sir . . . Do you see the ship right out to starboard – probably one of the escorts? That one’s a lot bigger.’

Lockhart stared at the radar screen. That, again, was quite true. On the edge of the convoy pattern, away to starboard, was a single detached echo which was probably a corvette; and it was appreciably bigger than the speck of light which they were querying. He found himself hesitating, on the verge of reporting the strange echo to the Captain, and yet not wanting to wake him up from his deserved sleep without good reason. It could be one of many things, all of them harmless: it could be a fault in the set, which was not yet clear of its teething troubles; it could be a straggler from the convoy (though its size was against it): it could conceivably be a rainstorm. Or it could – it
could
– be something that they really wanted to see . . . After watching for a full two minutes, while the echo strengthened slightly, maintaining level pace with the convoy as before, he said to Sellars: ‘Keep your eye on it,’ and then, unwillingly, he crossed to the Captain’s voice-pipe and pressed the bell.

When he came up to the bridge, knuckling his eyes and rubbing his stiff face, Ericson was not in the best of tempers. He had had a bare four hours’ sleep, interrupted by the first convoy report; and to have it broken into again, just because (as he phrased it to himself) there was a bloody seagull perched on the radar aerial and the First Lieutenant hadn’t got the sense to shoo it away, did not seem to him the best way of greeting the happy dawn. He grunted as Lockhart pointed out the echo and explained how it had developed: then he looked up from the radar screen, and said briefly: ‘Probably a straggler.’

‘It’s a lot smaller than the other ships, sir,’ said Lockhart tentatively. He recognised the Captain’s right to be short-tempered at this godforsaken hour of the morning, but he had taken that into account when he woke him up, and he wanted to justify the alarm. He pointed to the screen. ‘That’s the stern escort, I should say. This thing is at least ten miles behind that.’

‘M’m,’ grunted Ericson again. Then: ‘Who’s the radar operator?’ he asked, following Lockhart’s own train of thought.

‘Sellars, sir.’

Ericson bent to the voice-pipe, and cleared his throat with a growl. ‘Radar!’

‘Radar – bridge!’ answered Sellars.

‘What about this echo?’

‘Still there, sir.’ He gave the range and the bearing. ‘That makes it about ten miles astern of the last ship of the convoy.’

‘Nothing wrong with the set, is there?’

‘No, sir,’ said Sellars, with the brisk air of a man who, at ten minutes to eight on a cold morning, was disinclined for this sort of slur, even coming from a bad-tempered Captain. ‘The set’s on the top line.’

‘Have you had an echo like this before?’

There was a pause below. Then: ‘Not exactly, sir. It’s about the size we’d get from a buoy or a small boat.’

‘A trawler? A drifter?’

‘Smaller than that, sir. Ship’s boat, more like.’

‘H’m . . .’ Ericson looked at the radar screen again, while Lockhart, watching him, smiled to himself. It was clear that his bad temper was fighting a losing battle with his acknowledgement of Sellars’ competence. Behind them, the rest of the bridge personnel, and Baker, who had just come up to take over the watch, were also eyeing the Captain speculatively, alert for any decision. But when it came, it was still a surprise.

‘Sound “Action Stations”,’ said Ericson, straightening up suddenly. And to the wheelhouse, in the same sharp voice: ‘Full ahead! Steer ten degrees to starboard.’

Lockhart opened his mouth to speak, and then snapped it shut again. Taken by surprise, he had been about to say something phenomenally silly, like: ‘Do you really think it’s a submarine, sir?’ The loud, endless shrilling of the alarm bells all over the ship, and the thud of heavy boots along the decks and up the ladder, gave the best answer of all to this foolish speculation . . . He stood by the battery of voice-pipes, conscious of more than the usual excitement as the various positions were reported to him, and he acknowledged the reports: the pattern and the sequence of this were yawningly familiar, it was all old stuff, they had been doing it, in fun or in earnest, for two whole years: but this time, this time it really might have some point to it . . .

One by one the voices pricked his eagerness.

Ferraby from aft: ‘Depth-charge crews closed up!’

Morell from the fo’c’sle: ‘Gun’s crew closed up!’

Baker from amidships: ‘Two-pounder gun closed up!’

Chief E.R.A. Watts from far below: ‘Action steaming stations!’

Tallow from the wheelhouse: ‘Coxswain on the wheel, sir!’

Lockhart gave a swift glance round him, and fore and aft, a final check for his own satisfaction. The bridge lookouts were at their places on the Hotchkiss guns: Leading-Signalman Wells was ready by the big signal lamp. Grouped round the four-inch gun just below the bridge, the steel-helmeted crew stood alert, with Morell staring ahead through his binoculars and then turning back to direct the loading: far aft, Ferraby was the centre of another group of men, clearing away the safety lashings from the depth-charges and preparing them for firing. Satisfied, Lockhart turned to the Captain, presenting the completed pattern for whatever use he chose to make of it.

‘Action Stations closed up, sir!’ he called out. Then he dropped back to his own charge, the asdic set: the killing instrument itself, if one were needed . . . Underneath them, as if conscious of her weight of tensed and ready men,
Compass Rose
began to tremble.

Ericson was watching the radar screen. His call for Action Stations had been not much more than an impulse: he could even admit that it might have been prompted by irritation, by the feeling that, if he himself had to be awake, then no one else on board was going to go on sleeping. But certainly they had picked up an odd-looking echo, one of the most promising so far: it was possible that this time they were really on to something, and in that case the full readiness of
Compass Rose
was a solid comfort. Momentarily he raised his binoculars, and peered ahead, but the morning mist lay all round the horizon and there was nothing to be seen. He looked down at the radar screen again, and then bent to the voice-pipe.

‘Report your target.’

Sellars gave the range and the bearing of the contact. Whatever it was, it was still moving at the slow convoy speed, and they were overhauling it rapidly.

‘It’s gaining strength a bit, sir,’ he concluded. ‘Same size, but a firmer echo. Must be something pretty solid.’