Geoffrey Jenkins - A bridge of Magpies

The manoeuvre-a keel-shaking jolt which had the two boats weaving like drunks while they shaved past the outliers of Penguins Turning-brought the wind fine on the port quarter. It also put us heading deed-on into the current. This race created a whirlpool in the lee (or landward side) of Penguins Turning that didn't help our sea-keeping problems. We inched onwards, a dreary yard-by-yard slog.

Visibility was no more than a couple of hundred yards. But that was good for morale, because though we could hear, we couldn't see the crash of the seas on every hand. Albatross Rock finally heaved in sight.

I said, 'I understand now what the pig-boat saying means – " by guess and by God"!

'U-160 can only come this way.' Kaptein Denny was very tense.

'So can Sang A.' Jutta voiced the doubt which had been nagging at the back of my mind all the time.

'Leave it alone!' snapped Denny. 'Leave it alone, Miss Jutta, I say!'

I speculated what his reaction would be if I asked what he intended to do if Sang A surprised us working on U-160, with both cutters immobilized. I only hoped Emmermann was an ardent reader of the Africa Pilot. At best Kaptein Denny couldn't count on more than a few hours in which to slice open a hull specially toughened to withstand four hundred feet of water pressure and the explosion of enough 191 amatol in depth charges to blow the bottom out of the attacker's own hull if you didn't get clear quick enough after dropping them. How deep the U-boat would lie depended on the density of the water in the upwell cell. Only the tip of the conning-tower might emerge if its density was weak. That, only God and U-160 knew. Also, once the radar-blinding screen of sand fell -as as if must do with the decline of the gale-we'd be a sitting duck for Sang A's search scanner. Silence fell again.

We cased the ocean for U-160.

Finally Kaptein Denny brought both cutters to anchor. It was a back-breaking, muscle-fagging business and the spot he chose could have been anywhere except that there was a triangular blur to seaward which he said was Albatross Rock. His hard-line approach was an effective questionstopper. All that lead-footed afternoon the gale roared over us like a dirty snowstorm.

All that afternoon the desert fall-out swamped the ships. All that afternoon Kaptein Denny stood-short and brown and frozen-faced, alone with his thoughts-watching the foamlashed sea. Sunsets on the Sperrgebiet are usually spectacular affairs because of the dust in the air, but ours didn't stand a chance of penetrating the dark clouds rolling out to sea from the desert. The sun went down in a faint bleary blur and the gale thundered on hot and dirtily. The fog, too, was heavier and earlier than usual because of the hot-cold clash of the air and sea. It became a profitless business continuing the look-out for U-160. We couldn't have sighted her unless and until she was right under our noses.

Kaptein Denny's silence and tension were catching and Jutta and I were infected. We went below and I occupied myself with stripping and cleaning the sub-machine-gun. J also greased and checked some running gear that I thought might be useful when-and if – U-160 showed up. I also tested Denny's blow-pipe cutter which he'd brought for the U-boat's hatch.

Rata and I had a snack supper below. I was pouring myself a brandy to anchor it when Jutta said suddenly.

'If he's mad, and the U-boat doesn't come-what's he going to do to us?'

J nodded towards the sub-machine-gun I'd put handy on a locker.

'That gun's living with me from now on. Closer than my shirt.'

She went on speculatively, 'It all sounds so normal when he explains it and then when you're alone and come to think about it.. . it's quite some title: Master of the Equinoxes, Lord of the Solstice.'

'It rings, all right!

'So do delusions of grandeur! Then she came to me. 'I'm afraid, Struan, afraid for us. Deep down I'm ful! of doubts.'

I kissed her but her nerves and muscles were as taut as Gaok's rigging in the gaJe.

The waiting's sending me crazy.'

J hitched up the automatic. 'Let's got up on deck!

I held her and blew out the lamp. The cabin didn't go dark. Jt was lighted silver-faintly, uncannily-from outside and Jutta's face was that spectral colour I'd seen in the channel.

She put her face against mine. `J'd think it was part of the nightmare if I didn't know the real cause.'

We went on deck. The night had a parched and eerie splendour. The sea's shimmering fire threw up a backwash of luminosity against the overhead sand curtain and made little mobile footlights to light the cutters' hulls. Albatross Rock stood out more dearly than before as each wave that broke drenched it in liquid fire. On the bridge above us Kaptein Denny's statue-still figure and stubby head resembled a silver totem pole.

I was fiddling to get the automatic comfortable and hold Jutta at the same time, so my eyes weren't on the sea.

`Look!' Jutta's intake of breath matched the wind speed. Jf it had been moving I would have said it was a torpedo whose buoyant flask was leaking air. A silver stream cascaded to the surface from under the water like a scuba swimmer coasting along blowing bubbles.

An upheaval of disturbed incandescence followed. It resolved itself into the outline of a ship.

'Jesus!'

Like a ghost in the grip of some primordial time machine, U-160 rose up out of the sea.

Trip that brake pawl! Let fly the anchor! Get rid of it man, get rid of it!'

I couldn't make out Denny's face in the dark of the wheelhouse above, but I could feel his scowl.

'Now! Now! Now!'

We'd teamed the two cutters together beforehand for a snap start but we didn't anticipate that the starting chocks would have to be whipped away like this. Slipping cables is tearaway tactics. We had both boats' anchors out, from Gaok in the lead and Ichabo, streamed astern on a light hawser. You don't expect in this time and age that a U-boat will surface only a few cables' lengths away and bear down as if it meant business.

Kaptein Denny came racing down the bridge ladder. '

She'll foul Ichabo.

There was no sign in his face that he'd registered what I was saying.

'Cut her loose!' he roared. 'Cut her loose!'

He went on past me to the engine-room. I smacked the pawl free. The rattle of cables going override cut through the night like a small-arms fusillade. It was nothing, though, compared with the bark of the diesel starting up. Hushkits are for jets but I'd have given a thousand pounds at that moment for a special model for fishing cutters. It sounded as if it could be heard aJl the way to Possession.

'You know the plan-move, man-move!'

Kaptein Denny was on his way back to the wheel. In a moment I felt Gaok's screw bite and hold her against the current.

'She's-beautiful!' In the hurry I'd forgotten Jutta. The unreal light from the luminescent fire showed the deadly, low-silhouette, black shape frozen in her last agony. Marine growths were strung from hat jumping-wire-the thick cable designed to slice through undersea objects like mine moorings =which which runs from bow to stern via the conning-tower. The water sparkled as it fell back into the sea. 194

There were rough lumps of barnacles everywhere. The casing was barely awash. Something-round like a buoy-hung from the jumping-wire immediately for'ard of the bridge.

'Maybe she is beautiful-' I answered. It wasn't time to gawp. 'But what we have to give that hulk now is the kiss of life-or whatever you do for drowned subs.'

'Come on! This is the time! Go! Get going!' Kaptein Denny shouted again.

I got into position to cast Ichabo loose. Denny allowed Gaok to fall back to meet her so that J could jump before the current carried her away. Whatever the sight of U-160 had done to him it hadn't affected his seamanship.