Geoffrey Jenkins - A bridge of Magpies

'Through yet?' I asked.

He cut the flame. His eyes had a curious expression as though only part of him were there at all.

The incision wasn't through; it hadn't begun. Four inches of toughened steel scarcely showed a mark.

I made a quick calculating survey. Not only was the hatch itself secure but the frame surrounding it was distorted and sealed by rust. I experienced some of the frustration he himself must have known the first time, when he'd boarded U-160 all those years before and realized there was nothing he could do to get inside her. The situation didn't seem to have changed much. I knew in my heart that it was a dockyard job, but I wouldn't admit we were licked.

Both Kaptein Denny and Jutta were regarding me as though I had a solution ready: I hadn't. Jutla's eyes were very big and there were dark circles under them. The furrows in Denny's face were deeper.

'We're wasting our time with that thing,' I said. 'We'll use up all our gas without making a hole big enough to get your finger into. What we reaJly need is an explosive bolt fired through the pressure hull at the end of an air line. Then the hull should be pumped full of compressed air to give it buoyancy. The next requirement is a couple of powerful derricks to get rid of the mine and torpedoes-plus a skilled demolition squad. After that, relays of men with special gear to slice her open.'

Kaptein Denny looked stockier and grimmer on hearing my evaluation of the situation. When he looked at me, some sort of change was in process behind his eyes. His voice held a threat.

'Is that what you suggest?'

'Give me a chance to think.'

'Think then, because I want you to understand one thing very plainly: U-160 is never going to fall into Sang A's hands.'

With or without U-160, we looked like being the losers. I wasn't going to say that to him, though. My mind fumbled with the problem. Explosives. Mine. Torpedoes. There was an embarrassment of riches in that direction. Embarrassing enough lo blow a hole in the sea-bed..

The word sea-bed sparked a solution. The idea tumbled out rough-cut and unformed, because I hadn't had time to think it out.

'I've got it-we'll blow her open. We'll use the salvage bomb I filched from Sang A to do it with?

'Excellent!' Denny replied. The strange unseeing look went. from his eyes. 'Excellent! That's it! That's what we'll do!

Where's the bomb?'

'Still in the dinghy.'

'Struan – listen I' exclaimed Jutta, who had flinched at my suggestion. 'It won't work! A small bomb like that won't accomplish what a salvo of depth charges failed to do!

That hatch is fast. If you use the bomb anywhere else on the hull shell come apart at the seams and go down like a stone.'

`Jutta's right-' said Kaptein Denny unexpectedly. 'That doesn't mean to say the idea's basically unsound.' He indicated the mine. 'That could go up in sympathy with the bomb if we detonated it on the conning-tower. The torpedoes, likewise.'

For the second time a word gave me the clue to a solution. This time it was torpedo.

'I see a way!' I said quickly. 'We'll draw that half-fired torpedo out of its tube -we we can manage it in shaJlower water with a dragline attached to one of the cutters! All that will then stand between us and the interior of the sub will be the torpedo-tube door. The salvage bomb will take care of that!'

And send her to the bottom in the process,' objected Jutta. '

It won't work…'

'It wi! l,' retorted Denny. 'We'll make it work. We'll beach her, that's what we'll do. Well put her ashore on her side at the Bridge of Magpies – it's the only place hereabouts. We'll dump the mine in the channel. We can do that once she's ashore by using Gaok's mainboom as a derrick…'

It sounded good to me-not to Jutta.

`You both talk as if you expect the night is never going to end!' she exclaimed. 'What about Sang A while you're busy beaching her and blowing her open? What about…?'

But Denny went on, as if he hadn't heard her, 'We've time! We'll tow her! We'll use the up-channel current in our favour!'

`How far is the Bridge of Magpies, do you reckon?' I asked.

Jutta stood back, resentful and mistrustful.

'Seven-eight miles,' he replied.

We've come less than two in the past three hours. We've got to do better than that.

We will. We must?

It was a desperate last-chance throw; and we both knew it. We both knew, too, that we were discounting the signs in the sea and the wind. The writing was on the wall that the salinity lift had dropped-and U-160's buoyancy with it: the casing aft the conning-tower, which had been a good foot above the water when we'd first come aboard, was now occasionally awash. For'ard, it was almost continuously so. Our race against the sea and Sang A was likely to turn out a very close-run thing.

'I'd like to have Julia with me in Ichabo now,' J said. '

Right,' he replied. 'We'll work up speed gradually. We can manage six knots if we try?

Maybe we could have done so if it hadn't been for that misfired torpedo, which we couldn't draw until the water shallowed. We safely crashed the two-and three-knot barrier on a north-easterly course towards the channel mouth and the Bridge of Magpies, when suddenly U-MO yawed, and wheeled at right angles. We fought her with both cutters' engines until we brought her to a halt. Lights. Engines. Shouts. Time. Time. Time.

Where was Sang A?

'She's sinking slowly by the head,' I called across to Kaptein Denny in Gaok, on the opposite side of the U-boat. 'We've got to do something to stabilize her and offset the torpedo's drag.'

When I looked at the sodden hulk I began to have secret doubts: the odds were mounting against us. The U-boat was riding-if her dead action could so be described-so low that most of the time now the deck was flooded. Attached to the dead-weight by the hawser cradle, the cutters, too, were beginning to wallow.

'No time I' answered Denny. 'It's still too deep here. Try again!'

We got going and worked up a little speed-crabbing through the water, then with a sudden swirl we swung broadside on and the U-boat and cutters became unmanageable again. It takes twenty minutes and two-and-a-half miles 209 for a supertanker to come to a halt. It didn't take us two-anda-half miles, but it did take twenty minutes. It also needed another ten to bring the U-boal on to a rough course again towards the Bridge of Magpies,

For the next few hours we threw the book at U-160- short and long bursts ahead and astern-jointly and independently, full and half rudder or simply no rudder at all. Nothing helped, really. We may have gained half-a-mile-a distance the current would have carried us, anyway. The only difference in the later stages was that the acute swinging gave way to a long sweeping eddy-like molion as we cavorted up the coast into the mouth of the channel at its southern entrance. Jutta stood with me in Ichabo's wheelhouse and watched the first light of dawn tarnish the eastern edge of the sky. Ichabo was to port (the seaward side) and Gaok to starboard ( landwards). Sperrgebiet dawns are something all of their own. They're not grey but sand-coloured and you first see a long shape loom out of the blackness; and it takes on the form of the top of a dune while night still hangs around the base. The light comes quickly, too: the fact that we began to make out the long lines of the dunes ashore was ominous. They should have been hidden in dense fog at that hour, but the disintegrating upwell cell had thrown everything out of kilter.

Jutta asked in a small, thin voice, 'How far to go still, Struan?'

'It depends on how much mileage is left in the sub.'

There didn't seem to be much. It was a marvel, really, that she was still with us. The sea, which had moderated to a swell, swept clean across the casing now, though the stack of torpedoes was still above water. The deeper she sank the more the current took hold of her-and of us. We were in one of the relatively quiet phases, when U-160 was heading the way we wanted and the cutters were just nudging her along. The wind was only a fresh breeze now, but it had changed direction completely and settled in the south-west, its true quarter.