Alexander Fullerton - Surface!

He moved along to the after bulkhead, turned the valve-wheel on the small diameter tube that connected with the next compartment. As the valve opened, a stream of water flew like a bullet past his face. He shut the valve: they could all see what that meant: they were the only ones left.

Bertram, a young torpedo-man, muttered, “P’raps they’re better off ‘n what we are.” The Petty Officer rounded on him quickly.

“Shut y’ mouth, y’ damn fool. No air to waste ‘ere.” He looked at Tommy. “Shall I try the salvage blow, sir?”

“No. Waste of time.” They’d all heard and felt the collision: aft of this bulkhead, the whole side of the submarine must have been split open. The men stood looking at him, waiting for orders.

The batch over his head, at the after end of the compartment, was not an escape hatch but the ordinary one used for coming and going when the submarine was in harbour. For a moment he thought: If I told myself this was a dream, unreal, if I climbed up the ladder and threw open the hatch, should I not find myself in the bright, chill air, hear the engines in the other submarines charging their batteries alongside, find Number One standing on the casing, shouting, “Come on! Get a move on! Are those torpedoes going to take all next week to load?”

No, perhaps not. It looked real enough, on the men’s faces. He grinned at Higham.

“Well, looks like we’ll have to get our feet wet. Gather round me here, all of you. Just in case you need reminding, I’ll run through the drill for escaping… you’ve all done it in the tank at Blockhouse: well, it’ll be exactly the same now. Keep your heads, don’t hurry, take it easy, stick to the drill, and we’ll be up in the fresh air in next to no time.”

He began to talk about the escape apparatus, how easy, how foolproof it was: while he spoke, he thought how easy it would be for everything to go wrong.

The principle was simple enough. Around the escape hatch, strung up to the deckhead, was a thing called a Twill Trunk. It was a cylinder, made of twill, that could be let down to form a tube from the hatch down into the compartment: lines attached to its bottom edge could be secured to fittings in the compartment to hold the trunk rigidly and vertically in place. A steel ladder fitted up to the hatch inside the trunk.

Inside the compartment the pressure was atmospheric: outside, sea-pressure, forcing down on the hull, held the hatches shut.

There was a flood valve in the compartment, a big brass wheel that you could turn to let the sea in. This was the procedure: open the flood-valve, the water rises until it can rise no more because it is met by an equal pressure from the air which it has compressed at the top of the compartment. The water covers the lower part of the twill trunk. Then one man goes under the water, up inside the trunk, and opens the vent in the escape hatch. Air rushes out and the water rises inside the trunk, right up to the hatch. The pressure is then equal on either side of the hatch: open it, climb down the ladder and rejoin the men in the compartment: send them out, one by one, to float up to the surface, breathing freely from the oxygen sets which they wear strapped on their chests.

“How many sets have we got, Higham?”

“One each and some to spare, sir.”

“Pass me one over.”

The emergency lanterns glowed faintly, throwing grotesque shadows on the curved steel walls of their prison. The compartment had for months been the home of these men: their bedroom, dining-room, sitting-room. Here they sat and wrote their letters home, drank their tots of rum, and swung comfortably asleep in their hammocks. Now they were preparing to fill it with water, flood it, open it up, leave it to the fishes. Anyway, at all costs, leave it.

He put the set on, adjusted the straps, began to explain and demonstrate its use, the different valves, how to hold the mouthpiece, how to puncture the oxygen flask.

“See? It’s dead easy. The only thing is, keep your heads, don’t get excited. flooding makes a hell of a row: remember it, at Blockhouse? At first you may find difficulty in breathing from your set: if you do, don’t tear it off: raise your hand like this, and I or Higham’ll fix it for you. Payne, you know all about it, don’t you?”

Payne said that he did indeed know only too much about the flippin’ sets. He’d rather not use one, rather go up in a free ascent, holding his breath.

“You’ll wear a set, Payne.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

Well, he’d explained it all: better get a move on now. Tommy said to Higham, “Rig the twill trunk.” While Higham and Payne worked at it, Tommy told the others to start getting their sets on: he moved round, helping them to adjust the straps. Soon they were ready, the trunking lashed firmly in place, the men standing by with the yellow sets on their chests. God, how lonely it was.

“Crack the valve.” To move the wheel that first inch took nearly ten minutes. Only very slightly open, the noise of the water forcing in was already deafening. Tommy signalled to Higham to open the flood-valve to its full extent, and the roar hit them, struck them, left them gasping as the water rose to lap over their feet: their ears began to deaden under the rising pressure. Eyes were on him, several pairs of eyes swimming in the sound, all staring at him. It was up to him to show that everything was all right, everything under control: he grinned, his face deliberately in the light of one of the lanterns: nonchalantly he studied his watch without noticing the time. The water was up around his knees: he looked across at the base of the twill trunk, thought, It won’t be long now. He looked around the compartment where the men stood motionless: each wore his oxygen set, the bag blown up with oxygen from the manifold in the corner of the compartment. Later, when he was ready and the hatch was open, he’d tell them to start breathing from their sets: then they’d put the mouthpieces in their mouths, blow all the air out of their lungs through their noses, put on the nose-clips, open the valves below the mouthpieces and start breathing oxygen. That would be later: he’d have to do it himself, first, before he ducked under the water and climbed up into the trunk to get the hatch open. They’d be able to see how he did it, before they did it themselves.

The water was rising less fast, the noise was less. The pressure was an iron clamp around his head. He looked at the trunk and saw that its base was well covered. The water rose to chest-level: Timmins, a torpedoman whose height was not much over five feet, was standing on a box, where Higham had placed him.

A little boy saying, “Look, Uncle, I’m as big as you!” Little boys with marbles, air-guns and catapults, bees humming in the lavender, trees moving gently in the soft breeze of an English summer’s day. The weekend dance, the pint of beer in the local, the old Baby Austin that you bought for a fiver. The only way to get back to any of it was through that blasted trunk. Some of these men had wives and children.

The water had stopped, only a soft hissing came from the corner where the flood-valve was. Tommy felt giddy from the crippling pressure. He wondered if the men would stand up to it much longer as he said, “Right, now I’m leaving you for a few minutes, to get that hatch open. Higham, take charge while I’m away. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, send Payne up to see what’s wrong.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

They watched him closely as he went through the routine with his set. Just as he was about to duck under water, under the edge of the trunk, he remembered that he might need a wheel-spanner for the vent in the hatch. There was one hanging from an air-pipe behind Payne: Tommy pointed at it, held out his hand, and Payne quickly passed it across.