Alexander Fullerton - Surface!

Tommy looked up from where he sat slumped over the wardroom table. Sub had turned in. Tommy wondered if people noticed when he went through his daydream business. He thought, I went through that once, and you’d think that once was enough: now I go through it every ten days.

There wasn’t much justice in it. There was only one consolation: having done that, having passed the highest test of submarining, he wanted nothing more. To him, there was no higher peak. He had lived his day, fought his war and won it. Now, all that he wanted was a quiet billet. He’d be on watch, in half an hour.

“Up periscope,” ordered the Sub. At the lift of the lever, the periscope rose quickly, hissing as the wires ran round the sheaves on the deckhead.

“Stand by for a fix.” The messenger grabbed a signal-pad and poised a pencil over it.

Sub took three bearings, and laid the position off on the chart. They were patrolling off the island, up and down an East–West line for three miles in each direction. It was the second day in the area, and so far they had seen nothing, except for seagulls that glided down on the wind and circled the periscope.

Four o’clock came, and Number One took over the watch. Sub sat down to tea, buttered a piece of bread an inch thick and covered it with sardines. He had it half-way to his mouth when Number One’s voice came, sharp and urgent.

“Captain, sir!”

The Captain spilled his tea, and rushed into the Control Room. Sub lowered his sardines, and he and the Navigator looked at each other, wondering, hoping.

“Diving stations!”

The men were in their places, all eyes on the Captain, who hung on to the periscope, absorbed, silent. He moved it round, a little this way and that.

Number One was intent on his own job, watching the depth and the trim.

“Steer one-five-oh,” ordered the Captain. He swept round, all the horizon and the sky, then stopped again on the target, whatever it was. Suddenly he jerked the handles of the periscope up and stepped back, rubbing his chin, thoughtfully. As he stepped back, Featherstone pressed down the lever that sent the periscope back into its well.

The Captain looked round.

“It’s the convoy,” he said. “About a dozen junks. Can’t see any escort yet.” The low hum of the motors and the ticking of the electric log were the only sounds in the Control Room.

Two minutes passed. “Up periscope.”

“There they are. Two of them. Stand by Gun Action. Down periscope.”

The routine swung into action, quickly and quietly.

“Gun’s crew closed up, sir.”

“Very good. Up periscope.” For a moment he searched the horizon all round. Then, back on the target, he said:

“Target an M/L. Range five thousand yards. Bearing will be about green one-five-oh. Shoot.”

“Deflection, sir?”

“Set no deflection.” Sub passed the orders to the Gun’s crew. The Captain spoke again: “Wilkins.”

“Sir?”

“Your target is the other M/L. She’ll be right astern. You take the one to the right, understand?”

“Aye aye, sir.”

“Starboard twenty, group up, fifty feet.”

The submarine began to turn on to her attacking course, nosing down to fifty feet and increasing speed.

“Steer three-one-five,” ordered the Captain.

Wilkins’ eyes were hard and bright, his mouth a thin line. Jimmy was wishing he wasn’t a First Lieutenant, tied down to a job in the Control Room and only hearing the noise of the action. Tommy was checking the depth of the water, on the chart.

Chief was thinking that this was one of the times when he’d rather be an executive officer than an engineer. To be down below, working blindly while the men on the gun and the bridge fought a battle, gave little satisfaction. He looked at the Sub, whose face showed only eagerness, impatience, and he thought, “Damned if I can understand that kid! He doesn’t know what the hell’s going to happen up there, he hasn’t even seen it. He’s like a terrier: get at it, boy, seek him out!”

In most faces, looking round the Control Room, Chief saw tension, anxiety. Only the duller ones showed little feeling, and Sub was not by any means dull or insensitive. Chief thought that if this was an American film, Sub’s apparently fearless belligerence would be explained by his old mother having been raped by a Japanese soldier in Hong Kong. Chief knew of no such reason for the boy’s fanaticism.

If the Sub had known that Chief regarded him as a fanatic, he would have laughed: not now, but later, he would have laughed. Now, his palms were running with sweat, his heart was pounding and in his mind he was saying a prayer: God, don’t let me lose my head. Don’t let them know that the last few minutes before we surface for a gun action are minutes of torture. He thought, If they saw how scared I was, they’d think that it was my skin that I was scared for, they’d think I was frightened of being killed. They wouldn’t believe that I was terrified of only one thing, of making a fool of myself, of messing up the shoot, letting down the Gun’s Crew, proving myself useless.

At Dartmouth, he had been of little use, because he had disliked the life, the routine, the stiffness: now, at sea, he was proving to himself that he was not useless, that he could do anything as well as anyone else, that the Cadet at Dartmouth had not been John Ferris, but a John Ferris under the influence of Dartmouth.

“Oh, Christ!” he thought, “Let’s get up there, get on with it!” After the first shot had been fired, the relief was always tremendous: between shouting directions to the Gun’s Crew and observing the fall of shot, he would wonder to himself what on earth he had been worrying about. This was easy: it always was.

“Course three-one-five, sir,” reported the helmsman.

“Fifty feet, sir,” growled the Second Cox’n.

“Full ahead together.” The Captain had one foot on the bottom of the ladder. “Surface!”

Number One had a whistle between his teeth. When the needle in the depth-gauge passed the fifteen-foot mark, he blew it, and the hatches were flung open as the boat surfaced.

Blinding sunshine met them harshly after the soft artificial light in the submarine. There was the convoy, a straggle of nine or ten junks of varying sizes, just about right astern. Ahead of the convoy, broadside on to the submarine’s stern, was one of the anti-submarine launches. She was much the same size and shape as the usual British type of motor launch, the bridge high for her length, quick-firing guns dotted about her bridge and stern.

Away from the island, between the convoy and the submarine and keeping abreast of the centre of the convoy, was a second craft of the same class.

It took an effort to absorb this picture, so suddenly in view and so different from the picture that had been forming in their minds while they were waiting under water, but habit and the clear-cut orders overrode the momentary strangeness.

The three-inch fired, and the enemy launch that had been ahead of the convoy swung away.

“They’re running away, by God!” muttered the Captain.

“Right eight, up four hundred, shoot!”

But the launch was not running away: that swerve was only panic, or an error by the helmsman. Now she was swinging back again, heading straight for the submarine.

“Down two hundred, shoot!”

The other launch was also coming towards them, from the port quarter. Wilkins tried his Oerlikon for range, but the only splashes he could see were a long way short. He waited, watching his target.

The third shot fell close to the first launch.

“Down one hundred, shoot!” A few moments passed before they saw the shell explode in the launch’s bridge. A second hit, and the enemy was on fire. One more, and they could leave her where she was for the time being and pay a little attention to the other one.