Alexander Fullerton - Surface!

“Ah, that’s the stuff, sir. Got to throw the old gun in, too.”

“Steady as you go!” snaps the Captain, stooping at the periscope.

“Steady sir,” answers the helmsman. “Course-one-nine-one.”

“Which tube, Sub?”

“Number three, sir.”

“Stand by number three tube.”

The man with the telephone set sends the message forward to the T.I.

“Number three ready, sir.”

“Stand by – fire!”

There’s a thud that jars through the whole submarine as the torpedo is shot out of the tube. The air-pressure rises sharply and you swallow to clear your ears.

The man with the headphones, Saunders, reports, “Torpedo running, sir.”

“Very good.” The Captain watches steadily through the periscope. Everyone is waiting for the bang they want to hear. Sometimes torpedoes go wrong and run crooked, off their course. Sometimes they miss. Up forward, the T.I. is murmuring under his breath, “Oh Gawd, let it ‘it, don’t let it miss, Gawd, not this one.”

It hits all right, a roaring, shattering explosion, and the Captain smiles.

“Right. Stand by Gun Action.”

You’ve seen it earlier, through the periscope, and so has the Gunlayer. You know the targets: first the big oil storage tank, then the buildings and cranes on the jetty. But the storage tank stands among trees, and there’s no sign of where the shell falls. Make a correction, any correction, and try again.

“Down eight hundred, shoot!”

You’re in line, on the edge of the trees. “Up twelve hundred, shoot!”

A film of dust rises through the tall trees, just short of the tank. “Up four hundred, shoot!”

A hit, a flash of orange flame on the target. No more corrections: rapid fire.

A gun is firing from the harbour area, and the shots are not far off. That’s a job for Rogers, the newly-promoted Oerlikon gunner. He gives it a long burst, and the firing stops. Rogers quickly changes the magazine on his gun and waits, watching for any more opposition.

The oil tank is finished now, and looks strangely like the stem of a giant mushroom, the top of which is composed of flames and black, oily smoke.

The Oerlikon is firing again: more opposition from a shore battery, one of whose shots at this moment has scrunched overhead, a noise like tearing calico: the splash goes up a long way over on their starboard quarter. Rogers has changed the pan on his gun, but his continued fire has no apparent effect on the enemy.

“Stop that bugger, Sub!”

The Sub yells over the front of the bridge to the crew of the three-inch: “Shift target left: gun battery behind the left edge of the harbour: under the white smoke-cloud.”

The Gunlayer raises his left hand, thumb uppermost, in acknowledgement as he shows the Trainer the target.

“Down eight hundred, shoot!” The first round at the Jap battery hurtles away as one more enemy shot rips across astern.

“Down two hundred, shoot!”

It looks like a near miss, that one.

“No correction, shoot!” and as the splash from the enemy’s shell drenches the gun’s crew, the Captain orders full speed ahead to upset the Jap’s calculations.

“Nice work, Sub!” That last one hit the battery. Two more shots in the same place, and still no answering fire: it seems to have done the trick.

Shift target to the jetty, and a crane goes over on its side. Three or four men rush out of the sheds, make for the trees as shells begin to land in the wooden buildings.

In ten minutes the little port is wrecked. In front of the background of the blazing oil tank, four other fires are blazing and spreading. Two cranes are finished for good, and a barge, the only thing that was left afloat after you’d torpedoed the steamer, is sunk.

Cease fire, blow your whistle. Take a last look, before you dive. They’ll remember this day, ashore.

You shout to the Gun’s crew: “Good shooting!” and they grin, showing white teeth in their blackened, happy faces.

Rogers, the man who had taken Wilkins’ place as Oerlikon gunner, sat in the Seamen’s Mess, peeling potatoes.

“Lieutenant Commander ’Allet,” he announced, “is the best flippin’ C.O. I ever served with.”

“Ah,” agreed a hard-faced man they called Dodger. “Reckon we’ve got a good lad, there.”

“If any bastard in this flippin’ ship likes to argue with me,” continued Rogers, “I’ll ram ’is teeth dahn ’is flippin’ throat.”

“You always was one for an argument,” commented Shadwell, from the depths of a hammock.

Rogers looked at him. “I was up on the bridge just now, Shaddy, and when we was finished flippin’ the place up, and there was more smoke and flames than that on the flippin’ beach, I saw the old man lookin’ at it, steady-like, like ’e was drinking it in. When ’e turned round to pass some flippin’ remark to Subby, ’e saw me, and ’e gave a funny flippin’ grin, ’ard like, and I could see plain as kiss-me-arse what ’e was thinkin’. ’e was saying to ’imself,

“‘There y’are, yer yeller bastards: take that lot for old Wilkie, and may you roast in ’ell, you shower o’ stinkin’ sods’.”

Rogers looked round the Mess.

“That’s what ’e was thinkin’, plain as yer like. ’E’d been givin’ ’em one for Wilkie, nothin’ else.”

The words were hardly spoken when the klaxon roared over their heads, a blast as hard as a physical blow in its effect on the men who were sitting quiet and relaxed. The klaxon when the submarine was at periscope depth meant Collision Stations, shut off for depth-charging, dive to sixty feet. A bunch of half-a-dozen men performed the impossible feat of leaping aft through the bulkhead doorway in one solid mass: Shadwell heaved the door shut behind Chief Petty Officer Rawlinson as he fought his way in. The bar swung down, locking the heavy door in place.

Shadwell looked at Rawlinson, and put on his “classy” voice:

“Excuse me, Mr Rawlinson, but have you any ideah what the flippin’ ’ell’s goin’ on?”

The T.I. snapped: “Get forward, help ’em shut off.” Shadwell lowered himself into the tube space, muttering fiercely.

In the Control Room, Number One watched the needle steady itself at the sixty mark.

“Sixty feet, sir.”

“Very good,” muttered the Captain. The submarine was going dead slow on one motor: overhead, two anti-submarine launches were searching for her. Seahound was on the wrong side of the entrance: she still had to get out.

“What was the seaplane doing, Number One, when you last saw it?”

“Circling over the harbour area, sir.”

The Captain thought: Perhaps the idiots think we’re still hanging around at that end. Actually the submarine had been going her best speed towards the exit: a fairly obvious move, it would have seemed.

“Where are they now, Saunders?”

Saunders twiddled the wheel on his set: his ears looked so big that it might have been only the headphones that kept them from flapping.

“One right ahead, sir. Second one: I can’t find the second one, sir. Must be stopped.”

The Captain glanced at the clock: dusk now, dark in an hour.

Saunders spoke: “H.E., sir, right ahead, closing. Second H.E., sir, green two-oh. Closing, sir, moving slowly left to right.”

Those little bastards had to pass overhead: they had to pass overhead without detecting the submarine. God knows where they came from, the Captain thought: he hadn’t any idea that there was anything of the sort in the area. He hoped there weren’t any others in the bay.

Cat and mouse, creep quietly along, no sound, no sight. Eyes on Saunders: eyes on the Captain. The Captain turned to the Navigator at the chart table.