Alexander Fullerton - Surface!

“Right. Ace up, King towards, spin for start… yours, Number One.”

The Navigator finished his tea and squeezed himself out of the wardroom, went into the Control Room and addressed the helmsman, “Relief O.O.W,” he said.

The helmsman shouted up the voice-pipe, “Relieve Officer of the Watch, sir?”

“Yes, please.” The answer came out of the brass tube in Number One’s voice. The Navigator climbed the ladder to the bridge, took over the watch.

“O.K., Tommy. Course 100 degrees, three-eight-oh revs. There’s the land.” Number One pointed at the Northern end of Sumatra: they were approaching the top of the Straits, and next morning at dawn they would be diving.

Number One slid down the ladder to his tea. Somehow they managed to make room for him round the table: it seemed that you could always get in one more, however many there were already. He had finished his tea and was just lighting a match, when the klaxon gave a preliminary cough and then roared twice. The soldiers sat in stunned surprise at the violent, lightning evacuation. The Major went on drinking his tea.

“What’s all this in aid of?” asked Selby.

“Don’t ask me. Perhaps they’re issuing rum, or something. Pass the sugar, would you, Montgomery?”

As the Navigator fell into the Control Room on top of the Lookout, he said, “Aircraft, sir, coming towards from right ahead.”

“Sixty feet,” ordered the Captain. Five minutes later, he changed the order.

“Thirty feet, Number One.”

“Thirty feet, sir.” The submarine rose gently to periscope depth, thirty feet, and the Captain signalled with his hands for the periscope to be raised. Slowly, carefully, he searched the sky.

“Nothing there, now.” He stepped back, turned to Number One as the periscope hissed down.

“We’ll stay dived until dark. Go Watch Diving when you’re ready.”

“Aye aye, sir. Which Watch, Cox’n?”

“White Watch, sir.” Number One lifted the microphone down from its hook.

“White Watch, Watch Diving.”

Silence settled heavily through the compartments as the routine ticked along like a clock and the submarine began to creep into the Straits.

“Mean to say we’re going to stay under water for four hours, now?” asked the Major. “Sounds most unhealthy to me.”

The Captain grinned. “While you’re disporting yourselves on the beach, or wherever you are going to disport yourselves, we’ll be lying under water for forty-eight hours.”

Number One, who had just joined them in the wardroom, whistled.

“D’you mean that, sir?”

“Of course I mean it. We’ll lie on the bottom all the time. Won’t be able to run the air-conditioning plant: makes too much bloody noise. It’ll be a bit hot, I dare say.”

“Hot! Good God, we’ll bloody well fry!” Chief moaned, and began to wipe the soles of his feet with a towel.

All around them was the thick, black curtain of the night, in their ears the low throb of the diesels. In the front of the bridge stood the Captain and the First Lieutenant, their binoculars at their eyes, silently intent, watching to pick up the first glimpse of the light-house on the One Fathom Bank.

“Should see it any minute, now,” muttered the Captain. The lighthouse had no light in it, of course: only a tall, lonely pillar rising out of the middle of the Straits, a sign that here was the Bank, and beyond it a channel that twisted through countless other banks. The channel that was mined.

Minutes passed slowly as they strained their eyes ahead, occasionally taking the glasses from their eyes for long enough to blink before resuming the search.

“There it is, sir.” Number One spoke quietly, as though not wishing to break the clinging silence. The time was five-thirty.

“Good,” said the Captain, when he picked up the dark silhouette in his glasses. “We’re right on the dot, Number One. Hold this course until I shout up, then come round to one-two-oh and go slow together. I want to get a Radar fix, if I can.”

“Aye aye, sir.” As the Captain’s dark form merged into the hatch, Number One spoke to the Lookout. “Keep your eyes skinned.”

In twenty minutes’ time they would be diving, and by eight o’clock they would be among the mines. Number One was hungry: he wondered what was for breakfast.

Saunders, his ears held into his head by the headphones, sat in the corner of the Control Room and operated the machine that could detect the presence of mines. The submarine was just entering the area which was marked off on the chart in red ink, shaded with diagonal lines and marked, simply, MINEFIELD. Saunders’ long unshaven face was quite expressionless as he turned the handle in front of him, stared at the dial and lived through his ears. He would have worn exactly the same expression, or lack of one, if he had been operating a plough, intent on keeping the furrow straight and true.

Every eye in the Control Room was, most of the time, on Saunders’ face. He seemed unconscious of the part he was playing. Nobody made a sound, nobody moved an inch. The sweat ran down: no hand was raised to wipe it off. The First Lieutenant stood with his back to the ladder, his eyes fixed on the depth-gauge in which the needle never moved. The Navigator leaned over the chart-table, a pencil poised four inches above the word MINEFIELD. It had been poised, in exactly that position, for seven and a half minutes. The Sub was in the for’ard compartment with Chief Petty Officer Rawlinson and the torpedomen: they sat in silence, looking at their feet. The submarine had been shut off for depth-charging, which meant amongst other things that all the watertight doors were shut. Each compartment was a world on its own, linked to the Control Room by telephone. In the Engine-room, Chief leant against the port diesel, his eyes fixed without expression on a wheel-spanner that hung from an overhead pipe.

In the Control Room, nobody had moved. Saunders drew in his breath, sharply, and the Captain, looking at him, raised his eyebrows in a wordless question.

“Mine, right ahead.”

“Starboard ten.” The Captain’s voice was low, unhurried. The course was altered by fifteen degrees.

“Mine, five degrees on the starboard bow.”

“Port ten.” Seahound turned back again by five degrees, to pass between the mines.

Featherstone raised his right hand from his side, stared at his fingernails. Everyone saw him do it. He seemed to find the thumb particularly interesting. The Signalman, irritated, looked at him angrily, and Featherstone dropped his hand to his side. The Signalman stared at his feet.

The Captain said, “Report all objects.”

Saunders nodded, turned his wheel. His ears, Featherstone saw for the first time, were much bigger than the headphones.

“Contact, red three-one.” He turned the wheel a little more, and he added, “Contact, green two-eight.”

“Very good.”

The Signalman looked up at the deckhead, pursed his lips as though he was whistling. Featherstone glared at him: the Signalman’s lips relaxed and he stared at the hairs on the back of the First Lieutenant’s neck.

“Mine, right ahead.”

The Navigator dropped his pencil. It made a mark on the charted minefield as the Captain asked, “Where are the other two, now?”

“Red four-eight, sir.” Pause. “Green three-seven.”

“Very good.” The Captain relapsed into silence, rubbing his chin. The helmsman waited tensely for an alteration of course. None had been ordered. He had heard Saunders report a mine right ahead. The helmsman felt sweat running fast down his back.

The Captain spoke to Saunders.

“Tell me when the one to port bears red six-oh.”