Alexander Fullerton - Surface!

“Well,” put in Shadwell, “it’d be nice to sink a flippin’ cruiser, wouldn’t it?”

“Don’t be barmy. There ain’t no flippin’ cruiser. They’ll find it was all a flippin’ great mistake. Some bastard had a drop too much and he got carried away, like. Gawd ’elp us – another flippin’ cake-an’-arse party off the perishin’ Andamans.”

“Me own opinion,” stated Hopkins, “is that it ain’t fair for us to go sinking cruisers out ’ere. We ought to leave ’em for the Yanks. We’ve had our share of cruisers an’ suchlike, in the Med., and up north. It’s only right to let the Yankies sink a couple, before the flippin’ war ends.”

All over the Indian Ocean submarines were preparing to intercept the raider. Setter was heading for the Nicobar Islands, Slayer was putting on full speed to patrol off Penang, others were already in their allotted areas. A flotilla of destroyers was being rushed from Trincomali to Rangoon to protect the shipping in case the cruiser did break through.

Seahound would be off Port Blair when she dived at dawn on the next morning. It was off the Andamans that she had spent her first patrol when she arrived in the Far East. It had been a boring three weeks, with only one trawler sunk and a long fruitless search for the crew of a shot-down bomber. They couldn’t imagine meeting anything worth sinking in that area, off the Andamans: it was always empty.

It was quiet and warm in the wardroom, while the Navigator kept the watch and they slept, most of them; only the Sub lay awake with his eyes shut letting his imagination run on the subject of sinking cruisers. He saw it happen, heard the torpedoes exploding, several hits one after the other, and he said a prayer in his mind: “God, let us meet the cruiser, and sink her.” He took it back: “No, God, let us meet her, that’s all.” It was up to you, the sinking part: if God lets you meet her, and you bungle it, you can’t blame Him.

It always feels wonderful to have sunk a really good target: you’re all so pleased with yourselves, and you know that when you get back to harbour they’ll be waiting to show you that in their opinion you’ve done a good job. The way they do that is to line the ships with men, and cheer you into your berth: for a really big sinking, any merchant ships that may be there blow their sirens, the “V” sign predominant, three short blasts and a long one, the little sign linked for all time with the greatest Englishman of the century.

It feels good to be cheered into harbour. To be cheered anywhere, in fact. The first time you ever had a cheer directed at yourself was when you were eight years old, and it was the village children that cheered you when you rode through the main street with the fox’s blood on your cheeks – your first kill, and the ceremony of “blooding”: there was no reason for the children to have cheered, because it was something that had happened to you and not something that you had done, but it was an old custom, as English as roast beef, and it was dear to their hearts and so they cheered. The next time that you got a cheer was when you were twelve, and this time it was in Switzerland when you finished a test in a very fast schluss that took you through the arch of the finishing-post like a streak of light. You were covered in snow and there were icicles hanging in your hair because you’d fallen so many times, but you’d made up the time and won the badge with two stars on it, and you were only twelve so the people cheered.

Thinking of the cruiser he drifted into sleep, and there it was, the cruiser, making a terrific bow-wave of snow as it crossed the hillside, and Chief was sliding down on a toboggan with blood all over his face. It looked as though they were bound to collide, Chief and the cruiser, and Sub tried to shout, to warn him, but the words wouldn’t come because his mouth was full of snow. The messenger was shaking him by the shoulder, saying, “Sub-Lieutenant, sir: five minutes to.” It was his turn to go on watch. The messenger, however, was used to shaking men for their watches, and he stood by until he knew that Sub was actually turning out and not going back to sleep again.

If the cruiser is coming this way, it means that she must have gone a long way round, maybe visiting the Nicobars first. That’s quite possible, of course. But this is wishful-thinking, because you know, as you shove your feet into the rubber-soled shoes, that the chances of your meeting a cruiser are very slight indeed. It’s like having a ticket in a sweepstake, and who ever wins a sweepstake except the other man?

The Navigator shows you the patrol-line on the chart, and the position which he has just fixed. Not trusting Navigators, you check the fix before you take over, because the submarine is close to the island and once you’ve taken over the watch the responsibility is all yours. He tells you the course, and you note that the telegraphs are at slow ahead together. “O.K.” you say, and the Pilot goes to his bunk, fed-up because he’d been hoping that the cruiser would come along during his watch. Everyone likes to make the sighting.

“Up periscope.” No periscope watch will ever have been more efficient than the one you’re going to keep during the next two hours. There’s the island, steep and bright green: the sight of it recalls the atmosphere of the first patrol, when you’d just arrived in the East and everything was new and unusual. There’s the entrance to the harbour of Port Blair, the entrance that the trawler came out of, the entrance that she limped back into, sinking and on fire. Behind the port the island rises to a conical hill which is so densely wooded that it looks as though it’s made of trees, an enormous bouquet of emerald green against the deep blue of the sky. There is the watch-tower, a white box on stilts, from which the Jap sentry watches for a glimpse of a periscope. At the inshore end of the patrol-line, using the magnification in the periscope, you can see the sentry standing in his box, and you feel an urge to be on the surface so that you can turn him inside-out with a burst from the Oerlikon. You feel it as personally as that. Along the coastline you can remember the places from where the coast artillery fired at you as you fought the trawler; their shooting had not been at all bad, and the Captain had been forced to zigzag about while you directed the gun: it made it awkward, with the range and deflection changing between every few shots.

“Down periscope.” You fiddle with the trim for a minute, then turn again and signal with a movement of your hands for the periscope. It rushes up and you sweep all round with the air-search first, to make sure that while you search the horizon there will be no aircraft diving on the periscope. The sky is clear, and you sweep the horizon, first quickly to check that there is nothing in the immediate vicinity, then slowly, very slowly, so as not to miss the slightest sign of an enemy. And there, on the starboard beam as you head out from the island, there on the horizon in the south, in the direction in which the Nicobar Islands lie, you see a tiny smudge on the horizon. Smoke.

“Captain in the Control Room.” He’s there so fast that you only have time to dip the periscope: it comes up again into his hands. As he looks, the men whose eyes are fixed anxiously on his face see a slow smile twist his lips. They have seen that look before.

“Diving Stations!” As Number One tumbles out of his bunk, he says, “My God – must be the cruiser!”

“Don’t be a silly flipper,” answers Chief. He’s never at his best when he’s woken abruptly. “Cruiser be damned.”

At Diving Stations, the submarine turns and heads towards the smoke. Number One is thinking, after he’s been told that it’s smoke, that it’ll turn out to be either a cloud or a mirage. But the Captain, watching through the periscope, knows better. It’s smoke, and the smoke of a big ship.