'They're brave men,' the man shouted. 'You'd best go home, miss. This is no sort of night for the likes of you to be out in.'
A smothered cry broke from her, and the harbour-master could see the shaking of her body, wracked by dry sobbing. He watched her stumbling blindly along the jetty, until she was lost to sight.
Chapter 12
'Stand by to surface!'
The cox'n of HM Submarine Orcus, Bill Bowles, shifted his buttocks in the planesman's seat. Grasping the control column lightly between his hands, his eyes on the depth gauge, he was thankful that at last things were under way. Today, Friday, had been a long day.
'Open two, four, six and seven LP master blows,' ordered Lieutenant-Commander Foggon, the MEO trimming officer, who was standing behind him and watching points. Eddie Foggon was good at his job, a sound engineer officer who allowed the cox'n to use his own judgement. Orcus was a responsive old lady and Bill Bowles had the measure of her, providing the trimming officer kept the trim right: only when things became tricky did Foggon take firm charge of his cox'n. The main vents were being cycled and soon she'd be on the surface. They could all do with a bit of fresh air after today's exercises — and before the long patrol lying ahead of them.
'Permission to open the lower lid,' Lieutenant Sims, the bridge officer of the watch, asked after the captain had finished briefing him. He and the lookouts were already dressed for the weather.
'Open the lower lid,' Farge ordered, swinging round on the search periscope for the last time. The clips of the lid clunked free.
'Permission to man the tower?'
'Man the tower.'
'Ready to surface sir,' the control-room OOW reported.
Farge snapped shut the handles and the periscope hissed downwards into the well.
'Surface,' he ordered brusquely. 'Blow two, four, six and seven main ballast.'
Bowles dragged gently back on his column, watched the bubble gliding for'd, felt the bow-up angle coming on the boat. He had done this so many times in his life, but this was to be the last surfacing until they returned from the patrol. The Old Man looked drawn, seemed edgier than usuaclass="underline" it had been a long day for him especially. Farge must have been carrying the secret in his mind for a while now. Perhaps, like Bowles, he was thankful that action was at last beginning.
'Stop blowing seven, six, four and two main ballast.'
Farge, happy with Orcus' stability on the surface, called from his periscope:
'On the surface! Open up.'
Bowles heard the far-away shout from the OOW at the top of the tower:
'Upper lid open.' Seconds later the voice-pipe cocks were opened and the bridge-intercom snicked when it was plugged in.
'Start the blower,' Farge ordered. He picked up the mike and turned over the state of the submarine to the bridge.
'I'm happy to take the submarine,' the OOW reported.
'You have the submarine,' Farge snapped.
'Aye, aye, sir. I have the submarine.'
Farge zipped up his anorak, slung his binoculars about his neck and disappeared into the tower. Bowles relaxed in his planeman's chair, waiting for the pipe, 'Red watch patrol routine'.
'Flood Q,' the MEO ordered. At war now, they were becoming used to flooding the emergency diving tank when on the surface.
'Start generating port side,' Farge yelled from the bridge.
The chuntering of the diesel sounded from aft and then the fresh, cold air was streaming through the boat. Bowles glanced up at the first lieutenant who was relaxing beside the passenger, Lieutenant Woolf-Gault, against the safety grilles surrounding the masts.
'It's been a full day. No leave-breakers, no drunks: reckon we deserve it, sir,' Bowles' answered, extricating his tobacco pouch.
The cox'n enjoyed this moment, snug in the red lighting of the control-room. Supper had been up to scratch: the first days of patrol were always all right, while the fresh veg. lasted. The cox'n lit his old pipe; he stretched his legs, oblivious to the subdued chatter around him. Murray, the navigating officer, was at the search periscope taking his last fix before the light of Ru Stoer faded below the horizon.
The cox'n felt a certain smugness, an emotion which he suspected Jimmy shared with him. Though Prout was twenty-six and fifteen years younger than his cox'n, Bowles respected him, particularly as Prout was losing his forced abruptness. This was his first Jimmy's job, which probably explained their initial strained relationship. And, since that bloody Woolf-Gault episode Prout and Bowles had drawn closer to each other, both relieved by the philosophical reaction of the ship's company. Orcus was welding into a taut ship under their new skipper.
The captain had dived the boat in Eddrachillis Bay during the early hours of that morning. He had kept them busy all day: bottoming, shutting-off for going deep, shutting-off for counter-attack, assuming the Ultra Quiet State — he had repeated the drills over and over again until he was satisfied. Emergency breakdowns in the engine-room and the spaces; escape drills — the whole shooting-match, until the hands were muttering. Even Jimmy got the sharp edge of Farge's tongue when he failed to settle at periscope depth when coming up from deep. Prout had been made to repeat the evolution five times before the Old Man would let him off the hook. Breakdowns, breakdowns, breakdowns; main vents in hand, plane failures, hydraulic failures, until everyone was fed up. Bowles too had become chokka: he'd begun to suspect that something special was up, forebodings which were confirmed later when the captain asked him along to his cabin before speaking to the rest of the ship's company.
Farge had bottomed the boat in three-hundred feet — and during that final drill, they would not have cracked a watch-glass. Bowles mustered in the fore-ends all the hands who could be spared from their duties. The chief radio supervisor rigged a mike to the tube space and from there with eighty per cent of his company around him, the captain talked over the broadcast. Bowles would never forget that scene: the tight-lipped, determined Farge, standing on the rungs of the fore-hatch ladder, the packed compartment jammed solid by his silent men.
The captain spoke quietly: no histrionics, for as the details of their mission unfolded, even the dimmest amongst them latched on that this was going to be an unusual patrol. Until that moment, from Barrow onwards, various incidents had started the buzzes flying around the messdecks: the landing of the torpedoes and the empty for'd tubes were for the mines which Orcus would be loading in Faslane. Obvious, wasn't it? There had been many wild guesses to explain the alterations and additions which Vickers had carried out at such speed: extra H/F sonar transducers fitted, the existing sets serviced again and checked; doubling-up the supplies of absorbent for the CO2 scrubbers, and the oxygen candles; renewal of the main W/T aerial; checking the insulations and the transmitters, and a complete overhaul of the EW aerials; special wire-cutting tools (nets?); the wardroom pistol locker topped up — and several other mods which had been outstanding. But it was the personnel changes which were the most difficult to explain.
By chance Orcus already bore an able seaman diver, yet a Leading Seaman Diver, Malcolm Robertson, had joined at Kyle of Lochalsh. The unannounced arrival in Barrow of Surgeon-Lieutenant Tomkins had posed an accommodation problem for the officers, but to the pleasure of the junior rates, Sub-Lieutenant Halby had been rushed ashore with suspected meningitis and was now languishing in Barrow hospitaclass="underline" an unlucky turn of the wheel for the captain, because his argument for replacing Lieutenant Woolf-Gault had been demolished. 'Windy-Gault' was officially appointed as Halby's relief and was now the boat's TASO — but at least the wardroom would not now have to sleep 'hot bunks', the doc taking the spare bunk. As a wag in the senior rates mess had put it: 'At least Windy-Gault can't foul things up in the tube space: we've got no fish.' Joker Paine, the sonar chief, had added: 'Jimmy's no fool either: he's got Windy-Gault as far from the control-room as he can get him.'