Three hours later the British were still attacking at regular intervals.
‘Seventy-eight charges,’ said Graf.
‘Is that all?’ Lorenz replied. ‘And I thought they were going to make a serious attempt to sink us.’ He looked around at the figures inhabiting the boat’s preternatural twilight. None of them returned his smile. Perhaps they had lost faith in him? Lorenz climbed through the forward hatchway. Poor Richter was groaning but at least he was still alive. Bending to speak to Lehmann, Lorenz asked: ‘Louder or weaker?’
‘Staying the same.’
‘They’re circling?’
‘No, Kaleun.’ Lehman paused. ‘No, they’re coming back again.’
Lorenz returned to the control room. ‘Take us down another thirty meters.’ Alarm animated expressions that had become pale and masklike. Would one of them go mad now? Lorenz tried to make eye contact, albeit momentary, with every man in his vicinity. Which one of them would succumb, which one of them would run through the boat screaming? He could feel the tension mounting, the swell of communal panic. Thankfully, Graf declared his support with an obedient affirmative—‘Yes, Herr Kaleun’—and the sense of having reached a decisive, critical moment dissipated.
One hundred and fifty, one hundred and fifty-five, one hundred and sixty…
The woodwork cracked and the hissing of the leaks became louder. Condensation dripped from the overhead. There were more explosions, more showers of broken glass. Another fountain of spray appeared above the water gauge.
‘One hundred and seventy-five meters,’ said Graf.
Men were attending to the breaches, undertaking repairs like automatons, but the mood of the boat had changed. Lorenz could feel it, a profound shift, as fundamental as the ground moving during an earthquake: fatalism, resignation. The shivering Asdic pulses were like the grim reaper flicking the hull with his bony finger to make it ring. They had become Death’s plaything.
‘Sound bearing two hundred and ten degrees,’ said Lehmann. ‘Growing louder.’
And so it continued, explosions, maneuvers, explosions: lurching, staggering, rolling, and pitching — darkness, light — the reek of bodies and the slow accumulation of poisonous fumes. The passage of time became meaningless.
‘What now?’ Lorenz asked. HE had been listening to the steady drip of condensation for some time.
Lehmann adjusted his headphones. ‘I think they’re going away.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Their screws are fading.’
Graf poked his head through the hatchway. ‘We’ve got to surface.’
The hull was still complaining: pained murmurings, shudders, occasional shrieks. Cracks and snaps issued from the woodwork in the petty officers’ quarters, a constant reminder of how much weight was bearing down on them.
‘Not yet,’ said Lorenz.
‘We’ve made an awful lot of water, Kaleun.’
‘Not yet.’
‘We can’t use the pumps.’
‘I know.’
‘Kaleun: why have they stopped attacking us?’ asked Danzer. ‘Do you think they’ve run out of munitions?’
‘No,’ said Lorenz, ‘I doubt it.’
‘Then why?’
‘Why? Because they think we’re dead.’
Lorenz spent the next twenty minutes inspecting the compartments, assessing the damage and congratulating his men. Most of them were so shaken by the ordeal that they could barely respond. They looked weary, close to the point of collapse. The breach in the engine room had been cataclysmic and the water level had risen above the matting. Fritz Fischer, the chief mechanic, splashed through the gloom. His shirt was torn and his exposed skin was streaked with oil.
‘Will it hold, Fritz?’ Lorenz asked.
‘Not for much longer,’ Fischer replied, wiping his face with a rag. A tattoo on the mechanic’s right bicep showed a scroll on which the word ‘Hope’ was emblazoned in Gothic letters.
On returning to the control room, Lorenz ordered Graf to take the boat up to periscope depth. The tanks were flushed, and the hydroplane operators rotated their wheels but the manometer pointer failed to move. U-330 should have been ascending at a rate of one meter per second.
‘We’re too heavy and too deep,’ Graf said bluntly. ‘We’ll have to use the pumps.’
‘I’m not risking that,’ said Lorenz. ‘Let’s try going a little faster.’
Apart from a slight tremor, the manometer pointer remained inert.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Falk.
‘Patience,’ said Lorenz. ‘We’re only going at four knots.’
‘I’m not sure we can go any faster in our current state,’ said Graf.
‘Nonsense,’ said Lorenz. ‘Of course we can.’
Slowly, the manometer pointer started to move.
Graf exhaled forcefully. ‘Thank God.’
‘I suspect,’ said Lorenz, ‘that He had very little to do with it.’
Falk grimaced. The first watch officer considered such provocations unwise when the scales were so finely balanced.
One hundred and seventy, one hundred and sixty-five, one hundred and sixty…
The boat was perilously deep; however, the ascent — once it had begun — was sustained, a tentative, gentle engagement with acclivity. Each second dragged, and eager faces were enameled with perspiration. Some dared to entertain the possibility that they might actually survive. At twelve meters Lorenz ordered a reduction in speed. There was an anxious moment when the bow dipped, but it rose again almost instantly. The observation periscope was raised, and Lorenz looked through the viewer. ‘I can see them.’
‘What are they doing?’ asked Graf.
‘They appear to be waiting for us.’
‘Maybe we left some oil behind.’
‘Let’s creep away while we can. Both motors, ahead slow.’
Half an hour later Lorenz raised the periscope again. There were no escorts. All that he could see was a smudge of discoloration high in the sky: smoke that had risen from the cargo ship they had torpedoed. ‘Gone,’ said Lorenz. ‘Prepare to surface.’ He gazed around the control room which looked as if it had recently confined an enraged bull. The matting was littered with tools, broken glass, discarded oilskins, shoes, and a crucifix. He picked up this last item, contemplated the diminutive Christ (whose features were remarkably expressive for such a small object), and laid it on the chart table. ‘Start the bilge pumps,’ he said. ‘Chief: ahead one half.’ Ordinarily, the grinding of the pumps was irritating, but at that moment they sounded sweeter than a lullaby. The second watch was already assembling. As soon as U-330 broke the surface the diesels started up. Lorenz climbed into the conning tower and opened the hatch. Cool, fresh air rushed into the boat and for a moment he was arrested by its purity. He stepped up onto the bridge, scanned the horizon, and leaned against the bulwark. Juhl and the rest of the watch followed. None of them spoke. They were all enjoying the private ecstasy of being alive. The sea was a heaving mass of molten lead bathed in a jaundiced light. It would be dark soon. Waves smacked against the bow, raising geysers.
Lorenz turned the bridge over to Juhl and went back down to his cabin to get his war diary. Richter was still lying on his bed and being treated by Ziegler, who in addition to being a radio operator was also the boat’s medical orderly. The gash across Richter’s face had been cleaned but this made it look worse, rather than better. It was now possible to see how wide and deep it was. Spikes of bone were clearly visible. The injured man was silent, his eyes closed.