The ensuing blasts were so loud, the experience of hearing felt strange and unfamiliar. He understood, intellectually, that he was listening to detonations, but the experience did not feel as if it were being mediated by sense organs. Sound was no longer an ordinary, physical phenomenon, but something endowed with supernatural potency. It was demonic and took control of his mind and body.
When the roaring finally stopped Lorenz felt hollowed out, empty, as if the inside of his skull had been scoured like a saucepan. The control room was in darkness and it wasn’t until the ringing in his ears had lessened that Lorenz realized the motors were no longer humming. He could smell burning, flames appeared near the matting, and a series of bangs echoed through the compartments — bottles of compressed air splitting open. Water spurted across the control room and there were cries of ‘breach!’ The emergency lights came on and Danzer smothered the flames that lapped around the engine telegraph with his jacket. Lorenz looked at the manometer.
Forty meters, forty-five meters, fifty meters…
A metallic keening that none of the men had ever heard before arrested all movement. Graf tilted his head to one side and said, ‘I think…’ He swallowed and could barely bring himself to continue. ‘I think one of the ribs has been fractured.’
There was no hope of keeping the boat stable without the electric motors working. A submerged U-boat had to move forward otherwise it would sink. Long before the electricians had started to undertake repairs the overhead and hull would be bulging inward.
Another two depth charges went off, and the lights flickered. Through the haze Lorenz could see anxious eyes looking at him, expecting orders or a plan for their salvation expressed with epigrammatic concision. When Lorenz failed to say anything, Graf coughed and said, ‘Kaleun, we’ve got to surface.’
Ninety-five meters, one hundred meters…
The boat was creaking and groaning.
‘Herr Kaleun?’ Falk prompted. ‘What do you want us to do?’
If the boat continued sinking then all of the crew would be dead in a matter of minutes; however, to surface next to a speedy destroyer was practically suicidal. Lorenz considered these two grim alternatives, and supposed there was a slim chance, with respect to the latter, that some men might survive in the water and be taken prisoner. He took a deep breath and said, ‘Blow the tanks, chief! Distribute lifesaving gear.’
There was a great commotion as the compressed air began to hiss.
Reitlinger poked his head through the aft-bulkhead hatchway. ‘The bilges in the motor room are making water fast.’
Graf uttered a string of obscenities before addressing the hydroplane operators. ‘Forward up twenty, aft down five.’
One hundred and fifty meters…
Lorenz shouted through the forward hatchway: ‘Lehmann? Ziegler?’ The two men jumped out of their respective rooms. ‘Smash up the code machine and destroy all manuals and documents.’ Turning to address the navigator, Lorenz added, ‘Müller! Rip up all plans, diaries, and charts.’ Another detonation rocked the boat, and Lorenz wondered whether the implementation of standard security procedure would, in the final instance, prove to be entirely redundant. The manometer needle was still moving in the wrong direction and it had passed from the orange arc into the red.
Two hundred meters, two hundred and ten…
They were heading for the cellar again.
Nerves were as taut as piano wire. Lorenz could sense his crew struggling to retain their sanity as dark waves of fear and panic threatened to sweep away reason. He had rehearsed this ending many times in his nightmares. The loss of his authority, men scratching at their own faces, gibbering and weeping, tearing bloody clumps of hair from their heads — the boat transformed into a lunatic asylum as the lights dimmed and the iron ribs snapped: a community of fate become a fated community.
The manometer needle slowed down and stopped at two hundred and forty meters, but Lorenz experienced no relief. Perspiration trickled into his eyes and his heart felt swollen and heavy. The tortured metal of the boat was surprisingly vocal, discovering in its vibrating internal structures the means to produce a long, drawn-out lamentation. This was accompanied by the percussive cracking of woodwork under strain. Lorenz thought of finely balanced scales, trembling indecisively, such that even a sigh might make one side heavier than the other. Were they too heavy to ascend?
Graf growled at the manometer and raised his arms, pressing his palms against an invisible lintel. ‘Now!’ he commanded. ‘Up, up, up!’ The sheer extremity of his emotion endowed his will with magical properties, and bizarrely, the boat obeyed, beginning an uncontrolled, vertical ascent. Slow at first, but gathering momentum, U-330 took off like an unstable barrage balloon released from its tether. It twisted and jolted through more turbulence as two more depth charges exploded.
Men were piling into the control room, wearing their escape gear — combined breathing devices and life jackets. Lorenz shouted through the aft hatchway: ‘Pump the diesels.’ The order was relayed back through the boat; each repetition taken up by a different voice and attenuated with distance. He wanted the engines to start without a second’s delay, as a moving target would be more difficult to shell than a stationary one. ‘Breaking surface!’ Graf’s declaration silenced the hubbub. U-330 had risen like a cork, and its subsequent movements were so violent many of the crew were thrown to the deck. As the engines coughed into life, Lorenz scrambled over the bodies and climbed up the ladder. When he reached the top, he opened the hatch and leaped out onto the bridge. Over the bulwark he could see the destroyer. It was only a short distance away: two hundred meters or less. Lorenz shouted a new course direction and watched as the destroyer’s deck gun started to revolve. ‘Quick, get out! Before they start firing on us.’ U-330 did not turn away from the destroyer as Lorenz had instructed. The rudders were jammed and the boat had begun to describe a tight circle. Men were already erupting through the hatch. They clambered down the conning tower, ran toward the bow and jumped into the sea. Zeigler emerged and addressed Lorenz. ‘I’ve sent a message to headquarters and they know we’re in trouble.’ Lorenz gripped the radio operator’s arm. ‘Good man,’ he said. ‘Good man.’ When Lorenz let go, Ziegler scaled the bulwark and accomplished a graceful, athletic dive that carried him comfortably clear of the ballast tanks.
Where were the shells? Why wasn’t U-330 getting blown out of the water? Lorenz gazed at the looming destroyer. It was so close the forward mountings could not be sufficiently depressed. The frustrated British gun crew were shaking their fists and hollering curses and insults. One of them, however, was hoisting a stripped Lewes automatic rifle over the bridge screen. Lorenz ducked as bullets strafed the side of the boat and the conning tower. Through the rear railings he saw men tumbling and lying prostrate on the deck — clouds of red mist hanging in the air. Lorenz peeped over the bulwark and saw that the destroyer was trying to achieve an optimal ramming position.
Pullman climbed out of the hatch and Lorenz noticed that the photographer was clutching a small bag made from a green rubberized material. ‘What have you got in there?’ Lorenz asked.
‘Film rolls,’ Pullman replied.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Lorenz shouted. ‘Worry about saving yourself — not your photographs!’
Pullman declined Lorenz’s advice with his ludicrous half-smile and slid down the conning- tower ladder. He sprinted across the deck through a hail of bullets, and while those around him were participating in a deadly ballet — throwing up their arms and spinning before collapsing in lifeless heaps — he continued determinedly and leaped into the water unharmed.