Several swells later he saw that it was moving slowly towards the lifeboats.
He knew from shipmates who’d been in other sinkings what the U-boat was after. Its commander would interrogate the survivors: what ship, where from, where bound, tonnage, cargo, number of crew? Then the Germans would wave, wish them good luck and steam away. Some U-boat commanders had been known to hand cigarettes to survivors, to indicate the direction of the nearest land, to pick a man out of the water and take him on board. Not that Corrigan wanted that. He’d rather take his chance with his own lot.
Thinking about that reminded him of sharks. The sooner he was out of the water the better. There’d been no sign of them yet. They kept away from fuel oil, waited in the waters beyond. Corrigan knew a lot about sharks. A lifeguard on a Massachusetts beach had to. Sharks were attracted by vibrations in the water. For a shark vibrations were worth investigating, especially vibrations from large, irregular and unfishlike shapes. Corrigan knew just about every tactic a swimmer should employ when sharks were about. As a last resort he could defend himself with the sheath-knife on his belt. A blooded shark was always attacked by other sharks. He knew of men who had saved their lives that way. So he didn’t feel too bad about sharks, although with wounded corpses in the water and plenty of blood about he reckoned things might go wrong.
Even so, he’d rather stay with his own crowd than be picked up by the U-boat. It had come closer, bows on to him now, maybe a couple of hundred yards from the loaded lifeboat. The rowing had stopped. Someone, the Captain he supposed, was standing in the sternsheets with an arm raised. To Corrigan there was something strangely reassuring about the sleek hull of the U-boat, shining wetly in the moonlight. It represented order and purpose among all that wreckage and devastation. He was aware of the contradictory nature of his thoughts — it was the Germans who’d created the devastation — but there was a bond between seamen which somehow transcended the grim realities of war.
The U-boat came on, moving more slowly. He supposed it was stopping. But it didn’t stop. Instead it went steadily on, its bows slicing into the lifeboat, the shouts and screams of the Americans drifting across the water in a frightening dirge. The two halves of the lifeboat, crushed and broken, were thrown aside and began to pass down the length of the submarine. Suddenly, spurts of flame and the rat-tat-tat of automatic fire came from its casing. Disbelief gave way to horror; the U-boat was machine-gunning survivors in the water. Now, less than a hundred yards from him, it was turning to port. With desperate haste he tore loose the tapes of his life-jacket, slipped it off, took a deep breath, duck-dived and began to swim underwater towards the hand-float. Three times he had to come up for air before reaching it: saw the flashing lines of tracer bullets and heard bursts of machine-gun fire. The float with its hanging lifelines was a small, two-foot-square affair, no more than a stout wooden frame over a buoyancy tank. It was designed for swimmers to cling to but not climb upon. Used in that way it could support four men in the water.
Corrigan surfaced on the side away from the submarine, put up a hand and grasped a lifeline. Keeping his chin level with the water he turned the raft just enough to enable him to see the submarine when the swells lifted.
It must have rammed the other lifeboat, the capsized one, while he’d been making the underwater swim to the float. Only its fore-end now remained, the bow pointing forlornly to the sky. Beyond it the submarine was turning to starboard. A powerful beam of light from the conning-tower swept the sea, settling on what remained of the lifeboat. Searchlight, he muttered to himself. Christ help us!
For some time the long black shape, doubly sinister now in the moonlight, continued its grim task; steaming through the wreckage, machine-gunning as it went, then turning to make another run, the beam of light probing the surface of the sea. Once it swept round in his direction. Realizing that the float would be a target he ducked under and began swimming away from it. Never in his life had he swum so far underwater, and certainly never with such urgency. The sound of the submarine’s propellers came closer and his terror mounted. But in spite of it he had to come up. With the pressure on his lungs beyond endurance, he surfaced. The submarine was no more than thirty feet away. It must have passed between him and the hand-float, because in the instant of gulping in air he’d heard the rattle of automatic fire and caught a glimpse of men on the casing. The beam of light from the signal lamp had been trained on the side away from him.
In that split second the moonlight had revealed something else, something painted on the side of the black conning-tower: a white rectangle, at its centre, in red, the rising sun of Japan, beneath it, the jagged hole made by the shell he and Smitty had fired. So that was why those bastards were killing everybody. Christ Jesus! The Japs had sunk old Fort N and killed most of the gun’s crew. Wasn’t that enough? They didn’t have to massacre the entire crew.
He tried to wipe the oil fuel from his face but realized that it coated his hands and arms and just about everything else. And it burnt his skin and hurt his eyes.
Five
What had promised to be a quiet night in the operations room at Navy House, Kilindini, was interrupted by a spate of incoming signals reporting Fort Nebraska's urgent transmission. The first of these came from the Fleet W/T Office. In no time several more had come in from HM ships at sea, plus two from the RAF, one from the Air Officer Commanding Kilindini, the other from the RAF flying boat base at Pamanzi in the Comoro Islands.
‘Here’s another, sir.’ A tall girl with flaxen hair handed the signal to the Staff Officer Operations, a Commander who sat at a desk on a platform overlooking the plotting table. She was one of two Wrens on duty in the operations room. ‘It’s from Restless,’ she added.
‘Thank you, Camilla. I’ve been waiting for this one. Restless is all we have within reasonable distance of Fort N's position.’ Commander Russel, balding and long of face, took the signal sheet, checked its time of origin, 2109, and read on:
US merchant ship Fort Nebraska transmitted SSSS at 2102 giving her position as 22 miles ENE of Porto do Ibo. The message ended with quote my course is unquote whereafter transmission ceased. Am proceeding to her assistance at 20 knots. My position 12° 50’S: 42° 56’E.
Ian Russel, SOO to the Deputy C-in-C, Eastern Fleet, the Rear-Admiral responsible for the control and protection of merchant shipping between Durban and the Equator, passed the signal to a Lieutenant RNVR who appeared to be staring at something over Russel’s shoulder. ‘Put this on your plot, Jakes, and give me an ETA for Restless at the Fort Nebraska position.’
The Lieutenant’s attention at that moment had been diverted from the plotting-table by the statuesque figure of Camilla. It was, to him, quite the most shapely in the business. It looks, he was thinking, particularly good in tropical uniform, and would no doubt look even better without it. Abandoning the pleasant fantasy he took the signal and bent over the plotting-table. A few minutes later he had the answer. ‘If the current behaves as it should, I make Restless's ETA 0340 tomorrow, plus or minus five minutes.’ He looked up from the plot. ‘At twenty knots that’s about six and a half hours’ steaming time.’