Ferraby watched him, not with admiration or envy but with a futile hatred. Damn you, he thought, once more almost saying the words out loud: how can you be like that, why don’t you feel like me – or if you do, why don’t you show it? He turned away from the brisk figures and the glowing heat of the flames, his eyes traversing the arch of black sky overhead, a sky blotched and streaked by smoke and whirling sparks; he looked behind him, at the outer darkness which the fire could not pierce, the place where the submarines must be lying and watching them. No submarine within fifty miles could miss this beacon, no submarine within five could resist chancing a torpedo, no submarine within two could fail to hit the silhouetted target, the stationary prey. It was wicked to stop like this, just for a lot of damned merchant navy toughs . . .
A boat drew alongside, bumping and scraping: Lockhart called out: ‘Hook on forrard!’ There were sounds of scrambling: an anonymous voice, foreign, slightly breathless, said: ‘God bless you for stopping!’ The work of collection began.
It did not take long, save in their own minds; but coming towards the end of the long continued ordeal of the voyage, when there was no man in the ship who was not near to exhaustion, those minutes spent motionless in the limelight had a creeping and paralytic tension. It seemed impossible for them to take such a reckless chance, and not be punished for it; there was, in the war at sea, a certain limiting factor to bravery, and beyond that, fate stood waiting with a ferocious rebuke. ‘If we don’t buy it this time,’ said Wainwright, the torpedoman, standing by his depth-charges and staring at the flames, ‘Jerry doesn’t deserve to win the war.’ It did seem, indeed, that if Sorrel could be hit when she was zigzagging at fourteen knots, there wouldn’t be much trouble with Compass Rose; and as the minutes passed, while they collected three boatloads of survivors and a handful of swimmers, and the huge circle of fire gave its steady illumination, they seemed to be getting deeper and deeper into a situation from which they would never be able to retreat. The men who had work to do were lucky: the men who simply waited, like Ericson on the bridge or the stokers below the waterline, knew, in those few agonising minutes, the meaning of fear.
It never happened: that was the miracle of that night. Perhaps some U-boat fired and missed, perhaps those within range, content with their success, had submerged for safety’s sake and broken off the attack: at any rate, Compass Rose was allowed her extraordinary hazard, without having to settle the bill. When there were no more men to pick up, she got under way again: the returning pulse of her engine, heard and felt throughout the ship, came like some incredible last-minute respite, astonishing them all. But the pulse strengthened and quickened, in triumphant chorus, and she drew away from the flames and the smell of oil with her extra load of survivors snatched from the very mouth of danger, and her flaunting gesture unchallenged. They had taken the chance, and it had come off; mixed with the exhilaration of that triumph was a sober thankfulness for deliverance, a certain humility. Perhaps it would not do to think too much about it: perhaps it was better to bury the moment as quickly as possible, and forget it, and not take that chance again.
Another ship, on the opposite wing, went down at four o’clock, just before dawn; and then, as daylight strengthened and the rags of the convoy drew together again, they witnessed the last cruel item of the voyage.
Lagging behind with some engine defect, a third ship was hit, and began to settle down on her way to the bottom. She sank slowly, but owing to bad organisation, or the villainous list which the torpedoing gave her, no boats got away; for her crew, it was a time for swimming, for jumping into the water, and striking out away from the fatal downward suction, and trusting to luck. Compass Rose, dropping back to come to her aid, circled round as the ship began to disappear; and then, as she dipped below the level of the sea and the swirling ripples began to spread outwards from a central point which was no longer there, Ericson turned his ship’s bows towards the centre of disaster, and the bobbing heads which dotted the surface of the water. But it was not to be a straightforward rescue; for just as he was opening his mouth to give the order for lowering a boat, the asdic set picked up a contact, an undersea echo so crisp and well-defined that it could only be a U-boat.
Lockhart, at his Action Station in the asdic compartment, felt his heart miss a beat as he heard that echo. At last . . . He called through the open window: ‘Echo bearing two-two-five – moving left!’ and bent over the asdic set in acute concentration. Ericson increased the revolutions again, and turned away from the indicated bearing, meaning to increase the range: if they were to drop depth-charges, they would need a longer run-in to get up speed. In his turn, he called out: ‘What’s it look like, Number One?’ and Lockhart, hearing the harsh pinging noise and watching the mark on the recording set, said: ‘Submarine, sir – can’t be anything else.’ He continued to call out the bearing and the range of the contact: Ericson prepared to take the ship in, at attacking speed, and to drop a pattern of depth-charges on the way; and then, as Compass Rose turned inwards towards the target, gathering speed for the onslaught, they all noticed something which had escaped their attention before. The place where the U-boat lay, the point where they must drop their charges, was alive with swimming survivors.
The Captain drew in his breath sharply at the sight. There were about forty men in the water, concentrated in a small space: if he went ahead with the attack he must, for certain, kill them all. He knew well enough, as did everyone on board, the effect of depth-charges exploding underwater – the splitting crash which made the sea jump and boil and spout skywards, the aftermath of torn seaweed and dead fish which always littered the surface after the explosion. Now there were men instead of fish and seaweed, men swimming towards him in confidence and hope . . . And yet the U-boat was there, one of the pack which had been harassing and bleeding them for days on end, the destroying menace which must have priority, because of what it might do to other ships and other convoys in the future: he could hear the echo on the relay loudspeaker, he acknowledged Lockhart’s developed judgement where the asdic set was concerned. As the seconds sped by, and the range closed, he fought against his doubts, and against the softening instinct of mercy: the book said: ‘Attack at all costs’, and this was a page out of the book, and the men swimming in the water did not matter at all, when it was a question of bringing one of the killers to account.
But for a few moments longer he tried to gain support and confidence for what he had to do.
‘What’s it look like now, Number One?’
‘The same, sir – solid echo – exactly the right size – must be a U-boat.’
‘Is it moving?’
‘Very slowly.’
‘There are some men in the water, just about there.’
There was no answer. The range decreased as Compass Rose ran in: they were now within six hundred yards of the swimmers and the U-boat, the fatal coincidence which had to be ignored.
‘What’s it look like now?’ Ericson repeated.
‘Just the same – seems to be stationary – it’s the strongest contact we’ve ever had.’
‘There are some chaps in the water.’
‘Well, there’s a U-boat just underneath them.’
All right, then, thought Ericson, with a new unlooked-for access of brutality to help him: all right, we’ll go for the U-boat. With no more hesitation he gave the order: ‘Attacking – stand by!’ to the depth-charge positions aft: and having made this sickening choice he swept in to the attack with a deadened mind, intent only on one kind of kill, pretending there was no other.
Many of the men in the water waved wildly as they saw what was happening: some of them screamed, some threw themselves out of the ship’s path and thrashed furiously in the hope of reaching safety: others, slower-witted or nearer to exhaustion, still thought that Compass Rose was speeding to their rescue, and continued to wave and smile almost to their last moment . . . The ship came in like an avenging angel, cleaving the very centre of the knots of swimmers:
the amazement and horror on their faces was reflected aboard Compass Rose, where many of the crew, particularly among the depth-charge parties aft, could not believe what they were being called upon to do. Only two men did not share this horror: Ericson, who had shut and battened down his mind except to a single thought – the U-boat they must kill: and Ferraby, whose privilege it was to drop the depth-charges. ‘Serve you bloody well right!’ thought Ferraby as Compass Rose swept in among the swimmers, catching some of them in her screw, while the firing bell sounded and the charges rolled over the stern or were rocketed outwards from the throwers: ‘Serve you right – you nearly killed us last night, making us stop next door to that fire – now it’s our turn.’
There was a deadly pause, while for a few moments the men aboard Compass Rose and the men left behind in her wake stared at each other, in pity and fear and a kind of basic disbelief; and then with a huge hammer crack the depth-charges exploded.
Mercifully the details were hidden in the flurry and roar of the explosion; and the men must all have died instantly, shocked out of life by the tremendous pressure of the sea thrown up upon their bodies. But one freak item of the horror impressed itself on the memory. As the tormented water leapt upwards in a solid grey cloud, the single figure of a man was tossed high on the very plume of the fountain, a puppet figure of whirling arms and legs seeming to make, in death, wild gestures of anger and reproach. It appeared to hang a long time in the air, cursing them all, before falling back into the boiling sea.
When they ran back to the explosion area, with the asdic silent and the contact not regained, it was as if to some aquarium where poisoned water had killed every living thing. Men floated high on the surface like dead goldfish in a film of blood. Most of them were disintegrated, or pulped out of human shape. But half a dozen of them, who must have been on the edge of the explosion, had come to a tidier end: split open from chin to crutch, they had been as neatly gutted as any herring. Some seagulls were already busy on the scene, screaming with excitement and delight. Nothing else stirred.
No one looked at Ericson as they left that place: if they had done so, they might have been shocked by his expression and his extraordinary pallor. Now deep in self-torture, and appalled by what he had done, he had already decided that there had been no U-boat there in the first place: the contact was probably the torpedoed ship, sliding slowly to the bottom, or the disturbed water of her sinking. Either way, the slaughter which he had inflicted was something extra, a large entirely British-made contribution to the success of the voyage.
By the time they were past the Straits, and had smelt the burnt smell of Africa blowing across from Ceuta, and had shaped a course for Gibraltar harbour, they were all far off balance.
It had gone on too long, it had failed too horribly, it had cost too much. They had been at Action Stations for virtually eight days on end, missing hours of sleep, making do with scratch meals of cocoa and corned beef sandwiches, living all the time under recurrent anxieties which often reached a desperate tension. There had hardly been a moment of the voyage when they could forget the danger that lay in wait for them and the days of strain that stretched ahead, and relax and find peace. They had been hungry and dirty and tired from one sunrise to the next: they had lived in a ship crammed and disorganised by nearly three times her normal complement. Through it all, they had had to preserve an alertness and a keyed-up efficiency, hard enough to maintain even in normal circumstances.
The deadly part was that it had all been in vain, it had all been wasted: there could have been no more futile expense of endurance and nervous energy. Besides Sorrel, which was in a special category of disaster, they had lost fourteen ships out of the original twenty-one – two-thirds of the entire convoy, wiped out by a series of pack attacks so adroit and so ferocious that countermeasures had been quite futile. That was the most wretched element of the voyage – the inescapable sense of futility, the conviction that there were always more U-boats than escorts and that the U-boats could strike, and strike home, practically as they willed.
The escorts, and Compass Rose among them, seemed to have been beating the air all the time: they could do nothing save count the convoy’s losses at each dawn, and make, sometimes, a vain display of force which vanished like a trickle of water swallowed by an enormous sea. In the end, they had all sickened of the slaughter, and of the battle too.
To offset the mortal bleeding of the convoy, by far the worst of this or any other war, Viperous had sunk one U-boat: a second had probably been destroyed; and Compass Rose herself had collected 175 survivors – nearly twice the number of her own crew. But this seemed nothing much, when set alongside the total loss of lives: it seemed nothing much, when measured against the men they had depth-charged and killed, instead of saving: it seemed nothing much, when shadowed by the stricken figure of Sorrel’s captain, wordless and brooding at the back of their bridge as Compass Rose slid into the shelter of Gibraltar Harbour, under the huge Rock that dwarfed and mocked the tiny defeated ships below.
At half-past eight on the evening of their arrival, there was a knock on the door of the Captain’s cabin. Ericson, sitting in his armchair with a glass in his hand and a half-empty bottle of gin on the side table, called out: ‘Come in!’ in a voice from which all expression save an apathetic listlessness had vanished. He had been drinking steadily since four o’clock, in an attempt to forget or to blur the edges of certain scenes from their recent voyage. It had not been successful, as a glance at his face showed all too plainly.
In answer to his invitation three extraordinary figures entered the cabin: three tall, very fair men, all dressed alike in sky-blue suits of an excruciating cut, vivid shirts with thick brown stripes, and yellow pointed shoes. They stood before him, like a trio from some monstrous vaudeville act, looking down at the figure slumped in the chair with expressions half-doubtful, half-smiling: they had the air of men who expect to be recognised and welcomed, and yet are uncertain of their exact status in novel circumstances. They were like three public school boys who had strayed, by accident, into the headmaster’s side of the house.
The Captain stood up, rocking slightly on his feet, and focused his eyes with an effort. ‘Who—?’ he began, and then he suddenly recognised them. They were three of his late passengers, the captains of Norwegian ships, who had been living in the wardroom for the past three or four days after being picked up as survivors. The last time Ericson had seen them, they had been wearing what was left of their uniforms; now, it was clear, they had been ashore, and some Gibraltar outfitter had done his worst for them in the way of civilian clothes. It was a highly efficient disguise for men who, when properly dressed as ships’ captains, could exhibit a formidable air of competence and toughness.
The tallest and fairest of them, possibly the elected spokesman, took a pace forward, and said, in a voice just over the borderline of sobriety: ‘Good evening, Captain. We came back to thank you for our lives.’
Ericson blinked. ‘Didn’t recognise you,’ he said, his voice equally blurred. ‘Come in. Sit down. Have a drink.’
‘Thank you, no,’ said the first speaker.
‘Thank you, yes,’ said the man just behind him, with perverse readiness. ‘I wish to drink with this brave man who stopped his ship in the middle of a fire, and gave me my life.’
‘And me,’ said the third man, who had the worst suit and the vilest shirt of all, ‘me, I have the same wish, much stronger. And for my wife too, and my three children.’
‘That’s fine,’ said Ericson, a trifle embarrassed. ‘Let’s sit down. What’ll you have?’
But when they were all three provided with glasses, and had settled down on the hard cabin chairs, the conversation lagged. There had been a formal toast to their rescuer, and much repetition of the word ‘Skoal!’ each time they drank; apart from that, there did not seem much to say. Ericson was too near to his brooding thoughts to switch over to conviviality at such short notice; and the three visitors, who had clearly included
any number of bars in their shopping tour ashore, were further handicapped by their halting English. Ericson, with an effort, complimented them on their new and appalling clothes: there were more drinks, and more cries of ‘Skoal!’: and then a stonewall silence fell, one of those silences which demonstrate instantly that all the conversation which has gone before, no matter how lively, has been an arid social artifice. Finally it was broken by the first of the three captains, who leant forward in his chair and said solemnly: ‘We know that you have much to think about.’
‘Yes,’ said Ericson, ‘I’ve been thinking.’
‘You are sad?’
‘Yes,’ said Ericson again. ‘I’m pretty sad.’
The second captain leant forward in his turn. ‘The men in the water?’
Ericson nodded.
‘The men you had to kill?’ asked the third captain, completing the chorus.
‘The men I had to kill,’ repeated Ericson after a pause. He remembered having once seen a Russian play with dialogue like this. Perhaps Norwegian plays were the same.
‘It was necessary to do it,’ said the first captain decisively, and the other two nodded. ‘Yes,’ said the second. The third one said ‘Skoal!’ and drank deeply.
‘Maybe,’ answered Ericson. ‘But that didn’t make them look any prettier, did it?’
‘It is war,’ said the second captain.
‘Skoal!’ said the first.
‘I wash my hands, please,’ said the third.
When he came back, Ericson roused himself momentarily. ‘I really thought there was a submarine there,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.’ He realised how foolish that must sound, and he added: ‘I had to make up my mind. I’ve put it all in the report.’