“Dicky to George. Firing now.”
“Very well. I’ll come in. Right standard rudder. Steer course one-one-zero.”
A single pillar of water in
Dodge’s
wake. Just the one shot, yet sufficient to deafen
Dodge’s
sonar.
“Sonar reports underwater explosion, sir.”
“Very well.”
“Sonar reports indications confused.”
“Very well.”
What had this U-boat captain been doing during his three minutes’ grace between
Dodge’s
arriving close to him and dropping the charge? Starboard? Port? His own sonar indications had not been very conclusive. And what was the U-boat doing now, with
Keeling’s
sonar deafened?
“Sonar reports contact bearing zero-seven-five, range fourteen hundred yards.”
So he had guessed wrong. Round after him.
“Left full rudder. Steer course zero-six-five. George to Dicky. Contact bearing zero-seven-five from me, range fourteen hundred yards.”
“Zero-seven-five. Aye aye, sir. I am turning to starboard.”
Round after him. Round again. Coach
Dodge
in against him. Jockey into position to drop a single depth-charge, resisting the temptation to make it a full pattern. Remember that this fellow might fire a spread at any moment. Keep the flagging mind alert. Think quickly. Forget the weary legs and the aching feet which had not, after all, gone numb. Keep from thinking about the ridiculous and yet penetrating need to get down to the head again. Round and round, ever on the alert for something to happen at any moment.
Something did.
Keeling
on one run,
Dodge
on another, had each dropped a charge. Hopeless to expect any results from such a feeble attack.
“After look-out reports sub astern.”
Krause leaped to the wing of the bridge. A grey shape showing there, a quarter of a mile away, bridge and hull in full view. The guns in the after gun-mounts began to fire. Wang-o, wang-o.
“Right full rudder!”
Next moment it was gone, plunging violently below the surface.
“Meet her! Steady as you go!”
“Sonar reports close contact dead ahead.”
“Mr Nourse!”
“Sub alongside! Sub alongside!”
That was a scream from the port-side look-out. Almost scraping alongside, not ten feet between them. Krause could have hit her with a rock if he had had a rock to throw. As it was there was nothing to throw. Not a depth-charge at the port-side “K”-gun; the five-inch could not depress so far. Tonk-tonk-tonk went the port-side 40 mm; Krause saw the splashes in the water beyond--it would not depress sufficiently either. Painted on the side of the U-boat’s bridge was a golden-haired angel in flowing white robes riding a white horse and brandishing a sword. The U-boat’s bow submerged again at a sharp angle and the bridge plunged forward into the water again. Bang-bang-bang-bang. Someone had got a fifty-calibre machine-gun into action too late.
“Left full rudder!”
Right in
Keeling’s
wake the U-boat broke surface again in a flurry of spray and vanished instantly, to reappear again and disappear again. The assumption was obvious that one of her bow-planes was jammed on rise. It might be an ordinary mechanical failure; it might be that one of those depth-charges had by a miracle exploded near enough to damage it.
“Right full rudder!” bellowed Krause, his voice loud enough to be heard from end to end of the ship.
Here was
Dodge
coming right towards them; in the excitement of finding a sub close alongside he had forgotten all about
Dodge,
who was coming in to the attack as she had every right to do. The two ships, no more than a cable’s length apart, were wheeling towards each other, heading for a common meeting point where the crash would be tremendous, fatal to both ships probably. Instinctive action, instinctive application of the ordinary rules of the road, saved them. Slowly each ship ceased to swing inwards; for a hair-raising moment inertia carried them on towards each other, and then the kick of the propellers against the turning rudders, the solid, wedgelike thrusts of the rudders against the water, swung the ships slowly outwards again.
Dodge
went past
Keeling’s
port side hardly farther than the sub had been a minute ago. Someone waved airily to Krause from
Dodge’s
bridge and then passed rapidly by at the combined speed of both ships. Krause found himself shaking a little, but as always there was no time to worry; not if he wanted to get
Keeling
into position to follow up the attack that
Dodge
was going to deliver.
“Meet her! “he roared. “Left full rudder!”
He went back into the pilot-house forcing himself to be calm; it was helpful to be greeted by the talker’s monotonous voice.
“Sonar reports contacts confused.”
Sonar down below was doing its job in an orderly fashion, whether ignorant or not of all the things that were going on topside.
“Meet her! Steady as you go!“
He was judging
Dodge’s
course by eye, and trying to anticipate the sub’s next move.
“Dicky to George! Dicky to George!”
“George to Dicky. Go ahead.”
“We’ve no contact, sir. Must be too close.”
Yesterday that situation would have called instantly for a full pattern of depth-charges; today there was no question of wasting all
Dodge’s
remaining offensive power on the ten-to-one chance that the sub was near enough within the possible three-hundred-yard circle to receive damage.
“Hold your present course. I’ll cross your stem.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Left standard rudder! Meet her! Steady as you go!“
“Steady on course - - “ said the helmsman; Krause had no ears for the figures; he was planning to pass across
Dodge’s
wake sufficiently far from her to give his sonar a chance to pick up an echo from the sub;
Dodge
would be going twice as fast as the sub, so that was the area to search. With a jammed plane the sub could with care manage to keep submerged by trimming her ballast tanks; even below the surface she might manage to clear . . .
“George! George! Here he is!”
Krause looked forward over the starboard bow at
Dodge.
There was nothing to see except the little ship steaming along apparently peacefully.
“Too close!” said the T.B.S., and at the same time through the ear-phones came the sound of gunfire, echoed a second later over the air.
Dodge
was turning rapidly to port. Guns were firing; over the water came the sound of small-calibre machine-guns. Round came
Dodge.
Grey against her grey side was something else, the surfaced U-boat, bow to stern with her, circling as she circled, each ship chasing the other’s tail. As
Dodge
came broadside on to Krause’s view a great red eye opened in
Dodge’s
side and winked once at Krause. A pillar of water rose in the sea half-way between them; something black shot out of the base of the pillar, turning end-over-end with incredible rapidity, rising out of Krause’s sight and roaring overhead with a sound like the fastest underground train ever heard.
Dodge
had banged off her four-inch at extreme depression and the shell had ricochetted from the surface, luckily bouncing high enough to pass over
Keeling.
Hard to blame the gunners; with
Dodge
turning so rapidly and
Keeling
crossing her stern the situation was changing so rapidly they could not have guessed that
Keeling
would come into the line of fire.
Other bangs, other rattles, as the ships wheeled. The U-boat captain must have despaired of effecting a repair and come to the surface to fight it out. Close alongside
Dodge,
his men must have run to their guns over the streaming decks as she emerged. And, closer to the surface than
Dodge’s
gun, her gun would bear on
Dodge’s
loftier side while
Dodge’s
gun would not depress sufficiently. And what would that four-inch do to that fragile little ship?
In a moment, it seemed, they had turned the half-circle and
Dodge’s
bow and the U-boat’s stern were presented to Krause’s view; already the U-boat was disappearing behind
Dodge
on the other side.
“Right full rudder!” said Krause. He had been so fascinated by the sight that he was allowing
Keeling
to steam straight on away from the fight. “Meet her! Steady as you go! “
“Steady on course - - “
“Very well Captain to gunnery control. ‘Stand by until you have a chance at a clear shot.’ “
A sudden flare-up forward in
Dodge;
smoke pouring from her below her bridge. The U-boat had scored one hit at least. The embattled ships were coming round again, and he was going in the opposite direction, hovering on the outskirts like a distracted old lady whose pet dog had engaged in a fight with another dog.
“Gunnery control answers ‘Aye aye, sir.’ “
He must get clear, turn, and come in again. With cool judgment and accurate timing he could break into the battle. He would have to ram, picking the U-boat off
Dodge’s
side as he might pick off a tick. It would be a tricky thing to do. And he might easily tear the bottom out of
Keeling,
but it was worth trying, even in the face of that probability. They were turning counter-clockwise; best if he came in counter-clockwise too. That would give him more chance.
“Left standard rudder! Meet her! Steady as you go! “
Endless seconds as
Keeling
drew away from the fight. He had to allow himself sufficient distance to time his run-in. Krause watched the increasing distance. He had his glasses to his eyes; as they came round again he could see the figures on the U-boat’s deck; he saw two of them drop suddenly, inert, as bullets hit them.
“Left full rudder!” Long, long seconds as
Keeling
turned with exasperating slowness.
“Meet her!”
As Krause braced himself to make the run-in the situation changed in a flash. Keyed up and eager, watching through his glasses to time his movement exactly, he saw
Dodge’s
bow seemingly waver in the smoke that surrounded it. It was ceasing to turn to port. Compton-Clowes was putting his wheel over. The deduction exploded a further series of reactions on Krause’s part.
“Right standard rudder! Captain to gunnery control. ‘Stand by for target on port beam.’ Meet her! Steady as you go! Steady!”
Keeling’s
turn to starboard presented her whole port side to
Dodge
and the sub All five five-inch guns came training round as she turned, and at the same instant the sub with her wheel hard over and taken momentarily by surprise by
Dodge’s
abrupt alteration of rudder diverged from her. Ten yards--twenty yards--fifty yards of clear water divided the two ships, and before the U-boat could turn back into the sheltering embrace of her enemy the five-inch opened, like a peal of thunder in the next room, shaking
Keeling’s
hull as a fit of coughing will shake a man’s body. The sea seemed suddenly to pile up around the grey U-boat, the splashes were so close and so continuous around her; it was as if there was a hillock of water there, with the square grey bridge only dimly to be seen in the heart of it like an object in a glass paper-weight --and, in the heart of it, too, over and over again, a momentary orange glare as a shell burst. Also in the heart of it showed momentarily a vivid red disc, just once. Through the noise of the gunfire and the vibration of the recoil Krause heard a rending crash and felt
Keeling
undergo a violent shock which made everyone on the bridge stagger; a shock wave like a sudden breath passed into and out of the pilot-house. And before they had steadied themselves the guns fell silent, ending their fire abruptly, so that Krause was conscious of a moment’s unnatural silence, just long enough for him to feel fear lest the main armament had somehow been put out of action. But a glance reassured him. The U-boat was gone. There was nothing in the foaming water over there. The eye-pieces of the binoculars which he raised again to his eyes beat against his eyelashes until he forced his hands to quiet themselves. Nothing? Surely there were some things floating there. And something came and went, came and went again; not strange-shaped wave-tops but two huge bubbles bursting in succession on the surface.
In that moment the unnatural silence was ended and Krause became conscious of sounds close beside him, snap-pings and hangings, and voices. From the wing of the bridge he looked down aft, and what he saw first was a bird’s nest of twisted iron seen dimly through smoke. It was an effort to recall what he should have seen there. The port-side 20-mm. gun tub just abaft the stack was gone, gone. Below it the deck was riven and twisted, with smoke eddying from it, and at the root of the smoke a glimmer of flame visible in the pale daylight, and, just beyond, the torpedoes in their quadruple mount with their brassy warheads. There shot up in Krause’s mind the recollection of the Dahlgren experiment just before the war when it was proved--to the satisfaction of all except those who died-- that TNT. detonated after a few minutes’ steady cooking.
Petty, the damage-control officer, hatless and excited, was running to the spot with a team following him. He should not have left his central post. They were dragging hoses. Krause remembered suddenly what there was stored there.
“Belay those hoses!“ he bellowed. “That’s gasoline! Use foam!”
One hundred gallons of gasoline in two fifty-gallon drums, for the motor whale-boat which
Keeling
carried. Krause swore a bitter vow that in future he would have a Diesel boat, or else no boat at all; at any rate no gasoline.
Those drums must have burst and the fiery stuff was spreading. The flames were reaching eagerly for the torpedoes.
“Jettison those fish!“ hailed Krause.
“Aye aye, sir,” answered Petty, looking up at him, but Krause doubted if he had understood what had been said. The flames were roaring up. Flint, the ageing Chief recalled from Fleet Reserve, was there and looked more sensible.
The convoy was perilously near. He did not dare launch live torpedoes. Krause had been a destroyer officer most of his professional life; for years he had lived with torpedoes in consequence, visualizing their use in every possible situation--save perhaps this one. The old dreams of charging in upon a column of battleships for a torpedo attack had no place here. But at least he was familiar with every detail of the handling of torpedoes.