The fact that
James
was running down a contact at some distance from the convoy, with
Viktor
to help her, was not sufficient justification for sounding the general alarm; it was likely that dozens more such contacts would be reported before the convoy reached home. So Krause said “No” in reply to Carling’s unvoiced enquiry. Glance, decision, and reply consumed no more than two or three seconds of time. It would have taken at least several minutes for Krause to have given verbally all the reasons for that decision; it would have taken a minute or two at least for him to assemble them in his mind. But long habit and long experience made the reaching of decisions easy to him, and long thought had familiarized his mind beforehand with the conditions surrounding this particular emergency.
And at the same time his memory made a note of the incident, even though apparently it passed out of his mind as soon as it was disposed of. Carling’s readiness to sound general quarters was an item added to Krause’s mental dossier about Carling. It would affect, to some possibly infinitesimal extent, how much Krause could trust Carling as officer of the deck. It might eventually affect the “fitness report” which in course of time Krause would be making on Carling (assuming both of them lived long enough for that report to be made) with special bearing on the paragraph regarding Carling’s “fitness for command.” A tiny incident, one in thousands that made a complex whole.
Krause picked up his binoculars, hung them round his neck, and trained them towards the convoy. In the crowded pilot-house it was impossible to get a clear sight, and he stepped out on to the port wing of the bridge. The transition was instant and prodigious. The north-east wind, almost from dead ahead on this course, shrieked round him. As he raised the glasses to his eyes his right armpit felt the bitter cold strike into it. He should be wearing his sweater and his greatcoat; he would have been doing so if he had been left undisturbed for a minute longer in his sea-cabin.
They were passing the convoy flagship, an ancient passenger vessel with upper works lofty in comparison with the rest of the convoy. The convoy commodore whose pennant flew in her was an elderly British admiral back from retirement, undertaking a difficult, monotonous, dangerous and inglorious duty of his own free will, as of course he ought to do as long as the opportunity presented itself, even though that meant being under the orders of a young Commander of another nation. His present duty was to keep the ships of the convoy as nearly in order as possible, so as to give the escort every chance of protecting it.
Beyond the convoy flagship the rest of the convoy spread itself in irregular lines; Krause swept his binoculars round to examine them. The lines were certainly irregular, but not nearly as irregular as they had been when he had examined them at the end of the night, in the first light of dawn. Then the third column from starboard had been revealed in two halves, with the last three ships--five ships in that column, four in each of the others --trailing far astern, out of the formation altogether. Now the gap had been nearly closed. Presumably No. 3 ship, the Norwegian
Kong Gustav,
had experienced an engine-room defect during the night and had fallen astern; in the radio silence and the blackout that were so strictly-enforced, and with flag signals invisible in the darkness, she had been unable to inform the others of her plight, and had fallen farther and farther astern, with the ships following her conforming to her movements. Apparently the defect had been made good and
Kong Gustav
and her two followers were slowly crawling up into position again. The
Southland,
immediately astern of
Kong Gustav
-
Krause had checked the name on his list soon after dawn --was smoking badly, perhaps in the effort to steam an extra half-knot to regain station, and several other ships were making more smoke than they should. Luckily, with the wind from ahead, and blowing hard, the smoke was lying low and dispersing rapidly. In calmer conditions the convoy would have been surmounted by a pillar of cloud visible fifty miles away. The Commodore had a signal-hoist flying--almost for certain it was the signal so frequently displayed in every navy--”Make less smoke.”
But conditions in the convoy could generally be described as good, with only three ships badly out of station and only a certain amount of smoke being made. There was time for a rapid glance round the
Keeling;
significant it was that Krause’s first care had been for the convoy and only his second care had been for his own ship. He lowered his binoculars and turned to look forward, the wind hitting him in the face as he did so, and, along with the wind, a few drops of spray hurled aft from the heaving bows. Aloft, the “bed-spring” of the radar antenna was making its methodical gyrations, turning round and round while the mast, with the rolling and pitching, was outlining cones, apex downward, of every conceivable dimension. The look-outs were at their posts, seven of them, all bundled-up in their arctic clothing, their eyes at the binoculars in the rests in front of them, traversing slowly to left and to right and back again, each sweeping his own special sector, but with each having to pause every few seconds to wipe from the object-glasses the spray flying back from the bows. Krause gave the look-outs a moment’s inspection; Carling, with his mind preoccupied with the duty of taking the ship to her new station, would not be giving them a glance at present. They seemed to be doing their work conscientiously; sometimes--unbelievable though it might be--look-outs were found wanting in that respect, tiring of a monotonous job despite frequent relief. It was a duty that had to be carried out with the utmost pains and method, without an instant’s interruption; a U-boat would never expose more than a foot or two of periscope above the surface of the sea, and never for more than half a minute at most; search had to be constant and regular to give any chance, not speaking of probability, of the transient appearance being detected. A second’s glimpse of a periscope could decide the fate of the convoy. There was even the chance that the sight of torpedo wakes streaking towards the ship and instantly reported might at least save the
Keeling.
This was as long as he dared stay out on the wing of the bridge; half his force was heading towards battle out there to port--
Viktor
had “peeled off” to join
James
some time ago--and he must be at the T.B.S. to exert control if necessary. Young Hart was approaching the port pelorus to take the bearings for Carling in his task of taking up station. Krause gave him a nod and went back into the wheel-house. The comparative warmth of it reminded him that in that brief time outside, without sweater or P-jacket, he had been chilled through. He stepped to the telephone; it was bleating and gurgling. He was overhearing the conversations between the British officers in
James
and
Viktor.
“Bearing three-six-oh,” said one English voice.
“Can’t you get the range, old boy?” said another.
“No, damn it. Contact’s too indistinct. Haven’t you picked it up yet?”
“Not yet. We’ve swept that sector twice.”
“Come ahead slowly.”
From where Krause stood
James
was indistinguishable in the murk of the near horizon. She was only a little ship and her upper-works were not lofty.
Viktor
was bigger and higher and nearer; he could still see her, but she was already vague. With visibility so poor and the ships separating rapidly he would not have her in sight much longer although she would be prominent enough on the radar screen. Carling’s voice suddenly made itself audible; he may have been speaking before but Krause, concentrating on the T.B.S., had not listened to him, as what he was saying had no bearing on the problem in hand.
“Right standard rudder. Steer course zero-seven-nine,” said Carling.
“Right standard rudder. Course zero-seven-nine,” repeated Parker.
Keeling
was at her new station now, or near it, evidently. She swung round, turning her stern almost directly towards
Viktor.
The distance between the two ships would now be widening more rapidly than before.
Keeling
rolled deeply to starboard, unexpectedly; feet slipped on the pilot-house deck, hands grabbed for security. Her turn had brought her into the hollow of the next roller without the opportunity to lift to it. She lay over for a long second, levelled herself abruptly, and equally abruptly lay over to port as the roller passed under her keel, so that feet slipped in the opposite direction and Carling came sliding down upon Krause.
“Sorry, sir,” said Carling.
“All right.”
“Steady on zero-seven-nine,” announced Parker.
“Very well,” answered Carling, and then to Krause, “Next zigzag is due in five minutes, sir.”
“Very well,” said Krause in his turn. It was one of his standing orders that he should be called five minutes before any change of course on the part of the convoy. The turn would bring the convoy’s sterns exactly towards
Viktor
and
James.
It was nine minutes since
James
had peeled off; she must be more than three miles from her station now, and the distance would be increasing by a quarter or even half a mile every minute. Her maximum speed in this sea would not be more than sixteen knots. It would take her half an hour--and that half-hour one of maximum fuel consumption--to retain her station if he recalled her now. And every minute that he postponed doing so meant she would spend five extra minutes overtaking the convoy; in other words if he left her out there for five more minutes it would be a full hour before she would be back in her station. Another decision to be made.
“George to Harry,” he said into the telephone.
“I hear you, George.”
“How’s that contact of yours?”
“Not very good, sir.”
Sonar notoriously could be inconsistent. There was much more than a faint chance that
James
was pursuing something that was not a submarine. Possibly even a school of fish, more likely a layer of colder or warmer water, seeing that
Viktor
was finding difficulty in getting a cross-bearing on it.
“Is it worth following it up?”
“Well, sir. I think so, sir.”
If there really were a U-boat there the German captain would be well aware that contact had been made; he would have changed course radically, and would now be fish-tailing and varying his depth; that would account at least in large part for the unsatisfactory contact. There was a new German device for leaving a big bubble behind, producing a transient sonar effect baffling to the sonar operator. There might be some new unknown device more baffling still. There might be a U-boat there.
On the other hand, if there were, and if
James
and
Viktor
were recalled, it would be some minutes before the U-boat would venture to surface; she would be doubtful as to the bearing of the convoy which would be heading directly away from her; she would certainly not make more than sixteen knots on the surface in this sea and probably less. The risk involved in leaving her to her own devices had been considerably diminished by those few minutes of pursuit. There was the matter of the effect such a decision would have on his British and Polish subordinates; they might resent being called off from a promising hunt, and sulk on a later occasion--but that reply to his last question had not been enthusiastic, even allowing for British lack of emphasis.
“You’d better call it off, Harry,” said Krause in his flat, impersonal voice.
“Aye aye, sir.” The reply was in a tone that echoed his own.
“Eagle, Harry, rejoin the convoy and take up your previous stations.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
There was no guessing whether the decision had caused resentment or not.
“Commodore’s signalling for the change of course, sir,” reported Carling.
“Very well.”
This slow convoy did not zigzag in the fashion of fast convoys; the passage would be prolonged inordinately if it did. The alterations of course were made at long intervals, so long that it was impossible for merchant captains to maintain station on the difficult lines of bearing involved in the fast convoy system--it was hard enough for them to maintain simple column and line. Consequently every change of course meant a ponderous wheel to left or to right, only a matter of ten or fifteen degrees, but that was a major operation. One wing had to maintain speed while the other reduced speed. Leaders had to put their helms over gently, and it seemed as if the ships following would never learn the simple lesson that to follow their leaders round in a wheel to starboard it was necessary to wait and then to turn exactly where the ship ahead turned; to turn too soon meant that one found oneself on the starboard side of the leader, and threatening the ships in the column to starboard; to turn too late meant heading straight for the ships in the column to port. In either event there would be need to jockey oneself back into one’s proper place in the column; not too easily.
Moreover, in this wheeling movement of the whole mass, it was necessary for the ships in the outer flank to move faster than those in the inner flank, which actually meant--seeing that those on the outer flank were already steaming as hard as they could go--that the ships in the starboard column must reduce speed. The large mimeographed booklet of instructions issued to every captain laid down standard proportionate reductions in speed for every column, but to comply with those instructions meant leafing hurriedly through the booklet and doing a rapid calculation when the right place was found. And if the correct figure were ascertained there was still the difficulty of getting an unpractised engine-room staff to make an exact reduction in speed; and there was always the difficulty that every ship responded to the rudder in a different way, with a different turning circle.
Every wheel the convoy made was in consequence followed by a period of confusion. Lines and columns tended to open out, vastly increasing the area the escort had to guard, and there were always likely to be stragglers, and experience had long proved that a ship straggling from the formation would almost certainly be sent to the bottom. Krause went out on to the starboard wing of the bridge and levelled his binoculars at the convoy. He saw the string of flags at the Commodore’s halyards come down.