Dive in the Sun (5 page)

He snapped the fingers of his free hand, and spoke from the side of his mouth, in short, brittle sentences.

‘Ian, look on the chart. Viserba lighthouse. Has it got a sort of domed roof, like an observatory? If it has, stand by to take a fix!’

He felt the pad pressing against his damp forehead, and wanted to shout at Jervis to get a move on. Instead he peered quickly round at the open sea behind him. Still empty. Not even a white-capped wave to mar the glossy sheen of green glass.

‘Yes, sir. Viserba lighthouse it is!’ Jervis sounded excited.

He felt a surge of relief flood through him. They were at least on course and running to time. They had passed Rimini in the darkness, and somewhere over the shoulder of that green headland lay Vigoria, and the dock.

The handle of the periscope slithered under the sweat in his palm and a tremor of cramp explored his thighs, but he hardly noticed. His brain worked rapidly and coolly, and for a moment the sickness of his stomach subsided.

‘Take a fix.’ He watched the lighthouse drift across his sight. ‘Lighthouse bears Red one-four-five. The stone beacon on the headland bears Red one-oh. Got it?’

‘Ship’s head three-five-oh,’ chanted Taylor from behind the compass.

‘Give me a fresh course for the next leg, Ian. We’ll alter course in five minutes from the time of the fix.’

Duncan’s slow voice broke in on his racing thoughts.

‘Say, Ralph, aren’t you keeping the stick up for a bit too long? I mean, some joker may be having a look-see with some mighty powerful glasses.’

Curtis bit his lip. He knew that Duncan was right. It was almost the first lesson he had learned, but something twisted inside him, making him keep the periscope fixed on the shore.

‘You attend to your job, Number One, and then I can do mine.’

The words were an implied insult to Duncan’s ability to
keep
the boat steady, but the voice still drawled across the control-room, slow and unperturbed.

‘Just thought you ought to be reminded, that’s all.’

‘New course, three-five-nine.’ Jervis’s voice had gone suddenly quiet and troubled.

Curtis wanted to scream at them, to drive his fist into Duncan’s face, anything to shut up their stupid voices once and for all.

The lighthouse passed out of his vision as he viciously jerked the handle round.

A tiny bird glinted in the sun’s light and dipped towards him. The sea was lighter now, and he could imagine the first hint of the warmth to come. He shivered miserably. Soon the little cottages would be alive with people, and the narrow tracks down to the white beaches would be filled with chatter and laughter. It was a different world, where a man could live and be free, could love and find happiness. While he…. He shuddered again, and swung the periscope to search for the lonely sea-bird.

The whole lens suddenly filled, and he stared in chilled horror at the wide, silver wings and the flashing arcs of the twin propellers. The periscope hissed down into its well, and he stared blindly at the depth gauge.

‘Dive, dive, dive! One hundred and twenty feet! Hard a-starboard!’

He listened helplessly to the water surging into the tanks, and felt the deck cant and stagger beneath his feet.

In a strange, harsh voice he said, ‘Enemy aircraft overhead. Coming straight for us!’

He tried to shut out the picture which filled his aching mind, of the aircraft’s bombs plummeting down into the crystal-clear water, of the one short moment of horror before their broken hull sank swiftly to the bottom.

You fool! You damned, bloody fool! He ground his teeth together to stem the anguish which was tormenting him, and tried to concentrate on the swinging compass.

‘Meet her, steer oh-nine-oh!’

Still nothing happened. Perhaps the plane hadn’t seen them.
Perhaps
it had been moving too fast and too close to the surface to spot the short shadow of the midget submarine.

‘Captain, sir!’ Jervis’s strangled voice was shaking with emotion. ‘Maximum depth here is one hundred feet!’

The words struck his mind like an ice-pick, and he swung round to stare at the boy’s white face, the edge of the chart crumpled under his fist. Then, reading the despair on his face, he wrenched his eyes to the gleaming dial of the depth gauge.

The long, slender needle crept remorselessly round. Eighty-five feet. Ninety feet. The boat plunged steadily towards the bottom.

‘Hold her, Steve! Hold her!’

He saw Duncan’s body stiffen as the man wrenched urgently at the controls.

The next few seconds lasted a lifetime. It was a race between the emergency air supply roaring into the tanks, and the deadly, wavering depth needle.

Some of the angle lessened in the deck, and the dive gradually slowed its pace. Then with a sickening lurch, which flung Curtis in a heap on the deck, the hull struck the first sand-bar. Like a mad porpoise she bounded across it, and struck again, the toughened metal scraping and jolting in protest. Curtis tried to regain his feet, and saw Jervis clinging desperately to the lockers, his eyes closed, his lips pressed into a thin line.

The lights flickered and then recovered, as the boat bumped and heaved across the bottom.

Duncan’s face was wet with sweat, and his normally calm eyes were wild. ‘I’m holdin’ her! Come on, old girl, steady now!’ Another bump made him curse, and stagger in his seat.

Curtis’s voice was flat and without emotion as he took over control once more, and with the blood pounding in his ears he settled the boat slowly on the bottom. The unbroken purr of the electric motor died away, and the shaken vibration of the hull settled into a pregnant stillness.

For a while no one spoke. The condensation began to drip heavily across their heads, yet nobody moved. They were like four stricken corpses.

Duncan slowly recovered and released his hands from the controls. He seemed to prise his fingers free, and as he drew in a long intake of breath the others began to move from their carved positions.

Curtis felt the weakness flooding through his trembling body, and wanted to vomit.

He said suddenly, ‘Sorry, chaps. I’m afraid I made a muck of that.’

Taylor turned gingerly in his seat, as if afraid that any small movement would start the submarine on its mad capering once more. ‘Bit er bad luck that! Just as well you spotted the bastard, sir!’

Duncan laughed softly. ‘Yes, Ralph. A bit of luck.’

Curtis looked at him dully, aware of the stillness and the tension, but mostly aware of the contempt in Duncan’s cold eyes.

Taylor glanced anxiously from one to the other. He sensed that something worse was about to happen. Something more dangerous and impossible than anything that the enemy could do. He must do something and damned quick. The captain had lost his nerve at the time, possibly. Didn’t we all? And old Steve was looking a bit nasty, too, but something must be done before it got any worse and the strong link of their friendship and loyalty was broken.

‘Er, d’you reckon they saw us, sir?’ Taylor’s voice was unnaturally casual. ‘Will it make much difference to us if they did?’

Curtis fumbled blindly with the chart, his eyes misty. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps they didn’t.’

‘No, maybe they thought we was a whale.’ Duncan crossed his legs carefully. ‘Don’t kid yourself, George. They saw us. They’ve probably got every damned Eye-tie alerted from here to the Vatican! It’ll be a really good do now! Too right it will!’ He spat angrily on the deck.

Jervis ran his fingers across his damp face. ‘Well, we knew it would be a risk coming up here at all.’ There was a pathetic defiance in his voice, and Duncan’s hard stare softened.

‘Sure, kid. But we don’t have to waddle about the surface like flamin’ ducks, do we?’

Curtis turned wearily towards the forward door. The bunk
in
the tiny battery compartment seemed the only place to hide from the implied insults.

‘We shall carry on as arranged.’ He stared at each of them in turn, his eyes burning in their sockets with the effort. ‘Try and get some sleep; we’ll need all we can get. We’ll start our run-in at eighteen hundred.’ He looked lastly at Duncan, half hoping that the old, lop-sided grin would come back. But the Australian’s eyes were indifferent, and without waiting for Curtis to say more, he yawned and began to search for the electric kettle.

In the stinking darkness of the battery compartment Curtis laid wide-eyed and stiff on the narrow bunk, each muscle and nerve stretched and taut.

He heard Duncan’s laugh and Taylor’s tuneless whistle, and as he laid staring at nothing he felt already excluded from their world, and so sudden and terrifying had been his complete collapse that even then he was unable to grasp the magnitude of the disaster.

As the rim of the sun dipped towards the edge of the hidden horizon the midget submarine encountered the first net. Although the speed of the boat was only a little above one knot, and even though they had all been tensely waiting for just such a moment, each man recoiled with the sudden shock, and waited breathlessly for the motor to slow even more and the harsh grating of the groping mesh to quieten sullenly as it sagged against the craft’s blunt bows.

Jervis was already dressed in his tight diving suit, and sat uncomfortably in the “W and D” compartment, his face white against the dark skin of the shining costume.

It had been terrible, waiting on the bottom for the coming of darkness, with his imagination torturing his thoughts and preventing the sleep which he craved so desperately. Coupled with that, the brittle atmosphere within the boat and unusual silence between his companions built up a fresh uneasiness, which the promise of action did little to dispel.

He grinned lamely as Duncan craned his body round to squint at him through the narrow watertight door.

‘All set? Ready to have a go, kid?’

Jervis nodded stiffly, the suit already dragging on his body. ‘Shan’t be sorry to get out and stretch my legs!’

Curtis scrambled across the control-room, his face tight and grim. His eyes darted from the diving suit to the depth gauge, which stood steady at thirty feet. The slow turning screw of the boat kept her solidly against the net in the exact position required for her to burst through, as soon as the tough mesh had been cut.

Without speaking, Curtis connected the oxygen supply and gently fixed the boy’s nose-clip in position. For a moment his blue, troubled eyes rested on Jervis’s face, and a brief smile of encouragement softened his hard expression. He gripped his hand tightly, the only part of his body to be left uncovered, and when he spoke his voice was quiet but surprisingly strong and steady.

‘Take it easy, Ian. If you find you can’t manage it alone, one of us’ll come out and give you a hand.’ The grip of Jervis’s hand tightened. ‘Promise me you won’t do anything crazy. We’ve got plenty of time for this job, and there’s no need for heroics.’

Jervis nodded, and moistened his lips. ‘I’ll be careful, Skipper.’

Taylor, sitting straddle-legged at the wheel, called hoarsely, ‘Good luck! Don’t take too long outside!’

Curtis snapped the circular face-piece in position and clipped it tight.

Jervis watched the preparations, suddenly aware of the great silence and feeling of loneliness.

Without another glance Curtis closed the watertight door, and the diver was quite alone.

He perched his body carefully on the edge of the “heads”, and began to breathe in regular, steady gulps of canned air. The compartment was so small that it always reminded him of the cupboard under the stairs at school, where he had nearly suffocated when locked in for a prank. The sides brushed his shoulders and his head was only inches beneath the curved deckhead.

Shutting out the urge to panic, he reached out and twisted the valve which would flood his tiny compartment and enable him to escape to the outside.

The pump started, and within seconds he felt the water swirling across his feet in an angry torment. Up and up, pressing the suit against his legs in a cool embrace, the water was soon lapping his buttocks and exploring his thighs. Nervously he plunged his hands deep, to accustom them to its temperature and to be ready for the work outside the hull. It was warmer than he had expected, and he placed them on his knees and watched them sink into the rising water like two pink crabs. Over his chest, around his neck, and with a sudden flurry, over his head. He was completely submerged. He waited a moment longer, and then, satisfied that the pump had ceased and conscious of the pounding of his heart, he allowed one arm to swim upwards to release the clips on the hatch. Holding carefully to the rim of the hatch, Jervis rose smoothly through the circular opening.

Once clear, he twisted his body round, his limbs turning lazily to the pull of the water, until he faced the night-periscope, where he knew the skipper would be watching him, and gave the thumbs-up sign. A cloud of tiny silver air-bubbles, released from the folds of his suit, scattered towards the surface, and he lifted his face to watch them disappear above him. Already his fears were beginning to die, and in their place came the usual feeling of wild exhilaration which the very sensation of diving seemed to bring. He watched, wide eyed, the strange ceiling of the sea, less than thirty feet over his head, a vast, undulating sheet of green glass, speckled and spanned with long gold braids from the setting sun. Occasionally little groups of fish darted towards him, only to halt quivering in their flight before hurrying nervously away from the strange creature before them.

Jervis moved slowly and leisurely along the dark casing of the hull, fascinated by the huge, towering shape of the net which wavered towards the boat like a spider’s web grappling with a fly. He released the powerful wire-cutter from its pocket inside the casing and gingerly took hold of the nearest mesh.

Beneath him the submarine was poised and still but for the faint tremor of the slow-turning screw and the ribbons of weed which danced lazily from the hydroplanes.

Jervis felt almost sorry for his companions cooped up in their steel shell, and wondered briefly what they were talking about.