A Twist Of Sand

"Stop both," I ordered. "Silent routine." I gestured to John. "Tell them over the loudspeaker that I want absolute silence. Absolute. Do you understand? Their lives depend on it."

"Aye, aye, sir," he replied, but his glance was a mixture of curiosity and compassion. I know what he's bloody well thinking, I told myself. The skipper's imagining all this. He's fighting the old battles all over again. He knows the drill so well, you can't fault him. But the sea's empty and there isn't a whisper on the hydrophones. He's playing possum with his thoughts on some remote African beach; he's told no one where we are. They'll let him down lightly when this gets out because of his war record. But he's crazy; he is still in command.

I saw it all on his face.

A deathly hush settled over Trout after the impersonal crackle of John's voice over the loudspeaker. All pumps and all machines were still, and not a man said a word. ()ne could almost hear the crunch of the hard sand under Trout.

Bissett's voice came muffled.

"Hydrophone operator reports no transmissions, sir," said John. His voice was almost a whisper.

"Unless there is something to report, tell him to keep quiet," I said. Blohm and Voss alone knows what listening apparatus NP I has. I couldn't afford to take one slightest chance.

I stood by the periscope, its clipped-up handles making it look vaguely like a spaniel with its ears tied back above its head. The operators stood by their unmoving dials, and in the immobile engine-room I could see Macfadden gazing, apparently with the vacancy of a lunatic, at the dead telegraphs. Mac was very much on the job, however, and I couldn't have hoped for a better engineer — or a more stable man under attack. Trout lay under the sea like the puff-adders lie in the desert sand — immobile, asleep, coiled, but quick as a dart when trodden on amid their dun surroundings. So Trout lay — waiting, listening for that strange bubbling, thumping noise which I construed to be NP I's engines.

With the air-conditioning machinery switched off — for what it was worth — the sweat started to trickle down the back of my neck. John's face glistened in the high humidity. The clock hand moved round. Silence. A great silence, only broken by the occasional soft thump as Trout nuzzled the unfriendly sand under her. An hour passed. I was almost startled to see one of the crew move silently to request permission to visit the heads — he had removed his shoes and socks and was padding about barefooted. In the engine-room men had stripped off their shirts, and the sweat ran in runnels from their bare, browned torsos — legacy of the cruising days in the sun. Let them sweat it out, I thought unfeelingly.

Two hours. Three hours. We stood to action stations without exchanging a word. The heat was becoming very oppressive. No one had eaten anything since the call to action stations. I called John and gave him instructions to have bullybeef sandwiches served all round.

"Tell the cook," I added, "that if he so much as drops a knife, he'll stop right away and no one will get a morsel."

"Aye, aye, sir," John said formally.

The sandwiches provided a welcome break in the long vigil. It was now past noon. The smell of humans, mixed with oil, so characteristic of submarines, hung heavy in the staling air. My own sweat stank rank; it stank of fear. You can smell a frightened crew, but this one wasn't. But their commanding officer was — terribly, frightfully afraid.

As the afternoon wore on, the fears which had gone underground since I had actually located Curva dos Dunas raised their heads, each one with two more heads attached to the original one. Suppose I had smelled out NP I's lair — was there any guarantee that she would return soon, even reasonably soon? With her apparently unlimited cruising range, she might be away weeks. I swore to myself that if I had to wait a week, or even two, I would do so. I had waited before. The French saying came to my mind: "Patience is bitter, but its fruits are sweet." In the balance of my doubts, I had the one great concrete fact: I had found a hide-out capable of being used by a marauding submarine which no one knew about. That it was navigable, I had only old Simon's charts to rely on, but they had proved themselves accurate enough. And there had been the strange noises which Trout had followed — I was still convinced, almost to her doom.

We waited.