Submarine

Bowles dragged gently back on his column, watched the bubble gliding for'd, felt the bow-up angle coming on the boat. He had done this so many times in his life, but this was to be the last surfacing until they returned from the patrol. The Old Man looked drawn, seemed edgier than usual: it had been a long day for him especially. Farge must have been carrying the secret in his mind for a while now. Perhaps, like Bowles, he was thankful that action was at last beginning.

'Stop blowing seven, six, four and two main ballast.'

Farge, happy with Orcus' stability on the surface, called from his periscope:

'On the surface! Open up.'

Bowles heard the far-away shout from the OOW at the top of the tower:

'Upper lid open.' Seconds later the voice-pipe cocks were opened and the bridge-intercom snicked when it was plugged in.

'Start the blower,' Farge ordered. He picked up the mike and turned over the state of the submarine to the bridge.

'I'm happy to take the submarine,' the OOW reported.

'You have the submarine,' Farge snapped.

'Aye, aye, sir. I have the submarine.'

Farge zipped up his anorak, slung his binoculars about his neck and disappeared into the tower. Bowles relaxed in his planeman's chair, waiting for the pipe, 'Red watch patrol routine'.

'Flood Q,' the MEO ordered. At war now, they were becoming used to flooding the emergency diving tank when on the surface.

'Start generating port side,' Farge yelled from the bridge.

The chuntering of the diesel sounded from aft and then the fresh, cold air was streaming through the boat. Bowles glanced up at the first lieutenant who was relaxing beside the passenger, Lieutenant Woolf-Gault, against the safety grilles surrounding the masts.

'It's been a full day. No leave-breakers, no drunks: reckon we deserve it, sir,' Bowles' answered, extricating his tobacco pouch.

The cox'n enjoyed this moment, snug in the red lighting of the control-room. Supper had been up to scratch: the first days of patrol were always all right, while the fresh veg. lasted. The cox'n lit his old pipe; he stretched his legs, oblivious to the subdued chatter around him. Murray, the navigating officer, was at the search periscope taking his last fix before the light of Ru Stoer faded below the horizon.

The cox'n felt a certain smugness, an emotion which he suspected Jimmy shared with him. Though Prout was twenty-six and fifteen years younger than his cox'n, Bowles respected him, particularly as Prout was losing his forced abruptness. This was his first Jimmy's job, which probably explained their initial strained relationship. And, since that bloody Woolf-Gault episode Prout and Bowles had drawn closer to each other, both relieved by the philosophical reaction of the ship's company. Orcus was welding into a taut ship under their new skipper.

The captain had dived the boat in Eddrachillis Bay during the early hours of that morning. He had kept them busy all day: bottoming, shutting-off for going deep, shutting-off for counter-attack, assuming the Ultra Quiet State — he had repeated the drills over and over again until he was satisfied. Emergency breakdowns in the engine-room and the spaces; escape drills — the whole shooting-match, until the hands were muttering. Even Jimmy got the sharp edge of Farge's tongue when he failed to settle at periscope depth when coming up from deep. Prout had been made to repeat the evolution five times before the Old Man would let him off the hook. Breakdowns, breakdowns, breakdowns; main vents in hand, plane failures, hydraulic failures, until everyone was fed up. Bowles too had become chokka: he'd begun to suspect that something special was up, forebodings which were confirmed later when the captain asked him along to his cabin before speaking to the rest of the ship's company.

Farge had bottomed the boat in three-hundred feet — and during that final drill, they would not have cracked a watch-glass. Bowles mustered in the fore-ends all the hands who could be spared from their duties. The chief radio supervisor rigged a mike to the tube space and from there with eighty per cent of his company around him, the captain talked over the broadcast. Bowles would never forget that scene: the tight-lipped, determined Farge, standing on the rungs of the fore-hatch ladder, the packed compartment jammed solid by his silent men.