A Twist of Sand

VI South of North

"luff! luff! luff! Get the sails off her, you sons-of-bitches! By the mark four! God, only four under her and it's coming up from south-west! See that over there, Mister Mate? No, not there — 326 degrees? Yes? Looks like porridge, but they're breakers. Clan Alpine. Alecto was there the year before too. No, you can't see it ordinarily, and Clan Alpine didn't either. Of course we're going in! No damn you, we had a good sight of the sun at Ponta da Marca and I reckon by now I can smell the Clan Alpine. Three hills. Magnificent bearing. Here — look at the chart. Don't be damn stupid, this is my own chart; the Germans think they know the coast, but this is my own and not even the Admiralty knows. Captain Williams! Bah, that chartman! I know Captain Williams. Farilhao Point… must make southing tonight or else we'll beat against the inshore current all day to-morrow… "

For hours the old man had been rambling. I sat by the bedside of my grandfather, old Captain Peace, who was indeed making his last landfall the hard way. Doctor Chelvers had told me when I arrived from London the previous night that by rights the old captain should have been dead days ago. Coronary thrombosis, not a stroke. But he was fighting it out to the last, although he had made his number to Lloyds.

I sat in the quiet room and listened to the old sailorman's phrases of the sea, in sharp contrast to the lovely Exe Valley, where everything was of that tender young green which one sees nowhere in the world except England, and nowhere lovelier in England than the Exe Valley.

Doctor Chelvers had said that morning that it might only be a matter of hours before old Captain Peace died, or it might be days. I looked at the weather-beaten face against the pillows, and thought of Trout and what was waiting for her. No peaceful sick-bed at the last for me! A sharp rattle from a depth-charge, or more likely the quiet, lethal whisper of a torpedo screw in the hydrophone operator's ears coming nearer… nearer… nearer…

London had been a failure. I had taken my chief's advice and tried to get drunk. I had given it up in disgust. Somewhere in the club had been that Intelligence man, but I never saw him. I had rung Wendy with the firm intention of spending one last night with her. Half-way there the air raid sirens went and the mood of depression became so strong that I never got as far as her flat. The thought of the sheer hopelessness of it all overwhelmed me. The absolute secrecy was a further burden. The prospects if the Germans made use of their frightful new weapon in the Atlantic, as they were bound to when NP I. returned from her successful cruise, were appalling. I decided to get out of London and see old Captain Peace before he died. The sight of the old sailor dying so manfully, with a flood of nautical phrases and oaths on his lips, affected me more even than unburdening my secret would have done. The old captain had been delirious off and on since my arrival the previous night. Now the salt of a sea life blew like spindrift through the sickroom.

The nurse came and took the dying man's pulse. She looked across at me and shook her head slightly She was middle-aged, bosomy, and kind. I have never yet encountered the blonde, glamorous nurse of the cinema sickroom. The more crow's feet at the corners of their eyes, the better nurses they have been.

"It's a wonder he has lasted all this time," she said "He must have a constitution like iron. You know, if thrombosis doesn't kill in the first attack, they sometimes linger on. The following fortnight is the dangerous time."

"You don't think he'll make it?" I asked. Death seemed everywhere.

She glanced at me keenly. "No, he can't. He is very near the end, now. You should take some rest yourself."

My laughter rang harshly in my own ears. Rest! I'd soon rest throughout eternity.

She came round the bed and stood looking down at me as I sat. "I don't know what your job is in this war, but you've been through it, I can see. Forget what has happened."

"Look," I said. "You're very kind to show an interest in me. All I can say is that I envy that old man dying in his bed."

Tears filled her eyes, and she hurried from the room.

NP I must have a base. That thought went through my mind, over and over again. The two naval chiefs were sure that she had not. I sat in the pleasant morning sunshine by old Captain Peace and turned the problem over in my mind, while from the bed came half-incoherent oaths, sailing-ship directions, mutterings all about winds and tides.

I tried to put myself in the place of the U-boat commander. The first thing, I thought, must be to rid myself of the fear which had engulfed me of this new frightful weapon. Was it, I asked myself again and again, quite as awe-inspiring as the Intelligence man had made out? Where was the flaw, the flaw of human fallibility? He had spoken of her radar as the Achilles heel. Well, that was one card in my hand, and likely to be a trump if well played. I projected myself into the skin of the U-boat commander Hans Tutte. Before I left the Admiralty I had asked for everything they had about him. Certainly the pipsqueak clerk had resented giving me the top-secret Admiralty appreciation of Tutte, but with my backing it seemed that I could ask what I wished. So also, I thought grimly, can a man on the eve of his execution.

Tutte was not the flamboyant extrovert that the great aces like Schepke and Prien were. The training of these great U-boat aces, their successes in early years and so on had been very similar. But when it came to attack, Tutte was different. There had been survivors' accounts of that dreadful blood-and-oil bath in the North Atlantic, some hysterical, some non-committal, but on putting them together I found that Tutte, daring, brave, resolute, was a master of the calculated risk. There was a fierce precision about his sinkings, even amid the tumult of burning ships, star shells and thudding torpedoes. It did not surprise me to read that his father had been a professor of mathematics. There had been throughout the momentary holding-off while he assessed the rate of risk and either he held back altogether, or struck with a rapid, deadly blow. His crew idolised him; there was warmth in the man to his crew and record of humanity towards boat survivors. One merchant first mate noted how, eight hours after Tutte had sunk his ship in one of those hideous melees in the North Atlantic at night, Tutte had surfaced alongside and passed a Thermos of coffee, some hunks of bread and a bottle of rum into the boat.

"The North Atlantic is a bastard," he had said in excellent English. "We sailors all know that. Steer such and such a course."

Imagine yourself such a man fresh from the North Atlantic, I told myself. Here is what Blohm and Voss says is the perfect U-boat. Reaction? First, call in your battle-trained officers and examine the new submarine in detail. I could imagine that conference in the as yet unliving control room of NP I.

Hans Tutte listens.

"Too big," says the first officer. "The new British corvettes and frigates turn on a sixpence. They'd get you in a clumsy big thing like this."

"All right for a straight fight with twenty knots, though," said the second thoughtfully. "Fast run in, no noise, torpedoes away, fast run out again."

The engineer is both thrilled and subdued. "Wonderful, if it all hangs together. But burn anything out at sea, and it would be a dockyard job."

"If the Royal Navy ever let you get home," said the first grimly.

"But she's big, and she'll be wonderful for the crew. The lack of confined space will keep up their morale wonderfully."

Hans Tutte leans against the periscope housing and weighs up the experience of his veteran U-boat men.

He says suddenly: "How long do you think men can stay submerged and retain their fighting efficiency? Number One?"

"You mean, sir, in relation to this, or the standard U-boat?"

"This."

"No surface, no action, just submerged?"

"Yes."

No. One pauses. "At a guess, I'd say twenty days."

Tutte surveys him judicially. "Number Two?"

"Maybe a month, but they'd be no match for anything when we came up."

"Engineer?"

"It's easier in the engine-room, sir. There's always something to keep my men fully occupied. Small things go wrong and need fixing. But a month is a long time… "

"Gentlemen," says Tutte coldly. "I have orders to carry out a cruise — without surfacing at all if possible."

The others gaze at him silently. He knows what is running through their minds, and the same doubts about morale and fighting efficiency are in his.

"No base," he added.

Number One coughs discreetly. "And the length of the cruise, sir?"

Tutte eyes him grimly. "The equivalent of once round the world — with action."

The U-boat service is too well disciplined to vent its surprise and dismay. Then Tutte smiles the smile for which his crew would follow him to the ends of the earth.

"I think, too, we must have a base, if it's only to surface and relax and see the sun. Not necessarily a naval base, for we have all our stores and torpedoes, but a base to relax in.

The U-boat Command disagrees with that. "Perhaps" he grins knowingly at his trusted officers — "once we are at sea the High Command might relent."

I sat long with this imaginary scene in my mind. Was it wishful thinking? I asked myself. I for one would have put forward the argument, as a submarine captain, of the need to relax and surface. What would happen in the interior of a submarine after a month under water? True, in NP I the air would not foul as in ordinary craft, but what about the stink of humanity, the accumulation of refuse if operating in enemy waters, and the green slime which would coat everything inside the U-boat? What would happen to the physical state of the men themselves? Would they get sick from some as yet unknown effects of long submersion? And — this was a wayward thought — was NP I quite foolproof in her machinery? Might there not be some poisonous exudation from this new-fangled nuclear propulsion? It came to me as I sat there in the pleasant sunshine that, perfect though NP I might be mechanically, the human element, particularly the human element trained in more conventional craft, would not stand up to the strain of the war at sea as well as her designers thought. NP I must find herself a haven, a nook away from the world. If I were Hans Tutte, that is what I would do. Somewhere safe to let the men smoke, swim and tan their bodies in the warm sun. This, I convinced myself, was the true Achilles heel of NP I. A base, a haven, a hidey-hole… she must have it.

The relief of having made some positive contribution to my problem was so great that it was some time before I realised that old Captain Peace was talking rationally. I saw that he was rational and his eyes had lost their uncomprehending look.

He stretched out his hand. "Geoffrey!" he exclaimed with pleasure. "Blast me, I never expected to have a real sailor at hand for my last voyage."

I muttered something about everything being well.

"Balls!" he said heartily. "I'm a dead duck, and you know it. What have you been doing with yourself? Why are you in England and not at sea? You didn't leave your submarine just to come and watch an old man die, did you?"

He rose up against his pillows with a burst of violent energy which had characterised him throughout his life.

England's enemies, beware of men like old Captain Peace, I thought to myself.

"No," I said steadily and I saw it cheered him at once. "Special orders."

"No tell, eh? "he laughed.

What the hell, I thought suddenly to myself. Why not tell him? He'd probably be dead before nightfall anyway. Somewhere in that vast accumulation of sea lore there might be something which would help me sink NP I. It would also help me, the unburdening of this terrible secret. I got up and closed the door.

I told him about my mission. I told him the details, the pros and the massive cons; I told him about Hans Tutte and what I would do in his place; I told him that I was convinced that NP I needed a base — of sorts. The old man's eyes gleamed and then filled with tears.

"Geoffrey," he said in a whisper. "It breaks my heart to know what England has against her, and I can't do a mortal bloody damn about it." Then the self-pity died out of his voice and he asked strongly: "Where is NP I going to operate?"

"In the South Atlantic," I replied.

"If only I had a ship," he exclaimed. "God, I know it like my hand. None of the islands. Plenty of skulking holes in South America, though, but not the place for a rest cure with that climate. I'd go for Africa, if it were me. Too many people around, too, and the Navy is not so stupid that it wouldn't search across the trade routes to Buenos Aires. That's what put Harwood on to the Graf Spee," he chuckled.

"Africa has the same disadvantages," I pointed out.

"Bad climate in the tropics, too many people. Even if they are blacks."

"South West Africa," cried the old man waving a pyjamaed arm." He was very excited.

"Not a harbour worth a damn between Tiger Bay, Walvis Bay and Cape Town," I said, bitterly disappointed now that I had mentioned the operation to a wandering old man on his death-bed. "I mentioned it to the Admiralty."

"God's truth!" roared the old sailor. "Admiralty! Why, that Captain Williams hydrographer-bastard wouldn't even look at my soundings. Get me a chart, boy — in my desk. No, not the Admiralty one — there's one of my own. What size is NP I? Three thousand tons? By the Lord Harry, she'd just about make it!"

He looked very excited and I slipped from the room. His desk was pure chaos. Papers, charts, maps, old ship chandler's orders, all kinds of nautical junk littered it. I rummaged about and saw a handwritten "last will and testament of Simon Peace, master mariner." I found what the old man must regard as "his chart " — it looked, at first glance, like a stretch to the south of Angola, heavily annotated with figures. I went back.

The moment I set foot in the room I knew what had happened. A glance at the mottled, congested face told its own story. I ran swiftly to the door and called for the nurse. He lay back gasping and coughing, like a seaman full of chlorine gas.

"He's trying to say something to you," said the nurse gently.

He spoke loudly.

"North?" I echoed. It sounded like north to me, but his voice was going.

"Twenty miles — north." He just couldn't get his failing voice round the last word. "North — north — north"

but it wasn't quite north, the way he said it. "Twenty miles south of north — big rock — twenty miles south of…"

The death rattle severed the last word.

Then to our utter astonishment, he sat up straight and said quite clearly and strongly: "A twist of sand, boy. It's your damn property anyway."

The nurse was crying. She put down the limp arm.

"His heart had stopped before he said that," she whispered.