The Sword and the Net

5 ATLANTIC: Second Phase

The weather had been fair since they left Lisbon—but as evening fell, the wind changed and there were ugly squalls. The sky grew rapidly overcast and a heavy swell began.

Reynolds himself came out upon the bridge and conferred with the Navigation Officer and altered his course half a point. There was some distress among the passengers, but nothing untoward.

By night the sky was a solid sheet of lowering black velvet without a star visible. The wind came steadily now from the south-west and was mounting towards gale proportions. The Vulcania rolled and wallowed and pitched—but ploughed on through the sea at three-quarter speed. . . .

A mile away, on her port bow, something shimmered beneath the curiously still surface of a valley between two rollers. It was grey and glistening as its back heaved above the water and bore without flinching the smashing brunt of a breaking wave. . . .

More of its back showed—a sleek, steel length. Its nose veered—until it was in line with the distant, unheeding Vulcania, It gathered speed and cut through the swelling waves at an angle which very soon, at this pace, would bring it close enough to its prey. . . .

Hearts aboard the Vulcania grew lighter: to the delight of Captain Reynolds and the immeasurable relief of the human cargo, there came a quick lull in the heavy weather. The sea, though running a heavy swell, was no longer mountainous. The wind lessened many degrees, and the sky, though still overcast, was less ominous. And then the first shell struck.

It was said afterwards that the Vulcania had no detector apparatus, or alternatively that she had but it was out of order. For some reason, the real truth about this has never emerged—but, whichever way it was, it is certain that the submarine’s presence was utterly unknown until that first shell, which struck amidships and high, landing with a downward trajectory at the very base of the foremost funnel, immediately aft of the bridge. . . .

The terror inspired by shelling is far greater than that caused by a torpedo. The torpedo, oil-smooth and silent and subterranean, strikes where it cannot be seen, below the waterline. Even the sound and shock of its explosion is dulled by depth. But a shell—albeit only from a six-inch gun—smashes from the outside; smashes down, probably, spreading visible and pressing havoc and often, as in the case of the Vulcania now, leaves an immediate wake of dead and smashed and wounded, dreadful enough upon an ordinary merchantman, or even a fighting ship, but inconceivably terrible upon a craft loaded to the gunwales with a living freight of women and children. . . .

The leading funnel sagged, swayed and came crashing down with an unearthly groaning louder and more terrifying than the explosion itself. The great mass of metal carried away the after-half of the bridge and then, its fall accelerated, tore a gaping breach through two decks and crashed down into what had once been the First-Glass Saloon but was now a dormitory for sixty mothers and their offspring. . . .

The noise was indescribable: in one tremendous instant, complete peace and such silence as the sea affords had been violently transmuted, in shocking gradations which swelled incredibly with each component, into a bedlamite inferno of sound. First, tearing a jagged hole in serenity, had come the sharp, heavy report of the gun . . . then, almost simultaneously, the rending roar of the shell’s explosion—a terrifying sound, which mingled indistinguishably with the shuddering feel of the ship trembling violently like a giant horse shaking itself beneath one. . . .

And then, swelling discordantly into a demoniac, unbelievable chorus, came the other sounds—cracking and crashing of wood . . . creaking and groaning of iron . . . the ourobboros-hiss of escaping steam . . . the thudding, tortured smashing of timber beneath iconoclastic weight . . . the crackling of shivered glass . . . the antlike, futile shouting of men thrusting improbably through the whole enveloping roar. . . .

Then, for one instant, a sudden cessation of the great noises—and, as a dreadful echo to them, the thin, sharp cries of children. . . .

Then the second shell came. The submarine’s gunner was in form: it landed within two feet of the first and, consequently, dropped two decks before it struck and exploded—this time right in the saloon-dormitory. It blasted a downward breach through which its quick successor fell almost plumb—to explode in the engine-room itself. . . .

All the din-demons were loose now; but the demon of steam raised his cry above all the others—and the Vulcania wallowed to a standstill and swung helpless and rose and dropped with the slow heavy swell of the sea while, a bare six hundred land-yards away, the gunner whose eye was in kept up his target practice.

In fifteen minutes the four hundred and fifty-three items of quick human freight aboard the Vulcania had been reduced by the considerable number of eighty-four. And of the remaining three hundred and sixty-nine, many were twitching, reddened lumps of uselessness. . . .

“Lieber Gott!” said Otto beneath his breath—and staggered and fell as a bulkhead bulged out in his path and split suddenly and fell.

A baulk of timber fell upon his back as he tripped over debris. His spine was saved by the thick cork of the lifebelt which he wore—but he was knocked flat and all the breath was driven from his body and his face was smashed into the litter.

His forehead struck painfully as he fell. He writhed and struggled, his emptied lungs seeming to resist his whistling efforts to refill them. . . . His head swam and blood ran stickily from his nostrils. . . .

He could breathe again. But his vision was hazy and his head rang with the infernal chorus of noises. He pulled himself somehow to his feet and staggered on. He was making his way along the main port gangway on B deck. He had to find an unobstructed companion which would allow him to descend. He had to get to his quarters—and the duffel bag and the box which was inside it, for he had to have—he must have—the oilskin packet. After all, there was a chance that some would be saved, and he might be among them. It was his duty to be among them if he could—and if he were, it was also his duty to be able to keep up the character of Nils. . . .

There was an agonizing lull in the fury of sound and movement which had been shaking the ship. Nils, his head swimming, moved faster. He could see the companionway now, ahead of him, where the gangway ended—and he could see that, although debris strewed the space before it, the companion itself was clear.

He staggered as another shell struck the ship, this time further aft: the gunner must have been traversing now, and doing a very thorough job.

Otto did not fall this time—but from the last cabin—immediately ahead of him—came a high-pitched, vibrating crackle of tortured wood and metal, loud enough and near enough to be vivid through the other, greater noises. It was followed at once by a sort of slithering crash—and the door of the cabin, torn from hinges and fastenings, fell outwards across his path. He jumped back—and then was hurled from his feet as a bathtub slid through the open, splintered doorway and caught his legs and thrust them from underneath him.

He shook his head to clear it, and pulled himself upright, his hands upon the edge of the tub. The Vulcania, now momentarily beam-on to the swelling seas, rolled heavily—and Otto, his head reeling, slipped and almost tell again.

He thrust his hands down to save himself—and they lighted on something within the tub; something which half-floated in tepid water and was clammily warm to the touch. He caught at the edge of the tub and reared upright and found himself staring down at the body of a woman. It was a young body, and by no means without beauty. It lay upon its back in an attitude astonishingly lifelike; indeed, Otto thought that she was alive, until he saw the jagged piece of incongruously shining metal—some part, no doubt, of a toilet fitting—which stuck rigidly out from the dark hole where one of her eyes had been.

Above there was indescribable chaos—and incredible discipline. Upon the already tilting decks, as near to their allotted boat stations as they were allowed to go, were miraculously orderly groups of women and children. Two boats, full-laden, were down and afloat already, and pulling away to the starboard for safety. Another, full, was being lowered from its davits when a shell fragment tore the right arm from a member of the lowering crew and the sheet screamed over its blocks and the boat tilted nose down in mid-air, and little, sprawling, armed and legged specks fell from it and hurtled down to the grey water.

The gunner fired again—and a flickering dart of flame sprang up from the Vulcania and licked a purple tongue at the cold dark sky. . . .

Otto had reached his quarters. The oilskin packet was safe in an inner pocket, and he was trying to make his way above decks again.

It had been a difficult journey down: to get up again was even harder. The Vulcania was listing badly to port, and the shells continued to drop. Worse by far, there was fire somewhere. The heat was growing oppressive and in Otto’s nostrils was the acrid smell of melting metal.

The companion down which he had come was irretrievably blocked. So was the next, which was the sternmost—so that he was forced to retrace his steps and desperately try his luck amidships. Clambering over debris, fighting against the shuddering and rolling of the ship, choking with the acrid, almost invisible smoke which was now tearing at his lungs, he fought his way along. He found a companion which was clear as far up as B deck, but thereafter was impassable. He worked forward again, clambered over the worst pile of debris he had yet happened upon—and saw the first fellow-human he had met on this nightmare journey.

It was a dark-haired, squarely built boy of ten. He was clad in life-belt, pyjamas and a brown woolly bath-robe—and he was working with all his strength to clear from the doorway of a cabin the jammed wreckage of the opposite bulkhead. He was silent and self-possessed and extremely busy. He was doubled over, with his arms around the main timber which was jamming the rest. He turned a contorted face up to Otto, but did not relax his effort. He said:

“I say, could you help me get this stuff away?” His accent was precise but his voice was thickened by the strain. He jerked his head towards the cabin door. “My mother’s in there,” he said.

Immediately he had spoken he turned back to his task again, heaving and straining until it seemed that the muscles must tear in his sturdy small back. For him it was certain that, having been asked, this man would help him.

And, curiously, that was the way too in which it struck Otto. It is perhaps to his discredit that there was no struggle in his mind between duty and humanity; but the question of whether Nils Jorgensen should or should not delay his search for safety did not so much as pose itself in his mind. He stood beside the boy and ran his eye over the tangled web of splintered lath and timber and bent down to see what must be done to clear it quickly.

There was a strange silence now; the lull since the striking of the last shell was much longer than its predecessors. The Vulcania wallowed unevenly, and the heat and the sharp smell of burning were fiercer.

Otto saw that the boy was right in what he was trying so stoutly to do—and stooped beside the little figure and wrapped his arms about the same baulk with which it was struggling and lent all his strength.

At first it did not seem enough. The blood sang in his head as he called upon his body for more force, and yet more. From the other side of the bulkhead—from inside the cabin—he could hear a woman’s voice. It was saying the same words, over and over again. “Derek!” it was saying. “Derek: go up on deck—at once! Go to our boat-station. . . . Do you hear me, Derek! . . .”

Otto called upon final and hidden reserves. There was a tearing crackle in the web—and the main prop of the obstacle came slowly down, bringing with it a shower of lesser, broken pieces of shattered wood and twisted scraps of metal.

The boy fell, but was on his feet again in an instant. There was a dull red bruise across his forehead, and from a jagged scratch on his forehead ran a thin trickle of blood. But a way was clear to the door and he darted at it and tugged it open. Subconsciously, Otto noticed that the hands which did the tugging left a wet red smear upon the bright brass of the handle.

A woman stood upon the other side of the threshold. She was young and tall and her hair hung down almost to her waist over the robe of blue silk which covered her. She put arms about the small figure and tried to pull it to her, patting at the clumsy cork of the life-belt with unsteady hands and then in horror looking at the long ugly scratch upon the forehead. She seemed to be saying something—but her son would have none of it. He pulled free of her arms and tugged at the blue robe and was sternly practical. He said:

“Come on, Mother! Hurry!” He suddenly pulled further away from her, eyeing here severely. “Where’s your life-belt?” He went past her into the cabin, searching.

Then the torpedo struck. Why the U-boat commander should so suddenly and extravagantly have abandoned the hitherto efficacious gunnery in favour of the absolutely sure but infinitely more expensive torpedo, will always be an unanswerable question except to the man himself, particularly as the Vulcania was already doomed. Battered, helpless, sinking and afire as she was, it is impossible to do more than guess at the motivation for the extra blow. Perhaps the commander thought that help was coming to her, by aeroplane or destroyer; perhaps he was carried away by the completeness of his hollow victory; perhaps it was a subordinate’s mistake. There is an answer, there must be—but whatever it is, the fact remains that the torpedo was fired and did strike.

It struck the Vulcania’s unprotected hull squarely amidships, on the port side; the side to which she was already listing. There was a different sound then as it exploded—a muffled, rending, underneath sort of sound at once duller and larger than the other sounds of bombardment had been and the more instantly terrible by reason of the invisibility of the damage.

The ship staggered: that is the only word. And almost at once her list sharply increased. The boy fell, and the woman. Otto lurched, and was brought up sharply by the damaged bulkhead on the other side of the gangway.

He pushed himself erect. The clumsy life-belt twisted on his body and beneath it, in its inner pocket, the oilskin package thrust a suddenly sharp edge into his ribs and thence his mind: Nils Jorgensen’s place was above-decks, seeking a boat.

“Come!” said Otto Falken to the woman, and pulled her to her feet.

The boy scrambled up. He still stated about the cabin. “Her life-belt,” he said. “Her life-belt.”

“Come now—quick!” said Otto—and saw that they were following him and made slow, staggering progress along the gangway which with every more dreadful moment tilted yet further, in a series of shaking, wallowing jerks, until they were forced, almost, to walk along the port-side bulkhead as if it were floor instead of wall. He heard a muffled cry from behind him, and turned and saw that the woman had fallen, her foot caught in a jagged-edged breach. The small, square figure of her son was bending over her, trying to pull her up, at first using only one hand while he carried the other awkwardly at its side; then, as Otto moved to help, using this one too he winced with a little hiss of indrawn breath, as he did so.

Otto picked up the woman. “Hold to me,” he said and thrust her lingers into his belt. He took the boy by the shoulder. “You go front,” he said. “In front.” As he spoke, he lifted the small hand which had caused the wincing. He did it quickly, turning it palm-up before its owner was aware of the action. There were ragged red cuts across it and, through the largest, bone shone whitely.

The boy closed his fingers quickly, glaring up at Otto with a frown.

Otto said: “Go now. In front. Quick!”

The child went—and they staggered on and came to the end of the gangway and a blast of heat so intense that they reeled back. The fire was playing freakish tricks, as fire on shipboard will, and now it was coming down at them. The companion above was a flame-filled mouth, cutting off all possibility of gaining the deck.

Otto thought furiously. The woman still clung to his belt, and the boy stood close—but neither made useless sound or movement. The ship moved again underneath them, settling down yet further in another shuddering roll, the angle of her list yet more acute.

The boy was looking at the downward companionway, where there was no wreckage and as yet no flame. Deep lines creased his smooth forehead in a frown of concentrated thought.

Otto said: “Come now. Back. To try there. Quick!” He had made up his mind: there was remote possibility—very remote—that before the ship turned full turtle they could find a clear way to the decks further aft.

He turned and the woman followed, obedient. But the boy put out his sound hand and caught at Otto’s shirt sleeve. He said:

“Those big doors in the side.” He pointed at the clear companionway. “Down lower. I saw them at Southampton. They brought things into the ship through them—and some people.”

Otto stared as the precise, clipped words in the clear voice sank into his mind. The cargo-ports! It was a chance; a better chance, perhaps, than any other. . . .

The Atlantic swelled restlessly, with a thick heavy swell, under the dark sky. The Vulcania's carcass, battered and smoking and shamefully, dreadfully helpless, lolloped crazily to the tune of the sullen water. She was almost directly upon her side now, her port rail nearly awash, and she was more down by the stern than the bow, so that there was not even dignity left to her in death.

Away from her—clear away to port—were four little bobbing specks, all that remained of her boats. Nowhere else was there sign of any other craft. The crowded cargoes of the boats could not see her any longer—the distance was too great and the darkness too dense.

So that none saw the three figures which clambered through the open leaf of the cargo-port in her starboard side which now was uppermost of her bulk, where the decks should have been; none saw the largest figure lift in turn the other two and throw them downwards into the heaving, dark water and then itself plunge after them. . . .

Otto’s lungs were stretched almost to bursting point. But he must keep his head up—and fill the lungs through his nose! He told himself this in time with his kicking legs—“Den . . . mund . . . zuhalten! Den . . . mund . . . zuhalten!”

His body felt numb and heavy—and very curiously considering the frightful coldness of the water, very warm. But his arms were neither hot nor cold—they just hurt him. Hurt him impossibly, unbelievably. His left arm was the worse. It was around the woman, under her shoulders: it kept her head above the water and was perpetually shot through and through with stabbing, cramping pains which would have been more bearable had their occurrence been in definite rhythm and not, as it was, in torturing haphazardness.

His right arm was bad, too. But not so bad as the other unless he thought about it. It had the relief of alternate duty: now it would help in the half-swimming, half-treading movement with which he kept his own and the woman’s head above water; now it would reach out and pluck at the boy and force up his drooping head.

The sea was an irregular relief map of shifting, swelling hills and valleys. It was bitterly, satanically cold, with an oily, all-embracing coldness, and it stretched down beneath Otto to unimaginable depths of cruelty. Overhead was the dark and lowering and inimical sky, with black cloud masses racing across a blacker backcloth which blotted out moon and stars, and upon the rest of the heaving surface of the sea was nothing save these three dark and minute and bobbing specks.

The strange, warm numbness began to spread to Otto’s mind. He ceased to think—and for long intervals now he would not even feel the pain in his arms, yet some inner force kept them and his legs and body at their work. . . .

They were deep in a valley between the tireless, forever advancing hills of water when a voice jerked him back to agonized awareness. It was a faint, far-away voice which he had never heard before, but which came nevertheless from the head against his right shoulder. It said something which Otto did not catch, but the quality of the tone made him increase the action of his legs so that he could use his right hand to make sure that the boy’s grip upon him was not loosening and then to seize the small neck and jerk the head upright, clear of the water.

The voice came again. It was very loud this time, and had that super-normal naturalness and clarity which tells that the speaker is not conscious of speaking. It was a high, enthusiastic voice, and it was telling a story.

“Listen, you chaps!” it said—and went on to gabble so fast that the words did not separate themselves in Otto’s mind, accompanied and enwrapped as they were in a sort of running giggle of excitement.

“. . . and there it was—a German sub!” it said with sudden definition. “Golly! . . .”

Then the next hill swooped down upon them and toyed with them and failed to crush them and swooped them up to its crest, as Otto fought with it, and slid them down into yet another valley which was a dreadful counterpart of all the others.

And the weight upon Otto’s right arm was suddenly heavier.

The wind lessened and the sky grew less black and the swell subsided, gradually, to a near-flat calm. But it was a cold grey dawn—and the look-out man in the crow’s nest of the Admiral Farragut shivered beneath his layers of clothing.

The Admiral Farragut was a tanker, and she flew the U.S. Ensign and also had the flag painted large upon both beams. But in these days one never knew: hence the lookout duty, shared in turn by every one of the crew throughout every hour of every voyage.

The man shivered again, and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets. His gaze swept the level dead-grey surface of the Atlantic in a wide sweeping arc. . . .

His hands came out of his pockets. He stiffened. His eye had been caught by something at the outermost edge of the arc. He stared, first with his naked eye, then through a glass—and after that he shouted. . . .

They could not separate the three until a boat had picked them up and they had been hauled aboard. Otto, as willing hands had caught at him and his burdens, had lost his last, slipping grip upon consciousness, and they had been forced to pry his fingers loose from the life-belt of the child. Also, the Second Officer, who was in charge of the boat, had to cut the woman’s long hair with his sheath-knife. The hair had been divided into two main strands, and these, roughly twisted, had been tied around Otto’s neck so that the unconscious head of the woman had been immovably lashed to him, its chin resting upon his shoulder.

Something forced Otto’s teeth apart and there was a trickling of liquid flame down his throat. He choked and opened his eyes and looked up at the faces of unfamiliar men and shut off sight again. . . .

He waked three hours later and rolled over on his back and thought, ‘Where am I?’

He thought it in German—but before the words came out of his mouth he had regained sufficient control of himself to turn them into inarticulate sound: he did not know why he did this, but merely that he must.

A lean, unshaven face swam into his vision and looked down at him and grinned with a flash of improbably white teeth.

“How’s it goin’, pal?” said a deep, metallic voice.

Memory, though battered and hole-pocked, flooded Otto’s mind. He said, carefully:

“All right. . . . What ship?”

The stubbled face leaned closer. “A’miral Farragut. Tanker—U.S. Merchant Marine.” Then, painstakingly: “United States.”

“Oh . . .” said Otto—and then:

“The . . . the . . .” He was groping for a word. “The child—the boy?”

The long unshaven face moved from side to side as the head was shaken.

“No use t’ fool ya, Bud. . . . The kid didn’t make it.” Idiom was clarified again. “Too bad—but he was dead when we hauled you in.”

The word dead came clearly through the mists. Otto stared up into small eyes which were nearly the same colour as his own. He did not speak.

“Girl’s O.K., though,” said the voice. “All right! . . . She’s sleepin’. . . .”

“Oh . . .” said Otto—and closed his eyes once more. He said, when he opened them again:

“Where is the ship going?”

“The good old U.S., son.” The face had gone, but the voice was still there. “Noo York!”