the narrow platform staring out at the noisy, heaving sea. He looked up into the darkened sky, catching a glimpse now and again of a patch of star-studded heaven as it dipped and curtsied behind and between the wider ceiling of scudding clouds. The whole cosmos revolved around an axis formed by the jutting bow and fo’castlehead of the small ship, and the whistle of the wind through the struts and halyards accompanied the pirouette of the fading night.
As he stood still, fastening the top toggle of his woollen duffle coat against the wind, he became aware of the dark, dreadful loneliness of the sea. He was suddenly afraid, and he tuned his ears to the more familiar sounds of the ship and his fellows. From below him came the clatter of pans in the galley as the assistant cook, who had been baking his nightly batch of bread, cleaned up before his mate arrived to prepare breakfast. Up ahead the four-inch gun strained at its lashings with every rise and fall of the gun deck, and the shells clanked mournfully in their racks. There was the sound of feet being stamped on the boards above his head as the port lookout changed his position on the wing of the bridge. The noises from aft were swept away with the wind.
The sounds of the ship only accentuated the noisy quietude of the limitless expanse of the sea, so that the boy shivered, and his hands gripped the railing beside him. Suddenly he was afraid of losing his grip on this heaving thing which was his only connection with security, and he feared to be cast away into the sea which hissed and foamed as it reached with white-nailed fingers upon the freeboard below.
Standing there he realized that the sea cannot be loved; it is an enemy upon which men sail their puny craft — an alien thing armed with a multitude of claws ready to pull them beneath it with scarcely a ripple or a trace. It is too vast and too black and too uncomprehending to be loved. It gives neither succour nor hope nor life to those who must depend upon it. It is beautiful and terrifying, and gigantic and insatiable; a desert of water over which men travel through necessity.
He no longer thought of submarines and torpedoes, for now his fears were those which have followed men from the dawn of time; the primeval fears of the elements: of wind, of lightning, of the sea.
He strained his eyes aft to try to catch a glimpse of the lookout on the ack-ack platform; to find another human being with whom to share his terror; but the man could not be seen; he was alone. He fought with himself against the dread which rose through his fibres like a scream. With a desperate urgency he stumbled down the steep steps of the ladder, his heavy coat buckling around his thighs and his hands sliding down the wet railings, not allowing himself to look at the water, his eyes fixed on the swiftly falling stern of the ship. Halfway to the bottom his rubber sea-boot slipped from the serrated step, and his hands lost their grip upon the rails. With a soft thud, and an imperceptible swoosh of clothing, he fell the remainder of the way to the steel deck, and lay there, one arm doubled behind him, and his terrified eyes hidden behind their curtained lids. To his unhearing ears came the slap of the stoical sea as the tips of its tentacles caressed him through the drains along the scuppers.
CHAPTER ONE
Lieutenant-Commander Joseph Frigsby, DSC, RCNR, stood on the bridge of his ship, leaning forward over the dodger. Now and again he glanced back at the boiling wake, running white in the green water, and murmured steering instructions down the voice pipe to the seaman at the wheel.
He was a short, thin man with sharp features beneath the visor of his cap. He was attired in a roll-necked woollen sweater, over which he wore a shabby officer’s uniform jacket from the sleeves of which the pair of lieutenant’s chain-linked stripes had been torn. His cap was regulation, but upon its front was fastened a soggy green replica of a naval officer’s gold badge. On his feet he wore a pair of turned-down rubber boots, and covering everything but the boots and cap hung a long khaki-coloured sheepskin coat.
His thin jaws worked methodically as he chewed a peppermint drop. He was thinking that no matter how often he crossed the ocean he could not get away from the feeling that when the ship was running a northerly course it seemed as though it was running uphill, and when it was travelling south, it was running down again. Of course it is ridiculous, he argued with himself, just one of those ridiculous little thoughts which people use to amuse themselves, especially ships’ captains whose life is much more introverted than those of others on the ship. He thought, it is the fault of the Mercator’s Projection which hangs on the wardroom bulkhead to show the U-boat dispositions.
But regardless of the fantasy of such thoughts, you could not get away from the fact that as soon as your course became southerly, somewhere west of Iceland, a new feeling gripped everybody aboard; and when you drew the new line on the wardroom chart it looked for all the world as though you were coasting downhill to Newfoundland a few hundred miles ahead.
You knew that it affected others the same way because you had seen the steward’s face light up each time he had noticed the new change in course on every crossing. The junior officers became a little more boisterous, and the men showed their feelings in a hundred ways: more singing and shouting, more laundry being done, a general relaxation from the tenseness which had gripped them all since the beginning of the trip....
He sighed and stepped back from his position at the voice pipes and took a turn around the asdic cabin, which housed the submarine detection gear, motioning to Lieutenant Harris, the officer on watch, to take over.
Dawn was breaking, the slow zigzag pattern of the ship’s course swinging the rising sun along the port side from the bow almost to the quarter. Mechanically he glanced at the lookouts on the bridge wings to see that they were keeping an eye out.
As he stepped to the watertight door opening into the radar cabin, he met the leading steward coming up the ladder with a teapot and cups in his hands. He reached out and took a cup while the steward poured it full of hot black tea. “Thanks, Roberts,” he said. “What’s on for breakfast this morning?”
“W-w-w-w-w-w-eggs, sir,” the steward answered.
“Thank you,” said the captain, walking away. It was a damnable affliction, stammering. He wished that Roberts could be drafted. A bloody embarrassing thing to have to listen to. Eggs, but what kind of eggs? It was impossible to ask Roberts.
He drank the cup of scalding tea with a smacking of lips, feeling the heat of it warm him under his sheepskin coat. Placing the empty cup on the starboard Oerlikon-gun platform, he made his way once more to the radar cabin and looked inside. The operator, a middle-aged Scotsman, named Wright, was sitting with his back against the bulkhead, his eyes on the screen in front of him. “How are the ships showing up?” asked the captain.
“They’re nae bad, sirr; it’s been guid ever since I came on watch.”
“Do you get a pip from the Milverton?”
“Where’s she, sirr?”
“Let’s see, she should be on the port beam. Around four thousand yards.”
As the operator began manipulating his wheel, the door flew open, and the face of Sub-Lieutenant Peter Smith-Rawleigh looked in. He was excited, and his pudgy countenance was filled with the momentousness of the occasion. He was freshly shaved, as he always was since he had found that his sparse beard was an object of levity among the men. He was the only man aboard who shaved every day at sea. He said, “Sir, there’s been an accident to one of the seamen. He’s pretty badly hurt.”
The captain asked, “Did you get the Sick berth attendant?”
“No, sir. That is, I’ve sent for him, sir.”
“Tell him to report to me as soon as the man is made comfortable.”
The sub-lieutenant made his
