the submarine detection gear as it sent back its echoes through the earphones.
“We’ll leave him where he is then until after the watches are changed. You stay with him and try to bring him around. If he is still the same we’ll move him down to one of the officer’s bunks.”
“Yes, sir,” Bodley answered, wondering whether to salute or not. He suddenly remembered that they were under cover so, desisting, he turned on his heel and went below again.
“Butch” Jenkins, ordinary seaman, RCNVR, leaned his back against the mast, and from his lofty position in the crow’s nest surveyed the gently pitching expanse of ocean clove by the dipping bows of the Riverford.
To starboard the nearest file of plodding freighters seemed stationary, but for the small white bones they bore in their teeth. The coxswain had told him that they were carrying nothing but a ballast of sand and shale in their holds, the tankers weighted down with water ballast. He could see the crew of a ship standing in the lee of a deck house as they watched the corvette passing before them. He hoped that they noticed his woollen-helmeted form as he stood there doing his part to protect them. It made him feel proud and — part of things, to be one of those doing his bit out here. The sight of the merchant sailors was the first real intimation that the convoy was not only formed of the shapes of ships, but also contained human beings, who, like him, formed a close-knit fraternity arrayed against the U-boats. He wondered how many people were represented by the ships stretching over ten square miles of ocean. He thought, I’ll give them at least seventy-five men to a ship. There are fifty-six merchant packets and seven escorts, counting the trawler. That makes sixty-three ships at seventy-five men apiece — almost five thousand men out here. The thought of being only one of so many suddenly raised his chances of survival.
As he watched the merchantmen, they began a flag-hoist, first one and then the other along their ranks bending the pendants to their halyards as they answered the convoy commodore’s signals. The gaily coloured bunting reminded him that this was the culmination of everything he had trained and hoped for since leaving high school the year before. He had been afraid that the war would end before he had a chance to get into it, and at night he had lain awake dreaming that if God was willing to keep it going a few more years he would probably end up in London on the Horse Guards Parade while the king placed on his chest the wine-coloured ribbon of the Victoria Cross….
He happened to glance below and caught Lieutenant Harris staring up at him. Suddenly he was all eyes for U-boats. Turning from the convoy side he regarded the empty sea stretching a thousand, no, ten thousand! miles to the south — stretching to the barren ice of Antarctica, with nothing between. It was hard to believe that out there beyond the horizon, or closer even, under the ripple of the chop, were the submarines lying in wait for their slow-moving target. It seemed impossible that there could be anything else on the surface, or under it, of this peaceful sea.
This was his first trip on a corvette, and he had been pleasantly surprised to find that there was no apprenticeship. They had left Londonderry behind, and as soon as they were running down the swiftly moving River Foyle to the sea he had been shown the Watch and Quarter Bill, and the coxswain had said, “Read it and remember your stations. You will be on ack-ack ammunition supply at action stations, you’ll take to No. 5 carley float if we abandon ship, and you’ll eat at the port table in the seamen’s mess. You’re in the red watch, and you go on watch in the second dog.”
It had been exciting, and a little scary too, when the coxswain had mentioned taking a carley float when the ship was abandoned. He had found the leading hand of the watch, a fellow called McCaffrey, and had asked him what time he had to go on. “Six o’clock,” the leading hand had answered. “You’ll eat when they pipe ‘second dog-watchman to supper’.”
And so he had learned what he had to know. He had found that a dog watch is two hours long, and that the second one began at six o’clock. After that the watches were four hours long until the next afternoon at four, when the first dog began. Through using his head and ears he had discovered during the last eleven days (except for the second and third when he was too seasick to get out of his hammock) what some of the terms meant, and those which he heard, yet could not fathom, he had enquired about.
Now he looked upon himself as a sailor, a veteran of the Battle of the Atlantic. He had been in an encounter with German submarines five days out from the United Kingdom, and the convoy had lost one ship, while another pad been damaged and had gone to Reykjavik, Iceland, for repairs. To the older hands in the crew it had been but an incident, but to him it was the epitome of death and destruction.
Everybody aboard knew that the ship was due for a refit this trip, and he was glad. He would go home to Verdun with something more to talk about this time than barrack-room tales. He could picture himself and Knobby Clark, who had promised to accompany him on leave, arriving in Bonaventure Station.
They would get off the train, and conscious that they were combat veterans, walk down the dusty platform towards the ugly red-brick waiting room. Over their shoulders would be slung the gas masks which were the mark of the overseas man. His mother would be standing there, and as she saw him she would nudge his sister Shirley before beginning her run towards him on shoes that were just a little too tight for a lady of her build and age.
He would kiss them both before introducing Knobby. “Ma, this is Knobby Clark, a shipmate of mine from Medicine Hat, Alberta. He’s going to stay here for part of his leave.” Then he would turn to Knobby and say, “And this is my kid sister Shirley.”
After the introductions were over and they were seated in the taxi he would be asked, “What does it feel like to be on land again?” by a mother who wanted the taxi driver to share with her the knowledge that her son was a seagoing man.
Later, after a supper that consisted of real, honest-to-God roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, they would go for a walk, he and Knobby, and stop in at Beaulieu’s Tavern at the corner for a quick one. Mr. Beaulieu would look at them, mentally gauging their ages, then, seeing their uniforms, would shrug and place the sweating glasses of ale before them.
They would talk of the English pubs, not too loudly, but loud enough to let the civilians hear, and after a few to “give them an edge on” they would take a trolley downtown to St. Catherine Street and see what they could do in the way of picking up a couple of girls....
When the watches changed at eight o’clock Butch eased himself gingerly over the side of the crow’s nest and scrambled down the mast to the bridge. Two of the officers were talking and laughing together as they stood against the voice pipes. One of them was Mr.
Bowers, the first lieutenant, and the other was the Jewish-looking one, Harris. They stepped aside absentmindedly as he passed them.
He hurried to the mess, realizing that if he was late most of the issue would be eaten, and that he would have to make a trip to the galley with his plate. This was a foolhardy undertaking while the leading cook was there. It was better to go hungry or fill up with bread and butter rather than have this martinet give out with a blast about young ordinary seamen who came for second helpings just because the weather was calm.
As he entered the mess he became aware of the aura of quiet where usually at this time of day there was noise and laughter. He peeled off his coat and cap and threw them over the hammock rack.
Instead of the debris of plates and cutlery the table usually contained, there was a person lying asleep. He thought, with a feeling of alarm, “Oh, God, I’m either too early or too late this morning!”
He moved closer, holding with one hand to a stanchion, and peered into the face of Knobby. “Well, you old son-of-a-gun!” he cried, happy to find that it was his friend who lay there. “Get up,
