But what if the destroyer anticipated the manoeuvre, and turned a second or two before the U-boat did? Then for those seconds, or longer, until the U-boat realized what the destroyer was doing--and she would be under much the same handicap regarding the translation of information in action as the destroyer had been labouring under--the U-boat would be running straight into the destroyer’s arms, like the child running round the table. A childish stratagem indeed, simplicity itself, like most of the stratagems of war; but, like most of the stratagems of war, more easily thought of than executed. Not only quickness of thought was necessary for the execution, but resolution, determination. It was necessary to make up one’s mind and carry the plan through, to balance risk against gain and to be neither deterred by the one nor dazzled by the other. At the moment when Krause gave the order for right rudder Keeling had the U-boat well within sonar range, she was in hot pursuit, and even if she took no radical new action she had a slight chance of closing on her enemy. The turn meant risking all this. If the U-boat simply continued her course while Keeling wheeled away loss of all sonar contact would ensue practically for certain. The U-boat would be free to carry out any attack on the approaching convoy that her captain might decide upon. That was the stake that Krause was laying on the table, apparently. But it was not as great as it appeared, for there was the consideration that if he went on circling after the U-boat, turning, tardily, after she turned, he would gradually be left behind, would gradually find himself on a wider and wider bearing and would eventually be shaken off. He was not staking a certainty against a possibility, but one possibility against another.
There was a further consideration that might have influenced Krause; it might have influenced him but it did not. He was handling his ship, so to speak, under the eyes of the battle-hardened crews of the Polish destroyer and the British and Canadian corvettes. They had fought a dozen actions and he had never fought one. They would be keenly interested in the standard of the performance the Yank would put up, especially as mere chance put them under his command, especially as he had called them off from one pursuit already. They might be amused, they might be contemptuous, they might be spiteful. Some temperaments might have given some consideration to this side of the matter. It is a fact that Krause gave it none.
To analyse in this fashion all the tactical elements of the situation, and then the moral factors which led to Krause’s uttering the order for right rudder, would take a keen mind several minutes, and Krause’s decision had been reached in no more than one or two seconds without any conscious analysis at all, as the child running round the table suddenly reverses his course without stopping to think. A fencer’s parry changes into riposte in the tenth of a second, in the fiftieth of a second; that comparison might have additional force because (although it was not often remembered now) eighteen years before, and fourteen years before, Krause had been on the Olympic fencing team.
Keeling wallowed as she made her turn, shipping green water.
“Contact bearing indefinite,” said the caller.
“Very well.”
In the confusion of the water that was not to be wondered at. Keeling was coming round.
“Ease the rudder. Meet her,” ordered Krause.
Keeling had now completed her turn. McAlister repeated the order, and Keeling steadied herself.
“Contact bearing port zero-two. Range eight hundred yards,” said the talker.
“Very well.”
The manoeuvre had met with success. Keeling’s turn had anticipated the U-boat’s. She had her enemy almost dead ahead of her now, and she had closed in by two hundred invaluable yards.
“Steady as you go,” said Krause.
The U-boat might still be turning, probably was; if so it was better to let her continue across Keeling’s bows, losing more distance.
“Contact bearing dead ahead. Up Doppler,” said the talker.
The U-boat had continued her turn, then, coming still closer into Keeling’s power. The Doppler effect indicated that she and Keeling were right in line, on the same course; in other words Keeling was on the U-boat’s tail and overhauling her at their difference in speed, six knots or so, and less than half a mile behind. Four minutes of this and they would be right over her. There was the temptation to let loose all Keeling’s forty thousand horsepower, so as to leap the intervening distance, but that temptation must be resisted because of the deafening effect any increase in speed would have on the sonar.
“Contact bearing starboard zero-one. Range seven hundred. Up Doppler.”
They were overhauling her rapidly. The Doppler effect and the smallness of the change in bearing indicated that she was not turning at the moment Ellis got the last echo. The U-boat captain down there, having swung his boat out of the circle, had had to wait to hear from his own echo-ranging apparatus; perhaps he had not trusted the first report; perhaps he was waiting to see if Keeling were turning farther still; perhaps he was taking a second or two to make up his mind as to what to do next, and he was losing time, time and distance. He had turned straight out of the circle, not completely reversing his course, and he must have been astonished to find his adversary’s bows pointed straight at him when he steadied on the course he hoped would carry him to safety. Now he must manoeuvre again; three more minutes steady on this course and he was lost. He could turn to starboard or he could turn to port. Anticipate him once more and he would be close overside. His last turn had been to starboard; were his reactions such that he would instinctively turn to port this time, or would he be more cunning and repeat his previous turn? Krause had two seconds to think this all out, much longer than, when blade to blade, the fencer has to decide whether his adversary is going to lunge or feint.
“Right standard rudder.”
“Right standard rudder.”
At the moment of the reply the talker reported. “Contact bearing starboard zero-two. Range six hundred yards.”
Only six hundred yards between them; not too wide a turn, then.
“Ease the rudder.”
“Ease the rudder.”
And this was the moment to catch the eye of Lieutenant Nourse, torpedo officer and assistant gunnery officer standing in the starboard after-corner of the wheel-house.
“Stand by for medium pattern.” “Aye aye, sir.”
Nourse spoke into his mouth-piece. Krause gulped with excitement. The moment might be very close. It was always true, handling ships at sea, that time seemed to move faster and faster as the crisis approached. Two minutes ago action seemed far off. Now Keeling might be dropping her depth-charges at any second.
“Contact bearing port one-one. Range six hundred.”
That change in bearing was due to Keeling s turn, uncompleted at the moment when Ellis got his echo. The next report would be the vital one. Nourse was standing tense, waiting. The crews of “K” guns and of the depth-charge racks would be crouching ready to go. As Krause looked back from Nourse to the talker his gaze met momentarily that of a strange pair of eyes, he looked back again. It was Dawson, communications officer, clip-board in hand, come up to the bridge from his station below. That meant that some message--which must be radio-- had come in too secret for anyone to see save Krause and Dawson. Secret and therefore important. But it could not be as important for the next few seconds as the business in hand. Krause waved Dawson aside as the talker spoke again.
“Contact bearing port one-one. Range five hundred yards.”
A constant bearing, and the range closing. He had anticipated the U-boat’s turn. Keeling and the U-boat were heading straight for a mutual rendezvous, a rendezvous where death might make a third. Another glance at Nourse; a clenching of hands.
“Contact dead ahead. Range close! “
The gnome-like talker’s equanimity was gone; his voice rose an octave and cracked.
“Fire!” bellowed Krause, and he shot out his hand, index finger pointing at Nourse, and Nourse spoke the order into his mouth-piece. This was the second when Nourse
and Krause were trying to kill fifty men.
“Fire one.” Fire two! Fire three!’’
The sudden alteration of bearing of the contact could mean nothing else than that the U-boat captain, finding himself headed off once more, finding the two vessels rushing together, had put his helm hard over again, turning straight for his antagonist, aiming to surprise him by passing on opposite courses and making the danger moment as brief as possible. That “range close” meant three hundred yards or so--the smallest range at which sonar could function. The U-boat might at this very time be passing right under the destroyer, right under Krause’s very feet. The depth-charges rumbling down off the racks, sinking ponderously through the opaque sea, might then be too late, would explode harmlessly astern of the U-boat. But the U-boat might still be just forward of Keeling, heading aft, and in that case the depth-charges would burst all about her if the depth setting were anything like correct, and would smash in her fragile hull. Yet she might not be passing directly below; she might be a hundred yards to port or to starboard. The double bark of the” “K” guns at that moment told how further depth-charges were being flung out on either side of the ship in anticipation of this possibility. They might catch her. One of the four depth-charges dropped might burst close enough. It was like firing a sawed-off shotgun into a pitch-dark room to try to hit a dodging man inside. It was as brutal.
Krause strode out on to the wing of the bridge as the “K” gun at the fantail went off. The ugly cylinder it had flung into the air hung in his sight for an instant before it dropped with a splash into the sea. And as it fell the sea far behind in Keeling’s wake opened up into a vast, creamy crater, from the centre of which rose a tower of white foam; as it rose Krause heard the enormous but muffled boom of the underwater explosion. And the tower of foam was still hanging, about to drop, when another crater opened, and another tower rose up out of the sea, and another on one side, and another on the other. He maketh the deep to boil like a pot, as Job said. It looked as if nothing could possibly live in the long ellipse of tortured water, but nothing showed at all. No dripping hull emerged, no huge bubbles, no oil. The odds were ten to one at least against a single depth-charge pattern scoring a hit. It would have been fortunate indeed if Keeling’s first pattern--if Krause’s first attempt to kill a man--had been successful.
Indeed that was so; Krause felt a dreadful pang of conscience as he jumped into the pilot-house. He should not have been out here at all. It was five seconds since the last explosion, five seconds during which the U-boat could travel a full hundred yards towards safety. Buck-fever again; and simple neglect of duty.
“Right full rudder,” he ordered as he entered.
“Right full rudder.”
The quartermaster repeated the order that Krause gave.
“Get a course from the plot back to the firing point.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“Steady on reverse of present heading,” ordered Krause.
“Sonar reports apparatus temporarily not functioning, sir,” said the talker.
“Very well.”
Sonar, as delicate as a human ear, was deafened for a time by underwater explosions. Keeling was coming round in a tight circle, but not nearly fast enough for Krause’s impatience. It always took several minutes for her to come all the way round, with the U-boat--if she were uninjured--making off as fast as her propellers would drive her. She could well be a mile away--more-- by the time Keeling had her bows pointed at her again, so far away that sonar would not be able to tell him that she had achieved this state of affairs. And Dawson was thrusting the clip-board at him again. He had actually forgotten about Dawson’s arrival on the bridge with a message, three minutes ago. He took the board and read the central words of the message first.
HUFF-DUFF INDICATES ENEMY CONCENTRATION -- here followed a latitude and a longitude -- SUGGEST RADICAL CHANGE OF COURSE SOUTHWARD.
Those figures for latitude and longitude had a suspiciously familiar appearance, and it was the work of only a moment to confirm those suspicions. Within a mile or two either way that was exactly where Keeling found herself at this moment. They were right in among the U-boat wolf-pack. It was an Admiralty message, addressed to him as Comescort, and it was two hours old. That was the speediest transmission that could be expected; the Admiralty staff, with its charts and its plotting-board, must have hoped hopelessly for good fortune when it sent out that warning. Miraculously speedy transmission, and the convoy steaming an hour or two late, and there would have been time to wheel the convoy away from the wolf-pack. As it was? Quite impossible. The convoy, well closed up by now, he hoped, was lumbering forward with its dead-weight momentum. It would only take a few seconds to transmit orders to the Commodore, but it would take minutes to convey those orders to every ship in the convoy, and to make sure they were understood. And the wheel round would lead to a repetition of the previous disorder and straggling--worse, probably, seeing that it was quite unscheduled.
“Back on reverse course, sir,” reported Watson.
“Very well. Start pinging.”
And even if the convoy should execute the wheel round perfectly, it would be of no avail in the midst of a wolf-pack which would be fully aware of it. It would only mean delay, not merely unprofitable but dangerous.
“Sonar reports no contact, sir.”
“Very well.”
Wednesday. Afternoon Watch--1200-1600
The only thing to do was to fight a way through, to beat off the wolf-pack and lumber on ponderously across the Atlantic. He had at least had his warning; but seeing that convoy and escort habitually were as careful as if there was always a wolf-pack within touch the warning was of no particular force. There was no purpose, for that matter, in passing on the warning to his subordinates and to the Commodore. It could not affect their actions, and the fewer people who were aware how accurately the Admiralty was able to pin-point U-boat concentrations the better.
“Sonar reports no contact, sir,”
“Very well.”
The plan then was to fight his way through, to plod doggedly onward, smashing a path through the U-boat cordon for his lumbering convoy. And this message which he still held in his hand? These few words from the outside world which seemed so impossibly far away from his narrow horizon? They must remain unanswered; there must be no violation of radio silence for a mere negative end. He must fight his battle while the staffs in London and Washington, in Bermuda and Reykjavik, remained in ignorance. Every man shall bear his own burden, and this was his--that was a text from Galatians; he could remember learning it, so many years ago--and all he had to do was his duty; no one needed an audience for that He was alone with his responsibility in this crowded pilothouse, at the head of the crowded convoy. God setteth the solitary in families.
“Sonar reports no contact, sir, for thirty degrees on both bows.”
“Very well.”
He turned from the one problem straight back to the other.
“Come right handsomely.”
“Come right handsomely.”
“Call out your heading, Quartermaster.”
“Aye aye, sir. Passing one-three-zero. Passing one-four-zero. Passing one-five-zero. Passing one-six-zero. Passing one-seven-zero.”
“Meet her. Steady as you go.”
“Meet her. Steady as you go. Heading one-seven-two, sir.”
Krause handed back the clip-board. “Thank you, Mr Dawson.”
He returned Dawson’s salute punctiliously, but he did not notice Dawson any more. He was quite unaware of Dawson’s glance or of the rapid play of expression on Dawson’s young chubby face. Surprise succeeded by admiration, and that by something of pity. Only Dawson besides his captain knew what weighty news there had been in the message he bore. Dawson alone could feel admiration for the man who could receive that news with no more than a “thank you” and go straight on with what he was doing. Krause would not have understood even if he had noticed. There was nothing spectacular to him about
a man doing his duty. His eyes were sweeping the horizon before Dawson had turned away.
Contact was certainly lost, and they had searched for thirty degrees on either side of the course the U-boat had been following at the moment of the last contact. Now he had started on a new sector, to starboard and not to port, with no observational data at all on which to base his choice. But a turn to starboard would be towards the convoy, now just visible in the distance. If the U-boat had gone off to port she was heading away from the convoy’s path, to where she would be temporarily harmless. The course he had just ordered would carry Keeling back towards her station in the screen, and it would search out the area in which the U-boat would be most dangerous.
“Steady on course one-seven-two, sir,” said Watson.
“Very well.”
“Sonar reports no contact, sir.”
“Very well.”
They were heading for the centre of the convoy now. Viktor was in plain sight on their starboard bow, patrolling ahead of the convoy, but James on the left flank was still invisible. Krause began to consider the matter of securing from general quarters; he must not forget that he was using up the battle reserve of his men’s energy and attention.
“Sonar reports distant contact, sir! “ said the talker, his voice several tones higher with excitement. “Port two-zero. Range indefinite.”
The slackening tension in the pilot-house tightened up again.
“Right standard rudder to course one-nine-two.”
“Right standard rudder to course one-nine-two.”
Keeling came round; Krause was looking at Viktor again through his glasses. It was a question whether he should use Viktor to make a thrust or retain her where she was to make a parry.
“Sonar reports distant contact one-nine-zero. Range indefinite.”
Another brief order, another minute turn. There was the temptation to niggle at Ellis with questions and orders, to ask him if he could not do better than that “range indefinite.” But his knowledge of Ellis had vastly increased during the last few minutes; Krause guessed that he needed no prodding to do his best, and there was the danger that prodding might disturb his vitally-important equanimity.