Submarine

From the first day, Woolf-Gault had proved a menace. Supercilious and omniscient, he criticized Tim Prout's every decision until, half-way through the patrol, Prout registered a protest. Farge told Prout to lump the situation, because there was precious little that he, the captain, could do about it in the middle of the Norwegian Sea. 'But I'll allow him to do a bridge surface-watch on his own,' Farge said. 'That'll get him off your back for a bit, Tim, when we reach the Minches.' Orcus was to make her landfall off the Butt of Lewis… Farge stretched out on his bunk, relived the incident, every detail of it.

Due to problems with the controlled leak in the motor-room, Orcus was running late for her ETA Barrow on 24 April. Approaching the Butt, and being within the RAF'S protective umbrella, Farge obtained permission to proceed on the surface to make up time. Orcus surfaced at morning twilight and, after reassuring himself that the officer of the watch on the bridge, Woolf-Gault on his own for the first time, knew his orders and was happy, Farge went below for his first decent sleep in days.

He was woken minutes later by two klaxon blasts, and the sudden silence following the stopping of the diesels. When he reached the control-room, the mike connection on the bridge had already been yanked out; through the voice-pipe, he heard someone with a Geordie accent diving, the boat. In the gloom of the red lighting, the hands were scurrying around him to their diving stations; the telegraphs were already at half ahead, grouped up; the main vents were opened; the planes were at hard-a-dive and the snort induction shut. Orcus was taking on her bow-down angle and, trimmed-down as she was, in less than two minutes she would be fully dived.

'First clip on!'

Farge heard the cry from the tower, shouted by the same Geordie voice. It wasn't Woolf-Gault's voice, the OOW.

Number One had the dive well in hand and Farge let him get on with it — but something was wrong, Farge sensed it.

'Second clip on!'

As he watched the pointer on the depth-gauge, he was aware of the rustling behind, where the first of the lookouts was dropping through the lower lid to the control-room deck.

'Thirty-five feet, sir,' Number One reported.

'Blow Q!' Foggon shouted, getting shot of the water in the emergency diving tank.

'Forty, sir.'

'Seventy feet,' Farge snapped. 'Back to fifty-eight ' He had to be sure, by giving the boat a bow-up angle, that all air was expelled from the ballast tanks.

Then, to his astonishment, he saw that the first man to emerge through the lower hatch was the OOW, Woolf-Gault.

'What the hell's going on?' Farge snapped, glaring at the passenger. Then the second man appeared, white-faced and silent.

'A riser, sir,' Woolf-Gault reported aggressively. 'Green 60 at four hundred yards. I saw its periscope.'

The third man, Thomas, the Geordie signalman, dropped through the lower hatch, his heavy-weather gear dripping into pools at his feet. He stopped at the ladder for a moment, his gloved hand on the upper rung. He stared, speechless, at Woolf-Gault; he glanced at his captain, meeting his eyes. Then he turned his back and shuffled for'd to shift from his sodden clothes.

'Fifty-eight feet, sir.'

'Up search periscope,' Farge snapped. 'Anything on sonar?'

Farge took his time during the all-round sweep to make up his mind. Full daylight had not yet arrived and there was nothing in sight.

'Wait for me in my cabin, Lieutenant Woolf-Gault,' he ordered brusquely, trying to smother the anger seething inside him.

'Nothing on 187,' the sound-room reported.

'Surface,' Farge snapped. 'Number One, relieve the officer of the watch.'

During the post-mortem, which Farge immediately instituted during the run through the Minches, the issue of the possible periscope sighting was irrelevant — it was the duty of. the OOW always to dive the boat. It was obvious to every man jack in Orcus that an officer had failed. But it was Woolf-Gault's reaction which most troubled Farge.

The officer had remained unrepentant, as arrogant and as self-opinionated as ever. Farge sighed in the seclusion of his night sleeper. He had told Tim Prout to send Woolf-Gault on first leave; tomorrow, Farge would ask FOSM that Woolf-Gault be relieved forthwith.

Julian Farge reached up for the bunk light, flipped off the switch and for a few minutes lay awake in the blue gloom from the night light. It was not only the Woolf-Gault incident that was disturbing: why was FOSM summoning him to headquarters in such a hurry?

Chapter 2

Northwood, 25 April.

The sleeper express stopped for over forty minutes outside Euston. Julian Farge, shaved and hungry, waited in the corridor with the other passengers, impatient at the delay: if he did not catch the tube by 0700 he was bound to be late for his appointment with FOSM. The hold-up was galling after all the Resident Naval Officer had done for him in Barrow to ensure that he caught the train.