Storm Below. Hugh Garner
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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 way down the ladder again, his oversized feet gripping the rungs carefully in his descent.
He’s rushed off to get the sick bay tiffy himself, the captain thought. Caught with his pants down. Bloody little snob. How did a Canadian get a hyphenated name? It was as ersatz as his Vancouver Island English accent.
“I’ve got the Milverton, sir,” Wright said.
“Eh? Oh, good! Good work!” said the captain, glancing at the screen.
He took another turn around the bridge, standing for a minute or two in the shelter of the splinter shield, gazing to starboard where the serried rows of freighters bobbed up and down in the middle distance. Beneath their high-riding plimsolls the red oxide of their bottom plates showed momentarily above the whitecaps. The little Greek coaster trailed a soggy tassel of black smoke along her wake.
~
Leading Seaman Hector McCaffrey lounged on the captain’s couch in the wheelhouse and puffed dreamily on a cigarette. In his hand rested a red-covered, lurid romance entitled The Fleshpots of Sin.
He was a heavy young man who was on the sixth year of his first seven-year hitch in the regular navy. Because of his three-or four-year seniority over most of the other members of the crew he was inclined to be a little distant with them, and he could not forget that for the first three years of his enlistment he had hardly dared open his mouth. Since the advent of so many civilians — “plough jockeys” he called them — he had come into his own, and now that it was his turn to rule the roost he resented the lack of feeling for his position which the new entries showed him. Along with their ignorance of naval protocol was an easygoing camaraderie which they were forever trying to force upon him, a leading seaman. With the exception of the captain and the navigating officer who were ex-Merchant Navy men he had nothing but contempt for the officers, whom he grouped together, regardless of civilian occupation, under the opprobrious term of “bank tellers.”
He settled himself more comfortably on the couch, placing his feet against the wooden foot of the bunk. He was using his duffle coat as a cover, and his lifebelt as a pillow. Over a suit of dungarees he wore a blue denim smock.
“You wanna watch out, McCaffrey,” the seaman at the wheel said, covering the voice pipe with the palm of his hand. “You know what the Old Man’ll say if he knows somebody down here’s smoking. He’s up top, you know.”
“He can’t smell this fag from here.”
“He can smell ’em a mile.”
“Is he on the blower now?”
“No, it’s Harris.”
“Quit worrying.” He went back to his book, waiting until nobody was looking before surreptitiously stamping out his cigarette.
The wheelhouse was quiet again except for the da-da-da-dit, da-dit from the wireless room which was separated from it