A Twist of Sand

I glanced at my watch and I took the decision which I had, through fear, kept rigidly at the back of my mind.

I would take Trout in after NP I.

I felt unutterably weary. I shuddered as I glanced at those fearful whorls on the chart, guarded by the remorseless sand-bars. Peering at the welter of soundings and curl annotations, I suddenly found myself amused. Before the final whorled channel into the anchorage in the centre was marked "Galleon Point." And, minutely under it in the faded Indian ink, "spar shows at low water. Five fathoms." A galleon! The thought was too much for my tired mind. I laughed to myself and the laughter, like a balm, soothed my failure and crystallised my new attack plan. It was almost dark now. I had two choices: I could try and take Trout in on the surface and risk discovery and almost certain sinking by NP I -- there was no room to manoeuvre -- or go in at periscope depth, using Simon's Rock, the three-topped hill and another high hill to the north to steer her by. My heart sank when I looked at the channel. A misjudged order, one mistiming, a swing of the tide-race, and Trout would be jammed against the sand-bars and wolfish breakers. It would be moonlight. I'd take Trout in, even if it killed me. Once in the inner anchorage, NP I would get her delayed salvo of Trout torpedoes, although I' hoped the explosion wouldn't damage Trout as well, the distance was so small. Anyway, that problem could wait. If I could take Trout safely in, it would be the most fantastic piece of navigation I had ever attempted. I would also have to bring her out again. And, I thought, the Skeleton Coast alone knows what the water densities are in that channel, sweeping in from warm, shallow water to the cold South Atlantic outside. The only other alternative had already been lost -- to have tried to follow NP I in on hydrophone bearings. I would have had to take Trout so close behind, however, that she must have heard us. Here goes, I thought grimly. I laughed as I tossed down the dividers.

John was looking at me. I hadn't heard him come in, I had been so engrossed in the plan of attack. He had heard that last laugh of mine, and I guess it didn't sound too good to a man who thought his skipper was running off the rails.

We faced one another. John's air of anxious care nettled me. Humour the patient, I thought to myself.

"Well?" I said curtly.

John spread his hands slightly.   "Look, Geoffrey. . . ."

He stopped hopelessly when he saw my face. "You've been without sleep for two days and nights. Have some rest. I'll set a course for Simonstown -- if you'll tell me where we are."

I took refuge in my command. "There's a new attack plan. I don't want it fluffed, like the other."

John made a gesture of despair. So low that I scarcely could hear, he said: "What were we attacking before?"

His loyalty, his despair, his obvious conclusion that I was no longer in a fit state to command Trout roused me. I laughed. A hard, brittle, nervous laugh. It drew a sharp look from him.

"I'm attacking the most dangerous enemy in the most dangerous waters in the world," I said.

He looked at me disbelievingly. I went towards the entrance and for a moment I thought he was going to stop me. I brushed past into the control room.

"Diving stations," I ordered. "Twenty feet. Up periscope. Group up. Both ahead together. Revolutions for six knots."

I intended to rush through the patch of rough, low-density water, and -- I hoped -- be shallow enough to avoid the turbulence, and get fixes on old Simon's rock at the southern entrance, and on the two hills before I committed Trout to the channel.

At sixty feet Trout bucked madly again, but at twenty feet all was quiet.

"Up periscope."

There was Simon's Rock, still white tipped in the near dark. I had a clear view of the three-topped hill bearing 105 degrees and the northern mountain, almost masked now against its dun background, on seventy degrees.

"Course one-oh-oh," I said, committing her to the entrance. It was about three-quarters of a mile to the first big swing in the channel; it then turned back almost parallel to the entrance.

Trout glided towards Curva dos Dunas.

I raised the periscope higher and was appalled at what I saw. Against the dun backdrop of the dunes, touched now with the last light of day, a gale creamed in from the south-west, breaking berserkly on the bars at the entrance, bared now like fangs. I was steady on my bearings however, and old Simon's chart was a marvel. All round creamed broken water.

The sweat trickled down my neck.

"Hydrophone operator and asdic report confused noises to port, starboard and ahead, sir," John reported, his face a mask of formality.

"Switch the bloody things off," I snapped.

"Aye, aye, sir."