A Twist of Sand

John had checked and apparently there was no damage. Trout didn't seem in grave danger, but her stern now swung inwards with the current. I took the chart between sweat-soaked fingers and saw that Trout must be hard aground off Galleon Point. What had pushed her sideways ? There was nothing on the chart. I swung the periscope round and studied the broken water to the south. Then I saw. There was a slight clear patch running directly into the main channel. It was a kind of overflow channel through which the water sluiced when the tide was nearly high, like now, and invisible at low water. The situation was serious, but by no means hopeless. I could blow the tanks and probably shake her loose, but that might mean giving away my position. But in this near-dark? A submarine's silhouette is small at the best of times, and it was not likely that she would be spotted if she broke surface only for a moment. . ..

"Blow the main tanks," I ordered.

Trout strained as she became buoyant. Strained, held --  and tore free -- free! She leaped to the surface.

"Twenty feet," I ordered.

She dived like a mad thing. As the words left my lips - I knew that her hydroplanes were damaged.

"Surface."

"Aye, aye, sir."

Trout came up raggedly, very raggedly.

"Try and keep her awash if you can," I said to John. His clipped, curt commands showed that he knew what danger Trout was in -- he had looked through the periscope.

There was only one thing now -- to take Trout in on the surface and hope that she wouldn't be spotted before I could deal a lethal blow. There was also the moon. A sharp lookout aboard NP I and we were doomed. On the other hand, a submarine's conning-tower, with the rest of her almost awash, is not easy to see -- unless a sliver of moonlight reflecting off the wet casing gave us away.

I reached for an old reefer jacket.

"I'll con her from up aloft," I said. "No look-outs.'

Then the thought struck me.

With one foot poised on the steel rung, I remembered my explicit orders. "You will destroy. . . ."

"Fuse the demolition charges to blow her up," I said.

Davis at the hydroplanes blanched. I turned to John and looked him in the eyes.

"If you fail to receive word from me within five-minute intervals, no one is to venture up aloft. Is that clear? You will blow the demolition charges."

"Escape drill for the crew, sir?"

I thought of that pitiless waste of waters. They would be better off in one short, sharp explosion than trying to battle it out against the inexorable sea.

"No escape drill," I replied. "You will blow the charges. That is all."

He looked at me bleakly.  I knew he would do it.

"Aye, aye, sir."

The salt spray smarted on my lips up aloft. Curva dos Dunas might have looked grim through the periscope, but from up here, with a view all round of the terrifying breakers, it was truly horrifying. Trout seemed stuck in the middle of a welter of creaming white water, with the salt spray and spindrift tearing up from the south-west across her, half-submerged. In fact, I could scarcely see the full length of the casing, or distinguish where it started and ended. It would need a very keen pair of eyes to pick us up from NP I in that driving maelstrom. Radar -- but that was her Achilles heel. I felt a little easier. Then, through the broken, spume-laden air on the landward side, my two mountains, like things primitive when the world was young, reared their dun crowns as the moon rose behind them, pale and strange in the queer refracted light which the salt-laden air of the sea, meeting the mica particles of the desert, had contrived. The moon itself looked distorted, sick. The feeling of being utterly alone, dominated by the wild elements of sea and desert, wiped the fear of NP I from my heart. It was not NP I who was the first enemy, but the Skeleton Coast. Alone, I shivered.

"Steer one-one-oh," I ordered down the voice-pipe. Trout headed down the channel.  There was almost nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the white water.  The spume tore across the slowly-moving submarine.

The two mountains gave me a new bearing, and I altered course sharply to the southward, the land being now close by on my left. I could even see, in the strange light, the scrub on the corrugated sandhills above the rocky beach. Trout had not suffered much -- for surface running at any rate -- but I reckoned, looking at old Simon's chart, that we must have struck at Galleon Point. She may have even fouled some old wreckage there.

My eyes were riveted to the south-west, where I knew NP I must lie in the inner anchorage. The driving, salt-laden gale made it impossible to see any distance. About a mile and a half to go. ...

"Action stations," I ordered. "Bring all tubes to the ready. Settings for four and six feet. Gun crew at the ready. When I give the word, I want them to fire on a bearing I will give them immediately before. Is that clear?"

"Aye, aye, sir," came John's disembodied response.