Whitey had heard that noise too often to be mistaken. He had heard it many, many times on the hull of the wreck in Sydney Harbour, the old Centennial, when they had carefully scraped away the barnacles to ensure a good contact for the magnets on their limpet mines. And he knew now, without a shadow of doubt, that someone was scraping at Wind Rode’s screw or rudder, with the same object in mind.

  Smoothly, his finned feet kicking powerfully and rhythmically, he slid towards the stern, a few feet beneath the hull.

  There was no moon, but the sky was a carpet of brilliants. Even so. not much light penetrated beneath the hull. This suited Whitey. He identified his position from the configuration of the hull—he felt an engine inlet-valve, and knew he was under the torpedo-tubes: he came to the end of the anti-roll bilge-keel, and he knew he was only a few feet from the propellers. He came very slowly now, stopping when the scraping stopped, gliding on when it resumed.

  And now, to his practised ears, the scraping seemed as loud as hammering. Then he saw him: legs moving a little to maintain his position, a hunchbacked, hazy outline working busily on a blade of the starb’d propeller. A well-placed charge there would cut the big blade off as efficiently as a cord drawn through cheese.

  It was very quick, and quite easy. The Jap frogman must have heard Gellatly’s deterrent precautions, and had waited till the explosions ceased. Now he had to work quickly in case they began again. His face pressed close to the bronze propeller blade, he scraped a little more and then dropped his steel scraper, satisfied. Already he had his charge fixed to the port screw. Now he reached down to his belt and brought up the other limpet. It was a small but powerful charge, its base fitted with a magnet almost a foot in diameter. The Jap pressed the charge against the clean metal of the blade and felt it clasped there. There was one more operation and then he could get away out of it. The firing mechanism of the charge was fitted with a hydrostatic valve. The charge would go up when a sufficient pressure of water had forced in. To ensure against premature explosion, the valve was fitted with a safety pin. Once that pin was out, it was merely a matter of time before the British destroyer would be rendered incapable of steaming.

  His lean brown hand went out to the pin.

  Whitey had forced himself away from the hull very slowly, to prevent a pressure wave from his movement reaching, and alarming, the enemy frogman. Gliding with his body stretched straight out to minimize water disturbance, he reached a point behind the bent-over figure. Then the pearl-diver thrust powerfully with both finned feet.

  His left hand, outstretched, took hold of the Jap’s left shoulder, steadying him. The Jap had time to half turn his head in abrupt shock when the long knife drove into his back. The second thrust faltered against a rib-bone before Whitey’s savage twisting forced it clear and in. But it was not needed. The Jap’s hand fell away from the safety pin. He drifted slowly down from under the knife, his body limp and jack-knifed so that he seemed to be trying to touch his toes with his nerveless hands. Before he had sunk out of sight Whitey had examined the pin in the limpet and was hauling himself around to the other propeller.

  On the way he passed the rudder, and a quick look sufficed to tell him it had not been touched. He found the other limpet at once, in a similar place to the first. The pin was out. Whitey wrenched the explosive clear of the magnet’s grip, but the charge, lethal enough when against the propeller blade, would result in nothing but a loud bang when it exploded in the mud of the bottom. His excited mind, working swiftly under the stimulus of what he had just done, had already traversed the risk to himself of the charge’s blowing while he was still dived. But he knew that it would be some time before the valve worked—the enemy frogman had to have time to get clear.

  He quickly examined both sides of the remaining blades and then prepared to thrust himself to the surface.

  A fish guides itself almost wholly by the rows of sensory organs stretching along the sides of its body. These acutely sensitive nerve centres pick up the varying pressures caused by a current flowing against, and being diverted by, an outcrop or rock beneath the surface. The fish alters course accordingly to clear the obstruction, warned by the pressures beating against its nervy side.

  Whitey the pearl-diver was not a fish, but he was as close as a human could get to that piscatorial species. Water is incompressible, and a body moving through it at any speed sends out warnings of its approach in the form of radial lines of pressure. The second frogman was swimming so fast to help his countryman’s work that Whitey scarcely had time to turn and set himself before the Jap got within ten feet of him.

  Whitey knew that this time it would not be so easy. He kept his head in its mask turned only slightly towards the newcomer, and he kept his hands on the propeller blade as if he were working there, the knife blade laid along the inner side of his palm and up his forearm.

  He waited until the Jap was three feet away, still coming in, before he lifted his arm and struck with the knife at the junction of neck and shoulder.

  But water, while being a most efficient conductor, is highly resistant to abrupt movement. This resistance caused Whitey’s knife to deflect a few inches, so that its point, instead of penetrating the vital area, rasped against the front of the frogman’s mask. He jerked his head back in an abrupt gesture of astonishment, and for a fraction of time Whitey stared into a contorted almond-eyed face. Then the Jap’s hand went down to his knife.

  Whitey’s reaction was instant and certain. The enemy swimmer was alerted to his danger—there could be no swift finishing blow now. If he struck at the Jap’s body it could develop into a writhing, stabbing, inconclusive fight. His knife-hand was still out-stretched, almost on his knife in its sheath. Whitey brought the sharp tip of his own blade down in front of the other’s chest. He felt it snag in the counter-lung. He pressed it in, and with all his strength, ripped.

  The result was spectacular. A cloud of air-bubbles burst out into Whitey’s face. Inside the breathing-bag on the Jap’s chest a miniature battle was in progress—water forcing in, air blowing out, both processes fatal to the Jap.

  He forgot his knife; he forgot everything but the instinctive urge to get to the surface. He breathed in frantically on the demand valve in his mouth and he got no air. He struggled in the big pearl-diver’s grip and his struggles made his bodily need of oxygen more acute. Arms flailing he tried to thrust himself to the surface, away from the killing, drowning pressure of that twenty-foot depth.

  Whitey let his rubber-clad body slide through his hands. When the Jap’s legs were in his fingers he tightened his grip. He held the kicking legs by the ankles, feeling already their weakening thrust. Then he curled one of his own legs over the propeller shaft, and, anchored securely, sat there. His hands clutched the weakly kicking ankles in a hard, implacable grip.

  Straining straight upwards, the Jap’s head was only a few feet below the surface, the life-giving air. Held by that inexorable grip, he might as well have been at the bottom of the deep Pacific. Held by the shaft, Whitey waited, almost casually, his head up, watching the struggles of the puppet in his hands. He did not have to wait long. The lungs of an average man contain six litres of air after taking a deep breath. Experienced pearl-divers, like Whitey, can draw as much as eight litres into their air-spaces. Even so, this eight litres includes two litres of residual air which is the amount left in the lungs after the deepest possible expiration. But skin-divers move slowly and carefully on the bed of the sea. conserving their oxygen: the diver Whitey was holding had been exerting himself to the utmost of his capacity for the last two minutes.

  Shortly Whitey felt no strain at all on his hands; the finned feet were quiet. While he had been holding the Jap back, his mind had been engaged by thoughts of that limpet mine beneath him. With his enemy drowned, Whitey heaved himself round to the other screw and prised off the remaining, safe, limpet. With the charge in one hand and his other arm round his prize, he kicked himself quickly to the surface.

  He was surprised to see or hear no excitement on the deck above him—he’d forgotten that he had been dived only a few minutes. What he did see was a grey shape hulking against the ship’s side a few yards ahead of him. He grinned tightly inside his mask as he realized that he had been so intent on what he was doing down there he had not heard the assault boat edge alongside.

  He lifted his head, spat out his demand valve, and called:

  “Up top there! You there, Clive? Heave me a line down.”

  Gellatly came to the rail at once he stared down into the water a few feet below him for an incredulous second. Then he leaned back and reappeared with a heaving-line. The end snapped into the water a foot from Whitey’s face.

  Whitey worked swiftly with the line. He was too far away for the charge to seriously hurt him, but its explosion was something he had no desire to experience. The dangling body of the Jap went up the side first, accompanied, when it reached the deck, by bursts of astonished and obscene comment. Then the safe limpet, and then, with eager hands reached over to help him, Whitey himself.

  The only man who was unaffected by the excitement was Gellatly, and that was because his quick mind had already shot ahead of the visible vindication of his precautions. Those two frogmen had been brought to the cove in a boat; that boat had to be caught. He told Whitey to get his gear into the assault craft, and to take the spare breathing set—Whitey had wasted too much of his precious air. Then Gellatly turned and ran for the bridge ladder.

  The word had beaten him there. Randall grinned widely with enjoyment at the petty officer.

  “Nice work. Gellatly! That red light you can see is my blushing dial.”

  “Yes, sir,” Gellatly said. He was not smiling. He turned his head to the captain. Bentley anticipated his words.

  “They’d have come in a boat, Gellatly. Get after it in the assault craft. No point in us sending the motor-boat. You’ve got to get that boat!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Gellatly was at the head of the ladder when he heard Bentley’s voice. It was crisp and hard.

  “Right, Number One! Get the motor-boat back in the water. I want deterrent routine carried out until the completion of the mission. Smack it about!”

  The frogman grinned briefly and tightly as he ran down the ladder.

  The Yank coxswain of the assault craft was still protesting when they bundled him up and over the side on to the upper deck. But it was no time for niceties of international goodwill and understanding. Hooky gave his orders and the big boat swung away from the destroyer’s side, curving in a wide circle that left a swathe of smooth white on the dark surface of the sea. Standing beside Hooky on the coxswain’s platform in the Mess, Gellatly snapped at his men:

  “Two of you on either side! Up in the bow, Whitey! It can’t be far away.”

  Then, his lookouts posted, Gellatly stepped down into the well of the boat to inspect their gear. The apparatus he did not worry about—each diver would have looked after his own breathing equipment. He checked on the rubber dinghy from which they would drop, and into which they would be hauled on the pick-up. He paid especial care to the demolition charges, fitted into special buoyant packs for easy and lightweight carrying, and the sub-machine gun in its waterproof plastic bag. That would be his weapon. He counted the fins laid out beside the breathing gear, and, satisfied, climbed back up beside Hooky.

  A thought struck him. There might be more frogmen in that boat, apart from the coxswain. He went back into the well and dressed himself for diving. When he returned Hooky spoke softly to him: “If you were in charge of that operation against the ship, where would you order the boat to wait?”

  They were almost clear of the island, and Gellatly stared out over the quiet sea before he answered. Then he swung his head suddenly and stared back at the dim line of shore, on the side opposite to where Wind Rode was lying:

  “Hell, yes!” he exclaimed. “Not out in the wide open spaces—in against that shoreline.”

  Hooky’s answer was to swing the boat to starb’d.

  They found the enemy boat quickly and easily. It was a small powered craft, and it had no alternative but to wait crouching as close in to the shore as it dared—it could not try to escape across the open sea once the sound of Hooky’s boat came pulsing across to the coxswain, nor could it sneak inshore and hide in a cove; the coast here dropped sheer into the water, the back side of the island’s rearing peak.

  “Stand-by,” said Hooky in an unemotional voice. They knew what he was going to do; it was so elementary they had not even discussed tactics.

  There was only one man in the boat ahead of them, and they saw clearly in the starlight his face turned to stare back at them, his mouth gaping in apprehension and knowledge of what must surely happen. Still twisted round to face them, he swung his boat in a desperate evasion movement. Hooky touched his own wheel.

  Travelling at top speed the big square bow of the assault craft smashed into the smaller boat smack amidships. The coxswain was flung clean out of his boat, his arm flailing in mid-air before he hit the water in a splash and went under.

  Hooky spun his wheel and looked at Gellatly.

  “Machine-gun?”

  “No,” the diver shook his head. “It might carry to the beach.” He jumped down into the well and was back in a second. Hooky looked down at what he held in his hand, but he made no comment. His weathered face as hard and brown as teak, he conned the big boat back over their wake, back to where a black head was jerking beside the waterlogged stern of the smashed boat.

  Gellatly wat leaning well out over the side. His left hand was extended. They swept up to the swimmer. “Right!” Gellatly snapped, and as Hooky swung the assault craft violently Gellatly dropped his hand grenade, almost on the Jap’s head.

  They flung themselves flat on the deck. The big boat careered on. The grenade, four-seconds delay on its fuse, had time to sink a few feet below its target before it exploded. They heard the water-dampened explosion, they fell the boat shake, and they heard several sharp pings against its steel sides. Gellatly got to his feet and looked back. Where the Jap had been there floated a small ulcer of white, flattened water. There was nothing else.

  Hooky straightened the boat up and headed its blunt nose for the distant loom of Mortie Island. Gellatly stood silent beside him. They drove on for half a minute. Hooky said:

  “We had to do it. If he got back ...”

  “I know, I know!” Gellatly’s voice was defensively sharp. He had a sour, nervous taste in his mouth. He wanted to spit. “Give her full power. We’ve fooled around enough as it is!”

  Hooky glanced at him sideways, at the tight line of jaw and mouth.

  “All right, cobs, all right—I’ll get you in there.”

  Chapter Seven

  THEY WERE HALF a mile from the whitely-gleaming strip of beach when Hooky stopped her. They heaved the rubber dinghy over the port side and lashed it firmly fore and aft. They were dressed completely now, black and sinister and strangely hump-backed in their breathing equipment. Gellatly checked the compass strapped to his wrist, then took a long look at the shore. From this distance, without moonlight, he could not be sure of the clump of bamboos. He felt irritation, sharp and sudden, at his failure to identify their leading mark. He licked his lips, consciously fighting down the feeling. What’s up with you, boy? This is what you volunteered for, isn’t it? Then why the churning in the guts? You know why, all right! Get in that bloody water and forget about it!

  He turned to look back at Hooky, standing huge and oaken at the wheel.

  “Let her go!”

  Hooky glanced at the beach, lining up his direction. The boat moved ahead, the frogmen waited just under the chest-high gun’le, the dinghy foaming alongside: a tense tableau.

  Gellatly’s voice was staccato.

  “You know the drill. Spread out as you go in. Straight into the bush. Rendezvous back here at two- thirty.”

  He paused, and looked again at the beach, shining dully, quiet. It could hide a dozen muzzles. Still staring out over the still water, he snapped:

  “Let’s go!”

  Corby was the first over. He paused a second on the boat’s deck, then he was over, his legs spread out so that he landed on the outboard edge of the dinghy, flat on his stomach, one leg inside the dinghy, the other trailing in the sea. The next instant he was in the water, a black blob receding astern. Whitey followed him.

  It was a symphony of expert drill, each man landing in the same spot in the same way, not a wasted motion, clean and quick and economical. Gellatly was in the air, dropping for the dinghy, when he heard Hooky’s soft, “Happy returns, fellers.” Then he jarred on to the rubber edge and then felt the warm water engulf him. The big boat moved on, its engine already throttled back, a dim greyness in the starlight.

  Gellatly swilled his mask quickly. A glance to his left showed him the four other heads, black and barely visible against the water. He turned his head back to the beach. Then he raised his right arm up like a beacon and twisted his body under the surface. The long swim had commenced.

  Ten feet under, he moved in steady, strength-conserving strokes. He could not see his companions. Normally, if threading their way in through a harbour-mouth, or a mine field, they would have been secured to each other with thin rope, a “chum-line”. But here that was not necessary.

  He swam, and his mind was busy. He had much to fill it. Where had those frogmen come from? How had they known the destroyer was there? Radar? Was Randall’s assurance about their own immunity from the searching beam reliable? Or were the whole mob of Japs alerted in there, waiting for the fish to flop into the trap?

 

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