Come into my Parlour (41 page)

The cells, like the passage, were too low to stand straight up in, and hardly more than upright coffins in which a man could only just turn round, but opposite the door in each there was a bench-like seat and on these the prisoners at once sat down.

Gregory sank his face into his hands and groaned. After a moment, Kuporovitch's voice came to him, thin but clear, through the ventilators in the two doors. “Gregory, can you hear me?”

“Yes,” Gregory replied, starting up. “Let's talk. Anything to take our minds off these ghastly surroundings.”

“They are pretty grim, aren't they? No place to wash or lie down, and right next to the vessel's screws. There! The engines have just started up again and these steel cells will now vibrate like this all night. Well, I suppose it's a good deterrent for the submarine crews if insubordination means being confined in places like this.”

As the U-boat began to submerge, Gregory said: “That brute Grauber's got off all right. I wish to God he'd taken us with him.”

“The dirty rat! Exposing the ship and crew to additional danger in order to get out himself. We wouldn't have stood much chance if we'd gone with him, though. At least two sailors will have manned the boat that took him ashore and the
Kapitänleutnant
is not fool enough to have waited for them to get back. So we'd have been a party of five or more. They would have shot us for certain before they would have allowed us to fall into Soviet hands again, and when we reached the German lines we wouldn't have been any better off than we were before.”

“I don't agree. My brain simply refuses to function properly when I'm cooped up like this, but once I was on dry land I would have thought up some way of getting out of Grauber's clutches. As it is, we don't stand any chance at all.”

“I think you're wrong there. You heard what Grauber said about the captain of this craft. He knows these waters well, and he must have had plenty of experience in evading aircraft and destroyers. I think the odds are that he'll get us through. If he does we'll have a much better chance of escape when we reach a port than if we'd gone ashore with Grauber and had the muzzle of his gun in our backs all the time.”

“Yes.
If
he gets us through. But we're not much more than a
dozen miles from Kronstadt yet, and he didn't seem at all cheerful about his prospects himself.”

“You're being too pessimistic,” Kuporovitch insisted. “The worst danger was when we surfaced to put Grauber off. As you say yourself, we're still only about a dozen miles from Kronstadt, so other aircraft must have been up and searching for us by the time they got out that boat. Since they didn't spot us then, the chances are now all in favour of our getting clean away.”

At that second, in flat contradiction of his optimism, the dull thump of another bomb shook the ship from stem to stern.

“Oh, God, they've found us!” gasped Gregory, springing up. “Now we'll never get out of here alive.”

“Hang on,” called Kuporovitch, “they haven't got us yet.”

Gregory fell back on his hard seat and bit his lip.

The explosion had occurred at some distance and although the pressure waves had struck the hull a sharp blow, the U-boat was still forging full speed ahead. She now turned sharply, like a huge fish on a line feeling a hook in its jaws and dashing off in a new direction.

Kuporovitch was now sweating too, but he knew that he must try to keep Gregory's courage up as well as his own, so he shouted:

“That's the way! Our captain knows his stuff. I'll bet he's run the gauntlet a score of times before. He's using evading tactics now. We'll get away all right.”

There came a more distant explosion. For an instant they hoped that again the had been found only by a single aircraft, which had now let go doth its bombs; but a second later another followed, much nearer, making the vessel's stern heave alarmingly. The prisoners were thrown sideways, hard against the walls of their cells. Thrusting out their arms as they were jerked back into their seats they sought to support themselves, while waiting breathlessly for the next shock.

It came, almost immediately. A loud boom rang right through the ship. She shuddered horribly, listed hard to port, then seemed to swing half round. Her engines stopped.

“This is it!” thought Gregory. “This is it! They've got her. That last one jammed her propellers or something, and she's a sitting pigeon now. The next one will be a direct hit and the water will come rushing in. Oh, God! This is too awful!”

Two more explosions followed. After each the submarine rocked and vibrated wildly. As she regained an even keel they realised that she was still going slowly forward under her own way and that her nose was now pointed slightly downwards.

For a few moments nothing happened, then there came a very gentle bump and the U-boat stopped dead.

“We've grounded!” shouted Kuporovitch. “We're on the bottom.”

“I know!” Gregory shouted back in a half-strangled voice.

A new terror had seized him now. He was convinced that the submarine had been put out of action, for although the near miss had not actually sunk them the frightful jolt from it must have damaged some vital part of her mechanism. Why, otherwise, had her engines stopped? She was stuck there on the bottom and would never rise to the surface again. Instead of the hull being burst open and his being killed instantly, crushed under a mass of compressed steel, or choking quickly as the water poured through some gaping rent in her side, he was now condemned to linger there for hours, or perhaps even days, gradually suffocating in the fume-laden air.

He knew that they were in quite shallow water, and that sunken submarines could be raised by means of camels and buoys; but the Russians were not the people to waste the time of their divers salvaging sunken German U-boats for the sake of rescuing their crews. If they bothered to salvage her at all it would be weeks hence at their own leisure; and by that time every soul in her would have long since been dead.

But no! In these days all under-sea craft were fitted with special escape hatches, through which the crew could one by one be released, so that with their Davis apparatus they shot up to the surface. Probably they were getting out in that way now and the Russians in some torpedo-boat were hauling them up to the fresh air, life and safety. Yet, even if that were the case it could bring no hope to him. Grauber's order had been clear enough. If the submarine was sunk the two prisoners were in no circumstances to be released, but left to drown in her.

His brain was racing with these nightmare thoughts. All that he had read of sunken submarines came back to him. He recalled the grim reports of the imprisoned sailors, tapping out messages in morse code on the hull, and of the divers outside answering. Of how the divers bored a hole through the steel plates and brought down a line to pump in air; but that sometimes the sea became so rough or the currents on the sea-bed so strong that the divers' rescue operations were constantly checked; and that the tapping of the men inside the submarine grew fainter and more irregular, until it ceased. Yet he might tap and hammer until his strength gave out. There would never be any reply, because there would never be anyone there to hear him.

He wondered when the U-boat's batteries would fail, and her lights go out. They had flickered wildly and gone off for a moment once or twice while the vessel was being buffeted by the underwater explosions, but for some moments now they had been steady again and a cheering glimmer coming through the ventilation slits from the electric bulbs
in the passage lit the cell with a faint radiance. But long before he died the power would give out and his last hours would be passed in terrifying stygian blackness.

Darkness, cold and the reek of poison fumes would be his last sensations on earth. It was almost stifling now but when the generators ceased to function, down there on the sea bottom, the cold would be intense. His furs now lay on the floor at his feet. By putting them on he would be able to stave off the cold for a little, but that would not prevent him from dying, buried alive in that black, coffin-like pit.

Kuporovitch was very far from being happy but, not being a victim to claustrophobia, he had so far escaped the worst of these nightmare fears. He was extremely perturbed by the turn events had taken, but his mind was still clear, and ever since the engines had stopped he had been sitting almost rigid, listening with all his ears. Soon after they grounded he had heard three more distant explosions and felt the hull shudder faintly in response to each, but after that there had ensued the silence of the grave.

“Gregory!” he called after an interval of about five minutes.

“Yes,” came the hoarse reply.

“You're not scared, are you?”

“Not scared!” Gregory replied, with a semi-hysterical laugh. Tm nearly sick with fright.”

“You needn't be, old chap. Everything's going to be all right.”

“What d'you mean? We're stuck here on the bottom. We'll never see daylight again. We're going to die here—to die—to die in the awful cold and darkness.”

“Shut up!” shouted the Russian. “Pull yourself together, man! It's not like you to give way like this.”

“I'm sorry,” Gregory muttered thickly. “But I can't help it, Stefan. I've faced death in lots of forms, and I've never gone to pieces like this before. It's being boxed up. If only I could get out I If only I could get out!”

“Stop it!” came the curt rejoinder. “Because we are on the bottom we are not necessarily stuck there.”

“What the hell are you talking about? The engines have stopped and the ship wouldn't be lying still if they had any means of getting it going again.”

“Oh yes, she might. A modern submarine takes a lot of knocking out, and that big bang wasn't near enough to damage us seriously. The
Kapitänleutnant
has been too clever for the boys who were after him. He seized on the chance to pretend they had got him and deliberately went to the bottom. No doubt he released a lot of oil to make a big patch on the surface so that they'd think they'd bust us
wide open and go home happy. That trick has come off lots of times before now.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I'm certain of it. There were no alarm bells or sounds of panic when we hit the sea-bed.”

“Oh, God, I hope you're right. What d'you think they'll do now?”

“Lie here for a bit, then go on again. She daren't stay here in this shallow water till morning. Some of the boys who think they got her are certain to come out to have a look at the wreck. If they found her still whole they'd let her have it, and she'd never get away a second time; so she's got to put twenty or thirty miles between herself and this place before daylight.”

Suddenly, as though in deliberate confirmation of Kuporovitch's statement, the motors started up. Gregory could have leapt for joy, but the strain upon him had been so great that he was halfway between laughter and tears.

The submarine rocked then drew astern a little. Her nose lifted and she went ahead. Two minutes later she had flattened out and was pulsing forward with all the speed her engines could give her.

“It looks——” Gregory hesitated. “It almost looks as if we might get clean away now.”

“I see no reason why we shouldn't,” Kuporovitch replied cheerfully. “If it's been reported to Kronstadt that we were sunk they won't bother with us any more. This makes the third big victory we've had tonight.”

“Victory!” repeated Gregory. “Have you gone crazy?”

“No. I said victory and I mean victory.”

“How the hell d'you make that out?”

“Well, first there is the promise we made to Marshal Voroshilov. You remember the terms of our agreement?”

“Yes. We were not to attempt to escape from the prison in Siberia to which he was sending us, and while we were there we were not to seek to communicate anything that we had learned from him either by word or in writing to a living soul.”

“That's it. Well, we haven't broken our promise so far, have we?”

“No. We made no attempt to escape. We were simply taken over by Grauber without having any say in the matter.”

“And as there is not now the remotest chance of our ever arriving at that prison in Siberia, we shall never be in a position to break the promise we made in the future; shall we?”

“You mean that our promise was binding only for so long as we
were detained in a Soviet prison, and that the failure of the Marshal to detain us frees us from it?”

“I do. It is not unfair to say that part of his side of the bargain was to protect us from all future risks to life, limb and sanity for the duration. But now, through no act of our own, we find ourselves up against the Germans again; and we may yet be hard put to it to withhold his secrets from them. If we can do that, save our necks and get out of this by our own endeavours, I feel that even Clim himself would agree that we have a right to cash in on our efforts.”

“You're right, Stefan. As a matter of fact that was the first thing that occurred to me when we were being taken off in the launch to the sub. By allowing us to fall into the hands of the enemy the Marshal forfeited his right to hold us to our promise.”

“Good! Well, that's Victory Number One. The second was over Grauber.”

“How d'you mean?”

“Why, surely you were not so preoccupied with your own fears that we'd never make port in this thing to have failed to notice how I succeeded in playing on his nerves?”

“No. I was tickled to death to see how you got the brute rattled.”

“But you didn't realise that it was deliberate, eh?”

“I'm afraid, Stefan, that I was very far from feeling like my usual self, so your tactics escaped me.”

“Well, it
was
deliberate. I realised from the start that we didn't stand a dog's chance as long as that single basilisk's eye of his was on us; but I could see he was scared stiff of meeting a sticky end under the sea. I felt pretty certain that if I could play on that fear he would take any risks that there might be on shore rather than remain with us. When those bombs were dropped I got the feel of his soft corn nicely and trod on it hard. He reacted perfectly and, although he positively hated leaving us, his fear of his own skin proved too much for him.”