Read Online Gold From Crete by C.S. Forester - Free Book Online

up, Mr Garland,’ said Hammett.
    ‘Aye, aye, sir,’ said a voice from the darkness.
    ‘Go ahead with all the speed that the bulkhead will stand,’ said Crowe, before he went back into the chartroom.
    His staff was still at the table planning the attack on the submarine; Rowles was a little white, and conscious of a stabbing pain every time he breathed, but it was not till sometime later that Crowe knew that his navigating officer had broken a couple of ribs when the explosion flung him against the table.
    ‘We’ll stay afloat for some time yet,’ announced Crowe, ‘and we’ll make three or four knots, I hope.’
    ‘Splendid, sir,’ said Rowles, addressing himself to his squared paper. ‘I didn’t want the little beggar to get away.’
    It is even harder to pick up the trail of a hostile submarine than it is to dispose of her, once she is detected: nothing must be allowed to interfere with the hunt when it is in full cry. While the emergency party faced sudden death shoring up the bulkhead, another signal winked from the battered flagship to the rest of the flotilla gathering in for the kill. Out on the bridge again, Crowe looked forward through the darkness. He could not see them, but he knew that his other destroyers were arranging themselves in a neat pattern while the poor old Apache was panting up after them.
    A fresh signal flashed from the Apache ’s masthead, and it was answered by a sound like a roll of thunder as the depth charges exploded. Only that signal was necessary; Crowe knew that his well-drilled flotilla was weaving round in the darkness as though taking part in an elaborate dance, and every few seconds a fresh roll of thunder announced the completion of a new figure as they systematically depth-charged every possible spot where a submarine might be lying. The sonic apparatus had given them the submarine’s position within half a mile; a depth charge bursting within a hundred yards would do grave damage, and it was the business of the flotilla to see that at least one charge burst within a hundred yards. The Apache crept slowly over the sea towards the distant thunder; soon she was pitching and tossing perceptibly as the tremendous ripples of the explosions met her. They continued long after the explosions had ceased.
    ‘We ought to be coming up to them now, sir,’ said Hammett, gazing into the darkness.
    ‘What’s that?’ exclaimed Crowe, pointing suddenly.
    It was a ghostly white triangle sticking out above the surface of the sea, thirty feet of it or so.
    The words were hardly out of Crowe’s mouth when one of the forward guns went off with a crash and a blinding flash. That triangle was the bows of a submarine protruding above the surface as she hung nearly vertically between wind and water, helpless and shattered; but a gun’s crew, tense and eager for a target, will fire at the first sight of an enemy, and a submarine, once seen, must always be destroyed beyond all chance of escape and repair. The firing ceased, leaving everyone temporarily helpless in the darkness, but, blink their dazzled eyes as they might, Crowe and Hammett could see nothing of that pale triangle.
    ‘She’s gone,’ said Hammett.
    Crowe sniffed the night air, trying to sort out the various smells which reached his nostrils. ‘That’s her oil I can smell, isn’t it?’ he said.
    Hammett sniffed as well. ‘Must be,’ he agreed, ‘there was no smell of our own oil before this happened.’
    The pungent, bitter smell was unmistakable; as they leaned over the rail at the end of the bridge it rose more penetratingly to their nostrils; they could picture the enormous pool of oil which was spreading round them, invisible in the night. And, as they leaned and looked, a vast bubble burst close alongside of the Apache as some fresh bulkhead gave way in the rent hull of the submarine sinking down to the bottom, and the enclosed air came bursting upward. They heard the sound and, faint in the darkness, they saw a