Free Go In and Sink! by Douglas Reeman

was almost unnerving.
    He twisted his head to look at the German cap which hung behind his door. The one he might have to wear if every other ruse failed. It had a white top, the mark of a U-boat commander. He had tried it on just the once. The effect had been startling.
    He licked his lips, tasting the diesel in his throat. It was a pity they had been made to dive overnight, but safety came first. The submarine was now about a thousand miles south of Cape Farewell, Greenland and a similar distance east of Newfoundland. Out here the enemy was not only made up of men. There could be ice about, and it was best to run deep and avoid the risk.
    Feet padded past his cabin and he thought he heard the clink of cups. Breakfast. The one real occasion when he faced most of his officers at once.
    The passage to the first rendezvous area had been busy for all of them. All the usual teething troubles. Faulty valves and inexplicable failures in wiring which had to be traced with the aid of Warwick or one of the telegraphists to translate the German handbooks.
    After the first day or so many of the company seemed to get overconfident. It must have been a strange experience for everyone. Dodging their own patrols, diving whenever an aircraft was heard or sighted. It gave an air of
cloak-and-dagger
which helped to mask the grim reality of their mission.
    Being forced inwards on their resources was bound to have effects, too. Small irritations grew into open arguments. A man who was minutes late on watch was met with something like hatred by the one he was relieving. It was as unreasonable as it was natural. Only when they had something from without to test them would they finally draw together as a unit, irritations or not.
    There had been a quick spark of anger between Gerrard and Devereaux, for instance, which he had quickly quenched. It had started because of something he had done himself. Three days out from the loch the weather had moderated, the Atlantic smoothing its grey face to a long succession of humped rollers. Marshall had decided on a deep practice dive, something they had not yet done together. It was always a tense moment in any boat, let alone this one.
    Three hundred and fifty feet. It was nothing like the depth the boat was built to withstand, but you always felt uneasy. As they had sunk deeper and deeper, with Frenzel and his E.R.A’s creeping about the hull in search of faults and leaks, several men must have considered the fact that the boat’s skin was less than an inch thick.
    Gerrard had handled deep dives in
Tristram
on many occasions, and had been busy with his slide-rule and calculations before the actual moment of taking her down. Each hour of the day the boats trim had to be watched and checked. As fuel was consumed the weight had to be compensated. Food and fresh water, even the movement of large numbers of men at any one time, such as going to diving stations, had to be allowed for. A bad first lieutenant had been known to let his submarine’s bows flounder above the surface at the moment of firing torpedoes, merely because he had not compensated for their sudden loss of weight.
    Every so often there had been a sharp squeak or groan, with attendant gasps from the inexperienced men aboard. For even at a mere one hundred feet there was a weight of twenty-five tons of water on every square yard of the hull.
    As the depth gauges had steadied on one hundred and five metres Gerrard had asked, ‘Shall I take her up again, sir?’
    Devereaux had remarked, ‘Getting worried, Number One? I
am
surprised!’
    For those brief seconds Marshall had seen the hostility between them. Maybe Devereaux had expected the appointment of first lieutenant, especially as he had been in the U-boat since her capture. And perhaps Gerrard really was rattled after his last commission in the Med. Either would be easy to explain.
    He had said calmly, ‘Check all sections.’ He had waited, listening to the negative reports flooding through