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Title: Behind the Log
Author: Pratt, E. J. [Edwin John Dove] (1882-1964)
Date of first publication: 1947
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   Toronto: Macmillan, 1947
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 8 May 2016
Date last updated: 8 May 2016
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1317

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by
Grant Macdonald (1909-1987) have been omitted from this ebook.






  BEHIND THE LOG

  _by_

  E. J. PRATT



  TORONTO
  THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED
  1947




  PRINTED IN CANADA





  To
  _Lorne Richardson_




FOREWORD

This is mainly a statement of exposition and acknowledgment.  In the
spring of 1945 my friend, Professor Lorne Richardson (then a Commander
of the Royal Canadian Navy), asked me if I should like to spend some
time at sea in order to gather material and atmosphere for a poem.  He
said that his suggestion had met with the approval of his colleagues,
and he felt sure that arrangements could be effected.  In due time the
invitation was ratified by Vice-Admiral G. C. Jones and I was granted
every facility to go out with destroyers and corvettes, and collect
from officers and crews facts, stories, moods, technical terms and the
ever-maturing crop of nautical idioms.

I began searching for an action which would combine dramatic intensity
with the eternal tedium of convoy--something in the early phase of the
War when the Atlantic sinkings far outpaced the building of ships and
when, after the fall of Paris, Churchill's frank and audacious
admissions sobered Britain to a sense of her peril.  U-boats were
multiplying fast and moving ever farther westward to concentrate on
Atlantic shipping.  Convoys were being located and trailed across the
ocean with a climbing ratio of loss, which sometimes came close to
annihilation.  Much has been written during and since the War upon the
slimness of the margins between victory and defeat, and the failure of
a given convoy to get through at this most critical phase could mean
general catastrophe.

The story of those ships comprising the Royal Canadian Navy and "the
fourth arm of the Fighting Forces", the Merchant Navy, is now a part of
the history of Canada's growth as a sea power, for at the close of 1942
Canada had become responsible for more than half of the convoys moving
towards Europe.  Those two arms of the Forces worked with the finest
co-ordination, and in the spirit of mutual faith which was never
betrayed, but rather reinforced, by the exercise of the democratic
right to grumble--the antidote to the Fascist lockjaw.

One episode in the six-year-old drama of the waters, which possessed
practically all the elements required for my special task, was the
struggle of convoy S.C. 42 for survival.  It is significant as being
the record of the first display of "wolf-pack" strategy directed
towards Atlantic shipping, and hence the experience of this convoy
became invaluable in the subsequent working out of counter-measures.
The odds against survival were tremendous--twelve U-boats (it was
estimated) with the possibility of German surface raiders coming in for
the kill.  The target was sixty-six ships crawling at eight knots and
protected by an all-Canadian escort of one destroyer H.C.M.S. _Skeena_,
and three corvettes, _Kenogami_, _Orillia_ and _Alberni_, which were
later joined by _Moose Jaw_ and _Chambly_.  Had the faster _Skeena_
been destroyed, all the heroism imaginable would not have availed
against the U-boats, which had a surface speed of three or four knots
more than that of the corvettes.

Another feature of the drama was the harnessing of physical science to
human effort.  Only two or three decades past, captains were blowing
their ships' whistles to determine positions by echoes.  It was always
a wonder to us, as schoolboys in Newfoundland, how captains of coastal
steamers and skippers of "fore-and-afters" could find their way into
port through darkness or thick fog.  A succession of blasts and even of
shouts, striking cliffs and rebounding, would give them the rough basis
for their calculation.  Our wonder was more than a mere tribute to the
practical skill of navigators.  It was partly rooted in mystery over a
dimly apprehended process of science working through an instrument,
whether a whistle or a voice.  We were constantly wavering between a
sophisticated pose before a blackboard demonstration of an echo and a
half-abashed acceptance of a scent or a sixth sense, supposed to be
shared equally by mariners and Newfoundland dogs.  And then as soon as
the superstitions were hammered out of our heads by the schoolmaster's
pointer, a new flock surprised us with the announcement of another
scientific discovery.  There are many of us who are ever standing on
the thresholds of workshops, looking and listening, never completely
rid of the feeling that one day a spirit will enter and planet-strike
the machines.

To a layman, anti-submarine detection (asdic) looked like a miracle.
It is true that its sensational performance in 1941 was in a year or
two to be eclipsed by radar, as shattering to human credulity as radio
and wireless were in their day, yet the physics of sound, or rather
supersonics, seemed then to have reached the highest pitch of technical
accomplishment.  The picture, actual or imaginary, of such a mechanism
in operation, especially in a life-and-death crisis, could be a source
of eerie dramatic tension.  The operator was the heir of a long
promise.  He came late in the line of the sentries and the coastal
skippers with their calls and answers, but when he did come he had a
range far beyond their voices, and when he challenged, the foe replied
from under the sea.

Further acknowledgements are due.  For his kind co-operation and for
his final authority to use the files at Ottawa and to gather more
recent information from a most obliging personnel, my thanks are
offered to Admiral H. T. W. Grant, C.B.E, D.S.O., R.C.N., Chief of the
Naval Staff.  For the use of his Log and the Report of Proceedings, and
for his personal narrative, I am deeply indebted to the commanding
officer of H.M.C.S. _Skeena_, Captain James C. Hibbard, D.S.C. and Bar,
R.C.N, who as senior officer of the escort was in command during this
sixty-hour action off Cape Farewell.  For securing access to officers,
ratings and sailors generally, for checking data, for many courtesies
on and off the ships, and for sharing so generously with me the wealth
of his experience, I am very grateful to Commander William Sclater,
author of _Haida_.

The names of the ships are authentic but the personal names in the
story are fictitious.  The Convoy Conference is synthetic, pieced from
the _Forms_ and _General Instructions_, from accounts of Masters and
N.C.S.O.s present at various convoy conferences, and amplified a
little.  Apart from a few minor transpositions and enlargements for
dramatic effect for which official indulgence is requested, the record
follows the incident.

E. J. PRATT.




  BEHIND THE LOG

  There is a language in a naval log
  That rams grammar down a layman's throat,
  Where words unreel in paragraphs, and lines
  In chapters.  Volumes lie in graphs and codes,
  Recording with an algebraic care
  The idiom of storms, their lairs and paths;
  Or, in the self-same bloodless manner, sorting
  The mongrel litters of a battle signal
  In victories or defeats or bare survivals,
  Flags at half-mast, salutes and guards of honour,
  Distinguished crosses, burials at sea.

  Our navigators trained their astrolabes
  And sextants on the skies in lucky weather,
  Or added guesses to dead reckoning,
  Hauled up their lead, examined mud or shell
  Or gravel on the arming--fifty fathoms,
  Now forty, thirty, twenty-five, shallowing
  Quickly!  "Engines, astern, reefs, keep your lead
  Going.  Have plenty of water under you."
  They did not wait till miracles of science
  Unstopped the naked ears for supersonics,
  Or lifted cataracts from finite vision
  To make night and its darkness visible.
  How long ago was it since sailors blew
  Their sirens at the cliffs while nearing land,
  Traversing channels, cocked their ears and waited?
  "Where did you hear that echo, mate?"
                                        "Right off
  The starboard quarter, Captain.  Took ten seconds."
  "That's Gull Rock there a mile away.  Where now?"
  "Two seconds for the echo from port bow."
  "That's Porpoise Head I reckon--Hard a-port!"
  With echoes everywhere, stand out to sea.
  But when the winds deafened their ears or cloud
  And rain blinded their eyes, they were shoved back
  Upon their mother wit which either had
  To find the exits to the runs and round
  The Capes or pile their ships upon the reefs.

  And of that lineage are the men today.
  They still are calling to the rocks: they get
  Their answers in the same hard terms: they call
  To steel gliding beneath the sea: they pierce
  Horizons for the surface hulls: they ping
  The sky for the plane's fuselage: even
  The moon acknowledged from her crater sills.
  But though the radio bursts and vacuum tubes
  And electronic beams were miracles
  Of yesterday, dismissing cloud and rain
  And darkness as illusions of the sense,
  Yet always there to watch the colours, note
  The V-break in the beam's straight line, to hear
  The echoes, feel the pain, are eyes, ears, nerves:
  Always remains the guess within the judgment
  To jump the fire perfection of the physics
  And smell mortality behind the log.

  As weird a game of ping-pong ever played
  Was on the sea--the place, off Cape Farewell,
  With the back-curtain of the Greenland ice-cap:
  Time--'41 autumnal equinox.
  The crisis was the imminence of famine
  And the cutting of the ganglia and veins
  That vitalized the sinews, fed the cells
  Of lungs demanding oxygen in air.
  The wicks were guttering from want of oil,
  And without oil, the bread went with the light,
  And without bread, the will could not sustain
  The fight, piping its courage to the heart.

  Grey predatory fish had pedigreed
  With tiger sharks and brought a speed and power
  The sharks had never known, for they had been
  Committed to the sea under a charter
  Born of a mania of mind and will
  And nurtured by a Messianic slogan.
  They were not bounded by the parallels.
  They found their habitats wherever there
  Was open sea and keels to ride upon it.
  Off the North Cape they had outsped the narwhals,
  The sawfish off the Rios and the Horn.
  They did not kill for food: they killed that food
  Should not be used as food.  They were the true
  Expendables--the flower of their type.
  They left their mothers for self-immolation,
  The penalty the same for being on
  Or off the target--for the first to join
  Their own combustion to that of the ships,
  And for the second, just to go the way
  Their victims went--a drunken headlong spiral,
  Shunted from an exhausted radius
  Down fifteen thousand feet or more of sea,
  Engines, propellers, gyros, rudders, dead.

  The S.C. 42 was being groomed
  To match a new suspected strategy.
  The sleuths till now had surfaced, stabbed and dived
  In lone attack.  This convoy had to face
  The risk of concentrated ambush, meet it
  By leaving beaten sea-lanes, east and west,
  And in the ambiguity of the wastes
  To seek the harsh alliance of the ice
  And fog, where Arctic currents were more friendly,
  And long nights blanketed the periscopes.


  THE CONVOY CONFERENCE

  In the Conference room the language dripped with brine.
  Veterans, who nearly half a century
  Ago had flown their flags on battle cruisers,
  Were busy grafting some new sprouts of Gaelic
  And Newne-Irish on an English stump.
  They had saluted Fisher as cadets,
  Heard Open Fire under Jellicoe,
  Outridden typhoons off the Solomons
  And at the Falklands cancelled Coronel.
  'Twas time they had a spell of garden peace,
  A time to trim their briers and colour Meerschaums.
  Those old days were the real days--now, by God,
  They had to tread the decks of merchantmen,
  From flagships to dry cargo-ships and tankers.


_The Naval Control Service Officer addresses the Masters._

  "Good morning, gentlemen.  It is a pleasure
  To see familiar faces here today.
  To such of you who have commanded ships
  In earlier convoys what I have to say
  Will be just dishing up the old instructions.
  But since to many it is the first adventure,
  I know you'll pardon me if I should cover
  With some precision the important points.
  Let me begin by saying that your convoy
  Has, in its Commodore, one of the most
  Renowned men in the Service.  It is not
  For me to talk at length about his fine
  And honourable record.  It is known
  To all of you.  He has of his free choice
  Issued from his well-earned retirement
  To place at the disposal of the Allies
  His knowledge, skill, and practical seamanship.
  Here at this table, gentlemen: Rear-Admiral
  Sir Francis Horatio Trelawney-Camperdown!

  "The Senior Naval Officer will have
  Escort and convoy under his command.
  An able and distinguished officer,
  He is through long and personal experience
  Well-versed in enemy tactics, and your safety
  Will be the escort's first consideration.


_N.C.S.O. thumbing the pages of "General Instructions"_

  "Being in all respects ready for sea,
  The ships will have steam up and hoist pennants
  At daybreak.  Note--The Commodore will sound
  A prolonged blast.  The ships will leave anchorage
  In single column and at intervals
  Of three minutes, and in the following order,
  The Commodore leading...
                        You will shorten cables
  XX minutes before you heave up.  Note--
  You will be making seaward on the ebb.
  You start two columns after dropping pilots.
  Notice in Form Al all the instructions
  Governing matters of sequence, columns and speed.

  "May I now draw your most thorough attention
  To that important fire page, section B
  Of General Instructions' (a voice--'regular page
  of _bumph_');                         that _complete
  Blackout at night_.  Only last week reports
  Came in of a ship sunk because she showed
  A light, and that despite the most emphatic
  Warnings at the conference prior to the sailing.
  Remember--have deadlights and scuttles closed,
  The blackout curtains checked, no cigarettes
  Or pipes lighted on deck and every measure
  To conceal the convoy put into effect.

  "And likewise of the first significance,
  Page 3 at section D concerning 'Smoke'.
  Advice is being received of ships making
  Black smoke which with good visibility
  May be observed for many miles at sea,
  And I may add for hours after a convoy
  Has passed a given point.  I must repeat
  This warning--Do not make black smoke in daylight!

  "Again.  Your route has with the greatest care
  Been chosen by the Admiralty experts.
  But may I point out that such care and judgment
  Could be offset by so simple a matter
  As refuse-dumping over rails.  Do not--
  (Voices--'Wrap it around the bully beef.'
  'No, put it in the soup to give it body.'
  'God, that tomato soup needs body and flavour.'
  'I'd put it in the kye to take the stink out.')
  Do NOT throw garbage in the sea in day time.
  That's a dead give-away.  A crate or carton
  Floating astern a convoy might betray
  The existence and position of the ships.
  That practice must at all cost be avoided.

  "And most important for internal safety
  Of convoy lines is that of station-keeping.
  A ship that's not in station is out of control;
  The turns in moments of emergency
  Cannot successfully be executed,
  Unless this measure strictly is observed.
  I do not need to emphasize this maxim.

  "These measures are of front-line urgency.
  W/T silence must always be maintained
  Along the route.  Occasionally it's broken,
  Not wilfully indeed but carelessly,
  By operators fresh from the radio school,
  Whose fingers have not lost the itch to tap
  The keys to break the tedium by listening
  To crackle on 500 kilocycles.
  A random da da dit dit dit might be
  An invitation to the U-boats ready
  To accept it.  They are ever listening
  In on our frequencies and you know well
  The manner the Direction Finder Loop
  On a surfaced U-boat will follow a signal.
  It's like a human ear alerted, which
  Will turn to the source of a sound to get a bearing.
  You must remember that the enemy
  Will not relax his efforts to pick up
  Those waves, that German D/F stations even
  As far away as Occupied Europe
  Are taking bearings, plotting out our ships.
  "Now, gentlemen: here is the Commodore."


_Sir Francis Horatio_

  "Gentlemen: I shall be very brief and I hope
  To be as brief after we get to sea.
  I shall keep my signals to a minimum,
  But when a hoist does go up I shall
  Expect immediate acknowledgment.
  Many of us have sailed together already,
  And gone through several trying situations.
  But our success, such as it is, has sprung
  From absolute obedience to instructions
  And from endurance which must be assumed.
  While it is true that for the navigation
  Of his own ship each master must be held
  Responsible, there is but little room
  For rugged individualists.  Elsewhere
  Perhaps the Nelson touch may be applied,
  And a captain's intuitions exercised,
  But not within the stations of a convoy.
  (Chuckles amongst the older masters.)

  "The N.C.S.O. has referred to the matter
  Of showing lights.  A match, lit on deck, has
  Been spotted by an escort at two miles,
  And last crossing, a thoughtless biped left
  A port open and failed to notice the signal
  From a destroyer.  It required a burst
  From a machine-gun to close it.  I am sure
  We shall require no such emphasis
  In this convoy but I should urge each master
  To make the business of lights a top concern,
  Particularly at the change of Watch.
  Men dropping in to a stuffy galley to make
  A mug of tea before going below
  Are the principal offenders.
                                  "Do not wait
  Till you are deep in fog before you stream
  Your fog-buoys.  That is generally too late.
  Your next astern by that time has lost touch.
  Good seamanship and team-play should prevent
  Avoidable collisions in thick fog.

  "If you are new to convoy you may be
  Tempted to flash on at full brilliancy
  Your navigation lights when another ship
  Closes you.  DON'T.  You are as visible
  To him as he to you.  Keep closed up.  Keep
  Lights dimmed except in an emergency.

  "I shall say little here about the stragglers.
  The record of the losses says it much
  More clearly, and the escort cannot help
  You if you leave the family.  They are good;
  They can work wonders but not miracles.

  "And now if you're uncertain of anything--
  Emergency turns, for instance--come and have
  A chin with me at the close of the conference.
  And to repeat, we're in this business all
  Together, and in it up to the neck:
  For my part, I am bloody proud of it.
  Good morning, gentlemen, and a good voyage.'


_N.C.S.O._

  "Questions?"


_Chorus_

                  "Plenty."


_Harvey Butt_

                                  "I'm in the wrong position.
  Too far astern.  I have a 12-knot ship.
  I want a place in first or second line
  To save me bumpin' into 6-knot tramps."


_Jim Burdock_

  "This convoy got no tramps."


_Butt_

                                "Well, all I know
  The last one had 'em, and I knocked the sterns
  Off three of them, and I was always goin'
  Full speed astern to save my goddam neck."


_"John Knox" O'Flaherty_

  "I could make 8 knots if I didn't have
  Such lousy coal.  The bloody stuff won't steam.
  A half of it is gravel--wouldn't boil
  A kettle: looks like salvage from a wreck
  Picked up from sweepings left on Sable Island."


_Charlie Shipside_

  "And I don't like my place--gummed up between
  A couple of tankers.  God, if I'm not fished
  I'll be run down."


_Jack Doucette_

  "Why should I be back there?
  Never did like the stern of columns.  Suppose
  I'm in there just for picking up survivors.
  What do you take me for--an ambulance?"


_Jerry Payne_

  "8 knots would tear the guts out of my tub.
  I haven't had a refit for three years.
  Can't execute a turn of forty-five degrees.
  We'll be colliding every fifteen seconds."


_Robert Fitzsimmons_

  "My pumps were out of gear when she was built;
  Still out of gear; complained a hundred times,
  But can't get any action."


_Michael Saltaway_

                                "I have this
  To say.  I only got one boiler workin';
  And that one's on half-time--the other half
  Is restin'--and I've only half a crew."


_Norwegian captain, leaning heavily on native speech_

  "I kan ikke forstaa fordommt ord.
  How in helvete tink dey dat I kan
  Faa 8 knots ut of my old vaskelbalja.
  Har ikke hatt fullt mannskap for two year.
  I lar mig fan ikke fortelle what I
  Skal do.  You go helvete alle mann."


_N.C.S.O._

  "What did he say?"


_'Arry Stubbins_

                          "'E says the bleedin' hinstructions
  Are fine and quite clear to 'is hunderstandin'."


_Robin MacAllister_

  "Nae, nae, he canna' thole thae English turrms.
  He'd ken a' richt, gin you gae him the Gaelic.
  I wad respeckfully suggest the wurrds
  O' the Generral Instructions be convairted

  Into a ceevilized tongue so that a chiel
  Micht hae nae doots.  Noo, let me spik mi thochts."

  (Voices: "Now, what did _he_ say?" "Noo's the day
  and noo's the hour."  "Is this St. Andrew's Night?"
  "Pipe in the haggis.")


_A Danish captain_

  "No, no.  He sess he do not _ikke_ know
  One word.  His vaskelbalja--tub-tub, washtub,
  Das iss he mean his ship, can't make 8 knots.
  No crew _mannskap_ full up for long long time.
  Ship had no refit since she left Bergen
  In 1894.  He tol' me dat
  Himself.  He not quite clear.  He sess ve can
  All go to hella.  Don't care damn.
                                        I got
  Complaints also.  Want get dem off my chest.
  Goddam nuisance, I seh, dose para-a-vanes.
  Muss up de vurks.  Crew don't like dem damn bit.
  Dey seh put hex on ship--a buncha Jonahs.
  And more also I seh.  No compass checks.
  Dose D/G coils play hell wid compasses.
  De gear get loose on deck.  Dey come adrift."


_Cyrus Bumstead_

  "I don't want anyone to tell me how
  To run my ship--been in the Services,
  Merchant and Navy, nigh come forty years.
  I was a Master when the most of them
  Were spottin' patterns on their diapers."


_Mark Knee to Cyrus_

  "I squeezed the Atlantic from my mitts before
  Those Juniors had their birthday buttons on."


_Captain, The Honourable Guy Brimblecombe_

  "Well, sir, you needn't worry about _my_ ship.
  She went through this before: she'll go again.
  She's in good trim.  I have a splendid crew.
  Signals will be acknowledged to the letter,
  And in the sea tradition, I assure you."


_N.C.S.O._

  "Now, gentlemen, since it is quite apparent
  That we are all in utmost harmony
  On the main grounds, it is just left for me
  To wish 'good-luck'.  Never have I attended
  A Conference where there was such fine feeling
  Combined with insight and rare technical grasp
  Of the problems of a convoy operation.
  Let me congratulate you.  May I now
  Invite you, on behalf of a great friend
  Of the R.C.N., to the Periwinkle Club
  At Lobster Point where you may hoist a couple
  to take the chill from the September fog."

  * * *

  In a few hours from the time the blinds
  Were drawn upon the jags and the last lisp
  Against the universe and things marine
  Was but a reminiscence lapsed in rum,
  Those men were on the Bridge peering through fog
  And moving towards their ordered rendezvous.

  * * *

  One half a million tons were in the holds,
  Cramming to the last precious cubic inch
  The slow-keeled merchantmen--the sixty-six.
  No longer were those ships an industry
  Run for peacetime returns upon investment.
  They took their line positions for defence.
  Against them mainly was the warfare waged--
  Bulk cargo carriers with box-like sections,
  Ship side to ship side and the main deck to keel,
  Carrying their gross of ore and coal and grain;
  The ships with 'tween decks running the full length;
  Tankers equipped with special pumps for oil;
  Refrigeration ships, holds insulated
  For storage of the perishable goods;
  And hybrid types that had their bellies full
  Of oranges, aluminum and lint.

  How desperate the strait which would commit
  A treasure of this price to such a journey!
  Where find a steward who would risk his name
  To close the page of such accountancy
  When every mile along the ocean highway
  Was calling for protection, and in calling
  Demanded life and life's expenditure?
  And here the call was answered with a guard
  Whose substitute for numbers was its courage--
  Four terriers slipped from the Canadian kennel:
  But one destroyer, _Skeena_; three corvettes,
  _Kenogami_, _Orillia_ and _Alberni_.

  Upon their vigil hung the life of all,
  Of ships and men.  Of sleeker, faster breed.
  The _Skeena_ ranged a far periphery
  At thirty knots, now out of sight and now
  Closing the convoy as her nose tried out
  The dubious scents in narrowing ellipses.
  The slower guards kept closer to their broods,
  Pushing their way within the column lanes,
  Emerged to pace the port and starboard flanks
  Or nuzzled with a deep strategic caution
  The hulls of those whose tardy engine beats
  Brought down the knots of faster ships and made
  The gravest risk and worry for the fleet.
  They kept a special watch upon the tankers.
  No ships, no aeroplanes, no jeeps could stir
  Without this source of power and lubrication.
  Even the merchantmen must flank these ships,
  Herded like buffalo young inside the ring.

  * * *

_Commodore to signalman_

  "Signal to pennants 73, relay
  To pennants 103, Stop Pouring Smoke!"


_Internal murmurings_

  "Look at it tossin' like a Texas twister.
  That smoke is blacker than an Afghan's whiskers.
  I'd like to tell that Captain of the Heads
  He should have stayed at home with the kind of job
  That suited him--housebreakin' his Angoras."


_Official_

  "And pennants 114 is out of station."


_Unofficial_

  "That flappin' penguin from the Auckland Islands
  Has been a week on route, yet needs more time
  To get rid of that Newfie-Crowsnest screech.
  He'll lose it when he's doused.  Get back in station,
  For if you don't, the canaries will stop singin'."


_The Master's thoughts_

  "I told those sculpins at the conference
  I couldn't make that eight--a half a knot
  Above a six would blow my stinkin' boilers.
  I haven't had a cleanin' for a year,
  And there's a beach of sand inside the gears,
  And yet that bargee yells--GET BACK IN STATION!'


_Commodore_

  "And pennants 74 by the Diet of Worms!
  He's waddlin' like an old barnyard merganser.
  Another hour by the way he's goin'
  He'll be out on the flanks duckin' his feathers,
  Or lost in fog and stragglin' back to Sydney.
  Keep pumpin' Morse into his ruddy blinkers.


_The Master in question_

  "I've got a twisted rudder--like a corkscrew,
  And if that poopin' punk there on that flagship
  Imagines he's Paul Bunyan or the devil,
  Tell him put on his shorts and straighten it."


_P.O. to galley-boy_

  "Gallagher, did your mother tell you nothin'
  On the way home?  Stop pitchin' gash in daytime.
  Handin' the convoy on a platter to the subs.
  As bad as smoke to give the trail away.
  Just one more bad tomato over there,
  And all the ships will quit this lovely Service,
  And you'll go with the galley, do you hear?"


_Gallagher_

  "Why won't that windpipe slitter tell me what
  I got to do with all that mouldy gash?
  'Twas gash when it was brought aboard, 'twas gash
  When it was crated: now its maggoty.
  Can't eat it and can't burn it and can't dump it.
  I'd like to foul his beak in those tomatoes."

  North of the sixtieth, they had, it seemed,
  Found refuge in a sea-berth where the foe,
  Finding the chill enter his crop, might seek
  More southern fodder.  Least of all the hazards
  Were winds and waves: for these the ships were built.
  Their bows could bull the heavier seas head-on.
  Their hulls could stand the shock beam-to.  The keels
  Had learned the way to bite into the troughs:
  Such was their native element.  The acts
  Of God were taken as their daily fare
  Received alike with prayers or curses.  These
  Were as the dice fell--whether luck of devil
  Or luck of God spilled on a shifting floor
  Close to the steady fringe of the Arctic Circle.

  For seven days and nights without attack!
  The asdic operator in his hut
  Had sent his ultra-sounds out and reported
  Echoes, but only such as might return
  As the dull, soft reverberation notes
  From seaweed or low forms of ocean life
  Or from a school of porpoises or whales.
  His hearing was as vital to the ship
  As was the roving sight in a crowsnest.
  His ear was as the prism is to light,
  Unravelling meanings from a skein of tone.
  Each sound might hold a threat, a Bremen slur,
  An overture to a dementia
  Of guns and rockets and torpedo hits
  Competing with the orders from the Bridge.
  He had to know that threat and not mistake it.
  For that his body was a sounding-board.
  Even his knees must feel it and his face
  Become a score for undetermined notes,
  As if a baton in his cortex played
  Wry movements on his neurones fiddle-taut.
  Twitched his reflexes into spasms, narrowed
  His pupils, kicked his heart into his throat.

  He had an instrument in his control
  Attested by the highest signatures of science.
  The echoes had traversed wide spans of time:--
  Helmholtz and Doppler tapping to each other
  Through laboratory walls, and there was Rayleigh
  Calling to Langevin, he to Fresnel,
  The three hymning Pindarics to Laplace,
  And all vibrating from their resonators
  Salutes to Robert Boyle, halloos to Newton.
  And here, his head-phones on, this operator.
  Sleeve-rolled mechanic to the theorists,
  Was holding in his personal trust, come life,
  Come death, their cumulative handiwork.
  Occasionally a higher note might hit
  The ear-drum like a drill, bristle the chin,
  Involving everything from brain to kidneys,
  Only to be dismissed as issuing
  From the submerged foundations of an iceberg,
  Or classified as "mutual interference".

  The hopes were running higher the farther north
  The convoy steamed.  Would this one get its break?
  The Arctic pressed into the human service,
  The Circle which had caught the navigators--
  The hardiest in the annals of The Search,
  Willoughby, Chancelor, Hudson, Bering, Franklin--
  Impounded them, twisted and broken them,
  Their ships and crews upon its icy spokes:
  This time through the ironic quirk of War
  Changed to an allied _cordon sanitaire_.

  The evening of the eighth day and a moon,
  High-sailing and impersonal, picked out
  The seventy ships, deriding the constrained
  Hush of the blackout.  Was the latitude
  Itself not adequate watch?  The sea was calm,
  Although with a beam swell the wallowing rate
  Was but five knots.  The moon illuminated
  The _Empire Hudson_, leader of port wing,
  Loaded with grain, the _Gypsum Queen_ with sulphur,
  The _Winterswyck_, the _Garm_, the _Scania_,
  _Muneric_ (iron ore--sink like a rock
  She would if hit), _Bretwalda_, _Baron Ramsay_,
  _Gullpool_, the _Empire Panther_ and _Macgregor_,
  The _Lorient_, _Arosa_, _Hampton Lodge_,
  And others with the same high names and pennants,
  Carrying at the load-water line their freight--
  Twelve columns of them in their blueprint stations.
  A half an hour to dusk the bo'sun's mate
  Had piped his strictest order--_Darken Ship_.

  Thousands of sailors under decks were sealed
  As in vast envelopes.  They ate and worked
  And slept within a world self-quarantined
  Against the pestilence of light by bolts,
  Bulkheads and battened portholes, for each cell
  Was like a tumoured brain, danger within,
  Danger without, divided from the world
  By an integument of iron bone.
  What chance for life the moment when a shell
  Trepanned the skull?  What would release the pressure
  Of that stampede to reach the for'ard hatch--
  That burial hole in the deckhead--and come up
  When the plates buckled in the lower mess?

  Danger within?  Could not the magazines
  By a raffle flirt of fate be made to turn
  Against the convoy, striking through the escort,
  With final undeliberated measure,
  When the oil tanks would join the magazines
  To the last ton, to the last gram of blunder?
  The fires that warmed the galleys could cremate:
  For oil and fulminate of mercury,
  Nitrated cellulose and T.N.T.
  And the constituents of our daily bread,
  Fresh water and fresh air, could by a shift,
  Sudden and freakish in the molecules,
  Be transubstantiated into death.

  Added to this might come the blows where friend
  Struck friend with utmost shoulder energy--
  Blows just as murderous as torpedo hits
  Where in the darkness, executing turns,
  Or in the fog, the convoy ships would find
  Their plates as vulnerable as cellophane:
  Or from excess of their protective zeal
  The fighting units with their double rate
  Of convoy speed might plough their sinuous way
  Up through the narrow lanes and turn too sharp,
  Presenting their full beams across the bows
  Of leading merchantmen.  Lucky they were
  If they escaped with nothing but a blast
  Of roaring basso from the Commodore's lungs--
  "Those lousy, noisy, nattering sons o' badgers,
  Where do they think they're going--to Miami,
  Harpooning porpoises or flying fish?"

  The Silent Service never won its name
  With fairer title than it did this night.
  Evening at half-past nine and a fresh sound,
  An instant octave lift to treble pitch
  From the dull datum of "reverbs" startled
  The ear.  "An echo bearing green four-O,
  Range 1500."
                      "Hold and classify."
  The ping-g-g with its death's head identity!


_C.O. to Officer-of-Watch_

  "Increase speed 250 revolutions."

  (_Officer-of-the-Watch repeats, calls down voice-pipe to
  coxswain who sets engine-room telegraph to speed.  The
  Engineer Officer-of-Watch acknowledges.  His chief
  E.R.A. swings wheel-throttle-valve open to make
  required revolutions.  Engine-room telegraph confirms
  to wheelhouse and coxswain calls up
  voice-pipe--"Wheelhouse-Bridge: 250 revolutions on, sir."
  Bridge Officer-of-Watch repeats to captain._)

  The _Skeena_ heeled to port on "starboard ten"
  To keep the target on the bow.  "Steady
  On _two-four-seven_."  (Harry one at the dip.)
  "Left cut on _two-four-six_....  Right cut
  On _two-five-three_."  (Reporting Doppler)
  "Echo high and inclination closing."
  The range 1200.  "Target moving right:
  Centre bearing, _two-five-five_."
  One thousand yards: "extent of target--_ten_."

  Not ice this time but moving steel submerged--
  Two hundred feet of longitudinal plate.
  Forged at the Krupp's and tested in the Baltic,
  Were answering the taps.
                            "Stand by depth-charges."


_Captain to Chief Yeoman_

  "Take an emergency report to shore:
  'In contact with classified submarine'."

  (Chief Yeoman repeats to W.T. office.)
  A crackle of Morse, and in bare space of seconds
  The warning goes to Admiralty, from there
  To allied ships in threatened area,
  And on the walls in _Operations_, where
  The swastikas and shadows of the U-boats
  Follow in replica the Atlantic movements,
  A red peg moves along the chart to plot
  The first of the disease spots that would pock
  The body of the S.C. 42.

  Whatever doubt the eye might have imposed
  Upon the ear soon vanished with the signals.
  _Jedmore_ reported two torpedoes passed
  Ahead.  _Muneric_, fourth ship in port column,
  Attacked, dragged instantly, sank with her iron.
  The Commodore--"Saw U-boat on port bow."
  _Kenogami_ in contact with another,
  A third, a fourth.  Suspicions which had wormed
  Their way along the vine were proved.  The first
  Wolf-pack engagement of the Atlantic War
  Was on!  A fifth ... a seventh!  They had trailed
  The ships to Greenland waters.  Moonlight full,
  Without the mercy of clouds, had turned
  A traitor to the convoy, cancelling
  The northern length of nights.  Like teal not yet
  Surprised to wing, the silhouetted ships
  Awaited leisured barrels from the hunters,
  And the warheads drilled them as from open sights.

  _Orillia_, detailed to sweep astern,
  Picked up the few survivors, took in tow
  The S.S. _Tachee_, badly hit but still
  Afloat: rockets were seen in midst of convoy:
  A signal from the flagship--"_Empire Hudson_
  Torpedoed on port side."  The triple task--
  To screen the convoy, counter-attack, and then,
  The humane third of rescuing the sailors,
  Seemed far beyond the escort's hope or effort.
  To save to kill, to kill to save, were means
  And ends closely and bloodily allied.
  Hundreds of sailors un-lifejacketed
  Clawed at the jetsam in the oil and water.
  Captains and Commodore were well aware
  Of how a lame one in a chase could spatter
  With blood the entire herd.  High strategy
  Demanded of the brain an execution
  Protested by the tactics of the heart.
  And there was only half an inch or less
  Of a steel skin upon the escort's hulls--
  Not for self-safety were those ships designed.
  Just here the log with its raw elements
  Enshrined a saga in a phrase of action.
  The _Empire Hudson_ listing badly, crew
  And officers were disembarked.  Someone
  Reported--'Secret papers have not been
  Destroyed, mersigs, swept-channels, convoy route,
  And codes, the CODES!'  And as there was a chance
  The steamer might not sink, _Kenogami_
  Was ordered to embark an officer,
  Return him to the listed deck to find
  And sink the weighted papers--_which was done_."
  This stark undecorated phrase was just
  An interlinear item in the drama,
  Three words spelling a deed unadvertised,
  When ships announced their wounds by rockets, wrote
  Their own obituaries in flame that soared
  Two hundred feet and stabbed the Arctic night
  Like some neurotic and untimely sunrise.
  Exploding tankers turned the sky to canvas.
  Soaked it in orange fire, kindled the sea,
  Then carpeted their graves with wreaths of soot.
  The sea would tidy up its floor in time.
  But not just now,--gaskegs and rafts and mops,
  Oilskins, sou'westers, sea-boats, duffel coats
  Drifted above the night's burnt offerings.
  Only the names remained uncharred--_Muneric_,
  _Ulysses_, _Baron Pentland_, _Sally Maersk_,
  The _Empire Crossbill_, _Empire Hudson_, _Stargard_--
  Merely heroic memories by morning.

  The early hours of daylight drove the subs
  To cover though the escort knew that eyes,
  As sleepless as their own but unobserved
  Behind the grey-green mesh of swell and lop,
  Were following the convoy's desperate plunge.
  All knew that no restrictive rules would hedge
  This fight: to the last ship, to the last shot,
  To the last man, for fair was foul and foul
  Was fair in that mle of strength and cunning.
  Tirpitz and Fisher thirty years before
  Had scanned the riddles in each other's eyes.
  What was the argument about the belt
  That drained the sophistry of principles
  Inside a ring?  "Hit first, hit hard, hit fast!"
  Tirpitz had trumped him with--"Hit anywhere."
  And here today only one point was certain--
  Sailors above the sea, sailors below,
  Drew equally upon a fund of courage.
  No one might gamble on the other's fear
  Or waning will.  Commander Schmidt might flood
  His tanks and dive when something on his mirror
  Called for discretion, but in his own shrewd time
  He could be reckoned on to blow the ballast
  And frame that picture on the glass again.
  He would come with Botterschult and Rickert,
  Von Braundorff, Niebergall, Schippmann and Fritzsche.
  They knew their crews would never fail the switches
  Or rush the conning towers before the orders,
  Though the depth-charges pounded the blood vessels,
  Though combing rams just missed them overhead.
  In what proportions did the elements
  Combine to move those individual pawns
  Of power in their massed flesh-and-nerve formation
  Across a board?  Grit human; bruinine;
  Habits that would not heckle a command,
  Obedience that sealed the breach of fear,
  A frenzy that would spurn the slopes of Reason
  Under a rhetoric of Will which placed
  Before the _herrenvolk_ historic choices---
  To scramble up a cliff and vandalize
  The sunlight or else perish on the ledges.

  These were the enemies the convoy fronted:
  Metal to metal, though in this arena
  The odds lay heavily with the pursuers,
  Even by day--for what were periscopes
  At distance of three thousand yards, that reared
  Their tiny heads curved like swamp moccasins?
  What was their smothered wake compared with that
  Propeller wash, that height and drift of smoke,
  Those lines of funnels with their sixty hulls?
  And so it was a safe bet on the sub
  When at high noon one left her nest and sped
  Her charge right at the S.S. _Thistleglen_,
  Dead at the waterline and full amidships.
  It took three minutes for the merchantman
  To dock her pigiron on the ocean floor.

  "There, there he is!"
                        Seven cables from the spot
  Where suction swirled above the foundering,
  The periscope light-grey--one minute only!
  The _Skeena_ carried out a pounce attack
  Of ten depth-charges fired with shallow settings.
  The asdic trailed the sub proceeding north
  At three-knot speed.  _Kenogami_ confirmed
  Echoes.  Depth-charges with deep settings dropped,
  The echoes ceased, and a great patch of oil
  Surfaced, and a huge bubble like a blister
  Broke, close to the position of explosions.
  "This time for keeps we pinged his bloody hide, sir:
  We've sent him down to join the _Thistleglen_."

  With this by day, what could another night
  Not call forth from the cupboard?  Afternoon
  Wore on till dusk with that dramatic lull.
  Which acted like narcotics on the heart,
  Yet put high-tension circuits in the brain.

  "The _Sally Maersk_ went down with bread enough
  To feed an army for a month."
                                "But what
  A job the corvettes did in rescuing
  Them all--the fifty-four under that fire."

  "Most of the _Baron Pentland_ too."

                                      "Her back
  Was broken though her lumber kept her floating."

  Could the same chance be taken the next night?

  An hour after nightfall and the convoy
  Had pierced the sixty-second parallel.
  Twelve shortened columns tightened up their gaps,
  All ships under instructions--(You will not--repetition--
  Not break W.T. silence without deep suspicion of
  U-boat presence.)                   Owing to moon
  Rear ships of the port column were instructed
  To drop smoke floats should enemy appear
  On the port side.  Each minute passed, each mile
  Northward were credit items on a ledger.
  And now quickening the heart, two friendly shadows,
  Corvettes, steamed into shape--_Moose Jaw_, _Chambly_--
  Two added to the four.  But still the hope
  Was on evasion--on the North--to kick
  Them with their wounded heels and merge the spoors
  Within the Greenland-Iceland ocean tundras.
  And so the last night's vigil was repeated.
  Although more ominous the silences:
  More broken, too, the sleep as the ears buzzed
  Still with the dental burr of the point-fives.
  And the yellow cordite from the four-point-sevens
  Kept up its smart under exhausted eyelids.
  The average rate was lowered by three knots.
  The _Tachee_ was in tow of the _Orillia_,
  Fumbling her rudder.  From the _Chambly's_ deck,
  Two miles away, the ships seemed fated targets.
  Silent and slow and dark as, clothed with crape.
  They journeyed on like mourners, having left
  The Saxon burial of their sister ships,
  And bearing on themselves the same contagion.
  The air was breathing out its prophecy.
  So was the water.  There was mockery
  Within the sea's caress--the way a wave
  Would clamber up the bow of the _Moose Jaw_, scout
  Around the shadows of the foc's'le,
  Tattoo the face of the Bridge and lazily
  Slither along the deck and then hiss through
  The hawse-pipes as the corvette dipped her nose
  To the slow anaesthetic of the swell.
  Mockery it was on face and lips and fingers,
  For, after her reconnaissance, the sea,
  As urging death with a forensic fury,
  Would shed her velvet syllables, return
  With loaded fists to thunder at the gun-shields,
  Trying to crack defence before the battle
  Was joined between the "patterns" and the "tubes".

  Eleven-thirty, and the navigator,
  His coat and boots on in his bunk, completes
  A nightmare with a steady mumbling curse.
  He thought the order was _Abandon Ship_--
  It was an O.D. calling Middle Watch.
  He wakes, turns over, and again turns over,
  Yawns, stretches and turns out, proceeds to Bridge,
  Peers through the blackout curtains, and in dim
  Blue battle-light he squints and notes night orders,
  The toughest order of the toughest Watch
  (Maintain tail sweep from two to four thousand yards),

  He focuses binoculars to range
  The horizon arcs.  "A lot of whales about
  Tonight."  The echoes picked them up.  Four hours!
  He has to fight that Middle Watch fatigue,
  And as the minutes crawl he sucks life-savers,
  Or cracks one on his teeth for company.
  A line of spray leaps up above the dodger
  And like rawhide cuts him across the face.
  Then, too, that phosphorescence on the sea
  Is easily mistaken in its darts,
  Flashes and curves for what the lookout fears.
  Two hours are gone: another two to go.
  (That wrist-watch ticks off hours instead of seconds.)
  His eyelids blink to ease the strain that falls
  Like mist upon a telescopic lens.
  A starboard lookout yell jerks back his senses--
  "Torpedo bearing green-four-O."  Lookout
  Recoils from an expected blow that does
  Not strike.  "Damn porpoises: they always home
  In on the bow."

  (_The navigating officer wipes the sweat from
  his forehead with his sleeve, tells the
  sub-lieutenant to take over for a few minutes
  as he wants to go to Heads.  Then he calls to
  a stand-by._)

                      "Say, Spinney, what about
  A mug of kye?"

                      "Yes, Sir."

                                  Spinney had not
  Yet found his legs.  Less than six months before
  He had been learning Latin and the class-
  Room smell had not been kippered from his system.
  To him the ocean was a place of travel,
  A blue-green oriental boulevard
  Round unknown continents--up to this year;
  And even to last night the illusion stayed,
  When for his benefit the Borealis
  Staged a rehearsal of the Merry Dancers
  Before the blood-red footlights till it paled
  The myth upon a tracery of starshell.
  He now goes to the galley, fills a jug
  With kye, picks up a half a dozen mugs,
  Stumbles, skates, splashes half of it on deck.
  Some drops of rain and sea-foam tincture it.
  Along the way a leading-hand of the Watch
  And a rheumatic coder cadge a drink,
  And by the time that Spinney finds his balance
  On the bridge only a soapy seawash greets
  The navigator's throat.  "What in the name
  Of all buck goats is this?  Where did you get
  This swill?"  (He hands it to the sub to drink.)
                      "Go back and fill her up again,
  And keep her clean."
                        Spinney steps down from Bridge,
  Staggers, makes for the ladder, cracks the jug
  Against the signal-box before he slides,
  Reaches the galley and returns, tries hard
  To wean his legs from the quadrangle walk,
  Does a Blue Danube on the deck, and then
  Revokes his quondam heroes (what a bunch
  Of fools those ancients were to travel,
  Aeneas was the biggest ass on earth!)
  And flinging out his last accusative
  At what is limned on the horizon, he
  Remeasures his Virgilian cadences
  In terms of stresses gliding queazily
  Along the black ramps of the North Atlantic.

  At ten to four Lieutenant Snell takes over,
  And the two victims of the Watch slope down
  With brains of fog and eyes of fractured glass.
  Their legs go aft by instinct to their bunks.
  Their minds well in advance entering a coma
  Beyond gun-cotton shock or Gabriel's horn.

  'Twas only in a stupor that O'Leary
  Recalled his reprimand.  When did it happen?
  "Yeoman, you dropped no markers with that pattern.
  That's standing orders now--smoke-floats to mark
  Areas attacked.  Ever heard it?  Don't you know
  Your drill?  You'll be in my report in the morning."
  O'Leary gagged upon his chewing quid,
  Hiccupped, sending a spurt of nicotine
  And hydrochloric acid on the sea.
  "He said to me, said he, 'O'Leary, don't
  You know your drill?'--Say, how the hell would I know?
  Nobody tells me nothing in this Navy."

  A bo'sun caught the Peggy with a fag.
  "Gripes, do you want to bitch this midnight show?
  That lighted butt is visible for miles,
  And on the starboard wing, too.  Don't you know
  The one and only moral law of Moses
  Is never light a fag on deck at night?
  A law you got to learn while in the Service.
  A light can be machine-gunned by the escort.
  They'd ping your fag and teeth at the same time."


_Peggy, out of earshot_

  "I didn't light it on the deck.  I cupped
  My hands and took three drags and that was all.
  That jockey groomed for donkeys thinks he's got
  The whole world by the tail in a down pull.
  When I get back to Civvy Street, I'll call him."

  O'Meara, Steele and Casey had a lot
  To say.  They'd gab it when the day came round--
  The day the _Stargard_ reached her port--but somehow
  The water and the salt got in their throats
  The moment when the _Stargard_ took them under.

  The dark was sedative and irritant.
  How easy was it for an interval
  To muffle the senses with a hushed blackout,
  And the diminuendo of the run
  Could well delude the reason.  This was not
  The rate that marked the fever of pursuit,
  And nothing from the decks was visible
  To show the way the trimmest escort unit
  Could be in shackles to a lubber keel,
  And have to be replaced in precious moments;
  Nothing to show how gyros and magnetics
  Could be ungeared by submarine explosions.
  For this was information undiffused
  Among the crew or countered by illusions,
  Or by resumption of the normal tasks.
  No one from the _Ulysses_ lived to cite
  The witness of the E.R.A.s and firemen,
  Pounding the steel rungs in that inner trap
  When the torpedo struck her gas and oil.

  The drama of the night before was over.
  No headlines would record as news the toil,
  As stokers every hour took temperatures
  Of bearings, scribbled them on pads, transferred
  Them to the logs and then resumed their rounds
  To watch for popping valves, to check the flow
  By turning wheels when the full head of steam
  Was hitting the square inches of the boilers.
  There was no spotlight on the items when
  A leading seaman of the watch reported
  "The temperature of the sea forty degrees.
  The lowering falls are clear, boats off the pins,
  The watertight compartments are all closed."
  No one would mould the linotype for such
  A mass that might survive or not survive
  Their tedium of watches in the holds--
  The men with surnames blotted by their jobs
  Into a scrawl of anonymity.
  A body blow at the boilers would untype
  All differentiations in the blood
  Of pumpmen, wipers, messmen, galley boys
  Who had become incorporate with the cogs
  On ships that carried pulp and scrap to Europe.

  Desire invoking for the memory
  Amnesia for the nightmare that had passed,
  It might have been a run in peaceful times.
  The sounds seemed casual enough--lookouts
  Reporting to the officers on watch,
  Got back the usual laconic answers.
  The turbine notes ran up from C to C
  And down according to the scale of speed.
  The scraps of speech from duffel-coated forms,
  Huddled beneath the after-canopy,
  Had by tacit agreement in the eyes
  Nothing to do with present urgencies.
  A rating "in the rattle" salved his mind
  By giving his opinion of a buffer,
  Casting suspicion on the buffer's birth
  And pedigree.  His _b_'s and _g_'s and _s_'s,
  Delivered through his teeth in confidence
  To the high winds and seas from A-gun deck,
  Had all the symptoms of a normal trip.
  Only the action-station gongs could jar
  That gentle wishful thinking--and they did.

  Horse-power to the limit on the engines,
  Levied for scout assault and close defence,
  Was routed quickly to defence, for short
  Beyond believing was the interval
  Between the echoes and torpedo hits,
  Between them and the spotted periscopes.
  The Commodore reported, "_Gypsum Queen_
  Torpedoed and sunk."  _Alberni_ gets an echo.
  Five hundred yards, _Kenogami_ confirming.
  _Chambly_ and _Moose Jaw_ get a definite kill
  With prisoners, and then a "probable".

  The peril of the night before was doubled.
  This time the subs had dived within the convoy,
  "Attacking from within the lines"--the fear
  Above all fears, for, out to sea, the lairs
  Might be discerned and the protective screens
  Be interposed between them and the convoy.
  But now the hazards of the fight were weighted
  In favour of the foe.  Seven or eight
  Out of the estimated twelve were there
  Inside or hanging on to flank or rear.
  Even blindly they could not miss--on port
  And starboard bow, amidships, on the quarter.

  Upon the _Skeena's_ Bridge the judgment fought
  With chaos.  Blindness, deafness visited
  The brain.  Through a wild paradox of sight
  And sound, the asdic echoes would not fall
  Within their ribbon-tidy categories.
  They bounded in confusion from the hulls
  Of tankers and corvettes: the ash-can sounds
  Were like those of explosions from torpedoes.
  Wake-echoes and reverbs, and _quenching_ caused
  By pitch and roll of a heavy following sea,
  Had blended with the sharper pings from steel
  To give the effect of a babel and a brawl.

  But blindness was the worst.  To find the foe
  By starshell served indeed to spot the target,
  But carved in white the escort's silhouette.
  The need called for the risk.  A megaphone
  Informed the _Skeena_ that a sub was seen
  Between the columns seven and eight, its course
  Marked by a steady hail of tracer bullets.
  The Skeena tried to ram; the sub escaped
  To an adjacent lane and turned right angles
  In opposite direction to destroyer.
  The shelter of the dark was now a threat
  Holding collision as the convoy ships
  Made their sharp turn of forty-five degrees.
  Her fighting and her navigating lights
  Were switched on to identify the Skeena,
  Scratching the paint upon the merchant hulls.
  As orders pelted down the voice-pipe, helm
  And engines answering--"Full speed ahead ...
  Starboard twenty ... Stop both ... Half-ahead port ...
  Half-astern starboard ... Stop starboard ...
  Half-ahead starboard ... Full ahead both ..."

  This was infighting at its grizzly worst.
  The issue grew more leaden as the night
  Advanced, and what relief could daylight offer
  Against the weary arithmetic count?
  The _Winterswyck_ blown up, sunk with her phosphate;
  _Stonepool_ torpedoed on both sides, gone down
  With general cargo and a fleet of trucks.
  And matching the confusion on the decks
  Was the confusion in the ether, ships
  Torpedoed, burning, sinking, hammering out
  Their cryptocodes.  What listeners could sort them,
  Solve those recurring decimals of dots
  And those long dashes when the operators
  Screwed down the keys--their last official acts--
  To give the drowning wails of instruments?
  What rescuers could hurry to position?
  Only the fighting ships--and they were fighting.

  "Which one was that?"

                          "A tanker bad enough,
  But not as bad as that; a flame that would
  Frizzle a glacier."
                          "_Aviation gas?_"

  "It could create that light but not that roar,
  'Twould cause stokehold concussion miles away,
  And wake up Julianehaab."
                            "'Twas ammunition."

  The _Garm_ and _Scania_ with their lumber lost!
  Rockets observed from _Randa_ and _Benury_--
  The signals ceased--both missing in the morning!

  The fourteen sunk and others just afloat,
  The remnant staggered on still north-by-east.

  * * *

      Last night, the second night, and must there come
  A third?  The ratio of loss had climbed
  Beyond all normal fears.  The logs themselves
  Might not be legible on that third morning.
  So far the tale was grim enough--but six
  Saved of the _Jedmore's_ crew; eight from the _Stonepool_;
  Less than half from the _Garm_; six from the _Stargard_;
  Two from the _Winterswyck_; and a great blank--
  The fate of crew unknown--was logged for _Scania_,
  The _Empire Springbuck_, _Crossbill_, _Thistleglen_,
  _Muneric_ and _Ulysses_.  The third night
  To come!  Those hammerheads were off there still,
  Hiding, biding.  How many?  How those freighters
  Foundered!  How fast?  Minutes or seconds?
                                              "Did
  You see the way the _Crossbill_ took her dive?
  Her cargo steel, she went down like a gannet."

  "The _Muneric_ beat her to it.  A life-belt
  Would have no chances in that suction-hole,
  Say nothing of a man.  I saw her blades
  Rise, edge themselves against the _Alberni_ gunfire."

  Why should those phobias of speed, colour
  And shape belonging to the night alone
  Return to plague the mind in open daylight?
  Would those fires start again?  A chemistry
  That would incinerate its own retort
  Raged round the _Stonepool_ when she sank.  Water
  And fire, water and oil, blood, fire and salt
  Had agonized their journey through nerve-endings
  To char themselves upon a graphite-grey
  Precipitate.  Survivors from the _Stargard_,
  Who would for life carry their facial grafts,
  Told of the scramble from the boiler rooms,
  Up canted ladders and the reeling catwalks,
  Only to find their exit was the sea,
  And there to find their only exit from
  Its cauldron surface was its drowning depth.
  Where find the straws to grasp at in this sea?
  Where was the cause which once had made a man
  Disclaim the sting of death?  What ecstasy
  Could neutralize this salt and quench this heat
  Or open up in victory this grave?
  But oil and blood were prices paid for blood
  And oil.  However variable the time,
  The commerce ever was in barter.  Oil
  Propelled the ships.  It blew them up.  The men
  Died oil-anointed as it choked the "Christ!"
  That stuttered on their lips before the sea
  Paraded them as crisps upon her salver.
  This was the payment for the oil designed
  To sleek the gears and punch the pistons in
  And over Alamein and Normandy.
  And blood mixed with the sea-foam was the cost
  Of plasma safely carried in the holds
  Across an ocean to a continent,
  There to unblanch the faces on the fields,
  There to revein the vines for fresher fruits
  In a new harvest on a hoped tomorrow;
  And over all, the purchase of the blood
  Was that an old dishonoured postulate,
  Scrubbed of its rust, might shine again--_Granted
  That what the mind may think, the tongue may utter_.

  * * *

  Three morning hours were gone and no attack.
  Were the U-boats destroyed or shaken off
  Or still awaiting night?  What mattered it?
  What mattered the rotation of the earth?
  The clock had struck in seasons those two nights.
  And Time was but a fiddler off his key.
  Treading the youth through middle age towards death.

  From the lookout a signal--_Smoke ahead!_
  Was it a surface raider?  This would mean
  Extinction, still another word for sleep.
  The smoke took shape--five funnels pouring it.
  Binoculars from the crowsnests and bridges
  Of all the ships, escort and convoy, swept
  The horizon: dots turned into lines, the lines
  To hulls and decks and guns and turrets--five
  British destroyers making thirty knots.
  This was the restoration for the hearts
  Of fifty ships--the maimed, the blind, the whole.
  Around them raced the fighters, plotting out
  Suspicious zones whenever asdic sweeps
  Reported doubtful contacts, searching far
  Afield, then closing to resume position
  On screen.  And so the S.C. 42,
  With mutilated but with fashioned columns,
  Covered the lap across the Denmark Strait
  With that same chivalry of knots which meant
  Rescue for hundreds in the Greenland battle.
  For with the battered _Tachee_ still in tow
  Of the _Orillia_, they reached the two
  Most northern outposts of the Old World havens,
  Rock-armoured Hvalfjord and Reykjavik,
  Then took their southern stretch until the convoy
  Sighted Inishtrahull and there dispersed.
  And the fighting ships, miraculously unscathed,
  Proceeded to Moville, to Lishahally,
  Thence up the winding Foyle to seek their berths
  Around the crowded docks of Londonderry.



      *      *      *      *      *      *      *      *



  BY E. J. PRATT

  _Newfoundland Verse
  The Witches' Brew
  Titans
  The Iron Door
  The "Roosevelt" and The "Antinoe"
  Verses of the Sea
  Many Moods
  The Titanic
  The Fable of the Goats
  Brbeuf and His Brethren
  Dunkirk
  Still Life
  Collected Poems
  Ten Selected Poems_






[End of Behind the Log, by E. J. Pratt]
