Sinclair in Command: The naval war is being waged in the Mediterranean (The Submariner Sinclair Naval Thriller Series Book 3) by John Wingate

Author:John Wingate [Wingate, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2021-03-10T22:00:00+00:00

The days had started to merge one into the other as they settled to their new routine, when at 0800 on Monday, 16th September, they finally altered course to the northward.

“Course, sir, three-three-o,” young Keating reported from the wheel.

“I’ll have to send a man aloft soon, Number One. We ought to sight Scarpanto in the afternoon.”

“And slip through the Straits tonight?”

“If luck holds. We haven’t been sighted yet.”

Fortune had certainly been with them for, since that first Friday, the thirteenth, the sky had remained blue and empty of aircraft. They could not have been luckier with the wind, which remained between force three and four, and still blew from the same quarter.

They had continued sailing all day on Saturday, but in order to make maximum speed, Peter had engined all night until he reckoned they were due south of Cape Anemomylos in Crete. He altered course to 050° then, and remained on engines until dawn on Sunday morning.

From then onwards they remained sailing, much to the relief of all aboard. Not only was it more pleasant, but for a caique to be motoring in mid-Mediterranean was unnatural. They passed no nearer to Crete than fifty miles, thereby slipping unnoticed past the air patrols. It was a glorious Sunday morning, the sea sparkling and the sun beating down hotly upon the planking. Men stood bare-headed and bare-footed around their Captain while he pronounced the traditional ‘Prayer to be said before a Fight at Sea against any Enemy.’ He had brought his old prayer book and these men felt comforted and unselfconscious now that they were about to go into action. There was no cynicism here; there never is when you have to face reality. These men knew that for them the choice was simple: extinction or survival: concentration camps and all that the horrors of a police state imply or freedom in an imperfect democracy.

But now the sun was over the meridian on that Monday, and they all knew that before another day had dawned they would, in all probability, have encountered the enemy. Zephyrus was bowling along merrily before the southerly wind. With her great sails out to their limit over the starboard side, and with her headsails curving in billowing crescents, she was a spanking sight.

“She must be making six or seven knots,” Peter said to Taggart who was reading the log which gyrated over the port quarter.

“Yes, she’s certainly shifting, sir.”

Peter’s heart sang as he watched the wake curling away under the counter, a mosaic of green and white as she bounced through the seas. The sheets were checked right away, and as the huge booms bucked to the swell, the blocks at the peaks creaked in unison.

“Land-ho! Red one-five!” Goddard hailed joyfully from the masthead at five-thirty in the evening, and by seven o’clock the island was clearly visible from the upper deck. Mauves and blues glowed softly in the setting sun and then twilight was upon them, the cliffs of Scarpanto melting into the western haze.

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