Enemy in Sight

By J.E. Macdonnell

"That boat back there is a complete submarine - in miniature. About fifty feet long, including propeller, rudder and hydroplanes. That reduces your living space to something nearer thirty-five feet. You have no torpedo tubes, no armaments. You're not meant to be found or to fight a battle. From now on you're a sneaker. Inoffensive - until you release your side cargoes. Each one of those holds four tons of amatol explosive and a time clock. You drop those under that Jap cruiser's bottom and then run for your life.”
Peter Bentley had three weeks to learn to handle the midget submarine - three weeks to accomplish the secret and deadly mission that could be the turning point of the whole war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Piccadilly
• Release date: Nov 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005056476

J.E. Macdonnell

JAMES EDMOND MACDONNELL was born in 1917 in Mackay, Queensland and became one of Australia’s most prolific writers. As a boy, he became determined to go to sea and read every seafaring book he could find. At age 13, while his family was still asleep, he took his brother’s bike and rode eighty miles from his home town to Brisbane in an attempt to see ships and the sea. Fortunately, he was found and returned to his family. He attended the Toowoomba Grammar School from 1931 to 1932. He served in the Royal Australian Navy for fourteen years, joining at age 17, advancing through all lower deck ranks and reaching the rank of commissioned gunnery officer. He began writing books while still in active service.Macdonnell wrote stories for The Bulletin under the pseudonym “Macnell” and from 1948 to 1956 he was a member of The Bulletin staff. His first book, Fleet Destroyer – a collection of stories about life on the small ships – was published by The Book Depot, Melbourne, in 1945. Macdonnell began writing full-time for Horwitz in 1956, writing an average of a dozen books a year.After leaving the navy, Macdonnell lived in St. Ives, Sydney and pursued his writing career. In 1988, he retired to Buderim on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. He died peacefully in his sleep at a Buderim hospital in 2002. He is survived by his children Beth, Jane and Peter.Macdonnell’s naval stories feature several recurring characters – Captain “Dutchy” Holland, D.S.O., Captain Peter Bentley, V.C., Captain Bruce Sainsbury, V.C., Jim Brady, and Lieutenant Commander Robert Randall.

Book preview

Chapter One

LIEUTENANT PETER BENTLEY stretched his fix-foot length on the still-warm sand in front of Ivor Stone’s modest fourteen-room beach-house, and stared with appreciation and perfect content at the effulgence beginning to glow above the trees of Pittwater beyond the quiet, dark water before him. The beach-house was at the right-hand end of Paradise Beach, thirty miles north of Sydney, and the small, exclusive crescent of sand lay on his left, gleaming faintly, like an illusion.

It had been dark only an hour, and the summer night was still hot. Bentley could hear plainly snatches of dialogue from the balcony of the house behind him—smart talk, deliberately smart, spiked by the host’s cocktails. A man’s voice, fruity ... She had on a bit of knotted nothingness that left her ninety percent nude—an estimate, not a measurement. Laughter. The girl beside him stirred, but she did not speak. She reached out a brown hand and trickled sand through her fingers on to the arm which Bentley was using as a pillow for his black-haired head.

Through the background hum of talk and low laughter came a woman’s voice, a little shrill, a little drunk.

Moira? My dear ...! She has to be satisfied with the crumbs from her husband’s timetable. So you can’t blame her for thinking variety is the spice of married life.

The girl beside him spoke. That bitch. Her voice was unemotional, almost languid. One day I’ll claw her eyes out.

Bentley smiled. His teeth showed white as sugar in the burned mahogany of his face.

Let it go, Moira. She thinks you’ve gone.

The girl ran her fingers, lightly and slowly, down the white underpart of his upper arm, and traced circles on his bare chest

That’s nice, he murmured, his eyes still on the trees a mile across the water.

Resting on one elbow, so that she was above him, Moira looked down at him. She saw a dark, eager and aquiline profile; Bentley was one of those men who one always thinks of in profile, as of the clean-cut edge of some weapon. He had eyes of quite startling brilliance—the brilliance of steel, as though they had been polished by the wind.

In the dim light she saw his face tighten, and his mouth opened. His intent eyes swung from the point above the trees he had been watching and stared, narrowed, up into hers. She lay close to him, watching him coolly through knowing, half-closed eyes as though his inner turmoil were perfectly apparent to her.

Directly in front of the beach-house stretched a twenty-yard patch of lawn; it was bounded by a thick row, almost a hedge, of oleander trees. Then came the beach, with the part where they were lying hidden from the balcony. Bentley rose on to his right elbow with the smooth litheness of the trained athlete, and as he did so she sank back, so that she was lying on her back, her head on a towel, looking up at him, waiting. His eyes ran down what was beneath him. Except for her breasts, conspicuous under the top of her bikini, she had the figure of a well-developed boy.

His face began to lower to hers. He tried to quell the consciousness of the knowledge that she was married. It was not hard—he had been at sea a long time. His lips met hers. His mouth crushed down. His qualms sinking under the deliciousness of the contact, he moved a little towards her, and his eye caught sight of what he had been waiting for.

It was like a signal, a warning. He came upright, breathing quickly through his open mouth, and a feeling of vague disgust filled him. He had almost become one of those spices of married life the shrill-voiced woman had sneered at. Then he forgot his disgust at what he saw in front of him.

The moon was rising from behind the crest of the hills, first setting their fanged edge alive with a running flame of orange light, then climbing into sight, growing in size and paling as it rose. Gum trees were etched black against its yellow face. Slowly, serenely, the moon lifted higher, until it was swimming clear above the trees and the hills, and flooding with its silent silver the whole lovely reach of water before him. The phenomenon had silenced the drinking crowd on the balcony; Bentley was surrounded by the limpid, warm quietness of the early evening.

Take me inside, Moira said abruptly. She was on her feet beside him. standing still and taut, with a scarlet tide rushing to her face. She knew men, and she knew that the moon’s rising was Bentley’s excuse to pull away from her—she had felt his belated repugnance like a slap across the face.

Wait! he said sharply. He was staring at the sword of silvery opalescence which the moon was laying across the gleaming water, at a black shadow on that path of light, moving.

Without a word she grabbed up her towel, turned, and walked quickly up the beach towards the oleander trees, her bare feet squeezing into the sand.

Bentley did not turn his head. His intense stare was fixed on the moon-path, and the blade object, now full in the revealing glare. He had forgotten the girl. He was on his knees, leaning forward, his hands bracing him, staring at the strange low shape, striving to identify what he saw. His experience told him it could be only one thing: his eyes told him it wasn’t the right shape.

The edge of a shell cut into his right hand. He shifted his hand, picking up the shell and throwing it a few feet away. When he looked back, the moon-path was empty. He swung his stare to the left, the direction in which the shadow had been moving. The water of Pittwater stretched clear and empty, guiltless, dreaming in the moonlight. He thought he could see a small concentric ring of ripples, reflecting the light, before they eased away to the overall smoothness of the windless water. Then he knew he was right.

He ran quickly up the beach, vaulted over the low stone wall bounding the edge of the lawn and pushed his way through the oleanders. He took the steps up to the high balcony two at a time and then was in among the crowd of guests. He did not notice their quietness, or their curious looks as they let him pass. On the way to being drunk, they had missed Bentley and the girl, and had assumed they’d gone home together—the talked-about girl and the good-looking young naval lieutenant. Then Moira had come up the steps, her face hard, and, a few minutes later, here was Bentley, in a hell of a hurry after her. The situation was obvious.

Bentley couldn’t have cared less what they were thinking. He stood on the balcony, in his swimming costume, tall and muscled, his head up, his stare searching for Ivor Stone. He found him near the door leading to the huge living-room, and pressed forward towards him.

Stone was a businessman as bright and hard as a new shilling. He had been at school with Captain Harvey Bentley, the lieutenant’s father, and their friendship had survived the naval captain’s long and frequent commissions at tea. Captain Bentley now had a battleship with the British Home Fleet, and it was natural that Stone should invite the son of his old friend down to Paradise Beach for this weekend party. Stone was a dull-looking man with flat black hair, a colourless face. But his voice was as vivid as his face was dead: it had a peculiarly ringing and piercing quality, and the group around him listened attentively when he spoke.

He was discussing the speed and havoc with which the Japs had driven southward in the Pacific when he caught sight of Bentley’s urgent face. Bentley gestured with his head to one side. At once Stone broke off what he was saying and, smiling at his listeners, said: Oh hell. I forgot to put that other batch of beer on the ice. Excuse me a moment.

Bentley walked straight towards the bathroom, then, out of sight of the laughing crowd, waited in a passage floored with rattan mats. Stone came up to him and said:

Yes, Peter? Something wrong?

I must use your phone, quickly, Bentley answered, his voice low. There’s a submarine out there.

Submarine? You mean …?

Yes. None of ours are within a thousand miles of here. Keep everybody away from the phone, will you? Some of those fellows are tight enough to get into a boat and go out there, if they know.

Bentley’s voice was curt and decisive—the voice of a man used to command. Even through his astonishment at Bentley’s information, the older man noticed his manner—like father, like son, he thought. Then he said crisply:

All right, my boy. The phone’s in my study there. I’ll keep ’em away.

Bentley nodded and opened the door. He shut it quietly behind him, and the noise from outside died to a murmur. He crossed quickly to the phone on the big blond-wood desk and took up the receiver. His first inclination was to phone his own captain, aboard destroyer Scimitar. Scimitar was the weapon for this job. Then common sense overcame inclination and he dialled Staff Officer Operations, at naval headquarters at Potts Point A Wren’s voice answered him. He spoke curtly.

Get me S.O.O. please. This is urgent.

There was a pause before the girl asked: Who’s speaking, please?

"Lieutenant Bentley. Destroyer Scimitar. Hurry please."

Yes, sir.

While he waited, Bentley stared out through the big plate-glass windows of the study, which, in the left corner of the bouse, looked over Pittwater. He could see nothing but the glittering path of gold and the white hulls of a score of pleasure boats nosing their red-painted buoys. What the hell was a submarine doing in Pittwater? he thought. There was no shipping there. Lying-up, maybe. The area was fretted with hundreds of little secluded bays, their shores heavily wooded. It was an ideal spot to sneak in, charge batteries on the surface, and then be ready to make the short trip down to outside the Heads, where shipping from north, south and east funnelled in. My God, he’d get a warm reception if he did! Now that they knew he was ...

Yes? S.O.O. What is it?

The voice was unfriendly. Perhaps the S.O.O. also had a party on in the big converted bouse which had been turned into an expanded naval headquarters.

Bentley here, sir. I’m phoning from Paradise Beach. I sighted a submarine six hundred yards off the beach. At least, I’m almost sure it is a submarine. Queer shape, small type. Last I saw of it she was heading submerged up towards Church Point.

Who did you say you were?

What the hell does that matter, Bentley thought angrily. Minutes counted now. If Scimitar could get to sea in time, she could bottle the enemy craft up in this trap.

Bentley, sir. Lieutenant Bentley.

"I see. From Scimitar?"

Yes, sir. Through his annoyance at this fool’s pointless questions, Bentley felt slight surprise that the august captain to whom he was speaking knew what ship he was in.

That’s strange, the S.O.O. said, and then he chuckled. "A most peculiar coincidence.’

The bastard’s tight, Bentley thought.

Sir, he said, and kept his voice controlled. I have just sighted a submarine. An enemy submarine.

Yes. Bentley, I heard you the first time. Somewhat unfortunate. There are other people there with you?

Yes, sir!

Has anybody apart from yourself seen the ship?

Only my host, sir. No one else.

Who is he? Reliable?

There must be a reason for this idiocy, Bentley thought. The S.O.O.’s a seasoned hand …

Ivor Stone, sir. One of my father’s oldest friends.

Oh yes. Stone. Yes, I know him slightly myself. Good. Tell him to keep this quiet.

Yes, sir. Bentley choked. Now I’ll ring my captain, if you don’t mind.

What the devil for?

Bentley paused. He stared at the water outside, deliberately stifling what was in his brain. Yet he could not keep the sarcasm from his voice when he answered:

My captain drives a destroyer, sir. A feet destroyer. She’s in full commission. She’s specifically designed for hunting submarines.

Is she! the voice was sharp with reprimand. He’s not tight, Bentley realised. Then the S.O.O. chuckled again.

All right, Bentley. I’ve had my little joke. You did see a submarine. The reason why its identification puzzled you is because it’s a midget submarine. It’s undergoing night diving trials with a dockyard crew.

Bentley breathed in slowly, and expelled his breath before he answered.

I see, sir. I’m … sorry. But why Pittwater …?

Can you think of a better spot for testing a craft that’s on the secret list?

No, sir, Bentley said, after a pause. No, sir, he said again, thinking of all those secluded bays, and the complete absence of normal shipping.

Bit of bad luck she was sighted at all, the captain went on. We assumed all the picnickers would have gone home by now. Well, that’s all, I think. Tell Stone to keep his mouth shut. He chuckled. Strange you should sight it. Good night, he ended abruptly.

Good night, sir, Bentley said mechanically, and replaced the receiver. He took a cigarette from the carved wooden box on the desk and lit it thoughtfully. Why was it strange that he should have reported a submarine? Twice, the old geezer had said that. The way he’d said it, he meant that the reporting of the craft was not strange, so much as was the fact that Bentley had made the sighting. Then he grinned, a lightening of his brown face. Bentley was at a weekend party, after months at sea in the western Pacific—the S.O.O. was surprised that he could see at all, let alone distinguish a midget submarine submerging at night.

Satisfied, and remembering that all senior officers’ jokes smelled like bilgewater, he opened the door and went to find Stone.

His host was waiting for him at the end of the passage, with an opened bottle of beer in one hand and a glass in the other. He was so obviously on guard that Bentley grinned.

You don’t look as if we’re going to be shelled in our beds, Stone said, looking at him keenly.

I think you can leave your tin helmet off, Bentley told him. It was a false alarm, he ended sheepishly.

What? No submarine?

No submarine.

Now look here. Stone glanced round at the party on the breeze-cooled balcony. "You’ve been at sea a long time, young feller. You think you see a submarine—you see a submarine, for my money. There’s nothing out there which you could possibly mistake for a