-  5  -

Al Dugan’s plan of attack on the hydraulic system was to isolate all of its parts and methodically inspect each one. “We’re lucky to have that fellow Lichtmann aboard, Captain,” he said. “Our boat was built in Portsmouth, and Nerka at Mare Island. She was an earlier boat than this one, but Mare Island builds to Portsmouth designs, and it turns out he was Nerka’s hydraulic plant expert. Starberg and Sargent are pretty good at it too; so we’ve got our three best men on it, and we’ll go at it systematically. There must be something basic wrong with it.”

“How long will it take you to put the plant back in commission if we need it? If we can’t use the periscopes, we’ll be in trouble if something turns up.”

“Depending upon which part we take down, we should be able to get the vital parts of the system working again in an hour. To find the problem, though, may take several days. I’d like to begin with the periscope hoists, and that’s why I thought maybe we could go deep for a while. I’ll let you know if we strike any trouble. We’ll have it ready for surfacing by sunset for sure.”

“Okay, Al. Let me know if there’s anything at all anybody else can do to help.” He felt a deep yawn arising from the depths of his being. Going deep for a few hours would give the whole crew a rest. He wanted nothing so much as to surrender to the demands of sleep.

Blunt, as usual, was sitting in the wardroom, unlighted pipe in his mouth.

“Commodore, we’re going to have to stay below periscope depth for a while. I’m turning in. You should do the same,” said Rich.

“I’m not sleepy,” said Blunt. “You go ahead. I’ll call you if anything turns up.”

So far as anything turning up in any way connected with Eel, Rich thought, he had better be informed of it before Blunt, who was, after all, sort of an official passenger, not involved with the operations of the ship. But it was a small matter, not worth worrying about. He removed his outer clothing, climbed in his bunk, and was instantly asleep.

Al Dugan awakened him several hours later. “We think we may have found at least some of the trouble in the system,” said the engineer. “The accumulator ram may be scored again—she’s not holding pressure like she ought—but the main trouble seems to be in the overload bypass system. This new design has a complicated valving setup. I think some of the valves are sticking. We don’t know which ones, though.”

The clock on Rich’s stateroom bulkhead was indicating nearly noon. “I must have been asleep quite a while, Al. What shape do you have the plant in now?”

“Well, we’re still checking some of the parts, but unless we find anything more, we’ll have to go with what we’ve got. We’ll have it ready to surface by sunset,” Al promised.

It was with gratitude for a long comfortable rest that Richardson brought Eel to periscope depth several hours later, and, just at sunset, took a careful look around through the periscope. Nothing was in sight. The sea was flat, calm as before. The murky gray atmosphere was unchanged.

The worrying in his mind had been growing stronger as the uneventful day wore to its close. The overcast sky reflected his mood. “Keith,” he said, “be sure Rogers has the radar all peaked up before we surface. I want to see if we can pick up the Whitefish and Chicolar radars on ours. No telling where they’ll be. Both ought to be north of us, I think.”

As it grew dark, the familiar surfacing routine took place and Richardson was on the dripping bridge. “There are no stars, Keith,” he called down the hatch. “You’ll have to work on dead reckoning.” This had been anticipated. No stars had been seen through the periscope either. Keith clicked the bridge speaker button from the conning tower twice.

The deep rumble of two main engines recharging the battery and providing steerageway was always comforting to hear. Eel settled into her surface cruising routine. Another night of tense watchfulness in enemy waters lay ahead. It felt almost better this way than to be submerged deep below periscope depth, with ’scopes inoperative because of lack of hydraulic pressure. Rich looked up at the shears. On their after side, just above the topmost periscope support bearing, the slotted oval dish which was the radar antenna rotated ceaselessly. Evidently it was seeing nothing, not even the radar of another submarine, for otherwise it would have been searching right and left of the suspect bearings, looking for confirmation in short, jerky sweeps.

“Permission to come on the bridge and dump trash and garbage!” a shout from the conning tower. Part of the surfacing routine. Since the captain was on the bridge, permission for such matters had to be sought from him—an authoritarian obligation he would abdicate the moment he passed below. Buck Williams cast a quick look at his skipper, received a nod in return.

“Permission granted to dump trash and garbage,” Buck called down the hatch. In a moment two men dragging filled gunny sacks behind them appeared on the bridge. The OOD and skipper moved out of their way to permit them clear passage to the cigarette deck, where the two men in a practiced maneuver flung each sack in turn clear of the side and into the water. “One more coming up, Bridge. A juicy one.” There was someone in the conning tower boosting the sacks up to the bridge. A little more gingerly, the third sack was carried aft, thrown overboard also. Wiping their hands on their shirts, the two men stood for a minute, sucking in deep lungfuls of the salt-laden air, then in turn went below.

Richardson waited a few more minutes. Still no sign from the radar. It was now completely dark. The visibility was less than the previous night, perhaps five miles. Surely by now Whitefish and Chicolar would be surfacing.

“Going below, Buck,” he said abruptly. He reached for the rail above the hatch to the conning tower, with distaste found it covered with a slimy, sticky substance. “Buck,” he said sharply, “get this rail wiped off, and have some words with the cook. One of the garbage detail always ought to have a rag with him and wipe the rails down when they’re finished. Otherwise somebody is sure to slip and hurt himself sometime. Especially if we make a sudden dive.” He realized there had been a slight irritation in his voice, more than he wanted to show.

Rogers looked up as Richardson approached the radar console. “No contact,” he said. “Nothing at all. No pips. No sweeping radars. Just lots of grass, and land to the northeast.”

“We’re too far away to pick up any of those tincans who were depth-charging Chicolar last night,” Keith said, “unless they’ve decided to head down this way. But if conditions are right, we should be able to see one of the other boats’ radars as far as fifty miles, maybe more.”

“I know,” Rogers said. “Except you can’t figure out these atmospheric conditions. Just now we got contact on land over sixty miles away which Mr. Leone says must be Quelpart. I’ve never seen this kind of range on this radar. It’s got to be atmospherics!”

Suddenly he looked closer at the radar, crowding alongside Keith, also bent over the unhooded dial. “Mark!” he said. “Look at that!”

Richardson moved in. The sweeping wand rotated slowly clockwise, passed the 6 o’clock position, the 9 o’clock position, and then, nearly at 12 o’clock, it was broken into a series of short dashes. “There it is,” all three men said almost simultaneously.

“Steady on it, Rogers,” said Keith. “Give us a bearing!”

In obedience to Rogers’ manipulation of the control handle, the moving wand steadied, swept back and forth over the area it had been crossing, was broken again into dots as the unseen outline of another sweeping wand far off the scope to the north intersected it.

“Who is it?” asked Rich.

“Don’t know, sir,” said the radarman. “If he steadies on us maybe we can exchange calls.”

The alien wand continued its periodic sweeps for several minutes, then at last hesitated uncertainly, swept jerkily back and forth, finally beamed directly at the wand emanating from Eel.

“There he is, sir. He’s on us now,” said Rogers. “Shall I give him the recognition signal?”

“Yes, go ahead.”

The code name for each submarine was her skipper’s nickname, and its initial letter had been settled on for radar recognition purposes. A standard radio-telegraph key, shorting out the transmitter, made it possible to key the radar pulses. Deliberately Rogers pushed the key three times, holding it down for approximately one second the first time, five seconds the second, and one second the third.

On the ’scope Eel’s wand suddenly vanished, came back on, was interrupted for a longer period, came back on, vanished for a third time, and then returned to its normal intensity: a dot, a dash, a dot; the letter R in Morse code.

They waited a full minute. “Send it again, Rogers,” said Rich. Once again the radarman tapped the radio gate key. Again they watched. At last there was an answering interruption from the alien radar—a dot and two dashes.

“That’s a W for ‘Whitey,’” said Keith. “I’ll bet Whitefish has just surfaced.”

The feeling of disquiet in Rich’s mind was stronger. “Resume your normal radar search, Rogers,” he said. “See if you can pick up Chicolar. He should be to the right of Whitefish.” For several minutes the trio stood in front of the radar, inspecting it carefully whenever it swept over the northern arc, but nothing was seen.

Dinner in the wardroom was a gloomy affair. At the conclusion of the meal Keith excused himself from the wardroom, returned a moment later. He shook his head slightly as he looked, gravely and unblinkingly, at his skipper.

“Commodore,” said Rich slowly, “I’m worried about the Chicolar. We’ve been unable to raise her. We have the Whitefish okay—she’s up somewhere to the north of us—and I figure that Chicolar ought to be up there too, but she hasn’t come in yet.”

“There are lots of reasons why Les Hartly may not have been able to check in with us yet, Rich,” said Blunt. “There’s no cause to worry, at least not yet.”

“He may be in trouble, Commodore,” said Richardson.

Blunt said nothing, puffed his pipe impassively. He was sitting exactly where he had been all day, exactly where he had placed himself after the convoy action of the night before. For all Richardson knew, he might have sat in the same place all day long.

“Commodore,” he said, “anything could have happened. They were caught on the surface, remember. They might even be on the bottom and unable to surface.”

Blunt palmed the pipe bowl. “What do you want to do, Rich?” he said. His gravelly voice was smooth, too smooth.

“I still think we should have tried to do something this morning,” said Rich quietly.

“So? Well, why didn’t you?” Blunt squeezed the pipe bowl. His hand was trembling slightly. “Do you mean to say that you would have been willing to take this crippled submarine, with a bad hydraulic system, up against three alerted enemy antisubmarine ships?”

There was an unreal undercurrent in the conversation. “But Commodore, the hydraulic system trouble wasn’t reported until after. . . . Besides, we didn’t have to tear it down right then. It could have lasted——”

“But you had trouble all the same, didn’t you? Somebody has got to have some common sense around this submarine! I absolutely forbid your taking her into action against enemy combatant ships in the shape she’s in!” Again there was that look of strained intensity. “The subject is closed,” Blunt said. “Chicolar will probably show up in due course, and we’ll all wonder why we made such a fuss about it.”

Looking back on them later, the next several days were for Richardson probably the most uncomfortable he had ever spent. The vision of Tateo Nakame with both hands planted on the skin of Eel’s ballast tanks on the port side near the stern returned in full force. Combined with it, however, was an even more vivid vision, that of Chicolar, damaged, leaking, wracked by depth charges, her pressure hull—probably the conning tower—ruptured by shell fire. A bad leak or other damage would have driven her to the bottom. There, once her location was precisely determined, it would be marked with a buoy. The Japanese escorts would slowly and deliberately cruise back and forth across the spot, sowing depth charges with the depth setting devastatingly determined for certain.

Every night, during the ritual planning and strategy council in the wardroom, the discussion would begin on the subject of Eel’s hydraulic system. Al Dugan reported that at least two bypass valves in different return lines seemed to be sticking occasionally and might be responsible for the continual bleeding down of the accumulator. This was apparently the cause of the rapid cycling and might have led to the scoring and other troubles. If nothing of greater seriousness developed, he thought, the system could be kept under careful surveillance and give satisfactory service for the remainder of the patrol.

As to where enemy ships were going, the arguments were no different from before. Everything had been said several times. Adamantly Captain Blunt held to his mid-area patrol thesis, insisting that sooner or later ships must cross the Yellow Sea. In the meantime, it became distressingly evident that something serious had happened to Chicolar. At the very least, her radar and radios must be out of action, a theory hopefully advanced by Larry Lasche and seized upon by Blunt. But after the first day, no one made further mention of this possibility.

After the second night without news, Richardson hesitantly brought up the need to reorganize the combined operations of the two remaining members of the wolfpack. Blunt became agitated at the suggestion, peremptorily ordered it dropped. Only when it became Eel’s turn to send the routine weather report for the Yellow Sea area did he permit a single terse sentence concerning lack of word from Chicolar to be included at the end of the message.

Rich could sense the dropping of morale throughout the ship. Years ago he had learned that no secrets could be kept from the crew of a submarine. This was axiomatic. Chicolar and her crew had gone to join Nerka, Walrus, and the other submarine casualties of the war. The fact cast gloom upon all of them, particularly Eel’s skipper, since he could not rid himself of the thought that just possibly, if he had persisted a little more strongly in his initial impulse to go to her assistance immediately, he might have won the argument with Blunt. Clearly, he should have insisted on returning to the spot after sinking the three freighters. A submerged approach at dawn might have been successful in picking off one of the destroyers, or even two, had he been lucky, but, most important, a sudden salvo of torpedoes would have distracted them from the wounded Chicolar, even perhaps convinced them she had got away. Then, if she were indeed disabled on the bottom, it might have been possible later to communicate on sonar and render some help. At a minimum he could have stood by to rescue those of her crew able to escape via the rescue breathing apparatus.

Over and over in his mind Richardson revolved the alternatives that might have been. Every time he did so, his thoughts went back to the same point: he was the captain of the Eel, and he held the responsibility for what she did, or didn’t do, to help her consort. Was this not, indeed, what Blunt had almost said? But it was all too late now.

After the fourth fruitless day of patrolling with nothing but fishing boats of various sizes sighted, and no messages from ComSubPac, he tried a new approach.

“Commodore,” he said, once again pointing out the various salient features of the shore topography around Korea and the coast of China, “we’ve been in the area eleven days. We have only nineteen days more before we have to pull out. So far, Whitefish hasn’t made a single contact. He’s got a full load of twenty-four torpedoes, and we need to figure out some way to give him a chance to shoot some of them.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Blunt.

“Well,” Rich said slowly, trying to speak matter-of-factly, “this is Whitey’s first patrol as skipper. He’s never made any night surface attacks, but he always was good with a periscope. So maybe if we could find a deep spot close in to shore somewhere, where ships might be pretty sure to pass, we could send him in there. He’d still be in radio contact at night, so we could coordinate our operations if a big convoy came by.”

Richardson was startled at the alacrity with which the wolfpack commander seized upon his suggestion. Within an hour Whitefish receipted for a message directing her to proceed close into the coast of China south of Tsingtao, where, the chart showed, relatively deep water extended fairly close to the shoreline.

Again there was the waiting, the deadly boredom of readiness with nothing happening. Two nights later a message arrived from Whitefish: SANK FIVE THOUSAND TON FREIGHTER X DEPTH CHARGED X PROCEEDING TO CENTER OF AREA TO REPAIR DAMAGES X FOUR TORPEDOES EXPENDED

“Good for Whitey Everett,” said Blunt when the decoded message was placed in front of him.

Rich tried to press his advantage. “Commodore,” he said, “this at least proves that there are ships moving. The total bag for the patrol so far is four, but they’re all relatively small coastal freighters. Maybe that’s all the Japanese have left. Anyway, now that Whitefish is back in the center of the area, it’s our turn to go close into shore, and I was thinking that this spot off the west coast of Korea . . .”

“With your hydraulic system in the shape it’s in?” said Blunt. “Not on your life! I forbid it!”

“Commodore,” Rich spoke sharply, “this submarine is not a cripple. We’re perfectly able to carry out our functions. If not, there’s a submarine tender at Guam, and we should go back there for repairs. We’ve been two weeks in the center of the area now, sir, and we haven’t seen a thing come through here. The four ships our wolfpack has sunk were all picked off close to shore.” There was a bite to Richardson’s voice, a compound of annoyance and of frustration.

“No!” said Blunt, slamming his fist on the table. “I’m running this wolfpack, and as long as I’m in charge you will operate in accordance with my instructions!”

This time it was Richardson who, in scarcely concealed anger, abruptly rose and left the wardroom.

He climbed to the bridge, seething. There was no question that something was wrong with Blunt. He had been a highly competent peacetime skipper of the Octopus eight years earlier, and he had been a source of strength and support with the old S-16 and the Walrus. Beginning with the recent period at Pearl, however, Blunt seemed to have changed, and he had not bounced back upon going to sea. The stimulus of a patrol had not had the hoped-for effect. His thought processes were not as incisive as they once were. He looked older, acted older, spoke in unaccustomed clichés. Rich also was convinced he was getting far from enough sleep. His eyes always looked blurry and tired, and he spent hours in the wardroom drinking innumerable cups of coffee, morosely speaking to no one. No doubt Admiral Small had thought getting him to sea, away from the routine of his desk and the distractions of Pearl Harbor, possibly also away from Cordy Wood, would restore him. But the problem obviously was deeper. Something else was wrong.

Perhaps the loss of Chicolar had begun to prey upon his mind, but Richardson had truthfully to admit to himself that he, at least, had begun to notice disturbing signs before the patrol began.

“Permission to come on the bridge?” Keith’s voice. Evidently he had followed him, having waited a decent interval first. Rich welcomed the opportunity, walked quietly to the after part of the cigarette deck, leaned against the rail, waited for him.

“Skipper,” said Keith in a low voice, “I have to talk to you about the commodore. He’s got me worried, sir.”

“How, Keith?” said Richardson wearily.

Keith was his confidant and best friend on board, but years of navy training and of ingrained respect for his former skipper were behind the deep reticence Rich now felt.

“He’s not the same as he was back in New London, sir. He was different this time in Pearl, too. Ever since we left Pearl Harbor he has been acting more and more strange. He hardly ever sleeps, and he hardly ever talked to you, or anybody, until lately. But now he’s beginning not to make sense.”

Richardson could think of nothing to say. The idea would have been startling a few days ago. Not so now.

“He’s your old skipper and all that, and I worried a lot about whether I should tell you this. He’s driving us all batty.”

“Oh, come on, Keith,” said Richardson uncomfortably. “He’s got a lot more on his mind than you know.”

“No, that’s not it.” Suddenly Keith spoke with a tone of passionate vehemence. “He doesn’t usually talk much, as I said, but for the last two days, when you’re not in the wardroom, he’s been talking a lot. All he talks about is maybe somebody is sabotaging our hydraulic plant!”

“Now, wait a minute, Keith. You don’t expect me to believe that a member of our crew is deliberately trying to wreck the hydraulic system!”

“Nobody’s trying to sabotage anything! That’s only the commodore’s idea. We’re all trying to help Al figure out what’s wrong. The best man we’ve got on the hydraulic plant is Lichtmann, but lately the commodore has decided Lichtmann must be the saboteur. Don’t ask me how he came up with this one, but it’s all he’s talked about for a day, now, and it’s giving us a fit!”

On the forward part of the bridge, the quartermaster and Officer of the Deck maintained their vigil, while behind them the four lookouts stood motionlessly, elbows on the bridge bulwarks, binoculars steadily sweeping the murky horizon, which could hardly be seen. One part of Richardson wanted badly to continue the conversation, but he could not, would not. “Keith,” he said, “I don’t want this subject to be talked about. Not anywhere, and especially not in the wardroom. It’s up to you to keep the rest of the wardroom in line when I’m not there. Blunt may be passing through a tough time—but he does have a lot on his mind, remember that. Anyway, I don’t want you or any of the others worrying about him. He’s my problem. I’ll handle him. He’s an old friend, and I’ll take care of him.”

Having made a decision, Richardson was surprised at the ease with which he was able to placate Keith. Perhaps Keith also felt he had said enough. Rich searched his mind for a new topic of conversation, found it. “Keith,” he said, “have you thought much about what types of ships those three escorts were that got the Chicolar?”

“Only what I’ve already told you. Nobody saw them. They must have been pretty small, because on the radar scope they were only half as big as the freighters. The three pips all looked exactly the same, so all three escorts could be the same type of ship. They increased speed from ten to eighteen knots, by our plot, when they closed in on Chicolar. They weren’t just patrol craft, that’s one thing sure. We counted over ninety depth charges, so that means each one carries at least thirty and probably a lot more. Anybody carrying that many depth charges——”

“Must have been designed for ASW work,” broke in Richardson. “It’s a good thing for us, sitting here charging batteries in the middle of the Yellow Sea, that they aren’t out patrolling, instead of sticking to convoy escort duty.”

“One of those new Mikura class escorts, if that’s what they were, might waste a lot of time just patrolling an area,” said Keith. “We could avoid him pretty easily. He’ll give us a big enough silhouette at night that we should see him before he sees us, and anyway, we should have him on radar long before he’s onto us.”

“Right, Keith, but the Jap Navy won’t pass up the duty to patrol. Remember the fishing boats. They’re made of wood, and wood doesn’t give as good a radar return as steel. I daresay the three escorts who got Chicolar were Mikuras, all right, but I’m beginning to wonder whether we might be seeing one of those big sampans they warned us about just before we left Pearl. Twice we’ve seen a pretty big one. Sea-going junks, I’d call both of them. Or maybe we saw the same one twice. It could easily be a patrol boat.”

“Our operation order says the big ones are. They’re on patrol to spot submarines. Their hulls are low to the water, and our radar doesn’t see them very soon, either, that’s for damn sure.”

“They aren’t worth a torpedo, but ComSubPac is worried about them. That’s one reason for the extra five-inch gun they gave us.”

Keith thoughtfully nodded his head. The musty atmosphere of the Yellow Sea, muggy, laden with salt, crowded around them, isolated them where they stood. They had moved close together, draped their arms over the forty-millimeter gun barrel. There was a hint of fog in the air, but then, there was almost always a hint of fog in the Yellow Sea at night. Richardson and Leone, standing with their heads inches apart, could see each other clearly enough in the faint illumination from occasional greenish-white phosphorescence in the water, or the gray reflection from some part of the ship’s structure. They spoke in low voices, barely loudly enough to hear each other above the muffled diesels spewing their exhaust into the sea astern.

Eel rode easily on the placid sea. Weather in the Yellow Sea apparently was rarely stormy, although, like any body of water, it must have its bad moments.

“You know, Skipper,” Keith was saying, “this darkness is deceptive. You can’t see the horizon. Taking my sights in the morning and evening I’ve almost always had to guess at it, and right now, in the middle of the night, you can’t tell sky from water. If the Japs were smart, they’d get those two-man submarines out looking for us at night. They know darned well where our patrol areas are. The way we patrol right off their main harbors, their crews could sleep all day in a barracks on shore and come out at night just looking for us. We’d look like an ocean liner to them. One torpedo from a Jap two-man submarine would finish us.”

“Maybe that’s one reason why the commodore won’t let us go in closer. I imagine the two-man subs would have trouble patrolling this far away from harbor.”

“Guess so, but now that the Japs know there’s submarines back in the Yellow Sea, it would seem to me they would want to send someone out looking for us. They could use the two-man subs close in to shore, and have patrol boats disguised as fishing sampans farther out.”

“Could be, Keith. How’d you expect to handle a sampan?”

“Well, he’d probably have a gun, so maybe doing a battle surface exercise alongside him during daylight might not be a good idea. Even a small gun could do a lot of damage if he got it going in time. At night, though, we ought to be able to take him by surprise and pretty well knock him out with our guns before he’s able to do us any damage in return—that is, provided the commodore will let us.”

“Most sampans I’ve seen are dark in color, and so low in the water that our gun crews are liable to shoot right over them. Besides, how do you tell a fishing boat from a patrol boat? Maybe we could get them to cooperate by painting ‘His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s Ship’ somewhere on their side. I don’t suppose they would be that helpful, though!” Richardson smiled wryly.

Keith gave an amused chuckle. The two remained on the bridge a few minutes longer, but for the time being all had been said that could or needed to be said.

It was the very next night that disaster struck. Surfacing had proceeded without incident. As was his custom, Richardson was the first one on the bridge, followed by Oregon, the quartermaster of the watch. Al Dugan, who would be Officer of the Deck, had not yet finished the routine in the control room and would be up directly. It was a dark night, even darker than the night before, overcast, hazy, neither stars nor moon to be seen. Because of the low visibility and the clear impossibility of taking star sights, surfacing had been delayed until virtually the end of the twilight period. Richardson was attentively surveying the horizon through his binoculars, as was Oregon, standing alongside of him. The view through binoculars would undoubtedly be superior to that which the periscope had just provided, and since the radar would take a few seconds to dry off and produce peak performance, it was important to assure with maximum certainty that there were no small ships lying close aboard that, in the gathering darkness, had not been noticed through the periscope.

Neither Richardson nor Oregon was paying any attention to the submarine wallowing beneath them. The accustomed routine had become so much a part of Richardson’s senses that he could register it by hearing and by feeling. Because of the concentration of his binocular search, however, as well as the darkness that overshadowed everything, for a moment he failed to notice anything out of the ordinary.

As he thought about it later, the first subconscious awareness that something was not right must have been when the turbo blowers, automatically started from the control room as soon as the hatch was open, seemed to have a somewhat different pitch from the noise to which he had been accustomed.

But this was not specific, not enough really to make an impression upon him. “Open the main induction!” he ordered. Then his senses came alive with a rush, for there was no answering “thunk” under the cigarette deck. About a hundred feet farther aft, the roar of two main engines and a spatter of exhaust came clearly to his ears. Since opening of the main induction was indicated by a light in the enginerooms and was the signal to start engines, obviously the huge air valve must have opened; but it had not made the customary noise. He would wait a moment before ordering the lookouts to the bridge. He lowered his binoculars to his chest, looked about, noticed that the main deck was unusually low to the water. The engine exhaust was splashing more than normally. Its burbling and sputtering was noticeably louder than usual.

He reached across the bridge, past Oregon, who was still using his binoculars, to press the button to speak into the bridge speaker. He was interrupted by a voice from the conning tower. “Lookouts request permission to come on the bridge.”

“No!” he snarled. “Permission not granted! Stay below!”

Again he reached for the microphone button, again was interrupted. “Radar contact, Bridge! Radar contact! Close aboard!”

His hand on the button, pressed it. “Control, bridge! Blow up with high pressure air!”

The instant he released the button—when energized, on surfacing, the bridge control overrode all other stations—there was a yell from Keith on the speaker. Evidently he was in the control room. “Captain! The hydraulic system is out! The main vents are not shut! Negative is flooded, and we’re submerging!”

If the vents were open, the ballast tanks could not hold air. Eel had no buoyancy. Worse, flooding negative tank was part of the standard procedure as soon as the submarine reached the surface. There would be thirteen tons of negative buoyance to pull the boat under again!

Oregon had heard too, and instantly understood. Frightened, he dropped his binoculars. At the same moment, Richardson looked up from beneath the bridge overhang where he had stooped to talk into the speaker-mike, saw Eel’s bridge alone on a quiet sea. Forward there was no bow, and aft the submarine seemed to end at the cigarette deck. Farther aft, deep white bubbles came up from below to mark where the two exhaust pipes were still faithfully delivering the exhaust from two diesel engines.

“Oregon, get below!” he shouted.

The quartermaster made a leap for the hatch, but at that same instant Richardson felt cold seawater around his ankles and realized he was too late. Water rose relentlessly through the slatted deck of the bridge, poured down into the gaping hole of the open conning tower hatch!

Oregon slipped, stumbled, fell to his hands and knees. Ignoring him, Richardson gripped the hand rails, forced himself over to the hatch. It was already six inches under water. The water was rising rapidly. He took a deep breath. His head bumped the overhang of the bridge. A violent vortex was surging against the open hatch, pouring down the twenty-three-inch-diameter hole! No one could possibly reach the swinging, chattering, hatch lanyard at the far side of the maelstrom! No one could possibly pull it shut against the force of the sixteen-fold fire hydrant holding the hatch wide open! Worse, the cascade of water would strike the lower hatch, the one leading from conning tower to control room, in exactly the same way. This also would be impossible to close. The control room must be flooding too!

Richardson wedged himself directly above the hatch, struggled to get his heels on the rim, pushed mightily. It didn’t budge. The latch must still be engaged in the open position! He was now under water. He stopped pushing, reached down. The pressure was rapidly increasing in his ears. Feeling around the top of the hatch, he found the latch with his fingers, pulled it up, felt it come free. Then, with all the strength of his back and legs, he pressed downward with his feet on the hatch rim.

His back was against the overhead. It was the last thing he could ever do for his ship. He concentrated on only one thing: pushing. With one hand he held the latch from re-engaging. The hatch gave, slowly moved down, suddenly slammed home with a rush as water suction took charge.

It would be latched on the underside now. He reached down to the hand wheel on top of the hatch, with a feeling of indescribable joy felt it turning rapidly from beneath. Someone had gotten to the hatch and was desperately dogging it down!

He must be deep under water now. His ears were hurting. There was a roaring sound in his head. He pushed himself clear. His hands struck something, the base of the periscope shears. Above was a small ledge with a row of large bolts, and then a rung upon which the lookouts climbed. He pressed downward on the ledge, reached up for the rung, found it. He gave himself a mighty heave upward.

It was not enough, could not be. He must be too far under. If a normal human body is brought from the surface to a depth of about twenty feet, compression due to sea pressure makes it negatively buoyant. It would be different, of course, had he been breathing air at that pressure—and in such case he would have to be careful to let it out as he came up to avoid bursting his lungs as it expanded. His mind raced wildly, encompassing all the peripheral thoughts, yet a part of it stayed calm, told him what to do. Now that he was clear of the ship’s structure, he could safely inflate his belt. He reached for the toggles, squeezed them, felt the grateful pressure around his waist.

It seemed minutes, but it could only have been a few seconds. His head broke the surface of the water. He blew out the deeply held breath which he had taken perhaps half a minute before and replaced it with a satisfying lungful of fresh oxygen. He was alone on the surface of the Yellow Sea. There was no sign of the Eel anywhere, nor of Oregon.

From deep inside of him, something like a sob forced its way to the surface. Only about a minute ago everything had been normal! He had been standing on the bridge of his ship, supervising the normal surfacing procedure. Now he knew not what unimaginable disaster could be occurring to Eel, submerged beneath him. All depended upon whether or not it had been possible to get the main induction valve shut. This could be done by hand power, but it was a long and tedious procedure during which incalculable amounts of water would be taken into the ship. If Al Dugan had not been swept away from his station in the control room, he would have signaled the engine room to stop the engines. This would have caused the men also to shut the large air flapper valves in each engineroom on the two inboard ends of the huge air-induction line. Possibly, realizing the boat had submerged from the way the engines would be laboring, certainly when solid water came in through the overhead air line, the machinist’s mates on watch would secure their compartments of their own accord.

Since the accident to the submarine Squalus, some five years earlier, the air-induction lines of all submarines had been redesigned so that their safety valves in the enginerooms snapped shut on a spring when the latching mechanism was triggered, instead of having to be closed by laboriously cranking, as in Squalus. In each engineroom, the releasing device for the spring was located some distance away from where the pipe debouched its air—and in case of casualty, water. At the first gout of seawater through the main induction pipe, the engineroom people on their own should yank the quick-release toggles, slam their engine throttles to “stop,” and shove the hydraulic control to shut the engine exhaust valves. Simultaneously, they would frantically crank closed the hand-powered exhaust valves which backed up the hydraulic ones.

If they had acted quickly, as they had been trained, there was hope that Eel had not been seriously damaged or put out of action. In such case, she might indeed be able to resurface in a short period, and if so would immediately come back to look for him and Oregon.

On the other hand, much more might have gone wrong. Eel might at this very moment be lying flooded throughout her length, or, as in Squalus’ case, half her length, on the bottom of the Yellow Sea. Certainly, her crew would have much to do before they could consider worrying about him, even assuming they were able to resurface at all. All he could do was to try to remain afloat and wait for rescue, if rescue was to come.

Now he blessed the caution which, stemming from his New London days, had made it an inflexible requirement that people going on the bridge during the surfacing procedure, and at any time in enemy waters, should wear the standard rubber inflatable life belts with which all ships were equipped. He felt again for the toggles and squeezed them. Instantly there was additional pressure around his middle. Evidently one of the carbon-dioxide cylinders had previously not been punctured. His body immediately rose nearly chest-high out of the water. The belt pressed around him comfortably. It had slipped upward to just beneath his arms. Keeping afloat, at all events, was not a problem.

The water somehow felt warm. The air was colder. He had not noticed it before, wondered how long he could last in these conditions. He had read that in the North Atlantic in the winter a man could live only minutes in the water before his body temperature became so far reduced that his vital forces simply came to a halt. Here it was not so bad. Maybe he could last until morning, perhaps even longer if he were lucky. Surely the Eel would come back soon!

Paddling with his hands, he turned completely about, searched in all directions. His binoculars still hung around his neck. He shook them as dry as he could, tried to use them. They were little help. Although the sea had seemed nearly calm from the deck of the submarine, there was, in fact, a small swell which effectively prevented his seeing more than fifty or a hundred feet in any direction. He debated taking the leather thong from around his neck and allowing the binoculars to sink in the water, decided not to. He might be able to use them after dawn broke. That was, however, nearly twelve hours away.

He thought he heard something, a distant hail, a voice shouting something. Again he turned around, paddling with his hands, tried to determine the direction from which the voice came, listened intently.

“Ahoy!” the voice shouted. He turned toward it.

“Ahoy!” he yelled. He could see nothing. “Ahoy!” he yelled again.

“Here! Over here!” the voice said.

He began torturously to swim, encumbered by his clothes and the life belt around his middle. He had not even removed his shoes, feeling that the maximum protection he could get against the ultimate cold of the seawater would be to his benefit.

He swam several minutes, stopped, and listened. He was making progress. The voice was louder. Soon he was able to recognize it. Oregon, also floating in the sea, also supported by a life belt.

“Jee-sus, Captain! When I saw the ship go under with you perched on top of the hatch under the bridge overhang, I never thought you’d make it out again!”

“What happened, Oregon? What did you see?”

“Nothing, sir. I fell in the water, and when I got up I saw you trying to get the hatch shut, so I started climbing up the periscope shears. She went down like a rock, sir. I could hear water going into the main induction. That must have made her really heavy, and when the periscope shears went under I just floated off the top. After a while I started yelling, figuring if you came up maybe you’d hear me, and anyway, the Eel should come back looking for us. They’ll be up pretty soon, don’t you think, sir?”

“Any minute now, I think,” reassured Richardson, but he wondered if he could believe his own words. With the hydraulic system out of commission, whatever the cause, the main vents somehow open—though they could, with difficulty, be closed by hand—and with the main induction system flooded, Eel would be having many problems.

But how could the vents have been opened in the first place? Especially without hydraulic power? The explanation, the only possible explanation, was that the last time the vents had been cycled they had not properly closed. Cycling the vents—opening and shutting them—was customary once or twice a watch while submerged, to release any air that might have leaked into the ballast tanks. If they did not close properly, the fact should have been evident on the red-and-green “Christmas Tree” light panel; but it might have escaped attention. When goggles were worn in a redded-out, darkened compartment, green lights could not be seen at all. Without goggles, they were so brilliant as to hurt the eyes, which then, somehow, could not separate the reds. Understandably, the absence of some green lights might not have been noticed!

If so, if this was what had happened, the fault for the casualty could only be one of command. He should have noticed that Eel was not floating normally, that her freeboard was decreasing as the air blown into the tanks leaked out through the partly open vent valves. It would have been so easy for Oregon and him to step quietly inside the hatch again! He could blame no one but himself. Dark shadows descended on his mind. His own incompetence, his failure to keep his mind on his job, had brought his ship and his crew to this disaster!

Sensing Richardson’s mood, Oregon too was silent. Side by side the two men floated in the Yellow Sea. Several minutes—a quarter of an hour—passed. Rich aroused himself. He still owed a duty to the one member of his crew destined to share with him whatever the uncertain future held. “Oregon,” he said, “I shouldn’t try to kid you about what shape Eel might be in. Even if they do make it back up in a short while, there’s no telling if they’ll be able to find us with the kind of visibility we’ve been having around here. Do you have any line on you? We should lash ourselves together. We may be floating here a long time.”

“I’ve been thinking the same, Captain,” said Oregon. “You don’t lie so good neither, sir. Maybe these lacings from our parkas would do for a light lashing.”

Then another thought struck Richardson, dissipated the lethargy that had engulfed him. “Oregon,” he said, “there’s something else besides Eel around here.”

“Sir?”

“Remember that radar contact we had just before the boat slipped under? . . . Well, it must have been a ship, probably a small one, because we didn’t see it before we surfaced. We didn’t have it on the radar right away, either. It could be anything. Even another submarine. But I’m guessing, whatever it is, most likely it’s made of wood, and it’s got to be Japanese!”