-  6  -

Except for the cold air, his life belt supported him so well that he was not physically uncomfortable at all, thought Richardson. He and Oregon pulled out the strings around the bottoms of their parkas, twisted the cords together into a single strand of double strength, and then lashed themselves together. They left enough slack so that each man could have a modicum of individual motion without discomfort to the other. Perhaps they could last thus several days, but he doubted it. Even though he could feel the cold only slightly, it was already sapping the strength from him. Without food or water, or sleep, the longest he could honestly hope he and the quartermaster could survive was about twenty-four hours. Despite his rather pessimistic second prediction to Oregon, he had in fact privately thought that Eel would be back very soon to look for them. Her failure to reappear could mean only one thing: that the situation on board was serious, possibly downright critical. Gradually his secret optimism gave way to a more sober assessment. In twenty-four hours he and Oregon would simply drift off to sleep. They might float for days, dead in their life belts.

Richardson judged it must be about midnight—his watch, advertised “waterproof,” had not been proof against depth—when he became aware that he was hearing something. He turned about, trying to orient himself to the slight breeze, equalize the sound in his ears.

There was no doubt about it. He could hear a motor, or an engine, running. The two men strained to hear more clearly: The sound was approaching, grew more defined. Finally both were forced to admit that by no stretch could it be a submarine diesel.

“Maybe it’s that contact we had on the radar just before we dipped under,” said Oregon.

“That’s what I was thinking too,” agreed Richardson. He fumbled with his life belt. One of its attachments was a single-cell waterproof flashlight for just such contingencies. He brought it up, held it in his hand, looked at it.

“Going to signal them, Skipper?” asked Oregon.

“I was thinking of it. If we don’t, the Eel might come back, but then, she might not for a while. How long do you think you can last in this water?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Oregon. His normally ruddy face showed ghostly white in what light there was. “I’m okay, but I’m starting to feel the cold, I think. Maybe a day, or a couple of days.”

“Me too,” said Richardson, inspecting the flashlight carefully. Maybe it would be better to let the noise go past and take their chances in the water. At worst they would die a peaceful death as their body machinery slowly ran down. Perhaps this was to be his atonement. Too bad Oregon had to be involved too.

The sound grew louder. The ship, or boat, would pass fairly close aboard. “Well, what do you say, Oregon?” Richardson asked. “If I put on the light, we go to a Jap prison camp, maybe worse. If I don’t, we may float around here forever. Maybe the Eel will come back in a day or so, maybe not.”

The quartermaster did not answer. Richardson hesitated. Oregon’s face was working, “I don’t know which would be worse,” he finally said. “I—I guess you’ll have to decide, Captain. It’ll be worse for you than for me, I think, anyhow.”

“You mean if they find out about the last patrol?”

“No sir, no sir, I wasn’t thinking of that—the war can’t last much longer, don’t you think? We won’t be too long in prison camp—it’s just that you’re the skipper. They always treat the skippers worst, don’t they?”

But Richardson was sure that Bungo Pete was exactly what Oregon was thinking about. Japan obviously could not hold on much longer. Soon the island-hopping campaign would bring the U.S. Navy to her front door in force that could be neither denied nor delayed. Imprisonment in a POW camp would be of short duration for the average, run-of-the-mill prisoner. Not so for the man who had killed Bungo Pete. There was little prospect he would live that long.

But that mattered little at the moment, Richardson quickly realized. What mattered, instead, was Oregon’s loyal attempt not to permit his own hopes for survival to affect his skipper’s thinking.

The noise of the engine—it could now be identified as a lightweight diesel engine, or possibly even a gasoline engine, poorly muffled, besides—approached closer. Richardson waited until he felt it was as near as it was likely to come. Having had no opportunity to test the light, he was surprised it functioned.

Richardson’s captor was the biggest and heaviest Japanese he had ever seen, and it was soon clear that the boat he commanded was far more than an ordinary Japanese fishing boat. While superficially similar to a large sea-going sampan, the boat must have been built like an ancient war-junk. She had two masts with the usual mattinglike sails, which were furled on deck, and she was large, half the length of Eel, even broader of beam. She was newly built of extremely heavy timbers, with the exception of the masts, which seemed light and spindly for a craft of her size. Between the masts there was a wooden deckhouse with a gently domed roof of long thin reeds. But beneath the reeds there was clearly a strong wooden roof as well. The whole structure of the craft seemed to be much more solid than an ordinary fishing sampan, even a sea-going one, might need to be.

More, Richardson had not been permitted to observe. He now sat uncomfortably on a stool in the deckhouse, arms bound behind his back, facing someone who could be no one else than the Japanese skipper. The man was tremendous in size, and he spoke perfect English.

“So,” he said, “will you tell me again, please, how you came to be here?” He carefully pronounced the word “please,” but there was otherwise no hint of the traditional Japanese difficulty with the letter L.

“We escaped from that submarine that was depth charged and sunk.”

“You’re lying!”

“I am telling you the truth. The submarine was disabled. We waited until the depth charging stopped, and then some of us escaped with breathing apparatus.”

Without warning the Japanese jumped to his feet, struck Richardson in the face with a clenched hammy fist. He knocked him off the stool, kicked him several times in the stomach. As Rich tried to roll away from him to protect his abdomen, he shouted a stream of orders in Japanese. Two men came in the compartment, picked Richardson up, sat him again on the stool.

“Now,” said the moon-faced Japanese captain, “you are going to stop insulting my intelligence!” He held a heavy stick in his hand, waited a moment for Richardson to answer, then struck him across the side of the head with it. Richardson saw the blow coming, ducked his head so that the club struck the upper part of his skull instead of the thin area of his temple. There was not enough room in the tiny compartment for the big Japanese really to swing the timber. It hurt excruciatingly, nevertheless. Tiny amoebalike blobs drifted back and forth in front of his vision. Still he remained silent. He saw the second blow coming, could not dodge it. It struck the side of his face. He could feel the blood in his mouth, the pain along his jawbone and in his head as he lost consciousness.

He came to as he was being carried across the deck. He felt himself being lowered through a companionway, and then apparently a door was opened and he was placed, fairly gently, it seemed to him, inside a small room. His head ached, and there was blood in his mouth, but the surcease from beating felt heavenly. There was not sufficient floor space to lie at full length. He curled up in the position in which he had been placed and, his arms still bound behind him, fell again into a comatose state which gradually transformed itself into sleep.

Morning came a few hours later, and with it Richardson’s inquisitor had apparently decided to change his tactics. Richardson was tightly held by the two crewmen who had brought him. He faced him, standing. “Listen carefully,” the huge, round-faced Japanese captain said. “Point one, just in case you wondered, I grew up in Berkeley, California, and graduated from Cal before the war. So don’t try anything funny with me. Point two, this ship is a patrol unit of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Point three, three of our larger antisubmarine escorts destroyed one of your submarines last week, not far from here. It was damaged and sank to the bottom, where we heard it making desperate efforts to save itself. We located it by dragging with grapnels, and after we hooked it, we blew it apart by sliding depth charges down the grapnel wires. Point four, there were no survivors.” He looked Rich in the eye with a malevolent grin.

Richardson still said nothing. He concentrated all his mental forces on resisting the beating which must be coming.

Still grinning, the Japanese produced a pistol, aimed it at Richardson’s belly. His grin expanded, and he began to titter. His voice was pitched at least half an octave above his normal speaking voice. “You’ll tell me what I want to know if I have to shoot your balls off one at a time!”

The hatred and contempt in Richardson’s soul must have revealed themselves in his face, for suddenly the Japanese thrust the pistol forward and fired.

Richardson saw the move coming, nerved himself to take the obscene blow. His every sense jumped to full clarity, and he saw that at the last minute “Moonface” dropped the muzzle of the gun just a fraction. The force of explosion caught him in the groin. He doubled over in pain, but it was only the slap of the powder charge striking his clothing. The bullet had passed between his legs, grazing the right one but otherwise causing no injury.

The pistol slammed against his head. Again the kick in the side, again shouted orders in Japanese. Two crewmen jerked him upright, held him against the weakness in his legs and the pain in his head. “Moonface” (as Richardson had come to think of him) tittered again, struck him across the face with the back of his hand. “Come along,” he said, waving his arm in a beckoning gesture. “I’ll show you something!”

More orders in Japanese. The two crewmen propelled Richardson out onto the deck, where the first thing that caught his eye was Oregon, who had been trussed up in a standing position against a mast. His hands were pulled hard behind him, evidently tied together behind the vertical spar. His body sagged against the ropes. His chin was down on his chest.

Richardson wanted to shout encouragement to Oregon, but he dared not. There was a stab of ice in his vitals.

Moonface tittered once more. “This is the way your man spent the night,” he said. “It is up to you if I treat him more kindly.” He raised the pistol, pointed it at Oregon’s body, spoke sententiously, spacing the words: “Where did you come from? How did you get here? Are there any more American submarines in these waters?”

“We’re survivors from that submarine that was sunk,” Richardson said desperately. “We escaped with breathing apparatus. There are no other American subs around here.”

Moonface snapped off his mask of mirth. Oregon was looking at them with fearful eyes.

“Is that true?” Moonface hissed to him. Oregon nodded weakly.

Moonface turned to Rich. “This is how we treat liars,” he said. He put his pistol against the lower part of Oregon’s abdomen, pulled the trigger.

As the shock of the report died away, Oregon began screaming a high-pitched, incoherent cry of torture. Moonface waited two full minutes, fired a second time. Again he waited, fired a third time. Jack Oregon’s agony was horrifying to watch. His muscles bulged and writhed within his bonds, tearing the flesh where his arms and hands were pinioned. His shrieks, which had been high and bubbling, diminished in volume, became animal-like. Bloody froth came from his mouth. Richardson, too, was screaming, lunging against the hands that were holding him back, straining at the cords that bound his arms, lunging toward Moonface. The raving torment gave him strength to drag the two men holding him several feet across the littered deck. He had no conscious plan. Had he been able to reach Moonface, he would have attacked him with the only weapon he had, his teeth. He felt another pair of hands join those that held him, and then a fourth pair. He was wrestled to the deck, held immobile.

Great gouts of dark blood were spilling out of Oregon’s groin, splattering on the deck. His head had fallen down on his chest once more. His heaving breath was stertorous, his groans nearly inaudible. Perhaps he was unconscious. Richardson hoped so.

“Help him!” shouted Richardson hoarsely. “Get him some help! He’ll bleed to death!”

“You’re the one who could have helped him, my friend,” said Moonface. “However, I shall be merciful.” He stepped forward, lifted Oregon’s head by the hair, placed the pistol on the bridge of his nose between the eyes and fired one more time. The heavy automatic literally blew off the top of his head. Bits of bloody matter splashed around the mast and some distance beyond it on either side. Some of it fell upon crew members who had gathered in a group of uneasy watchers.

Moonface holstered his gun. “We’ll give you a little time to think it over, my friend,” he said. “I may not be so merciful to you.” He barked a few words in Japanese to the dozen or so gathered crew members, giggled, and grandiloquently stalked away.

Pinioned to the deck, Richardson was vomiting. The four men holding him down picked him up, carried him to the rail, propped him over it until he had finished. Curiously, their hands felt sympathetic, almost apologetic.

Others had cut the ropes binding Oregon’s body to the mast, carried it also to the rail. They averted their faces from Richardson. The reckless disregard of consequences still drove him. He stood up, came as near to a posture of attention as his bound arms would permit. “Stop!” he shouted.

Unsure of themselves, they paused. Rich walked over the few feet to Oregon’s body, the men detailed to hold him moving uncertainly with him. Not many of the Japanese sailors or fishermen, or whatever they were, would understand English, but they were men of the sea. They would grasp the significance of what he was about to do. Probably the word would get back to Moonface, but he was beyond caring. Rapidly his mind searched over his early memories. Once, before the war, he had been present at a funeral on board ship. He could not remember the words exactly, but that didn’t matter.

He stood alongside the ruined body of his friend, raised his face. A furious recklessness drove him. Let them try to stop him in this duty. The unarticulated thought, unformed, only an emotional reaction, defied them, or anyone, to interfere. He almost wished they would try. . . .

The choking words, some of them heard every Sunday at his father’s church, then for four years at the Naval Academy and countless times since, came clearly, without conscious effort to remember. There was a stillness in the air, a high gentle note as the inadequate stays allowed the skimpy masts to creak in their steps. A lapping of the water alongside the wooden hull. Twice he faltered, but it was only the inability of his voice to croak out the words.

There was silence on the deck of the little ship as Rich finished. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He drew himself up, looked around. “Attention on deck!” he snapped. Whether they understood him or not made no difference. A respectful silence had settled upon the dozen Japanese present. He fixed his eyes on the men who still held Oregon’s body, with his head motioned toward the sea. They understood, lifted up the body, and dropped it gently over the side.

The men who had charge of him still had their hands through his arms. He turned away from the rail. They led him forward, down through a small hatch into the hold of the ship, and all the way forward to her bows. The overhead was so low that all of them had to stoop, he more than any, and the heavily barred door which they unlocked for him could not have been more than four feet high. He indicated his bound arms. After a moment, one of them untied them. They pushed him in. He could hear a bar placed upon the door, and the click of a heavy padlock.

Moonface had decided to give Rich plenty of time to think things over, he decided. Perhaps he intended to add hunger to his efforts at persuasion. Clearly he suspected Rich and Oregon must have come from a second submarine, possibly hoped confirmation would redound to his favor. Richardson cursed himself for not having had the wit to remove his parka before he was picked up. It was marked “CAPT,” while Oregon’s parka had been correspondingly marked “QM.” Assuming Moonface had realized he must be the captain of a submarine, the only logical purpose behind his insistent questions must be to establish the existence of a second sub in the area. Perhaps he hoped to gain personal credit for the discovery. This must be only the beginning of the interrogation Richardson could look forward to.

After what he had seen in the twelve hours or so he had spent aboard the little wooden craft, there could be no illusions as to the sadistic lengths to which Moonface might go, unless the rewards for bringing home an American submarine captain alive and reasonably well appeared more substantial than any information he could wring out of him by torture. Even here, there was something irrational. What could Moonface do with any such information that could not be better done by Japanese naval authorities at headquarters? The patrol boat could reach the naval base at Sasebo, for example, in two or three days, or rendezvous even more quickly with one of the faster destroyer types with which she must be associated. But the motion of the patrol boat gave no indication of any purposeful movement. Her tiny engine still maintained the same cadence which Rich and Oregon had noticed the night before in the water, and twice already he had felt her reverse course. During daylight, if fishing was the patrol boat’s cover, she would of course have lines out. She might in fact actually do some fishing, although Richardson had seen no evidence of fishing gear during his few fleeting glimpses about the decks.

His arms were numb. The bruises on his face and head, and in the abdominal area, ached with a dull monotony. The inside of his right leg smarted in the path of the bullet which had grazed it. Squatting on the floor of the tiny compartment, for he could not stand upright, he rubbed the injured places. Sufficient light came through the clouded glass of a tiny porthole, about six inches in diameter, to reassure him that the bullet wound was superficial. He was not bleeding. The skin had barely been scraped by the flaming powder grains.

The compartment, if it could be called one—it was no more than five feet in any dimension—was some kind of a storeroom. It was roughly triangular in shape, larger at the top than at the floor level. Two sides, one of which contained the door, were vertical and met at right angles. The third side was in effect the hypotenuse of the triangle, had a slight curve, and was itself almost triangular, being much longer at the top than at the bottom.

This was the port bow of the boat. Its side flared outward, and there was a small porthole. He could hear the gentle lapping of the sea on the other side of the planking. Shelves had been built along the un-pierced straight wall. The other one consisted primarily of the heavy door through which he had entered. He pushed on it. It was solidly secured. He inspected the porthole, a very simple contraption which was easily opened. Gray light streamed through the hole. The smell of sea air came with it, refreshed him. Quietly he swung it shut again, latched it.

On the shelves stood an array of nondescript items. A few cans of paint tightly sealed, some boxes that looked as if they might contain scouring powder. A sack of rags, open and half empty, lay beneath the shelves. There was nothing that could serve as a weapon. With a weapon, a paint scraper perhaps, he could attack Moonface, and in the ensuing fatal struggle bring final retribution to both of them for everything that had gone before: the war, the killing, Nakame, and now Oregon. What a mistake to have used the flashlight! Far better for both of them to have quietly died in their life belts in the middle of the Yellow Sea! He wished Moonface would send for him again, get it over with.

He should try to sleep, if he could. He jackknifed himself on the floor, drawing his knees almost up to his chest, pillowing his head on the sack of rags. Some of them smelled faintly of paint, and more strongly of turpentine. He could not sleep. His pulse, pounding with what he had seen and the hatred he felt, would not quiet. Resolutely he closed his eyes, but through his brain danced fleeting images of Eel, half-flooded with water, lying in the mud on the bottom of the Yellow Sea, her crew—those who had survived—led by Keith (Blunt would be no help), trying to repair damages, pump out the water, bring the crippled sub to the surface. If they had been able to get the air inlet shut in the enginerooms, the engine exhausts closed, she might not be too badly injured. If water could be kept out of at least one of the battery compartments to give power, the drain pump could be run. Partly flooded compartments could be pumped dry, provided only that someone was able to enter and dive into their bilges to open the drain valves. But if the motor room were even partly flooded, it would be impossible to put the sea-soaked main motors back into commission. Eel’s propellers, in this case, would never turn again.

He must have dozed after all. Someone was fumbling with the door to his prison. He scrambled to his knees. The door opened: Moonface, grinning. “Are you ready to tell me what I want to know?”

Richardson remained silent. His loathing for the contemptible animal confronting him made him tremble. It would be a relief to attack him with his bare hands. But not yet. Not until there was a chance of hurting him.

Behind Moonface was one of his crewmen with a wooden bowl in his hands. Richardson wondered if he detected a hint of compassion around the eyes set in the sailor’s otherwise impassive face. Moonface took the bowl, held it toward him. It was food, soup of some kind. The aroma filled the little cell. Moonface’s grin was more evil than ever. “Japanese Navy regulations say I must feed you. Would you like this?”

It must have been twenty-four hours since Richardson had eaten. He reached for the bowl. Moonface jerked it back, laughing his high-pitched laugh, flung its contents in his face. A spoon fell clattering to the floor. The door closed, was bolted. Something heavy, a cross bar, was set in place. The click of the padlock. He could hear Moonface still tittering loudly as he walked aft.

Richardson had heard of prisoners making weapons out of spoons, but there was no way he could envision to make one out of the spoon Moonface had forgotten, even if he had enough time. Maybe something would present itself later. He carefully put it out of sight on one of the shelves. Night was falling. He began to feel the hunger pangs, but more important was dryness in his mouth heralding real thirst. No doubt this also was part of Moonface’s design.

With the coming of darkness it became impossible to distinguish objects inside the storeroom. No light could enter through the solid walls and door, and very little came through the cloudy glass in the porthole. This at least could be repaired somewhat. Rich unlatched the glass port, swung it open, breathed deeply of the cool sea air. The opening was much too small for him to put his head through, but it gave him some comfort to crouch near the porthole, the better to get its full benefit. At the same time, he reflected, this would give him the opportunity of closing the port quickly and silently. He practiced the little maneuver so that he could do it in the dark without fumbling.

With the light still remaining, he could see almost straight down into the water. This resulted from the rather considerable flare of the patrol boat’s bows. By the same token, one would have to lean dangerously far out over the edge of the forecastle deck to see the porthole or the side of the little ship from topside. Flared bows, of course, were common with surface ships. Even Eel was built with considerable flare to give her better sea-keeping ability at high speed. It was owing to this characteristic of design that years ago a cruiser had sailed from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco, unknowingly bearing the word “MADHOUSE” in huge block letters on both her bows. Her entrance into San Francisco Bay created a delighted sensation in the newspapers, and instant consternation to naval authorities. Her captain had been completely unaware that anything was out of the ordinary until after he had anchored his ship and was heading shoreward in his gig.

There was a change in the regular routine of the patrol boat. After some moments Rich realized the engine had stopped. The boat was lying to, drifting. Perhaps she had also been drifting part of the time last night. Possibly this was why Eel had not heard her on sonar before surfacing. It was even possible that Moonface, believing in the presence of a second submarine, was hoping to catch Eel unawares.

It was becoming a dark night, darker than most. After a while, peering out of his tiny porthole, Richardson was convinced that a night fog had set in. The visibility, so far as he could tell, was nearly zero. It would be a good night for someone with a radar, a bad one for anyone without. Moonface’s orders might well be to lie to at night, making maximum use of whatever sonar gear he possessed. But if so, why had he gotten underway again last night? It was while he was mulling this over, wondering if the boat in which he was prisoner was capable of a sonar watch, and if so what it would use for power with the engine stopped, that a tiny noise wafted on the foggy air called him to straining attention.

Somewhere in the distance—it might be miles away, carried by the vagaries of fog and damp night atmosphere—an engine had started. He turned his head from side to side, putting first one ear and then the other to the open porthole. It was an engine! He had heard it starting—first rolling on compressed air and then bursting forth with power—too many times not to recognize it. It was one of Eel’s main diesel engines starting! There should be at least two—there were two! But the sound was so faint, so vague, that he could hardly believe he really heard it. Yet he had heard it; of this he was sure. Sonar, listening for underwater noises, probably would miss it. He wondered if any of Moonface’s patrol-boat crew had also heard, and, having heard, would understand what it portended.

There could be a number of reasons why an engine might be heard in the Yellow Sea: other patrol boats, a merchant ship, even an airplane flying overhead. No Japanese could be so intimately familiar with the sound of a U.S. submarine diesel engine as the sub’s own skipper. It was about the right time—a little late, perhaps—for Eel to surface, assuming she was back on some sort of a near-normal routine. Every sound he had heard had been a familiar one in the right order. Had he been closer, he would have heard the clank of the main induction and the clank also of the hydraulically operated engine exhaust valves. He could almost swear he had heard them, though it might have been only that he so wanted to. If true, it meant that the hydraulic system had been repaired and Eel was back in full commission!

It must be Eel. It could not be Whitefish. Distant and faint though it was, that sound was like a fingerprint. There was only one possible source for it! Eel was remaining in the vicinity, must be looking for him. She might even suspect the sampan. She would not, surely, be caught twice by the same trick of lying to with engines stopped.

If she saw the patrol boat, she would surely look it over through her periscope, would wonder whether the boat might indeed have picked up her skipper and quartermaster. . . . And then the idea which had been nagging at Richardson’s mind for the past several minutes suddenly assumed full detail.

He would have to move quickly and quietly, and he must eradicate all signs of what he had done. The hull of the patrol boat was dark, probably in order to blend in better with the general low visibility at night. He would need contrasting paint; one of the sealed cans he had noted had some dried white paint around its edges. He seized it, shook the can carefully, was rewarded with the heavy gurgle of a partly full can. He laid it gently on the floor at his feet To open it—the spoon!

It would not do to commit himself too far in advance. All must be in readiness to eliminate the signs as quickly as possible, preferably as he went along. It was imperative not to betray himself by paint drippings. There must be no cause for someone to look over the side and see what he had done. He must not leave any marks on the deck, on himself, or on his clothes. He would need something to apply the paint—a rag—and something to clean his hands with afterward, another rag. One of the cans apparently contained a solvent—turpentine. He thought about using it, decided not to unless absolutely necessary. The odor might become noticeable outside his cell. Perhaps if he would wrap his hands first—better yet, his leather wool-lined mittens, still in the pocket of his jacket!

Hastily he made his preparations. He placed the can on the deck, pried up its lid carefully. With a paint-soaked rag in his left hand, he reached as far out the porthole as he could to the right, drew a single broad vertical white stroke on the black wooden hull. He could not see what he was doing, had to go by the feel of the rag against the hull planking. Three times he resoaked the rag, repeated the stroke, until he was satisfied that he had made a solid vertical smear of paint, carefully allowing for the fact that he could not reach as far at the top and bottom of the stroke as he could in its midsection. More paint on the rag. Three short horizontal strokes, not too long. Then another vertical stroke alongside the porthole. Three more horizontal strokes attached to it. Finally, with his right arm reaching as far to the left as he could, a vertical stroke and a single horizontal stroke at the bottom.

He dropped the paint-soaked rag into the water. His ruined gloves followed. Carefully he squeezed the lid down tightly on the can, placed it on the shelf where he had found it. The rag he had laid on the rim of the porthole, after some thought, also went over the side. The remaining rags went deep into the sack from which he had taken them.

The whole operation had taken perhaps an hour. It was a dangerous move. A gamble. If discovered, the retribution would be savage. Rich could feel his pulse thumping as he proceeded with his careful clean-up. Finally he was left with only the spoon. For several minutes he debated dropping it out the porthole, decided against it. He might have use for it later on. Moonface might remember it, demand it back. He wiped it off carefully. Perhaps he should place it on the floor where he had found it, but he decided against this also. In the end it was hidden again on the shelf where he had first put it.

On the side of the flared bow of the little patrol boat, around his porthole, Richardson had written in large block letters the word “EEL.”

After several hours Rich decided that not only had his painting spree gone completely unnoticed, but also Moonface seemed to have forgotten all about him. Perhaps the Japanese skipper intended to let hunger and thirst weaken his resolve, in preparation for an even more thorough interrogation next day. On the other hand, every hour brought nearer the possibility that next day Eel might closely inspect the patrol boat through her periscope, would note the name lettered on her bow, would realize that only two persons could have written it there.

If, on the other hand, Eel did not see his sign, inevitably Moonface would see it. The consequences would, at their least, be most unpleasant. Among other things, it revealed at least part of what Moonface wanted to know.

Alive, now, to the possibility of other significant noises, he kept the port open and his ear to it. Nothing was to be heard except the idle lapping of the water against the patrol boat’s drifting hull and the creaking of masts and gear on deck to an occasional gentle roll. The entire ship was still. Absolutely silent. He could not even hear the quiet movement of any of her crew.

After a suitable interval he cautiously put his hand out the port to sample his paint, found it satisfactorily tacky. This at least seemed to be working out, but of course everything depended upon whether or not Eel would choose tomorrow in daylight to look over the patrol boat. If the fog continued, the prospect of her doing so would be greatly reduced.

In his current state of mind, Richardson was not only sleepless but also acutely conscious of everything going on aboard the little ship. It must have been about midnight that he heard voices speaking in low tones in Japanese not many feet away from his prison. There was a certain furtiveness about them, as if they did not wish to be heard, as if they were worried, uneasy, perhaps in subdued fear. He shortly afterward was conscious of some other voices talking loudly, farther away. One voice, shouting in particularly violent tones, was that of Moonface. The others sounded conciliatory, placating. One clearly carried a note of justification, of exculpation, was finally reduced to frightened pleading.

Moonface’s authoritarian tones increased in intensity. His denunciations grew louder. There came sounds of heavy blows. The pleading voice was crying in pain. Then several more dull thudding noises, and the pleading voice was silent. Moonface’s voice continued for several minutes in a paroxysm of rage, then silence again descended upon the little ship. Richardson recognized it for what it was. It was the silence of terror.

Several more hours passed. Daylight was beginning to lighten the murk when Richardson heard purposeful footsteps coming toward his cell. Quickly he closed and latched the port, turned with foreboding as the door was unbarred and opened.

Three solemn Japanese sailors accosted Rich, tied his arms as before, led him aft.

Moonface had arrayed himself in full uniform, with samurai overtones. He had buckled a pistol belt around his ample middle. Hung from the belt, its ornamented brown scabbard secured by a length of intricately brocaded line, was a heavy curved sword about three feet in length. A shorter sword, or dirk, was stuck in the pistol belt, and from the belt also hung a leather holster and a modern automatic pistol. Richardson instantly saw that Moonface was in an evil humor and at the same time hugely pleased with himself.

“I am not ready to talk to you yet, my friend,” he scowled, “but I will be soon. Have you had a good breakfast?”

Rich stared at him stonily.

“Probably not, but such are the fortunes of war. Too bad. Since I am a samurai, a two-sword man, I cannot of course eat with commoners, but it would amuse me if you attend upon me while I have my breakfast.” His scowl was replaced by the unpleasant grin which, by this time, Richardson had learned to fear. He made a great show of waving his hands through the air, clapping them together. From somewhere one of the sailors brought out a white mat, unrolled it on the deck. Moonface sat on it cross-legged. “You may stand over there,” he said, pointing to one side. “I do not want my faithful retainers interfered with as they serve me.” Again the show of clapping his hands. An uncomfortable-looking sailor brought a tray upon which lay a dish of meat with some vegetables, several small cups, two bottles filled with colorless liquid, a pair of chopsticks.

Moonface unsheathed his dirk, inspected its keen edge, stropped it gently in the palm of his hand, and returned it to its polished wooden sheath. He picked up a sliced piece of meat with the chopsticks, stuffed it into his mouth. “You must forgive my servants,” he said, smacking his lips and making sucking noises between his words; “we samurai are generally more punctilious in our requirements for proper service, but in war one must do the best one can with what one has.”

Richardson shot a glance at the half-dozen crewmen standing about: the man who had unrolled the mat, the one who had brought the tray, another who seemed also to be in attendance, the three guarding him. Already, in the short time he had been aboard the ship, he felt he had gained some understanding of the Japanese character in spite of the facade of impassiveness. With the exception of Moonface, all were extremely tense. Obviously they were terrified of their big captain. “This man is insane,” he said to himself, “plain crazy, and all the more dangerous because of it.” He fought down the flow of saliva which had started at the sight of food, willed himself to be as impassive as the Japanese, stared woodenly at Moonface. Moonface ate the entire meal, drank ceremoniously and with satisfaction in the small cups from the more ornate of the two bottles, not at all from the other, which evidently contained only water.

Finished at last, he pushed the tray aside, lumbered to his feet, waved his arms again in a beckoning motion. “Come, my friend,” he said, with the leering grin. “I have something to show you.” He led Richardson to an area below decks in the after part of the ship, turned on a single light bulb in the overhead. There was a man huddled against the side of the ship. Irons were clamped on his legs. His hands were manacled to a beam over his head. Dried blood matted his hair, covered the front of his blouse. His head was hanging down, but Richardson could see that both eyes were swollen shut, and there was a deep gash across the top of his head. The skin had pulled back, exposing the bone beneath. The man was unconscious.

“This is one of my crewmen who defied my authority.” The familiar titter. “My grandfather would have cut off his head immediately for such presumption. I have been kinder. I have given him a day to repent. Tomorrow you shall see me cut his head off with a single blow of this sacred sword I am wearing.” He spat upon the wretched man, kicked him heavily in the side.

He turned to Richardson. “You see, my friend, what I can do. Think carefully when I send for you. Poetic, is it not? You see, my friend, what I can do. Think carefully when I send for you.” He made the phrase into a little singsong chant. Still singing to himself, he turned and went back up the ladder.

His guards were looking at each other. They had evidently been given no instructions. Richardson smiled mirthlessly, pointed with his chin toward the bow. Wordlessly, they accompanied him back to his cell, walking stooped under the low overhead. When his arms were unbound and he was about to re-enter his prison, he looked the three men in the eye, tapped his forehead significantly. In a loyal crew this would have brought a reaction. It was, in a way, a test. The faces remained impassive, but there was an underlying unease as they closed the door upon him.

He did not believe any bones were broken, but every part of his body ached. The expected summons had come in midafternoon, and although feeling light-headed from lack of food and drink, he had managed to stick to his determination to give only name, rank, and serial number. The result had been a beating by several crew members who obviously hated their job but had, nevertheless, cuffed him about heartily enough to allay any suspicions Moonface might have had as to their willingness. Toward the end Moonface had himself lent a hand with a short stout piece of timber, and it was from these blows around the head and ribcage region that Richardson suffered most. Perhaps a rib had been cracked. His skull felt as if spikes had been hammered all over it. By twisting and squirming in the grasp of the men who were supposed to hold him, he had succeeded in some measure in protecting his head and soft abdominal area. His arms and legs were by consequence covered with deep bruises. His skin had been broken in several places where Moonface had struck it with his club, and finally he was bleeding quite profusely around the face and from his nose. It was perhaps this that brought the interview to a close. Doubtless the kudos for bringing in an enemy submarine captain alive would be greater than bringing him back dead.

Richardson had stopped feeling the blows as they fell upon him. Somewhere, in his remaining awareness, he realized he was only semiconscious. He perhaps actually did pass out for a moment or two. His next recollection was of being roughly carried along the deck and down the companionway into his cell. The roughness ceased as they passed through the companionway—out of sight of Moonface—and to Richardson’s surprise, when after a little delay he was laid gently on the floor of the cell, someone had dumped the rags out of the bag and had spread them around into the semblance of a bed for him.

He was never clear how long he lay there. Again his state of near-unconsciousness changed imperceptibly to sleep. When he awoke, it was because of a tremendous need to urinate, almost like a surge from within his body. Moonface, of course, had given no thought to sanitary facilities. He would have to use the same stratagem as the previous night. Painfully he crawled to his knees, pulled the rags away from the lowest corner of the sloping deck, made a little pile of the most absorbent of them. His urine was full of blood and reeked with the smell of it. The thought—almost a detached observation—crossed his mind that he might have suffered permanent damage. Well, it could not be helped, and probably did not matter, for neither his kidneys nor he could stand a repetition of today’s inquisition. He pitched the reeking bloody mess out the porthole.

Night was falling again, the end of his second full day aboard the Japanese patrol boat. She had not run her engines for twenty-four hours, had simply drifted all day long in the light haze, no doubt supposedly carrying out a sonar watch. With her demoralized crew and psychopathic skipper, she could be of very little benefit to the Imperial Japanese Navy. A couple of hours of lying quietly on his bed of rags had somewhat restored Richardson’s strength. He was able to think clearly once again. If his hopes and assumptions had been correct, if Eel had indeed been keeping the patrol boat under surveillance, something was likely to happen around the end of twilight, after the dying tendrils of the day had been replaced by the secrecy of night.

He had moved again, painfully, to the porthole, was staring out of it as he had for so many hours during the past two days. He could only see out to port, more or less to the eastward, he judged. The other side of the patrol boat, the starboard side, was his blind side. If Eel attacked, she would probably attack from the port side, simply because that was where he had painted the name. She would realize he had painted it from the porthole, would hope he was nearby, would want to avoid damaging that part of the ship. She would probably execute a battle surface attack close alongside. She would have to keep good way on to hold herself down while she blew her tanks, therefore would approach from well astern. Then, when her ballast tanks were well emptied and she could no longer be held down by bow and stern planes, the planes would suddenly be reversed and she would pop to the surface, riding high, presenting a good gun platform for her gun crews. He regretted that the turn of the patrol boat’s bows confined his view to her port forward quadrant only. He would have liked to see Eel as she suddenly and dramatically burst from beneath the sea. Probably he would not see her until she came abeam, already fully surfaced, guns blazing. She might sink the patrol boat, with him in it—a distinct possibility. An unlucky shot, or a ricochet, might finish what Moonface had started. What did it matter?

The scenario was fully played out in his mind, and he was therefore unprepared for a small disturbance in the water, perhaps 200 yards away, slightly forward of the patrol boat’s beam. Almost, he thought, it might have been a periscope feather, but this was the wrong place for it. Perhaps it was a fish jumping. He watched the spot, saw it again. It was too early. It was in the wrong place. It was still not dark enough. This could not be the Eel!

But it was. Suddenly she burst out of the sea, less than fifty yards away. Bows on, her bullnose cleaving up from the depths, she reared high above the water, splashing tremendous cascades of foam from the freeing ports at the bottom of her bow buoyancy tank. He could clearly see the tightly closed torpedo tubes as they came above water. She was moving fast. There was frightened yelling on deck of the patrol boat. Eel’s bow lowered as her stern came up. There was already someone on her bridge. Thirty yards—twenty yards—the distance closed rapidly. Her bow had lowered to approximately four feet above the water, about half its usual fully surfaced height, as she smashed perpendicularly into the stout wooden side of the pseudo sampan.

Richardson had his face pressed to the rim of the porthole, felt the force of the blow communicated to his forehead and chin. The patrol boat heaved massively to starboard. There was a horrendous crashing of timbers, a massive pouring of water, confused shouting and yelling. Eel’s bow had passed from his sight, must be buried in the side of the wooden boat. Men were boiling out of her bridge, jumping out of the gun access trunk opening, which he could see on her port side. The forward torpedo room hatch flung itself open, came to rest vertically, partly shielding the area behind it. Two men leaped out, placed a machine gun in one of the mounts which had been built there. Swiftly a belt was produced, clipped in. Then one man jumped back into the hatch while the other sprawled at full length on deck, and using the open hatch as a shield, opened fire. The stuttering roar of the gun overwhelmed all other sound. On Eel’s bridge another group of men leaped over the wind-deflector shield to cast loose the forty-millimeter gun. Ammunition clips were appearing magically from over the bridge and up through the gun access trunk. Within seconds the forty-millimeter began to speak in a steady, monotonous pounding. Tracer bullets and solid armor-piercing shots stitched their angry message into the amidships section of the patrol boat. Rich could see several rifles on the bridge, all aimed with precision into her midship section, all of them firing rapidly.

There was yelling and confusion among the patrol boat’s crew. Moonface was roaring orders. There were other voices shouting, the rapid thumps of many running feet. Eel had not backed clear. She was still driving ahead, holding her nose in the hole she had made. The patrol boat was in fact impaled on Eel’s bow. The submarine’s steel bow, with its heavy bullnose casting, had driven deep into its side.

The firing increased in fury. Two more fifty-caliber machine guns opened up from Eel’s bridge, one on either side, and at the same time more men scrambled out on Eel’s deck through the gun access trunk. They were weirdly accoutered. Some carried rifles with a bandolier of ammunition slung around their shoulders. Others had pistols in their hands, the corresponding belt and holster strapped around their waists. Several carried coils of heaving line. Two men had grapnels with short pieces of chain attached to them, and additional coils of rope. Several of them carried an assortment of tools: a crowbar, sections of pipe, a fire ax. They crouched nervously on deck just forward of the bridge, only a few feet beneath the deafening banging of the forty-millimeter cannon raking the patrol boat’s wooden decks. Richardson could hear the bullets striking the superstructure and hull of the patrol boat. There was a distinctly splintering impact as they shattered the thick wooden timbers.

There was the blast of a horn from the vicinity of Eel’s bridge. It was her compressed-air foghorn, commonly used as a signal to clear the decks of gun crews prior to an emergency dive. Instantly all guns ceased firing. Rich heard Buck Williams yell, “Come on!” The men who had been crouching on deck dashed forward, leaped past the forward torpedo-room hatch with its now quiet machine gun, passed out of view.

Some were yelling words Richardson could not understand. Others were imitating what they evidently supposed must have been the rebel battle cry during the Civil War. Still others were screaming like Indians.

There was much hoarse shouting, more splintering and smashing of wood. Richardson could distinguish the blows of the fire ax and the characteristic noise made by the crowbar as it tore apart wood panels and pried open barred doors. Obviously there was no organized resistance from the Japanese crew. If the patrol boat had had any arms she had been unable to cast them loose or use them. There were several heavy splashes, much shouting and yelling in Japanese. Then suddenly all was quiet.

Now he could hear what it was that the Eel’s crew was shouting, in between the rebel war yells and the Indian war whoops. It was his own name, his nickname. “Rich!” they were yelling. “Rich! Where are you, Rich?” Some of them were also shouting for Oregon.

“Here,” he shouted, banging on the door of his tiny cell, but it was much too solid. He could not even rattle the door. Perhaps a paint can would do better. He grabbed one, began banging the door with it, but the resulting noise hardly seemed satisfactory. He went back to the porthole, shouted through it. “Here I am,” he yelled. “Up forward.”

Whether they heard him or not, he could not tell, but it seemed to make no difference. A crowd of men was heading his way. He could hear them clumping through the between-decks area, smashing lockers and scattering equipment about as they came. Buck Williams’ voice was in the lead. “He must be all the way up forward,” he said. “Rich, can you hear me? Can you hear me, Skipper?”

“Here I am,” he yelled again.

Then Buck’s voice was just outside the door to his prison. “Here we are, Skipper,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, Buck. Get me out of this place.”

“Stand clear of the door,” said Buck. “It’s got a big iron hasp and padlock over this beam. We’ll have to chop it down!” A series of heavy blows rained upon it. He could hear the ax biting into the thick wood. It must have been difficult to swing the ax in the confined, low-head-room area, especially with the heavy list the patrol boat had now taken. She was slanting well over to starboard, obviously waterlogged, might even sink once Eel pulled her bow out of the hole she had made. In their haste and eagerness the men must be getting in each other’s way. He heard Williams give instructions to some of them to stand back to give the others room to work.

A shiny ax blade bit through the heavy wood of the door, was jerked out, bit through again. Next came the edge of the crowbar, and several men must have heaved on it, for a section of the door was pulled out. He was face to face with Buck Williams.

“Hi, Skipper,” said Williams. “They sure have this thing bolted down, but we’ll have you out in a jiffy!”

A few more blows with the ax, and then came the tip of the crowbar again. Many men placed brawny arms on it, heaved with irresistible force. There was more splintering of wood.

“That did it,” said Buck, and with the words the door fell open.

“How are you, Skipper?” said Buck again. “Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“I’m all right, Buck, but I’m sure glad to see you fellows.”

“Where’s Oregon?”

“They killed him yesterday,” Richardson said. He could sense the effect of his announcement upon the men gathered around. Suddenly silent, they helped him from the storeroom, supported him as he painfully climbed the companionway to the open deck above. A dozen Japanese sailors were huddled in a group against the deckhouse, under the leveled rifles of half as many Eel men standing guard. It was difficult to stand on the slanting deck, and hard to find room, for much of the deck of the patrol boat was splintered and smashed. Timbers lay where they had been tossed by the force of the blow from Eel’s bow, and there was a huge hole in her wooden side. Beneath the shattered deck, framed by smashed timbers, rested the scarred forepart of the submarine, driven into the side of the patrol boat almost half its width and, like a huge wedge, splitting the wooden patrol boat virtually asunder.

Richardson’s whole body hurt. His head throbbed. His leg muscles ached. His stomach felt nauseated. “Where are the rest of the Japs, Buck? Where’s Moonface?”

“Moonface? Who’s he?”

“I mean the Jap skipper. I’d just like to see that son of a bitch . . .” Richardson stopped. Despite the injuries he had received, his hatred of the Jap skipper, now that he had gained the upper hand, should be more dignified.

“Oh. Well, some of the Japs jumped overboard, and I guess we hit a couple of them before our boarding party got aboard. One of those in the water is a great big guy with swords and medals hung all over him. Is that the one you mean?”

“Yes, that’s the one I mean. Where is he?”

“Over there.” Williams pointed. There was a group of men in the water clinging to the side of the ship—its rail on the starboard side was at the water’s edge—and others were floating a few feet away, holding on to various pieces of debris.

“Why don’t you go back to the ship, Captain, and let Yancy look you over? We’ll take care of things over here.”

“I will, later. Let’s get things straightened out here first. Except for Moonface, these guys were all pretty decent.”

“Well, we’ve captured their ship, but we sure can’t use it, and neither can they any more. Maybe we can help them get their boat in the water.”

Richardson had not previously seen a boat, but he looked in the direction Buck pointed and saw one inverted on the roof of the deckhouse. “Have some men take it down and look it over,” he said. “See that it’s patched up if it needs it, and be sure it has provisions and water. Get that raft over the side also.” Richardson pointed to a wooden float-like structure about ten feet square built on oil drums. Then he thought of something. “There’s a prisoner in irons below. Get him out. And search this boat for any more like him.”

“Right, Skipper, will do. Maybe some of these Japs will give us a hand,” responded Williams, indicating the prisoners crowded against the side of the deckhouse.

The crowd of prisoners proved very willing indeed to assist with launching the boat and raft. One of them, who seemed to know what was needed, went below under guard and returned with a sack full of provisions.

“A couple of these guys are hurt, Skipper. Also, we found two more in irons, shackled to the bulkheads down there. This fellow led us to them. One’s in pretty bad shape.”

“Lay them out on deck and send for the pharmacist’s mate. Have Yancy take a real close look at the men who were in irons.” Richardson gave the orders without much thought. He had identified Moonface in the water, clinging to a piece of timber. He was separated some distance from the others. Moonface’s own men were avoiding him. The expressions on their faces, once so impassive, told their own stories.

Moonface was no Bungo Pete. Richardson’s revenge was already perfect. Nothing he said or did could add to or stand comparison with the obvious disgust and hatred the Japanese crewmen held for their own skipper.

“We figured you must be up forward when we saw that signboard you painted there, and the reason we didn’t do a regular battle surface was that we didn’t know what they might do to you before we could get to you. So we figured to come right in with the bow flooded down, smash her side, and board right over the bullnose. We blew up high after we backed clear, and Buck went down on a line to take a good look at the torpedo tubes. They work fine, and there’s not even any scratches around the shutters.”

Richardson was sitting at his accustomed spot in the wardroom, having just finished a delicious dinner. Yancy, Eel’s tall pharmacist’s mate, had put a number of bandages here and there to cover a skin injury, had applied copious quantities of liniment to the bruised areas, and categorically forbade Richardson to gorge himself on food—as he might have done had he followed his own inclination and that of Eel’s cooks, who wanted to produce the most prodigious meal ever served by a submarine. Grouped around him were Keith, Blunt, and the rest of the wardroom. It was Keith who had just finished explaining the decision to ram and board as quickly as possible. There was an atmosphere of tremendous happiness. The whole ship’s company partook of it, as Richardson saw from the many euphoric smiles which had greeted him when he came aboard. The only cloud in the general happiness was the story of how Oregon had been brutalized and murdered. When the details were learned, the gladness turned to rage. Several crew members proposed returning to wreak vengeance upon the Japanese lifeboat or the raft, and finally Keith had to forbid any further discussion of the topic.

The patrol boat’s decks had been the scene of a second funeral, for the fusillade of automatic-weapons fire had killed two of her crew. Both were horribly shattered by fifty-caliber machine gun bullets. In addition, the Japanese crewman whom Moonface had threatened to behead was dead when Yancy reached him. Three Japanese were treated for injuries from flying wood splinters, and the other prisoner in irons was suffering from a prior beating by Moonface. Several, apparently only slightly hurt, among them Moonface, stubbornly stayed in the water and refused the proffered help of Eel’s pharmacist’s mate.

By contrast, there were no injuries at all among the submarine crew. No doubt the overwhelming surprise of Eel’s attack contributed to this. From beginning to end, the shooting had lasted less than three minutes. Bandaging the injured, requiring all the survivors who remained on board to witness the triple funeral, disengaging Eel’s bow, and allowing the smashed wooden boat to roll over and sink to the water’s edge took an hour and a half.

After serious thought, Richardson had decided against attempting to take prisoners. Moonface was the only one he would have wanted in any case, but the man was patently a psychopath and therefore almost certainly of little value to intelligence authorities. He would, however, be a distinct and permanent nuisance, not to say a danger, to the Eel and her crew for the month or more that he would have to be on board. Furthermore, the only way to take him prisoner was to go into the water after him. This was less than a desirable prospect in view of the swords and knives he might still have about his person. In the end, after the wounded had been bandaged and a broken leg splinted, Eel simply backed clear of the wreck, leaving the boat and life raft surrounded by debris but floating safely and stocked with food, already half-loaded with survivors who were busily picking up the rest. The boat contained a simple magnetic compass, and Keith carefully handed the most self-possessed crewman (the one who had brought up the provisions and helped locate the prisoners chained below) a slip of paper on which he had written the course and distance to the nearest land: Saisho To, or Quelpart Island, seventy-five miles to the northeast.

It was not until after he had slept for several hours that Richardson was able to speak privately with his officers. The opportunity came during an inspection of the work to restore the flooded engines to operation. “Writing Eel on the bow of that boat was what did it, Skipper,” said Keith. “After we dunked we had a lot of water in the conning tower and control room. The main induction was flooded solid up to the inboard flappers, and there was a lot of water in both enginerooms. Also we flooded these two engines here through their exhaust lines before the enginemen were able to crank the inboard exhaust valves shut. We’re still checking them over pretty carefully, but I don’t think we damaged them. Anyway, with all that water on board we went right down to the bottom of the Yellow Sea. Good thing the bottom was there, too! Al was shifting the main vents over to hand power and getting them shut by hand, and we’d have been able to blow soon. So even if we had been in deep water I don’t think we’d have lost the ship. But it was mighty comforting all the same to feel her squash down into the mud.

“Then we had to drain all the water out and pump it over the side; so it took us several hours before we were squared away and able to come back to the surface. When we did, we found that sampan on radar right where the plot showed we had probably left you swimming. So we hung around and watched him all day.

“But”—and here Keith’s voice dropped, and Buck Williams looked uneasy—“Old Man Blunt wouldn’t let us plan a rescue operation. He said we couldn’t be sure that you had been picked up by the sampan and that it would just be risking our lives on a hunch. There was nothing he could say, though, when that signboard of yours showed up. Matter of fact, he didn’t say anything, but he still would have no part of what we were doing. So Buck and Al and I cooked up this little operation by ourselves. I hope you don’t think it was too unorthodox.”

Keith was obviously a little anxious, for no submarine had ever made an attack in the manner Eel had. Endangering the all-important torpedo tubes, however successful the outcome, was a matter for serious concern.

“It was just right,” Richardson assured him. “You did exactly right. But what about the commodore? What do you mean, he took no part in your planning?”

Keith obviously had thought through what he was to say to this expected question. “We know he’s your old skipper and all that, and your friend too,” he said carefully, “but we’re really worried about him, sir. There’s something wrong with him. Not all the time, but part of the time. Sometimes he makes sense, and sometimes he doesn’t.” Keith’s voice, already lowered in tone, had developed a flat, monotonous quality. His wide forehead bore an unaccustomed pair of vertical creases. The gray eyes, looking steadily and unblinkingly at Richardson, were troubled. “We talked about this just the night before we dunked and left you and poor old Oregon topside. We’re sure now that the hydraulic accumulator suddenly bled down at just the wrong time and caused all the trouble. Lichtmann, Starberg, and Sargent were all three in the control room, about to drop through the hatch into the pump room, and they heard it bleed off. Along with Al, they’ve been knocking themselves out working on it ever since.”

Keith instinctively moved closer, spoke even more softly. “The commodore has told just about everybody in the wardroom that Lichtmann is sabotaging the plant on the sly. No explanation how he knows. He says it’s obvious, and that Lichtmann’s name is even German. He says if anyone catches Lichtmann fooling around with the plant, he should shoot him on the spot! It’s got so that beginning last night we set up a watch list of officers to stick with Blunt all the time. Larry relieved Buck, just now, so that all three of us could talk to you about it.”

“Nobody in the crew has heard of this yet, Skipper,” said Al, “but they know something peculiar is in the wind. There’s nobody sabotaging the hydraulic gear—that’s just the commodore’s idea. We think we know where the problem is, and we think we’re closing in on it. But nobody can work looking over his shoulder all the time for fear somebody will come along and shoot you!” Dugan was breathing deeply. He was obviously under heavy stress.

Richardson felt himself treading the edge of an abyss. Its depth could not be known, but the boundaries were clear, the paths that led to disaster well marked. If Eel’s crew were to learn of the concerns just stated, the effect would be instant. In the taut confines of a submarine on war patrol, the one all-encompassing fact, from which all others automatically flowed, was the total interdependence of all its parts, human or mechanical. The unreliability of the hydraulic system had already taken its toll in terms of effectiveness and confidence. If to this must now be added the dreadful fear of hidden disloyalty, it would be like a cancer, eating at the heart of morale. Thenceforth, no member of the crew could go about his duties in the certain knowledge, so imperative in their exposed condition, of complete support. What lookout did not already harbor the secret fear of being late to the hatch, of a miscount of persons through it, of finding it shut in his face with the boat diving? What maneuvering room electrician, receiving a signal for emergency speed, did not fear the circumstance which had caused it? What member of the crew, officer or enlisted man, upon hearing the call for battle stations did not feel a clutch of apprehension lest the enemy, this one time at last, be able to overwhelm their own best efforts?

Again, it was only their confidence in themselves and in each other, and each in all the others, that enabled this ever-present fear to be set aside. What, then, if the very basis of the tenuous fabric of cohesiveness were ripped asunder? Even if there were demonstrably no truth in the accusation against a crew member, what would be the effect of its having been voiced?

Richardson could feel himself shriveling inside as he contemplated the certain ruin that would result. No matter how carefully the thing was handled, it would be a disaster. Lichtmann might or might not have been able to create a secure position for himself during his short time with his new shipmates, but there was no way he could remain unaffected if the suspicion were to become known. Richardson must, somehow, at all costs, prevent the situation from progressing further. Certainly he must get Blunt to explain the source of his suspicions and, if possible, allay them.

The greatest danger lay in the crew’s becoming aware of what it was their officers were discussing so earnestly. Keith’s action in ensuring that someone was with Blunt at all times had been the right move, but even this might become too obvious if continued much longer. Richardson would have to rescind the order soon, before either the crew or Blunt became aware of it. Perhaps he could take the surveillance duty himself—and then he realized he had already been doing so, up until the time of his enforced absence.

But he was undetermined, irresolute. What could he do? If the situation had continued to retrogress during his absence to the point now described, what could anyone do? Buck Williams was obviously waiting for a chance to say something. He might have some clue, suggest a direction in which movement was not yet foreclosed. “What do you think, Buck?”

“I’m out of it pretty much,” said Buck Williams. “All the commodore thinks and talks about is the hydraulic system, and that’s not in my department. But I sure do agree that there’s something wrong with him. He doesn’t sleep. Sits around most of the time in the wardroom smoking his pipe. Then, when he does start wandering around, we all wish he’d go back and be quiet again. I think if he could only get some sleep and relax a little bit, he’d be a lot better off. I know we’d all be.”

The comment triggered a thought in Richardson’s mind. “Keith,” he said, “who succeeded to command during my absence?”

Keith looked uncomfortable. “Well, he said he would, because he was senior officer present. But then he didn’t do anything. At first I tried to carry on as I had for you, but he wouldn’t make any decisions, except to turn us down on everything. So finally I just had to go and take care of things myself without telling him.”

“What Keith’s saying is not exactly true, Skipper,” said Buck, interrupting. “All of us told Keith that he just had to take over. Things were going to hell fast. It was a pretty serious situation down there on the bottom, and with you and Oregon gone. Our morale was already about zero. The commodore was no good at all, sir. Besides, I don’t think he even could qualify in this submarine if he took a test right now. Lots of the orders he gave we couldn’t carry out because they didn’t apply to this ship.”

“That’s right, Skipper,” said Dugan, “we just said ‘Aye aye, sir,’ to him, but then we’d ask Keith. He was the real skipper while you were gone.”

“All right, fellows,” said Rich, “I promised you I’d take care of him, and I will.” But it was an empty promise. He had no plan, no notion of how to begin or what to do. He was still covered with bandages and liniment. His mind was barely functioning. He was perilously close to admitting his inadequacy when the man on telephone watch in the compartment interrupted him.

“Captain,” he said, “there’s an op-immediate coming in for us in the radio room.”

When decoded, the message said:

INDICATIONS ARE THAT ALL YELLOW SEA TRAFFIC IS MOVING CLOSE INSHORE X MANY SMALL TO MEDIUM SIZE CARGO SHIPS CONVOYED INSHORE OF ISLANDS ON WEST COAST OF KOREA X TRAFFIC ALONG CHINESE COAST MOVING INSIDE TEN FATHOM CURVE X SPECIAL FOR BLUNTS BRUISERS X GO GET EM BOYS