-  7  -

“Commodore,” said Richardson, “this message is a directive to get in as close to the coast of Korea, and maybe China too, as we can. This large-scale map of the area”—he tapped for emphasis a chart laid out on the wardroom table—“is an official Japanese Navy chart that we grabbed from that patrol boat. As you can see, there’s a chain of small islands varying from five to ten miles off the west coast of Korea. We checked out the depth markings—it was simple; they’re just in meters. There’s at least two hundred feet of water all around them, all the way up to the mainland of Korea. That’s almost as deep as it is anywhere in this area. The combined submarine track chart shows that most of our submarines have concentrated on the middle of the Yellow Sea. Once the Japs realized this, it made sense to stay close in to shore whenever they could. They probably do that whether or not they think there might be a submarine somewhere around, for the little they might save by heading straight across the Yellow Sea is nothing compared to the losses they would take if just one aggressive submarine got loose in a medium-sized convoy.”

It was a regular wardroom conference, unchanged from any of the preceding ones except for ComSubPac’s recent message, a copy of which lay on the table. Blunt sat silently puffing on one of his several pipes.

Richardson and Leone had spent considerable time preparing for this conference. “Keith,” said his skipper, “show the commodore that depth-of-water overlay you worked out.” Keith produced a piece of semitransparent tissue from a folder of papers. On the tissue were outlines of some of the islands and mainland sections on the larger map, and a series of carefully printed numbers in what were obviously the water areas. “Here’s where it fits, sir,” said Keith, spreading out the tissue, flattening it carefully. He slid it about until his land-contour lines fitted over those on the chart.

“These figures are the depth of water taken from our own best American chart of the area. They’re given in fathoms, so we converted them to meters. You’ll see, sir, how close the few depths on our chart correlate to the depths the Japs have on theirs. This area being so close to their home base, the Japanese Navy made a very thorough survey, and there’s a lot more data on their chart than we have. But even though they have twenty soundings for our one, every sounding we show agrees with what they have. This means the charts must be accurate. Look what they show for the depth of water around some of these outlying islands. . . .”

The advocates talked on and on, each in turn picking up his thread of the argument.

“So, we’ve got to go here, Commodore,” Richardson was saying; “the Maikotsu Suido has just got to be on the track of every one of their convoys. It must be practically like highway number one through there. The water is deep for the Yellow Sea, even though it is inside the island chains, and the strong northerly current that’s supposed to be there can be used to our advantage.”

Blunt took the pipe out of his mouth. “One of our best boats was in there a couple of years ago. His patrol report said this was a bad place for submarines to patrol in.” They were the first words he had said for fifteen minutes.

“I know, Commodore. That was the Wahoo, and it was just under two years ago. Dornin took the Trigger in later and said the same thing. They were the only two boats to try this spot. But it doesn’t make sense that an offhand comment, even by two of our best skippers, should prevent anyone else from ever trying this area. Their fish weren’t dependable then, remember. Anyway, if both boats hadn’t used up all their torpedoes and left the area early, they’d probably have been back in there.”

The pipe was back in Blunt’s mouth. His eyes closed wearily, his head nodded. Suddenly he jerked himself upright again. Rich and Keith looked at each other. Inadequate rest was undoubtedly part of his problem.

“We’ll patrol submerged in there for a day or so, Commodore. We could tell the Whitefish to patrol outside and to the north. If we get a chance to stir things up in there, maybe the traffic will shift outside, not knowing there are two submarines, and we’ll be able to give them a one-two punch.”

Blunt’s eyes were almost glassy. He took the pipe out of his mouth again. “Nothing doing! There’s something strange going on aboard this boat, Rich! While you were working out your schemes, I’ve got into something a lot more important. Somebody is sabotaging the hydraulic system, and I’m going to catch him at it. When I do . . .” he looked significantly down and to the right, at his right hip, patted it with a slow deliberate motion. To his consternation, Richardson realized that under the submarine jacket he had worn all day he had buckled a gun belt, and at that very moment, in the wardroom, was armed with a holstered automatic!

A deep calm settled upon Richardson. He had hoped, by heavily involving Blunt in tactics, to divert his mind from his suspicions. The message from Admiral Small had come at just the right time. The lure of action, the necessity to concentrate upon the orders Blunt would have to give his two remaining submarines, orders which Richardson would frame for him, discuss with him, would push everything else into the background where Richardson intended the hydraulic system henceforth to remain. But obviously the scheme had failed before it had been fairly tried. Something more drastic must be done. Buck’s mention of Blunt’s extraordinary wakefulness had suggested another idea, a second plan which had been discarded in favor of the one he had been acting on. Now the secondary plan must be implemented. He affected not to see the gun, continued the conversation for a few minutes, excused himself temporarily. The headache resulting from the beatings he had taken on the patrol boat was returning, he said, and he needed some help for it. It was not, however, about his headaches that he was talking to the tall pharmacist’s mate a few minutes later.

“Yancy,” he said, “the commodore has driven himself to the point where he’s completely exhausted. Can we give him something to make him sleep for a while?” Immediately thereafter he sought out Buck Williams. As he returned to the wardroom, Williams followed him, said to the exec, “Keith, I’m going to start routining our fish up forward, but first there’s a change we want to make in the procedure. Can you come up there with me for a minute, so I can show it to you?”

When Keith returned, he said shortly, “It’s all right, Skipper. He’s got a good idea, and I told him to go ahead.” He gave Richardson an imperceptible nod.

When the wardroom steward entered a few minutes later with a freshly brewed pot of coffee, Keith accepted only half a cup, announced that he intended to get some sleep for the next day’s work, placed it untouched on the table. Richardson and Blunt took full cups. Rich sipped his only lightly, cradling the warm cup in his hands. His eyes stayed on Blunt as the latter drank his right down.

“That was just the right temperature this time,” Blunt said. “If it weren’t for coffee, none of us could function.” His eyelids grew heavy, his head nodded. He jerked it upright, but again it nodded. . . . They caught him before his head struck the table. Buck Williams reappeared at the door to the wardroom, and the three officers, plus Yancy who came up from the other direction, quickly laid Blunt in his bunk.

“He was so tired, Captain, the sleeping pill hit him right away, just like I said,” said Yancy.

“How long do you figure he’ll be out?”

“Maybe twelve hours. The sedative will wear off pretty soon, but he’ll sleep until his system wakes him up.”

“He needs a real rest, Yancy. He ought to sleep for at least three days.”

“All we gave him was a sleeping pill, Captain. He’ll wake up in about twelve hours when he has to go to the head, and besides that, he’ll be hungry. If you want me to keep him out for three days, he’ll have to have intravenous feeding, bedpans, the whole thing.”

Blunt was completely relaxed, sleeping peacefully. The tense look about his face had almost magically disappeared. Remorse at the liberty he had taken with his old friend and superior was already troubling Richardson. “No intravenous business,” he said. “Yancy, you watch over him, and you be here when he’s awake. No matter what’s going on on board ship. You got that?”

The pharmacist’s mate nodded.

“When he wakes up, you be sitting right here with something to eat—you tell the cook what to fix up, and be sure you have it ready on time—and tell him he’s got to rest. If he has to go to the head, get him right back in his bunk. He’s so tired, he’ll sleep longer if we give him a chance.”

Yancy nodded again. “Okay, sir. I’ll try to keep him from getting up.”

“Keith,” said Rich, having moved across the narrow passageway to his own stateroom, “tell all the officers that I want their pistols locked up in their safes so that nobody can get them. Most of them are probably locked up already, but make sure. Buck is already securing all our small arms. I’ll put the commodore’s pistol here in my safe with my own gun.” He twirled the dial on the combination to the tiny safe built into his desk, pushed aside papers and various other objects, including a holstered automatic wrapped in its gun belt, squeezed Blunt’s gun in. Locking the combination, he turned back to Keith. “We’ve got twelve hours,” he said. “How long will it take us to reach the Maikotsu Suido?”

Richardson himself was standing periscope watch in the conning tower, raising and lowering the instrument for periodic 360-degree sweeps every several minutes. Two compartments below him, in the pump room, Lichtmann, Starberg, and Sargent, supervised by Al Dugan, who normally should have had the watch, were working with vigor on the hydraulic system and had reported they were making headway. A feeling of contentment possessed Rich, not even partly dampened by the pain it caused him to go through the deep knee bends associated with raising and lowering the periscope. Strictly speaking, this particular technique was called for only during an approach, to reduce the time of periscope exposure. But the Maikotsu Suido waters were no doubt heavily covered by air as well as surface patrols. The self-flagellation of going up and down with the periscope was nothing. If anything, it would speed the cure.

The Maikotsu Suido was roughly rectangular in shape, its long axis nearly north and south. The rocky west coast of the mainland of Korea formed its eastern boundary, and a chain of relatively small islands formed the western. Its southern terminus was a group of islands extending to the mainland. To the north it was open. The Korean coast bent off in a peninsula to the west, and a group of close inshore islands around the tip of the peninsula provided a sure sanctuary for coastal traffic. It had been a sensible move to enter this body of water at its southern end, for there was a heavy current setting to the north. Eel could remain relatively immobile while stemming the current, and yet evacuate any particular spot rapidly by turning around to a northerly heading. Ships making a northern passage would undoubtedly favor this area because of the strong current, which, from Richardson’s observations of the shoreline, must be averaging at least four knots.

Richardson’s plan, communicated in the name of the wolfpack commander to Whitey Everett in the Whitefish, was to proceed to the eastern side of the Maikotsu Suido in hopes of picking up a target. Any action Rich could stir up would on the one hand draw local antisubmarine activity upon Eel, and on the other direct the Japanese supply ships farther offshore, hopefully beyond the island chain where Whitefish would be patrolling.

Richardson had expected to see aircraft flying about. It was understandable that none had been seen in the Yellow Sea, for Blunt had required Eel and Whitefish to patrol submerged far offshore during daylight. At night, when they were surfaced, it had up till now been uniformly hazy. Today was bright and clear, and one would expect the Japanese antisubmarine aircraft to make the most of it. Yet he had been in the conning tower for three hours, and had seen nothing. Gradually he conned Eel closer in to shore, taking an occasional fathometer sounding after a careful periscope search to assure there was no antisubmarine vessel in the vicinity.

Another hour passed. He turned the periscope over to Keith, went down to a hasty lunch. Blunt was still sleeping soundly. Before returning to the conning tower Rich climbed down beneath the control room into the pump room. Al Dugan was temporarily exempted from the watch list, as were his three workers, to permit them to give full time to the hydraulic mechanism.

“I think we’ve found the trouble,” said Dugan. “It’s not only the bypass valves, although they were part of it. There were all sorts of things wrong with the system—they’ve even got the wrong kind of hydraulic oil in it. The worst thing is that the instruction book was wrong. So when the boys in Pearl Harbor fixed it up, they set all the clearances, pressures, and sequence switches to the book values, and didn’t realize that whoever got up this book must not have known what he was talking about. Lichtmann had a similar problem in the Nerka. Their hydraulic system was made by the same company, though it was an earlier and smaller model. We’re damn lucky you got him aboard. They had to overhaul their plant the same way, just like us, on patrol.

The grease-smeared face which grinned at Richardson was only faintly reminiscent of the natty sailor in white who had driven him to the admiral’s quarters on Makalapa Hill that memorable night. Part of the hydraulic plant was dismantled, strewn about the fantastically crowded compartment, and Lichtmann had obviously been sitting in the bilges, oblivious to the oil and water lying in the bottom, squeezing around and behind close-fitting piping, disassembling and reassembling parts of the mechanism. Starberg and Sargent were in the same condition. The dungarees of all three were fit only to be placed into a garbage sack and thrown overboard. Al Dugan, supposedly in a supervisory position, was hardly better off than his men.

Richardson climbed out of the pump room with the feeling that the hydraulic system at last was under control or on its way to being so. There would be time to take a walk aft to see for himself the progress of the clean-up work on the two engines which had been flooded. They were already back in full commission, but it would not hurt to let the engineroom crews know he appreciated their labors.

He was stepping over the sill of the watertight door on the after bulkhead of the control room when there was a sudden bustle and Keith’s loud voice from the conning tower: “Captain to the conn!” Everyone in the control room must have heard of the reputation of the Maikotsu Suido and was, by consequence, a little keyed up. At least six voices repeated the words to him simultaneously, only a second or so behind Keith.

“Smoke on the horizon, Captain,” said Keith, a dozen seconds later. “Bearing south. Looks like something coming our way!”

Through the periscope Richardson could see a tiny smudge on the horizon. He spun the periscope completely around, looking at the surface of the sea in all directions, went around a second time searching the sky. It was a clear, beautiful day topside, virtually no clouds in the sky, sea nearly calm, visibility unlimited in all directions. Eel had been stemming the current, heading south at slow speed submerged, close in to shore. Looming two miles away to port, rocky bluffs extended right to the water’s edge. To starboard there was a clear horizon, but beyond it were the tops of an irregularly spaced group of hills, the islands on the seaward side of the Maikotsu Suido. To the north there was only the smooth horizon. To the south nothing except the smudge of smoke. As he watched it, the smoke disappeared.

“Smoke’s died away, Keith,” he said, lowering the periscope. He had been using the radar periscope because of its larger optical path and consequently better light-gathering capabilities.

The conning tower depth gauge read fifty-eight feet. The thirty-six-foot radar periscope would go under at keel depth of sixty-two feet. There had been four feet of it exposed. “I’ll take a look through the attack scope,” said Rich, stepping aft to the second shiny steel cylinder bisecting the conning tower.

The attack periscope was forty feet long. At fifty-eight feet there would be eight feet of it out of water. Its much smaller head and consequently narrower optical path gave less visual acuity, but he would risk the extra height for a short exposure in order to see from a greater height.

He squatted on his haunches behind the periscope, motioned with his hands for Keith to raise it until its handles just cleared the upper lip of the periscope well. They came up; he snapped them down into position, swung the periscope quickly dead ahead. Jabs of pain went through his knees and thigh muscles as he put his eye to the eyepiece, motioned for the periscope to be raised. He rose with it to his full height, snapped the handles upward into the stowage position, followed the periscope down until he was once again on his haunches and had to pull his head clear as it continued down into the well.

“There’s at least two ships out there, Keith. I can see masts. You caught them when they blew smoke for a moment. They’re probably heading this way. We’ll take another look to make sure.”

“Sonar, do you hear anything bearing dead ahead?” The sonar watch stander shook his head.

“Shall I send for Stafford?” asked Keith. “He’s a magician on this gadget.” Richardson nodded. Stafford must have been waiting for the call, was in the conning tower in less than a minute. He began tuning the sonar receiver, heavily padded earphones covering both sides of his head, an intent faraway look on his face.

“Two minutes since the last look,” said Keith.

“Up periscope,” said Rich, oblivious to the protests of his leg muscles as he resumed his squatting position.

“Several ships heading this way,” he said a moment later, as the periscope descended. “Sound battle stations.”

The general alarm, amplified on the ship’s general announcing system, sounded like a series of low-pitched musical chimes. There was a scurrying in the control room. Richardson and Leone could sense the crew tumbling out of their bunks, breaking away from whatever work they had been doing, dashing to their stations for combat. Buck Williams jumped up the ladder from the control room, followed closely by Scott. Cornelli—he had been promoted to the helm to replace Scott, who now had Oregon’s spot—took over the steering station. Behind him Rich could hear the low-pitched whir of the TDC as Buck turned it on.

“Target bearing?” said Buck in a low voice to Keith, who had moved aft alongside of him. “Due south, Buck,” said Keith.

“Estimated range?”

“Beyond the horizon. Start with fifteen thousand yards, as a guess.”

“That’s a pretty good estimate,” said Richardson, who had been listening.

“Battle stations manned and ready below,” said Quin, who had taken a telephone headset out of its stowage box, put it on his head and plugged it in.

“Battle stations manned in the conning tower, Captain,” said Keith. “The ship is manned for battle stations.” At the beginning of the patrol Keith had pasted a little check-off list on the side of the TDC. He had already checked several items. Richardson could visualize the attentive calm throughout the submarine: the torpedo room crews at each end, the electrician’s mates in the maneuvering room to whom would fall the main burden of the submerged maneuvering, the engineroom crews standing idle, ready instantly to start engines should the order come to surface. The damage-control parties, forward and aft. The extra hands in the control room and dinette, ready for whatever emergency might devolve upon them.

He crossed to the hatch leading to the control room, looked down, saw Al Dugan’s sweaty, oil-streaked face looking up. “You all set down there, Al?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, Captain.”

“What shape is the hydraulic system in?”

“Starberg and company are buttoning it up,” said Al. “Everything but the main engine exhaust valves and the main vents is cut back in already. I’d like to leave the vents in hand power. . . .”

With the ship already submerged and the vents closed, there was no reason why they could not stay in hand power, for the vents did not have to be operated to surface the ship. They would, of course, have to be opened to dive. “How about diving if we need to, Al? Do you have men free of battle station assignments standing by each vent?”

“Yes, sir, Captain. No strain. We’ve got two on each vent, and a telephone manned by each pair. You can work your vents right now by telephone if you want to.” Dugan grinned confidently.

These phones were no doubt surreptitiously manned whenever the ship went to battle stations. They were part of the interior grapevine system by which the rest of the crew would find out what was going on. “Fine,” Richardson said.

“Three minutes since the last look, Skipper,” said Keith. Richardson returned to the periscope station.

“I’ll take a look all around this time too,” he said. “Up periscope.”

He repeated the squatting-and-rising ritual. “Bearing, mark,” he said.

“No range.” He spun the periscope completely around twice, snapped the handles up. It dropped away.

“All clear all around,” he said. “It’s a convoy. At least three big ships, maybe a couple more. Also, there are escorts. I could see at least two masts of smaller ships on either beam of the convoy.”

“Estimated range, Captain?” Buck.

“I’d still say fifteen thousand,” said Rich.

“Speed?”

“No estimate. They’re reasonably big ships, five- to seven-thousand-tonners.”

“I’ll start them at twelve knots,” said Buck, twirling the dials on his instrument.

“Let’s try for a radar range,” said Rich. He pointed to Quin. “Control, make your depth five-two feet!” This would leave only five feet of water over the top of the periscope shears and would cause the fully extended radar periscope to reach ten feet above the surface. Height, unfortunately, was obligatory at the longer ranges. He turned to Rogers. “Are you peaked up and ready? I want this to go real fast.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. . . . Scott,” he said to the quartermaster, who had now taken over the job of raising and lowering the periscopes, “when I give the word, I want the radar periscope all the way up. As soon as it hits the top, start it back down again. If Rogers gets a range before it’s two-blocked, start it back down immediately. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get clear.” Scott nodded his comprehension. This had been part of the technique developed during training with the new radar periscope. Rogers’ duties were to sing out loudly as soon as he had seen a radar return indication on his A ’scope, even before measuring it.

To ensure that everyone understood, Rich rehearsed the instructions: “Rogers, set your range index at about fifteen thousand yards. As soon as you see a pip, you holler ‘Range!’ good and loud, so that Scott can hear it. Don’t wait to match it with your range marker. You can do that afterward. I want to get the ’scope down just as soon as possible. We’re going to be waving ten feet of it up in the air. It will look like a telephone pole!”

Turning to the TDC he said, “I’ll get my eye on the periscope on the way up and will line it up so that it goes down exactly on the target bearing.” Keith and Buck both nodded. With the periscope exposed ten feet above the surface, its tip would be out of water long before the base with the eyepiece would come out of the periscope well, long before the radar connection in the bottom of the base would engage. Hence there would be no benefit to orienting it down low, as Rich had done previously. “Everybody ready?” said Richardson. “Up periscope!”

The radar periscope started to rise. As before, Richardson squatted on his haunches facing it. He was ready for the pain, set his face so as not to show it. He snatched the handles as they came up, spread them out, lunged against the eyepiece, began to rise with it. He could hear the radar wave guide engage the trombone section at the base of the periscope, heard the snap of the radar as Rogers kicked it in to the now complete wave-guide tube. The periscope traveled all the way to the top, stopped with a bouncy jerk, started back down. Richardson followed it as far as he could, almost gasping with the pain of returning to the squatting position, snapped the handles up as they began to enter the well.

“No pip, sir,” said Rogers.

“One-eight-four, true,” said Keith.

“Target bearing zero-zero-four, relative,” said Richardson, looking at the azimuth ring built into the bearing circle around the periscope where the tube disappeared into the top of the conning tower. “It’s a convoy of four freighters, and I can see at least three escorts. Angle on the bow of the leading ship is about starboard ten. I can give you an estimate of range; let’s see . . . I couldn’t see the water line . . . use a fifty-foot height of mast and give them one-quarter of one division in high power.”

Keith had seized an ivory-colored celluloid slide rule hanging by a string alongside the TDC, set the scales, read off the answer: “Twelve thousand yards!”

“Twelve thousand looks a little short to me,” said Rich. “One of the escorts is out in front. Right now he bears a degree or so to the right of the bearing I gave you. One is to the left, and one farther to the right. They were all on different courses, so they must be patrolling on station. We’ll soon know if the convoy itself is zigzagging. They’re so close to shore that if they are, their next zig will probably be to their left. Also, I thought I could see another set of small masts astern of the last ship. There might be a fourth escort back in the clean-up spot.”

“If we get a shot at them,” said Keith, “that’s the one we’ll have to worry about.”

“That one, or the left-hand escort,” agreed Rich. “At least our fish are Mark Eighteens, and they won’t leave a wake for him to head for.”

“We still have ten fish aft, Skipper, and ten left forward. Recommend we try for a stern tube shot if we can,” said Keith.

“Right. Matter of fact, we may have to shoot both bow tubes and stern tubes,” said Richardson. “And besides, with these tincans moving around we’d better have a fish or two ready at each end set shallow just in case we need to take a shot at one.”

Keith said, “The torpedo rooms are pretty fast on the reload, if we give them warning. Maybe we’d better have them lay out their gear now, and start reloading as we fire.” Rich nodded. Keith pointed with emphasis at Quin, who had been listening with extreme attention.

Quin picked up his telephone mouthpiece, pressed the button, spoke into it. “Tubes forward and tubes aft,” he said, “the skipper wants you to be ready to make a reload as fast as you can. There’s four destroyers up here and four targets. Start reloading as soon as you have an empty tube. He needs some fish ready for the tincans.”

Richardson shot him an approving look. “Three minutes since the last observation,” said Keith. “If that optical range was any good, they ought to be just under eleven thousand yards right now.”

“We’ll try another radar range,” said Richardson. “Same procedure as before. Everybody ready? . . . Up periscope.” Up came the tube, Richardson squatting like an ancient devotee of an ageless religion in front of it, his knees spread, the tube rising almost between them, his hands waiting. The handles came out of the well. He snapped them down, jammed his forehead against the rubber guard around the eyepiece of the periscope, straightened up rapidly as the periscope continued to rise. The radar wave guide engaged the bottom of the periscope. Snap! went the radar.

“Range!” shouted Rogers.

Richardson had not yet reached the full standing position. He went back down with the periscope, snapped up its handles, backed clear at the last possible moment. Keith was standing on the opposite side of the periscope tube, looking up at the azimuth ring in the overhead. “Zero-zero-four-a-half,” he said.

“Range thirteen thousand five hundred,” sang out Rogers. “Good range, sir.”

“Angle on the bow is still starboard ten. That was a good bearing. There are definitely four cargo ships and four escorts,” said Richardson. “One of the escorts is patrolling astern, one on each flank and one ahead. No zig yet.”

Turning to Rogers, he asked, “How was your radar pip? Do you think we can come down a little?”

“That was a good pip,” said Rogers. “We ought to be able to come down about four feet.”

“Good. Control, make your depth five-six feet!”

Eel nosed down slightly as the depth gauge began gradually to increase, steadied at the new figure. “It’s nine minutes since you took a look around, Captain,” said Keith.

“I’ll do it next time. What’s the state of charge of the torpedoes? Have you got the water injection yet?”

“All fish in the tubes got a freshening charge two days ago, Captain,” said Keith. “We just took the injection temperature. It’s fifty degrees. Buck has already made the temperature correction for torpedo speed on the TDC.”

“Good,” said Rich. “Anything else we’ve forgotten?”

“Well, maybe we’d better rig for silent running and rig for depth charge. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to know the depth of water in case we have to go deep in a hurry.”

“Stafford,” said Richardson, “can you hear the escorts echo-ranging?”

Stafford didn’t hear until Scott leaned over his shoulder, made him remove one earphone, and repeated the question.

“Yes, sir,” said Stafford, “distant echo-ranging, bearing south.”

“Quin,” said Rich, “tell control to get a single ping sounding as quick as they can.” He explained, turning to Keith and Buck, “If they’re echo-ranging, they won’t notice a single extra ping, especially at this distance.”

Keith said, “We should get a bathythermograph reading, if there’s time.” He was going over his check-off list. The bathythermograph, which recorded water temperature against depth of submergence, gave indication of the location of temperature layers and was therefore useful for evasion.

“All right. We’ll go deep after the next observation. I’ll save the look around for the next time.”

“Fast periscope technique again,” Richardson said to Scott and Rogers—“Up periscope!”

The ’scope started up. Again Richardson went through the routine. “Range!” shouted Rogers. The ’scope started down.

“Bearing zero-zero-five-a-half,” said Keith.

“Range twelve thousand,” said Rogers.

“Fifteen hundred yards in three minutes gives us a speed of fifteen knots,” said Richardson.

“I make it fourteen and a half by TDC,” said Buck.

“Use fourteen and a half,” said Richardson. “Target has zigged to his left. Angle on the bow of the leading ship is now starboard thirty. There are definitely four escorts. The leading ship is considerably bigger than the other three. It looks like a passenger cargo ship of perhaps ten thousand tons, with two stacks, and goalposts fore and aft over her cargo hatches. The other three ships are somewhat smaller, ordinary freighters. Two masts each, with booms.”

“Distance to the track is six thousand yards,” said Buck.

Richardson had already made the same calculation in his head. If the target continued on its present course with no further zigs, and Eel remained stationary, the convoy’s nearest point of approach would be six thousand yards away, far outside optimum torpedo range. As yet, Eel had not maneuvered. It was still too early to tell how radical a zigzag plan the enemy ships were using, but they were close to the coast of Korea, and the most likely direction of their zigzagging would be toward the center of the Maikotsu Suido. The most probable next zig might even be farther to the target’s left. Clearly, Eel would have to move over to get into position, and to do so it would be necessary to use high speed. Far better to do it now, before the escorts were close enough either to hear the submarine’s propellers or to pick her up by echo-ranging on her broadside as she closed the track.

Assessment of the situation was virtually instantaneous, more a suddenly presented picture than a careful step-by-step evaluation. “Right full rudder! All ahead full! Control, make your depth one hundred feet! What was that sounding?”

“Two hundred beneath the keel,” said Keith. “Two hundred sixty feet depth of water.”

“Very well,” said Richardson. ‘Control, make your depth two hundred feet. Be careful as we near the bottom. Do not use much angle. Our sonar heads are down. If we touch, they’ll be wiped off.”

Six miles to the south, eight Japanese ships were moving steadily toward the same point at which Eel also was aiming. Four of them were targets of war, fated, if Eel could have her way, to find their last port of call on the bottom of the Yellow Sea. The remaining four were professional fighting ships, designed and trained to combat submarines. Perhaps a thousand men in all, about equally divided between the merchant ships and the antisub ships. Four merchant skippers, ever conscious of the possible presence of submarines, huddled unnaturally together for mutual protection, alert for any warning of danger, ready for instant flight should an enemy submarine appear. Four Japanese Navy skippers, eager for the accolade of having sunk the second U.S. sub in two weeks in the Yellow Sea. Four hundred depth charges between them, and about five hundred Japanese Navy men, no less eager than their commanders to sink an American submarine.

Opposed to these, eighty persons in Eel, probably better trained, certainly in a more complex ship than any of theirs. But both of Eel’s advantages—surprise and invisibility—stemmed from her ability to submerge. Submergence alone made it possible for eighty men to challenge a thousand, and to gain this capability the submarine had given up the ability to sustain damage. To submerge, she must be in exactly neutral buoyancy. Reserve buoyancy, which permits a surface ship to view the prospect of hull damage with some degree of equanimity, does not exist for a submerged submarine. Even a small hole in Eel’s pressure hull—made by a sharp enemy bow, a flailing propeller, an explosive shell from a gun, or the crushing water hammer from a near depth charge—could start a flood of water equivalent to fifty fire hydrants. A ton of water taken in—only a few hundred gallons—would be enough to send her to the bottom. If, somehow, all her ballast tanks survived whatever had caused the damage to the pressure hull (hardly likely, since they surrounded it), and if no more than one compartment had been flooded, she might, by blowing all of them dry, stagger to the surface, there to be smashed pitilessly down again by the knife-sharp bows and waiting guns of her assailants.

In the immediate future were not one contest but two, both unequal. Unequal, first, in that Eel would have one clear, unopposed shot at her antagonists (provided that some egregious error in approach technique, such as permitting one’s periscope to be sighted, was not committed, or bad luck—sonar detection—encountered).

But once the submarine’s presence became known, which it must ultimately and inevitably be by the crashing roar of her torpedoes, the inequalities would shift abruptly, and the second battle begin. From this point on, it was the submarine that would be on the defensive: slow moving, her machinery silenced save for the motors turning the propellers at minimum speed (for to run faster would make more noise), her torpedo tubes empty (reloading them would make noise), running at deep submergence, listening, always listening, for the pings of enemy sonar, for the sound of the searching propellers. Blindly twisting at excruciatingly slow speed in the desperate effort to avoid the high-speed rush of the enemy destroyer bringing the killing depth charges.

Four ships against one. Five hundred men against eighty. An alerted enemy, in their home waters, free to move swiftly in any direction, free, even, to seek help in emergency. Free to see, as well as listen. Free to make noise, to have no care for the making of noise. Free of the fear of the black water transforming itself into white at the instantaneous moment of ingress. Free of imagining, and awaiting, that tortured last view of a closely circumscribed steel world while light and power from the batteries yet remained. Free of the terror of the everlasting darkness and pressure at the bottom of the sea.

So must it have been during those last terrible moments in Chicolar, when awareness of the sacrifice to be exacted was replaced by the cataclysmic inrush of water which compressed the air with an ear-bursting blow, increased the temperature to unbearable height, and swept all before it into extinction.

“The normal approach course is two-seven-five,” said Buck.

“Steady on course two-five-oh,” snapped Richardson. He crowded over alongside Buck and Keith, looked at the TDC. “We don’t have to go all the way over to the normal approach course,” he said. “The range is still well open. How long will we have to run to get to two thousand yards on this course?”

“That’s about a two-mile run—a little more. Let’s see, at full speed, eight knots—that’s two hundred-sixty-six yards a minute—it’ll take us about fifteen minutes.”

“Too long,” said Richardson. “I’ve got to get a look before then. Keith, are they getting a bathythermograph reading?”

“Yep. There’s a new card in the gadget.”

“Okay. Tell them to take another single ping sounding when we get down to two hundred feet. We’ll run about eight minutes at this speed and then come back up.”

“That’ll put us just about four thousand yards off the track, Skipper, a little farther maybe,” said Buck.

“Fine,” said Rich. “Keith, we might as well go ahead and rig for depth charge and silent running now. Get everything buttoned down tight.”

“Okay, sir, but can we leave the hatch open and ventilation on for a while more? Besides, we might want better communication with Al. . . .”

The connng tower had only a supply ventilator. The return was through the hatch. Closing the hatch would not only isolate him from direct communication with Al Dugan—forcing reliance on telephones—it would stop the flow of air as effectively as shutting off the supply. Rigging for maximum security this far ahead of need was only a precaution. Keith’s suggestion would mean a great deal for the comfort and efficiency of the fourteen men jammed into the conning tower, as well as the rest of the crew. “All right. We can hold off on the ventilation for a while.”

Keith gave the necessary instructions. Suddenly Richardson had nothing to do. Eel tore on through the water at an unaccustomed rate. He could feel the hull trembling with the water passage. There were some small vibrations topside. A little unnecessary noise, a drumming of some portion of the bridge structure. Perhaps it was the lookouts’ new platform and rails. These would have to be inspected carefully next time they had a chance, he thought.

“How much time?” he asked.

“We’ve been running four minutes, Skipper,” said Buck. “Four minutes to wait.”

Rich could feel his blood pressure gradually mounting, his pulse increasing. Below he could hear the watertight doors being closed, various men moving about. With the doors closed and dogged it was forbidden to change from one part of the ship to another except in emergency, so anticipated moves were being made now.

“How long we been running?”

“Five minutes, Captain; three minutes more to run.”

His palms were itching. He had forgotten about the pain in his knees and thigh muscles. Now the aches were evident again. He waited an interminable length of time, moved over behind Buck and Keith to watch the slowly moving dials of the face of the TDC.

“We’ve been running seven minutes, Captain,” said Keith.

“All ahead one-third,” Rich called out. “Control, make your depth five-eight feet.”

The annunciators clinked in the forward part of the conning tower as Cornelli executed the order. Gently Eel’s deck inclined upward. The drumming of the superstructure stopped.

“You get the BT card?” asked Richardson. “And what was the depth of water?”

“We got a seventy-five-foot reading at two hundred feet, Captain,” said Keith, answering the last question first. “They’re putting the BT card in the fixer now. We’ll have it up here in a minute.”

There was someone coming up the ladder from the control room. Blunt. Behind him, gesticulating helplessly, the lanky pharmacist’s mate took two steps up the ladder and stopped, head framed in the opening, silently signaling his failure. Now Rich cursed the weakness which had allowed him to accede to Keith’s request regarding the hatch and ventilation. Better to be sweltering in peace than cope with an erratic superior, especially during an approach! That solution was now irrevocably gone. No time to toady to the squadron commander’s unpredictable states of mind. No time to consider, or evaluate, the sudden dismay communicating itself to the area just below his own diaphragm. Play the game out. Pretend his appearance had not been greeted with hastily concealed startlement. Hearty greeting. “How are you feeling, Commodore?” No sign of the deep unease awakened by his sudden appearance.

“Fine, Rich, I never slept so well in my life, but what was the pharmacist’s mate doing? Why didn’t you call me? He tried to keep me from turning out. Did you send him?”

“Well, frankly”—calm tone, get over this part quickly—“I told him to see what he could do for you. You’ve been looking a little peaked lately.”

Blunt was about to say something, but Richardson went on, a little hurriedly, as if he had not noticed. “We’ve got a convoy of four ships up there, Commodore, with four escorts. I’m hoping to shoot bow and stern tubes. Also, we’re going to be in for a depth charging, sir. It’ll be pretty uncomfortable up here in the conning tower after we shut off the ventilation, so I recommend you move back to the control room when that time comes. . . .” Handling the ship in combat was Richardson’s sole responsibility. Best signal his intent to exercise it.

“All right, Rich,” said Blunt, “just give me a minute to get down the hatch when you give the word.” There was a degree of truculence in his manner. Perhaps he felt he should have been informed as soon as the enemy ships were sighted. Surely in his state of extreme drowsiness the previous night, he had not suspected the sleeping potion which had finally enabled his body’s craving for sleep to be satisfied. Probably he did not yet realize that, in contravention to his last expressed wishes, while he had been sleeping the Eel had entered the Maikotsu Suido, nor that coordination instructions had been sent to the Whitefish in his name. Hopefully, his long sleep might have restored some of his oldtime equilibrium. But of this Richardson could not yet judge. There was no time to make an evaluation. The ship was about to go into mortal danger, would be under determined attack by four fully aroused escorts in half an hour. There would be one chance, only a single quick opportunity, to fire torpedoes at the convoy. Even this would exist only if prior detection could be avoided.

If all went well, the first announcement of the presence of a submarine would be the crash of lethal explosions against the steel sides of enemy cargo ships. With four ships in the convoy, and four close escorts, not to mention probable air cover, only consummate skill would make possible an attack on all. He would have only ten torpedoes to shoot. From that moment on, Eel would become the subject of a relentless search by at least two, and perhaps all four, vengeful tincans. If she could remain at periscope depth there was the possibility that a modicum of the initiative might yet remain with her. The probability, on the other hand, was that she would be driven deep, or as deep as the shallow Yellow Sea would permit, there reduced to a sea-mole, blind, wandering through the watery wasteland, fearing every change in enemy propeller cadence, every shift in echo-ranging scale, as the precursor of the depth charge attack that would have Eel’s name on it.

He would need every faculty, every capability, every intuitive sense, if he was to guide his ship and crew safely through the ordeal into which he was leading them. A querulous superior who held no responsibility for the operation of the ship, nor for the conduct of the approach and attack, could not be tolerated. He would have to be put aside even if strong methods became necessary.

Blunt was still in the forward end of the conning tower, several feet away. Richardson crowded over behind the TDC, alongside Keith and Buck Williams. “Keith,” he hissed, “when I tell you, run down to the control room and get hold of Yancy. Tell him that if I send him a message to take charge I mean to take charge of Captain Blunt with as many men as he needs, and get him back in his bunk asleep in whatever way he has to do it.” Keith nodded his understanding. “Don’t go until I tell you to,” he finished.

Keith nodded again.

“What’s the distance to the track now?” Richardson said, resuming his normal voice.

“Forty-two hundred,” said Buck.

“Range?”

“I’m showing—mark!—ninety-two hundred yards.”

“Speed through water?”

“Own speed—three and a half knots coming down slowly.”

“Depth?” demanded Richardson.

“We’re at ordered depth, sir,” said Keith. “Depth is five-eight feet. You haven’t looked around yet. . . .”

“Keith, I want that bathythermograph card,” said Richardson, putting special emphasis in the words. “Jump on down and see what’s holding them up. Get it and bring it back up here yourself.” There was an understanding look in Keith’s eyes as he ran below.

“Stand by for an observation,” said Richardson. “Radar periscope—we’ll use the fast procedure again for our next range, Scott, but this time I want you to stop it at the deck and bring it up slowly until we break water. I want to get a look around first.” Scott and Rogers nodded their comprehension.

“Up ’scope,” said Richardson. The periscope came up, stopped with the handles just clear of the bottom of the well. On his knees, Rich extended them, bent over, his chin on the floor, to look through the ’scope. “Up a little,” he said, motioning with his thumbs, “up a little more, that’s high!” He extended his right hand palm down over the handles. Swiftly he rotated the periscope completely around, bouncing on his haunches much as a cossack sword dancer might have done, his torso and head contorted to look through the eyepiece. He made two complete circles. “All clear for now,” he said, turning around to the port bow. “Here they are. Bearing, mark!” He flipped up the handles and pointed downward with his thumbs. The periscope started down into the well.

“Two-nine-six relative,” said Scott, who had moved to the periscope in Keith’s place to read the azimuth ring.

Richardson made a sudden horizontal cutting motion with the palms of both hands. Quin, still wearing the telephone headset, had taken Scott’s place at the periscope hoist controls and stopped the periscope’s descent.

“I think there’s a plane up there,” said Richardson. “No point in leaving the ’scope up too long. Now we’ll go for the radar range. Everybody ready?” Quin and Rogers nodded.

“Bring her all the way up, Quin, until you hear Rogers sing out ‘Range,’ then drop it immediately. Don’t worry about me. You got that?” Quin had seen the procedure many times in drill, and only moments ago again, this time for real. He nodded his understanding.

“Up periscope.” The handles were up quickly this time, since the periscope had been stopped before it had reached the bottom of the well. It rose up . . .

“Range!” shouted Rogers. The ’scope started down. Richardson stepped clear.

“Eight-seven-five-oh. Good range,” said Rogers.

Buck was twirling one of the control cranks on the front of the TDC. “That was down four hundred yards,” he said, “but I was right on in bearing.”

“Good. No zig yet. Angle on the bow is starboard thirty-five.”

“Should be starboard thirty-four,” said Buck. “Four hundred yards’ range difference in eight minutes. That’s about one and a half knots. That puts the speed up to sixteen knots.” Carefully he turned a third knob on the TDC controls.

“Distance to the track?”

“Four thousand three hundred. Ten minutes since the last zig.”

Another interminable wait. “Three minutes since the last look,” said Williams.

“We’ll make a very fast observation this time, just to check things,” decided Richardson. “Fast procedure again. . . . Ready?” Nods of assent. “Up ’scope!”

The ’scope came up. “Range!” shouted Rogers.

“Zig toward!” barked Richardson. It slithered away, the hoist rod knob on the side of the periscope yoke barely grazing his forehead. He would have to be a little more agile next time, or risk a lump on his head.

“Seven thousand yards!”

“Three-zero-zero!”

“They’ve just zigged,” said Richardson. “Only the leading ship has turned. Angle on the bow is starboard fifteen.”

“Starboard fifteen,” repeated Buck, cranking another one of the handles. “That was about a twenty-five-degree zig to his right. Range was down another hundred. That gives us seventeen knots. Maybe they’ve increased speed. These guys are really pouring on the coal!” Again, he carefully and precisely adjusted his “target speed” control knob.

“I can’t see the water line yet, but it does seem to me they’re making pretty good speed.” Richardson turned to the radar operator. “Think we can go a little deeper, Rogers?”

“Yes, sir, that was a real good pip, that time.”

“Control, make your depth six-oh feet.” Quin relayed the word by telephone.

A few seconds later Al Dugan’s voice came up the hatch. “We’re at six-oh feet, Conn.”

A good approach officer always keeps his fire control party advised of the situation topside, including the reasons for his own maneuvers and his intentions for the future. Richardson waited a few moments. Keith would be back shortly—was back, a small smoke-smudged card in his hand.

“Here’s the bathythermograph card, Skipper,” said Keith. “It’s isothermal all the way down. I guess that’s what it had to be with this current. It’s just like the one we got this morning.” He flicked his eyes briefly to the forward part of the conning tower, where Blunt stood under the closed hatch leading to the bridge, idly holding its wire lanyard. Keith turned his eyes back to Rich, nodded ever so slightly.

“I was afraid of that,” said Richardson, acknowledging with his eyes the nearly imperceptible signal. He raised his voice so that Blunt could also hear. “The water is isothermal all the way, Commodore. No layer. When sighted, the target was on course approximately north, running close to the coast of Korea. It’s a four-ship convoy, ships in column, with escorts ahead, astern, and on both flanks. Also, there’s an aircraft patrolling overhead. I figured the convoy for a zig to his left, which he did shortly after we sighted him. Approximately twelve minutes after that he zigged again, but this time to his right, which I really didn’t expect, because that keeps him really close in to the beach. If he’s zigging every ten to twelve minutes, there’ll probably be one more zig before we get to the firing point. Most likely away, to his left, but we can’t be sure. The starboard flanking escort and the astern escort will be the ones to give us trouble. I figure to shoot right after the near escort has passed; stern tubes with a fairly large track on the leading ship, then swing around for bow tubes with a sharper track on the last three. As soon as we shoot the stern tubes, the after room will start a reload just as fast as they can, because we may need those torpedoes back there. The same with bow tubes, but the ones I’m really going to depend on immediately are the stern tubes.” He was really speaking for everyone’s benefit, pointed with emphasis at Quin, who, once again relieved from the periscope control by Scott, nodded his understanding that he was to relay this information to all stations.

“There are four big ships in column, and four escorts. The three leading escorts are all the same type tincan. They look new. My guess is they’re the new Mikura class. They might be the same three that got the Chicolar. Anyway, they’re in about the same pattern, one ahead and one on each beam of the leading ship. They’re patrolling back and forth on station as well as following the zigzag. I can’t make out the astern escort as well. He looks a little bigger, probably an old destroyer. I’ve been making all observations on the leading ship, which is a two-stack passenger-cargo ship between eight thousand and ten thousand tons. The other three ships are ordinary freighters, somewhat smaller than the leading one. We’ll shoot three fish aft at the leading ship, depth set ten feet. The fourth torpedo aft we’ll keep in reserve with a depth setting of four feet. Then we’ll swing hard right for a quick shot, two fish each, at the last three ships. Set depth of all torpedoes forward ten feet!”

The small audience nodded its understanding. Quin pressed the button on the top of his telephone mouthpiece, spoke into it at some length.

“Quin,” said Richardson when the yeoman had finished, “tell the people in the forward and after torpedo rooms there are to be no torpedoes unsecured at any time, even while they’re loading them. We’ll try to keep from taking sudden angles, but the chances of a quick counterattack are pretty good, and we may have to go deep in a hurry after we shoot. I want all the special securing lines rigged on the torpedoes just as though we were reloading them on surface, and if we order silent running again, they are to stop dead and hold everything right where they are.”

Quin nodded his alert appreciation. “All fish to be reloaded with surface reload procedure and never to be unsecured in case we get depth charged and have to take a steep angle. Hold everything if silent running is ordered,” he said. Again he pressed the button on the top of his mouthpiece, relayed the word to the torpedo rooms and, of course, simultaneously throughout the ship.

“How long since the last look?” said Rich.

“Two and a half minutes. Don’t forget that aircraft!”

“Observation,” said Rich. “Radar periscope; then we’ll switch to number two at the deck, and I’ll try for a masthead height.” He glanced about the conning tower, motioned with his thumbs to Scott. “Regular procedure,” he barked. The periscope came up. He grabbed the handles, rose with it, reached a fully standing position. “Mark!” he said.

“One-nine-two-a-half, true,” said Keith.

“Range!” said Rogers. The periscope started down.

“Range was five-four-double-oh,” said Rogers. Richardson stepped behind number two periscope, motioned with his thumbs for it to be raised. Behind him he could hear Buck Williams making the new insets in the TDC. “He might be going a bit faster yet,” said Buck.

“No more than seventeen knots,” said Richardson. He was again on his knees, stooped as low as he could get. The periscope handles on the attack ’scope came into view. He grabbed them, snapped them down. The periscope was facing the wrong direction. With a quick jerk he spun it quickly, sighted on the target, turned the range crank. Keith was also on his knees on the other side of it, fingers on the dial. “Mark!” said Richardson. “Down ’scope!” He banged up the handles. The periscope started down. Both he and Keith had to throw themselves out of the way of the descending yoke to avoid being struck on the head.

“I can see the water line clearly. That was a good masthead height reading. Did you get it, Keith?”

“Got it,” said Keith. “Eighty-five feet. That’s a good-sized ship.”

“Yes, she’s a beauty,” agreed Richardson. “No zig yet. Angle on the bow was starboard twenty-five.”

“How does twenty-seven look, Skipper?” said Buck. “That puts him on course three-four-five, using seventeen knots.”

“That looks fine, use twenty-seven. How long since the last zig, Buck?”

Keith answered him, “Six minutes, Skipper.”

“All right, we’ll shift to the attack periscope. Control,” said Richardson, “make your depth six-four feet! That will give us three feet of the attack periscope exposed,” said Rich in an altered tone, addressing the members of the attack party.

“What’s the weather like topside?” asked Blunt. It was a legitimate question. Richardson should have described the weather conditions earlier.

“Weather calm, clear, small waves about one or two feet in height, just enough to make our periscope hard to see. No whitecaps, however. The plane is on the far beam of the convoy. As we get closer I plan to come down at least one more foot.” He turned to Keith.

“Have we completed our check-off?” he asked. Richardson would have said more, but was interrupted by the wolfpack commander.

“How do you know those new two-stack ships can’t be making more than seventeen knots, Rich?” Blunt asked. “We have lots of merchant ships that can make at least twenty.”

“Damn few of the older one-stackers can even make seventeen, so that’s tops for this outfit,” Richardson answered swiftly. Keith’s look told him that his exec had caught his flash of irritation, quickly masked. By contrast with the previous one, this was not a legitimate question. Later, perhaps, during a postmortem over coffee in the wardroom. Not now, with the moment of attack nearly at hand. There had been a tinge of querulousness in Blunt’s voice. Standing under the closed bridge hatch, Blunt’s eyes were glittering in the deep shadows under the bushy eyebrows. Still holding to the lanyard, he leaned forward, supporting himself on it, projecting himself toward the periscopes.

“You said we’re close to land. What is our position? Why wasn’t I informed when we got this close in?” Blunt’s voice had risen perceptibly. His bearing communicated anger. His face was flushed, his jaw hung slack, emphasizing the wattles under his chin.

“Check-off list is completed, sir,” said Keith, breaking in. “We’re ready to shoot bow and stern, except for opening outer doors.” Keith had seen the same signs as Richardson, was loyally trying to stave off a bad situation.

“We’re expecting a zig,” said Richardson, taking Keith’s cue and addressing his words to the fire control party. “We’ll hold the outer doors closed for a bit more. The less time the fish are flooded in the tubes, the better they’ll run. As soon as the enemy zigs, we’ll complete preparations and be shooting almost immediately.”

“Goddammit, Richardson, answer me! What have you been up to while I’ve been asleep?” Blunt was shouting now. His voice filled the conning tower.

“How long since the last look?” asked Richardson. His self-control was slipping. He must not show it. Even now, if he could somehow bring this extraordinary situation under control, Eel’s crew might not fully understand the true circumstance. In the aftermath of a successful attack, the sudden contretemps in the conning tower might be relegated to one of those strange discussions between superior officers which no one could pretend to understand. But further interference on the part of Blunt could not be borne. Within minutes, two or three at the most, Eel would be firing nine of her ten loaded torpedoes. Her concealment would be shattered the moment the first torpedoes found their target. She would then instantly become the hunted instead of the hunter. He would need every capability at his command to regain the initiative, to escape the sonar searchers in the four escorts—maddened because of their failure to detect Eel previously, now certain of her presence in the immediate vicinity.

Keith was looking at him intently. The thought in his mind was leaping at him from the wide, staring eyes.

“Richardson, I’ll not be ignored like this!” The squadron commander had left his perch on the step under the hatch, was crowding past the astounded Scott, bumping Stafford’s back where he still maintained his sonar vigil according to the most recent orders. Keith waited no longer, turned, crowded through the group in the opposite direction, and bolted through the still-open hatch leading to the control room.

“Two minutes since last look!” Williams, automatically picking up for the absent Leone. No doubt Buck had taken it all in, just the way Keith had, was trying to be of assistance. Not only with Captain Blunt, but also to keep the approach in hand. Blunt was standing alongside Rich. His eyes were glaring, his breath coming in short, noisy, low-pitched whistles through his partly open mouth.

The charade must be played out. At least, keep him occupied until Keith and Yancy returned. “Commodore, would you like a quick look?” With his thumb, Richardson motioned to Scott. The periscope began its ascent. Stooping—that gave him something to do for a few seconds—Rich grasped the handles. He swung the ’scope around toward Blunt, with his free hand propelled him toward it much as he might one of Eel’s own officers, and ranged himself in Keith’s position on its back side. Blunt could not prevent the intuitive, habitual move of hooking his right elbow around one handle, placing his left hand upon the other, affixing his eye to the rubber guard.

“Around this way, sir,” muttered Richardson, waiting only long enough to be sure Blunt was firmly attached in the familiar position to the periscope. “This should be the bearing of the leading ship.”

“Bearing, mark!” said Blunt, twitching the periscope barrel a fraction of a degree. Relief flooded through Richardson. The tone of voice and the action were those of the Blunt of old. “Range, mark!” Blunt had dropped his right hand to the range knob, was turning it.

“Four-nine-double-oh!” read Richardson, matching the just-determined enemy masthead height against the periscope range dial. Williams looked up suddenly from the TDC, jerked his head around toward the periscope. His hand flew to the range input crank of the computer, but the look on his face was one of puzzled inquiry. Clearly, the range just called out by Richardson did not agree with that generated by the Torpedo Data Computer. Rich shook his head. With relief, Buck dropped the range crank, reached to the face of the TDC, pointed to the target-bearing dial, nodded his head vigorously. Good for Buck! The bearing, at least, was right on.

“Angle on the bow, starboard twenty-five!” said Blunt. Again Buck nodded. Blunt’s observation as to the attitude of the leading ship was approximately the same as that predicted by the TDC. A quick-thinking young man, that Buckley Williams. The ’scope had been up ten seconds. Now to get it down. How to cause Blunt to order it down. Leaving it up unnecessarily was not only anathema to submariners; it was, under the circumstances, dangerous. All Blunt’s submarine instincts should cause him to lower it, now that a routine observation had been completed. Three more seconds passed. There was a control lever in parallel with the one Scott and Quin had been using, secreted in the dark overhead alongside the periscope—the one used by the OOD during routine submerged patrolling when there was no battle stations personnel to do it for him. Blunt showed no sign as yet of giving up his view through the instrument. Rich pulled the handle gently toward him. The periscope began to descend ever so slightly. Blunt would feel the slow movement; perhaps the thought would communicate itself to him. . . .

“Down ’scope!” Blunt stepped back, snapped up the periscope handles as Richardson jerked the lever and the long silver tube dropped away.

“Looks like a beautiful approach, Rich. You’re in a perfect position to get all four of those bastards!” Blunt was rubbing his hands together with pleasure. “How I wish I were still young enough to take a boat on patrol! You young fellows are having all the fun!” The aging face was alight. The jaw muscles no longer looked flabby. In the space of a few seconds, ten years might have dropped from him. Richardson was barely able to conceal his astonishment at the precipitant right-about-face in his attitude, but temporary deliverance from a problem for which he could not, in the short time available, think of a permanent solution, supplied an even greater emotion, of relief.

Keith was coming up the ladder from the control room. Behind him was someone tall, and behind him, a third person, short, powerful, and black—Yancy and Chief Commissary Steward Woodrow, in charge of the wardroom, in charge of all the provisions on board as well, and one of the most respected men in the ship.

Yancy carried a small cardboard box in his hand. Woodrow had a rolled-up blanket under his arm and two uniform web belts over his shoulder. Keith also had picked up a pair of web belts, Richardson saw, as for the second time in half a minute he made a signal of negation. He pointed back down the hatch, saw the grateful looks of the two enlisted men as they went back below. They could not have much relished the job they had been about to carry out.

Keith’s arrival in the midst of the fire control group caused a certain amount of shuffle among the tightly packed men, and in the process Richardson found the opportunity to maneuver Blunt back to his old position under the hatch—the only free space in the conning tower—while Richardson himself shouldered past Rogers on the radar console to where Stafford stood watch on the sonar. He leaned over to speak to him. Stafford, probably the only person in the conning tower to have been totally unconscious of the difficult situation just past, pulled away one earpiece to listen.

“Stafford,” said Rich, “can you hear them okay?”

“Yes sir, I can hear them fine. The leading ship has twin screws, I think, and the others—I can’t hear them quite as well because they’re behind him—I think they’re single-screw ships. I can hear three escorts, too. All the tincans have twin screws.”

“The nearest escort, the one we need to worry about most, bears around two-zero-zero true. The other one that I’m worried about bears around two-four-five. He’s the leading escort. I think that one will probably pass well clear ahead, but the one on two-zero-zero might come pretty close to us. Keep on that one, and let me know if you notice any change in what he’s doing, either ping interval or speed, or anything.” Stafford nodded, replaced the earphone over his right ear. Richardson crossed back aft to the after end of the conning tower, crowded in alongside of Keith and Buck at the TDC.

Behind both of them, facing in the opposite direction, Larry Lasche toiled at an automatic plot board. Rich heard him as he spoke over his shoulder: “Buck, I’m getting seventeen knots overall. Target course for this leg, three-four-zero.”

“I’ve got three-four-five, seventeen knots, Larry,” answered Williams. “Looks pretty good.”

“What’s the distance to the track?” said Richardson.

“Twenty-six hundred yards.”

“We’ll have to turn toward a little more,” said Richardson, addressing both Leone and Williams. “We have to maneuver for this stern tube shot and at the same time not close the track too much in case they zig toward.”

The face of the TDC contained a number of dials, the two most prominent of which represented the target and the Eel, on converging courses. Somewhere to the left of the target dial, all three men knew, there lay an escort, zigzagging back and forth irregularly as it patrolled on station to starboard of its charge. It would pass nearly overhead shortly before the time to shoot.

Rich raised his voice. “Left full rudder,” he said, “make your new course one-nine-zero.”

“One-nine-zero,” responded Cornelli, swinging the stainless-steel steering wheel. Obediently the “own-ship” dial on the face of the TDC began to turn counterclockwise, finally settled with the bow of the miniature submarine aligned with the number 190 on a surrounding dial.

“Time since the last look?”

“Two and a half minutes,” said Keith. “About nine minutes since the last zig.” Keith also was ignoring the data from Blunt’s observation of half a minute previous.

“Steady on one-nine-zero!” said Cornelli.

“Observation,” said Richardson. “Up periscope. Number two.” The periscope started up. Once again he had to ignore the muscular pain as he went through the deep knee bend ritual, motioned with his hand to Scott to stop it just before it had reached its full height. “Bearing, mark!” he said.

“One-nine-five,” said Keith.

“Range”—turning the range dial on the side of the periscope—“mark! Down periscope.” The periscope dropped away.

“Four-three-double-oh,” said Keith.

“Angle on the bow starboard thirty,” said Rich. “No zig yet. The near escort bears about ten degrees to the left of the main target, angle on the bow zero. He’s patrolling on station as before. The aircraft is circling the convoy.”

“Speed checks at seventeen knots,” said Buck.

“Plot gets seventeen knots,” said Lasche.

“Target course three-four-five,” said Buck. “Distance to the track two-one-double-oh.”

“This may turn out to be a long-range shot,” said Richardson. “I’m concerned about this near escort. If the convoy zigs away, we’ll have to close the track more, which will force us to a speed burst. We’ll be broadside to him, too. If the convoy zigs toward us a little, we’re in a perfect position, but if it zigs too much, it may run right over us. How long since the last zig?”

“Eleven minutes,” said Keith.

“Time since last look?”

“One minute.”

“Up periscope,” said Rich. “I’ll take a look around.” He grabbed the periscope handles as soon as they came up out of the well, kept the periscope down low, spun it around rapidly. “All clear,” he said. “Up!” He motioned with his thumbs. The periscope started up. “Bearing, mark!” he said. “Range, mark! Down ’scope. No zig yet.”

“Checks right on,” said Buck.

“How’s the near escort, Skipper?” asked Keith.

“Looks like he’ll pass astern,” said Richardson. “Distance to the track?”

“Nineteen hundred yards,” said Buck.

“We can’t swing around to the right any more for our stern tubes, because there’ll be a zig any minute,” said Richardson. “Control,” he spoke more loudly, “make your depth six-five feet.” In a more normal tone he said, “That will barely let me see over the top of the small waves we’ve got up there. It’ll also give us a little more clearance in case he runs over us—up periscope!”

“It’s a zig away!” said Richardson. Through the periscope he could see the bulk of the leading ship begin to lengthen. She was riding low on the water, belching smoke again, heeling over slightly toward him in her turn. A quick turn of the periscope to the nearest escort showed it also with the starboard side in view. He had evidently turned a little sooner. Astern, three freighters were plowing along in the original path, evidently planning to turn in column as before, when they reached the knuckle in the water where the leader had put over his rudder.

“This changes everything,” said Rich as the periscope descended into its housing. “Right full rudder! All ahead full!” He turned to Buck. “Starboard sixty! Give me a course for a thirty gyro, bow tubes, on the leading ship, one-twenty starboard track. We’ll shoot three each at the first and second ships and try to get the stern tubes off at the third ship!”

“Course for thirty right gyros, one-twenty starboard track, bow tubes: two-two-zero!” said Buck, figuring swiftly with his fingers on the dials on the face of his TDC.

“Make your new course two-two-zero!” ordered Rich. He waited to hear Cornelli’s acknowledgment from the forward end of the control room, then spoke swiftly to Keith. “So far, the near escort has shown no signs of detecting us, but he may pass very nearly overhead. The reason for not swinging farther is to give us a chance to get around for a stern tube shot afterward.”

“Right! Where’s the escort now?”

“He’s over on our port bow with a starboard angle,” answered Richardson. “But we’re speeding up and closing him.” Richardson turned, quickly stepped forward to the sonar again. “Stafford,” he said, “keep your gear on that near escort. What’s he bear now?”

“Two-one-zero,” responded Stafford, obediently swinging the sonar head dial to the left.

“Very well. Keep your bearings on that fellow coming in. I want him to pass ahead.”

“Aye aye,” said Stafford. “Bearing two-one-zero.”

“Steady on two-two-zero,” sang out Cornelli.

“What’s the range now?” said Richardson, stepping quickly aft again.

“Twenty-five hundred yards TDC,” said Buck. “Distance to the track fifteen hundred yards. Gyros right ten, increasing.”

“All ahead one-third!”

“Speed through water, four and a half knots,” said Keith.

“Escort bears two-one-five,” said Stafford.

“Keith, finish the rig for silent running except for the torpedo rooms. Secure the ventilation. Rig all compartments for depth charge, but leave the hatch to the control room open for the time being.” He swung back to Buck. “What’s the speed through water now?” he said.

“Four knots.”

Still too fast to put the periscope up. The feather it would make splashing through the seas would surely be detected by the escort, now close aboard and coming nearly directly for them. He would have to wait for Eel to slow down a little more. On the other hand, he was nearly at the firing point. Things were moving rapidly. He cocked his head as if he could visually appraise the situation going on on the surface of the sea above. The main target would now be nearly broadside on, and in perfect position for firing. The three ships in column astern would by now have reached the turning point. Each in succession would have made its turn onto the new course. The near escort, close on the port bow, was closing in even more, but might pass ahead.

“Escort bearing two-one-five,” said Stafford again.

This was bad. The escort was patrolling his own station back and forth, superimposing a random zigzag plan upon the more formal zigzag plan being carried out by the convoy. Two successive sonar bearings of the same value indicated that he was now heading directly toward Eel. Possibly his sonar operator had detected something suspicious in the water.

“Escort bearing two-one-four,” from Stafford.

“Speed through water?” he said to Buck. He could read it almost as well himself, but it helped to have someone else do it for him.

“Three and a half knots.”

“Keith, I’m going to make one more observation, and then we’ll be shooting. Also, I’ve got to try to find that aircraft again. This is not a shooting observation, but open the outer doors forward anyway.”

“Open outer doors forward, aye aye,” said Keith. “We’re ready to shoot in all respects, Captain, as soon as we get the outer doors open.”

“Up periscope,” said Richardson. The scope came up. As before, he rode it up, swung it all around rapidly, steadied it on the port bow for a second. “Bearing, mark!” he said. “Down ’scope.”

“Two-three-oh,” said Keith. “No range. Did you get a range?”

“No range,” said Richardson. “That was the main target. The aircraft is clear to starboard. The escort is about thirty degrees to the left. He’ll be passing overhead very soon.”

“Escort bearing two-one-four,” said Stafford.

“Outer doors are open forward, Captain,” said Keith.

“Be sure all periscopes are all the way down,” said Richardson. “The tincan will pass overhead in a few seconds.”

All inside the conning tower could feel the tension which had suffused the air. With the securing of the blowers the noise level had dropped perceptibly. The air suddenly felt dead. The temperature rose. People spoke in lower voices simply in reaction to the atmosphere in which they moved.

“Escort bears two-one-five,” said Stafford, his voice sounding unusually loud in the sudden stillness. “Still pinging the same. He’s close aboard now.”

He had not detected them. That was good. Everyone in the conning tower could hear the propellers resounding through the water. The Eel was nearly broadside to his approach. An alert sonar watch perhaps should have recognized a return echo. A change in his ping rate or his propeller speed would betray his interest.

“He’s pinging steadily, long range,” said Stafford. “No change in rpm.”

Thum, thum, thum, thum, from the propellers. Growing louder, ever louder. This was Eel’s time of greatest danger. No doubt depth charges were carried at the ready, and even now, if a submarine were detected only a few hundred yards ahead, a devastating blow could be dealt her.

Thum, thum, thum, went the propellers. Louder and louder. Thum-thum-thum! Close aboard now. THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM!

“Tincan passing overhead!” said Stafford.

There was a swish of water through Eel’s superstructure. The submarine rocked gently in the destroyer’s wake. The escort had passed, after all, not more than a few feet away from where they stood.

In the sudden stillness in the conning tower Blunt was staring from the forward starboard corner where he had stationed himself, still gripping the lanyard to the hatch. His face was beaded with sweat. Richardson tossed him a quick smile. Except for the fact that this was very much for real, Blunt had experienced it many times. “He’s gone by,” Rich said. “This is a shooting observation. Stand by forward.”

“Shooting observation. Stand by forward,” echoed Keith. Quin repeated the same in the telephone, giving emphasis to his voice as he transmitted the order.

“Range fifteen hundred, gyros thirty right, torpedo run eighteen-fifty,” said Buck.

“Up periscope,” said Richardson. He laid the vertical cross hair of the periscope directly between the stacks of his target. He was a complete automaton, and yet his mind encompassed the fact that the ship was crowded with people—soldiers, from the general olive-drab appearance—and was heavily laden. Millions of Japanese yen and untold hours of Herculean labor had gone into building her. She was obviously a new ship, probably completed after the beginning of the war. She had recently been repainted. She was a thing of pride to her skipper. She was doomed. Explosion, fire, drowning lay in the cross hair that he carefully, coldly, placed upon her.

“Mark!” he said.

“Zero-two-three-a-half,” said Keith.

“Set,” said Buck.

“Shoot,” said Richardson. “Down periscope!”

“Fire one!” said Keith.

“Fire one!” shouted Quin into his telephone.

Keith was leaning on the firing button built into the side of Eel’s conning tower, just forward of the TDC. “Number one fired electrically!” announced Quin. Everyone in the conning tower had felt the jolt transmitted to the sturdy fabric of Eel’s hull when the torpedo had been expelled.

Keith released the firing key. “Stand by two,” he said.

Lasche was counting off the seconds. “. . . Eight . . . nine . . . ten.”

“Fire two” sang out Keith.

“Number two fired electrically,” reported Quin.

“. . . Nine . . . ten . . .”

“Fire three!”

The jolt of the torpedo departing. Quin reporting the message from the torpedo room that the third torpedo had been fired electrically. Had this not happened, the chief in the torpedo room would instantly have fired it manually. Larry Lasche, counting out the seconds between torpedoes to ensure they were not fired too closely together.

“All torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal,” announced Stafford, playing his sound head-dial back and forth over a small arc, oblivious to the fact that “hot,” at least, could refer only to the old steam and compressed-air torpedoes.

“Shift targets,” said Richardson. “Up periscope!” He laid the cross hair on the stack of the second ship—a neat-looking but older vessel. “Mark!” he said. Again the train of events was set in motion. He felt Eel jerk three more times, recognized on the one hand the death he had dealt out and on the other the fact that there could be no stopping the process, once it started, neither for himself nor anyone else.

He spun the ’scope around. The stern of the destroyer which had just passed overhead loomed huge in his magnified field of view. It had not been more than sixty seconds since it had gone over. Everything was still calm and peaceful on the surface of the sea. Nothing yet could have happened. “Right full rudder! Down periscope! All ahead full! Give me a course for stern tubes!”

Keith crowded alongside of Buck in front of the TDC, gave Rich the answer. “Recommend course three-four-zero for about a right thirty-degree gyro for tubes aft,” he said.

“Starboard stop! Starboard back two-thirds!” said Rich. This would help increase the speed of the turn and at the same time keep Eel from gaining too much speed through the water at this crucial moment. He watched her swinging around on the dial of the TDC. It took so long for a submerged submarine to turn! She moved so slowly, had so much weight to swing around—not only her own steel structure, but also the water in her ballast tanks. She had such a huge ponderous bulk to push around through the water, so little power with which to do it. Maneuvering on the surface was a totally different thing, even on the battery.

“Approximate bearing of the third ship is twenty degrees left of the second one,” he said to Buck, “and increase his range by five hundred yards.” Buck furiously cranked the dials of the TDC.

“How long before our first spread gets there, Larry?” Rich asked.

“Thirty seconds to go.” He watched the bow of “own ship” on the TDC pass 300, pass 320—it was swinging a little faster now. It passed 330.

“Starboard stop,” he said. “All ahead one-third.” His judgment had been right, Eel’s speed had remained at about two and a half knots, but her swinging had perceptibly increased. Al Dugan was doing a masterful job at depth control with the speed changes, full rudder maneuvers, and six torpedoes fired forward at rapid intervals.

“Steady on three-four-zero!”

“Up periscope!” The deadly ritual again. “Shift targets. Bearing, mark! . . . Shoot!”

“Fire seven! . . . Fire eight! . . . Fire nine!”

“Three torpedoes aft fired electrically.”

He spun the periscope around, saw a huge geyser of water shoot up alongside the leading ship. “A hit!” he announced. A second later the boom came in. He turned to the escort. Still no sign, still stern to. A second geyser rose alongside the forward part of the leading ship. With two torpedoes in her she was gone regardless of whether the third one, spread aft, missed or not. But as Richardson watched, the ship must have slowed down enough from the effects of the two hits to make sure the third hit also. It went off almost in the same place the first one had struck. Even as he watched her, she began to list toward him, still belching smoke and steam from her stacks, her decks boiling with startled, terrorized humanity.

The escort had evidently put his rudder left, was turning around. A cloud of steam, or vapor, burst from the stack of the second ship. The reverberations of the third boom had barely died away in Eel’s conning tower when a geyser of water arose alongside the forward part of the second ship and, seconds later, another in her after section. He swung to the third ship, caught the explosion there. The torpedoes had been spread to allow for variations in the solution for target speed, course, and range. If they ran as intended, one at least of each salvo should have hit each target. Six hits for nine torpedoes, fired with large gyro angles, were more than could normally be expected.

He spun the periscope around once more. A jet of steam came up from the stack of the fourth ship in column. A whistle or siren. She had turned radically to the left, was still swinging. No chance for a shot there. He swung back to the escort. Still in his turn, listing away, undoubtedly coming back to where he would assume the submarine must have been, possibly where a now-chastened sonar watch stander remembered something unusual in his echoes. The aircraft had also turned, was headed back toward the gutted convoy.

“How’s the reload coming forward?” he asked.

A second’s delay. Quin answered. “They got one in. The second one’s going in now. Neither one ready yet.”

“Let me know just as soon as they’re ready to shoot forward.” The destroyer was perhaps five hundred yards away, heeling over to starboard under the impetus of left rudder. It was clearly one of a new class of submarine escorts. No doubt one of the new Mikuras. “Frigates,” they were called in the recognition pamphlet. In describing them to the wolfpack commander he had, without forethought, called up the possibility it might be this same trio which had accounted for Chicolar a few days ago. If Eel could remain at periscope depth, not be driven under, he might have a chance to exact retribution from one of them.

He spun the periscope completely around again. The aircraft might also be a problem, but the opaque Yellow Sea water was on his side. The two-stack passenger freighter was lying flat on her beam ends, stacks toward him. He could see water climbing up her deck, now vertical, which had only so recently been horizontal, pouring through deck openings into her interior. Anybody still below decks was now caught, would be unable to get out, would go down with her in the trap she had become. Her port side lay horizontal above the water. Many men were standing there, outlined against the sky. Lifeboats and life rafts hung crazily from their nests on deck, or from their davits. There had been no time to launch any of them. Her passengers and crew, the troops she carried, would be dependent for survival upon whatever wreckage broke free, of which apparently there was already a goodly amount. Land was three miles distant. They had a good chance of saving themselves if they could get free of the sinking ship, either by swimming to land or through rescue by one of the escorts. Strange. They were soldiers. He should hope they all drowned.

All this, his mind took in with instant comprehension. Number two ship had taken two hits, was down by the stern. Water was already coming up over the main deck aft. Her bow, where the upper part of a jagged hole just forward of the mast could be seen, was rising preparatory to the final plunge to the bottom.

The third ship, struck by a single torpedo, was the smallest of the three. The torpedo had hit her aft. She was stopped and also well down by the stern. Farther aft, the fourth ship, approximately similar to the last one hit, had turned course radically to the left. Belching clouds of smoke, she was obviously racing away from the carnage which had overtaken her sisters.

Farther to the left, the single escort which had been astern, an old destroyer of some kind, had apparently experienced some uncertainty but now also was turning away. Perhaps she would accompany the single undamaged ship in her flight eastward. Nothing else in sight: all was serene and calm through the remainder of the periscope’s circular sweep.

Back to the escort up ahead. She was still in her turn. The aircraft was coming also, but not dead on. Evidently the pilot had no fix on Eel’s position. The Mikura frigate (if that was the correct class name) was the main concern.

“Down periscope.” The tincan was a perfect shot for bow tubes, if there were but a single bow tube ready. He cursed the zig away which had forced him to change his plans at the last minute and left him without the torpedo he had planned for this eventuality.

“How much longer before we’re ready to shoot forward?”

He could hear Quin repeating the question in the telephones. No answer. He knew they must be working with maximum urgency. At least one torpedo must be ready soon.

“Up periscope. Observation,” he gritted. “Bearing, mark!”

“Three-four-eight,” said Keith.

“Range—use forty-five feet—mark! Down periscope.”

“Five hundred twenty-yards,” said Keith.

“Left full rudder! New course, three-three-zero!” He needed no TDC helper for this obvious move. The less the gyro angle, the better.

Buck was frantically spinning the dials on the TDC. Keith brushed past Richardson, began spinning one of them himself.

“Angle on the bow?” said Buck.

Rich had deliberately waited, since Buck had only two hands and could only get two pieces of information into the TDC at once. Keith’s help had relieved that problem.

“Port one-twenty,” said Rich, “but he’s turning toward. Set him up at port ninety, and I’ll take another look.”

The total time since the first torpedo had been fired was in the neighborhood of three minutes. Most of the time had been occupied by the necessity of turning to bring the stern tubes to bear. The Mark Eighteen torpedoes required a run of about 350 yards before the arming mechanism in the warhead rotated enough to activate the exploder. Since there were no wakes in the water, the Jap escort would not know immediately where to look for the submarine. He would instinctively reverse course, but it was possible there might be a moment or two of indecision while he searched. . . .

“Up periscope!”

“Number one tube is ready,” shouted Quin.

“Observation! Bearing, mark! Range, mark! Down scope. Angle on the bow, port sixty. Turning toward.” He needed the essential bits of fire control information, heard Buck set the data into the TDC.

“Set!” said Buck.

“Set depth four feet!”

“It’s already set, Captain,” said Keith.

“Open outer doors forward,” said Rich.

“Number one outer door is open,” screamed Quin, his voice pitched much higher than normal, his tenseness betraying itself in the steaming, sweating, densely packed conning tower.

“Stand by forward,” said Richardson. Suddenly he felt calm. This was the time to be deliberate. This one shot must be a good one. He would leave the periscope up and aim the torpedo deliberately.

“Number two tube is loaded, Captain. Depth set four feet. You have two fish ready forward.” Keith’s voice.

“Bearing, mark! He’s still turning. Angle on the bow, port forty-five.”

“Zero-one-zero!”

“Set,” said Buck. “I’m following him around.”

“Short-scale pinging, bearing three-four-oh!” Stafford.

“Check fire!” roared Keith. “Correct solution light has gone out!”

“Down ’scope,” said Richardson, almost wearily. The chance was gone. Obviously, with the destroyer swinging toward, the distance the torpedo would run before hitting would be too short to arm it. “Shut the outer doors,” he ordered.

“He’s starting a run! Shifted to short-scale pinging!” This was Stafford, repeating himself at the sound gear. His voice also was elevated a notch.

“Rig for depth charge,” said Richardson, knowing well that the ship was already fully rigged for depth charge except that the control room hatch had not been closed. Torpedoes in the forward and after torpedo rooms, however, were in the process of being reloaded. “Quin,” he said swiftly, “forward and after rooms! Secure for depth charging immediately.”

Wide-eyed, Quin repeated his orders into the telephone.

“Shut the lower hatch,” he ordered. Someone in the control room, probably Al Dugan, pulled the oblong hatch down on its lanyard. Scott leaped on it, kicked the handles shut. Unlike the hatch to the bridge, it was not fitted with a hand wheel.

Blunt’s voice from the forward part of the conning tower, “Aren’t we going deep, Rich?”

He had forgotten the wolfpack commander. During the entire time Blunt had stood holding on to the hatch lanyard under the bridge hatch. It was too late now to permit him to go below, even had he been willing to do so, or had Richardson been willing to spend the effort to convince him to do so.

“We’ll take this one at periscope depth,” announced Richardson. “He’ll figure we’ve gone deep and will set his depth charges deep. Maybe after he passes we’ll get a chance for another shot.” He crowded over alongside of Stafford, just forward of number one periscope. Silently, Stafford indicated a section of the dial to which his sound head arrow was oriented.

“There he is, sir. Short-scale pinging. He’s speeded up!”

“He may not have seen the periscope, but if he did, he’ll figure we’ve gone deep now. As soon as he goes by, we’ll try to line him up for a stern shot!” Richardson spoke in answer to the thought wave he felt hurled at him from everyone in the conning tower. If Eel could survive this first quick attack at periscope depth he might be able to get a shot off while the destroyer was getting ready for a second. All depended upon being able to get that periscope up for an observation, upon the likelihood that the tincan might have to wait a few moments for the disturbance of her depth charges to die away before she could regain contact. There might also be the necessity to do some reloading of depth charges in her launchers. He did not mention the airplane. It could not see beneath the surface. Not in the Yellow Sea. The only danger from it was a few additional bombs or depth charges dropped in the wake of the escort’s barrage. Of course, if it sighted his periscope at the crucial moment when he had it up to aim the torpedo . . . He left the thought unfinished.

The sonar dial was calibrated in relative bearing, but through a connection with the submarine’s gyro compass a second dial, concentric with the first, gave true bearing as well.

“True bearings!” he snapped to Stafford.

“Three-three-five, steady on three-three-five,” repeated Stafford. Rich’s instinctive selection of course 330 for a minimum gyro had been a good one.

“Make your course three-three-five!” ordered Richardson. “All ahead full!”

“What are you going to do, Rich?” Blunt again. His voice was almost squeaky.

“I’m going to run right under him at full speed! At this short range and with depth charges going off, he’ll lose contact anyway. Maybe we can catch him by surprise and get through the barrage before he’s able to drop them all,” answered Rich, forcing himself to speak normally instead of in the clipped tones he had almost used. He must not betray his own inner tension. If only Blunt would keep quiet! “Quin!” he said, “Tubes aft, report on condition of their reload.”

In a moment the report came back. “All tubes secured aft,” relayed Quin. “Tube ten was not fired. Tube seven has been reloaded, but is not ready yet. All the other fish are secured in their racks.”

“Very well,” said Richardson. “Tell tubes aft to turn to on that fish and get it ready. We’ll need it as soon as the depth charge barrage is over. Set depth on both, four feet.” He looked up at Scott. “Speed through water?” he asked.

“Four knots, increasing. We’re steady on three-three-five.”

Rich picked up a spare set of earphones, adjusted them to his head. The penetrating, high-pitched echo-ranging was clearly audible even before he put them on. Stafford was moving the sound head dome ceaselessly back and forth over a small arc concentrated right around Eel’s bow. He said something which Richardson could not hear. Rich moved his left-hand earphone over to his cheek, freed the ear. “Bearing three-three-five,” said Stafford. “Steady bearing. He’s close aboard now. He’ll be dropping any second.”

Richardson could hear the whir of the screws. One of them must be bent slightly askew, for the thrashing sound of the damaged blade could plainly be distinguished. He could almost hear the rush of water past the enemy hull, visualize the concentration on her bridge as they calculated the optimum time for dropping the depth charges. Hopefully, his maneuver of turning toward and speeding up would take them unawares. Suddenly he found himself remembering the nearly identical situation years ago off New London, when, by miscalculation of one of the student officers out for a day’s training, the old U.S. destroyer Semmes with her knifelike bow and the two huge propellers extending below her keel had come near to knocking Richardson’s first command, the S-16, into oblivion on the bottom of Long Island Sound. Semmes also had had a nick in one propeller. S-16’s periscopes were not, however, as long as Eel’s. There was now a full eighteen feet of water between the surface and the highest point of Eel’s structure. The Mikura could not draw more than ten. Fifteen at the outside. As soon as he passed overhead, Eel would slow down again and try to catch him with a stern tube.

Funny he should think of it. That was the day Jim Bledsoe had introduced him to Laura.

Stafford had been rapidly increasing the width of the arc covered by his sound head. The pings were coming in with undiminished strength no matter in what direction it was trained. Richardson could almost hear the echo bounce off Eel’s steel hull, even imagined he could hear a second echo reflected off the hull of the attacking destroyer. Here it comes, he thought. Idiotically, he remembered a line from one of his favorite books about sea fights in the days of sail. “For what we are about to receive,” one of the characters used to say, “O Lord, we give thanks.”

Stafford ran the sound head all the way around the dial. “He’s overhead,” he said. Richardson did not need this information, for suddenly the entire interior of Eel’s conning tower reverberated with the roaring of machinery, the sibilant rush of water past a fast-moving hull, the spitting thum, thum, thum of propeller blades whirling pitilessly in the water, one of them carrying a scar which made a sort of crackling sound as it went around. There was a vibration communicated to the structure of the conning tower. Richardson could feel the submarine shudder, move bodily in the water, as the enemy ship drove by.

“He’s dropped,” shouted Stafford. The sonar man reached up to his receiver controls, abruptly turned down the volume. The next second or two would determine whether Eel sank or survived. If the depth charges were set shallow, a thunderous explosion and tremendously increased air pressure coincident with the sudden roaring influx of water—or equally serious, a sudden extraordinary heaviness as water poured in through a hole in a more remote portion of the submarine—would signal the end for everyone.

Five seconds, ten seconds. . . . Click, WHAM! Click, WHAM! Click, WHAM! The depth charges sounded right alongside, tremendously loud in the tense stillness inside the submarine. A slight pause, then a crashing cacophony of brutal, ear-smashing noise as a whole barrage went off almost simultaneously. A cloud of dust was thrown up in the conning tower. The deck plates under their feet were shivering. The entire submarine hull resounded, reverberated, intensified the concussions. The long thin hoist rods of the periscopes vibrated madly, almost passing out of sight. Richardson could have sworn the periscopes themselves sprang out of shape and then returned. He was shaken so violently that for a second he must have become hallucinatory. He thought he saw the steering wheel knocked loose from the forward bulkhead of the conning tower, where Cornelli stood holding it, arms rigid and muscles bulging under his sweaty dungarees. Then, just as swiftly, Rich realized the wheel was still intact, in place where it should have been.

WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM! Six more depth charges going off almost together! Again the shivering of the steel, the bewildering effect of heavy equipment apparently disoriented, which, if it were true, would signal the destruction of the submarine. Pieces of cork flew off the sides of the conning tower. Dust rose throughout. Miraculously, the lights stayed on, dancing on their short wire pigtails. Quin, standing just forward of the opening of the deck which led to the now closed control room hatch, was knocked to his knees, fell into the cavity.

“All compartments report,” said Richardson. “All stop!”

Quin painfully picked up his telephone mouthpiece, spoke into it.

Cornelli clicked the annunciators to stop. The follower pointers, actuated from the maneuvering room, clicked over also to stop. Good, thought Richardson. At least they’re okay back there.

“All back two-thirds! Speed through water!”

Scott, who had been recording with a pencil on one of the pages of his quartermaster’s notebook, read the dial for him. “Five knots,” he said. “Twenty depth charges.”

“Let me know when speed reaches three knots,” said Richardson. “Tubes aft, bear a hand with number seven tube.”

“All compartments report no damage,” said Quin. There was relief in his voice. “Tubes aft will be ready with number seven in a minute.”

“Three knots,” said Scott.

“All stop,” said Richardson. “All ahead one-third! Number two periscope!”

He grabbed the handles as they came out of the periscope well, savagely spun the periscope all the way around until it faced aft, put his eye to it. “There he is!” he said. “Bearing, mark!”

“One-eight-one,” from Keith.

“Angle on the bow one-eight-oh,” said Richardson. Range, mark!” He turned the range dial.

“Two hundred,” said Keith.

“Open outer doors aft,” ordered Rich. “As soon as he turns one way or the other, we’ll shoot. Buck,” he went on, “give him a one-seven-nine-degree port angle on the bow, speed nineteen!”

Once more, for a few seconds, Eel had the initiative. He spun the periscope around rapidly, flipping it to low power in order to get a larger field of view. As before, heightened with the perceptions of imminent danger and immediate combat, his mind took in everything almost photographically. His first target had sunk perceptibly lower in the water and had rolled over even farther, so that, although not quite turned turtle, it might well be on the way to doing so. Its stern had sunk beneath the water, but the bow, probably held up by an air pocket, remained partly above the surface. Crowds of men were standing on the curved plates where her side joined her bottom, and crowds of black dots, the heads of men, were in the water around her. The second freighter was straight up and down, her bow silhouetted against the western horizon. Deck equipment, displaced from its normal position, was falling from a height of a hundred feet on both sides. Most of it fell into the area where her now submerged smokestack and deckhouse lay, and where most of the survivors also must be. One of the objects moved as it fell. Perhaps he had jumped.

The third ship, still more or less on an even keel, was sinking too, but more slowly. Her stern had sunk to the water’s edge, and around the bow Rich could see ten feet or more of red underwater paint. She had had time to get lifeboats out, and Rich could see two of them already in the water, apparently picking up other crew members.

Most important of all, however, was the appearance of the lead escort. The frigate which had been patrolling ahead of the two-stacked passenger cargo ship had headed over in the direction of her consort. Still some distance away, she was heading directly for Eel, zero angle on the bow, would be dropping her own depth charges in a couple of minutes. He swung back to the destroyer which had just depth charged him.

“He’s swinging to his left. Stand by aft. Open outer doors aft. Range, mark!”

“Four-seven-five,” said Keith. “Bearing one-eight-zero.”

“Angle on the bow, port one-seventy. He’s turning left. Crank in port one-two-oh, Buck.” The TDC dials whirled.

“No spread, Keith. We’ll shoot on periscope bearings as soon as you get your correct solution light.”

“Tubes ready aft,” announced Keith.

“Set,” from Buck.

“Correct solution light aft!”

The computer in Richardson’s brain was in command. His cross hair exactly bisected the bridge of the tincan. She was a war-built escort, nearly the equivalent of a destroyer. Designed particularly for antisubmarine work. Diesel-powered. Capable of at least twenty knots, maybe more. She was swinging left now, swinging a little more.

“Echo-ranging from aft. Long-scale pinging.” Stafford. “Echo-ranging forward also. Long-scale pinging forward and aft.” This must be the second escort.

“Stand by number ten,” said Richardson again. “. . . Fire!” The jerk as the torpedo started on its way. “Stand by number seven,” he said. “I think he’s slowed down. Give him fifteen knots!” The probability was that the tincan had reduced speed more than this, but her initial way would carry her on. He was gratified to see that she continued to turn to the left, that her angle on the bow had now approached his advanced estimate of 120 port. “Set in angle on the bow port ninety,” he said.

“Set!” from Buck.

“Light!” from Keith.

“Mark the bearing!”

“One-seven-two-a-half!”

“Set!”

“Fire!” he snapped a second time.

Maybe there would be time to do something about the other escort. He swung the periscope around. “New setup,” he said. “Angle on the bow zero, bearing, mark!”

“Zero-zero-five,” from Keith.

“Range, mark!”

“One thousand yards!”

“Stand by forward.” There was some delay. Buck must be cranking his dials like mad. Keith’s voice in his ear: “Outer doors opened forward, Captain. Ready to shoot forward. Tubes one and two. Ready with tube one.”

“Set,” again from Buck.

“Shooting observation!” said Richardson. “Bearing, mark! . . . Fire!” Again the jolt as the torpedo went out. Again the hiss of air, the rumble of water counterflooding the tube. One torpedo left. He aimed a little right of the onrushing escort. “Fire!” he barked for a fourth time in the space of forty seconds. He swung the periscope around once again, passed the sinking ships in a blur of kaleidoscopic disaster, settled on the escort vessel astern. He got there just in time to see a plume of water rise up amidships. At the close range, the reverberating roar of four hundred pounds of torpex arrived almost simultaneously with the sight. The torpedo must have gone off directly underneath the center of the ship, for it lifted her up amidships, irresistibly, like a huge, powerful plunger. She broke into halves. Her bow plunged downward on one side of the plume. Her stern slid down the other. In the middle of the catastrophe a mixed cloud of smoke, water, steam and debris continued to rise into the heavens. Then the water, and what had been a fine new ship, subsided, shrank swiftly down into nothingness, leaving only a pall of black smoke and huge ripples rapidly eddying from the center of the disaster. Black dust on a white disk in a mud-gray sea.

No time to play the spectator. He swung the periscope rapidly around—the other way this time (still all clear)—to the other escort coming in from ahead. She had put her rudder hard over, was already heeling far to starboard, swinging sharply to her left, in a violent emergency turn. He should never have fired at her. He should have known she would maneuver in automatic reflex to the hit on her consort. The geometry of that hastily conceived last-minute shot was totally destroyed, the torpedoes wasted. He swung the periscope farther left; as he expected, there came the third Mikura, hastening over to join her fellows, now reduced from two to only one.

Time to do one more thing. “Here, Keith,” he said, “you have time for a quick look.” He swung the periscope to the leading ship. Only a small section of her bow still protruded above the surface.

“Commodore,” he called. Blunt was alongside of him. Keith swung the periscope back and forth twice, lingered for a moment in the direction of the fourth and last ship in the column, now fleeing in the distance accompanied by a single escort. He stepped away from the periscope. Blunt fixed his eye to it, eagerly duplicated Keith’s maneuver.

“What’s the tincan doing on our starboard bow, Commodore?” said Rich. He grabbed the handles of the periscope on the opposite side from where Blunt was looking, turned it around to the approximate bearing of the last escort.

“Angle on the bow is starboard ninety,” said Blunt. “Range”—he fumbled for the dial, turned it. Rich performed Keith’s function, read the dial for him. “Seven-five-oh yards,” he said.

Buck, in his eagerness, could hardly keep himself from reaching for the periscope handles. Gently Richardson pulled Blunt away, propelled Buck to the periscope. Larry Lasche’s eyes were also alight with hope for a view, but regretfully Richardson shook his head. He allowed Buck no more than ten seconds, time for one quick sweep past the destroyed convoy, took it back himself, spun it around twice, lowered it. “Make your depth two hundred feet,” he ordered. “Pass the word to all compartments we have sunk three cargo ships and one escort, and we’ll probably hear many more depth charges before this day is over.”

He suddenly realized he was sweating profusely. Keith and Buck were no better. Their faces were beaded, as his must be. The temperature in the conning tower had climbed to well over 100 degrees, and the humidity, with all the vapor-producing, perspiring bodies filling it, must be 100 percent. The deck plates beneath his feet, once Scott’s pride for their immaculate condition, were a quarter of an inch deep in muck. Globules of moisture were condensed on the conning tower’s cold sides (anywhere the careful cork insulation was violated) or on exposed metal—the periscopes—which elsewhere was cooled by contact with sea water. Added to this was the perspiration which had dripped off their bodies and the debris which the near depth charges had discovered in the nominally clean compartment. All this had landed on the deck. They had been shuffling through it for what seemed like an age.

He was astonished to realize that from the time of initially sighting the convoy, only a little more than half an hour had passed.

At the ordered depth, two hundred feet, there was barely fifty to seventy-five feet of water beneath Eel. Richardson debated taking a sounding, finally decided he would risk it during a depth-charge attack, should another one eventuate. Until then the need to know whether one could go a few feet deeper was less important than the chance that taking the sounding would reveal Eel’s position to a now alert sonarman in one of the two remaining Mikuras.

But, though the screws and pinging of the two frigates could be heard for some time, Eel gradually crept away to the northwest, running as silently and as deep as she could. There was never any indication that the enemy antisubmarine vessels had ever regained contact, or even had tried very hard. Perhaps, as Al Dugan suggested during one of their postmortems later on, the fate that befell one of their number cooled off the ardor for battle of the other two.