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“We have only four torpedoes left, Commodore, but Whitefish has sixteen. We know where the enemy is sending his ships now, but only Whitefish is fully effective. What we need to do now is to position her in the middle of the most likely place, and then do everything we can to make the enemy come by.”

Another evening conference over coffee in the wardroom was in progress. It differed from its interminably long predecessors, however, in one salient feature: the ebullient spirits of the wolfpack commander. The physical reaction to his strenuous athletic exertions on the periscope, and the mental ones of conducting the approach and attack, had expressed themselves in extreme fatigue. He had announced he would nap for an hour, but instead slept so soundly that it had been necessary to shake him to announce the evening meal. In the meantime, Eel had surfaced and was now well clear of land in the broader reaches of the Yellow Sea to the west.

Euphoria was evident in Blunt’s animation and appearance. A decade had again dropped off his face. His eyes were bright and alert. The near-catatonic paralysis which had twice seemed to possess his thought processes was no longer evident. He was, Rich felt with a peculiar foreboding, again like the much-admired skipper of old. Instead of merely listening almost noncommittally to the arguments placed before him by Rich and Keith and, less frequently, one of the others, this night he joined eagerly in the discussion.

“The thing to do, Rich, is to put Whitefish in the Maikotsu Suido where we were, maybe all the way down at the southern end again. But how do we know the Japs will continue to run ships through it?”

“That’s the main part of the problem, Commodore,” said Richardson. “They won’t, if they think there’s a submarine there. So far, there’s still a chance they may not realize there’s two of us around. If they’re as confused as our headquarters sometimes seems to be, they might think a single boat got those four cargo ships the other day.

“After Chicolar was sunk we lay pretty low, remember, for several days. There was no reason for them to suspect more subs around, especially if they didn’t get their times well coordinated. That would explain their lack of air-patrol activity, and it might even explain Moonface. It would have been a great coup if he could have come in with proof positive of another boat in the area. Since we hit into that big convoy in the Maikotsu Suido, however, we’ve seen a number of aircraft. They’re obviously out looking for us. If they figure they’ve pinpointed our location they will probably feel other areas are fairly safe. We know one thing for sure: these ships moving up the coast of Korea are vitally important to Japan’s occupying forces in China. Remember the briefing we got just before getting underway.”

“What are you proposing, Rich?”

Keith’s eyes were fixed upon Richardson. This had already been discussed, and Rich knew he had the wholehearted support of his executive officer. “If we send the Whitefish in there, Commodore,” he said slowly, “and get detected ourselves some distance away, they might think the area is clear. . . .”

“You mean deliberately get spotted by aircraft out in the middle of the Yellow Sea? They’ll have their best patrol craft out looking for us, and they’ll be carrying more than just the two bombs we heard the other day! When they spot us they’ll keep the air saturated with aircraft! They’ll prevent us from surfacing, just as we did the Nazi subs in the Atlantic! Once we zeroed in on one we stayed there till it ran out of battery, and when it had to come up, we killed it!”

A long appraising look passed between them. Blunt was now again his old self, else there would have been no chance at all for Richardson’s scheme. As Keith had remarked, it made no difference whether he really had conducted a good approach or only thought he had. The effect would be the same. But though his confidence had returned, at least for the time being, his prewar submarine experience could not have prepared him to cope with the realities of aircraft. They were there, and they had to be feared, but one had a job to do regardless. Rich and Keith had realized this would be the point upon which the decision would turn. They would be pitting the vigilance of their lookouts against the speed of an airplane and an enemy pilot’s ability to deliver his airborne depth charges accurately.

“Yes sir,” Richardson said, “that’s just what I mean.”

The storm must have come straight down from the Gulf of Pohai, also known as the Gulf of Chihli, which was an extraordinarily apt name, thought Al Dugan. Swathed in foul-weather gear and oilskins, he, four lookouts and a quartermaster strove to keep an alert watch on Eel’s heaving, ice-covered bridge. This was a hell of a way to fight a war. Even though he knew the scheme was to decoy Japanese antisubmarine effort away from Whitefish, it was just Eel’s luck to have to do it in a freezing norther. His own immediate misfortune was to have to spend three more hours on the bridge sticking his nose in it. This was the second day out in the middle of the Yellow Sea, and nearly all the time had been on the surface in this cursed storm. The bad weather had probably kept enemy aircraft more or less closed in also, for Eel had seen only half a dozen planes during the entire two-day period and, although she had deliberately dived late, the planes had never approached closely enough to drop depth charges. It was even possible the submarine wallowing in the frothy sea had escaped detection amid all the whitecapped waves. For that matter, no shipping had showed up in front of Whitefish’s torpedo tubes either. At least, she had sent no messages. By agreement, while in the Maikotsu Suido Whitefish was to remain under radio silence unless her presence was revealed by an attack upon a Japanese ship.

Very likely the five cargo ships sunk during the past several days had represented a pretty fair percentage of Japan’s available shipping for the supply runs to China. This alone might explain Whitefish’s lack of contact; it was also likely that the Japanese convoy shipping officials were awaiting more certain evidence that the coast was clear before sending additional ships on the suddenly perilous voyage to the north. In the meantime, Dugan was thoroughly miserable. He hunched his shoulders inside his heavy garments, checked again to see that the hood of his parka was as tightly knotted around his face as possible. Even so, water was sneaking in, running down his neck, soaking the front of his shirt inside the fur-lined jacket which was under the waterproof parka. His mittens—he had worn a pair of woolen mittens inside a pair of leather ones—were soaked through. A thin sheeting of ice crystals had formed on the outside of the outer leather mittens, and they had lost all ability to keep out the cold. His mistake had been in thinking to warm his hands by shoving them in the pockets of his parka trousers. Water had somehow already found its way there, and it was not until he felt the wetness around his fingers inside the inner mittens that he had realized it.

The submarine was barely moving through the water, barely maintaining steerageway, keeping herself head on into the seas so that, should a sudden submergence be necessary, there would be minimal impedance by wave action. Also, to improve the diving time, Eel was riding well flooded down, her ballast tanks only partly emptied. She was consequently low in the water and logy in her motion, rising slowly to meet the white-crested waves as the sea thrust them relentlessly down upon her in monotonous procession. Always she rose a little, but never enough. The sea would burst through her bullnose and over her bow in a solid mass of green icy water which would then travel aft, draining swiftly away through her slatted foredeck as she struggled to rise beneath it. It inundated the forward five-inch gun and reached the base of the bridge with sufficient force to send another shower of spray and roiled white water solidly over the forty-millimeter platform to burst against the steel bulwark behind which Dugan and his bridge crew were huddled. The lookouts had been brought down from their perches high on the periscope shears, instructed to remain close together behind the bridge bulwarks. Watching the sky was the important thing, Al had told them, repeating the instructions that all previous Officers of the Deck had told the lookouts in their turns.

“Stay especially alert for aircraft coming in low to the water,” Richardson had emphasized. There was no use to caution the lookouts about planes diving out of the sun. Until the past hour, there had been no sun. It was also unnecessary to stress to the lookouts—as all OODs had—that there was plenty of recent cause for the Japanese to be angry at any U.S. submarine they might come upon. Hopefully, they might still be willing to believe a single sub was responsible for the sinkings in the Yellow Sea, and without doubt upon finding one they would bring it under the heaviest attack they could muster. Cornelli, quartermaster of the watch, had responsibility for the after section of the sky and horizon, backing up the two lookouts assigned the port and starboard quarter. Dugan himself served that same function in the forward sector. Cornelli was also responsible for regular inspection of all six pairs of binoculars on the bridge, and for providing new dry lens paper to take the place of the wadded-up hunks of wet tissue which, after a few minutes of use, were no longer able to keep the binocular lenses clear.

It was late afternoon. The sun was low in the southwest, would be setting in another hour or so. Back aft, the feeble sputters of a single engine exhaust, constantly drowned as the sea rose above it, were a reminder that the battery was fully charged and the propellers turning over at minimum speed. It was a reminder also that, beneath them, the people inside the submarine were warm and dry. Even the men in the operating engineroom, though they might be glad for a heavy jacket, would have no difficulty avoiding the blast of cold air coming in. They could have a sandwich or a cup or coffee anytime. In the meantime, Dugan was cold, hungry, and wet.

Eel was rising and falling slowly, alternately bow and stern, rolling slightly—not much. This was because of the large free surface effect of her only partly emptied ballast tanks. American submarines in the old days were considered to be unstable in this condition, and somehow the idea had persisted, but Dugan had never found it to be so. His only worries were the weather: the cold and freezing, the ice crunching about on the slatted bridge deck which made footing uncertain. Because of the cold he and his bridge crew moved more slowly, were more apt to slip or stumble, or interfere with each other. The railings around the hatch were slippery with frozen moisture. Getting six men below with bulky, frozen clothing would inevitably take longer than the eight seconds they had established as a standard in the sunny Hawaiian training areas. An occasional larger-than-usual sea would frequently come entirely over the bridge windscreen, drenching everyone. Were they forced to dive into such a sea, it was just possible the ship might go down more rapidly than usual, while at the same time the bridge personnel would be that much slower in getting below. This was one of the reasons why they had been brought down from their daylight perches on the periscope shears. All were no doubt very much aware of the problem, and their concern must have been increased by reflection upon the accident which had left Richardson and Oregon on the bridge a week ago.

It had been decided that the next time an airplane was sighted it would be the signal for Eel to submerge and remain submerged as if she really were intent upon evasion. Otherwise the Japanese might realize she was acting out of character and suspect she was decoying them. So far as Al Dugan and his bridge watch squad were concerned, this could not happen too soon.

The deeps of the ocean are always inviting to a submariner. It is only the surface of the sea that is sometimes harsh.

Heavy winds from the north had finally, only within the hour, blown away the leaden overcast. Visibility was excellent, the sky a brilliant blue in all directions without hint of a cloud. The sun, a low cheerless orb to the southwest, now approaching the horizon, had not been able to penetrate the intense cold. Even its usual radiant warmth had hardly been noticeable to Al Dugan’s benumbed cheeks. With visibility like this, any aircraft should be spotted long before it came close enough to catch the Eel on the surface with a bomb or depth charge.

On the other hand, the Japanese must be aware of this also. They would come in close to the water, as low as they dared to fly, having started their attack runs from beyond the visible horizon. Perhaps this was what was going on, for no aircraft had been seen for several hours. In this event, of course, or at night, when visibility was reduced, the airplanes would come in on radar. Eel had had a new radar-signal-detection apparatus installed during the previous refit at Pearl Harbor, and this gadget, known as the APR, had already been useful to warn them of radar surveillance. More than once during the past two days it had enabled them to be safely submerged when the Japanese aircraft arrived. Were an aircraft to make a radar approach from over the horizon, the man on watch at the APR would be the first person in the ship to become aware of it. Dugan felt a measure of confidence as he ceaselessly searched the air above the horizon through his dampened binoculars. He would see the Japanese aircraft before it came, or get warning of it from the APR set in the control room. He was tired of waiting, wished the enemy would come. It would be a favor.

“Bridge!” It was the bridge speaker on the underside of the bridge overhang. “Bridge, APR signal! Strength one!”

A steady signal at strength three, according to ComSubPac, was the time to dive. “Strength one” meant only that an aircraft radar was in the vicinity, probably many miles away. Al pushed the “press to talk” button alongside the bridge speaker twice by way of acknowledgment.

“Bridge! APR signal coming in and out. Maximum strength one. Looks like an aircraft radar searching back and forth.”

Dugan again pressed the bridge speaker button twice, using the heel of his mittened hand, for his fingers felt too numb to function.

There was a patrol plane in the air, probably carrying on a routine search in the Yellow Sea. The fluctuations in strength resulted from variations in the plane’s own heading as it patrolled back and forth on its search line. If it ever remained steady, particularly if it gradually increased in strength while remaining steady, this would be definite indication that the plane had detected the submarine—a steel mass in a watery one—and was beginning a run in. Even before it reached strength three, in this case, Dugan silently promised himself, he would pull the plug.

“Lookouts, look alive now!” he sang out. “There’s a plane in the area looking for us. He’s pretty far away, but he might come closer!” Everyone on the bridge was already well aware of the situation, he knew, for they also had heard the report from the man on watch at the radar detector set.

Long seconds crawled by in slow procession. Finally Dugan pushed the button again. “Control, bridge. What’s with that APR contact?”

“Still the same, Bridge. Getting stronger and weaker. Maximum strength one.”

A bell tinkled in Dugan’s mind. “Coming in and out,” the man had said. One of the stratagems the Japanese had used, he remembered, as had U.S. aircraft in the Atlantic war, was to vary the strength of the radar beam to give the impression of searching while actually homing on a firm contact.

“Control, bridge. Ask Mr. Leone to take a look at that contact.”

Keith’s voice came back almost immediately through the speaker. “Bridge, control. Al, I’m here on the set. Just got here. It looks like two radars to me, both on the same frequency and both of them are cutting in and out rather rapidly.”

“Control, bridge,” said Dugan into the speaker, “does it look like they’re on another contact?”

“That’s what it looks like, Al,” said Keith from below, his voice distinctly recognizable despite the bridge speaker’s less than optimum reproduction quality. “But so far as we know, we’re the only thing out here. Better stay on your toes up there. Maybe they’re playing games with us.”

“Double-sharp lookout, all hands!” shouted Dugan, carefully wiping up his binocular lenses again and swinging a careful search through the entire forward section of the horizon. The two forward lookouts would be doing the same, he knew, as would Cornelli and the two after lookouts in the other direction.

“Bridge, control,” Keith again. “Definitely two radars. Both patrolling, but they’re getting fainter now. APR strength one-half.”

Dugan pushed the speaker button twice in relief and at the same time mild disappointment. If they had only steadied up for a while, he thought, we could be submerging where it’s warm and comfortable. As he let go of the button the second time he realized he had momentarily cut off another transmission from Keith.

“. . . maybe up to their regular stunt, Al. They’ve already spotted us six times out here. They must know where to look for us.”

Dugan was about to reach for the speaker button to make another acknowledgment, had been leaning on the bridge windbreak with his binoculars over the edge, staring dead ahead at the horizon, when suddenly he noticed something. A tiny discontinuity, a thin dark line seemingly on the horizon, which suddenly disappeared. Instantly he knew what it was. “Clear the bridge!” he bellowed. He reached for the diving alarm, pressed it twice with his entire mittened hand, heard the reassuring sound of the diving alarm reproduced over the ship’s general announcing system. “Dive! Dive!” he shouted into the bridge speaker.

He stood aside to permit the heavily bundled lookouts and quartermaster to get down the hatch. As they did so, he heard Cornelli screaming, “Aircraft! Coming in from astern!”

Two planes! One ahead and one astern. They had been working a game! They had been coordinating their attacks! One coming in from ahead, and now one coming in from astern. Both flying low to the water. How far away were they? How quick could the submarine dive? The lookouts were clear. Cornelli, waiting, jumped into the yawning hatch. His bulky, heavily clothed figure completely filled the hole.

Dugan had not heard the vents opening or the diesel engine shut off, but he was aware of the main induction slamming home behind him. A sea traveled up over Eel’s bow, broke over the forward forty-millimeter platform, boiled up over the windscreen. She wasn’t diving yet—couldn’t be—but she was half-submerged anyway with this sea coming aboard. Water was pouring down the hatch all over Cornelli, who had less than a second before found the ladder and was descending as rapidly as he could. No time to waste. Dugan simply leaped onto Cornelli’s back, knocking him down the ladder, falling down himself, grabbing the braided copper hatch lanyard in his hand as he descended. The wire rope slipped through his hands, but he expected this, felt the toggle slam into his wrist. His feet touched only a single rung of the ladder as his weight on the lanyard pulled the hatch down with him. A deluge of water was pouring into the ship through the hatch. It stopped sharply as the hatch slammed home. He held down hard on the lanyard, almost in a sitting position, while Cornelli picked himself up, crowded past him, scrambled partway up the rungs of the ladder, and spun the dogging hand wheel shut.

“Hatch secured!” shouted Cornelli, through chattering lips.

There was half an inch of cold water sloshing around on the conning tower deck plates. No matter, it would quickly drain through into the bilges. “Take her down fast!” shouted Dugan. “Two aircraft making a run on us!” He released the lanyard, took two quick steps to the control room hatch, was gladdened to see Keith standing beneath him. The executive officer had evidently moved over from the radar detector and was now superintending the diving operation. He had himself grabbed the bow plane control wheel and was holding it on full dive. The lookout who would normally have taken the bow plane was standing beside him hastily pulling off his wet parka. Another lookout had the stern planes, was moving them to full dive as Dugan watched.

Dugan scrambled down the ladder to the control room, whispered hoarsely to Keith, “Two planes coming in, one ahead and one dead astern. They’re right on the water and coming in fast. Get her down as fast as you can!”

“Right,” said Keith. “I’ll take the dive for now. You rig for depth charge. Get the watertight doors shut!”

Without answering, Dugan reached for the announcing system microphone, “All hands rig ship for depth charge!” he said into it urgently. “Shut all watertight doors! Two planes coming in for attack!” Approximately twenty seconds had passed since the diving alarm had sounded.

Richardson had joined the tense group in the control room, had heard the last few words of the colloquy between Leone and Dugan. “How far away would you say they were, Al?” he asked.

“Two or three miles, maybe a little more for the one I saw,” responded Dugan. “I didn’t see the other one, but I guess it was about the same. Cornelli saw it just as I sounded the diving alarm. They were making a coordinated attack on us.”

“Down on the deck like that they probably aren’t going more than a hundred eighty knots That’s three miles a minute,” said Richardson. “About half a minute more before they get here.”

Dugan was feverishly divesting himself of his foul-weather gear, pulled the parka over his head, threw it on the chart table over the gyro compass in the center of the control room. A river of water ran from it over the linoleum top of the table, dripped to the deck beneath.

“What’s the depth of water here, Keith?” asked Richardson.

“No more than two hundred fifty feet, Skipper,” answered Keith, not taking his eyes away from the diving control panel. “We’re under now. Depth five-oh feet.”

“Go on over to a fifteen-degree down angle, Keith. We’ve got to get as deep as we can as quick as we can. Al, see that the sound heads are rigged in. We may hit bottom with this steep angle.”

“Aye!” said Dugan as he reached again for the announcing microphone. “Rig in the sound heads,” he ordered. “Forward torpedo room, bear a hand! Rig in the sound heads immediately. We may hit bottom. Report by telephone when they are rigged in.”

Instead of easing off on the stern planes to level the ship after her initial dive, as was the ordinary procedure, the stern planesman under Keith’s direction grimly held the stern planes in the “full dive” position. Eel’s deck continued to tilt down even more.

“All ahead emergency!” barked Richardson, vectoring his voice up the hatch to the conning tower. They could feel the increased bite of the electric motors as the electrician’s mates opened their rheostats wide.

“We’ll lose the bubble in the small-angle indicators, Captain,” said Dugan. “It goes out at ten degrees.”

“Let it,” said Rich. “Shift to the large-angle indicators. Pass the word to all hands to rig ship for steep angle. The planes will figure to catch us within a few seconds after we’ve completely submerged, and they’ll expect that we won’t be very deep by that time. We’ve got to get just as deep as we can—left full rudder!” He explained the order tersely. “Got to get off the track. Coming in from ahead and astern that way means they’re geared to drop their eggs right on line and ahead of our diving point. Can’t help it if it slows up our dive a little.”

The water which had recently fallen upon the control room deck had mixed with the carefully applied wax of a previous, less strenuous period. The linoleum deck had become slippery. The fifteen-degree dive angle, relatively shallow when drawn on a sheet of paper, assumed a strenuous, perceptibly out-of-horizontal attitude. Al Dugan braced himself against the corner of the table, still trying to peel off his outer clothing. Keith and Rich gripped the steep steel ladder, now leaning well past the perpendicular, which led from the control room to the conning tower. At its top the watertight hatch had been closed in response to the order to rig for depth charge. The two tool benches with padded tops, normally located on the deck just before the diving panel to provide seats for the men operating the bow and stern planes, had begun to slide on the deck. One of the lookouts, not immediately occupied, ranged himself forward of them, one hand gripping the side of the control room table, braced the other against the forward-most bench, kept them from slipping farther. Keith cast him a grateful glance.

“Seven-oh feet,” said Keith. “Fifteen degrees down bubble. Forty-five seconds since we dived.” The lookout whose place he had taken had by now removed his parka and foul-weather jacket, moved silently into position on the bow planes. Keith stepped back a foot.

“Fifty seconds,” he said. “She’s going down fast now.”

“Make your depth two hundred feet, Keith,” said Rich. “Hold your angle for a while, though, until passing about one hundred fifty feet.”

All watched the depth gauges as, with excruciating slowness, they moved onward to the safe haven of the depths.

Richardson was doing some rapid mental calculations. “At fifteen degrees down bubble, the stern of the boat is about seventy-five feet higher than the bow, or roughly fifty feet higher than the control room, where the depth gauge is. That means our stern has only been out of sight for about ten seconds. We put the rudder over just about the right moment—there won’t have been time for any noticeable change of course to be noted by the attacking aircraft. Since then we’ve changed course about thirty degrees to the left, which means we’re about one hundred yards off the track already, except that the stern is probably only about fifty yards off the track.”

There was a metallic thud followed by a clatter of loose objects from somewhere below. Muffled oaths came up through the hatch grating in the control room deck. A toolbox had slipped its moorings and had fallen to the deck in the pump room, no doubt bursting open and strewing its contents all about. Rich could imagine the cooks in their galley, one compartment aft, bracing themselves to hold dinner on the stoves. In the torpedo rooms, at least, the four torpedoes remaining were secured in the torpedo tubes, with tail buffers up tight. There was consequently no chance that a torpedo, poorly secured in a rack, perhaps with a faulty securing strap (a number had broken just in normal use), might get loose. He found himself thinking that the initial kick of the rudder would of course have been to starboard, and the propeller wash, no doubt visible on the surface, would probably have first indicated an apparent change of course to the right. A trained naval pilot, however, would not have been fooled. The propeller wash must still be coming to the surface. Sixty seconds had passed. The depth bombs must have been released into the water.

“Passing one-five-zero feet,” said Keith.

“Take the angle off the boat, Keith. Zero bubble.”

“Stern planes on full rise,” ordered Keith. Obediently the stern planesman, still swathed in his heavy rainclothes and submarine jacket, his face now covered with large globules of sweat, reversed the direction in which he was holding his control wheel.

“Ease the rudder,” ordered Rich. “Rudder amidships!” Eel was now some forty-five degrees away from her initial heading, and with her rudder amidships and her unusual down-by-the-nose attitude coming off rapidly, her speed went up another notch, to nearly nine knots. Nine knots to outrun an airplane coming twenty times as fast!

“Sixty-five seconds,” someone said. If they were dropping, they had already done so. Sonar, which might have heard the charges hitting the water, was of course blind, because the retractable heads below the keel had been housed. At this speed they could hear nothing anyhow. The acoustic frequency head mounted topside had been manned when the submarine dived, but its operator could hear only the wild roar of water through which the submarine was tearing at maximum submerged speed. It would not be long—it could not be long—they must have dropped. . . .

WHAM! A tremendous, side-splitting, careening blow! The fifteen-degree down angle which Eel had assumed had already perceptibly lessened, and it was no longer necessary to hold on to the steel ladder which they had previously been holding so tightly. Rich and Keith were, however, still gripping it, and they could feel it buckle within their grasp and then spring back to its original shape. The full shock of the depth charge seemed thus to have been communicated directly into their own bodies. Al Dugan, less securely braced, had perhaps felt the shock less but was nevertheless thrown to the floor. Something had gone wrong in the pump room. The sound of an electric motor increasing rapidly in speed, the normally inconspicuous whir of its running rising violently in pitch until it nearly resembled a police siren. This could be disastrous. Through the cloud of dust raised by the explosion and the confusion occasioned by the shock of its nearness, Rich was conscious of Keith and the planesmen standing steadily to their posts, rocked though they were, yet desperately fighting to maintain control of their leaping, quivering equipment. Throughout the ship the men on watch must be going through the same thing, silently and desperately, pitting their wits and their training against the blow of the enemy.

WHAM! A second explosion, louder even than the first. Then, almost coming on top of each other, WHAM! WHAM! Two more, slightly less loud.

“Stern planes jammed on full rise!” The stern planesman’s desperate shout instantly brought Keith and Richardson to his side.

“All stop!” shouted Richardson. This would at least eliminate the wash of the emergency ahead propellers against the stern planes immediately behind them, would reduce their upward thrust, which would otherwise have Eel on the surface within seconds.

“Shift to hand power!” snapped Keith. Releasing his control wheel, the stern planesman grabbed the shift lever, tried to pull it out of its socket in order to place it in the hand-power position. It would not move. Keith and Richardson placed their hands over his on the handle, braced their feet on the diving panel, pulled with the combined strength of three men. It snapped loose, and together the three shoved it into the hand-power position. Swiftly Keith reached for the folded-in cranking handle on the periphery of the four-foot-diameter stern plane wheel, pulled it out against its spring, set it into its socket. He and the stern planesman each placed both hands upon it, leaned their entire weight into the wheel, began laboriously, wordlessly, and with frantic speed, to crank it against heavy resistance toward the zero position.

Al Dugan, having picked himself up from the floor, joined Richardson. Keith and the stern planesman were cranking furiously. The stern plane angle indicator was moving, though very much more slowly than under hydraulic power.

WHAM! Another depth charge, and a few seconds later, WHAM! A sixth. No one paid any attention. The emergency was in the stern planes. They must be leveled before the boat took the up angle which could spell disaster. Already the fifteen-degree down angle had been reduced to zero. Now it was going the other way. Rich noticed with approval that the bow planesman, very much aware of the desperate struggle taking place immediately to his left and watching it with an intent look of dismay, had instinctively and without orders turned his bow plane wheel to “dive” to counteract the effect of the stern planes. At least, he still had control in hydraulic power, and since the propellers had been stopped, the immense effect of the stern planes upon the attitude of the submarine would be lessened. Normally, the submerged maneuvering convention was that bow planes control the depth of the submarine and stern planes its angle. Richardson put his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Good work, Smitty,” he said. Under the stress of the moment, unhabitual use of the man’s nickname came naturally. He turned his attention back to the stern plane wheel. The indicator was now nearing zero, indicating that the vital control surface had been restored to its neutral position.

“Good going, Keith,” said Richardson. “And the same for you, Blackwood,” addressing the perspiring and panting stern planesman. He was still dressed in the heavy clothing he had worn for his lookout stint on the bridge, and must obviously be pouring with sweat inside. It was hot in the control room. With all the doors and hatches shut and all bulkhead valves closed in the ventilation lines, there was no circulation of air. Less than two minutes before, Blackwood had been near to freezing on the bridge. Now he was roasting down below.

“All ahead one-third,” said Rich. “Do you want to see if you can put the stern planes back in hydraulic power?”

“We’ll try it,” said Keith. “What do you think the trouble was, Al?”

“My guess is that the depth charge went off pretty near to the stern planes while they were on hard rise, and jammed them into the stops. Didn’t you find it pretty hard to crank them clear in hand?” said Al.

“Right,” said Keith, while Blackwood nodded. “They went much easier once we started them moving.”

Richardson crossed to the general-announcing-system control station, punched the call button for the after torpedo room. “Stern room,” he said into the microphone, “is there any visible damage to the stern plane ram or hydraulic system?”

“Negative, Control,” said a voice immediately. “One of those depth charges sounded like it was right alongside, and it really gave them a jolt, but everything looks okay.”

“All right,” said Keith. “Go ahead and shift, Blackwood, but stand by to shift right back into hand power if you don’t have control in hydraulic.”

Gravely Blackwood operated the shift mechanism, tested his plane, nodded, reported to Keith, “Stern planes look okay, sir. I have control in hydraulic power.”

“Good,” said Rich. Then, addressing Keith, “Make your depth two-zero-zero feet. I daresay those planes will stick around awhile, so we’ll just stay down here until they’ve had a chance to get tired. Have all compartments check for damage and report.”

As was to be expected, the close shave with the two aircraft was the main topic of conversation throughout the ship. There had, however, been no damage. A fuse had been knocked out of the field circuit of one of the air compressor motors, causing it nearly to run away, but Lichtmann, on watch in the pump room, had been on the point of cutting off the air compressors anyway, as was routine on a dive. He had managed to cut the armature current before any serious damage had been done. It would be well, however, to check it carefully, Dugan reported, before using that particular air compressor again. Fortunately, the pump room harbored two of the vital mechanisms.

“At least, Commodore,” said Richardson, trying to make as light as he could of the incident, “they obviously had located us earlier, and carefully planned this attack. That means our decoy plan is working.”

“Too damn well, if you ask me,” responded Blunt. “Whitey Everett better have something to show for this, is all I can say!”

The wolfpack commander’s words were not a witticism. The two were having coffee alone in the wardroom. Clearly, Richardson’s scheme had gone too far for Blunt’s peace of mind. He must move carefully to avoid driving him back into the unrealistic state he had been in. Obviously, something serious, either psychological or physical, was happening to him. Keith had stated the obvious fact: stress of any kind was destructive to him.

Indeed, Richardson had already decided that the ComSubPac directive not to dive until the APR contact strength had reached three was obviously not applicable if an aircraft had previous knowledge of the submarine’s presence. During an attack run it would naturally reduce the strength of its radar signals to avoid alerting a radar detector aboard the target submarine. Henceforth, Eel would dive at strength one, or upon any persistent APR contact, whatever the strength. . . . He hoped there would be a message from Whitefish that night indicating that the stratagem carried out at so much risk had been successful.

But Whitefish sent no message. Instead was a message from ComSubPac:

RECENT BIG FUSS IN YELLOW SEA MUST BE DUE TO EFFECTIVE AREA COVERAGE AND SINKINGS BY BLUNTS BRUISERS X INDICATIONS INTENSIFIED ANTISUBMARINE ACTIVITY BY AIR PATROLS X CONVOYS STILL MOVING ON WEST COAST OF KOREA ALSO CHINA COAST CLOSE INSHORE X GREAT WORK JOE COMSUBPAC SENDS X

“They must be going around Whitey, Commodore,” said Richardson. “He’s in the Maikotsu Suido, all right, probably right in the middle of it. But this message says the ships are running close inshore, and my guess is they’re staying just as close to shore as they can get. They’re probably moving at night also, which could be another reason he’s not picking them up.” Rich had strenuously protested against requiring Whitefish to send radio messages. Japanese direction-finding stations had doubtless been alerted to locate the submarine in the Yellow Sea. If they should now recognize that there were two subs to worry about instead of only one, the risk to both would be intensified and the chance of targets for either greatly reduced. Eel could send messages for the time being, he had argued, for the presence of one submarine in the Yellow Sea was known; doing so, in fact, was desirable to draw attention away from the location of her wolfpack mate.

“I recommend we send Whitefish a message tonight that we’re coming in to join her in the Maikotsu Suido,” announced Richardson soberly. “We can send the message while we’re still out here, and tell her not to receipt for it or open up her radio in any way. We have four fish left, and if we’re lucky, we might be able to bag another ship. If we can get one out of a convoy running along the coast, that will divert the rest of them offshore into the middle of the Maikotsu Suido, and that’s where Whitefish will be waiting for them.” Rich could see that Blunt was somewhat less than enthusiastic.

“Why don’t we just tell Whitefish to go into shallow water?” said Blunt.

Richardson could feel his eyes narrowing. If Blunt could not see the obvious, somebody had to tell him. “Listen to me,” he said; then suddenly he realized that his voice had taken on much the same timbre as when he had protested Blunt’s callous comments about Joan and Cordelia Woods. “Listen: Les Hartly lost his ass and his ship because he didn’t know his business! It was our job to square him away, and we didn’t do it. He thought he knew all the answers because he’d been a skipper a long time, but a lot of things have changed since he made war patrols. He ran into a bear trap without even knowing what was going on, and they nailed him. It’s just the opposite with Whitey Everett. This is his first command. He’s not sure of himself. He’s good at the periscope, but he’s never made a surface attack at night, and you know he won’t. He’ll never go after those ships in shallow water, either, and we’ll just waste the rest of our time out here in the area. Dammit, Commodore, we’ve got to back in there! We know where the enemy is, and that’s where we’ve got to go!” The intensity of Richardson’s words clearly surprised the squadron commander. A lot depended upon Blunt’s reaction to Richardson’s harsh words. His mention of Les Hartly had been just right. Blunt hesitated. Rich moved in for the kill.

“Commodore, Les was away from the war too long. Things changed a great deal while he was in Mare Island getting the Chicolar ready. In a different way, the same thing is the problem with Whitey. Hardly anybody has figured everything out on his first patrol in command. Even you, sir. This is your first war patrol. You get to have a feel for the enemy after you’ve been fighting them. You can’t get it by reading patrol reports. Keith and I are the experienced ones. This is the sixth war patrol for me and the ninth for Keith. We know what we can do, and we know what the enemy can do. ComSubPac has some experienced skippers on his staff. He knows, too. He is practically ordering us to go into the shallow water after them, and he’s right.”

The squadron commander said nothing. His eyes flickered twice as he listened. Richardson realized he had carried the day. In a very real sense, command of the wolfpack had now passed to him. The patrol had already cost something in terms of mutual respect and friendship—this would merely add a little more to the price—but the way was clear for him to put his scheme into execution.

Shortly before dawn, having run at maximum speed to the east all night, Eel slipped between two of the islands at the southern edge of the western side of the Maikotsu Suido. Immediately she felt the current set to the north. Relentlessly Rich drove her toward the coast of Korea, intending to get as near as possible before it became necessary to dive. Perhaps all the aircraft patrols were far to the west into the Yellow Sea. Morning twilight was well advanced before the need to remain undetected caused him reluctantly to submerge.

By ten o’clock Eel was patrolling 2,000 yards off a point of land around which any ships heading up or down the coast would have to pass. It was an ideal spot for submarine patrol, provided one was acclimated to shallow water. There was no way traffic hugging the coast could avoid a submarine stationing herself here. Shortly after noon a single freighter, unescorted, chugged slowly up the coast, zigzagging perfunctorily, puffing a cloud of black smoke from obviously ancient boilers, secure in the information that ships had been passing daily, that no submarines were close in to shore. The approach was almost like a dance, simple in its execution, flawless in its performance, strenuous only in some of the details. With a slight stretch of the imagination, the maneuvers, the periscope work, the macabre ritual before the sacrifice, could be compared to the high leaps and entrechats of a dancer acting out the denouement of a tragic ballet. Shortly before Eel achieved the firing position, more smoke appeared to the south. The situation was exactly as Rich had hoped it might be. One last pirouette, a rising crescendo of music, a final leap before the graceful submission to the inevitable outcome—only the ending was barbaric because it was real, not fanciful, its artistry shattered in the thunderous roar of two torpedoes striking ten seconds apart, a cloud of smoke, debris, and steam rising from the vitals of the doomed ship—this too was real—and it was death, and murder, and war, and no longer artistic, but only dreadful.

And then the ship was gone, leaving wreckage floating about on the water, a matted slick of coal dust, junk and life rafts, and a single damaged lifeboat into which a dozen men climbed. More men were on the life raft, and more clung to pieces of wreckage. But some of them clung to nothing, merely floated motionless, scalded to death in the engine room or boiler rooms, broken by the shock of the earthquake which had overwhelmed them, converted suddenly from living sensate beings into the pitiless flotsam of war.

Far to the south, three columns of smoke turned sharply westward. They would move well out into the Maikotsu Suido before heading north again, knowing that the submarine so catastrophically revealed in their path could not possibly follow submerged. An aircraft would soon appear, did appear, circling the area of devastation off the little point of land. Richardson watched it all through the tiny tip of the attack periscope, barely exposed above the placid surface.

Four hours later Stafford reported distant explosions to the northward. Some of them, he said, sounded like torpedoes, but this must have been his imagination willfully embroidering upon the situation. No one at that distance could tell a torpedo from a depth charge.

He had, however, counted twenty-five or more explosions. Six of them, or perhaps as many as ten, judging by their timing, could certainly have been torpedoes. Whitefish must have got into action.

ATTACKED THREE SHIP CONVOY POSITION MIKE XRAY FORTY TWO X SANK ONE FREIGHTER X DEPTH CHARGED X TEN TORPEDOES REMAINING ALL TUBES LOADED X CLEARING AREA TO INSPECT FOR DAMAGE X. The message was sent in the wolfpack code and therefore required no identification as to addressee or sender.

“He fired six fish and probably missed with his second salvo,” commented Blunt. “At least he equalized his expenditure of torpedoes and has six forward and four aft ready to go. That was good planning.”

It was, of course, exactly what every submarine skipper should endeavor to do. Although considerable design effort had been expended, no workable scheme had ever been developed to permit torpedoes to be transferred from one end of a submarine to the other without taking them out of the ship. Even though dismantled into its three main components—air flask, warhead, and afterbody—the air flask was too long to be maneuvered around the bends in the congested fore-and-aft passageway, even if there were equipment to do it with. Obviously, a prudent submarine captain would do his best to equalize torpedo expenditures between the forward and after torpedo rooms so that the undesirable condition of having a surplus of torpedoes in one end and empty tubes in the other would not occur.

“Commodore,” said Rich, “I think we’d better follow Whitey and clear the area too. We’ve raised so much hell here in the Maikotsu Suido that they’ll have all of their available ASW forces out looking for us. By now they’ve got to know for sure that there are two submarines involved.”

“What do you suggest, Rich?” asked Blunt. There was a querulous note in his voice.

“This is the first time any submarine has gone into the Maikotsu Suido since the Trigger, more than a year ago. Before her it was the Wahoo, but they were the only two. Both were topnotch subs, with top skippers, and both reported this area as being difficult for submarines because of the high current and confined waters. No subs have come here since the Trigger, and the Japanese have had a clear run through here. No doubt they figured for some reason we simply were not up to sending any more boats here. Now, all of a sudden, they have lost six ships in the Maikotsu, and two more just beyond its borders. They’ve already saturated the area with antisub air patrols. They’ve got to know, now, there are two submarines here. They’ve got to stop all traffic, at least in this vicinity, until they find them.”

Blunt seemed to accept this analysis.

“So, all we’re going to find around here for the next few days are air and surface patrols. We have about a week left in the area, and I think we ought to try to get rid of at least some of those ten fish Whitey has remaining. If we move right away and catch a convoy running along the Chinese coast, the Japs might even think there are four subs in the Yellow Sea. That will likely make them shut down all their traffic for a while, and that alone will hurt them.”

Blunt appeared to agree, yet he remained irresolute. “There’s no reason for Eel to go over there,” he said. “Those two fish you have left aft won’t be much use.” The unstated portion of the argument, the important part of it, Blunt still could not see: without the presence of the Eel to drive her, Whitefish would find no more targets.

The discussion would have gone on longer. Richardson had not expected an easy victory. The degree to which he could push for his own point of view had to be balanced against the resultant stiffening, the psychological resistance which Rich had by now come to expect. Admiral Small, in Pearl Harbor, made it all academic. For the second time, his message was most complimentary: DEPREDATIONS OUR BOATS CLOSE INSHORE KOREA HAVE CAUSED JAPANESE FITS X WELL DONE BRUISERS, it said. Then it went on to the meat of the communication:

KWANTUNG ARMY EMBARKING TWO DIVISIONS THREE LARGE TRANSPORTS TSINGTAO X DEPARTURE IMMINENT X ESCORTED BY TOP ASW TEAM RPT TOP ASW TEAM NOW REDUCED FROM THREE TO TWO MIKURAS PLUS DAYLIGHT AIR COVER X INDICATIONS CONVOY BOUND FOR ICEBERG X WILL SORTIE DURING DARKNESS FOR HIGH SPEED DAYLIGHT DASH ACROSS YELLOW SEA TO COAST KOREA X MUST NOT RPT MUST NOT ARRIVE X COMSUBPAC SENDS X TERMINATE ALL OTHER OPERATIONS CMA MAKE MAXIMUM EFFORT X

On a moonless night in a cold but musty sea, Eel arrowed at maximum sustained speed to the northwest. The storm of the past week had blown away the customary overcast, but this could not last long in the Yellow Sea, and the cloud cover with its atmosphere of sea dust had returned. Somewhere to starboard, Whitefish was also running for the same destination. Now, the decision made, Richardson found himself unable to remain in the warmth and comfort of Eel’s below-deck spaces, or to participate in the interminable strategy sessions in the wardroom. Nor was there solace in the bellowing roar of four powerful diesel engines, the purposeful routine of the control room, or the quiet readiness of the conning tower. There was no interest left in the torpedo rooms; only two useless fish remained, both aft—well, not quite useless. If Eel could engage the escorts, take them away from the convoy, Whitefish had ten torpedoes with which to deal with the three troop transports. Eel’s two fish might give her some capability, should an opportunity develop, of handling at least one of the two remaining Mikuras. As to the other, he would simply have to take what came and do what he could. The important thing was to make it possible for Whitey Everett to carry on, for only Whitefish could do the job that had to be done.

Restlessly, Richardson wandered from forward torpedo room to after torpedo room. The supreme test of his career, of his command of Eel, was about to come. He must be ready for it, must meet it, without adequate weapons. Only once before, in his youth, had he been faced with a similar situation. On a camping trip with three other boys, all of them Eagle Scouts, they had come upon a female grizzly bear with young. The bear attacked, the boys ran, and she caught one of them. Rich had saved his life by making a huge show of attacking the cub, striking it with a stick until it bawled, with result that its mother left her victim and made for him instead. He had by consequence spent the night in a tree, from where he had continued to occupy the bear’s attention while the other scouts took their injured companion to safety. The totally unexpected conclusion to the affair was that the Senator from his state, learning of it from a newspaper account, had offered him a vacant appointment to the Naval Academy for the following year.

That had been nearly fourteen years ago, and there were some analogies to his present situation. The wolfpack commander had been quite right in his observation that the two torpedoes remaining, both in stern tubes, would be of little use. Perhaps they could sink one of the transports—indeed, if the chance offered, he would seize it. But Eel’s job clearly was to help Whitefish get into action with her ten torpedoes, and if necessary she must be prepared to take the required risk. If Richardson could divert the attention of the escorts, Everett would be able to make an unopposed approach. With the transports in close formation, as they would be, he ought to be able to hit at least two of them.

In the ensuing confusion Eel would have her best chance to evade the escorts. Then, if she could somehow get on the surface unobserved, and providing she had not been forced to expend her two now doubly precious torpedoes—how fortunate that he had insisted on taking the two extra fish!—there might yet be an opportunity to pick off the third troopship. Even if Eel’s torpedoes were all gone by then, there were still the deck guns. Or, by re-engaging the escorts (for they would have raced to rejoin their injured charges) Eel might still be able to provide the ingredient which would enable Whitey Everett to make one final effort.

The dangers of the course he was setting for Eel were, however, also very clear. With only two torpedoes remaining, and both of them in stern tubes, she was not in a good defensive position. There were, of course, the deck guns, and a single unescorted troopship might be attacked with surface gunfire; but the transport, too, would have guns. Furthermore, she would be calling for aircraft on her radio. A long fight would undoubtedly ensue, and the longer it lasted, the more the probability that an airplane would abruptly terminate it. A fight with the two escorts was even more out of the question; and should there be only one, whatever the outcome of such a battle, Eel would almost certainly be in no condition to pursue and attack anything.

The only place in the ship which seemed to offer what he sought—the silence, the solitude, the contemplative peace—was the alert quiet of Eel’s darkened bridge. Here he could come closest to the privacy his troubled thoughts craved. It was cold, but he had protected himself with foul-weather clothing. The air was calm and relatively dry. The cold did not seem to penetrate, even though Eel was surging through the quiet waters at maximum speed.

There must be a following wind. The exhaust from four main engines, spewing their diesel defiance into the dark Japanese-controlled sea, proved him right. With Eel fully surfaced and the sea quiet, the exhaust pipes were a good six inches or more clear of the water. The water spray and smoke were directed downward, but the smoke reversed itself, rose lazily in four tiny plumes which hung suspended above the ship as they continually rose and were continually fed from beneath, until they disappeared above into the dark night.

He stood silently against the after rail, bracing himself in the corner it made with the forty-millimeter gun cradled there. A few feet forward of him, two lookouts and a quartermaster, maintaining their vigil, paid him no attention. Farther forward loomed the bulky after portion of the periscope standards, and beyond them the bulletproof bridge bulwarks and windscreen in which he could dimly make out the round heads of the Officer of the Deck and two more lookouts. He had forgotten to notice who had the deck—no, he hadn’t forgotten; it was Al Dugan, who had reported as Rich came on the bridge that the most recent survey of the hydraulic system indicated it was performing as well as could be expected, but would require another thorough overhaul upon return to Pearl Harbor.

Bungo Pete had not been in his mind of recent days, had been pretty well driven out of it by the emergency over Joe Blunt. Moonface had also helped him forget for a time. It occurred to him that he might have happened upon the motivations behind the pseudo samurai. Ambitious he undoubtedly was. He was also imbued with the idea of rediscovering an ancestral culture, which, in California, must have been ridiculed. Had he been able to bring in the broken commanding officer of a second submarine, after the destruction of Chicolar, his status among his fellows would have risen high indeed; but it would have risen highest in his own recently repatriated mind.

Now, in a moment of understanding, Richardson could see why his occasional images of Bungo Pete, in reverie or nightmare, almost always were a composition of persons he knew and admired. Sammy Sams, from Walrus’ training days in Balboa; funny that he should have so stuck in his mind. Joe Blunt, naturally—before the present patrol. Jerry Watson, occasionally. Admiral Small. But never Moonface. Moonface was the antithesis of Nakame, of all he admired in his superiors, all he could admire and appreciate in an enemy. Yet even though Rich could admire such an enemy as Nakame, he could at the same time set in motion the events which, because there was a war, might result in Nakame’s death no less surely than that of an enemy despised.

Or his own death. That was never far from the equation.

In the effort to restore Blunt there had been another motive, of course: that of regard for a once-adored superior. He had done all he could, all he knew to do. And he had failed—that he now recognized. The occasional strangeness, the lack of sensitivity, even Blunt’s new habit of speaking in a series of tired clichés, were evident at Pearl before the patrol began. The wonder was that Admiral Small had noticed nothing. Perhaps more accurately, the admiral had not realized that what he had seen was deeper than mere staleness at a desk job. Otherwise Small would never have permitted Blunt to go to sea.

Lately Rich had begun to feel Blunt’s difficulty was more than psychological. The mind which only a few months ago had been so precise, so capable, so courageous, now could not stand stress or responsibility. Keith must be right: while some sort of psychological breakdown could not be ruled out, the signs pointed to something physical. His shifts of mood, even of capabilities, were too sudden, too extreme, to be merely a state of mind or emotion. Keith had suggested taking Yancy, the pharmacist’s mate, into their confidence, but Rich refused, agreeing finally only to Keith’s borrowing, without explanation, some of the texts Yancy had stowed in his medical locker. But the books, which both Keith and Richardson studied surreptitiously, gave little enlightenment beyond appreciation that a number of obscure influences could be at work.

Bungo Pete and Moonface were both now in the past. He had killed Nakame. This was something that had to be done. But he had refrained from killing Moonface when he had the chance. And of the two, Moonface unquestionably deserved destruction far more than Bungo Pete. But the destruction of Moonface would have had no meaning. Bungo had been an honorable opponent, a respected—if feared—enemy. Moonface was a sadistic maniac. Why had he stayed his hand with Moonface? Why had he not taken him prisoner when he had the opportunity? Was his failure to do so an indication of an unexplained weakness within himself that responded in some peculiar inverted way to the stresses of war? Or was he losing his sense of proprieties under the stresses of war and combat? Was he, somehow, equating the mercy shown Moonface as, in some strange way, expiation of the blood sin he had committed against Nakame?

But in a larger sense, what was sin? In a disordered world, could one hold to any fundamental of order, or must one’s basic sanity, one’s sense of right or wrong, also be laid upon the altar of conflict? The war had been begun by evil men controlled by ambition and greed, but even they had ceaselessly announced the holiness of their aims, the legitimacy and rightness of what they sought to accomplish. Did they believe their own propaganda? Of this, of course, he had no way of knowing, but it was at least possible that they did believe it. Furthermore, millions of good men, not involved in the high political machinations which had resulted in the war, believed it because they had to. They had no other choice. Yet, in so doing, they sacrificed their own individuality, their own clearness of perception, their own birthright of humanity.

He, Edward Richardson, Commander, U.S. Navy, encased in his steel prison which was also his instrument, his pride, and his weapon, his submarine Eel, his samurai sword, was only a tiny piece of flotsam amid the jetsam of the world. Yet he was master of the destiny of eighty men on board, in a way controller of the destiny of eighty more men in another submarine a few miles away. He had set them once again hurrying through the night on an errand at the end of which, if all went as he planned it, lay death and destruction for hundreds, possibly thousands, of human beings who had neither done him offense nor could do so even if they were aware of his existence.

Joan and Laura. The second his ideal (he now admitted this to himself), but for a hundred reasons forever unattainable. The other real, warm flesh and blood, greatly giving, yet somehow soiled by the war that had blemished him too. They also were flotsam among the jetsam of the world, drifting helplessly down the path fate had allotted to them. Just as he was.

Eel dipped gently in the slowly rolling sea, speeding forward into the darkness. Destination: the coast of China, her four diesel engines roaring at flank speed, carrying fate within her bowels. But fate, real enough in so many ways, had little to do with the two torpedoes she had remaining of her original armament.

Deep under the surface of the Yellow Sea, a single shielded light had burned long in an otherwise darkened compartment. Two men had sat hunched in their seats, the corner of the table between them, staring at the chart spread upon it, measuring distances and dimensions with navigator’s dividers, studying every feature. Committing it to memory, as though it had not been before them nearly every night, in one form or another. Conversation was low, sparse, and in quiet tones. It would not be right to awaken those who needed their rest. It was against the unspoken code of the combat submariner to disturb anyone’s sleep except to call him for a watch, or because of some emergency. But this was not the reason for the deep quiet in which Keith and Richardson had conducted their private conference.

Elsewhere in the submarine, the regular ordered bustle of one-third of the crew standing watch prevailed as usual. The men on telephone watch in each torpedo room; the enginerooms with their great, indomitable diesels; the electrician’s mates with their extraordinary, complex, switching cubicles; the cooks in their tiny, efficient galley; the quiet, methodical nerve center in the control room; the silent, ominous conning tower. Here, in the empty wardroom, with the others busy elsewhere or snatching a few hours’ rest in their bunks against the next day’s trials, skipper and exec spoke in lower than normal voices in intuitive recognition that they were planning to force action upon another man, and the eighty men of his crew, whom the fortunes of war had placed temporarily under their control.

Whitey would not run his ship close in to shore. He could be efficient only where he had sufficient depth of water to be comfortable, though no submariner could really be comfortable in the Yellow Sea. But he would not run into shallow water. Yet the coastline of China, particularly in the area around Tsingtao, was virtually all shallow water. And it went without saying that the enemy ships were choosing the shallowest water of all, barely deep enough to avoid running aground in the ageless muck the rivers of China had been carrying down since the beginning of history.

It was up to Richardson to bring the Whitefish into combat, to pass the rapier of action from his own spent hand to that of Whitey Everett, and, in the name of Blunt, cause Whitey to fulfill the mission on which so much depended.