Run Silent, Run Deep - Страница 10

Set into the steel walls on either side were two tiny round windows, or eye-ports made of thick glass. Occasionally some member of the crew would watch a dive from there or seek some of the mysteries of the undersea from this vantage point.

In the floor was a hatch identical to the bridge hatch, thus permitting complete isolation of the compartment should it be- come necessary. Like the bridge hatch, its weight was counter- balanced by a large coil spring, — too much so, as a matter of fact and now that it had become "worn in" a bit the hatch, during the last few days, had developed an unpleasant tendency to resist being closed or to fling itself open when undogged.

As I reached for the hand rail preparatory to continuing below, Jim appeared, standing on the control-room deck framed in the open hatchway.

"Bridge!" he shouted.

"Bridge, aye, aye!" answered Keith from above.

"Take her down!" Jim shouted. "Course two-seven-oh!"

Looking upward, I could see Keith's face as he leaned over the hatch opening, cupped his left hand to his mouth.

"Permission to check the hatch first, sir!" he answered.

The light from the hatchway was in Jim's face and I knew he could not see me. Keith already had hold of the hatch, had swung it part-way shut. "It'll just take a minute, Jim" he yelled. "-okay?"

The past four days had been hell for Jim, and I could most strongly sympathize with his feelings at this point. Even so, his next action was unwarranted.

He shook his head in an impatient negative. Hands gripping the ladder rails and head thrown back, he shouted imperatively up the opening, "Take her down, I said!"

Keith had no further choice. "Clear the bridge!" he called in answer. A moment later came the two blasts of the diving alarm.

I stepped clear of the lower hatch, drew back into the recess of the conning tower near the eye-ports. Watching through them as our narrow slotted deck went under and the sea rose up to meet us had always been irresistibly fascinating to me, and I was never tired of an excuse to do so.

With the diving alarm still reverberating, one lookout and then the other appeared, scurrying down the ladder. Both continued straight on through the lower hatch to the control room below. Next came Rubinoffski, and then Keith. In the mean- time from the control room there were sounds of air escaping as the vents went open.

The first intimation of something wrong was the noise made by the hatch as Keith pulled it to. Instead of the satisfying thud of the latch snapping home and the gasket seating on the rim, there was a peculiar, arresting clank to it.

Keith's face went dead-white. I leaped to his side as he struggled with the hatch dogging mechanism. A glance disclosed the trouble. Somehow the dogs had not been fully retracted when the hatch had been opened the last time, and now, by the narrowest fraction of an inch, one of them was caught between the hatch and its seat!

Nor was this all. The latch, having enough slack in it to latch easily, had entered its slot and engaged. Try as we could, Keith and I could not push it free, nor could we budge the dogging mechanism. The hatch was locked in its present position, with daylight showing all around the edge by a matter of an inch or so. Jammed as it was, the only way of clearing it was with a maul and a heavy screwdriver or chisel.

I could sense, rather than feel, S-16 settling beneath us as my mind encompassed the significance of our situation. There was no maul to be had in the conning tower, nor any time to work on the hatch if there were. Our only hope lay in stopping the boat from diving.

"Stop the dive!" I yelled down the hatch at my feet. "Hatch jammed!" in an effort to let the control room know what was wrong. Our "hull openings" indicator, or "Christmas Tree," might still be showing red for the bridge hatch, though there was a strong possibility that since the hatch was nearly shut, it might have gone green.

In answer there came a whistling noise from below, and air commenced to escape through the partly open hatch. With a groan I realized the control room had not heard my order and was carrying out standard diving procedure, admitting high pressure air into the boat as a test for tightness. If the barometer went up and then held steady after the air was shut off, it indicated that the hull was airtight, hence watertight. A good test under leisurely circumstances, but worse than useless in this instance because the boat was not watertight, and it was already diving. Not until the control room shut the air valve in order to check the barometer would the ship's in- ability to hold air become evident. In addition, until then the noise made its personnel unable to hear anything we might shout down the hatch from the conning tower above.

In the meantime I could feel S-16 tilting her nose down.

It was still only about twenty seconds since the diving alarm had been sounded, but we had only about the same number of seconds left.

"Leone," I snapped. "Get below and surface the boat."

Keith gave me a scared look and bolted below.

Undecided as to my next move, I stood there, feeling far from heroic, half standing on the ladder and hanging on to the hatch wheel with both hands. I looked it over carefully. The latch, the immediate cause of the jamming, was partly home under the rim of the hatch seat. Made of a piece of steel about a quarter of an inch in thickness, it offered only a relatively sharp edge to push or hammer on. Attached by a linkage to the latch, so that it would retract when the latch engaged, was a short bolt supposed to intersect the spokes of the hatch hand wheel when the hatch was fully open to keep the hand wheel from turning. The bolt was retracted, all right, as it should be, but the hand wheel still would not turn in either direction. Three of the four hatch dogs had slipped past the inside edge of the hatch seat, but one was clearly caught on top, jammed between the seat and the hatch itself. With one dog jammed one way and three the other, the hand wheel was effectively prevented from any movement whatsoever.

The only way to clear the jam was to push back the latch, open the hatch, reverse the hand wheel so as to take up the lost motion, retract the dogs, and haul it shut again. Standing on the second rung of the ladder to reach it, bracing myself and wrapping my left arm around the rail I pushed an the latch with all my might with my right hand. Nothing happened.

I tried hammering it with my clenched fist, bruising the fleshy part of the hand in the process. Still no luck, though my hand ached.

Suddenly the noise of air blowing stopped from the control room, though air still hissed out the open ring around the hatch. In a second I heard the noise of the main vents shut- ting and more air blowing, a different note, as high-pressure air whistled into the main ballast tanks. Keith had gotten through and surfacing procedures had been started.

But there could be no stopping the downward momentum of a thousand tons of steel. Suddenly I heard a gurgling sound.

A quick look through the nearest eye-port was rewarded with a splash of sudsy foam; then another and then suddenly there was green water and the daylight in the conning tower grew dimmer.

Air continued to hiss out above me, as the slightly increased pressure in the reservoir of S-16's hull equalized to atmosphere.

I could hear water climbing quickly up the watertight structure.

Obviously the boat would not stop before the open hatch went under. There was no telling, in fact, how far she might go down, and maybe the sudden inrush of tons of water into the ship would overbalance the slight amount of positive buoyancy we were gaining by the air-going into her tanks.

At this point I don't remember any further conscious thought about it. Once the hatch went under, water would rush into the control room, sweeping people away from their stations, shorting the electrical equipment, generally making a mess of things and possibly knocking out the bow and stern planes, the main motor control, and the high-pressure air manifold on which our safety now depended. If the control room were flooded, nothing could keep the ship from sinking to the bottom of Long Island Sound. Perhaps some of the crew would be able to shut watertight doors leading forward or aft, but men trapped in the control room would certainly be drowned, while those who managed to save themselves from that fate would be faced with the prospect of slow suffocation if for any reason the rescue bell or the Momsen lung device could no be used.

It is said that a drowning man sees his whole life flash before him. Perhaps my sensation at that moment was some- what the same. Certainly it could have taken me no more than a second to race through all these possibilities.

Water, which had been gurgling up the sides of the conning tower, now reached. the hatch-there, meeting the gush of air still streaming out, it blew idiotically backward, and only a few drops fell inside.

From my position on the ladder I could see into the control room through the still-open lower hatch. I leaned toward it and roared, "Shut the hatch!" just below it stood Tom Schultz, and I caught a glimpse of his twisted face as, with- out a word, he reached up, grabbed the hand wheel and tried to pull it down. It was awkward for him and the spring resisted movement. He had the hatch almost closed when it swung partly open again. I sprang off the ladder and landed on the top of the hatch, holding it shut with my weight while Tom spun the hand wheel between my feet from below, sealing it tight.

Instantly a deluge of cold sea water hit me in the back, knocking me to my hands and knees. I struggled to my feet in a veritable Niagara of angry ocean pouring into the conning tower. I still remember a moment of wonder at the tremendous amount of water that came in despite the fact that the hatch was actually ninety per cent closed. It rose rapidly in the tiny compartment, and I could feel the pressure on my ears as the air was compressed. Ultimately, of course, a condition of equilibrium would be reached, and the air would commence to bubble out through the hole at the top. Frantically I searched the overhead for some high protected corner where I might be able to find a few gulps of precious air when the compartment became entirely flooded.