Run Silent, Run Deep - Страница 25

I ran to the other side once again, looked once more.

There came a scream from the forward starboard lookout.

"Torpedo wake!" he yelled.

Startled, I looked up, followed his outstretched arm with my eyes. It was the wake Tom and I had just seen.

"Torpedo!" The after starboard lookout was screaming, too, pointing farther aft. I swung around quickly, hoping my night vision was coming back. Nothing there. Merely the waves and wind slicks on the water.

I had been unconscious of the weather, except for its slight oppressiveness. Now suddenly it intruded itself upon my mind. The sea was neither calm nor rough but in that betwixt- and-between condition that is bard on small vessels and, not even an annoyance to large ones. The wind, because of our radical course change, now came from our starboard bow, sweeping across our decks and whistling in our ears. The now rolled slowly and heavily, farther to port than to star- board, and occasional seas swept over our after deck. It was dark-a good night for murder. I looked back at the German submarine. She was still there, closer, if anything.

"What do you think, Tom?" I tried to speak calmly, but my voice must have betrayed the racing beat of my heart "Do you think he is chasing — us?"

Tom might have been about to answer when there came a loud cry from the port after lookout.

"TORPEDO, PORT QUARTER!"

This time there was no doubt. Another torpedo coming up on the other side. Close.

"Right full rudder!" shouted Tom.

"Belay that!" I screamed, right on his heels. The bridge rudder angle indicator wavered, then remained as it was.

"Tom," I said savagely, "nothing doing. That's what he wants us to do. As soon as we are broadside to him," I let that thought finish itself.

"Sorry, skipper," Tom muttered.

Seconds ticked by. Tom spoke again: "Maybe if we manned the gun and opened fire…"

"No. Too risky down there on deck." Then I had an idea, pressed the bridge speaker button. "Control," I called, "load and fire three green flares." Perhaps if the flares went up close alongside the German, or overhead, the glare might blind him to our position or scare him or otherwise dissuade his pursuit.

The torpedo coming up on the port side looked even closer than the first one, but, since we were stern to, it had to run parallel to us.

"Lookouts," I shouted. "The only torpedoes that can hurt us are the ones that come right up the stern. Keep a sharp lookout."

I had not given much thought to how they would be able to distinguish a torpedo wake in the wash of our propellers but perhaps they might, especially from the advantage of their height. Another idea struck me.

Tom, I'm going up on top of the periscope shears. Tell control not to raise either of the periscopes. Listen for me from there."

I climbed swiftly up to the top of the periscope support!

Three successive pops of high-pressure air came from same- where below as I climbed up, and when I reached there Tom called up, "Captain, three green flares away." Swinging my leg over the top of the steel towerlike structure I bestrode the top of the periscope shears like a man backward on horseback just in front of me was the bronze-lined bearing for the after periscope and immediately behind me was the round hole through which the forward periscope would pass.

Should the control room by accident raise either periscope I would find myself in a most uncomfortable position, if not indeed impaled by the blunt end of the instrument. In my exposed perch the wind whistled and tore at my clothes, and I was flung from side to side as the ship pitched and rolled. I grasped the periscope supports with my knees. Back aft four plumes of exhaust smoke spewed forth with a shower of spray, spattering water over our dock and onto the heaving black sea which would periodically rise up to submerge them.

I raised my binoculars. There he was, all right. I could see more of him from my high location. No doubt he was chasing us but we were making full speed, and were, fresh out of dry dock. We should be able to outrun him, although so far there seemed to be little indication that we were doing so.

Less than a mile away, nearer to fifteen hundred yards, the sharp-angled gray shape, low, broad, and sinister, plunged along in our wake throwing a cloud of spray and spume to either side. I could only see his deck in flashes as he plowed along, but the squat, square structure of his conning tower remained visible all the time.

The main thing, of course, was the possibility of more torpedoes and I searched the water between us. Running directly away from the German we presented a very difficult target.

Nevertheless there was always the possibility that a lucky shot might come our way. Two he had already fired, if one discounted the possibility of others we had not seen. He would not be likely to waste more without a better chance of a hit.

Conceivably we could fire one at him, though with no greater chance. It. looked like a stalemate. The German was hanging on, hoping, no doubt, that we might make a false move. If we were to submerge, he could be practically on top of us for an easy shot during the minute it would take us to get under. if we turned either way and presented our broadside, a torpedo would be coming instantly. Time crawled painfully while I clung with one hand and both legs to my precarious perch. The wind seemed laden with salty moisture and my dampened shirt clung around my ribs. My right hand ached from holding up the binoculars and my left one was numb from holding onto the ship. Walrus swayed drunkenly from side to side, reaching me now far over to starboard, now even farther over the water to port.

More time dragged on. Surely; a minute must have passed since Tom gave me the word that the flares had been fired!

It was supposed to take them one minute to function after being ejected, surely they all could not have failed to function, and then I saw it: a brilliant green star burst directly above and in front of the German submarine, lighting up the surrounding water and reflecting the gray sides of the German boat with an almost dead-white color. The flare descended slowly, brilliant beyond all measure. Then there were two of them, and before the first flare has touched the water the third had exploded in the air so that three brilliantly lighted green stars in echelon formation were suspended above the enemy submarine.

I had thought of turning away or diving, or both, when our flares went off, but neither action was necessary. I could, see the enemy boat clearly, every detail etched sharply against the black water, and as I watched she seemed to slow down; then her bow dipped and she was no longer there.

I climbed down to the bridge again, rejoining Tom.

"We'll keep going on this course for at least an hour, I said, "then turn south again. He can't catch us submerged."

Then the reaction set in and I found my hands shaking.

6

Our vigilance was intensified by our escape from the German submarine, and for a time our lookouts thought they saw torpedo wakes or enemy submarines in every whitecap.

But aside from several false alarms during the next day and night, the rest of our trip was uneventful and two mornings later we sighted the high tree-covered slopes of Santo Domingo rising majestically above the horizon. Some distance to the left, lower-lying and not yet in sight, lay the shores of Puerto Rico. Mona Passage, the waterway between, was reputed to be a favorite hunting ground for German submarines; logically enough: a large percentage of the traffic to and from the Caribbean Sea had to funnel through it.

I could visualize two or three wary U-boats lurking at periscope depth in the approaches. The bottom of the ocean on both sides, Caribbean and Atlantic, was already littered with the shattered hulls of our merchant vessels.

We went to the last notch of our speed, "All ahead flank," on the annunciators, the throttles jammed wide open, till the pitometer log dial in the conning tower registered twenty and a half knots. And as we neared the passage we stopped zigzagging and arrowed for it to get through as rapidly as possible.

Perhaps our stratagem was successful, perhaps it made no difference. Perhaps there were no German submarines there. At any rate, hugging the shores of the one-time Pearl of the Antilles, we roared into the deep blue, transparent Caribbean Sea, the storied highway of the Spanish Plate Fleet, and of Drake, and Morgan-and Captain Blood.

The Caribbean Sea is one of the loveliest bodies of water in the world. It is warm, usually calm and peaceful, always beautiful, seldom roiled by bad weather, but able to produce, almost in minutes, the most violent and unpredictable hurricanes.

Thus far in the war it had already proved a profitable operating area for German submarines. Somewhere, probably in one of the briefings just before leaving New London, I remembered having read a description of a proposal to convert it into an Allied lake. All the entrances: Yucatan Channel, Mona Passage, Windward Passage on down through the Lesser Antilles to Trinidad and the coast of South America, were to be closed off by nets, mine fields, and heavily armed patrols. A mammoth project, but the destruction the Germans had already wreaked during half a year of war in its freely accessible waters was also mammoth.

It took us two days to drive across its broad expanse. Two days during which we doubled the lookout watch on the bridge and kept all watertight doors continuously closed, not dogged, but latched shut, ready for instant dogging down.