Run Silent, Run Deep - Страница 44

Our bow planes up forward, normally housed against the side of the ship while on the surface, began to turn out and down- into the "rigged out" position for submerged operation.

I swung back to the enemy, just in time to catch the sec- ond salvo-a bit more ragged than the first. Four more white blossoms in the black ocean, no closer than before, thank God!

He had some kind of salvo-fire system, and was no doubt firing as fast as he could reload his guns, in a way a fortunate circumstance for us. Also, I noticed, his length had decreased and he was stubbier than ever. Obviously he had turned toward, was racing for us as fast as his engines would drive him.

Our deck dipped, went under. I was the last man left on the bridge. Time for one last look-a third. salvo coming- not at all together this time. The night was ripped again, once-twice-three times… "WHRANG!" I saw nothing but stars and bright flashes. A hit! We had been hit!

There was no other conscious thought. I was knocked against the side of the bridge, felt, rather than saw the open hatch to the conning tower yawning at my feet, Rubinoffski standing in the middle of the bole with the bronze lanyard gripped in his hand, the sea rushing up the side of the conning tower, gurgling and splashing. I lurched to it, sort of half-stumbled into the Quartermaster's arms, felt myself unceremoniously pushed aside and down as, intent upon only one thing, Ru- binoffski jerked the hatch lid down with one hand, spun the dogging hand wheel with the other. Not a drop of water came in, but it could not have been far behind.

I would have landed head first on the deck at the foot of the ladder had not a couple of pairs of hands gathered me 'm on the way down. "Skipper, are you all right? What happened?" asked a faraway familiar voice, Jim's.

I felt shaken, though otherwise all right. "We're hit!" I gasped. "Check." That was as far as I got. Jim whirled, dropping me none too gently, shouted down the hatch to Tom.

"Surface the boat! Blow everything!" He snatched the telephone hand set from its stowage, slammed it to his face.

"Silence all along the line," he rasped. "We've been hit by gunfire! All compartments report!"

There was silence, too. All you could hear was the sound of the vents going closed again, at least they apparently still worked, and the high-pressure air whistling into the ballast, tanks. In a moment I could feel the down angle begin to sta- bilize. It had been increasing rapidly, now it remained steady, but in a second or two it would start decreasing and we would:, shoot to the surface.

But what would we do then? We'd stand no chance against the gun power of our adversary. Even if our pressure hull had been pierced, we'd be better off trying to control the flooding and stay submerged, of course, it all depended on how big the hole was. I could feel my wits returning, pulled myself together, stood up. Jim spoke rapidly, covering the mouthpiece of the phone as he did. "Don't worry, skipper.

Blowing is just precautionary. If the hole is too big to stay down, at least we'll have started the boat on the way back up. If it's just a small one,"

He broke off, listening. "Make your reports in order, from forward aft, unless you're flooding!" he snarled into the phone.

He listened another second or two. It could not have been more than-thirty seconds all told since the hatch was shut be- hind me. With our emergency dive, however, Walrus had built up a terrific downward momentum. She was already well past periscope depth, with the down angle barely start- ing to come off.

"Tom! Open your vents and resume the dive!" Jim bellowed the order down the hatch. "Take her on down, there's no water coming in!"

Tom was quick to countermand his instructions of less than half a minute before. The vents banged open once more, and the high-pressure blowing stopped. Now I could hear the roar of the erstwhile trapped air streaming out of the sud- denly vented ballast tanks, and the bow and stern plane motors groaned as they reversed the planes once more.

"Conn!" It was Tom's voice, up the hatch. "Conn, aye aye!"

Jim answered him.

"Conn, I blew both safety and negative! Permission to vent them!"

"Granted!" shouted Jim. You couldn't tell that safety tank vent had been added to the others releasing air, but you certainly could tell negative, because it could only be vented into the ship, not overboard like the others. Having been blown dry at a deeper than usual depth, it had much higher air pressure than usual in it, and the resulting instantaneous in- crease in internal atmospheric pressure within the ship was distinctly unpleasant. Not that we minded it.

Our momentum problem was now in the other direction.

We had actually started Walrus on the way back up, even though the down angle of the dive had never come to the horizontal. All of our initial downward momentum, upon which the ship depended to get into the depths rapidly, had been lost. Now we would have to drive her forcibly down again, and in the meantime our friend with the surprise broad- side battery would be coming with a bone in his teeth. He would have a beautiful marker as to where we were and the direction we were going-in the huge froth of air bubbles he would find.

One way to fix. that. "Left full rudder!" I said to Oregon.

At least we could turn toward Mm, perhaps surprise him by get- ting under him and away. before he looked for us, certainly make his job a little harder.

O'Brien pursed his lips and shook his head. No chance for him with the uproar going on. I slung the extra pair of sonar earphones around my neck, leaned over for a look at the depth gauge. Eighty feet, just beginning to increase slowly!

The inclinometer mounted below it showed twelve degrees down angle. Maybe that would be enough.

I felt a hand reaching for me. O'Brien. He pointed to his sound receiver. Red flashes. I put the phones over my ears, heard the singing. No doubt this chap carried depth charges and knew how to use them.

One hundred feet. We were going down faster but I could hear screws now, fairly high-speed ones, not slow, chunking merchant propellers. Jim was silent, looking at me. I nodded gravely. "We're in for a depth-charge session. Better get set for it!"

As Jim gave the necessary orders I concentrated on listen- ing. We slowed down to creeping speed as we approached our depth, got there in plenty of time after all, and, sat there cursing the very name of this Jap who had so messed up our entry into his area. Of all things to fall for, a "Q-ship I winced at the thought.

He was pretty good, too, with his depth charges. Wham. wham!… WHAM!… wham! Four good ones, shaking up our guts, malting the insides of the ship ring. I felt a little weak in the knees. wham, wham, Wham, WHAM.

WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM.

He was good. Wiping the moist palms of my hands frequently on my trouser thighs, I tried to figure out his maneuvers, outguess him as he criss- crossed overhead. He was nearly as good as Bungo Pete, might well qualify as his little brother. He had not been able to catch us quite so near to the surface as Bungo had, but he was doing well nevertheless. And, of course, it takes only one depth charge to finish you, if it's close enough.

For hours Walrus crept along at deep submergence, while our enemy battered at her tough hide with depth charges.

Hours during which we twisted and turned, listened to his. propellers-a destroyer's high-pitched "Thum, thum, thum, thum, thum," twin screws, rather than the slower and more sedate chugging of the single merchant propeller this type of ship should have — had. Try as we would we could not shake him. His horrible resounding pings came steadily through our earphones, kept the dial of the sonar receiver flickering with red Hashes. First he would come along one side, pinging coldly and steadily, evaluating; then he would cross over, either ahead or astern, do the same thing from the other side. When finally satisfied he would pass overhead- or nearly so-and drop. just a few at a time, not many, aimed as accurately as he could. We would listen to the Q-ship's propellers, try to de- termine when he was starting a run for. real, when only to change position. Then, at the proper. psychological moment, we would put our rudder over, speed up, or slow' down a little, try to make him miss. Wham! Wham! Wham! WHAM!

WHAM! Successively louder, then diminishing again as he straddled us with his patterns. We got so we instinctively knew when the closest charge in any given pattern was due, and would cringe inwardly until we had felt it and survived.

We were up against a professional and everyone in the ship knew it. We went about our duties with parted lips and staring eyes, and the peculiar parched-skin condition, contrasting strangely with the continual sweating of my palms and the general high humidity inside the ship, was not entirely due to loss of body fluid.

Give him credit for putting us hors de combat, for it was long after daybreak before we got clear, of him and were able to come back to periscope depth, there to wait until night before surfacing. There might be a plane waiting to pounce on us, we reasoned, or some damage which, having once surfaced, might prevent our diving again upon necessity.

Before we finally got Walrus to the surface, a match would not stay lighted, nor would a cigarette bum. The slightest exertion brought the sensation of being badly out of breath, and a dull lassitude settled over all of us which took a determined effort to fight off. The first few breaths of cool, fragrant night air fixed that, however, and we turned to with interest to see what our topsides looked like.