Run Silent, Run Deep - Страница 68

"PLANE! PLANE!"

Keith and I looked over our shoulders instinctively. It was there, all right, a big four-engine patrol boat. It was coming right at us, the four big propellers glinting in the sun, the straight-across Japanese wing a thin, horizontal line bisecting them.

"Clear the decks!" I yelled. I reached down, pulled the toggle handle-our air-operated foghorn blasted its warning. Then, "Clear the bridge!" Keith and the lookouts dashed below. The men down on deck came racing up. Oregon almost flew up from his barely over-the-side perch. When Williams, the last man off the deck, had almost reached the bridge level, I sounded the diving alarm.

"They'll be all right in the rafts, I told them we'd come right back up for them," Buck said, as he ran past me.

"You bet!" I thought, "and we'll surface under the plane and smash it to bits if it lands to capture them I"

Our vents were open, air whistling out of them, as I gave a last look around. The plane was a fair distance away; we'd get down in time. But as I looked forward my heart froze like a stone in my chest. The heaving line Scott had used was still fast to the starboard forward cleat, and our bow was already dipping toward the sea!

Instantaneously my mind encompassed the inevitables.

Within seconds we would be submerged, dragging the line, and instantaneously my mind encompassed the inevitable Within seconds we would be submerged, dragging the line, and the two rubber boats, with us. The three fliers would be dumped into the water. In their condition their survival for even a few minutes was a foregone impossibility. Even if we did come back for them, all we would find would be bodies, half-chewed by fishes attracted by the blood.

It could not have taken me more than a third of a second to assess the grim results of our carelessness. My carelessness in allowing the line to be made fast to the ship, Buck's in not cutting it free during the half a dozen seconds he had waited for Oregon, down on deck. All of ours, for not having anticipated the possibility of this very situation days ago.

Keith's head was framed in the hatch. "Skipper!" he shouted.

"Take charge, Keith!" I yelled the words at him while running to the after part of the bridge where the rail was cut for access to the deck.

I leaped down, raced forward. The bow had just begun to dip when I got there, water barely sliding over the deck.

Furiously I ripped at the heaving line. It was made fast in a Hitch; no loop to pull to release it. I cursed aloud! No knife in my pocket! How could I have been so improvident? The cleat was well under now, my hands buried inches, a foot-under.

The water rose rapidly to my face, the current due to our increase in speed on diving tugging at my arms. Frantically I pulled. My feet slipped, and I plunged into the cool water, sitting down facing aft, legs on either side of the cleat. This kept me from slipping further, and I concentrated on the now, soaked knot while I held my breath and tried to hold myself against the rising panic. "Take it easy, take your time; take it mV, take your time!" I said it over and over to myself, as the rush of the water bent me over the cleat. My ears began to hurt. We must be pretty deep now. I pulled again, got my fingers under some part of it, yanked with both hands and what must have been superhuman force, felt the line come free and slip swiftly from my hands.

Painfully I braced back against the rush of water. I got both hands against the end of the cleat around which my legs were spread-eagled, pushed with everything I had. There was a terrific pain in my groin, paralyzing, digging deep into my insides. I doubled over, clutching my abdomen, felt the pain and me and the suffocating roaring in my ears chasing each other around and around and around.

I must have been out for a moment, for the next thing I Remember was bright sunlight and the most exquisite, excruciating pain I have ever felt. I was floating in the water, one arm hooked in one of the life rafts, my head pillowed on the rubber inflated edge. Something was holding my arm, and a voice was saying something I couldn't understand. I shook my head, looked up. A deep gash of agony made me double up again.

The spasm passed, leaving a quick, throbbing ache, and I managed to raise my head. "Hang on!" the voice said. It was the flier who had caught the heaving line. He was holding on to my arm like grim death itself, his face contorted, bloodless.

It was obviously he who had pulled me, somehow, half into the rubber raft and held me there while I regained my senses. It, too, in his condition, must have called for a nearly superhuman effort.

"I'm all right now," I managed to say, and made as if to struggle aboard. Waves of acute ache pervaded my entire abdominal section, and I had to stop. Resting for a moment and gasping with the pain, I tried it again, this time tumbled head first into the soft rubber bottom of the raft.

"Easy, fella, that's mah busted leg!" the flier said. I twisted around carefully. "Are you the skipper?" he asked in a different, tone. I nodded, clutching my knees to my chest to ease the pain, cradling it.

"I don't know how you did it," the flier said. "When your boat started diving I saw the rope tied up yonder, and I just naturally figured we'd had it after all. Then you came flying out to untie it, and then you-all went under, and the rope started to pull us over to it and we were about going under ourselves before you got it loose."

A shadow flitted across us. I looked up. "There's the son-of- a-bitch that brought us all the trouble," the flier said. It was the Jap flying boat, all right, flying low over the water to take a good look. It passed not far off, made a circle, passed again, then roared off to the north.

My ache subsided a little, and I straightened up gratefully. the sub will stick around to get us," I told him "They'll surface as soon as the plane goes out of sight for good."

"Hope that's pretty soon. My men are bad hit." He shifted to give me a little more room, winced with the silent hurt Of it. The bottom of the rubber boat had a puddle of diluted blood in it.

I looked at the other boat. The two men were still, lying quietly within it, only their heads showing. Their boat bobbed helplessly in the vast lonely expanse of the ocean. The water, which had seemed virtually flat calm from Eel's bridge, see-sawed the rafts uneasily.

"Are they unconscious?" I asked him.

"They weren't when they got in it. Maybe now they are."

In the distance the flying boat went out of sight. I tried to sit up straighter, to disregard the discomfort it brought. "Can you see the periscope of my sub?"

"Nope. Never seen one. What does it look like?"

"Like a broom handle, floating straight up and down," I said. "It ought to be around here somewhere."

Presently he nudged me. "There's a broom handle." I looked where he indicated, saw the Eel's periscope approaching. I waved violently, involuntarily rocking the boat, to show Keith that I was all right. The periscope began to rise higher. Keith was surfacing, or about to surface.

The flier nudged me again. "There's that Jap bastard again!" To the north, sure enough, the now-familiar outlines were all too evident, coming back. Heedless of my companion's protests, steeling myself against the waves of pain, I stood up, braced myself on his shoulders, pointed determinedly down. I made several violent hand signals, shook my head from one extreme to the other, pointed to the north. A bubble of white burst astern of the periscope, and its length began to decrease. I saw the quick glint of the eye-piece as it turned in the direction I had pointed, and sat down again, relieved.

Keith would have the word now.

For about an hour Eel's periscope slowly cruised warily about, and for an hour the Jap flying boat flew-back and forth, flying over the horizon, coming back almost overhead, then flying out of sight again. Each time it disappeared I thought it might stay away, and each time my hopes were dashed by its reappearance.

"How long can this kind of a plane stay in the air?" I asked of my companion.

"I sure don't know. A mighty long time, but it depends on when they took off." He grinned a pain-filled grin. "Now let me ask you a foolish one. How soon do you figure you can come up and get us aboard? I'm getting worried about those two fellas over in the other boat."

I shook my head dolefully. "I'm beginning to think those Japs know what's happened down here, and they're expecting the sub to come back. That's why they're flying back and forth." An idea struck me.

"Let's time the flights. Have you got a watch? Mine's stopped."

Silently he produced one and at my instruction timed the flights of the plane from just before it went out of sight until it arrived back in our vicinity. While he did so, I busied my- self hauling in the heaving line and inspecting it carefully. It seemed in fair shape. Carefully I fashioned a slipknot in the unweighted end, tested the security of the knot — by which it-, was fastened to our raft. Likewise, I checked the line leading. to the other raft and shortened it as much as I could, bringing the other rubber boat tight up against ours.

The preparations, in our cramped situation, took quite a while. It hurt like hades to move, too. "How long?" I finally, asked as the flying boat swung, around at the completion of its second circuit.

"Ten minutes this last time, eight the time before. Takes, three minutes to go out of sight."

"Good. Maybe eight minutes will be long enough." I didn't want to rise in the rubber raft yet, for fear the Jap aviators would see that something out of the ordinary was going on.