“Affirmative, Keith!” Richardson responded. “Here comes the wave!”
In the space of less than a minute since Richardson had triggered the first alarm, Eel had traveled approximately one-quarter of the distance between the sea buoy and the main channel entrance buoys. Now it looked as though she were crossing a narrow, shallow valley of water. Ahead, on the far edge of the trough, watched the Pearl Harbor channel entrance buoys. It was mandatory to pass between them, for they lay on either side of the dredged and blasted passage into the harbor. Astern, what Buck Williams had thought was the horizon was now clearly the crest of a large wave, racing toward land. Already it was drawing water from the area ahead of it, creating a depression in the water level through which the submarine was passing, and adding to its own crest at the same time.
“Rich!” called Williams. “It was nice knowing you!” The comment was made in a jocular tone, but it was the first time Richardson had ever heard one of his juniors use his nickname. Buck Williams would be a damned good submarine skipper someday, if somebody didn’t cashier him first for irreverence in the face of danger.
The two men braced themselves in opposite corners of the bridge. Astern, the wave had crested, foaming at the top, formed into the shape of a huge breaker. Moving shoreward at a speed far greater than that of the submarine, it began to lift her. Eel’s stern rose. Her bow depressed, until water was within a foot or two of flowing over her slatted main deck forward. But the wave rose much too rapidly for Eel’s stern to follow, and the huge breaker began to submerge the submarine’s after parts. Still it came on, curling higher, standing on the main deck nearly as high as the tops of the periscope supports.
Richardson had heard no orders given to shut the induction, but the thump of the valve beneath the bridge deck, as the hydraulic mechanism closed it, could be mistaken for nothing else. Keith had shifted to the battery. Except for the hatch on the bridge, the submarine was as tight as she could be.
“Buck! Get below!”
“I’m staying with you!” shouted Williams. To confirm his determination he leaned under the bridge overhang, shouted to Oregon, whose worried face could be seen framed in the bridge hatch. “Shut the hatch!”
The bridge hatch slammed shut. The wheel on its top twirled to the shut position as Oregon spun it from underneath. Williams and Richardson were now isolated on the submarine’s bridge. The breaking sea, curling in mighty splendor, stood on the Eel’s main deck. The wave’s forward progress slowed as it gathered strength from the shallow water it had scooped up into its corporeal self. Its forward face became steeper—“A wonderful surfboard comber if one dared to ride it!” thought Richardson. The wave touched the after end of the cigarette deck, bellied up from beneath, leaned forward even more. It foamed at the top, became suddenly concave, with a million lines of curved vertical ribbing, and broke.
“Hang on!” shouted Richardson, and as he did so he heard Williams shout the identical words to him. Both men gripped the bridge railing and took a deep breath.
Afterward, Richardson would recall an impression that, though there was no noticeable temperature to the sea, he suddenly found himself standing in water to his waist and for a second looked straight up inside the hollow of the breaker. He saw its crest strike the top of the periscope shears, adding yet more spray to its descending, broken, frontal edge. Then he was engulfed in roaring water. There was a sensation of color, of white mixed with streaked lightning, and of pressure. His feet were no longer securely on the deck. He was weightless, buffeted. His hands strained to hold the rails, were swept free. Something hit him on the back of his head; whether he blacked out for a moment he never knew, but his next recollection was a sudden awareness of the solid structure of the bulletproof front plating of the bridge pressing against his back, the slatted wooden deck driving upward against his thigh and buttocks.
Water, draining freely between the slats, held him immovably in place. He could see its shiny surface above him, exactly as it looked so often through the periscope when a sea rolled over its eyepiece — except that this time it was tilted at a crazy angle. Then his head broke through, and in a moment he could move and pull himself upright. Surprisingly, he had felt no need for air. Perhaps there had not been enough time.
A wet, disheveled Buck Williams was still gripping the bridge rail where he had been before the wave struck. The ship was heeled far over to port; Richardson, on the port side, had gone farther under than Williams. The bridge speaker was blaring something. It sounded choked and garbled, because water was still draining from its perforated bottom, but it was unmistakably Keith’s voice.
“Bridge! We’re way off course! Are you all right?” With the ship already knocked off her ordered heading, if anyone had been swept overboard the thing to do was to continue the unexpected turn and go after him directly. Doubtless Keith would have someone on the other periscope helping him look for people in the water — yes, both ’scopes were up, describing great arcs across the cloudy sky as Eel rolled in the aftermath of the huge sea — but of course it was not possible to depress the periscope optics sufficiently to see what had happened on the bridge directly beneath them.
Richardson made as if to reach for the speaker button. The quick-thinking Williams, nearer to it, pressed it for him. “Keith! This is Rich!”—unconsciously he also used his nickname—“We’re both okay up here. Carry on!”
“Conn, aye! That comber rolled us over thirty degrees and took us forty-five degrees off course! We’re coming back to channel heading now!” Keith sounded relieved, despite the distortions of the speaker.
Several hundred yards ahead, broad on the port bow, the entrance buoys danced as the breaker hit them. Strangely, they seemed no closer than they had been before the pooping sea, though they had then been dead ahead, with the submarine making quite respectable speed. As Rich watched, the two buoys steadily swam to the right, settled down a few degrees on the starboard bow. Keith was compensating for the distance Eel had been pushed off track, obviously planning to get the ship centered in the channel and on the right course before passing between the buoys.
“That looks like the only wave, Skipper!” said Williams. “I sure wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it!”
“Me, too, Buck. That was the biggest comber I’ve ever seen, or heard about, either!” Richardson paused. “After we get secured let’s look up this Kona business. I’ve seen it before. But never this rough!”
Both officers had been shaking their binoculars dry, now put them to their eyes and began looking steadily aft. “Well,” said Richardson, “that was it, I guess. Only one wave, but that one nearly creamed us.”
“Open the hatch, Captain?”
“Negative, not for a couple minutes.”
“Aye aye, sir.” The conversation, clipped and monosyllabic, carried out with binoculars against their eyes, had shifted to officialese. A full thirty seconds of silence ensued, each man absorbed in his own search of the water and horizon astern.
“Bridge!.. Conn! We’re steady on base course, about to pass the entrance buoys!”