Assessment of the situation was virtually instantaneous, more a suddenly presented picture than a careful step-by-step evaluation. “Right full rudder! All ahead full! Control, make your depth one hundred feet! What was that sounding?”
“Two hundred beneath the keel,” said Keith. “Two hundred sixty feet depth of water.”
“Very well,” said Richardson. ‘Control, make your depth two hundred feet. Be careful as we near the bottom. Do not use much angle. Our sonar heads are down. If we touch, they’ll be wiped off.”
Six miles to the south, eight Japanese ships were moving steadily toward the same point at which Eel also was aiming. Four of them were targets of war, fated, if Eel could have her way, to find their last port of call on the bottom of the Yellow Sea. The remaining four were professional fighting ships, designed and trained to combat submarines. Perhaps a thousand men in all, about equally divided between the merchant ships and the antisub ships. Four merchant skippers, ever conscious of the possible presence of submarines, huddled unnaturally together for mutual protection, alert for any warning of danger, ready for instant flight should an enemy submarine appear. Four Japanese Navy skippers, eager for the accolade of having sunk the second U.S. sub in two weeks in the Yellow Sea. Four hundred depth charges between them, and about five hundred Japanese Navy men, no less eager than their commanders to sink an American submarine.
Opposed to these, eighty persons in Eel, probably better trained, certainly in a more complex ship than any of theirs. But both of Eel’s advantages — surprise and invisibility — stemmed from her ability to submerge. Submergence alone made it possible for eighty men to challenge a thousand, and to gain this capability the submarine had given up the ability to sustain damage. To submerge, she must be in exactly neutral buoyancy. Reserve buoyancy, which permits a surface ship to view the prospect of hull damage with some degree of equanimity, does not exist for a submerged submarine. Even a small hole in Eel’s pressure hull — made by a sharp enemy bow, a flailing propeller, an explosive shell from a gun, or the crushing water hammer from a near depth charge — could start a flood of water equivalent to fifty fire hydrants. A ton of water taken in — only a few hundred gallons — would be enough to send her to the bottom. If, somehow, all her ballast tanks survived whatever had caused the damage to the pressure hull (hardly likely, since they surrounded it), and if no more than one compartment had been flooded, she might, by blowing all of them dry, stagger to the surface, there to be smashed pitilessly down again by the knife-sharp bows and waiting guns of her assailants.
In the immediate future were not one contest but two, both unequal. Unequal, first, in that Eel would have one clear, unopposed shot at her antagonists (provided that some egregious error in approach technique, such as permitting one’s periscope to be sighted, was not committed, or bad luck — sonar detection — encountered).
But once the submarine’s presence became known, which it must ultimately and inevitably be by the crashing roar of her torpedoes, the inequalities would shift abruptly, and the second battle begin. From this point on, it was the submarine that would be on the defensive: slow moving, her machinery silenced save for the motors turning the propellers at minimum speed (for to run faster would make more noise), her torpedo tubes empty (reloading them would make noise), running at deep submergence, listening, always listening, for the pings of enemy sonar, for the sound of the searching propellers. Blindly twisting at excruciatingly slow speed in the desperate effort to avoid the high-speed rush of the enemy destroyer bringing the killing depth charges.
Four ships against one. Five hundred men against eighty. An alerted enemy, in their home waters, free to move swiftly in any direction, free, even, to seek help in emergency. Free to see, as well as listen. Free to make noise, to have no care for the making of noise. Free of the fear of the black water transforming itself into white at the instantaneous moment of ingress. Free of imagining, and awaiting, that tortured last view of a closely circumscribed steel world while light and power from the batteries yet remained. Free of the terror of the everlasting darkness and pressure at the bottom of the sea.
So must it have been during those last terrible moments in Chicolar, when awareness of the sacrifice to be exacted was replaced by the cataclysmic inrush of water which compressed the air with an ear-bursting blow, increased the temperature to unbearable height, and swept all before it into extinction.
“The normal approach course is two-seven-five,” said Buck.
“Steady on course two-five-oh,” snapped Richardson. He crowded over alongside Buck and Keith, looked at the TDC. “We don’t have to go all the way over to the normal approach course,” he said. “The range is still well open. How long will we have to run to get to two thousand yards on this course?”
“That’s about a two-mile run — a little more. Let’s see, at full speed, eight knots — that’s two hundred-sixty-six yards a minute — it’ll take us about fifteen minutes.”
“Too long,” said Richardson. “I’ve got to get a look before then. Keith, are they getting a bathythermograph reading?”
“Yep. There’s a new card in the gadget.”
“Okay. Tell them to take another single ping sounding when we get down to two hundred feet. We’ll run about eight minutes at this speed and then come back up.”
“That’ll put us just about four thousand yards off the track, Skipper, a little farther maybe,” said Buck.
“Fine,” said Rich. “Keith, we might as well go ahead and rig for depth charge and silent running now. Get everything buttoned down tight.”
“Okay, sir, but can we leave the hatch open and ventilation on for a while more? Besides, we might want better communication with Al.…”
The connng tower had only a supply ventilator. The return was through the hatch. Closing the hatch would not only isolate him from direct communication with Al Dugan — forcing reliance on telephones — it would stop the flow of air as effectively as shutting off the supply. Rigging for maximum security this far ahead of need was only a precaution. Keith’s suggestion would mean a great deal for the comfort and efficiency of the fourteen men jammed into the conning tower, as well as the rest of the crew. “All right. We can hold off on the ventilation for a while.”
Keith gave the necessary instructions. Suddenly Richardson had nothing to do. Eel tore on through the water at an unaccustomed rate. He could feel the hull trembling with the water passage. There were some small vibrations topside. A little unnecessary noise, a drumming of some portion of the bridge structure. Perhaps it was the lookouts’ new platform and rails. These would have to be inspected carefully next time they had a chance, he thought.
“How much time?” he asked.
“We’ve been running four minutes, Skipper,” said Buck. “Four minutes to wait.”
Rich could feel his blood pressure gradually mounting, his pulse increasing. Below he could hear the watertight doors being closed, various men moving about. With the doors closed and dogged it was forbidden to change from one part of the ship to another except in emergency, so anticipated moves were being made now.
“How long we been running?”
“Five minutes, Captain; three minutes more to run.”
His palms were itching. He had forgotten about the pain in his knees and thigh muscles. Now the aches were evident again. He waited an interminable length of time, moved over behind Buck and Keith to watch the slowly moving dials of the face of the TDC.