In a moment the report came back. “All tubes secured aft,” relayed Quin. “Tube ten was not fired. Tube seven has been reloaded, but is not ready yet. All the other fish are secured in their racks.”
“Very well,” said Richardson. “Tell tubes aft to turn to on that fish and get it ready. We’ll need it as soon as the depth charge barrage is over. Set depth on both, four feet.” He looked up at Scott. “Speed through water?” he asked.
“Four knots, increasing. We’re steady on three-three-five.”
Rich picked up a spare set of earphones, adjusted them to his head. The penetrating, high-pitched echo-ranging was clearly audible even before he put them on. Stafford was moving the sound head dome ceaselessly back and forth over a small arc concentrated right around Eel’s bow. He said something which Richardson could not hear. Rich moved his left-hand earphone over to his cheek, freed the ear. “Bearing three-three-five,” said Stafford. “Steady bearing. He’s close aboard now. He’ll be dropping any second.”
Richardson could hear the whir of the screws. One of them must be bent slightly askew, for the thrashing sound of the damaged blade could plainly be distinguished. He could almost hear the rush of water past the enemy hull, visualize the concentration on her bridge as they calculated the optimum time for dropping the depth charges. Hopefully, his maneuver of turning toward and speeding up would take them unawares. Suddenly he found himself remembering the nearly identical situation years ago off New London, when, by miscalculation of one of the student officers out for a day’s training, the old U.S. destroyer Semmes with her knifelike bow and the two huge propellers extending below her keel had come near to knocking Richardson’s first command, the S-16, into oblivion on the bottom of Long Island Sound. Semmes also had had a nick in one propeller. S-16’s periscopes were not, however, as long as Eel’s. There was now a full eighteen feet of water between the surface and the highest point of Eel’s structure. The Mikura could not draw more than ten. Fifteen at the outside. As soon as he passed overhead, Eel would slow down again and try to catch him with a stern tube.
Funny he should think of it. That was the day Jim Bledsoe had introduced him to Laura.
Stafford had been rapidly increasing the width of the arc covered by his sound head. The pings were coming in with undiminished strength no matter in what direction it was trained. Richardson could almost hear the echo bounce off Eel’s steel hull, even imagined he could hear a second echo reflected off the hull of the attacking destroyer. Here it comes, he thought. Idiotically, he remembered a line from one of his favorite books about sea fights in the days of sail. “For what we are about to receive,” one of the characters used to say, “O Lord, we give thanks.”
Stafford ran the sound head all the way around the dial. “He’s overhead,” he said. Richardson did not need this information, for suddenly the entire interior of Eel’s conning tower reverberated with the roaring of machinery, the sibilant rush of water past a fast-moving hull, the spitting thum, thum, thum of propeller blades whirling pitilessly in the water, one of them carrying a scar which made a sort of crackling sound as it went around. There was a vibration communicated to the structure of the conning tower. Richardson could feel the submarine shudder, move bodily in the water, as the enemy ship drove by.
“He’s dropped,” shouted Stafford. The sonar man reached up to his receiver controls, abruptly turned down the volume. The next second or two would determine whether Eel sank or survived. If the depth charges were set shallow, a thunderous explosion and tremendously increased air pressure coincident with the sudden roaring influx of water — or equally serious, a sudden extraordinary heaviness as water poured in through a hole in a more remote portion of the submarine — would signal the end for everyone.
Five seconds, ten seconds.… Click, WHAM! Click, WHAM! Click, WHAM! The depth charges sounded right alongside, tremendously loud in the tense stillness inside the submarine. A slight pause, then a crashing cacophony of brutal, ear-smashing noise as a whole barrage went off almost simultaneously. A cloud of dust was thrown up in the conning tower. The deck plates under their feet were shivering. The entire submarine hull resounded, reverberated, intensified the concussions. The long thin hoist rods of the periscopes vibrated madly, almost passing out of sight. Richardson could have sworn the periscopes themselves sprang out of shape and then returned. He was shaken so violently that for a second he must have become hallucinatory. He thought he saw the steering wheel knocked loose from the forward bulkhead of the conning tower, where Cornelli stood holding it, arms rigid and muscles bulging under his sweaty dungarees. Then, just as swiftly, Rich realized the wheel was still intact, in place where it should have been.
WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM! Six more depth charges going off almost together! Again the shivering of the steel, the bewildering effect of heavy equipment apparently disoriented, which, if it were true, would signal the destruction of the submarine. Pieces of cork flew off the sides of the conning tower. Dust rose throughout. Miraculously, the lights stayed on, dancing on their short wire pigtails. Quin, standing just forward of the opening of the deck which led to the now closed control room hatch, was knocked to his knees, fell into the cavity.
“All compartments report,” said Richardson. “All stop!”
Quin painfully picked up his telephone mouthpiece, spoke into it.
Cornelli clicked the annunciators to stop. The follower pointers, actuated from the maneuvering room, clicked over also to stop. Good, thought Richardson. At least they’re okay back there.
“All back two-thirds! Speed through water!”
Scott, who had been recording with a pencil on one of the pages of his quartermaster’s notebook, read the dial for him. “Five knots,” he said. “Twenty depth charges.”
“Let me know when speed reaches three knots,” said Richardson. “Tubes aft, bear a hand with number seven tube.”
“All compartments report no damage,” said Quin. There was relief in his voice. “Tubes aft will be ready with number seven in a minute.”
“Three knots,” said Scott.
“All stop,” said Richardson. “All ahead one-third! Number two periscope!”
He grabbed the handles as they came out of the periscope well, savagely spun the periscope all the way around until it faced aft, put his eye to it. “There he is!” he said. “Bearing, mark!”
“One-eight-one,” from Keith.
“Angle on the bow one-eight-oh,” said Richardson. Range, mark!” He turned the range dial.
“Two hundred,” said Keith.
“Open outer doors aft,” ordered Rich. “As soon as he turns one way or the other, we’ll shoot. Buck,” he went on, “give him a one-seven-nine-degree port angle on the bow, speed nineteen!”
Once more, for a few seconds, Eel had the initiative. He spun the periscope around rapidly, flipping it to low power in order to get a larger field of view. As before, heightened with the perceptions of imminent danger and immediate combat, his mind took in everything almost photographically. His first target had sunk perceptibly lower in the water and had rolled over even farther, so that, although not quite turned turtle, it might well be on the way to doing so. Its stern had sunk beneath the water, but the bow, probably held up by an air pocket, remained partly above the surface. Crowds of men were standing on the curved plates where her side joined her bottom, and crowds of black dots, the heads of men, were in the water around her. The second freighter was straight up and down, her bow silhouetted against the western horizon. Deck equipment, displaced from its normal position, was falling from a height of a hundred feet on both sides. Most of it fell into the area where her now submerged smokestack and deckhouse lay, and where most of the survivors also must be. One of the objects moved as it fell. Perhaps he had jumped.