It is said that a drowning man sees his whole life flash before him. Perhaps my sensation at that moment was some- what the same. Certainly it could have taken me no more than a second to race through all these possibilities.
Water, which had been gurgling up the sides of the conning tower, now reached. the hatch-there, meeting the gush of air still streaming out, it blew idiotically backward, and only a few drops fell inside.
From my position on the ladder I could see into the control room through the still-open lower hatch. I leaned toward it and roared, "Shut the hatch!" just below it stood Tom Schultz, and I caught a glimpse of his twisted face as, with- out a word, he reached up, grabbed the hand wheel and tried to pull it down. It was awkward for him and the spring resisted movement. He had the hatch almost closed when it swung partly open again. I sprang off the ladder and landed on the top of the hatch, holding it shut with my weight while Tom spun the hand wheel between my feet from below, sealing it tight.
Instantly a deluge of cold sea water hit me in the back, knocking me to my hands and knees. I struggled to my feet in a veritable Niagara of angry ocean pouring into the conning tower. I still remember a moment of wonder at the tremendous amount of water that came in despite the fact that the hatch was actually ninety per cent closed. It rose rapidly in the tiny compartment, and I could feel the pressure on my ears as the air was compressed. Ultimately, of course, a condition of equilibrium would be reached, and the air would commence to bubble out through the hole at the top. Frantically I searched the overhead for some high protected corner where I might be able to find a few gulps of precious air when the compartment became entirely flooded.
S-16 now commenced to right herself, her bow slowly coming up. With the flooding confined to the conning tower, there was no doubt that she would get back to the surface all right. The question was whether I could manage to avoid drowning until someone was able to come out through an- other hatch and rescue me. With that weight of water in the conning tower there would be no hope of pushing open the lower hatch and draining it through there. Besides, with the difficulties they were facing below they might not even think of me for a few minutes.
I climbed up on the tiny chart desk, bumping my had against the overhead, but the water had reached my waist and was rising rapidly when it stopped coming in as though a hydrant had been shut off. I can remember the instantaneous relief. The ship was safe, and so, in a few moments, would I be.
It was several minutes in fact before anything else happened. I found out later that, unable to open the lower conning-tower hatch, Keith and Kohler had come up through the forward torpedo room, rushed over the slippery deck, and climbed up on the bridge. With a large open-end wrench which Keith had snatched up, they began battering at the latching mechanism from above. I shouted to them to stop for fear of breaking it, had them slide the wrench through the opening to me down below. Sloshing backward away from the hatch I measured the distance, swung gently and fair, and tapped the latch free on the first blow. The hatch instantly swung open under the combined heave of the two anxious men above.
After dogging the hatch properly from topside, the three of us made our way forward and below via the torpedo-room hatch. Jim was waiting at the foot of the ladder.
"You fool," he hissed at Keith. "Do you realize what you almost did?" His face was livid with emotion and his lips quivered with the fury of his voice. I could see Keith wilt.
"That will be all for you, Leone," Jim raged, "this will be your last day in submarines. You ought to be court-martialed!"
I was amazed at Jim's outburst. Kohler and three or four other members of the crew who happened to be in the for- ward torpedo room stared, their shocked surprise.
"Cut it out," I told Jim. "It wasn't that bad. It wasn't Keith's fault." Then I tried to relieve the tension a little. "So what if I did get a little soaking? I needed a bath anyway!"
The joke fell flat. I motioned Keith up ahead of me through the watertight door into the forward battery compartment and followed him, dripping a trail behind.
A difficult decision confronted me, and I had to make it immediately. Roy Savage, Carl Miller, and Stocker Kane might just possibly, — still qualify Jim, particularly if I made excuses for him and pressed his case. Captain Blunt would of course take their word for it. The question which weighted me, as I sloshed my way aft to change clothes, was the same one with which I had got Jim, and myself-into the present impasse.
Except that the last four days had been an eye-opener. knew, now, that I could never turn the S-16 over to Jim, at least not until he had amassed considerably more experience and steadiness under stress. And I also knew that the whole situation had really been my own fault. I might have been blind, might have temporarily been tempted, but I could never face myself if anything later happened to S-16 under Jim's command. Everything he had done these last several days, every thought he had had, every word he had said, clearly demonstrated his unreadiness for that type of added responsibility. And yet, there was no denying that he was a fine submariner, all-in-all an asset to the Navy, and that he would not be in this situation had I not, for my own advantage, put him in it.
No matter how I argued it, it all came back to the same thing. I had to choose between sacrificing the S-16 or Jim.
In either case, I was really the one to blame and there was not a thing in the world that anyone could do about that.
As our sorry little procession wound its way between the bunks in the forward end of the battery compartment toward the wardroom and Jim's and my stateroom, I went over and over the situation in my mind. There was only one thing to do, and it was up to me.
When we reached the curtain in the doorway I turned to Jim. "Come in a minute, will you, Jim?" I said. The others, sensing their dismissal, went on. Jim stepped with me into our little room, automatically reached for a cigarette. He avoided my eyes as he offered me one. I ignored it. This was going to be tough.
"Jim," I said, "I'm more sorry than I can possibly tell you.
I'll take over. I want you to start us back for New London.
I'll explain to the board."
Jim had just taken a deep drag. With his lungs full of Tobacco smoke he at first seemed not to hear, and then as it sank home he choked. "Why, you-you-" he gobbled for a moment, unable to speak. He threw the cigarette on the floor, stamped it furiously, opened and shut his mouth twice with- out a word. When he finally found his voice, his words were in direct contradiction of every naval tradition, everything he had learned, all the indoctrination the Navy had exposed him to. He spoke in a manner which no self-respecting person could forgive or forget, no commander of a United States man-of-war could condone. And yet I couldn't do any more to him after what I had already done. I had to take it, had to let him get away with it, had to swallow the sudden sick indignation.
"You God-dammed son-of-a-bitch," he said.
3
Laura Elwood entered my life at the tag end of a nerve-shattering day in mid-August, shortly after the S-16 arrived in New London from the Philadelphia Navy Yard. One of old Joe Blunt's maxims had always been that no officer of the Navy worth his salt ever needed a drink to settle his problems, — but this was one time that I did, and I didn't care who knew it. An hour before I had supervised the final operations in tying the boat up to her usual dock in the river, and as soon as I could get rid of a few essential items of paper- work I headed for our tiny shower. Jim, from the appearance of our stateroom, had preceded me; we passed each other, draped in towels, as I headed forward. He halted, made a tremendous pretense of clicking his bare heels together, and raised his right hand in a caricature of a Nazi salute.