Captain Warder, slow and deliberate, broke in: “Now, Eckberg, here comes a destroyer. We are going to get hell. I want you to pick up those propellers, and I want you to give me bearings. Give me all the information you can in regard to this ship.”
Under his words I heard three distant muffled explosions. Our fish had hit home. I answered him, surprised at my calm voice: “I sure will, Captain. I’ve got him now. I’ve got his screws. They’re bearing one six zero, they’re fast, and they’re getting louder.” The whish-sh… whish-sh… whish-sh of the destroyers’ screws was clear in my phones.
“Good!” said the Captain.
“He’s coming portside, Captain, he’s coming fast.”
“Very well, Eckberg. Keep talking.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Now every moving thing in the Wolf—every bit of machinery, every source of sound—was turned off. The air-conditioning machinery was switched off, lest its sound betray us. The whir of the fans ceased. The blowers stopped. The hydraulic pump jarred to a halt. The whine of the electric generators died away. The men took off their sandals lest a footfall betray us. In the galley the mess cooks silently shifted pots and pans from the stove to the floor, lest an accidental push send them clattering down.
Throughout the ship the buzz of conversation stopped. We waited. The heat began to increase. The Wolf was as silent as a tomb save for the low grind of my sound controls as I spun dials, worked my wheels frantically to keep the Jap clear in my phones. Now he was 5,000 yards away. I must know where he was every second and where he would be. The perspiration began to roll off me. It seemed as though someone was pouring water down my back. Four thousand yards… three thousand… two thousand… one thousand… The temperature within the Wolf was at least 110 degrees… five hundred yards… I began to say, “Bearing two five five,” but I never pronounced the second five. The first depth charge exploded. Everything suddenly turned upside down. It was the loudest sound I had yet heard. It was as solid as a blow on the skull, it was like a thunderclap between my ears. I found myself on the floor, my stool upturned. Maley was on the floor beside me, scrambling to his feet. We were in a snowstorm—paint chippings and cork from the bulkheads filled the air. The photographs of Marjorie and Spike tumbled down on me. The books on the shelf fell to the floor. Paint flew off corners. Overhead, electric bulbs shattered in their sockets. The lights flickered off, then on again. The wall opposite me billowed in toward me; the force of the concussion was so great it had contracted the Wolf’s hull like a rubber ball. It was as though a gigantic hand had reached under the sea, grabbed the Wolf about the middle, and shaken her.
I was sitting in a puddle of my own perspiration, one hand flung back to break my fall. I tried to get up. I reached forward to grab my bearing-control lever, and an electric shock jarred me from head to toe. I was grounded in my own sweat. I tingled to my fingertips. And all the time from that terrific explosion it seemed that somewhere, deep in my skull, behind my eyes, my brain pan jangled like a struck bell.
All this could have taken only a few seconds. As from a great distance I heard Captain Warder’s voice, asking insistently, “Where is he now, Eckberg? Where is he now?”
I put my hands to my phones to adjust them and found them over my temples. I pushed the left phone over my ear—and another charge exploded. This was even closer than the first, right off the beam of the ship. I can hear today only because the phones were not on my ears. The Wolf lurched sharply. There was no screaming, no panic. I listened hard, balanced on the edge of the stool, and I caught the Jap screws again. He had passed our beam. He was going up our port side. He was driving up on the bow. I managed to call out his bearing.
“Good work, Eckberg,” said the intercom. “Keep it up. Good work.”
A moment later Captain Warder’s voice came to me again, surprisingly clear. He had abandoned the conning tower and taken a stool in the control room just outside my shack. The conning tower had been sealed off. Now we could see each other if he leaned to the left and I to the right. Here he could talk directly to me, and from here he could control the Wolf’s activities.
A third depth charge landed. It wasn’t as close. I could hear the Jap’s propellers through it. Now more charges, each a little farther away. I was shouting bearings, and Captain Warder was snapping orders.
Our depth gauge had to tell us much. If a charge exploded above us, it drove us down. If the gauge showed eighty feet and a moment later one hundred feet, the charge had exploded above us. If we bounced up, it had exploded under us. The Jap was trying to land them so close that the concussion would rip open the Wolf’s seams. If he managed to explode one directly under us, we’d ride the bubble of air right to the surface, where he could finish us off with his deck guns.
“She’s gone away, Captain,” I finally announced.
The Skipper passed a hand over his forehead. He clenched and unclenched his left hand. “Dick,” he said, “pass the word. Have the mess cooks run coffee through the ship for all hands.”
Lieutenant Holden gave the word, and Gus Wright, undisturbed as always, came through with, “Who wants a cup of mud? Come and get it!”
We gulped down our coffee. And then the entire crew began digging into corners looking for leaks. Zerk and Dishman and Snyder were crawling about in grease and slime, and Zerk came crawling out of a corner with a grin to announce, “Well, she held together down here, anyway.”
Dishman, who had No. 1 engine, would take no one’s word that she was all right. He swarmed around her like a mother hen looking out for her brood, inspecting every nut and bolt, feeling, listening, watching.
Still submerged, we ran for the southern exit of the straits. We thought we had sunk two ships. We knew the Wolf had been hurt by the depth charges—probably not badly, but a few air and water lines had sprung small leaks, according to the report from the men crawling about. We wanted to reach the open sea to surface and recharge batteries, to examine the Wolf’s injuries, and to send a report to the High Command of what we had done.
We dared not use our transmitter in the straits because the Japs could put direction finders on us. Out at sea, by the time they determined where we were sending from, we’d be away from there with all the ocean to hide in. We remained down until well after dark. Jap planes were still in the area and probably working frantically to spot us. I maintained a continuous watch and heard no propellers over a two-hour period. Captain Warder took frequent periscope observations and reported nothing in sight. But we took no chances. These waters were phosphorescent. A submarine left a white wake easily seen from the air. Not until 9 p.m. did we rise slowly to the surface.
Now we worked hard. Our auxiliary gang under Zerk toiled all night repairing the leaks. I sent off my dispatch reporting our action and the damage incurred. We recharged batteries. Then we turned in our tracks and headed back full speed for Lombok Straits. We weren’t finished with the Japs by a long shot. This time the Skipper chose a new route, to protect himself against a possible ambush. Instead of proceeding around the left side of Nusa Besar, as before, he came around the right, and then the Wolf dove directly in front of the island. We spent from dawn until noon fighting the currents to get into a position to attack the Japs if they were still where we’d seen them the day before.