Then, for a little while that seemed an age we waited at our stations, mouths dry, gasping, in air so foul, so thick, you could almost feel it in your hands. It was dusk in the world above us. Somehow the word came through. We had broached because somebody misinterpreted an order. Someone had blown too much water out of our bow tank. We went deeper now, and waited. I sat with my earphones, Maley at my side, and I trembled. Would I ever get out of this alive? We’d probably all be completely exhausted, every man helpless on his bunk now, if the broaching hadn’t knocked us into alertness again. I looked up, and Lieutenant Deragon was in the doorway, looking at us. I must have looked pretty bad. He disappeared but was back in less than a minute.
“Here, Eckberg,” he said, with a stony face. “You look as though you’ll be needing this.” He placed a roll of toilet paper beside me and vanished again.
That broke the tension. Maley and I grinned at each other.
“Remember those freighting days,” Paul whispered. “Remember how we griped when we could sit around and play cards and argue about the news? Remember how we griped we were just carrying freight around…” He coughed, and grinned again.
Captain Warder, the perspiration beaded in his eyebrows, deep lines in his face, looked in. “Eckberg, how much sleep have you had?”
“I don’t know, Captain,” I said. “I’m not very sleepy.” I was so keyed up now I could have remained awake all night, I think.
The Skipper mopped his brow with a wilted handkerchief. It was Maley’s watch coming up.
“I think we’re going to stay down a little while longer,” he said. “But most of the excitement is over. You’d better turn in and get some sleep.”
“I don’t think I can,” I said. “I want to see us up and away so I can quit worrying.”
The Skipper looked at both of us, and the corners of his mouth turned up in a tired smile. “All right,” he said. “You boys have done a real job today. We’ll get out of here and head for home now as soon as conditions permit. See that you get some sleep, Eckberg.” And he was gone.
Somehow the time passed. Men with towels around their necks moved sluggishly with mops, swabbing the sweat from the decks, wringing the mops out into buckets. Buckets full of sweat stood in corners of the Wolf. Maley and I stewed in the radio shack. We alternated on the sound gear. We couldn’t slow ourselves down.
It was nearly midnight when Captain Warder appeared again. “We’re going to surface very shortly,” he said wearily. “Take a good sweep all around and let me know what you hear.”
I bent over my gear and searched. We knew it was black night up there, and that Captain Warder depended on sound to let him know what conditions were. I must have spent ten minutes investigating every suspicious noise in every degree of the circle.
Finally I reported, “There’s nothing up there as far as I can tell, sir.”
“That’s fine.” His voice came hollowly from the conning tower. “All right, boys. Bring her up to periscope depth.”
We rose slowly. Captain Warder upped his periscope. For fifteen minutes he scanned every inch of the horizon. I think it was the most concentrated scanning he had ever done. Then, his arms over the periscope crossbars, he turned. “Have the night lookouts come to the conning tower,” he said.
The word was passed for the night lookouts. They climbed up.
“Boys,” said the Captain, “I don’t have to tell you to keep a sharp lookout tonight. I know you’re tired, but this good air will revive you. Report anything at all suspicious.” Then he ordered, “Surface!”
Three blasts of the horn, and up we went. At 1: 10 a.m. the hatch opened. The Wolf had been under for many hours and most of her crew had been without sleep for forty-three consecutive hours. The air roared through. A sudden chill made me shiver as I sat at my desk. Lieutenant Deragon came by again. He looked in. This time he grinned. Nothing ever seemed to upset him.
“Why don’t you turn in, Eck?” he said. “We’re O.K. now.”
“I know,” I said. And I asked him where we were. We were on our way to get around the point of the island, he said. “Let me show you,” he added, and he led the way to the charts in the control room. He pointed out the route we were taking. We were going to a port in Australia. It was to be our new home port. “Here we are now,” he said. “We turn at this point and head south.”
“Where were we when we broached, sir?” I asked. He pointed that out. I said frankly, “I don’t like it. We’re not very far away from those destroyers.”
“No,” he said, “but we will be.” He glanced at the speed indicator. “No, it won’t be long now,” he went on. “Anyhow, there’s no use your staying up any longer. Turn in and get some sleep. You need it.”
I said I wanted to stay up until we got around the corner, and so I did. First I sat down at radio and sent a long dispatch to the High Command, dictated by Captain Warder, recounting what had happened to us. Then I turned in.
When I awoke it was afternoon. I had slept fourteen hours. The Wolf was riding cautiously at periscope depth, on the alert for planes. Most of the crew were in their bunks, too, recuperating. They were too tired to talk. That night, after surfacing, we received a message from the High Command:
A wonderful cruise.
Your accomplishments rank among the greatest of all time.
Congratulations.
Captain Warder had copies typed and posted conspicuously about the Wolf. The men clustered around the bulletin board in Kelly’s Pool Room and read the Captain’s personal PS:
TO ALL HANDS:
I want to take this opportunity to express my deepest thanks for your ability and your conduct, and above all, your devotion to duty. It is my firm hope that I will be with you all when we put out to sea on the next patrol.
We knew the Japs had air supremacy in the Christmas Island area, and we proceeded cautiously toward Australia. Finally, one afternoon we were near enough to the Australian coast to surface in daylight. Captain Warder reported from the bridge, “It’s a nice day… A little cloudy. Choppy sea up here. We’ll let a few of the boys come up.”
I waited my turn. Frank Franz called down, “Got your dark glasses, Eck?”
I shouted up, “No. What do I need them for? It’s cloudy up there, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” he said. “But that doesn’t make any difference. You better wear those glasses.”
I was too anxious to go up. I had not been topside for many days and nights. I stopped at the entrance of the bridge. I shielded my eyes with my hands.
“Permission to come on the bridge, sir?” I asked the officer of the deck.
It was Lieutenant Syverson. “Come ahead, Eckberg,” he said.
I watched my feet as I moved up. Now, two steps to daylight. I lifted my hands, and lightning seared my brain. I clapped my hands over my tortured eyes. I saw red. My eyes burned as though I had been scalded. Hands over my eyes, now peering a bit, slowly I grew accustomed to daylight.
It was a beautiful day. Never had the sea seemed so blue, the whitecaps so white. My eyes drank in the glory of the sky and the open air. The smell of salt was so strong in my nostrils that I had a fit of sneezing. The taste of salt was in my throat. I stared at the other men as they came up. Their bodies, naked from the waist up, were an obscene white, like the white underbelly of a fish. Their faces were gray, like the faces of men taken out of dungeons. We discovered that only a few minutes on the bridge under that cloudy sky sunburned us. We discovered that none of us carried an ounce of excess weight. It was as though we had been in a Turkish bath, reduced and exhausted and dehydrated, days on end. When we finally climbed back into the depths of the Wolf again, we realized for the first time how foul the odor was. The air above made us dizzy when we came down. Our faces were flushed. We began to perspire. I lay down in my bunk for a twenty-minute rest after ten minutes in the air.