He was brooding over these hard facts when the First Lieutenant came on to the bridge with more bad news. A leading torpedoman had been killed and three seamen wounded by fragments of metal. The wounded were receiving attention. The dead man’s body had been placed in the torpedo compartment. Even more serious was the news that during the gun action, which had lasted less than five minutes, Yochiro Keda, the submarine’s Chief Telegraphist, had heard Fort Nebraska transmitting a wireless message. It had, he said, been a brief transmission, apparently giving the ship’s position but beginning and ending with four Ss. Though Yashimoto appeared to take the news calmly, even phlegmatically, he was shattered by it. The message transmitted by the American ship must bring enemy naval and air units to the scene. Survivors would report having seen a shell burst on the submarine’s conning-tower after which, they would say, it had moved away on the surface. The brief W/T transmission had made a bad situation a greal deal worse.
In the eastern sky the moon came clear of the clouds, revealing to those on the submarine’s bridge a lifeboat, several rafts and an odd assortment of floating wreckage strewn across an area where widening patches of fuel oil, dark and sinister in the moonlight, marked the grave of the Fort Nebraska.
After that second round, that must have gone way over the U-boat because they didn’t see any splash this side of it, and with the list getting worse, Corrigan knew there was no point in standing by the gun with the dead bodies around it.
‘We better get to hell out of it, Smitty,’ he shouted to the man leaning against the breech of the 5.5 inch gun. ‘Get ourselves into a lifeboat.’ He’d had to shout to make himself heard above the shrill hiss of escaping steam.
‘Reckon I can’t make it, Brad. Legs feel kinda weak,’ was the hoarse reply.
‘Aw, c’mon boy. I’ll lend a hand.’ In the darkness Corrigan put an arm round the other man’s waist. Together they hobbled and staggered across the sloping poopdeck, making for the starboard ladder. They reached it as the lightning came and for a moment Corrigan saw water swirling at the foot of the ladder.
‘Jesus!’ there was fear and astonishment in the loud oath. ‘The well-deck’s awash, Smitty. Can’t get forward now. She’ll be going soon.’ It’s all right for me, he was thinking, I belong in the water. But Christ! What about Smitty Fredericks?
Goddam wound’s bleeding. Sharks go for blood like crazy. And I’ll be supporting the guy.
But there wasn’t time to think that one out. The hull shook, the list increased steeply, the movement now more a series of jerks than smooth like before. The sound of escaping steam had been muted by the deep thrum of the siren, a bizarre duet which deadened thought.
Corrigan remembered the stack of hand-floats on the poop. Shouting, ‘Hold on there, Smitty, while I put a float over,’ he disappeared into the darkness. With the list too steep to walk without support he had to crawl, hanging on to deck fittings as he went. He reached the stack, flicked open the locking grips and pulled a float clear. He began dragging it back towards the ladder. He hadn’t gone far when the hissing sound from the well-deck ventilators rose to a scream, like a gale blowing through rigging. Must be the pressure of water flooding into the holds, forcing out the remaining air, he told himself. Before he could reach Smitty the ship began its final, stern first slide. A slow but irreversible movement, the level of the sea rising until it had covered the after well-deck, then climbing the poop ladder rung by rung. He couldn’t see his companion. If only the lightning would come again. He yelled, ‘Let yourself down the side, Smitty. Switch on the survivor’s light. I’ll look after you in the water. You’ll be okay.’ He kicked off his shoes, switched on the life-jacket’s red light, climbed over the guardrail and slid down the side of what remained of the stern above water. When his feet touched the sea he leant forward and plunged in. A strong crawl took him clear of the ship.
He stopped swimming, flipped on to his back and floated. Turning his head he searched the darkness for Smitty’s red light, but nothing showed. He shouted, ‘Smitty,’ several times but soon gave up. There was no chance of being heard above the noise of escaping steam and the siren. He’d have to wait now until the ship had gone before searching for Smitty. So he lay on the smooth sea, rising and falling to the undulations of the swell, wondering about how, when and if he and the other survivors would be picked up. Those thoughts were disturbed by the moon breaking through the clouds. It was as if a giant light had been switched on to reveal the scene. The sinking ship seemed closer now that she could be seen, her dying more awesome, whorls of smoke leaping and twisting from the fire, the solitary funnel in its midst like some martyr at the stake. With the stern submerged and the bows high out of the water she slid slowly beneath the sea. Then, where the ship had been, the sea was in turmoil, pieces of wreckage, jets of fuel oil and water, and great bubbles of air bursting to the surface with obscene plops and hisses like gargantuan farts, leaving only the pungent odour of diesel to hang in the air like some invisible mantle.
The turbulence of the sinking was followed by a strange calm, a sudden silence, a tranquillity which Corrigan found comforting. But moonlight and the voices of men soon dispelled the illusion. Because he was looking for Smitty, and couldn’t really see properly until lifted by a swell, he focused on the area closest to him. That was where the stern had been, where the dead bodies of the gun’s crew lay sagging in the water like black gunny sacks, the air trapped in their clothing ballooning, distorting the shape of their corpses. But there was no sign of Smitty, no one moved, no red light winked, no response to Corrigan’s repeated calls.
In and around the widening pools of fuel oil he saw the litter of wreckage: pieces of timber, gratings, hatch-planks, wooden buckets, crates, mooring rope bins, gas cylinders, fire extinguishers and glass bottles. But it was the two lifeboats, some distance from him, which dominated the moonlit scene. One loaded with men, a few of them rowing untidily, was heading for the other which had capsized. Corrigan could see men clinging to its lifelines. Wondering whether to swim towards the lifeboats or make for the hand-float he’d thrown over the side, he heard what sounded like a diesel locomotive in the distance. Soon afterwards, from the top of the next swell, he saw the U-boat, a dark shape on moonlit water. It was a good few hundred yards away, turning in a wide circle.