Dust on the Sea (60 page)

“All compartments report!” Rich shouted down the hatch.

Quin, with his earphones, would have been the normal channel for the order, but he was still temporarily out of commission. He could see him trying to listen, however.

Suddenly Dugan leaned back. “After engineroom reports damage!” he said, speaking swiftly.

“Are they taking water?”

It could not be serious. Al Dugan had yet to feel the weight in his diving controls. There was, however, that sound of rushing water, which he could still hear. It sounded like something changed in the superstructure. There was a quality to the noise which Richardson had never heard before.

He grabbed the telephone handset. Through it Richardson could hear compartments still reporting, as they had been trained, from forward aft.

“Silence on the line!” he bellowed into the telephone mouthpiece. “After engineroom report!”

The voice at the other end of the line seemed extremely distant, weak. It stated its message of horror, baldly, matter-of-factly, without embellishment or inflection of voice. It was almost as though the speaker were too tired, or too much under shock, to place any personal feeling into what he had to say: “After engineroom is flooding!”

Richardson had been expecting something like this. Neither strong steel hull nor human flesh and blood could continue to stand up under the crushing pounding so deliberately delivered for the past several hours. Nor could vital internal machinery. This was the end. This the solution to the problems. Now he could abandon himself to the inevitable. He was so tired—so tired,
WHAM! WHAM
! Two more depth charges. God, would they never stop? The last two depth charges, however, seemed not quite so close as the previous ones. The destroyer
had finished its pass and was now dead astern. Had not
Eel
speeded up, the two middle depth charges in the pattern would have fallen neatly around the conning tower instead of farther aft. Now the frigate would be turning around, beaming its sonar where its plot would indicate
Eel
should be. But the escort would be pinging straight up
Eel
's wake, through the disturbed water of her thrashing screws, the inline disturbance of six closely spaced depth charges. Richardson could increase its difficulty by maneuvering to keep the disturbance between them. Even with full speed, however, the rapidly accumulating weight of water in
Eel
's after engineroom would soon be too much to carry. He could hasten the end by ordering “all stop” and letting her sink quietly to the bottom. The men in the after engineroom could prolong their lives a little by evacuating the compartment, dogging it down tightly after them. Then everyone could rest.

The alternative was to fight it.
Eel
must have gained some distance on her attacker. There would be a period of some peace, some opportunity to see if it might not yet be possible to salvage the situation. What was it that old Joe Blunt used to say so many years ago when he was still the much-admired skipper of the
Octopus
? “When you get into firing position, take your time and do it right.” That was one of them. The other was something to the effect that no matter what happened, there would be time to do what had to be done. Only the coward gave up and let circumstances rule him.

Richardson was aware of Quin staring at him with great wide-open eyes. Al Dugan in the control room below was taking a step up the ladder to bring Richardson into clearer view.

“All compartments, this is the captain. Stand firm to your stations! I'm going aft!” Deliberately he forced himself calmly to replace the handset in its cradle. “Buck,” he called, “I'm going to the after engineroom. You're in charge up here. You can reach me by telephone. Keep the speed on, and keep that tincan astern. I'll be back in three minutes!”

He stepped into the hatch, placed his heels on the ladder leading to the control room. It would do the control room gang good to see him coming down in his accustomed way, back to the ladder, hands on the skirt below the hatch rim opposite. “Gangway, Al,” he said. The diving officer, standing on the bottom rung of the ladder, swung clear. “Is she getting heavy aft?” he asked Dugan in a low tone.

“A little, but we're still holding her at this speed. I don't think we can if we slow down, though.”

The steps he must take had almost instantaneously become clear in Richardson's mind. First, at all costs keep off the bottom. Second, stop or reduce the flooding. Third, get Keith and all other injured persons
to a place of comparative safety, leaving only able-bodied men to do what could be done in the after engineroom. “Al,” he said, speaking swiftly, “line up your air manifold for blowing number seven main ballast tank alone. If you find yourself getting out of trim, or if we have to slow down, put a bubble in it big enough to balance the weight of the water in the after engineroom. Be careful and don't put too much air in the tank.” Dugan nodded.

“Line up the drain pump on the drain line and be ready to start it. If we can still reach the after engineroom bilge suction, I'll open it and give you the word to start pumping. And remember, if you get too much air in number seven tank, the only way to get rid of it will be through the vent valve, and it will go right to the surface for them to see!”

As Richardson swiftly made his way through the successive compartments, opening the watertight doors, seeing they were redogged behind him, he was acutely conscious of the haggard looks with which everyone regarded him. His was the responsibility for the situation, and it was to him alone they had to look for survival.

There were two or three men peering through the heavy glass viewing port in the closed watertight door between the forward and after enginerooms. One of them had his hand on the compartment air-salvage valve above the door. They moved quickly aside for him. No water was yet visible in the compartment.

“Open the door,” he ordered. Instantly the dogging mechanism handle was spun, the door swung open. He stepped through. “Dog it and keep a watch on me,” he said crisply. “Stand by to put pressure on the compartment, but don't do it unless I signal, or unless you see water.” Air pressure in the engineroom, a last resort to reduce intake of water, would thereafter prevent opening either door to the compartment until an airlock system was devised.

Water was coming in from somewhere. He could hear the hydrant-like spurt of it beneath the deck plates. The upper level was deserted except for Yancy, the pharmacist's mate.

“Where's Leone?” asked Richardson.

“He's down below with Mr. Cargill and Chief Frank. He's okay, sir. The other man is all right, too. He just couldn't take any more. So I gave him a sedative, and I think he'll be okay when he wakes up. He's over there lying on the generator flat.” Yancy indicated the area aft of the starboard main engine.

“Good. Get some help and get him through the door forward right away, and roll him into a bunk.” He indicated the watertight door through which he had just entered, then swiftly dropped through the open hatch in the deck plates, climbed down the thin steel rungs in
the ladder. He was nearly to his knees in water in an incredibly confined space between the two huge engines.

Keith, a large abrasion on the side of his head, sloshed toward him. “Looks like the sea line to this freshwater cooler is ruptured right at the hull valve,” he said. “We've got the hull valve shut, but it's the valve body itself that's broken. There's no way of stopping the water coming in unless we can take the sea pressure off.”

“We're getting the drain pump lined up. How fast is the water coming in? Can we reach the drain pump suction?”

“Pretty fast. It's up nearly to the lower generator flats, but so far I don't think any has got into the main generators. Good thing we were able to take the angle off when we speeded up. We'll get the bilge suction open, but the drain pump won't be able to handle it. It's coming in too fast. We'll have to put a pressure on the compartment.”

“Not a hundred and fifty feet worth. We've got to reduce external pressure too. Tell off the engineers you'll need down here. Send forward everybody not required here or in the compartments aft. You can start pressurizing whenever you're ready, but let me know first, and come out yourself. A few pounds will be enough, and I'm going to need you back in conn.”

Suddenly it was clear what he had to do. From the look in Keith's eyes he understood, and agreed. “That last salvo makes sixty-five depth charges he's dropped on us,” Richardson said quietly. “He probably has at least that many more in his locker, and sonar conditions are phenomenal. He'll figure to keep us down here either until our battery gives out or he gets one of those blockbusters right on target. It's time to see if those five-inchers are as good as we think they are!”

There was a hissing of air through hidden pipes. Al Dugan had begun to put air into the aftermost ballast tank to counteract the growing weight of water in the after part of the boat. With a final word to Keith, Richardson started up the ladder. He had reached the upper level of the engineroom, had just motioned to the men watching through the viewing port of the watertight door, when a change in
Eel
communicated itself to him. Perhaps it was the lessening of the sensation of speed through the water. Perhaps it was a gradual squashing down aft. His sixth sense—a faculty developed by all submarine skippers—told him all. The main motors had stopped!

A telephone handset was nearby for the convenience of the engine throttlemen. He grabbed it. “This is the captain! What's happened?”

It must be the maneuvering room which answered. “Ordered all stop, sir.” There was lethargy, acceptance, in the voice. To stop the screws meant sinking to the bottom. There could be only one possible result of such a move, and only a single reason could be the
cause. Some catastrophe had taken place in the nerve center of the submarine!

“Conn! Are you still on the line?”

“Yessir, Captain.” Quin's voice. It, too, carried a hidden message. “The commodore ordered all stop, sir.”

“
Who
ordered?”

“The commodore, sir!”

The watertight door had been undogged. The men were swinging it open. Rich slammed the phone in its place, jackknifed through the door, ran the length of the forward engineroom. Here they had not seen him coming because the door was behind an exhaust trunk and out of the line of sight. Several seconds were needed to get it open. In the crew's dinette, however, someone had been listening surreptitiously on the phones. The watertight door was already being undogged as Richardson raced for it.

He was panting heavily when he reached the diving station. Al Dugan's face was working. “As soon as you went aft, the commodore went back up the ladder and had the hatch shut. A minute ago he sent word you had been injured, and he was taking command and putting the ship on the bottom. He's flipped, sir! You can tell by looking at him” The oval-shaped hatch to the conning tower was closed. Both dogs had been hammered home.

Consternation. A knot in the gut. Neither must be allowed to show. “All right, Al. I'll take care of this. Is your air manifold still rigged to blow number seven tank?”

“Just through the after group. The forward group blow is as was.”

“Fine. Keep her balanced, and keep her off the bottom. Use safety tank if you have to.” There was grateful relief in Dugan's acknowledgment. Rich could guess at the quandary he had been in.

“Sargent!” The auxiliaryman responded with alacrity. “Yessir!”

Richardson spoke slowly and distinctly, so that everyone in the control room would hear and understand. “Shift steering and annunciators from the conning tower to the control room!” Sargent jumped to the forward bulkhead, rapidly began to make the shift.

“Al, get a quartermaster out of the damage-repair gang and put him on the steering station. Report when he has steering control.” To the man wearing the telephone headset Rich said, “Inform all stations that I have the conn in the control room.”

“Blow safety!” suddenly called out Dugan. The diving officer raised his right hand, palm open. Lichtmann, appearing from nowhere in Sargent's place, knocked the air valve open. “Secure!” Dugan clenched his fist. Lichtmann spun the handle shut.

“Steering and annuciators shifted to the control room, Captain!” Sargent was reporting.

“I have steering control, sir. Annunciators too.” The new helmsman was Sodermalm, a lithe young sailor with several patrols under his belt.

“All ahead full!” Richardson still spoke portentously. This was the test, the resolution of the most immediate emergency. Sodermalm clicked over the annunciators.

“Captain says all ahead full from the control room,” he heard the phoneman say into his mouthpiece. The electricians in the maneuvering room must have been waiting for the order, for the answering signals on the two instruments were instant and simultaneous. Richardson could feel
Eel
responding to the additional power. Grins of approbation from Dugan and the men in the control room.

There was still more to be done. “Conn, control,” he said to the man wearing the phones—it was Livingston, the young seaman who only yesterday had mistaken a bird for a plane—“What is the latest bearing of the enemy?”