Dust on the Sea (37 page)

Thum, thum, thum, thum, from the propellers. Growing louder, ever louder. This was
Eel
's time of greatest danger. No doubt depth charges were carried at the ready, and even now, if a submarine were detected only a few hundred yards ahead, a devastating blow could be dealt her.

Thum, thum, thum
, went the propellers. Louder and louder.
Thum-thum-thum!
Close aboard now.
THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM!

“Tincan passing overhead!” said Stafford.

There was a swish of water through
Eel
's superstructure. The submarine rocked gently in the destroyer's wake. The escort had passed, after all, not more than a few feet away from where they stood.

In the sudden stillness in the conning tower Blunt was staring from the forward starboard corner where he had stationed himself, still gripping the lanyard to the hatch. His face was beaded with sweat. Richardson tossed him a quick smile. Except for the fact that this was very much for real, Blunt had experienced it many times. “He's gone by,” Rich said. “This is a shooting observation. Stand by forward.”

“Shooting observation. Stand by forward,” echoed Keith. Quin repeated the same in the telephone, giving emphasis to his voice as he transmitted the order.

“Range fifteen hundred, gyros thirty right, torpedo run eighteen-fifty,” said Buck.

“Up periscope,” said Richardson. He laid the vertical cross hair of the periscope directly between the stacks of his target. He was a complete automaton, and yet his mind encompassed the fact that the ship was crowded with people—soldiers, from the general olive-drab appearance—and was heavily laden. Millions of Japanese yen and untold hours of Herculean labor had gone into building her. She was obviously a new ship, probably completed after the beginning of the war. She had recently been repainted. She was a thing of pride to her skipper. She was doomed. Explosion, fire, drowning lay in the cross hair that he carefully, coldly, placed upon her.

“Mark!” he said.

“Zero-two-three-a-half,” said Keith.

“Set,” said Buck.

“Shoot,” said Richardson. “Down periscope!”

“Fire one!” said Keith.

“Fire one!” shouted Quin into his telephone.

Keith was leaning on the firing button built into the side of
Eel
's
conning tower, just forward of the TDC. “Number one fired electrically!” announced Quin. Everyone in the conning tower had felt the jolt transmitted to the sturdy fabric of
Eel
's hull when the torpedo had been expelled.

Keith released the firing key. “Stand by two,” he said.

Lasche was counting off the seconds. “. . . Eight . . . nine . . . ten.”

“Fire two” sang out Keith.

“Number two fired electrically,” reported Quin.

“. . . Nine . . . ten . . .”

“Fire three!”

The jolt of the torpedo departing. Quin reporting the message from the torpedo room that the third torpedo had been fired electrically. Had this not happened, the chief in the torpedo room would instantly have fired it manually. Larry Lasche, counting out the seconds between torpedoes to ensure they were not fired too closely together.

“All torpedoes running hot, straight, and normal,” announced Stafford, playing his sound head-dial back and forth over a small arc, oblivious to the fact that “hot,” at least, could refer only to the old steam and compressed-air torpedoes.

“Shift targets,” said Richardson. “Up periscope!” He laid the cross hair on the stack of the second ship—a neat-looking but older vessel. “Mark!” he said. Again the train of events was set in motion. He felt
Eel
jerk three more times, recognized on the one hand the death he had dealt out and on the other the fact that there could be no stopping the process, once it started, neither for himself nor anyone else.

He spun the 'scope around. The stern of the destroyer which had just passed overhead loomed huge in his magnified field of view. It had not been more than sixty seconds since it had gone over. Everything was still calm and peaceful on the surface of the sea. Nothing yet could have happened. “Right full rudder! Down periscope! All ahead full! Give me a course for stern tubes!”

Keith crowded alongside of Buck in front of the TDC, gave Rich the answer. “Recommend course three-four-zero for about a right thirty-degree gyro for tubes aft,” he said.

“Starboard stop! Starboard back two-thirds!” said Rich. This would help increase the speed of the turn and at the same time keep
Eel
from gaining too much speed through the water at this crucial moment. He watched her swinging around on the dial of the TDC. It took so long for a submerged submarine to turn! She moved so slowly, had so much weight to swing around—not only her own steel structure, but also the water in her ballast tanks. She had such a huge ponderous bulk to push around through the water, so little power with which to do it.
Maneuvering on the surface was a totally different thing, even on the battery.

“Approximate bearing of the third ship is twenty degrees left of the second one,” he said to Buck, “and increase his range by five hundred yards.” Buck furiously cranked the dials of the TDC.

“How long before our first spread gets there, Larry?” Rich asked.

“Thirty seconds to go.” He watched the bow of “own ship” on the TDC pass 300, pass 320—it was swinging a little faster now. It passed 330.

“Starboard stop,” he said. “All ahead one-third.” His judgment had been right,
Eel
's speed had remained at about two and a half knots, but her swinging had perceptibly increased. Al Dugan was doing a masterful job at depth control with the speed changes, full rudder maneuvers, and six torpedoes fired forward at rapid intervals.

“Steady on three-four-zero!”

“Up periscope!” The deadly ritual again. “Shift targets. Bearing, mark! . . . Shoot!”

“Fire seven! . . . Fire eight! . . . Fire nine!”

“Three torpedoes aft fired electrically.”

He spun the periscope around, saw a huge geyser of water shoot up alongside the leading ship. “A hit!” he announced. A second later the boom came in. He turned to the escort. Still no sign, still stern to. A second geyser rose alongside the forward part of the leading ship. With two torpedoes in her she was gone regardless of whether the third one, spread aft, missed or not. But as Richardson watched, the ship must have slowed down enough from the effects of the two hits to make sure the third hit also. It went off almost in the same place the first one had struck. Even as he watched her, she began to list toward him, still belching smoke and steam from her stacks, her decks boiling with startled, terrorized humanity.

The escort had evidently put his rudder left, was turning around. A cloud of steam, or vapor, burst from the stack of the second ship. The reverberations of the third boom had barely died away in
Eel
's conning tower when a geyser of water arose alongside the forward part of the second ship and, seconds later, another in her after section. He swung to the third ship, caught the explosion there. The torpedoes had been spread to allow for variations in the solution for target speed, course, and range. If they ran as intended, one at least of each salvo should have hit each target. Six hits for nine torpedoes, fired with large gyro angles, were more than could normally be expected.

He spun the periscope around once more. A jet of steam came up from the stack of the fourth ship in column. A whistle or siren. She had
turned radically to the left, was still swinging. No chance for a shot there. He swung back to the escort. Still in his turn, listing away, undoubtedly coming back to where he would assume the submarine must have been, possibly where a now-chastened sonar watch stander remembered something unusual in his echoes. The aircraft had also turned, was headed back toward the gutted convoy.

“How's the reload coming forward?” he asked.

A second's delay. Quin answered. “They got one in. The second one's going in now. Neither one ready yet.”

“Let me know just as soon as they're ready to shoot forward.” The destroyer was perhaps five hundred yards away, heeling over to starboard under the impetus of left rudder. It was clearly one of a new class of submarine escorts. No doubt one of the new
Mikuras
. “Frigates,” they were called in the recognition pamphlet. In describing them to the wolfpack commander he had, without forethought, called up the possibility it might be this same trio which had accounted for
Chicolar
a few days ago. If
Eel
could remain at periscope depth, not be driven under, he might have a chance to exact retribution from one of them.

He spun the periscope completely around again. The aircraft might also be a problem, but the opaque Yellow Sea water was on his side. The two-stack passenger freighter was lying flat on her beam ends, stacks toward him. He could see water climbing up her deck, now vertical, which had only so recently been horizontal, pouring through deck openings into her interior. Anybody still below decks was now caught, would be unable to get out, would go down with her in the trap she had become. Her port side lay horizontal above the water. Many men were standing there, outlined against the sky. Lifeboats and life rafts hung crazily from their nests on deck, or from their davits. There had been no time to launch any of them. Her passengers and crew, the troops she carried, would be dependent for survival upon whatever wreckage broke free, of which apparently there was already a goodly amount. Land was three miles distant. They had a good chance of saving themselves if they could get free of the sinking ship, either by swimming to land or through rescue by one of the escorts. Strange. They were soldiers. He should hope they all drowned.

All this, his mind took in with instant comprehension. Number two ship had taken two hits, was down by the stern. Water was already coming up over the main deck aft. Her bow, where the upper part of a jagged hole just forward of the mast could be seen, was rising preparatory to the final plunge to the bottom.

The third ship, struck by a single torpedo, was the smallest of the
three. The torpedo had hit her aft. She was stopped and also well down by the stern. Farther aft, the fourth ship, approximately similar to the last one hit, had turned course radically to the left. Belching clouds of smoke, she was obviously racing away from the carnage which had overtaken her sisters.

Farther to the left, the single escort which had been astern, an old destroyer of some kind, had apparently experienced some uncertainty but now also was turning away. Perhaps she would accompany the single undamaged ship in her flight eastward. Nothing else in sight: all was serene and calm through the remainder of the periscope's circular sweep.

Back to the escort up ahead. She was still in her turn. The aircraft was coming also, but not dead on. Evidently the pilot had no fix on
Eel
's position. The
Mikura
frigate (if that was the correct class name) was the main concern.

“Down periscope.” The tincan was a perfect shot for bow tubes, if there were but a single bow tube ready. He cursed the zig away which had forced him to change his plans at the last minute and left him without the torpedo he had planned for this eventuality.

“How much longer before we're ready to shoot forward?”

He could hear Quin repeating the question in the telephones. No answer. He knew they must be working with maximum urgency. At least one torpedo must be ready soon.

“Up periscope. Observation,” he gritted. “Bearing, mark!”

“Three-four-eight,” said Keith.

“Range—use forty-five feet—mark! Down periscope.”

“Five hundred twenty-yards,” said Keith.

“Left full rudder! New course, three-three-zero!” He needed no TDC helper for this obvious move. The less the gyro angle, the better.

Buck was frantically spinning the dials on the TDC. Keith brushed past Richardson, began spinning one of them himself.

“Angle on the bow?” said Buck.

Rich had deliberately waited, since Buck had only two hands and could only get two pieces of information into the TDC at once. Keith's help had relieved that problem.

“Port one-twenty,” said Rich, “but he's turning toward. Set him up at port ninety, and I'll take another look.”

The total time since the first torpedo had been fired was in the neighborhood of three minutes. Most of the time had been occupied by the necessity of turning to bring the stern tubes to bear. The Mark Eighteen torpedoes required a run of about 350 yards before the arming
mechanism in the warhead rotated enough to activate the exploder. Since there were no wakes in the water, the Jap escort would not know immediately where to look for the submarine. He would instinctively reverse course, but it was possible there might be a moment or two of indecision while he searched. . . .

“Up periscope!”

“Number one tube is ready,” shouted Quin.

“Observation! Bearing, mark! Range, mark! Down scope. Angle on the bow, port sixty. Turning toward.” He needed the essential bits of fire control information, heard Buck set the data into the TDC.

“Set!” said Buck.