Love and War

At half past the hour, the candle was visibly dimmer. A man muttered, 'Air's growing foul.'

'Someone let one go,' said another crewman. The snickers were halfhearted. Cooper's eyes began to smart. Dixon kept stroking his side whiskers with index and middle fingers.

'How long?' Alexander asked abruptly. Cooper roused. Either his sight was failing or the candle, half gone, had dimmed still more. He had to lift his watch near his chin to see.

'We've been down thirty-three minutes.'

He kept the watch open in his hand. How loudly it ticked. As the light continued to dim, his mind played pranks. The intervals between ticks grew far apart; he seemed to wait a half hour for the next one. When it came, he heard the sound for a long time.

Alexander started to sing softly, some Cockney ditty about wheelbarrows and vegetable marrows. Crossly, Dixon asked him to stop. Cooper longed for Liverpool, Tradd Street, even the deck of Water Witch. Thoughts of the blockade-runner led to thoughts of poor Judah, his remains lying somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic. Cooper felt moisture on his cheeks, averted his head so no one would see —

The candle went out.

A man inhaled, a panicky hiss. Another cursed. Dixon scraped a match on the iron plating, but it produced no light, only a quick fizzing noise and then a smell.

Alexander's voice: 'How long, Mr. Main?'

'A few minutes before the candle went out, approximately forty-five minutes.'

'The air is still quite breathable,' Dixon said. Someone's grumble disputed that.

Without sight, Cooper couldn't judge the passage of time. Nothing remained but a mounting pressure on his temples and devils in the mind, persuading him that he was suffocating, persuading him that he heard the iron plates cracking, persuading him that one thing after another was going wrong. He passed rapidly through dizziness, sleepiness, extreme confidence, the certainty of the imminence of his own death.

He ripped off his cravat, tore loose his collar button. He was strangling —

'Up!'

Laughter then, a rush of conversation. For a moment, wiping his sweaty neck, Cooper nearly convinced himself he had been the one to cry out. Calm, Dixon said, 'Mr. Alexander, man the stern pump, if you please. I'll handle this one. Mr. Fawkes, Mr. Billings, unbolt the ballast bars.'

Cooper rested his head against the hull, anticipating the sweet night air waiting up above. He heard the squeak and hiss of the pumps, the ring of an iron nut falling to the deck. The sound was repeated several times. 'Ballast bars unfastened, sir.'

'The bow's coming up,' Dixon grunted, working the pump handle. 'We should be lifting momentarily.'

Everyone felt the bow rise. The men laughed and whistled, but that didn't last long. One exclaimed, 'What's wrong, Alexander? Why ain't the stern coming up, too?'

'Captain Dixon?' The little Englishman sounded frightened. 'The tank is still full. It's the pump.' 'We'll die,' said the man immediately behind Cooper. Dixon: 'What's wrong with it?'

'Fouled, I should suspect. Damn bloody seaweed, probably.' 'If we can't fix it, we can't return to the surface.' Dixon's words, blurted like a command to Alexander, had a bad effect on the crewman who had spoken a moment before.

'We're going to suffocate. Oh, God, oh, God — I don't want to die that way.' His baritone voice ascended to a high register, the words punctuated by the hiccups of his crying. 'We're going to die. I know we're going to —'

Cooper twisted and reached into the dark. The watch fell; he heard the crystal smash as he seized the hysterical man's arm. With his free hand he struck the man's face twice. 'Stop that. It will do no one any good.' 'Damn you, let go — all of us — we're —' 'I said stop.' He struck a third time, so hard the man's head thudded on the hull. Cooper released his arm. The man kept crying, muffling it with his hands. At least he wasn't screaming. 'Thank you, Mr. Main,' Dixon said. Alexander spoke. 'Sir? I am going to dismantle the pump a section at a time. I think I can do it in the dark — I know exactly how she's put together. It may be that I can reach and remove whatever's fouling her.'

'If you do, the water will rush in.'

'Give me another idea, then!'

More softly, Dixon said, 'I'm sorry. I have none. Take whatever measures you think will help, Mr. Alexander.'

So the nightmare continued, more intense than before. Cooper imagined he couldn't breathe. Not at all. Yet somehow he did: thin breaths, each costing him pain. Or was the pain imagined, too? A silence that was almost sharp settled in the submersible, every man listening for the squeak or chink of a metal part being unscrewed or removed and wondering, What does that noise mean? That one?

Cooper groped near his feet for his broken watch. Just as he touched it, he heard a bubbly roar. A man screamed, 'God preserve us,' and water gushed from the pump, filling the vessel with spray, sloshing along the deck.

Alexander exclaimed, 'One minute more — now — there. I have a big handful of seaweed, sir. I think that's all of it. Now I must force the pump back together against the pressure —'

The water continued to rush in. Cooper lifted his left foot and tapped it down. Splash. The man he had struck was moaning again. Cooper reached behind and shoved the man's head against the hull. That shut him up.

Almost at once, he felt bad about treating the fellow so brutally. The man was right; they would all die soon. He had a swift and sure sense of that. He fought to draw a little of the malodorous air into his lungs and, with doubt about the outcome removed, settled down to wait for the end.

He began to review his past life quickly, by-passing the shameful moments and dwelling on those of intense pleasure — as when he had first seen Miss Judith Stafford on the deck of the coastal steamer bringing them both to Charleston long ago. He composed a little farewell speech to tell her how grateful he was that she had married hi —

'Done,' Alexander shouted. Cooper automatically looked toward the stern, though he could see nothing. He heard the drawn-out squeal of the pump piston. Then Alexander again.

'She's working!'

'Hurrah,' Dixon cried. The crew applauded. Tears spilled from Cooper's eyes as he labored to breathe. He thought he felt the stern lift. Dixon confirmed it.

'There she comes!'

Minutes later, Hunley broke into the moonlight.

Dixon and Alexander attacked the fore and aft hatch bolts like madmen seeking escape from an asylum. Suddenly Cooper glimpsed stars, felt and inhaled sweet, cold air. In no time, the crewmen were briskly turning the crank as if nothing had happened.

Dixon climbed up to peer over the forward coaming. 'Only one person left. Can't see who it is.'

Slowly, the submersible nosed back to the pier, where Lucius Chickering jumped up and down and clapped and spun round and round with his arms at shoulder level, like some happy bird. Dixon ordered him to stop capering and help tie up the vessel.

'I'm not capering, I'm celebrating,' Lucius exclaimed as Dixon worked his way to the bow and flung a line. 'The soldiers and townspeople went home after forty minutes. They all said you were dead, but I had this crazy idea that if I stayed — if I didn't give up — that would prove everybody else was wrong and presently the boat would come up. But Lord Almighty, Lieutenant, you surely tested my faith. Do you realize what time it is?'

Climbing out after Cooper, Alexander asked, 'How long were we down?'

Cooper raised his watch to his ear. Good heavens. Still ticking. He jumped to the pier, tilted the watch toward the moon, shook bits of shattered glass from the white face. He thought he had misread the hands, but he hadn't.

'It's fifteen minutes before ten. We were submerged two hours and thirty-five minutes.'

'I told you, I told you,' Lucius cried, grabbing Cooper's shoulders and whirling him. 'Isn't it incredible? You were right. She works.' Alexander muttered something; Dixon shushed him. 'She can sneak out and kill Yankees any time now — Oh.' Lucius stopped his gyrations. 'I forgot, Mr. Main. One soldier said he was going to General Beauregard's headquarters to report Hunley sunk again. With all hands lost. I'll bet your wife's heard it by now.'