grayness.
Eleven ships in all, Jim had said.
'Range, Jim!' I said into the mike. 'I've got the TBT on the leading ship, looks like a tanker!'
'Two-five-double-oh! Do you see the escorts, Captain?'
'I see theme We're all right! Keep the ranges coming!'
'Range, two-four-double-oh! Outer doors are open, sir! TWO- three-double-oh! Two-two-double-oh! Taking a radar sweep. clear all around-Range two-one-double-oh!'
'TBT is on the leading ship, Jim,' I said into the mike.
'Angle on the bow is large, around port ninety.'
Hanging on to Walrus' careening bridge, I kept my binoculars rigidly fixed on the leading ship. Walrus rolled spasmodically from side to side, pitched her bows under, her bows, where six bronze warheads needed only the word from me to send them on their deadly mission. A sea roared up to the bridge; instinctively I ducked. Walrus heaved and pounded.
It had stopped raining. Somehow the sky looked just a bit less dark, the gray less pronounced. Our targets were outlined distinctly for me now. Two tankers in the near column. Maybe more beyond. A large freighter bringing up the rear of the nearest column. All big ships, big and fast.
'Two thousand yards!' Jim's voice carried a finality, a defiance to it.
I risked a quick glance to starboard, the port-flanking tin- can was still clear, much nearer. We had a couple of minutes to go, to be deliberate with. Now that we had got there, as Captain Blunt used to say, TAKE YOUR TIME AND MAKE EVERY FISH COUNT!
'Stand by forward!' Into the mike. 'I'm on the leading ship, Jim! Let me know as each one goes out! Shoot!'
'Fire!' Jim had been holding the announcing system button down as he gave the command. I felt nothing. No jolt, no jerk as three thousand pounds, a ton and a half, was expelled.
'One's away,' blared the bridge speaker. A pregnant pause.
'Two's away!' More time. I took my glasses off the TBT, swung around to inspect the nearing destroyer. 'Three's away!' Jim was shooting a spread, would need no further TBT bearings from me. 'Four's away!' I looked forward, reaching out to see the white wakes, impossible in the heaving black water. 'Five's away!' The oncoming tin-can was looming larger all the time.
Wonder if he's seen anything yet? 'Number six away! All torpedoes expended forward! Range to target, one- three-double- oh!'
'Left full rudder!' I yelled the order. Walrus scudded around, the starboard mufflers roaring their choked protest.
'Recommend course zero-nine-zero!'
'No!' I shouted, then recollecting myself, grabbed the mike: 'No good, Jim. Too close to the port-flanking tincan!' I tried to speak calmly. 'How about one-seven-zero with a left ninety gyro for the stern tubes?'
'Roger!'
'Oregon, steady on one-seven-zero!' He had heard the colloquy with Jim, and the rudder had already eased a few degrees in anticipation. But, disciplined helmsman that he was, he had to have the order.
'Steady on one-seven-zero! No question about Oregon's steering ability. He gently eased the rudder off and the ship lunged ahead, the lubber's line right on the marker.
I picked up the mike, ran to the after TBT, plugged it in.
'Stand by aft! After TBT!' I said into the mike. I had to push Pat Donnelly aside to give me a clear shot for sighting.
The after bridge speaker: 'Standing by aft! We're all set below, Captain! Range one-two-five-oh!'
'Shoot!' I had the TBT aimed right between the first and second ships of the near column, at another ship in the second column whose black silhouette completely filled the space between them.
'Seven's away! Eight's away!' Another look at the destroyer.
We were running nearly right away from him, gaining, with our. temporary speed advantage. 'Nine away! Ten away! All torpedoes expended, Captain! We're reloading forward.'
Ten torpedoes, we were lighter by better than thirty thousand pounds, and about seventy thousand dollars' worth of complicated mechanism was out there running in the ocean.
And we were in something of a box, too. Any change in course would increase the approaching destroyer's chances of catching us, make it easier for him to see us.
'Range to the near escort, dead astern!' I called the inquiry into the mike, leaning against the periscope supports with my feet braced in front of me. In this location I could not feel the radar mast rotate, but I could sense it going around, sweeping aft. Walrus' motion was no different on the new course. Seas were still sweeping her with regularity, leaping higher than her radio antenna stanchions-higher than a man's height, splattering all over the deck aft, sometimes virtually submerging it.
Steam, from our hot mufflers under the deck, boiled up through the wooden slats, drifted faintly away. It would be suicide to walk aft there.
'Range to escort, one-nine-double-oh!' He WAS close!
Something had happened in the direction of the convoy. I turned, a flash as though of light, but bigger than any light, and yellower. It lasted only a fraction of a second. Then an- other, and another! No sound-there couldn't be any sound, with all the natural noises of wind and sea going on. I looked harder. Could that be the suspicion of yet another flash in the second column? These were all torpedo hits, of that there could be no doubt, and probably from our bow salvo at that. Our stern shots would be a minute or so later getting there.
Back to the escort: 'What's the range now?' He didn't look any different, but in the dim visibility it would be hard to tell anyhow. Still bows on, still coming, no indication of having seen anything out of the ordinary.
'Range to escort, one-nine-five-oh!' That was not good. We should be making twenty knots to his fourteen, should be pulling ahead faster than that.
Flash! Another hit! And then, flash-flash-two, almost together.
Some notice at last from the convoy. Now it was evident that it was breaking up. Ships were turning every which way.
Suddenly I was no longer an entity, a constant you could think of as a single thing; it had disintegrated, almost in an instant, into eleven different ships. It was as though they were being driven by some inner compulsion. Dark form' s outlined against the slightly less dark sky seemed to be motivated by only one emotion, one heedless, reckless, awful necessity: to get away from the convoy center.
'Good God!' The outburst came without conscious volition.
A violent cone of flame, white-hot with fringes of yellow and orange, screamed into the heavens! It towered over the convoy, towered over us too, cast everything into pitiless relief, turned the night into broad daylight!
In the insane light of the explosion the leading tanker was visible, broken in half, bow and stern floating idiotically with nothing between them. The second tanker seemed all right; so did the third ship in that column. The one which had blown up must have been one of those in the middle column. As I watched, fascinated, the masts of the freighter, last in the near column of ships, grew shorter, his stack disappeared, and I was looking at his bottom.
Then the noise of it reached us, a horrible, sudden, all-gone crash, a detonation of a million pounds of TNT, a complete, unutterable holocaust It could only have been an ammunition ship. No wonder the ships of the convoy had been trying to get away!
'Captain! What is it!' Jim's voice on the bridge speaker.
'I'm OK, come on up here!' Jim arrived in time to see the second tanker burst into flames. His comment was identical to mine: 'Good God! Did we do that?'
'Yes, Jim.' I silently pointed out the tincan on our tail.
'He can't miss seeing us now, unless he's too interested in what's going on over there to tend to his business.'
'We'll have to watch for our chance, now, old man.' I said.
'Most of those ships have escaped the blast, though we can probably scratch four of them. Get back on the radar and give me a picture of how it looks.'
Jim ran down the hatch. His voice came in a couple of seconds: 'Convoy has scattered. We have only nine
