ocean buried me, welling up from beneath the deck and hurtling over the side at the same time, before the welcome voice of my Exec announced that the ship had reached the desired heading.
There was now some protection from the bridge bulwarks and periscope supports behind me, as well from the fact that the seas in sweeping in from dead ahead could not pick up quite so much of solid substance through the submerged forepart of the ship.
I wiped off the TBT lenses again, squeezing water from the precious piece of lens paper to do it, sighted through. 'Ready'
Keith! Single shots! Don't shoot unless I'm holding down the button!' This was to take care of the possibility that I might be temporarily unable to aim. I turned the TBT slowly from side to side, centered the cross hair in the middle of the Q-ship's wildly tossing stack.
'Range, nine hundred! Can you see our stern, Captain?
Give us a bearing of the stern light!'
I sighted on to the stern light, which Keith and I had long ago designated as the bore-sight target for the after TBT, just as the center of the bullnose was for the forward one. It was a good precaution in case the seas had done some sudden unsuspected violence to the precious instrument, took only a second.
When you get there, take your time! I pushed the button on top of the right handle twice.
'OK! Give us the target for the first fish!' Another deluge of water, not so long, this time. I hardly felt it, got the TBT on as soon as my head came out, blurred or not, held the button down.
'One's away!' I let go the button. We'd watch to see where the fish would go, we had decided. Wipe off the lenses again.
BLAM! A stunning flash of light, followed by a solid explosion! Amazingly, I heard it, and almost immediately!
'Hit, skipper!' The speaker-how could Keith have heard, with the ship battened down as it was? Then the obvious explanation: the phenomenon had been noticed before; the sound had traveled four times as fast through the water as it could through air. Occasionally one torpedo would thus produce the sound of two explosions, if fired under conditions permitting the noise to be heard through both air and water.
The hit had been forward of the stack. I put the TBT cross-hair midway between the stack and the stern, thumbed the button again.
'Two's away!' This time I was under when the explosion came in. It shocked my eardrums. They were ringing when I came out again, just in time to see the column of water sub- siding, falling on the ridiculous foreshortened stern.
One forward and one aft. Not bad. I aimed the third one at the stack once more.
'Three's away!' The wait again. This was getting to be the payoff. To be reasonably sure of the destruction of the Q-ship, we had to hit her with a lot of torpedoes-three anyway, prefer- ably all four. A quick, secret flash of orange-gunfire! He had unlimbered one of his broadside guns, was shooting in our general direction I didn't even hear the passage of the shell, wouldn't have cared if I had. This was the payoff, this the moment of revenge. This was getting even for the Walrus, and for Jim, Hugh, Dave, and the rest. And it was making it up also for Stocker Kane, who never would have any children to speak proudly of the father who gave his life for his country, and for Hurry Kane, and Laura, and the rest of the people whose lives had been shattered by this fool war. Roy Savage and Needlefish, too, gone these long years, rusting their bones, somewhere not far from where we were at this very moment…
WHRRUMP! Number Three went home, right under the stack. The explosion flash of the shallow-running torpedo momentarily obliterated him from sight. The water spout came up, I thought the motion of the stack looked a little strange, different from the crazily tossing masts of the rest of the ship, when the white water deluged down, the smokestack was leaning drunkenly, slowly toppled forward. And there was some- thing a bit different in the way he rolled, too. Slower, farther over each time a sea tossed him.
The fourth fish. Same place-where the stack had been. Hold the button down: 'Four's away, skipper!'
Maybe we could have saved that one. The masts had not come back from the last roll, were still leaning toward me. thought I could see part of the deck, grayer than the black hull.
There they go-back up again, slowly, however-no, just a wave rolling past. Down came the two masts, lower than ever to- ward the black, eager water, the deck now clearly visible as a gray slash at the top of the black outline.
Our fourth torpedo smashed squarely into it, right into the black spot in the center of the gray where the stack and central deckhouse had been.
Supplicatingly, as if tired of conflict and travail, the masts lay on the water. The hull separated into two parts, and I saw the outline of the bottoms of both, intermittently, as the seas raced upon them.
'Radar shows he's sinking, skipper! We're blowing up now!'
The Eel's forward half-rose quickly; they were using high pressure air instead of the low-pressure blowers. In a moment it seemed, we were fully surfaced, and Keith and Al joined me.
I pointed silently astern. There was the thump of the main induction beneath my feet.
'I ordered it opened, skipper,' said Keith. 'We'll be putting the engines on in a minute.' We were all three looking a when four exhaust plumes shot out, and the roar of our engines came faintly upwind to us. Al handed me a clean piece of lens paper, helped me do a thorough job on the TBT binoculars.
We could barely make out the low-lying hulks of the two halves of our antagonist, more by their dark red color than by their shapes. Every succeeding wave which tore down upon them buried them, and finally there came a time when we could see only one.
'What's the range, conn?' I called into the after speaker.
'Eight hundred yards, sir!' We had been drifting backward during the whole time of our attack. 'We still have four pips on the radar, bridge!'
At this moment the second red blob failed to rematerialize.
A long instant we watched for it to rise into sight, finally knew it too had gone. 'One pip's gone, bridge! Three left, coming in and out!'
'He doesn't know what he's talking about!' muttered Al.
'No, he's right. Those are the lifeboats!' Keith's voice was matter of fact.
Of course, the lifeboats. And Bungo was just the man to weather the storm in them, too. Less than fifty miles from shore, he'd be back in business with his crew of sonar and depth-charge experts within a week!
'Go below, both of you!' I spoke roughly, an unaccustomed dryness in my mouth.
'Why, what's the matter…?' one look and Keith shut up- I waved him impatiently to the hatch.
'Right full rudder! All ahead flank!' This time there was no trouble turning, with the wind helping. And then it was pushing us, blowing at my back, the seas alternately lifting first stern, then bow, as they steam-rollered on by. Every time our bullnose lifted clear of the water it must have heaved twenty feet into the air, before the sea caught up with it.
I pushed the forward speaker button. 'Radar! What's the bearing and distance to the nearest pip?'
'Three-zero-zero, one thousand!'
'Keep the ranges coming!' I shouted. Then to the helmsman: 'Steer three-zero-zero!'
We came right a little. After a little I could see it, a little boat with oars out, tossed up against the sky. It was not so hard to see; dawn was breaking, I realized. A little to starboard.
'Steer three-zero-five!' That put it right ahead. On we came.
Now they saw us, lay on their oars, looking. A row of faces staring out of hunched-over bodies, heads sunk between their shoulders. They had had a rough night, and a rougher morning. I gritted my teeth. 'Steer three-zero- four!'
They suddenly realized their danger. Oars moved jerkily, frantically, not in unison. They had been in the 'no- quarter' business too. They knew what was coming. We were right on them, towered above them, our huge bow raised high on a wave, poised in deadly, smashing promise, pitiless; the row of freeing ports at the base of bow buoyancy must have looked like foaming dragon's teeth. I looked the steersman right in the eye as he stood at his oar, dead ahead and far below-the wave passed. Our bow dropped like a guillotine.
The boat never even came up. One black round head swam by, looking up with horror-filled eyes, arms and fists raised out of the water, skidded down our rounded belly, vanished aft spinning in our wake. I steeled myself. This was how they had looked in Walrus when the unexpected fatal torpedo explosion had hit them. This was the
