Who aimed the torpedo? He was my assistant, wasn't he, it's his job to back me up!'
I still spoke in a placating tone. 'I know you did, Jim, but remember when you said he had zigged away? Keith knew he had not zigged. You announced the angle on the bow as ninety, which is about what it should have been. Frequently when the target passes at close range just at the time of firing, it looks like a zig, and you fell for it. You wouldn't have fired at all if Keith hadn't made you.'
Jim's jaw muscles bulged. 'What are you telling me all this for? Don't you want me to be qualified? Are you for me or against me?'
'I want you to be qualified just as much as you do Jim,'
I said steadily, 'but what I am trying to say is that the Qualification Board has probably picked up these same points I'm telling you about.'
Jim muttered an obscenity. 'Damn this whole thing, anyway,' he mumbled.
We would have talked further but there came a voice from the conning tower.
'Commander Savage wants Mr. Bledsoe in the control room!'
Jim swung away abruptly without another word and went below.
The Falcon, with our torpedo secured on deck, had already started on her way back to port. Keith in the meantime had turned the ship around and was heading back toward the point where we had previously dived. He looked at me inquiringly, bowing his head against the stiff breeze which on this new course whipped straight across our bridge. There was nothing I could tell him about what had just gone on.
'Keith,' I said, 'you know what you're supposed to do. As soon as Jim passes up the word, go ahead and dive.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' answered Keith. 'We're still rigged for dive, but the hatch has not been checked yet.'
'Hasn't it?' I asked, surprised.
'No, sir. We were crowded up here, and Jim said not to bother because we weren't going to dive again.' Our ship's orders required that the bridge hatch be inspected while rigging the ship for dive, and again after every surfacing. This involved closing it, and if we were under way the skipper's as- sent was therefore required. 'I'll ask Jim for permission to check it as soon as you get below,' said Keith. Ordinarily, of course, I would have given the authority, but today was Jim's show. Even with Jim and Roy Savage below, however, there was hardly any room to spare on the bridge, and Keith evidently wanted to spare me the contortions necessary to allow him room to shut it.
'Very well,' I answered, and dropped down the hatch in- to what passed for a conning tower in an S-boat, hardly more than an enlargement of the hatch down to the control room. It contained a built-in desk, used by Jim and the Quartermaster for some of their navigational work, and some signaling equipment. It was not like a fleet boat's conning tower, however, nor really a 'conning tower' at all, in the strict sense, for the ship could by no means be conned from there.
Set into the steel walls on either side were two tiny round windows, or eye-ports made of thick glass. Occasionally some member of the crew would watch a dive from there or seek some of the mysteries of the undersea from this vantage point.
In the floor was a hatch identical to the bridge hatch, thus permitting complete isolation of the compartment should it be- come necessary. Like the bridge hatch, its weight was counter- balanced by a large coil spring, — too much so, as a matter of fact and now that it had become 'worn in' a bit the hatch, during the last few days, had developed an unpleasant tendency to resist being closed or to fling itself open when undogged.
As I reached for the hand rail preparatory to continuing below, Jim appeared, standing on the control-room deck framed in the open hatchway.
'Bridge!' he shouted.
'Bridge, aye, aye!' answered Keith from above.
'Take her down!' Jim shouted. 'Course two-seven-oh!'
Looking upward, I could see Keith's face as he leaned over the hatch opening, cupped his left hand to his mouth.
'Permission to check the hatch first, sir!' he answered.
The light from the hatchway was in Jim's face and I knew he could not see me. Keith already had hold of the hatch, had swung it part-way shut. 'It'll just take a minute, Jim' he yelled. '-okay?'
The past four days had been hell for Jim, and I could most strongly sympathize with his feelings at this point. Even so, his next action was unwarranted.
He shook his head in an impatient negative. Hands gripping the ladder rails and head thrown back, he shouted imperatively up the opening, 'Take her down, I said!'
Keith had no further choice. 'Clear the bridge!' he called in answer. A moment later came the two blasts of the diving alarm.
I stepped clear of the lower hatch, drew back into the recess of the conning tower near the eye-ports. Watching through them as our narrow slotted deck went under and the sea rose up to meet us had always been irresistibly fascinating to me, and I was never tired of an excuse to do so.
With the diving alarm still reverberating, one lookout and then the other appeared, scurrying down the ladder. Both continued straight on through the lower hatch to the control room below. Next came Rubinoffski, and then Keith. In the mean- time from the control room there were sounds of air escaping as the vents went open.
The first intimation of something wrong was the noise made by the hatch as Keith pulled it to. Instead of the satisfying thud of the latch snapping home and the gasket seating on the rim, there was a peculiar, arresting clank to it.
Keith's face went dead-white. I leaped to his side as he struggled with the hatch dogging mechanism. A glance disclosed the trouble. Somehow the dogs had not been fully retracted when the hatch had been opened the last time, and now, by the narrowest fraction of an inch, one of them was caught between the hatch and its seat!
Nor was this all. The latch, having enough slack in it to latch easily, had entered its slot and engaged. Try as we could, Keith and I could not push it free, nor could we budge the dogging mechanism. The hatch was locked in its present position, with daylight showing all around the edge by a matter of an inch or so. Jammed as it was, the only way of clearing it was with a maul and a heavy screwdriver or chisel.
I could sense, rather than feel, S-16 settling beneath us as my mind encompassed the significance of our situation. There was no maul to be had in the conning tower, nor any time to work on the hatch if there were. Our only hope lay in stopping the boat from diving.
'Stop the dive!' I yelled down the hatch at my feet. 'Hatch jammed!' in an effort to let the control room know what was wrong. Our 'hull openings' indicator, or 'Christmas Tree,' might still be showing red for the bridge hatch, though there was a strong possibility that since the hatch was nearly shut, it might have gone green.
In answer there came a whistling noise from below, and air commenced to escape through the partly open hatch. With a groan I realized the control room had not heard my order and was carrying out standard diving procedure, admitting high pressure air into the boat as a test for tightness. If the barometer went up and then held steady after the air was shut off, it indicated that the hull was airtight, hence watertight. A good test under leisurely circumstances, but worse than useless in this instance because the boat was not watertight, and it was already diving. Not until the control room shut the air valve in order to check the barometer would the ship's in- ability to hold air become evident. In addition, until then the noise made its personnel unable to hear anything we might shout down the hatch from the conning tower above.
In the meantime I could feel S-16 tilting her nose down.
It was still only about twenty seconds since the diving alarm had been sounded, but we had only about the same number of seconds left.
'Leone,' I snapped. 'Get below and surface the boat.'
Keith gave me a scared look and bolted below.
Undecided as to my next move, I stood there, feeling far from heroic, half standing on the ladder and hanging on to the hatch wheel with both hands. I looked it over carefully. The latch, the immediate cause of the jamming, was partly home under the rim of the hatch seat. Made of a piece of steel about a quarter of an inch in thickness, it offered only a relatively sharp edge to push or hammer on. Attached by a linkage to the latch, so that it would retract when the latch engaged, was a short bolt supposed to intersect the spokes of the hatch hand wheel when the hatch was fully open to keep the hand wheel from turning. The bolt was retracted, all right, as it should be, but
