by Herman Wouk
“I’m taking her up. Blow tanks! Surface! Surface!” He could barely hear the captain’s strained bellow in the voice tube, but before he could issue orders to the planesmen, there came another hoarse howl. “Belay that, Byron. I’m taking her up to fifty feet! Blow negative! Maximum up angle! All ahead full!”
The lights came on, showing the planesmen clinging for dear life to their control wheels. The other sailors clutched stanchions, valve heads, anything that would keep them from breaking their limbs or their skulls in this tossing quaking space with its hundreds of iron projections. The depth charges boomed and crashed in a hell without letup. Books, cups, measuring instruments, were clattering and flying about; cork fragments rained in the air. Nevertheless, the planesmen obeyed orders, frantically twisting their wheels, and the submarine with a grind and a bound went forward, wallowing, shuddering, bucking in the roiled water. It was proving a tough vessel. Whatever the havoc so far, the hull was holding, there was some charge left in the can, and the engines were turning; but the control room had a wrecked look, two of the sailors were bleeding — Byron too put his hand to a wet spot on his cheek, and brought it away red — and Chief Derringer was horribly gagging and vomiting behind the dead reckoning tracer. Death still seemed very close at hand.
However, the submarine had gained a shade of advantage from the attack. Even in the deep ocean, the heavy explosions would have created a screen of turbulence opaque to sonar, and therefore a new chance to sneak away. With the Devilfish on the bottom, the rain of depth charges had raised a broad cloud of mud. Through this cloud it moved off momentarily hidden from the enemy’s sonar. Astern the depth charges blasted and rumbled. Obviously the destroyer captain, his charges set by fathometer, was plastering the area to bring up debris as proof of his victory.
But Byron’s awareness of this tactical situation was nil. Somehow they were under way again; that was all he knew. As he stanched the cut on his face with a handkerchief, Carter Aster’s voice on the loudspeaker startled him. “Now pharmacist’s mate to the conning tower on the double.“ The quartermaster came trampling down from conn to tell Byron in a low voice that the captain had been thrown off his feet by one of the explosions, fallen in the darkness, and struck his head. When the lights came on Aster had found him on the deck, eyes closed, bleeding from his forehead. So far he had not revived. The exec didn’t want to alarm the crew; he had sent the quartermaster to let Byron know why he would be giving the voice tube orders for a while.
Aster did not alter Hoban’s tactics. The Devilfish ran on, just above the bottom, squandering its last reserve voltage at ten knots while the pharmacist’s mate worked on the captain. The depth charging astern ceased. The pinging continued on short scale with up Doppler. So the destroyer was once more on the move and closing the range. In search, or in direct pursuit? No telling.
And now sonar reported propeller sounds of two other vessels, approaching at high speed from the direction of the entrance. Derringer began plotting them on the tracer at a range of five miles. “There’re two more goddamn destroyers, Mr. Henry,” the chief said, rolling his eyes at Byron. “Speed thirty knots.” He repeated the news by telephone to the conning tower.
Aster’s voice in the speaking tube, choked and tense: “Periscope depth, Briny!”
“Aye aye, sir. Periscope depth.”
The planesmen turned their wheels. The polished oily shaft of the attack periscope slid noiselessly upward behind Byron. The submarine climbed.
“Sir, levelling at sixty-one —”
An exultant yell cut Byron off. “Why, it’s raining! Pouring! It’s a goddamn squall, black as a black cow’s inside!” Aster shifted to the loudspeaker. “Surface, surface, surface! STAND BY TO MAKE TWENTY-ONE KNOTS!”
Seldom had Byron Henry heard more welcome words, or more welcome sounds than the roar and swash of the blowing tanks. Swiftly the Devilfish rose. He could feel the motion of the sea, the steep pitching, the levelling off, and he knew that the submarine was breaking into the rainy night. His ears recorded the change of pressure. Sweet damp air poured in through the vent. The diesels coughed and roared into life. The Devilfish smashed forward, once more a surface vessel breathing and burning the open air!
Rude cheers, happy blasphemies, roistering obscenities rang through the long vessel in every compartment. Temporarily, anyway, praying time was over.
They were still at battle stations. Red-stained handkerchief to his face, Byron mounted the ladder on his way to his post on the bridge. Aster, at the chart desk, said, “Stand by, Briny.” The pharmacist’s mate was bent over the captain, who sat with his back to the torpedo data computer, eyes open, complexion bluish, head bandaged, khaki shirt splashed with blood. Hoban gave Byron a sickly smile. “Well, I see you caught it, too.” His voice was hoarse and weak.
“It’s just a cut, sir.”
“You were luckier than me.”
Aster said, “Captain, do you want to try walking?”
“In a minute. You’re heading south, you say? Why south?” It was a tired, petulant query. “The entrance is the other way.”
“That’s it, sir. He’s tracked us, he knows where we were heading. A line between the two contact points shows him. With two more tin cans coming for us, I figure we better do a wide end run. Ten miles south, ten miles east, and then up the east coast to the entrance.”
“Very well. Help me up.” Aster and the pharmacist’s mate lifted him by his elbows. On his feet, Hoban weaved and grasped a stanchion. “Whew! Dizzy. That’s not a bad plan, Lady. But keep the men at battle stations. I’d better take a half hour or so in my bunk.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Aided by the pharmacist’s mate, the captain tottered to the ladder, and the bloody bandaged head sank through the hatch. Aster took up rulers and divider. “Briny, better have Doc Hviesten fix you up.”
“I’m all right, Lady. I’ll just go to my station.” Byron wanted to climb outside, see the waves, breathe fresh air.
Aster gave him a hard penetrating look. “Do as you’re told. And put on foul weather gear.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
When he did get to the bridge, he found blackness, spray, wind, rough swells. These were beautiful to him. The fire control officer had the deck; a blond lieutenant from Virginia, Wilson Turkell II, nicknamed Foof in some forgotten Annapolis episode. But only the captain and Aster called him Foof. He was an accomplished officer with two marked habits: total silence except on ship’s business, and a way of drinking himself insensible on the beach. Turkell said nothing when Byron arrived, and nothing thereafter.
The bridge was the captain’s battle station. Half an hour passed and he did not come. Aster shouted an order through the open hatch to turn east. From the dark form of Turkell, surprising Byron almost like speech from a tree, issued five words: “This is a bad business.”
“What? Why, Wilson?”
But the tree had spoken its wooden piece. Except for orders Turkell said nothing more.
Half an hour passed in rainy, pitching, tossing silence, and the dark. Sonar lost the three destroyers. The Devilfish turned again to run along the coast. The loudspeaker grated, “Now secure from battle stations. Meeting of officers in the wardroom.”
The captain was not at the meeting. In his place sat Aster, looking grim, smoking a gray cigar. When all the officers were seated, he pulled the green curtain. “Okay, I’ll make this short,” he said in low troubled tones. “I’ve been with the captain for the past hour. His concussion seems serious. Doc Hviesten says his pulse is elevated, so’s his blood pressure, and his vision is impaired. He may have a fractured skull. The Devilfish has to return to base.”
Aster paused, looking around at the officers’ set faces. Nobody said a word or made a gesture. He took a long puff at his rank cigar. “Now I guess you all feel as badly about this as I do. We came here to do a job. But there’s no alternative. We can’t break radio silence. If we could, ComSubRon 26 would just order us in. Captain
Hoban isn’t up to conducting attacks, and he can’t delegate command. The safety of the boat and crew becomes paramount. The thing to do is get the hell out of here. Let’s hope the Salmon, the Porpoise, and those other guys get some scores down at the landing beach.”
“How do we get out, Lady?” Turkell asked in an offhand way. “And when?”
“On the surface, Foof, straight through the entrance at twenty-one knots” — Aster glanced at his watch — “approximately forty minutes from now.”
Turkell’s reaction was a marked downcurving of his mouth and a single nod. “Any comments?” Aster inquired, after a silence. “We’re all in this together.”
The engineering officer lifted a hand, an awkward formality among Devilfish officers. He was a peppery little lieutenant j.g. from Philadelphia named Samtow, a humorless fanatic about machinery maintenance, but otherwise rather a joker. “The captain’s conscious? He’s aware of what’s going on?”
“Of course. He’s ill and dizzy. He doesn’t feel up to conducting attacks, and there’s no point in wasting torpedoes.”
“Does he know we’ll transit the entrance on the surface?”
“Yes.”
Turkell’s lips barely moved. “That’s his desire?”
“Well, Foof, we tossed it back and forth.” Aster slouched, puffing on his cigar, shedding some of his forced dignity. “It’s a tough one. Destroyers and sub chasers will be thick up there as whores on Market Street. We know that. These monkeys may even have mined the entrance. For all we know they have radar, too, though our intelligence says no.” Aster swept both his arms wide, and shrugged. “On the other hand we’ve got zero visibility topside, haven’t we? With the diesels we can run through and get away in a quarter of an hour. This hole is twelve miles wide, and that’s one hell of a big expanse to bottle up solid with patrol vessels on a rainy night. But if we pull the plug it’ll take us four times as long to transit the hot zone, with all those tin cans pinging for us. I grant you, two hundred feet of water overhead is a nice margin of safety. The captain finally said I’d have the conn, and to do it my way. So I say again, any comments?”
The officers looked at each other.
“That’s the way to go,” Turkell said.
Aster let several wordless seconds go by. He nodded. “Okay then. One more thing. Captain Hoban told me to express his regret at aborting the patrol. He says the boat, the crew, and the officers all performed admirably. If not for malfunctioning torpedoes we’d be heading home with a couple of major sinkings chalked up. We’ve learned that the Devilfish can catch a lot of hell and still go on fighting. The patrol hasn’t been a dead loss, and he says well done.” Aster spoke all this in a dry monotone. In his natural tone he added, “And that’s that. Back to battle stations. I just secured for a while to give the crew a chance to grab a sandwich and a piss.”
“You mean,” said Samtow, “there’s somebody left in this boat who hasn’t pissed in his pants?”
The meeting broke up in coarse relieving laughter. The escape through the entrance was an anticlimax. Aster, Byron, and Turkell stood on the bridge in rubber clothes, peering into driving black rain. The sonar operator, stammering with excitement, reported more and more screw noises and pinging; far ahead at first, then getting closer, then sounding all around the Devilfish. Apparently in the sonar receiver terrifying pandemonium was echoing, through 360 degrees, but on the bridge all was wet, dark and peaceful. They went cruising straight through the heavy Japanese patrol line and saw no sign of it as they plunged and wallowed uneventfully through the night out of the gulf and into the open ocean.
“Just goes to show you, Briny,” Aster remarked while the sonar operator was chattering alarm after alarm, “that ignorance is bliss. Here we are absolutely ringed by these yellow rascals, and it’s like a pleasure cruise. Let’s just hope we don’t ram one.”
He kept the submarine at General Quarters until the pinging had faded from the sonar, far astern; then he stationed the watch. “Briny, when you’re relieved, see me in my cabin.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
He was lying on his bunk in jockey shorts, smoking a cigar, when Byron came. “Hi. Draw the curtain and sit down.” Aster raised himself on an elbow. “How do you like submarine duty?”
Byron took a moment to answer, then spoke the truth. “It’s for me.”
Aster’s green eyes flashed, and his mouth corners curved in his highly individual, cold, almost mirthless smile. “Now listen carefully.” Aster leaned toward him — their heads were only a foot or so apart — and spoke almost in a whisper, “There’s nothing wrong with Captain Hoban except that he’s scared absolutely shitless. ”
“What? No concussion?”
“Nah! He confessed to Doc Hviesten. Doc told me. Then the three of us had it out. He did fall, but he wasn’t knocked cold, he simulated it. It isn’t malingering or cowardice, he just can’t hack it, Briny. He got the message when the first depth charge went off. You know, I guessed it, watching him. It was pitiful. He crumpled up in a ball like a girl caught naked. I guess he’s doing the right thing, because he sure as hell can’t conduct an attack. He’s broken. He’s in terror. Doc had to put him to sleep with a strong sedative. As soon as we reach Manila, he’s going to transfer out of submarines.”
This was staggering news to Byron. “Oh, he’ll think better of that. His whole career —”
“No, he won’t. He’s through. He told me that, Briny.”
“Ten years in submarines, Lady —”
“Look, he was in the wrong business. There was just no way he could find out. I’ll never blame any man who decides he can’t hack this, and I feel sorry for him. Actually he did well in his condition. He kept his self-control, and he maneuvered properly under fire.”
“Who else knows about him?”
“Well, Foof was right there. You can’t deceive Foof. But he’s no blabbermouth. Doc Hviesten won’t talk, he’s very ethical. I think the sailors were too scared to notice. I’m backing Hoban’s story. When he’s transferred the truth will get out. Meantime we have to run this submarine. We’re returning to base with our tail between our legs, and that’s poison for the crew. So if we make a fat contact on the way back, I’m going to ask Hoban’s permission to shoot. We’ve still got twenty torpedoes left. If we do run an attack, Foof will be my kibitzer, he’ll punch the Is-Was, and you’ll man the TDC. Got that? You’re the best diving officer I’ve ever seen, except maybe me, but Quayne will have to do that.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What’s your problem?”
“I can’t run that TDC.”
“You did all right in the attack trainer. Better than Samtow. There’s nobody else.”
“Dive, dive, dive. “ Through the mists of sleep Byron heard the loudspeaker and the clamorous flooding of the ballast tanks. On the instant he was out of his bunk naked. Sitting at the tiny desk writing a report, his roommate, Samtow, yawned. “Easy. It’s almost dawn, so Lady’s pulling the plug.”
“Dawn? It is? How could I sleep five hours?”
“It’s a talent.”
“What’s happening?”
“We’re about fifty miles out of Manila.”
“What about the captain?”
Samtow shrugged. “Haven’t seen hair nor hide of him.”
Byron dressed, drank coffee, and went to check on the torpedo rooms, bow and stern. The submarine stank. Listless cleanup and repair went on here and there, but the mood of defeat was as pervasive as the odor of malfunctions and decay. Most of the sailors were taciturn, but their feeling was plain — stunned humiliation that the red-hot Devilfish crew should be skulking home empty-handed from their first patrol, mauled by Japs, barely saving their skins.
Then the sonar operator reported the faint beating of a propeller. The plotting party came on duty. The count of propeller turns per minute gave the vessel’s approximate speed. Its very slow movement relative to the submarine showed it some forty miles away. The distance wa
s astonishing, but depending on sea conditions, the equipment could sometimes pick up screw noises at great ranges. Several times the contact faded out and returned, still on the same closing course at the same speed.
A rumor flashed through the compartments that Lieutenant Aster was going after it; and, as by a blast of compressed air, the sickly atmosphere in the vessel blew away. The torpedomen came to life, feverishly checking their weapons. The engineering gang fell earnestly to work on jammed valves, malfunctioning pumps, and broken fuel and water lines. The crew began an intensive cleanup. A cheerful fragrance of frying chicken soon obliterated the stench of leaking drains and filthy men. About midday curiosity overcame Byron. Pulling the curtain behind him, he stepped into Aster’s cabin, where the exec, quite naked, sat correcting typed logs. “What’s the dope, Lady?”
“About what?”
“Will we attack this target?”
“Oh, you require a special briefing, do you?”
“Sorry if I’m off base.”
“Well, since you ask, I have the captain’s permission to close him and take a look.” Aster was distant and uncordial.
The propeller sounds slowly grew stronger, hour by hour. Derringer’s plot showed that with this submerged approach, the Devilfish would not sight the ship much before evening, but a daylight run on the surface in these waters was far too risky.
Byron had the afternoon watch. At five o’clock Aster appeared in the conning tower in clean khakis, freshly shaved, smoking a long Havana, and humming the “Washington Post March,” his habit when in the highest spirits. “Well, now, gentlemen, just let’s see if this rascal is in view yet, hey? Plot says he ought to be. Up periscope! — Well, well, well! By the Christ, there’s our friend. Bearing. Mark! Two one zero. Range. Mark! Fourteen thousand yards. Down scope!”