The U-19's Last Kill

by Jack Finney

  Suddenly, loudly, Moreno said, “It’s time, damn it, it’s time! What’s the matter with him!” No one answered, and we waited for I don’t know how long then—it might have been a minute, a half minute, or it might have been four or five. The sun had set now, and, though it was still daylight in the sky, the first star was suddenly visible, and here on the face of the ocean it was more night than day. I must have looked away for a moment without realizing it, for it was the sound that I heard first—the sound, not loud, enormous and strangely prolonged, or a vast object gently breaking the surface of the water a hundred yards away; the sound, it must be, of a whale emerging on the surface. It was a sort or enormous, gentle plop, and, as I jerked my head up to stare, I was grinning, for I had already heard the familiar sound of water draining front the decks of a submarine. And then, there she lay, out on the water; her deck was nearly awash, but the fuzzed silhouette of the conning lower of the U-19 lay above the surface, black against the darkening horizon, in the center of a widening ring on the smooth surface of the ocean.

  We yelled; the exultant sounds tore at the linings of our throats, and we thumped one another’s backs till the boat rocked. Then Vic was at the oars, grinning wildly, heading for the sub. Moreno shouted angrily then, and Vic braked, shoving on the oars. Then he rowed toward the big boat instead; as we passed under her stern, Moreno dropped a great coil of line—new inch-and-a-half Manila hawser—into our boat I heard a dull, metallic clank out on the water, and swung around in my scat to see Frank Lauffnauer standing in the conning tower of the sub. There was another clank as he quickly closed the hatch cover at his feet again, then he pulled off his mask and mouthpiece. He yelled at us exultantly. “Gott sei Dank!” he shouted over the smooth water, and Vic began to row then, heaving hard on the oars, through the new darkness toward the U-19.

  Behind us I heard the whine of the electric anchor motor on Moreno’s boat, then the big diesel rumbled to life again, and now Moreno was ready to maneuver if the sub drifted too close. His lights could be seen from shore, of course, but Rosa had made a point or mentioning to those few neighbors who were on the island that she and her “husband”—that was Moreno—had just bought a cabin cruiser. They were bringing it over tonight to take the rest of us home, Anyone seeing Moreno’s lights now would figure that that’s what was happening out here.

  I felt sure. I doubted that anyone could see the sub’s dark tower from shore, and the bulk of Moreno’s boat lay between it and shore anyway.

  At the side of the sub Linc and I helped Frank—he was shivering, his teeth chattering, but grinning—down into the boat, clapping him gently on the back, murmuring our congratulations. Linc began helping him out of his gear then, and he gave him a pint bottle of whisky to nip at. Vic rowed to the prow of the wet, moss-coated little sub, and I slipped an end of the big hawser through her towing eye and putted about fifty feet of the heavy line on through it.

  We rowed back to the boat then. Frank and the others climbed up on deck, and I handed up Frank’s clothes There was a moment then—I in the rowboat staring up at the others, lined up at the rail looking down at me—when we just grinned at each other, almost foolishly, like a bunch of kids, What the odds had been against us up to this point, what the chances of the U-19’s valves giving way long before this point. I didn’t know, and certainly I no longer cared, nor did any of us. We brought it off! I thought, grinning up at the others. Then I turned to stare out over the darkened water at the dim, almost invisible silhouette of the U-19’s conning tower. And now we’ve got our submarine, I thought. Then I heard the chatter of Frank Lauffnauer’s teeth, and when I turned to look back at him and at the others, there along the rail, I was no longer smiling at the thought.

  TO BE CONTINUED

  The rusted hatch was opened. And then the little sub gave up its dreadful secret.

  Frank Lauffnauer had just done the impossible. In 1918, as a young German sailor, he had abandoned a small submarine in 100 feet of water off Fire Island, New York. Now, forty years later, he found the sub and re-entered her through the escape hatch. With all the odds against him, he managed to blow her ballast tanks and bring the U-19 to the surface.

  The sub was part of Lauffnauer’s incredible plan to seize a fortune of $1,500,000. His confederates—Vic, Linc, Rosa, Moreno and Hugh—were standing by, ready to tow the sub to a secret dock. Here, in Hugh’s words, is what happened that eventful night.

  III

  Someone had to ride the sub, and I’d volunteered. There was nothing I or anyone else could do if she started to founder, except to sing out; but if the towline broke, Moreno’s boat would shoot ahead for no telling how many dozens of yards before he could reverse her, and the sub might be lost in the dark. In that case we needed someone aboard with a flashlight, to locate the sub again. I’d volunteered, I didn’t quite know why; her deck awash, there was no place to ride except the little conning tower, and it would be slimed and wet and scaly with rust.

  I stood waiting in the rowboat; forward in the fishing boat I saw Vic and Linc sprawled on the deck, just above me, Frank Lauffnauer stood quickly dressing, staring back at the ancient German sub he’d served in more than half a lifetime before.

  Rosa stood on deck, leaning against a wall of the little cabin, and I saw Moreno come out and say something to her. I couldn’t hear what it was, and in the faint, reflected gleam of the running lights I saw her shrug. He murmured something again, and she replied—in Italian, I realized now—then Rosa stood up, walked to the door of the cabin and, ducking her head, stepped down inside. Moreno followed, said something else in Italian, and I heard Rosa reply angrily; a moment later she stepped out, her arms draped with a bulk I couldn’t make out and walked toward me. She stopped at the rail, and I saw she was carrying oilskins, boots and a blanket. “I’m going with you,” she said quietly, “if you don’t mind.”

  “Sure,” I said after a moment, surprised. “Glad to have you.” Then Moreno stepped to the rail and dropped my gear, almost flinging it into the bottom of the boat, and walked away. Rosa laughed aloud at him, handed her gear down to me, then swung a leg over the rail, and I reached up to help her into the boat.

  I rowed to the sub then, and, silting in the boat, we struggled awkwardly into our boots and oilskins. Holding to the conning tower, I helped Rosa up into it, then passed her the blankets. I tied the boat to the conning-tower rail with a dozen feet of line, then climbed in beside Rosa and hailed Moreno’s boat.

  The diesel rumbling at low speed then, Moreno very carefully maneuvered his boat, keeping the towline slack till he lay directly ahead of the drifting sub. Then he moved forward, very cautiously and very slowly, and the arc of the heavy doubled towline slowly lifted from the water. Slowly the arc flattened, we heard the creak of the gradually tightening line, then it was taut and straight above the water. Carefully and evenly Moreno opened the throttle, and almost imperceptibly we were moving. We moved ahead then at a steady eight or nine knots, I judged.

  There was no moon yet, and it would be less than a quarter moon when finally it appeared. This night had been chosen for that reason, among others—from any more than thirty or forty feet, only the boat’s running lights would be visible. The danger of our sub’s being seen by anyone else was almost nonexistent.

  Rosa’s oilskins rustled, and I glanced down to see her lugging something from her pocket: then she brought out a vacuum bottle full of coffee, and I grinned. “You’re a bright girl,” I said, and she unscrewed the plastic top, then poured it half full.

  “There is no cream and no sugar,” she said, offering me the cup. “Do you mind?”

  “No, I like it that way. Go ahead, have yours, then I’ll have mine.”

  “We will have it together.” she said, shrugging. “Unless you wish not to; you Americans worry so about germs.”

  “Suits me,” I said, and she took a sip or two, then offered me the cup, and I had some; it was good coffee, nice and hot. Then I passed the cup back to her.

/>   “It’s not too comfortable here,” I said, “and it won’t get any better. Why’d you come out, Rosa? O.K. if I call you Rosa?”

  She smiled, shifting her position a little. “This would be a strange place to be formal; yes, call me Rosa. I will say Hugh. I came out here because I did not wish to be there”—she nodded at the vague shape of the boat ahead.

  “Was Moreno annoying you?”

  She laughed contemptuously, “Not as you mean. He is careful; he wants to marry me, so he speaks and looks carefully; I made him understand that he must. But he hungers after me all the time; he cannot hide it. And I am sick of it.” Then she stopped laughing. “I am a widow, Hugh, of four months; I do not want men just now. In time I will again, and when I do, I will welcome attention.”

  “You must have been in love with him.”

  “Love, love. He was my husband, and I was his wife. Whether I loved him is less important than you think.”

  “O.K., O.K.,” I said. “You’re twenty-two or -three, no older, and I’m twenty-six. But you talk as though you were fifty and I were fifteen.”

  She just smiled—laughing at me again—and didn’t say anything, and I felt my face flush angrily, then I laughed.

  All night we moved through the water at a steady eight or nine knots, and not once did we see a boat or even a set of running lights. A half hour before daylight we curved in toward the shore. I couldn’t see anything different about this stretch of coast line. Several hundred yards out Moreno reduced speed so slowly and expertly that, while the towline went slack, it never touched the water until we were nearly dead stopped. He shut down the diesel then, the two boats drifting, and it was the sub, all her bulk under the water, that stopped first, of course.

  We waited then for dawn. Once Moreno had to start up his engine, and tow us in a wide sweeping circle back to our starting point—the two boats had drifted too close together. At the very first hint of whitening sky to the east I hauled the rowboat up to the conning tower, then Rosa and I rowed back to the big boat, and she got out. Vic climbed down into the rowboat, a thick coil of half-inch line looped around his forearm, and we rowed—fast, now—to the sub. We hailed the boat, and they pulled in the towline; then Vic knotted an end of his line to the towing eye, and I rowed for shore, Vic paying out the line as we moved.

  On shore in the first faint light I could see the vague bulk of the dock I was heading for. We reached it, and I saw that it was typical of its kind. It looked like a house or perhaps a small-sized barn, set on piles in the water at the very edge of the shore. It had a steep, gabled roof, shingled with wood—old, weathered and a little green with mold. There were several large dusty windows under each of its eaves, and the entire end of the structure facing the water was big, double, wooden doors, their bottoms a foot or so under water just now. Standing in the boat, Vic unlocked the padlock and, with me backstroking the boat, he pulled the doors open. Inside, two feet above the water the tide was high now—two platforms, each about four feet wide, extended the length of the building, one on each side and about a dozen feet apart. Between them lay water, and at the far end of the building the two platforms were connected by a third which extended across the back of the building.

  We tied up the boat and climbed out onto the dock. Then, the line over our shoulders, we began to pull—and we didn’t move. The sub a dead weight in the water, we could not overcome her inertia. Our upper bodies almost parallel with the dock planking, the rope biting into our shoulders, we heaved and strained till the sweat poured into our eyes—and didn’t gain a single inch. The sky was lightening fast, and now I saw a chain hoist hanging from the center beam, about where you’d need it to work on the boat’s engine. We found a fourteen-foot plank lying against a side wall, shoved an end of it over to the opposite side, and, using it as a bridge, I got under the hoist, caught the chain and lowered it enough to tie on our line. And now, the chain rattling through the pulleys, we started the little sub moving easily. Once it started, we pulled it by hand, the little conning tower moving steadily through the white dawn toward us. It had dried during the night, and now I saw that under the slime that coated it, it was red with rust.

  There were a couple of fending poles lying on nails in the wall, and, while Vic stood on the platform at the far end of the building hauling in the line. I guided the little sub, shoving on her side with the pole, into the slip.

  In two trips with the rowboat Vic ferried in the others, and then—with Rosa’s boat anchored two hundred yards beyond low-tide line—we all stood lined up on the dock in the first full, bright daylight, staring in silence at the ancient little submarine, “Well, here she is,” Linc murmured then, “Next question—will she ever operate again?”

  Lauffnauer nodded at the water and spoke to me. “We piled concrete blocks in the slip at low tide. Three layers of them on the bottom, more on the sides. There are only a few inches of water between her and the blocks now. When the tide goes out, she will rest on the blocks—a crude drydock. You have props ready, Ed?” He turned to Moreno, “Right there.” Moreno nodded at the end wall—his face sullen, I thought; he hadn’t once looked at Rosa or me—and now I saw a couple of dozen newly cut two-by-fours piled against the wall.

  We propped the conning tower right away—a couple of long two-by-fours on each side, one end of each resting against the tower, the other ends lying on the platforms about an inch from the walls, the two-by-fours angling upward slightly toward the tower. As the tide ran out, the sub lowering, the two-by-fours would move down toward the horizontal, wedging themselves tight against the walls.

  About a hundred and fifty yards behind the dock was a two-room shack, with a small septic-tank bathroom. A plank walkway led from a rear door at the side of the enclosed dock, across the swampy shoreland up a gradual incline for fifty yards or so to solid dry ground. Then a path continued across the rocky, weed-clustered earth to the door of the shack. Rosa’s husband had kept a few cots in here, a second-hand electric refrigerator—there was a power line into the place, which continued on to the dock—a two-burner hot plate and a few cooking utensils. He and his one- or two-man crew had slept here occasionally. Now Rosa went on up to the shack to fix us some breakfast.

  The rest of us stayed, watching the sub inch downward in the slip as the tide lowered. The conning-tower props moved slowly to the horizontal, as we guided and kept them in position. Presently their ends touched the walls. The slimed deck planking began to break the surface of the water; the sub’s bottom had touched the concrete-block floor.

  There were two handsaws, newly sharpened, hanging from nails in the wall, and now Moreno took a small cardboard box lying on a wall studding. There were five brand-new metal tape measures in it; we each took one, and Vic and Linc each took a saw. Saw in hand, Vic knelt at the edge of the platform on one side of the sub, Linc on the other, each with several lengths of two-by-four beside him. Then, as the water line sank, exposing the sub’s sides, the rest of us measured distances between the platform pilings and the sub’s sides, calling them off to Vic or Linc. They sawed off the short lengths required, and we wedged them into place. Finally, a short prop between every piling and the sides of the sub, we were finished, and again we sat on the dock, staring and silent, watching in fascination as more of the ancient little ship came into view.

  The water was well down now, the ballast tanks half exposed; and the upper portions of the sub’s sides were drying, and as they dried the red rust revealed itself under the slime. I wondered how much of the thickness of the pressure hull was gone and what pressures it would and would not withstand now.

  The same thoughts were in everyone’s mind, I’m sure, for in just that moment Vic murmured absently, speaking to no one in particular, “She doesn’t leak too much, we know that, but——” He stopped, slowly shaking his head, and Frank Lauffnauer spoke, his thin face grave and the lines down his cheeks seemed deeper. “Now it is time to look inside,” he said, “And I will go first, I saw almost nothing last n
ight; it was hard to see, wearing my mask.”

  We scrambled to our feet then, suddenly excited. Moreno snatched a coil of heavy extension cord from the wall, a caged hundred-watt bulb at one end, and plugged it into a wall outlet. Then he handed it to Lauffnauer, who took it and jumped right over the cable railing onto the deck. And now, out of the water, the full unsupported weight of his body dropping onto the rotted and pulpy wooden-deck gratings, his feet went through them. He fell to his knees; his knees, too, plunged through the sodden wood. He got right to his feet, stumbling a little, his feet going through again, then got to the conning tower and climbed into it.

  We waited—this was his right—and I saw him stoop, his head and shoulders disappearing, and knew he was pulling at the hatch cover. It creaked, then snapped open, and I waited for the sound of Frank’s steps down the inner ladder.

  Instead, he stood suddenly upright, hurling himself away from the newly opened hatch, his face contorting, and we stood staring, astounded. Then he thrust his upper body over the edge of the conning tower as far as he could get and began coughing deep in his chest, inhaling harshly in great retching gasps.

  The odor reached us then, and we ran, ducking low, stumbling, bumping into one another, to the open doors of the dock, where we stood leaning out over the water, breathing in the fresh air. Behind us I heard Frank stumbling across the sub deck, feet breaking through the sodden planking; then he was running to join the rest of us and gulp in new air. It wasn’t strong, the queer odor that drove us from the sub, but it was unbearable.

  We knew what it was, but no one talked about it. “You got a pump?” I said presently to Moreno, “Any kind.” He nodded, grimacing, went up to the shack, then came back down dragging a long length of discarded gasoline hosing and a hand bilge pump.

  We worked half an hour then, up on a bare patch of ground back of the marshy tideland—all of us but Rosa, who went into the shack. We took the pump apart, oiled the leather valve, then put it together again and connected it to an end of the hose with friction tape. Then I held the end of the hose out to Vic. “You like adventure?” I said sourly, and he smiled a little, took the hose and vent into the dock, a hand tight over his face, he shoved the hose end as deep into the open hatch as he could get it. then we all pumped—outside the dock in the sunlight—for a full hour and a half, spelling each other at ten-minute intervals. The pump wasn’t very effective; nevertheless, each stroke forced a column of air from the mouth of the hose, and by ten o’clock the air in the dock was fresh again.