Dust on the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  The range closed swiftly. At seven thousand yards Rich ordered two-thirds speed ahead. He could see the large bulks of the three ships looming clearly, shadowy shapes in his staring binoculars. Swiftly he swept from one to the other. They were running in very close formation, hardly three ship-lengths apart. Two were relatively new ships, not large, perhaps three thousand tons each. Engines aft—probably the products of a war construction program. The third ship was a trifle larger and looked older, an old-type freighter with a tall stack and a small deck house amidships. Possibly four-thousand-ton size.

  Eel was now as committed as Chicolar had been, with three basic differences: she knew a lot more about the enemy, having tracked them for a considerably longer time, she was coming in for attack on their beam, and there were no escorts.

  “Range four thousand yards”—from Keith on the bridge speaker. Eel’s speed had been reduced to about ten knots. At three thousand yards range, with the leading ship just on her port bow, Richardson ordered the outer doors to the forward torpedo tubes opened. He could almost hear the six consecutive thumps as the hydraulic mechanism banged them open.

  “All ahead one-third! Stand by forward!” he ordered.

  “Range twenty-five hundred yards!”

  “Why don’t you go ahead and shoot, Rich?” Blunt. He had not spoken for more than a quarter of an hour. Richardson had completely forgotten his presence on the bridge.

  From the high plane of the objective professionalism which somehow possessed him, Richardson heard himself say, “I seem to remember an old skipper of mine saying once you get in there to take your time and do it right. They can’t see us.”

  “Range to leading ship sixteen hundred. Gyros six right. Torpedo run one-six-zero-zero!”

  “Conn, bridge, we’ll shoot with the port TBT,” continued Richardson into the bridge mike, setting his left shoulder into the bulge built in the port side of the bridge. “Bearing, mark!”

  “Port TBT, aye aye. Range sixteen hundred. Torpedo run one-five-two-five. Gyros ten right. Ready number one!”

  “Stand by, forward,” said Rich once more. He looked through the TBT binoculars, thumbed the button buzzer with his right thumb. “Shoot!” he said into the microphone hanging on its wire looped over the top of the pressure-proof binoculars.

  “One’s away”—Keith from the conning tower. He could hear someone counting seconds. “Two’s away.”

  “Shift targets,” said Rich. He swung the TBT to the second target. “Bearing, mark!” He pushed the button.

  Keith answered as before, “Ready with number three!”

  “Shoot!” he said again.

  “Three’s away! Four’s away!”

  “Shift targets! Bearing, mark!” He thumbed the button a third time.

  “Ready number five!”

  “Shoot!” said Richardson for the third time.

  “Five’s away! Six away! All torpedoes fired forward!”

  Richardson had felt the mild lurch as each torpedo was ejected. Eel was firing electric torpedoes and therefore there was no wake, no sign that anything had happened in the water, but he knew that six times three thousand pounds of highly complicated mechanism, carrying a total of twenty-four hundred pounds of TNT, was running in the dark water.

  “Aren’t you going to maneuver, Rich?” asked Blunt.

  “No, sir,” said Richardson. He felt perverse detachment. Standard tactics called for maneuvering to avoid, but he would not do it. He had dealt death again, and now he must watch it happen. “These ships have had it,” he growled in justification. “Besides, they’re unescorted. There’s nobody there who can hurt us.”

  There was a flash of light at the water line of the first freighter. The ocean was riven as a huge plume of water and air suddenly obscured the doomed ship’s midsection. Seconds later another similar plume covered the after portion. Then the noise of explosions came in—three times; three loud booms.

  “What happened, Rich? I distinctly saw you fire only two torpedoes at the first ship.”

  “We heard them through air and water both, Commodore,” rapidly responded Rich. “The middle two probably overlapped each other and reached us around the same time.” He shifted his attention to the second ship just in time to catch the two explosions enveloping her. He shifted the TBT to the third ship. Nothing. The torpedoes could not have missed!

  Then, as he watched it, the ship seemed to divide into two parts. Her midship section disappeared. Bow and stern rose toward the sky, closed together, swiftly shrank. Both sections were already half under water when the thunderous explosion of the torpedoes beating in the old freighter’s ancient bottom reached them.

  “Six hits for six torpedoes! Bully good shooting, Rich!” shouted Blunt ecstatically, slapping him across the shoulders and slamming his eyes unexpectedly into the rigid rubber-protected eyepieces of the heavy TBT binoculars. “Great work!” Blunt was almost babbling with excitement and pleasure. Curiously, Richardson felt totally let down. This had been ridiculously easy. The ships had had no defense whatever. Chicolar had taken the escorts out. His attack had been made without warning, and he had had all the advantage of modern technological science. It had been nothing but murder.

  “All ahead, flank! Left full rudder!” he ordered.

  “Where are you going now, Rich?” said Blunt.

  “Back to the Chicolar. Maybe we can help her a little.” He spoke into his command microphone. “Conn, bridge, what have you got on the Whitefish? And where are the three tincans working over Chicolar?”

  “Nothing on the Whitefish, Captain. We’ve not seen her radar for quite a while. Maybe she’s dived. Morning twilight will be in half an hour. The three tincans are where they were before, still in a group fifteen miles bearing two-six-five true.”

  “Make your course two-six-five, helm,” said Rich.

  “Rich, they’re fifteen miles away. Day will be breaking before we get there.”

  “Then we’ll dive and make a submerged approach. They won’t be expecting a second submarine.”

  “After what you did to that convoy? By the time we get there they’ll know what happened to it, and that another submarine was responsible!” Blunt seemed totally oblivious to the fact that four lookouts, a quartermaster and Al Dugan were all crowded together on Eel’s tiny chariot bridge and could not avoid hearing every word that was said.

  “Commodore,” muttered Rich, trying to give his voice an urgent piercing quality while at the same time lowering his tone so that only Blunt could hear, “Commodore, they won’t have any idea what has happened to their convoy! Besides, the Chicolar is in trouble! She may have been hit before she dived! We’re still recording sporadic depth charging over there, and the radar shows the three Jap escorts still clustered around the same spot. We’ll be able to dive outside visual range and make a dawn attack. . . .”

  “Absolutely not, Rich, I forbid it! That’s an order!” Blunt spoke as loudly as before. “Our mission here is to sink Japanese ships, not to go off shooting at windmills on some wild goose chase! Chicolar can take care of herself. Les Hartly is an experienced skipper. I want this ship to remain undetected. Whitefish is already submerged, and you are to do the same. I want you to head southwest and return to your patrol position. This was a good night’s work. I won’t let you spoil it now!”

  Night was beginning to give way to the gray haze of the approaching dawn. Blunt’s face was seamed, its once craggy lines now only sagging gray flesh. His eyes had a strange intensity, a hint of fervid determination. Rich had never seen him this way before. Abruptly Blunt turned. He stooped for the grab rail above the hatch to the conning tower, swung himself below.

  After the commodore disappeared there was silence on the bridge. Dugan, not a loquacious individual anyway, wisely was using his binoculars and paying no apparent attention to the exchange between his skipper and the wolfpack commander. Obviously the strain of the war patrol, Blunt’s self-isolation on board the submarine, and his background in pre
war submarine tactics might contribute to a sort of bewilderment which could be responsible for his present attitude. It was also possible, Richardson had honestly to admit to himself, that he had deeper information, better knowledge, than possessed by the submarine skippers. One thing sure, he was the senior officer present. The three submarines in effect were his fleet. His orders must be obeyed.

  “All ahead two-thirds. Come left to course two-two-five,” Rich ordered down the hatch. In the stillness on the bridge, the clink of the annunciators answered him before the acknowledging call came from the helmsman. “Al,” he said to Dugan, “take over the deck. Check with the forward torpedo room to be sure that no torpedoes are loose in the room. When you’re satisfied that everything is secure, go ahead and dive. Take a quick sounding first. We should have at least forty fathoms under our keel.”

  Richardson fought down a feeling of bitterness as he descended the ladder into the conning tower. He waited there, withdrawn and uncommunicative, as Dugan gave the necessary orders, received the correct responses, and supervised the operation of submerging. Instead of the wild exultation of successful combat, the satisfaction over destruction of three enemy cargo ships without having received a shot or a depth charge in return, gloom enveloped him. The three ships sunk had been far less offensive than Bungo Pete. They had not shot at him, had not even known he was there. Their only offense was that they happened to be on the other side of a war.

  They had had nothing to do with starting the war, nor, for that matter, had he, nor had Bungo Pete. Perhaps, as Blunt had once suggested, he spent too much of his time thinking about the lifeboats. Was that why he had wished to rush to the aid of Les Hartly and the Chicolar? Was he still impelled to rush headlong into danger in order to satisfy his unconscious craving for absolution? If so, perhaps Blunt was right. He had no right to risk his men or his ship to fulfill some inner psychological compulsion of his own.

  He waited in the conning tower until the dive was complete, and Eel was cruising quietly at periscope depth. Suddenly he felt tired. Keith had been standing silently in the after part of the conning tower alongside Buck Williams, facing the now quiet TDC. Neither had said a word to him. Perhaps they had some inkling of the inner turmoil which possessed him.

  “Keith,” he said in a low voice, “secure from battle stations. Set the regular submerged watch. I’m going below.”

  He swung himself onto the ladder leading to the control room, went down with his back to the ladder, his heels on the rungs, supporting himself from falling by hands on the opposite side of the hatch coaming.

  In the control room, Al Dugan obviously wanted to say something. He beat him to it. “Al,” he said, “Keith has the conn in the conning tower. We’ll be securing from battle stations in a minute. He’ll turn over to you.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Al. “Can I talk to you for a minute, Captain?”

  “What is it?”

  “We have a problem coming back, Captain; it’s the hydraulic system. I didn’t want to bother you about it before with all that was going on, but she’s recycling fast again. If we’re going to have a few hours, I’d like to turn to on it with a couple of men. We’ll have to put the planes in hand power, and secure the plant. You won’t be able to use the periscopes for several hours.” Dugan’s normally stolid face was clearly worried.

  -5-

  Al Dugan’s plan of attack on the hydraulic system was to isolate all of its parts and methodically inspect each one. “We’re lucky to have that fellow Lichtmann aboard, Captain,” he said. “Our boat was built in Portsmouth, and Nerka at Mare Island. She was an earlier boat than this one, but Mare Island builds to Portsmouth designs, and it turns out he was Nerka’s hydraulic plant expert. Starberg and Sargent are pretty good at it too; so we’ve got our three best men on it, and we’ll go at it systematically. There must be something basic wrong with it.”

  “How long will it take you to put the plant back in commission if we need it? If we can’t use the periscopes, we’ll be in trouble if something turns up.”

  “Depending upon which part we take down, we should be able to get the vital parts of the system working again in an hour. To find the problem, though, may take several days. I’d like to begin with the periscope hoists, and that’s why I thought maybe we could go deep for a while. I’ll let you know if we strike any trouble. We’ll have it ready for surfacing by sunset for sure.”

  “Okay, Al. Let me know if there’s anything at all anybody else can do to help.” He felt a deep yawn arising from the depths of his being. Going deep for a few hours would give the whole crew a rest. He wanted nothing so much as to surrender to the demands of sleep.

  Blunt, as usual, was sitting in the wardroom, unlighted pipe in his mouth.

  “Commodore, we’re going to have to stay below periscope depth for a while. I’m turning in. You should do the same,” said Rich.

  “I’m not sleepy,” said Blunt. “You go ahead. I’ll call you if anything turns up.”

  So far as anything turning up in any way connected with Eel, Rich thought, he had better be informed of it before Blunt, who was, after all, sort of an official passenger, not involved with the operations of the ship. But it was a small matter, not worth worrying about. He removed his outer clothing, climbed in his bunk, and was instantly asleep.

  Al Dugan awakened him several hours later. “We think we may have found at least some of the trouble in the system,” said the engineer. “The accumulator ram may be scored again—she’s not holding pressure like she ought—but the main trouble seems to be in the overload bypass system. This new design has a complicated valving setup. I think some of the valves are sticking. We don’t know which ones, though.”

  The clock on Rich’s stateroom bulkhead was indicating nearly noon. “I must have been asleep quite a while, Al. What shape do you have the plant in now?”

  “Well, we’re still checking some of the parts, but unless we find anything more, we’ll have to go with what we’ve got. We’ll have it ready to surface by sunset,” Al promised.

  It was with gratitude for a long comfortable rest that Richardson brought Eel to periscope depth several hours later, and, just at sunset, took a careful look around through the periscope. Nothing was in sight. The sea was flat, calm as before. The murky gray atmosphere was unchanged.

  The worrying in his mind had been growing stronger as the uneventful day wore to its close. The overcast sky reflected his mood. “Keith,” he said, “be sure Rogers has the radar all peaked up before we surface. I want to see if we can pick up the Whitefish and Chicolar radars on ours. No telling where they’ll be. Both ought to be north of us, I think.”

  As it grew dark, the familiar surfacing routine took place and Richardson was on the dripping bridge. “There are no stars, Keith,” he called down the hatch. “You’ll have to work on dead reckoning.” This had been anticipated. No stars had been seen through the periscope either. Keith clicked the bridge speaker button from the conning tower twice.

  The deep rumble of two main engines recharging the battery and providing steerageway was always comforting to hear. Eel settled into her surface cruising routine. Another night of tense watchfulness in enemy waters lay ahead. It felt almost better this way than to be submerged deep below periscope depth, with ’scopes inoperative because of lack of hydraulic pressure. Rich looked up at the shears. On their after side, just above the topmost periscope support bearing, the slotted oval dish which was the radar antenna rotated ceaselessly. Evidently it was seeing nothing, not even the radar of another submarine, for otherwise it would have been searching right and left of the suspect bearings, looking for confirmation in short, jerky sweeps.

  “Permission to come on the bridge and dump trash and garbage!” a shout from the conning tower. Part of the surfacing routine. Since the captain was on the bridge, permission for such matters had to be sought from him—an authoritarian obligation he would abdicate the moment he passed below. Buck Williams cast a quick look at his skipp
er, received a nod in return.

  “Permission granted to dump trash and garbage,” Buck called down the hatch. In a moment two men dragging filled gunny sacks behind them appeared on the bridge. The OOD and skipper moved out of their way to permit them clear passage to the cigarette deck, where the two men in a practiced maneuver flung each sack in turn clear of the side and into the water. “One more coming up, Bridge. A juicy one.” There was someone in the conning tower boosting the sacks up to the bridge. A little more gingerly, the third sack was carried aft, thrown overboard also. Wiping their hands on their shirts, the two men stood for a minute, sucking in deep lungfuls of the salt-laden air, then in turn went below.

  Richardson waited a few more minutes. Still no sign from the radar. It was now completely dark. The visibility was less than the previous night, perhaps five miles. Surely by now Whitefish and Chicolar would be surfacing.

  “Going below, Buck,” he said abruptly. He reached for the rail above the hatch to the conning tower, with distaste found it covered with a slimy, sticky substance. “Buck,” he said sharply, “get this rail wiped off, and have some words with the cook. One of the garbage detail always ought to have a rag with him and wipe the rails down when they’re finished. Otherwise somebody is sure to slip and hurt himself sometime. Especially if we make a sudden dive.” He realized there had been a slight irritation in his voice, more than he wanted to show.

  Rogers looked up as Richardson approached the radar console. “No contact,” he said. “Nothing at all. No pips. No sweeping radars. Just lots of grass, and land to the northeast.”

  “We’re too far away to pick up any of those tincans who were depth-charging Chicolar last night,” Keith said, “unless they’ve decided to head down this way. But if conditions are right, we should be able to see one of the other boats’ radars as far as fifty miles, maybe more.”