Tom looked at the chart north of Ireland. U-19 had been reported as coming out behind the mine-sweepers at Helgoland three days ago; she was spotted reporting off the Hebrides the day before, and, unless she was going directly up the Channel, might well be expected on the convoy route tomorrow. He sighed hopefully.
CHAPTER XXI
In the dim light before the dawn, the L-20, only her conning tower showing, lay awash, a few hundred yards astern of the Galway, watching the eastbound convoy sweep by. As far as the eye could see, the ocean to the northward seemed to be covered with ships, vast shapes looming out of the semi-darkness, a forest of masts and stacks, moving resistlessly onward. Foam curled here and there as the seas broke against plunging bows; the grey water turned white as churning propellers cut the wide seas into one vast mass of foaming wakes. And over all, masking the stars, hung a low cloud of smoke, fed by countless smokestacks.
No lights showed, no whistles blew; silently, inconspicuously, the vast armada steamed on through the night toward France.
Tom watched awestruck. What could not a U-boat do, falling on that fleet like a wolf on a flock of sheep! The L-20 heaved under his feet as he watched them pass, easy targets for his torpedoes. It struck him suddenly as queer, not that so many ships were being sunk, but that the losses were so few. Here he was, right on the flank of the convoy, ideal to attack. That two-stacker there, she was nearest; one torpedo on her, then turn a little to port and next fire at those two tramps astern of her and a little inboard; it was like taking candy from a baby. His fourth torpedo on that freighter following in the wake of the two-stacker, and then, while Biff reloaded the tubes, steam ahead a little —
A distant hum came to his ears, vaguely familiar. Tom looked aft in the darkness, abruptly alert. The noise swelled in pitch. The blowers on a destroyer!
On his starboard quarter, a searchlight flashed on, a huge finger of blue light wavered a moment over the sea and settled on his conning tower. Almost at the same instant came a flash of red fire in the darkness. A tracer shell shrieked toward him, a trail of sparks marking its path. The shell bounced on a crest just short of the L-20, burst in a geyser of flame and spray. A shower of splinters rattled against the sides of the conning tower.
Half-blinded in the glare of the searchlight, Tom saw signal lights flashing on the Galway. No time to depend on that. He seized two Very pistols from the signal rack, fired wildly aloft. Another shell screamed by. Over this time, thank heaven! Green, red, green, green, the stars from the Very pistols flamed in graceful arcs through the night — the Allied recognition signal.
With his heart in his mouth, Tom glimpsed a dim bow come hurtling toward him out of the night. Firing had ceased; they were too close to fire; evidently they meant to ram. Hadn’t he got his recognition signal right?
He pressed a button; below him klaxons shrieked a warning through the boat, he yelled wildly down the voice tube:
“Close all watertight doors! Blow all ballast tanks! Stand by for collision!”
He looked up from the tube. Heeled far down, port rail awash, helm hard over, propellers churning full astern, spinning almost on her tail, the destroyer was shooting by his starboard bow, not twenty yards away. In the gleam on her decks, reflected from her searchlight, he saw the shining muzzles of three four-inch guns trained on him, gunpointers crouched low over telescope sights, loaders standing tensely by, ready to hurl in the next shell when the breech should open. More faintly he caught a glimpse of two strings of ashcans on her stern, ready to rain overboard should he submerge.
The destroyer’s bridge swept by; pale faces leaned out toward him, a voice roared:
“What ship is that?”
“U.S.S. L-20,” shrieked Tom. “Keep clear!”
“Signal faster next time, old man! All subs look alike to us!” A wave of a megaphone, the destroyer slid by and vanished in the night.
Tom leaned a little weakly against the binnacle for support. The bridge teetered uncertainly, he looked over the rail. The L-20’s deck was just thrusting its narrow length up from the waves; they were coming into surface conditions; the ballast tanks must be nearly emptied.
The helmsman looked at him. In the dim glow of the binnacle light, his face seemed ghastly white.
“I probably look like that to him too,” muttered Tom to himself. He looked down the hatch into the control, saw a few anxious faces below peering up at him.
“Below there, open all the doors and pass the word to secure in surface trim! The excitement’s all over now. The U.S.S. Lamson has just gone by.”
The L-20 rode more steadily now. Tom looked to port; the rear ships of the convoy were just steaming clear, leaving only the foaming sea to mark their passage. He took a long look at the disappearing ships and shook his head. Possibly a convoy was not attacked with such impunity after all. He surmised that a U-boat crew, normally anxious to see Germany again, would prefer to confine their attention to ships unshepherded by destroyers.
Lights were flashing from the Galway; evidently Erickson was anxious as to their fate. Tom trained his blinker tube on the Galway9s bridge and himself answered in dots and dashes of flickering light:
“No damage. Will pick up tow as usual.”
With engines stopped, the Galway rolled silently in the trough of the seas, waiting for the convoy to open out a sufficient interval, while astern of her, the L-20’s air compressors pounded, hurriedly trying to make good in the banks the high pressure air used for the emergency blow on the ballast tanks; and the port diesel, running light, was clutched in on its motor, which, with connections reversed, was being driven as a generator to provide current for the air compressors and avoid any drag on the storage batteries.
An hour went by, a faint light streaked the eastern horizon. The L-20 secured her compressors, coupled both engines to drive through to the propellers, and puffed slowly ahead under the Galway’s counter and a little to windward. Mr. Mate and a few of his roughly clad seamen peered over the high poop.
“Look out below!” A heaving line whistled through the air, the monkey’s fist hit their deck, bounced across the low rail. Biff Wolters pounced on the line, dragged it forward, straddled the sharp bow of the submarine, and, leaning far over the stern, bent the heaving line into the towing shackle. A green sea washed over the low bow, burying Biff completely. He clung to the bullnose, emerged a moment later, blowing like a porpoise, and took a final half-hitch of the monkey’s fist round its own part of the heaving line. He waved his arm and scrambled back, clinging to the jaws of the net cutter till he was safely aft where he could seize the rail for support.
From below, the L-20’s winch slacked out and the tow-line dipped in a wide arc toward the Galway as the seamen there heaved in and the sub paid out on the heavy wire hawser. On the freighter the heaving line was dipped low under the counter and hauled aboard through a specially fitted submerged hawse pipe, making the tow-line wholly invisible; while the telephone wire, cut loose from the towline just outboard of the point where the latter ran into the hawse pipe, was brought in over the Galway’s rail, hanging in a loose bight and looking to the casual eye like nothing more than a dutch pennant trailing under the counter.
Meanwhile the submarine, drifting with the wind, was well to leeward by the time the Galway’s mate had shackled up inboard of his hawse pipe. A strain came on the towline, it rose like a bowstring above the waves, dripping full length. The submarine stopped drifting.
Over the Galway’s poop, Mr. Mate’s bowler swung several times; all secured on the tramp.
“O.K., Biff, plug in the telephone!”
Biff waved his hand and seized the sub’s end of the telephone wire. He dragged it to a connection box alongside the gun pedestal, plugged it in, screwed down hard on the packing nut to make sure the joint was watertight, then called out:
“All set here. Test out below.”
Inside the control room, Cobb slipped the special fire-control telephone headset over his ears and pressed the b
utton on his transmitter.
“Hello, hello, Galway! Can you hear me?”
“Hello, pigboat, hello. Yes, I get you fine.”
Cobb reported the telephone line working.
Lieutenant Knowles glanced around. Streamers of fire were beginning to shoot across the heavens, gilding the low-lying clouds ahead. The night was fast vanishing. It was time to disappear.
He pressed the warning signal, the klaxons sang out raucously. Biff and his mates scrambled up the rear of the conning tower to the bridge and hurriedly dropped through the hatch.
Tom leaned over the voice tube:
“Flood the main ballasts!”
The quartermaster pushed by him, went below. A dull roaring came from beneath the decks as the air whistled out the vents; the sea rose swiftly up the rounding sides, covered the freeing port in the superstructure, flooded in over the deck. The boat lurched a little as her stability suddenly decreased with the disappearance of most of her waterplane. Tom took a last long look at the stars fast fading before the dawn, then dropped hurriedly through the conning-tower hatch and slammed the lid down behind him.
From all sides, reports came to him; a few brief orders and the L-20 was submerged to thirty feet, vents closed, periscope just showing, and ready for any contingency.
Tom took station at the number two periscope, adjusting the telephone headset over his ears. He pushed in the connection and heard a loud click.
“Hello, Erickson!”
A loud voice buzzed in his ears.
“Galway, Erickson speaking!”
“All set on the L-20. Get under way immediately.”
“Right away, Mr. Knowles.”
Over the telephone, Tom heard the clang of the gong on the Galway and braced himself instinctively. Probably the Galway started as gently as she could; nevertheless the submarine jumped ahead viciously as the first strain tautened the line, then surged back and forth jerkily several times before the Galway and her submerged tow both synchronized and moved forward with reasonable steadiness.
The control room had its old appearance. A coat of fresh paint made it look a little brighter than before, perhaps; here and there a sharp eye would have detected little rings cut into the otherwise smooth metal forming the inner shell. That was where the dockyard force, a few weeks back, had calked in the iron plates against the sprung rivets, making the L-20 watertight again.
The bow diving planes were depressed a bit, because the towline to the Galway led upward through the water, tending to make their stem break surface. To maintain their depth, the bow diving man had over five degrees “Down rudder” on his planes.
At diving stations, the L-20’s crew stood by expectantly. Except the men at the planes, however, and the helmsman, no one had anything to do. The diesel engines were unclutched, the propellers coupled only to the motors. The new chief electrician, Ingram, had his main controllers on neutral. The L-20’s motive power was coming from the towline; no need to use up any of the precious juice in the storage batteries for this kind of a submerged run. Fully charged, the batteries were in constant readiness to deliver maximum power when called on.
But even without the current, the motors were turning over at fair speed; the drag of the water past the propellers was revolving them and rotating the shafts nearly as fast as if they were themselves driving at the same ship speed.
The diesels were silent, the motors hummed only faintly, and the fans whirred as usual, but instead of the comparative silence of running submerged, an uneven roaring filled the boat. They were only fifty yards astern of the Galway, and the throbbing of her screw, coming back through the turbulent wake in which floated the L-20, rumbled against the steel sides of the submarine like an endless tattoo reverberating from a tautly stretched drumhead.
Lieutenant Knowles, hoisting his periscope clear of the spray, sighted ahead.
“Read your compass, quartermaster, when I mark.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
The masts of the freighter ahead were weaving in and out as the submarine yawed astern. They were a little off the line.
“Give her a touch to starboard.”
“A touch to starboard, sir.” The quartermaster shifted his wheel a trifle, they steadied a moment.
The masts of the tramp came right in line.
“Mark!” yelled the skipper.
“Seven-nine, sir!” called back the quartermaster.
790, east by north, was the Galway’s course.
“Very well then, quartermaster, steer seven-nine, and let’s see if we can’t cut down this damned yawing before all of us lose our breakfasts!”
He leaned to the voice tube and pressed the button. A bell tinkled forward. A gruff voice sounded from the tube,
“Torpedo room!”
“Biff, lay aft a minute.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Shortly Biff pushed through the small opening in the bulkhead, his chunky shoulders awkwardly cased in a chief petty officer’s brass-buttoned jacket. He moved carefully as he worked his way through the door, apparently fearful of bursting the seams in his new coat. A few steps brought him down the passage; he squeezed by the conning tower ladder and the helmsman just abaft it and saluted.
“Aren’t you used to that rig yet, Biff?” asked Knowles banteringly.
“Naw, ’n I never will be neither. I don’t mind a chief’s billet, ’n the extra pay sure rings the bell wit’ me, but these clothes — ” He looked at himself with a grimace. “Hell, look at this!” He flicked the necktie of his new shirt. “This gear wuz never meant fer a sailor.” He scanned his captain’s uniform. “Mebbe it’s diff’runt wit’ you. Ye wear them stripes ’n that braided coat as if ye’d had ’em all yer life.” Tom grinned inwardly at this chance shot. “But fer me, gimme a sailor’s jumper ’n lots o’ sea room in me trousers instead o’ this brass-buttoned coat ’n these creased britches any day,” he growled. “I don’t look natchrel no more.”
“We’ve got to take what comes. Try to stick it out, Biff,” counselled Tom sympathetically. “If you want, you can wear your old rig except when we’re in port. How’ll that be?”
“No use, cap’n,” groaned Biff. “The night I got word that I’d been rated a chief, I took all the boys ashore to celebrate, ’n when I got back nex’ mornin’ I wuz feelin’ so good I give away my whole bag o’ clothes. I don’t own nuthin’ now but this chief’s outfit.”
“Just like a sailor, all right,” mused Tom to himself. “He’ll never change.” Aloud he asked:
“You’re all set forward, Biff?”
“Yeh,” replied Biff briefly. “I pulled all the torpedoes part way out the tubes ’n boosted their air flasks while you wuz chargin’ the banks. They’re all packed to the limit wit’ air.”
“All ready to fire, then?”
“All ready. Jes’ give us the word which ones ye want, so’s we kin get them outer doors folded back right.”
“You didn’t pull any of the torpedoes all the way out of the tubes, did you, Biff?”
“Naw, only part way. They’re all back in the same holes they wuz in before.”
“Good. There’d be hell to pay if we mixed ’em.
Now you’ve got the starboard torpedoes set for a shallow run, ten feet deep, and the port torpedoes set for a deep run, thirty feet down. Is that right?”
“Righto. If you spot a U-boat on the surface or awash, fire starboard; if he’s at periscope depth, be sure an’ fire port, else the tin fish’ll go right over him, less’n ye hit his periscope, ’n a fat chance we ever got o’ doin’ that.”
“Yes. If he’s moving, we’ll be lucky to land on his hull even; these U-boats aren’t any targets like a regular ship.”
Biff, nodding acquiescence, looked inquiringly for further instructions.
“That’s all, Biff, just stand by now.”
Biff touched his cap, winked maliciously at Mullaney who was clinging to his Kingston valve levers and looking thoroughly unhappy as the little boat
bobbed in the churning waters, then swaggered forward.
The hours dragged slowly along. Far down beyond the horizon, only a thick haze of smoke marking their position, was the convoy, a destroyer zigzagging on each flank, chaperoning the armada; the Hendon Castle, alone in the middle of a heaving waste of tumbling water and flying spray, was throwing up a vast column of black smoke, a pillar visible for miles around, obviously forcing her boilers to the limit to regain her position under the protecting guns of the destroyers. A few men were visible about her decks; on her forecastle, Mr. Mate, the carpenter, and a few seamen were struggling with the windlass, and having difficulty in freeing up the wildcats for service when they should soon need them for anchoring in port. On the poop, another seaman was ostentatiously oiling the breech of the six-pounder, as small a weapon as any merchantman was now armed with.
From the galley in the waist of the ship, the cook emerged, bearing a huge pail of slop. He walked to the side. In utter disregard of the strict convoy rule against throwing anything overboard that would leave a trail, he lifted the bucket and emptied its contents down the rusty side. The broken remnants of the crew’s breakfast — eggshells, coffee grounds, soggy bread — floated aft, a brown patch against the grey sea, soon marked astern by a flock of gulls, circling over it with shrill cries, flashing downward to seize a morsel, rising again with flapping wings while they gulped their prizes.
A cold wind whistled by. The master, comfortably ensconced in his pilot house, listened to it and looked anxiously aft to see how his dummy stack was standing up in the breeze. It was only a canvas-covered cylinder. The stack was holding, however; the manila guys staying it looked as stanch and steady as if it were steel and they were really wire. Erickson turned away relieved.
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