CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DOWNED AT SEA!
“Not a sign of life there,” Larry said as he looked through theperiscope. “Beach fires all out. Down ’scope. Take her up.”
They moved toward the ladder leading up to the conning tower, Larryfirst, Scoot immediately behind him, in trunks. He held a bundle in onehand.
“Hope I can keep these clothes a little dry,” Scoot said. “I’d like tobe dressed when I do this if I can.”
Larry unfastened the hatch cover and hurried up on to the bridge. Scootwas behind him in a second, followed by March and two enlisted men whomanned the machine guns at once. Everyone moved swiftly and noiselessly.
Scoot was already sliding down the ladder to the deck, with March rightbehind him. Larry stayed on the bridge, looking sharply toward shore atevery minute.
“So long March,” Scoot whispered as he slid into the water. “I’ll beseeing you.”
“Good luck, Scoot,” March whispered back. And that was all. For just asecond he watched Scoot strike out toward the plane, holding aloft hisbundle of clothes and making no splashing sound. Then March turned andwent back up the ladder to the bridge.
There he stood quietly beside Larry, who said nothing. March picked upScoot’s dim figure in the water, listening at the same time for thesound of an alarm on the beach in case a sentry saw the black hull ofthe submarine offshore.
“He’s reached it,” March whispered to Larry.
“Good.”
“Must be unfastening the buoy now,” March said. Again they waited insilence.
“Can’t be sure, but I think he’s climbing up on the pontoon,” Marchsaid. “Yes—I can just barely make him out. Can’t be seen from shore.”
Then there was a long silence, tense, expectant. March tried to pictureScoot slipping into trousers and shirt, climbing into the plane’scockpit, feeling for the switches and controls in the dark. He’dprobably have to wind up the starter. And suddenly at this moment,March wondered how much gas the Jap plane had in it.
“Must be enough for it to get back to its battleship,” he told himself.
March jumped. A coughing roar split the silence and the darkness.Flashes of flame came from the exhaust pipes of the plane as the engineroared, subsided, roared again. Scoot had taken just half a minute towarm it up. Then he gave it the gun and March saw the plane begin tomove.
“Down, men!” Larry shouted, and the two men left their guns and sliddown the hatch. “Get on down, March,” Larry said, “and take her down.I’m right behind you.”
But at that moment shots rang out from the shore. Figures were runningalong the beach, shouting and gesticulating wildly. The seaplane wasroaring away over the water and some men were firing at it.
March, his feet on the rungs of the ladder, looked up, startled. Andthen Larry fell at his feet.
“I’m hit, March,” Larry said. “Don’t waste a minute. I can get down.Hurry.”
Grabbing his Skipper, March hauled him to the companionway. He heardthe spatter of bullets against the sides of the submarine. He loweredLarry quickly down the hatch and men below grabbed him and helped himfrom the ladder. March slid down after him, shouting commands to takeher down while he was still closing the hatch.
“Call Sallini,” he said to one of the men. “Take the Skipper to hisquarters. Mac, go in with him.”
The roar of water into the ballast tanks flowed over them, and thewhine of the electric motors told them the ship was under way.
“Steady at fifty,” he said. “Hold course. We’ll surface in a littlewhile. Stan, will you take over here? I want to see how the Skipper is.”
“Sure, March,” Stan said. “Pat him on the back for me. Hope it’s notbad.”
March stood at the door of Gray’s quarters. There was not room inside.Larry was on his bunk, looking up to smile with an effort, but withpain marking his face.
“This was one _if_ we didn’t think of, wasn’t it, March?” he asked.
“How are you, Larry?” March asked.
“It hurts like the devil,” the Skipper replied. “I think there’s two orthree slugs in my chest somewhere. Sallini will be able to tell in aminute.”
The pharmacist was ripping off Gray’s shirt and undershirt, whichshowed spreading stains of blood. McFee helped him, trying to move Grayas little as possible. Then Sallini examined the wounds carefully for afew moments.
“Three’s right, Skipper,” he said. “And they’re still in you. I don’tsee how this one missed the heart but it must have or you wouldn’t betalking now. This one up here busted your collar-bone. That’s whathurts so much right now. And the other, on the right side must’ve goneright through the lung. I can’t tell if any might be lodged in thespine or not. Doubt it or you’d have passed out—couldn’t move much.”
“Can’t move much anyway,” the Skipper replied weakly.
March saw that his face was draining white, and his eyes began to cloudover.
“Sulfa tablets, anyway,” Sallini said. “And bandages to stop thebleeding here, though there’s not much likely to come out while he’slying down. May be some internal bleeding but I couldn’t do anythingabout that. Don’t know what else I could do right now.”
“Okay, Sallini,” March said. “Go get what you need and do it as fast asyou can.”
The pharmacist left and March stepped close to the Skipper, leaningdown close to him as Mac was.
“March,” Gray said. “I don’t know what the devil this is, but I feellike passing out. Anyway—and this is an order from your Captain—carryout plans exactly as we have laid them out. You’re in command of thissubmarine when I’m—er, incapacitated. McFee will help you carry on. Goget that convoy!”
“We’ll get it, Larry,” March said. “But you’ll do the job, becauseyou’ll be up and around by the time we get there. Or at least you candirect the battle from your bunk.”
Gray smiled and let his head fall back. He seemed to be sleeping. ThenSallini reappeared and Mac and March stepped to the companionway andwatched through the door while the pharmacist did what he could forGray.
The Skipper was unconscious and they had done all they could. March,with a heavy heart, stepped back into the control room and took theinterphone from the orderly.
“The Skipper’s been wounded,” he said to the entire ship. “I know thatmakes you all feel just as badly as I feel right now. Sallini’s doneall he can for him and he’s resting. Can’t tell much about hiscondition, but I’ll let you know regularly how he is.”
Then he gave the order to surface the boat and they went ahead oncourse in the darkness. March stood his watch on the bridge, lookingahead in the blackness, wondering how Scoot was making out up there,and how the Skipper was making out in his own blackness down below.Sallini had given Larry some blood plasma to overcome some of the lossof blood that the Skipper had suffered, but Gray was still unconscious.When March went below as Stan came to relieve him, he found Salliniworried.
“His fever’s going up,” he said. “I’ve just given him more sulfa. Don’tknow what it can be but there’s infection somewhere. Wish I could getthose slugs out of him, but that’s a ticklish business.”
“We’ll wait and see,” March said. “Maybe the sulfa will lick theinfection and the fever will come down. If not—well, we’ll decide thenwhat to do. Meanwhile, get some sleep. You’ve been up all night.”
March lay down on his bunk for a while and managed to drift off tosleep for three hours. Just as dawn was breaking he got up and had acup of coffee, had the boat submerged to periscope depth, and traveledahead more slowly, checking regularly to make sure he was exactly onthe course he had agreed on with Scoot.
_The Skipper Was Still Unconscious_]
“I wonder how Scoot’s making out,” he said. “He might be pretty nearthat convoy now—if there’s a convoy there.”
Scoot was at that moment disgusted. He had been able to do nothing withthe Jap plane’s
radio during all these hours, and now, even with morelight to see by, he could not get it working.
“Maybe when the Japs order radio silence,” he told himself, “theyenforce it by gumming up the radio some way so it _can’t_ be used.Anyway, I can’t do anything with this baby. I’m going to be keepingradio silence whether I want to or not.”
So he turned his attention to the sea ahead of him, where he hoped tosight the convoy. Looking at the chart occasionally and checking hisspeed, he calculated where he must be.
Then he saw it! First a few clouds of smoke far ahead on the horizon.Then little dots below the smoke—dots that were Jap ships. More andmore and more of them he saw, line after line in orderly procession. Upahead and at the sides were destroyers and near the front abattleship—no, two battleships. As he flew on further he made out acarrier in the center and at the end three cruisers and more destroyerskept a rear guard.
“Don’t want to get any closer than I have to,” Scoot spoke aloud tohimself. “But I want to get all the dope I can and as accurately aspossible. Got to stick around long enough to check their speed andcourse.”
He flew on, counting, checking, making another estimate to compare withhis first.
“About fifty-five ships,” he said to himself. “Eight miles long, threemiles wide. Pretty slow—there must be some old freighters in there.About ten knots.”
He grabbed a chart and quickly plotted the convoy’s course, wrote briefnotations of his conclusions, tucked the paper into a waterproof pouchand stuck it in his pocket.
“Won’t trust to memory, anyway,” he said.
Then, feeling that he had learned all he could, he banked the plane andturned away, still about two miles ahead of the leading ships. Helooked back down at them as he headed eastward once more.
“Right now they’re wondering what’s going on,” he said to himself. “Upto now they haven’t thought a thing. They saw the plane coming in andjust thought it was a little earlier than they had expected. That maybemade them wonder if I had some special report. But now they really arein a dither! They just can’t figure out why I should come so close andthen turn back.”
He laughed. “Well, that’s their problem, not mine.”
He gave the little plane all the speed he could. If they were going tosend up a plane to have a look at him, he wanted to get as far away aspossible. They might send up several planes.
“If they’re fast, then I’m sunk,” Scoot said. “But why should they sendup a flock of planes to look at one Jap seaplane that acts a littlefunny?”
He checked his course often, so that he could land where the submarinecould pick him up. And he kept looking behind for the Jap plane thatmight be coming after him.
He did not have to wait long for that. Half an hour away from theconvoy he saw the fast little pursuit ship behind him, coming like thewind. He wished his own plane could travel twice as fast, but he couldnot urge another mile per hour from it. Gradually the gap closedbetween the two planes.
“Now what?” Scoot asked himself. “What should I do? I’ll keep right onthis course, first of all. And I’ll just keep flying straight ahead asif I were minding my own business. Nothing much else I _can_ do. Thatplane’s got three times the speed and ten times the fire power of thisone!”
The pursuit was only a few hundred yards behind. It stayed there for awhile, apparently awaiting some kind of signal from the seaplane. Thenit came around to one side, and Scoot tried to hide his face.
“First and only time I ever wished I looked like a Jap,” Scoot said.
The fast plane flew alongside the other for a time, slowing down tokeep pace with it, but still some distance to one side.
“What is this?” Scoot asked. “Are we just going out for a spintogether? I wish he’d do something.”
The Jap flier obliged by cutting back and coming up on the other side,then speeding up and circling around in front. It was at this momentthat he looked full into Scoot’s face. Scoot could even see the alarmthat filled him, the wide eyes, the gasp of amazement, as he realizedthat an American was flying the Jap seaplane.
At that moment, Scoot pressed the trigger on his own machine gun, butit was too late. The Jap had darted out of range just in time. He wasso fast that Scoot could not possibly maneuver his slow ship to battlehim.
“There’s only one chance,” Scoot said to himself, “and I’m going to tryit. If this monkey is the bad shot most of them are, he may miss on hisfirst try, even with a set-up like me. If he does, that’s my chance.”
The fast pursuit was diving on the seaplane’s tail. Scoot heard thestaccato rattling of the ship’s machine guns.
“Good!” he cried. “Firing while he’s still too far away, like all ofthem! Too anxious!”
But then Scoot’s plane wobbled, tipped over, and went spiraling down tothe sea in a slow spin. The pursuit plane circled above and watched.About fifty feet above the water, the seaplane lurched a little, seemedto come out of its spin. The pursuit plane pilot looked puzzled, but hesmiled again as he saw the plane stall, slip back and hit the sea, tailfirst.
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March Anson and Scoot Bailey of the U.S. Navy Page 17
