Dust on the Sea

by Edward L. Beach

  When Keith returned, he said shortly, “It’s all right, Skipper. He’s got a good idea, and I told him to go ahead.” He gave Richardson an imperceptible nod.

  When the wardroom steward entered a few minutes later with a freshly brewed pot of coffee, Keith accepted only half a cup, announced that he intended to get some sleep for the next day’s work, placed it untouched on the table. Richardson and Blunt took full cups. Rich sipped his only lightly, cradling the warm cup in his hands. His eyes stayed on Blunt as the latter drank his right down.

  “That was just the right temperature this time,” Blunt said. “If it weren’t for coffee, none of us could function.” His eyelids grew heavy, his head nodded. He jerked it upright, but again it nodded. . . . They caught him before his head struck the table. Buck Williams reappeared at the door to the wardroom, and the three officers, plus Yancy who came up from the other direction, quickly laid Blunt in his bunk.

  “He was so tired, Captain, the sleeping pill hit him right away, just like I said,” said Yancy.

  “How long do you figure he’ll be out?”

  “Maybe twelve hours. The sedative will wear off pretty soon, but he’ll sleep until his system wakes him up.”

  “He needs a real rest, Yancy. He ought to sleep for at least three days.”

  “All we gave him was a sleeping pill, Captain. He’ll wake up in about twelve hours when he has to go to the head, and besides that, he’ll be hungry. If you want me to keep him out for three days, he’ll have to have intravenous feeding, bedpans, the whole thing.”

  Blunt was completely relaxed, sleeping peacefully. The tense look about his face had almost magically disappeared. Remorse at the liberty he had taken with his old friend and superior was already troubling Richardson. “No intravenous business,” he said. “Yancy, you watch over him, and you be here when he’s awake. No matter what’s going on on board ship. You got that?”

  The pharmacist’s mate nodded.

  “When he wakes up, you be sitting right here with something to eat—you tell the cook what to fix up, and be sure you have it ready on time—and tell him he’s got to rest. If he has to go to the head, get him right back in his bunk. He’s so tired, he’ll sleep longer if we give him a chance.”

  Yancy nodded again. “Okay, sir. I’ll try to keep him from getting up.”

  “Keith,” said Rich, having moved across the narrow passageway to his own stateroom, “tell all the officers that I want their pistols locked up in their safes so that nobody can get them. Most of them are probably locked up already, but make sure. Buck is already securing all our small arms. I’ll put the commodore’s pistol here in my safe with my own gun.” He twirled the dial on the combination to the tiny safe built into his desk, pushed aside papers and various other objects, including a holstered automatic wrapped in its gun belt, squeezed Blunt’s gun in. Locking the combination, he turned back to Keith. “We’ve got twelve hours,” he said. “How long will it take us to reach the Maikotsu Suido?”

  Richardson himself was standing periscope watch in the conning tower, raising and lowering the instrument for periodic 360-degree sweeps every several minutes. Two compartments below him, in the pump room, Lichtmann, Starberg, and Sargent, supervised by Al Dugan, who normally should have had the watch, were working with vigor on the hydraulic system and had reported they were making headway. A feeling of contentment possessed Rich, not even partly dampened by the pain it caused him to go through the deep knee bends associated with raising and lowering the periscope. Strictly speaking, this particular technique was called for only during an approach, to reduce the time of periscope exposure. But the Maikotsu Suido waters were no doubt heavily covered by air as well as surface patrols. The self-flagellation of going up and down with the periscope was nothing. If anything, it would speed the cure.

  The Maikotsu Suido was roughly rectangular in shape, its long axis nearly north and south. The rocky west coast of the mainland of Korea formed its eastern boundary, and a chain of relatively small islands formed the western. Its southern terminus was a group of islands extending to the mainland. To the north it was open. The Korean coast bent off in a peninsula to the west, and a group of close inshore islands around the tip of the peninsula provided a sure sanctuary for coastal traffic. It had been a sensible move to enter this body of water at its southern end, for there was a heavy current setting to the north. Eel could remain relatively immobile while stemming the current, and yet evacuate any particular spot rapidly by turning around to a northerly heading. Ships making a northern passage would undoubtedly favor this area because of the strong current, which, from Richardson’s observations of the shoreline, must be averaging at least four knots.

  Richardson’s plan, communicated in the name of the wolfpack commander to Whitey Everett in the Whitefish, was to proceed to the eastern side of the Maikotsu Suido in hopes of picking up a target. Any action Rich could stir up would on the one hand draw local antisubmarine activity upon Eel, and on the other direct the Japanese supply ships farther offshore, hopefully beyond the island chain where Whitefish would be patrolling.

  Richardson had expected to see aircraft flying about. It was understandable that none had been seen in the Yellow Sea, for Blunt had required Eel and Whitefish to patrol submerged far offshore during daylight. At night, when they were surfaced, it had up till now been uniformly hazy. Today was bright and clear, and one would expect the Japanese antisubmarine aircraft to make the most of it. Yet he had been in the conning tower for three hours, and had seen nothing. Gradually he conned Eel closer in to shore, taking an occasional fathometer sounding after a careful periscope search to assure there was no antisubmarine vessel in the vicinity.

  Another hour passed. He turned the periscope over to Keith, went down to a hasty lunch. Blunt was still sleeping soundly. Before returning to the conning tower Rich climbed down beneath the control room into the pump room. Al Dugan was temporarily exempted from the watch list, as were his three workers, to permit them to give full time to the hydraulic mechanism.

  “I think we’ve found the trouble,” said Dugan. “It’s not only the bypass valves, although they were part of it. There were all sorts of things wrong with the system—they’ve even got the wrong kind of hydraulic oil in it. The worst thing is that the instruction book was wrong. So when the boys in Pearl Harbor fixed it up, they set all the clearances, pressures, and sequence switches to the book values, and didn’t realize that whoever got up this book must not have known what he was talking about. Lichtmann had a similar problem in the Nerka. Their hydraulic system was made by the same company, though it was an earlier and smaller model. We’re damn lucky you got him aboard. They had to overhaul their plant the same way, just like us, on patrol.

  The grease-smeared face which grinned at Richardson was only faintly reminiscent of the natty sailor in white who had driven him to the admiral’s quarters on Makalapa Hill that memorable night. Part of the hydraulic plant was dismantled, strewn about the fantastically crowded compartment, and Lichtmann had obviously been sitting in the bilges, oblivious to the oil and water lying in the bottom, squeezing around and behind close-fitting piping, disassembling and reassembling parts of the mechanism. Starberg and Sargent were in the same condition. The dungarees of all three were fit only to be placed into a garbage sack and thrown overboard. Al Dugan, supposedly in a supervisory position, was hardly better off than his men.

  Richardson climbed out of the pump room with the feeling that the hydraulic system at last was under control or on its way to being so. There would be time to take a walk aft to see for himself the progress of the clean-up work on the two engines which had been flooded. They were already back in full commission, but it would not hurt to let the engineroom crews know he appreciated their labors.

  He was stepping over the sill of the watertight door on the after bulkhead of the control room when there was a sudden bustle and Keith’s loud voice from the conning tower: “Captain to the conn!” Everyone in the control room mus
t have heard of the reputation of the Maikotsu Suido and was, by consequence, a little keyed up. At least six voices repeated the words to him simultaneously, only a second or so behind Keith.

  “Smoke on the horizon, Captain,” said Keith, a dozen seconds later. “Bearing south. Looks like something coming our way!”

  Through the periscope Richardson could see a tiny smudge on the horizon. He spun the periscope completely around, looking at the surface of the sea in all directions, went around a second time searching the sky. It was a clear, beautiful day topside, virtually no clouds in the sky, sea nearly calm, visibility unlimited in all directions. Eel had been stemming the current, heading south at slow speed submerged, close in to shore. Looming two miles away to port, rocky bluffs extended right to the water’s edge. To starboard there was a clear horizon, but beyond it were the tops of an irregularly spaced group of hills, the islands on the seaward side of the Maikotsu Suido. To the north there was only the smooth horizon. To the south nothing except the smudge of smoke. As he watched it, the smoke disappeared.

  “Smoke’s died away, Keith,” he said, lowering the periscope. He had been using the radar periscope because of its larger optical path and consequently better light-gathering capabilities.

  The conning tower depth gauge read fifty-eight feet. The thirty-six-foot radar periscope would go under at keel depth of sixty-two feet. There had been four feet of it exposed. “I’ll take a look through the attack scope,” said Rich, stepping aft to the second shiny steel cylinder bisecting the conning tower.

  The attack periscope was forty feet long. At fifty-eight feet there would be eight feet of it out of water. Its much smaller head and consequently narrower optical path gave less visual acuity, but he would risk the extra height for a short exposure in order to see from a greater height.

  He squatted on his haunches behind the periscope, motioned with his hands for Keith to raise it until its handles just cleared the upper lip of the periscope well. They came up; he snapped them down into position, swung the periscope quickly dead ahead. Jabs of pain went through his knees and thigh muscles as he put his eye to the eyepiece, motioned for the periscope to be raised. He rose with it to his full height, snapped the handles upward into the stowage position, followed the periscope down until he was once again on his haunches and had to pull his head clear as it continued down into the well.

  “There’s at least two ships out there, Keith. I can see masts. You caught them when they blew smoke for a moment. They’re probably heading this way. We’ll take another look to make sure.”

  “Sonar, do you hear anything bearing dead ahead?” The sonar watch stander shook his head.

  “Shall I send for Stafford?” asked Keith. “He’s a magician on this gadget.” Richardson nodded. Stafford must have been waiting for the call, was in the conning tower in less than a minute. He began tuning the sonar receiver, heavily padded earphones covering both sides of his head, an intent faraway look on his face.

  “Two minutes since the last look,” said Keith.

  “Up periscope,” said Rich, oblivious to the protests of his leg muscles as he resumed his squatting position.

  “Several ships heading this way,” he said a moment later, as the periscope descended. “Sound battle stations.”

  The general alarm, amplified on the ship’s general announcing system, sounded like a series of low-pitched musical chimes. There was a scurrying in the control room. Richardson and Leone could sense the crew tumbling out of their bunks, breaking away from whatever work they had been doing, dashing to their stations for combat. Buck Williams jumped up the ladder from the control room, followed closely by Scott. Cornelli—he had been promoted to the helm to replace Scott, who now had Oregon’s spot—took over the steering station. Behind him Rich could hear the low-pitched whir of the TDC as Buck turned it on.

  “Target bearing?” said Buck in a low voice to Keith, who had moved aft alongside of him. “Due south, Buck,” said Keith.

  “Estimated range?”

  “Beyond the horizon. Start with fifteen thousand yards, as a guess.”

  “That’s a pretty good estimate,” said Richardson, who had been listening.

  “Battle stations manned and ready below,” said Quin, who had taken a telephone headset out of its stowage box, put it on his head and plugged it in.

  “Battle stations manned in the conning tower, Captain,” said Keith. “The ship is manned for battle stations.” At the beginning of the patrol Keith had pasted a little check-off list on the side of the TDC. He had already checked several items. Richardson could visualize the attentive calm throughout the submarine: the torpedo room crews at each end, the electrician’s mates in the maneuvering room to whom would fall the main burden of the submerged maneuvering, the engineroom crews standing idle, ready instantly to start engines should the order come to surface. The damage-control parties, forward and aft. The extra hands in the control room and dinette, ready for whatever emergency might devolve upon them.

  He crossed to the hatch leading to the control room, looked down, saw Al Dugan’s sweaty, oil-streaked face looking up. “You all set down there, Al?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir, Captain.”

  “What shape is the hydraulic system in?”

  “Starberg and company are buttoning it up,” said Al. “Everything but the main engine exhaust valves and the main vents is cut back in already. I’d like to leave the vents in hand power. . . .”

  With the ship already submerged and the vents closed, there was no reason why they could not stay in hand power, for the vents did not have to be operated to surface the ship. They would, of course, have to be opened to dive. “How about diving if we need to, Al? Do you have men free of battle station assignments standing by each vent?”

  “Yes, sir, Captain. No strain. We’ve got two on each vent, and a telephone manned by each pair. You can work your vents right now by telephone if you want to.” Dugan grinned confidently.

  These phones were no doubt surreptitiously manned whenever the ship went to battle stations. They were part of the interior grapevine system by which the rest of the crew would find out what was going on. “Fine,” Richardson said.

  “Three minutes since the last look, Skipper,” said Keith. Richardson returned to the periscope station.

  “I’ll take a look all around this time too,” he said. “Up periscope.”

  He repeated the squatting-and-rising ritual. “Bearing, mark,” he said.

  “No range.” He spun the periscope completely around twice, snapped the handles up. It dropped away.

  “All clear all around,” he said. “It’s a convoy. At least three big ships, maybe a couple more. Also, there are escorts. I could see at least two masts of smaller ships on either beam of the convoy.”

  “Estimated range, Captain?” Buck.

  “I’d still say fifteen thousand,” said Rich.

  “Speed?”

  “No estimate. They’re reasonably big ships, five- to seven-thousand-tonners.”

  “I’ll start them at twelve knots,” said Buck, twirling the dials on his instrument.

  “Let’s try for a radar range,” said Rich. He pointed to Quin. “Control, make your depth five-two feet!” This would leave only five feet of water over the top of the periscope shears and would cause the fully extended radar periscope to reach ten feet above the surface. Height, unfortunately, was obligatory at the longer ranges. He turned to Rogers. “Are you peaked up and ready? I want this to go real fast.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. . . . Scott,” he said to the quartermaster, who had now taken over the job of raising and lowering the periscopes, “when I give the word, I want the radar periscope all the way up. As soon as it hits the top, start it back down again. If Rogers gets a range before it’s two-blocked, start it back down immediately. Don’t worry about me, I’ll get clear.” Scott nodded his comprehension. This had been part of the technique developed during training with the new radar perisco
pe. Rogers’ duties were to sing out loudly as soon as he had seen a radar return indication on his A ’scope, even before measuring it.

  To ensure that everyone understood, Rich rehearsed the instructions: “Rogers, set your range index at about fifteen thousand yards. As soon as you see a pip, you holler ‘Range!’ good and loud, so that Scott can hear it. Don’t wait to match it with your range marker. You can do that afterward. I want to get the ’scope down just as soon as possible. We’re going to be waving ten feet of it up in the air. It will look like a telephone pole!”

  Turning to the TDC he said, “I’ll get my eye on the periscope on the way up and will line it up so that it goes down exactly on the target bearing.” Keith and Buck both nodded. With the periscope exposed ten feet above the surface, its tip would be out of water long before the base with the eyepiece would come out of the periscope well, long before the radar connection in the bottom of the base would engage. Hence there would be no benefit to orienting it down low, as Rich had done previously. “Everybody ready?” said Richardson. “Up periscope!”

  The radar periscope started to rise. As before, Richardson squatted on his haunches facing it. He was ready for the pain, set his face so as not to show it. He snatched the handles as they came up, spread them out, lunged against the eyepiece, began to rise with it. He could hear the radar wave guide engage the trombone section at the base of the periscope, heard the snap of the radar as Rogers kicked it in to the now complete wave-guide tube. The periscope traveled all the way to the top, stopped with a bouncy jerk, started back down. Richardson followed it as far as he could, almost gasping with the pain of returning to the squatting position, snapped the handles up as they began to enter the well.

  “No pip, sir,” said Rogers.

  “One-eight-four, true,” said Keith.

  “Target bearing zero-zero-four, relative,” said Richardson, looking at the azimuth ring built into the bearing circle around the periscope where the tube disappeared into the top of the conning tower. “It’s a convoy of four freighters, and I can see at least three escorts. Angle on the bow of the leading ship is about starboard ten. I can give you an estimate of range; let’s see . . . I couldn’t see the water line . . . use a fifty-foot height of mast and give them one-quarter of one division in high power.”