Wolters rested his hands gently on the warhead alongside him. “So there ye are, — if the pistol works ’n gives you a hot shot, ’n if the gyro works and guides her true, ’n if the hydrostatic piston works ’n keeps her at the right depth, then if you’ve guessed right about the course ’n the speed of yer target and got the range correct — if all that’s O.K., you’ll slam the detonator in the nose o’ this warhead up against the side o’ the ship y’re shootin’ at and ye’ll punch a hole in her that’ll be big enough to drive a team o’ horses through. ’N that, me lads, is what we’re out to do to any U-boat we meet.”
Knowles glanced at the clock on the gauge board over the tubes, jumped up quickly.
“It’s nearly eight bells, and my trick at the wheel.
“Sorry, I have to leave.” He hurried aft to the battery room and pulled from the little metal locker opposite his bunk a woollen jersey, a knitted helmet and his wind-breaker. Bundled in these, he squeezed his way with some difficulty through the little hatches in the conning tower, and emerged on the chariot bridge. A brief word as he repeated the course, then the helmsman he relieved vanished through the patch at his feet and left the watch standers a little room.
The biting wind, carrying a dash of salt spray, drove across the low rail of the chariot bridge, stung Knowles’ face. Glancing over the rail, he found himself hardly ten feet above the water. The little submarine pushed steadily ahead, rising and falling monotonously as the waves swept across her low hull and washed around the base of the conning tower; one moment the forward deck was awash, everything buried save the gun rising like an island through the grey sea; the next moment their bow rose free, bursting through the surface like a salmon jumping at a fly, while streams of water rushed down their rounded sides, gushing like fountains from the long line of scupper holes cut in the non-water-tight superstructure. The waves rose and fell along their sides as crest followed trough in endless succession, and swept astern where two oily clouds of vapour, rolling out just above their waterline, marked the muffler exhausts from the diesel engines. Every hatch was battened down except the single one on the bridge; even from that vantage point, the horizon seemed strangely close — they were too near the surface to see very far in any direction.
Tom looked around. The old familiar sight of wrinkled grey sea, flecked with whitecaps; a dull sky overhead with no sun and no promise of sunshine; nothing in sight but the sharp outlines of St. Kilda’s Rocks rising bare and cheerless far off on the starboard bow.
Tom scanned the rocks curiously, his emotions suddenly stirred. For the first time in months, his Annapolis days surged again through his memory. He knew those rocks. On his first cruise, at the end of his plebe year, the midshipmen’s practice squadron, on a voyage from Norway down to Spain, had passed close aboard those rocks while rounding Scotland, and he had spent hours one summer’s day searching their bare sides through a glass as the old battleships of the practice squadron steamed slowly by. How long ago that seemed! And what a change since that day when he lay stretched out in midshipman whites on the old Indiana’s superstructure and idly watched the gulls fluttering over St. Kilda’s Rocks.
For a moment the dormant bitterness of his situation rose again. Here he was, the war on, only a quartermaster steaming into the war zone, when he should have been an officer, commanding a submarine himself. He glanced at his skipper, a lieutenant. He remembered Rolfe at the Academy, — only three classes ahead of him — and here was Rolfe in charge of a submarine. Why had he been such a fool as to allow Erhardt to trick him, to leave him drunk, to miss his ship?
He stared away to starboard, but instead of the far-off rocks on the horizon he saw only that disordered room back in Manila, himself leaning out the window, Erhardt in his uniform, sailing away on the Willemstad. Mechanically Tom steered as that picture stood out sharply before him, wondered when he would catch up with Erhardt again, then with a sigh he found himself looking at St. Kilda’s Rocks once more. Well, he hadn’t done so badly for a short hitch. He smiled grimly.
The hours passed slowly by, the rocks gradually drew abeam, vanished astern as they turned to starboard and headed east round Scotland. At eight bells, Tom was relieved and went below for his chow. The meal was already over, only a few watch-standers like himself sat round the little tables in the battery room. Silently he ate, while the mess cook cleared away.
“Anything in sight, quartermaster?” Randolph, chief electrician, a slight, nervous c.p.o., looked at him questioningly.
“No. Passed St. Kilda’s Rocks a couple of hours ago, Sparks, that’s all.”
“Where we headed?” broke in another chief, Arnold, a machinist’s mate.
“Can’t prove it by me. North of Scotland, that’s all I know.” Tom kept on eating. Why bother about where they were going? One place was as good as another in the war zone.
Arnold shook his head dully, slid off the end of the bench.
“I guess we’re out o’ luck, Sparks. I had a feeling we’d get stung when Lieutenant Carpenter left.”
“Carpenter?” asked Tom quickly. “He was skipper here, wasn’t he? Where’d he go?”
Randolph shrugged his shoulders.
“I dunno. Temporary duty somewheres. Good skipper, too.” He slid off the bench, joined Arnold and together they vanished forward.
The dishes rattled noisily as the mess cook heaved the greasy plates into his pan, staggered down the passage toward the galley, leaning unsteadily first on the port bulkhead, then against the triced up bunks to starboard, as the little vessel rolled.
Tom finished his dinner alone. Except for the men off watch, already resting in their bunks, the battery room was deserted.
As the quartermaster pushed the bench back and prepared to rise from the table, Pete sidled down the passage and slid in beside him, looked cautiously round to see if they were alone, then turned a worried face to his friend.
“Tom, we’re in fer it now.”
“Aw, what’s ailing you, Pete? These pigs are no worse’n the destroyers.”
“That’s not it, Tom. It’s not the boat, it’s the captain! Shure, ’n he’s not the reg’lar one fer this boat!”
“Why worry about it? This skipper’s run subs before. He had the L-18, a sister to this one, for a long time.”
“Yis, ’n why didn’t he go out on the L-18? I’ll tell ye! He couldn’t. His crew was afraid o’ him! They wouldn’t let her go out!”
Knowles looked curiously at him. Somebody had evidently been trying to scare a sailor new to the subs.
“Where’d you get this, Pete?” he demanded.
“From Biff. But it’s all over the ship. They’re all scairt to death!”
“Let’s see.” Tom pushed back the bench, threw his legs over it, and, followed by Pete, pushed forward into the torpedo room. A little knot of sailors was gathered just abaft the tubes, arguing earnestly — Wolters, Arnold, Randolph, several others. Working carefully between the racked torpedoes, Tom joined them. The discussion ceased immediately.
“Look here, Biff, what sort of a yarn about the skipper you been filling Pete here up with?” Tom demanded. “You know the Navy Regulations about discipline.” Biff looked at him defiantly.
“It don’t take no fresh caught chief to teach me no discipline. I wuz a p.o. before you knew there wuz a Navy. Who d’ye think ye are anyhow?” He rose, shook a tattooed fist under Tom’s nose.
“Belay that, Biff.” Randolph slipped his small figure between the two, pushed them apart. “There’s nuthin’ to scrap over. It ain’t no yarn, quartermaster; it’s the facts.”
“Yeh,” added Arnold, “there ain’t a machinist’s mate in the flotilla don’t know it’s so.”
“Sure they know it. We all know it,” said Biff angrily. “The boys on the L-18 been wreckin’ one part of their engines after another to keep from goin’ to sea with this skipper, and now we got him!”
Tom thought a moment. The apparently casual remarks of Commander French about the
L-18’s numerous defects came back to him with a new significance. “What’s the matter with him?” asked Tom.
“His judgment’s rotten,” answered Biff briefly. “His crew wuz afraid they’d go out ’n not come back agin. Not becoz any war’s goin’ on neither.”
“They had plenty o’ reason to be scared.” Arnold spoke vehemently. “He nearly lost ’em comin’ across the ocean. They wuz runnin’ submerged at 60 feet, with the bottom about 5,000 fathoms down, when he tries to come up by blowin’ the water from a variable tank instead o’ pumpin’ it. Well, something wuzn’t right with the air connections fer blowin’, he couldn’t build up an air pressure in the tank fast enough; instead o’ blowin’ what water he had in the tank out, a hell of a lot more ran in through the sea cock and the boat started to sink like a rock instead o’ coming up. Her crew managed to stop her at 150 feet, but it sure gave the boys the willies. It’s not so good to be sinkin’ with the bottom five miles down. ’N any fool in a sub should’a known better’n to blow a variable tank. Hell, they learned that on the A-1.”
“You just talk to ’em on the L-18,” added Biff. “That should’a been enough fer that captain, but the boys just said nuthin’ and went along with the war. They wuz strong on discipline. Then, about a month ago, he bottomed the boat off the coast of Spain in a couple of hundred feet of water. No reason to bottom; he did it just fer instance. ’N as if that wuzn’t bad enough, without sayin’ anything to anybody, he picks out a spot where the chart shows soft mud bottom. Of course the boat got stuck in the mud, ’n they thought they were there fer keeps. Finally they got clear after a tussle, by sallyin’ back an’ forth on the propellers till the boat broke loose. Lucky the storage batteries didn’t go dead on ’em first an’ leave ’em without any power for the drivin’ motors.”
“What did they do thin?” asked Mullaney.
“That wuz enough for ’em,” replied Randolph. “The L-18 ain’t gone out since she got back from that trip. The boys just figgered the skipper’d had two chances at ’em and that wuz enough. The third time they’d most likely stay down. And they’ve taken damn good care to see that somethin’ was wrong with the machinery every time they’ve been ordered out since. That’s easy in a sub when the crew’s set on it. And they got away with it, too.”
“I don’t know as I blame ’em,” mused Tom.
“Maybe that’s all right fer thim, but look at us!” exclaimed Pete alarmed. “Here we are at sea wid the skipper the L-18 wouldn’t trust. This’ll be the third time fer this guy. Wot’ll we do?”
“Nuthin’, I guess; we’re in the Navy,” said Randolph, leaning dejectedly against the warheads.
“We’re just out o’ luck,” admitted Biff. “All we kin do is obey orders ’n trust to luck. We gotta remember there’s a war goin’ on ’n we’re at sea.”
“Yeh,” agreed Arnold, buttoning up his dungaree jacket and preparing to leave, “but it’s sure tough being out in a pig with a skipper who’s pulled boners like those. One mistake ’n we’re gone.”
Tom turned away silently. He thought of Ensign Baker and his old shipmates in the C-3. Yes, only one little slip on Baker’s part. Things happened swiftly inside a submarine.
“Guess it’s up to me to keep tab on the skipper and see that that mistake isn’t made,” Tom muttered, half to himself. “Sorry for that crack about discipline, Biff. You had the dope, all right.” And with a nod to the brawny torpedoman, Tom moved aft and into the relative warmth of the battery room.
Steadily the engines pounded; the L-20 steamed on. Watch followed watch; the second day dawned and found the submarine well into the North Sea and heading southeast.
A tense atmosphere gripped the boat. On opposite sides of the North Sea, the largest battle fleets the world had ever seen faced each other, watchfully waiting. From Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, the Grand Fleet made frequent sweeps towards Helgoland, while behind that island fortress, the German High Seas Fleet lay hiding, a “fleet in being,” a constant threat to the Allied control of the seas and all that that control implied — the ability to transport food and troops to the Western Front, where the badly mauled British and French armies were desperately hanging on, looking forward hopefully to the new year and the coming of the new American army.
And constantly, to and fro across the North Sea, swept hurrying cruisers, German raiders, U-boats, while sudden death from minefields lay in wait for friend and foe alike.
The L-20 stood on, still on the surface but riding partly awash on her air vents, ready to dive at an instant’s notice. In this condition, the Kingston valves in all her main ballast tanks were open to the sea; only the fact that there was no outlet for the air from the tanks prevented them from filling and submerging the boat completely. Opening the air vent valves at the top of the ballast tanks would allow the air to escape while the tanks filled with a rush and took the boat under in a “crash dive,” and in this condition of instant readiness to disappear, the submarine cruised onward.
Several times they sighted smoke on the horizon. Then they made out six columns of smoke at regular intervals close together, which passed them by some ten miles off — evidently a squadron of cruisers going south at high speed. Soon the air filled with radio code messages and the word spread through the little ship that a German squadron had bombarded Lowestoft in the early dawn and the smoke seen was the Battle Cruiser Squadron from Rosyth rushing toward the Dogger Bank to cut off the German retreat. But nothing further of an action was heard, and the raiders evidently made good their escape behind the Helgoland minefields.
Meanwhile the L-20 buzzed with rumours. She had not before entered the North Sea. Why was she there? All sorts of wild conjectures flew round the ship — they were going to the Baltic to attack Kiel; they were going to Petrograd to help repel a German attack on the disorganized Russian fleet; they were going to cover the Grand Fleet while it bombarded Helgoland and then sent a storming party in to capture it — every type of scuttlebutt rumour filled the air and was received for the moment with the ready acceptance characteristic of sailors.
But in spite of surmise and guess, the L-20 kept steadily on to the southeast, and it soon became plain that their destination was Helgoland. Night came on and Knowles took the steering again. Lieutenant Rolfe, who had been on the bridge all day, greeted him wearily.
“Hello, chief.”
“Good evening, captain.”
“We won’t do much more cruising except at night, I guess, for some time now, Knowles.”
“The crew’s all upset about where we’re going, captain,” answered Tom. “Are you going to tell ’em what we’re out for?”
“I might as well now. You can pass the word when you go below. We’re to act as observation post off Helgoland, give word if any raiding squadrons go out, and try to nail them if we can, either coming or going. And if we can get any U-boats, so much the better, but the main thing is to stay there as long as possible and report all raiders outward bound. And that means, in these waters, keeping a periscope watch in the daytime, for Fritz’ll make it pretty hot for us in the Helgoland Bight if we show on the surface during the day.”
“Have they tried this before, captain?”
“Yes, the limeys have had a few subs here before, enough anyway so the Germans are on their guard now, but we’re the first American boat.”
“That’s quite an honour,” said Tom.
“Not so much as you might think, chief. The L-20 should have gone out last week on this patrol. But her skipper, Lieutenant Carpenter, a classmate of mine, went out on ‘special temporary duty,’ on the E-30, a British boat, which had this patrol a couple of weeks ago. Carpenter was to get the hang of the thing so’s his boat could take over the patrol this week. Well, nothing’s been heard since from the E-30, and that’s why the L-20 was minus a captain. Tough on his wife. Got married four months ago, just before this flotilla of subs left New London for the War Zone. Well, here I am instead, first on the job.”
Knowles sh
uddered in the darkness. So their British predecessor on the patrol had vanished forever. And the L-20’s captain with her. Tom remembered Carpenter — he’d been three-striper of Tom’s company when they were midshipmen. Just married. Tom wondered. Was it the girl Carpenter had had down that June week he graduated, the girl he had chosen to present to his company the colours they had won in competition? Tom remembered her; a lovely picture she made that June day on parade when she proudly handed Carpenter the much-prized colours, and the midshipmen had cheered her. Just married. And somewhere, in the cold depths off Helgoland, Carpenter lay entombed in a shattered submarine. Tom clutched his steering lever more tightly, peered vainly ahead into the darkness. But he saw nothing and only the swashing of the sea through their superstructures and the muffled exhaust of the diesels broke the silence of the night.
At ten o’clock, they slowed to one-third and went cautiously ahead, the engines barely turning over.
“We’re only five miles northeast of Helgoland now,” the skipper announced briefly. “This’ll be our post. We’ll close in to two miles at night, and haul out beyond easy visibility in the day so they can’t spot us awash from the island.”
In another twenty minutes they stopped. Ahead could vaguely be seen a dark mass looming low above the water — Helgoland. The watch was changed, two lookouts posted with night glasses on the little signal board above the periscope shears. In small groups, the crew, coming up from below to catch a smoke abaft the conning tower fairwater, strained their eyes at the vague outline against the dark horizon. And not till the last man in the crew had gazed at the enemy fortress, did anyone turn in.
In the early dawn, Tom took his post again, and as the first streaks of light broke through the mists on the eastern horizon, headed the L-20 northward. Looking back, he could see Helgoland gradually take shape as the light struck it, its flat sides rising sharply from the sea — steep, smooth cliffs, faced by the Germans with concrete to stop the constant gnawing of the waves which were slowly washing the island away. No signs of life were visible, no guns protruded, no citadels frowned down upon the observers. And yet that seemingly barren little island was the strongest fortress in the world, a nest bristling with hidden guns, beside which the vaunted strength of Gibraltar was as nothing. Against those guns the admirals of the Grand Fleet flatly refused to hazard their ships in attack, and for three years now, German ships fleeing pursuit had but to get in lee of Helgoland’s guns to be entirely safe. Behind that fortress lay Germany’s naval strength, safe from attack; from that haven came the U-boats, and to it they returned when, with torpedoes spent or mines all laid, they finished their cruise.
Pigboats Page 6
