Pigboats

by Ellsberg, Edward

  The deck plates felt very cold. Tom shifted from one foot to the other to keep the soles of his feet warm, then jerked a copy of the Nautical Almanac off the shelf over the chartboard and stood on that.

  “What the — ” exclaimed Rolfe as he saw the covers of his almanac soaking up moisture from the wet deck, then stopped. “All right, I guess I won’t be taking any shots at the stars for a while anyway.”

  Tom found the steering harder. The boat was making barely half a knot, it took a wide swing of the rudder to make her answer the helm at all. He looked across the C.O.C. at the diving wheels. Their pig was with difficulty holding her depth of 80 feet.

  Tom heard the captain muttering to himself, then in a whisper that in the silent room sounded almost like a shout, Rolfe ordered:

  “Hard dive on both planes!”

  In low tones, Sanders, the little third class quartermaster at the forward diving wheel, answered quickly:

  “It’s no use, captain, all the planes are set at ‘Hard dive’ already, and at that we can hardly keep her from rising.”

  Rolfe looked at the indicators. Sanders was right; at ordinary speed submerged, with the planes set as they were, they should be going down at a sharp angle; as it was, though the trim indicator showed slightly down by the head, the depth gauge was holding steady at 80 feet — they were barely counteracting the slight positive buoyancy of the boat.

  “Our goose’ll be cooked for sure if we stick at this level,” thought Rolfe. “I’ll have to take her down negative.”

  “Mullaney, how much water have you got in the adjusting tank?”

  Pete, who for an hour had been watching operations in a daze, gave a start at being addressed, then read the glass.

  “It’s nearly empty, sir, only nine hundred pounds.”

  “Give her five hundred pounds more, so we’ll sink. Careful now.”

  Pete leaned over the flooding manifold, opened wide the valve marked “Sea,” cautiously gave two turns on the valve at the other end of the casting, labelled “Adjusting Tank.” Quickly he turned to watch the vertical sight glass on his variable tank. The water flowed in steadily, the level soon showed against the “1400” mark on the brass scale. Hurriedly Pete choked down the flow, shut off the sea connection.

  “Fourteen hundred pounds, now, captain.”

  Rolfe nodded. He was watching the depth gauge; the needle flickered, started to move. With negative buoyancy now, the L-20 was slowly sinking. But they must not go too far or the sea pressure would crush the frail shell.

  “Stand by to check her, Bill.” Arnold, the grimy machinist’s mate at the drainage manifold reached behind the maze of pipes and valves at his station, clawed over a motor located behind the drainage manifold, unclutched it from the periscope hoists, threw in the clutch at the other end of the motor shaft, hooking it to the high pressure pump there. On his manifold he opened the pump suction to the adjusting tank, opened the discharge to the sea.

  “All set to pump adjusting tank, captain,” reported Bill.

  The terror of the listening microphones, their sensitive diaphragms tuned to catch the slightest noise from below, gripped Tom. Holding the wheel steady with one hand, he turned to the skipper behind, whispered sharply:

  “Don’t pump that tank, captain; blow it!”

  Rolfe looked at him in surprise.

  “What do you mean, blow a variable tank? I nearly lost a boat that way once. I should say not! Stand by there, Arnold.”

  “You’ll sure lose this one if you start that pump. The Germans’ll hear us,” replied Tom vehemently. “You can blow it if you’re careful. Build up the air pressure in the tank before you open the sea cock, then you’re bound to blow the water out, and there’s no danger of the sea flooding in first. But for God’s sake, don’t start any pumps!”

  “Who the hell do you think you are, anyway? I’m running this boat, and I don’t need any quartermasters to tell me how! Stand by that pump, Arnold!”

  Tom gritted his teeth, turned back to his wheel. No use to protest.

  Rolfe, his face red, turned angrily to the depth gauge, struggled to calm himself. 100 feet, no. They were sinking rapidly; he must recover positive buoyancy before they went too far.

  140 feet. Enough.

  “Start the pump!”

  Arnold pressed the button, the motor speeded up. The clutch slipped a little as the pump started to buck the sea pressure, then gripped firmly. Gradually the water in the sight glass dropped as the little motor whirred and the pump groaned under its load. The boat, lightening as the contents of the adjusting tank went overboard, slowed in its descent. At 170 feet, with 400 pounds of water discharged, the buoyancy again became positive, the depth gauge steadied.

  “Enough,” whispered Rolfe, “secure!”

  Bill Arnold pressed the button, closed off his valves; the noise of pumping ceased. In silence the L-20 headed for shoaler water. No one moved, no one spoke. The slowly revolving motors were hardly audible inside the boat; it seemed impossible that their propellers, barely turning over, could send any note out through the water. Had the enemy microphones caught the grinding of the pump?

  In the silence, even without microphones, they could hear, beating against the steel sides of their boat, the high-pitched note radiating through the sea from the churning propellers of their enemies; silence as the destroyers suddenly stopped engines to listen, then again that relentless throbbing against their hull. Now near, now far, as the destroyers searched back and forth, listening through the noises of their own machinery for any faint vibrations set up in the depths.

  Down below, drawn faces and strained ears weighed the volume of that beating each time it struck the shell. A little louder this time; had the Germans heard that pump? Silence. The destroyers had stopped. Thirty men leaned closer to the hull, waited in agonized quiet for that droning to break out again. The seconds drifted by, the submarine crept along. There it was! Anxiously each listened, relaxed a bit against his valves, his switches. No louder, thank heaven; the Germans were no nearer. How far was it to that thirty fathom line where they could safely bottom and lie quietly till the destroyers abandoned the search? Another hour’s run, the word went round. The men looked hopelessly at each other. Fat chance to remain hidden for sixty more long minutes. Better come up and fight it out. The unspoken thought ran through the boat. Rolfe felt questioning eyes boring in on him — Randolph from the switchboard, Mullaney back at the Kingstons, Sanders, Arnold, Knowles, Wolters — from all over the boat anxious eyes seemed to be looking through bulkheads, peering from behind manifolds, all expressing the same thought:

  “They’ll get us now for sure! Why don’t you take ’er up an’ let us fight it out?”

  The air was not so good. Since he had stopped the fans, the atmosphere had gone dead. No breeze stirred through the boat; the odour of oil, of acid fumes, of rebreathed air grew stronger, more sickening. It was harder to think. He could start the blower, stir things up a bit; the draft would feel good even if it were the same old mixture of gases. No, he mustn’t. The noise would give them away. Foolish idea to come up and fight. He didn’t mind fighting, but it wouldn’t be a fight. If he broke surface, his one little three-inch gun against those twelve four-inch guns on the destroyers would be a joke. Well, how about torpedoes? He figured that out. The destroyers weren’t over half a mile away, but they were manoeuvring constantly. Still if he came up to periscope depth while they were stopped to listen for him, he could probably get off at least one torpedo before he was spotted. A little hard to hit these destroyers though; their draft was so light you had practically to set the torpedo for a surface run or it’d pass under. And once a torpedo wake showed on the surface, there’d be at least two destroyers racing over him before he could go fifty yards, and a perfect hail of ashcans would be exploding right against his sides. There wouldn’t even be any pieces left. No, nothing in that, except as a last resort. Then he’d get one of those boats anyway before they went up.

 
; Let the crew keep on drilling him with their eyes. Best right where they were. Only a short distance now and they could bottom at a safe depth. There was that droning again. He put his hands over his ears as if to keep out a hideous noise. A little louder, wasn’t it? The sound ceased. Dead silence. Again the drumming of the propellers against their sides. Yes, it was louder this time. He waited painfully for it to stop while the pack hunting him stopped again to listen. The droning swelled. What was the matter? Time for them to stop and listen. They’d done it a hundred times now. The noise increased. An icy hand seemed to clutch Rolfe’s heart. They weren’t going to stop this time, the destroyers had heard something, they had his bearing at last!

  To Tom Knowles, it seemed as if the droning rose in pitch till it sounded like the roar of Niagara. The destroyers were passing directly over them!

  Rolfe leaped to a periscope. He must come up and fight. No need for quiet any more.

  “Hard rise! Full speed both motors!”

  Too late.

  A terrible concussion rocked the boat. The first ash-can had exploded close aboard. As if struck by a huge wave, the submarine heaved violently to starboard. A flicker, the lights went out. Blackness. Another roar. The boat rolled drunkenly, her stern shot suddenly downward.

  In the darkness, Tom found himself in a knot of struggling arms and legs, of men fighting to regain their feet. At rapid intervals came those terrible hammer blows, tossing the submarine about in the depths like a leaf in a gale, tilting her, rolling her, battering her sides as she shot downward.

  Knowles dragged himself off the top of the heap, clutched something overhead. A periscope handle. The sub must be almost on her tail.

  There flashed through Knowles’ mind the knowledge that this was the end. The boat was sinking out of control. If the ashcans had not already smashed her in, the sea would crush them in a moment, just as it had the C-3.

  How deep was the water? They were inside the 90 fathom curve, but halfway only to the 30 fathom line. He clawed round trying to get on his feet. There was no deck to stand on. In between explosions of the depth bombs, he heard the cursing of men caught in the night, waiting each moment to feel the steel shell about them suddenly close in like a nutcracker to end the agony.

  There! It was coming. A stream of water, cold, icy, shot through the darkness, struck his chest, splashed down over the fighting, swearing mass below. A sudden silence ensued, in which only the sound of rushing water, cascading downward, broke the stillness.

  A violent bump. The stern stopped sinking; the boat hung poised vertically an instant in its descent, then the bow cut through the water with increasing speed. Another thud, the hull struck full length, rolled a little to port, stopped. The L-20 lay quietly on the bottom.

  CHAPTER IX

  As the submarine took its final lurch into the mud and came to rest, the quartermaster felt the deck once more beneath his feet. He let go the useless periscope, unconsciously waited a fraction of a second for the boat to collapse. Nothing happened. Only the sound of rushing water splashing on the deck.

  To Tom Knowles, waiting in the darkness for the end, there flashed the thought that death was not coming swiftly, that it might not come at all. The feel of the solid deck beneath his stockinged feet reassured him. The boat must be reasonably intact. They might yet save themselves!

  He felt around. Light! Where was that water coming from? If he could stop it, there’d be a chance. Groping toward the switchboard, he stumbled against a figure thrashing wildly about, pushed it roughly aside, felt the ebony board. Swiftly his fingers swept over it, searching for the lower left hand corner. He clawed across the main circuit breaker. As he thought. Tripped open by the concussions. He gripped the handle, jammed the breaker closed.

  The lights flared up, then a vivid flash on the board, and the circuit breaker kicked out once more. Darkness again. Short circuit somewhere. But in that gleam, as in a flash of lightning, Tom had seen the staring eyes, the ashen faces of his shipmates, sprawled over the manifolds, jammed in a heap aft in the C.O.C., struggling frenziedly to untangle themselves as the water rose on the deck.

  And overhead, Tom had glimpsed a heavy stream of water, shooting at high pressure from the ventilation valve over the forward door. He left the board, stumbled blindly forward in the blackness, feeling his way past the steering wheel, past the wardroom, up the narrow passage leading to that door. The torrent of water struck him solidly, knocked him down. He staggered up, stooped low to keep under that deadly stream, bumped into the forward bulkhead. Reaching above the dogs, he found the locking gear on the clapper valve handle, released it. Gripping the handle with both hands, he jerked; the flapper inside, caught in the flying stream, seated with a bang. As if cut off by a knife, the jet shooting from the bulkhead ceased; a few drops of water, leaking from the valve casing, seeped down Tom’s neck. He leaned back against the bulkhead, gasped with relief.

  Another explosion. The bulkhead against which Tom rested quivered sharply, the boat rocked perceptibly on the bottom. The Germans were still sowing depth bombs somewhere near, searching them out.

  Tom listened, sick with fear. If any wreckage floated up, if any oil seeped out to make a slick on the surface, a string of ashcans, set to explode on the bottom, would in a few seconds come raining down to tear them to shreds. If only they were on the surface, fighting in the blessed sunlight, he could stand it. But there, trapped in the dark, blind, helpless, Tom’s shattered, nerves gave way, he sank down panting with fright, waiting for the blast that should end everything.

  But apparently nothing floated up to betray them. At irregular intervals the boat rocked unsteadily in its ocean bed when the depth bombs exploded, now near, now farther off, as the relentless destroyers, their microphones searching vainly for the silent boat, laid pattern after pattern in their barrage. But evidently all the bombs were set to burst somewhere above them, still seeking a boat under way. And far down, the wounded L-20, cushioned now from the blows by a thick blanket of water above her, lay firmly gripped by the silent depths.

  CHAPTER X

  A stiff breeze, sharp with the chill of late December, swept over the Helgoland Bight, tipping the waves with foam, sending line after line of tiny ripples scurrying up the windward slopes of the waves to lose themselves in the whitecaps that blew from the crests and streamed like driven rain to leeward. The sea was rising. Far to the southward, disappearing below the horizon, the torpedoed battle cruiser was slowly moving toward port and safety, her stern awash, the water surging over her quarterdeck as each wave broke, sweeping over the battened down hatches, lapping round the armoured base of her after turret. Two minesweepers in tandem, now had the tow; they pitched unevenly in the seas, jerking astern suddenly each time the bow of the massive warship abaft them settled in a trough and took up the slack in the thick wire hawser. A mass of foam churned up by straining propellers whitened the sea as the minesweepers dragged their waterlogged charge along. The slap of the waves under their counters as the heaving of the towline jerked their sterns suddenly back into the sea, the racing of the propellers as the towline slacked and the pitching sterns rose clear on the crests, the hoarse cries megaphoned back and forth between the sinking cruiser and her panting towboats, punctuated sharply the desperate struggle the Germans were making to get the sinking ship in before rising seas snapped the stout towline and left the helpless ship to founder.

  While the towboats battled the sea, and the crew of the warship fought with their pumps the rising tide which threatened to engulf their stern, three destroyers, circling at high speed, maneuvered round the stricken ship, guns manned, depth charges cast loose, torpedo tubes trained out, ready to fend off any further attack on their huge sister.

  Miles away to the north of Helgoland, in a waste of breaking crests and dull grey seas, three other destroyers pitched crazily as they headed to windward steaming in line abreast, searching over several miles of windswept sea, stopping occasionally, then steaming on again. But each time the
y stopped, the wind caught their high bows like sails, swung them into the troughs where they rolled drunkenly, their low sides going awash as the seas pounded them, their masts whipping violently back and forth as the waves tossed their light hulls like corks. Here and there, they cut through wide patches of milky water — large slicks, strangely smooth in the midst of tumbling waves and streaming spray. What few bubbles of air, streaks of oil, might be floating up from the L-20, were lost in the turbulent seas and the roiled patches which exploding depth bombs had left on the surface.

  The searching flotilla came to the end of its leg. A signal fluttered to the yardarm of the starboard vessel, stood out stiffly in the wind shrieking by. A short blast on the whistles of the remaining boats, the signal was acknowledged.

  As the little flags snapped down from the signal of the flotilla leader, she turned slowly to leeward, rolled dangerously as she fell off into the trough of the sea and the wind caught her broadside, straightened out on a course leading to the eastward of distant Helgoland. The other two destroyers, turning in her wake, fell in astern, and in a few minutes only some far off clouds of smoke, sharply cut from their stacks and driven low across the water, marked their course toward the mouth of the Weser and shelter from the pounding seas.

  In long rows, driving always toward the distant cloud on the horizon which was Helgoland, the waves swept by under the lash of the north wind, a heaving waste of foam, hurtling crests, long swelling billows, rising to a peak here, flattening out again as the sharp wind pounded the surface. A few gulls, their sleek wings flashing as they played, skimmed low, sweeping up and down as the water heaved beneath them, washed them with spray — the only signs of life in the vast sweep of the deserted ocean.

  CHAPTER XI

  A flicker of light, cold, unnatural, swept in a thin pencil across the C.O.C., settled on the switchboard. Randolph had found the two-cell bull’s-eye lantern still in its rack, ripped it from the bulkhead, pressed the button. In ghastly fashion it cast a dim illumination through the control room, reflected in streaks from the polished sides of the housed periscope tubes leaning strangely to port, shone back faintly from rings of gleaming ripples in the water swashing about the deck.