Pigboats

by Ellsberg, Edward

  Tom fitted the square key over the inboard connection, slowly turned it. A shrill whistling in the manifold as the high-pressure air shot through the tiny valve opening, blew through into the adjusting tank. A little frost gathered on the valve as the air expanded. Tom watched the gauge. He must not let the pressure build up too much or he would blow the adjusting tank to pieces.

  The compressed air reached the tank, started to force the water out. In the sight glass, a line appeared, dropped steadily. Air above, water below. The crew watched fascinated. The water was actually going overboard!

  And then as one man, their eyes turned to the gauge on the air banks. The pressure there was dropping. 1475, 1450, 1425, 1400 pounds. Their precious store of air was going fast.

  His eyes glued on the adjusting tank glass, Tom watched the water drop as he fed the compressed air in behind. The water reached the bottom of the glass, he turned off the air, looked at the gauge. 1300 pounds left.

  “All right, Bill, shut off the sea discharge and set the drainage pump to fill the tank again.”

  The connections were shifted, soon the pump was sucking again from the C.O.C. and filling the adjusting tank, while Tom opened the vent and allowed the air to discharge into the compartment as the tank flooded. As the air whistled into the room, the half suffocated sailors crowded round the vent, eager to fill their lungs with the stream of cold air gushing into the devitalized atmosphere inside the submarine. But one whiff was enough. A strong odour of burned oil, strange, sickening, came to add its stench to that in the room. Sanders, who got the first whiff fell back choking.

  “Whot’s ailing that air?” he gasped.

  Biff Wolters caught him, helped him to a seat on a nest of pipes. “It’s the bum lube oil we been gettin’ for our compressors, mate. That air’s no good. The compressors get so hot, compressin’ to 2,000 pounds, some o’ the oil flashes from the heat and it’s the smoke from that ye’re smellin’ now.” Biff leaned Sanders gently back against the sheathing, and turned to Knowles.

  “Say, Tom, that stuff ain’t doin’ us no good, vent it overboard.”

  Tom kept on pumping water into the tank, but made no move to close the vent.

  “There aren’t any other little things you’d like too, are there Biff, while you’re asking? You must think we’re tied up alongside the dock. How d’ye think I can get it overboard?”

  Biff looked at him, a puzzled expression gradually spreading over his broad face.

  “Why not couple up that vent line again ’n let it blow out that way?” he asked at last.

  Randolph laughed at Biffs question.

  “I didn’t think even a torpedoman was that dumb, Biff,” he said. “Can’t you see that?”

  “Naw, I can’t see it,” said Biff gruffly, “’n I’m too damn near choked to do any deep thinkin’, either, Sparks. Wot’s the answer? Why can’t we vent it overboard?”

  “Because there has to be more pressure in the adjusting tank than there is outside the boat, Biff,” replied the electrician, “or the air won’t blow overboard. And if we had that much pressure in the tank, that pump couldn’t pump into it, any more than it’ll pump overboard now. You kin see that, can’t you?”

  “My head’s so thick breathin’ this soup down here, I can’t see nuthin’ ’cept we’re sure out o’ luck. But I’ll take yer word fer it.” He turned tenderly to Sanders.

  “Feelin’ any better, Joe?”

  A feeble nod was the response, as the little quartermaster’s coughing fit died away.

  A cloud of spray, followed by solid water, shot out the vent. The adjusting tank was full. A brief moment of excitement as the multitude of piping connections were shifted, then Tom again admitted high-pressure air to the tank and blew its contents overboard. Three times he repeated the operation, and left the C.O.C. practically dry. Then he shifted his suction manifold to suck from the motor room aft, dried that compartment in two blows.

  As the water disappeared, the spirit in the boat grew a little more cheerful. The men watched with eager eyes the reappearance of familiar valves,, the gradual emergence of oily deck plates. But Tom’s spirits sank lower and lower. It was taking an eighth of his total store of air each time he blew the adjusting tank; when the motor room was dry and the suction shifted to pull on the engine room, three quarters of the air was gone. And there was more water in the engine room than in either of the other two compartments. As he set the valves to draw from the diesel engine room the second time, Mullaney, padding across the slippery canvas in his bare feet, pushed him aside a little, and stared at the gauge on the high-pressure banks.

  “Two hunerd and sixty pounds,” he muttered, “an’ she wuz fifteen hunerd whin ye started. Kin ye do it, Tom?”

  “Start the pump, Bill,” ordered Tom. The water began to fill the tank again, another blast of oily-smelling air vented into the room, then a spray of water.

  “Enough!” yelled Tom. Again he set the tank to blow, turned on the air. Slowly the water went down in the sight glass; slowly the pressure dropped on the gauge. More and more slowly, the needle moved, till at last it came to rest at 157 pounds.

  “There’s the answer, Pete,” said Knowles. “The air’s all gone. She’s just balancing the sea now.” He called to Arnold, who was sitting in the engine room door, gazing disconsolately at his silent diesels. “How much water left in the engine room, Bill?”

  Without rising, the machinist’s mate tossed a stillson wrench into the port bilges. A slight splash, a metallic clatter as the wrench hit the hull, then quiet again.

  “About two feet, I guess,” muttered Bill without turning round. “Any air left, Tom?” he asked listlessly.

  “No.”

  “I guess I’ll turn in then.” Arnold, slowly pulling himself erect, turned toward the C.O.C. “Might as well die in comfort.” He shuffled forward past the periscopes, edging through the crowd of seamen jammed into the room. Silently they watched as the grey-haired machinist’s mate passed into the battery room, hauled himself into the nearest bunk, and wrapped a blanket about his soaked form. For a moment he lay still, then, as if suddenly recalling something, he slowly lifted his head from the mattress, and called out:

  “Oh, Biff!”

  The torpedoman, who was aimlessly turning the useless steering wheel, looked toward him.

  “Yeah, Bill.”

  “Call me when ye’re ready to get under way.”

  Biff’s jaw dropped, then his mouth slowly closed without replying. “Wot’s Bill think he’s doing, kiddin’ us?” He stared fixedly into the battery room.

  Tom Knowles clapped him on the shoulder, brought him to again.

  “How much air you got in your torpedoes, Biff?”

  “A full charge o’ course, enough to run each of ’em two thousand yards. Wot d’ye wanna do, shoot ’em at the mermaids?”

  “Not a chance, big boy. Here’s where the air in those torpedo flasks works again. Drag ’em out of the torpedo tubes, hook up your charging line to the air flasks in the torpedo bodies, and we’ll bleed ’em down to blow out the rest of this water. Lively now!” he ordered.

  “O.K., chief,” nodded Biff. “C’mon, gang!” The torpedomen followed Biff forward, unlatched the inboard doors of the torpedo tubes, exposed again the sharp propellers and the glistening tails of their torpedoes. The clatter and bang of chain hoists rang through the submarine as the choking torpedomen struggled with their little remaining strength to draw out the torpedoes in the tubes. The port list aggravated the task, and a stream of curses echoed aft as Biff fought to keep clear the detonator in the nose of each torpedo as it pulled free of its tube and swung heavily to the low side of the boat. At last the deadly missiles were safely in their racks again, the air connections made, the air transferred to the main banks. Once more the pressure there went up again; Tom pumped water from the engine compartment into the ballast tank and blew it overboard. But when the air for the last time ran so low that it would no longer force the water lower in the
sight glass, there was still a foot of oily water left sloshing round between the crankcases of the port and the starboard engines. And the L-20, still far too heavy to float, lay bedded in the ooze of the ocean floor.

  CHAPTER XII

  A deep quiet, broken only by the hissing of a hundred tiny streams of water spurting in through strained rivets and leaking joints, gripped the L-20. In their bunks most of the crew lay motionless, wet clothes clinging to cold bodies, tightly wrapped in blankets, striving to keep in a little warmth. Moisture dripped from the stanchions overhead in a steady rain on the shivering sailors; condensation ran in zigzag streams down the bulkheads. The sea had long since soaked up all the warmth from the submarine, leaving a raw chill inside as frigid as the wintry ocean which had engulfed the boat. The slow breathing of choking men, fighting in a heavy mixture of oil vapours, carbon dioxide, and acid fumes for a breath of oxygen, was marked by little clouds of fog, forming as the moisture from their warm breath struck the chilly air.

  In the C.O.C., Tom Knowles leaned heavily against the switchboard. His face was streaked with oil; his wet blouse, clinging tightly to his body, was covered with oily stains from his struggles to reach behind the drainage manifold to the slipping clutch. Seated dejectedly on the manifold, looking at the motor, was Biff Wolters, his undershirt plastered with oil and dirt, shivering with cold. A few tools — ratchet drills, wrenches, bolts and nuts — were scattered over the chart board. Projecting through the water covering the deck was a pair of bare legs, twitching spasmodically.

  A long minute passed. Then a violent agitation stirred the pool of water and Mullaney’s body burst through the surface, with a ratchet drill still clutched in one hand, his face blue, his eyes popping out, his chest heaving as he struggled vainly for air, getting hardly more oxygen than when he was under water.

  Knowles looked at him, read failure in Pete’s pallid face, turned back again to the switchboard.

  “It’s no go, Tom,” gasped Pete. “I’m near drowned tryin’ to squeeze in, but there’s no reachin’ it from underneath.”

  “All right, Pete. We’ll quit struggling with that. We’re not getting anywhere. And we’re only using up the air faster.” Tom surveyed the empty engine room abaft him, then continued: “All hands’ve turned in, and you lads had better follow. Get in your bunks with the rest of the boys. Lie still, and breathe slow. It uses up less air that way, and we’ll all last longer. And don’t talk. But for Christ’s sake, think! You ’specially, Biff, you’re an old pigboat sailor. We’ve got to find a way to get that pump going!”

  Wolters rose slowly from his seat among the valves, steadied himself on the wheel a moment.

  “Think!” he moaned, “I ain’t done nuthin’ but, since we sunk! An’ all I kin think of is that my permanent mailin’ address is gonna be ‘Care Davy Jones, off Helgoland.’ My head’s splittin’ already. If there’s any more thinkin’ done in this bucket, ye’ll have to do it yerself, Tom.” Painfully, the torpedoman dragged his faltering feet forward, the tattooed ship on his huge chest quivering irregularly as he strove to fill his lungs. Dripping wet, Mullaney followed him mechanically, but his blue eyes, unlike the rest of his slow-moving body, roamed wildly around the compartment as if seeking some hidden exit from the trap.

  The footfalls of the two men died away; the slight commotion forward as they dragged themselves into their bunks was quickly over. In silence the slow minutes passed. Tom looked at the clock on the switchboard. Ten p.m. Twelve hours on the bottom. Hopelessly the chief quartermaster watched the never-ending ripples, spreading in widening rings around the spots where the water, squirting from leaking rivets, pierced the deepening pool on the deck. Already nearly as much water had leaked back as he had once blown overboard. The end was coming now. The compressed air was gone, they could not make the pump work; the rising water would engulf the motors, flood over the coaming into the battery room. And then chlorine gas would finish them. Unless before that the carbon dioxide they were giving off themselves with each breath, so poisoned the stale air in the boat that they could no longer breathe it. How much of that did it take? He had a vague remembrance of his old instructions at the Submarine School. A seven per cent dilution of C02 was fatal. In the ordinary case, it took twenty hours to reach that limit. Unless the air was purified or exhausted overboard by a pump, the carbon dioxide would after that cause quick death. His head ached frightfully. That was one of the symptoms. Not much longer now.

  Tom shook himself, trying desperately to throw off the drowsiness which was creeping over him, causing his tired head to nod. If he went to sleep, he doubted that he would ever wake again. He stooped, splashed water savagely from the deck over his face. He was captain, he was responsible, he must keep going till some way out was found. He poured a capful of salt water over his head, revived a little under the sting of the cold spray, tried strenuously to think.

  The silence of the machinery, the immobility of that formidable array of useless valves, numbed his brain, made action seem impossible. Slowly, dully he scanned in turn each piece of machinery, his throbbing eyes searching them out one by one, asking himself each time, “What can I do with that?” and each time as he vainly racked his brain, answering, “Nothing.”

  Again and again his eyes moved round the empty C.O.C., while his tortured mind sought to wring from the dead machinery, the useless controls, some way to pump the water, to float the boat up, before suffocation overtook them all. But no solution came, and the doomed quartermaster saw before him only an intricate and useless group of controls, gradually disappearing beneath a rising tide of black water. Slowly, gruesomely that tide rose, no torrent gushing through burst pipes now, only a placid pool fed by tiny jets, while he watched fascinated the intricate patterns wrought on the surface of the water as the circling ripples, spreading from their sources, twined and interwined in widening rings, were reflected from the periscopes and the binnacle stand, and were finally lost in the dark shadows behind the manifolds. In unending processions, the rippling circles formed, spread and died away.

  A strange set of ripples from forward scurried across the surface, altered the pattern. Another leak probably, starting a fresh disturbance. Tom looked up wearily. But no more rivets had started there, no fresh leaks were disturbing the water. Instead the green baize curtains over the wardroom door, dangling in the water, were fluttering gently, ruffling its surface.

  As Tom stared uncomprehendingly, wondering where in that silent steel coffin came the breeze to stir those curtains, the hangings were suddenly flung apart, the blue muzzle of a Colt automatic thrust itself toward his breast and he found himself looking into the bloodshot eyes of Lieutenant Rolfe!

  Involuntarily Tom started up. Rolfe! He had completely forgotten him in the desperate battle to raise the boat.

  The pistol wavered a little in the captain’s shaking hand; Rolfe clutched it close against his hip to steady his aim, clinging to the forward periscope with his other hand while his burning eyes searched Tom’s face. Startled, Tom followed the motions of the muzzle weaving back and forth over his heart, Rolfe’s fingers twitching over the trigger, each second seemingly about to give the fatal squeeze. But still Rolfe did not speak; his wild eyes stared into Tom’s, roved over the quartermaster from head to foot, came back to his face again and stayed there, staring intently.

  “Crazy,” muttered Tom under his breath, watching the quivering pistol nervously. For an instant he took his eyes from the pistol, looked down the passageway toward the battery room. All hands turned in. No help from there. Hopeless.

  In the deserted control room, knee deep in the flood filling the waterlogged boat, the helpless quartermaster watched as the seconds dragged along and a snarl of hate grew on his captain’s face. Apparently Rolfe meant to take out on him his rage against the L-20’s mutinous crew. What difference did it make? In a few hours they would all be dead anyway — hates, ambitions, stilled forever. Tom stared at Rolfe. Why didn’t he shoot and be done with it? Why was he
dragging it out?”

  “I know you!” In a low voice, strangely contrasting with his snarling face, Rolfe spoke at last, his pistol steadied on Tom’s heart. “Quartermaster hell! You’re Lieutenant Knowlton, skipper of the C-3!”

  Tom started forward involuntarily, then settled back slowly, his bare feet gripping again the slippery deck as he struggled to conceal his surprise.

  “What do you think I was doing in that wardroom all the time you were trying to raise her? Do you think I’m a fool?” Rolfe’s wild eyes lighted up fiercely. “Quartermasters on their first submarine cruise don’t suddenly know all about ’em. I placed you. It wasn’t easy, you’ve changed. And to make it harder, you’re supposed to be dead!” The lieutenant laughed harshly, his eyes glittering like a snake’s hypnotizing its defenceless prey. “Dead! Along with the rest of ’em in the C-3 at the bottom of the Yellow Sea!”

  He leaned closer, waved his pistol exultantly over his victim.

  “Dead in the C-3! That made it harder. Oh, we remember her in the submarine flotilla. You killed ’em all by your God-damned carelessness, you son-of-a — ” His hoarse voice cracked as he strove to keep it down, he clutched the nearest periscope a little more tightly to steady his wavering knees.

  “You!” His eyes glittered malignantly as he spat out the words. “You telling me how to run a sub, threatening me with a court if I didn’t make a crazy attack! It’s your fault we’re sunk! And then you get the crew to mutiny, and I’ve got to stand by idle and choke in this God-damned air while you try to raise the boat!” His snarling lips curled away from his teeth, a maniacal look spread over his face.

  “You didn’t raise her, did you? Why didn’t you raise the C-3 and save their lives if you know so damned much? We’ll all be stiffs here pretty damn quick. And nobody’ll ever know what happened to us!”

  Panting, Rolfe stopped a moment, gasped for breath, his chest heaving, his body shaking from his outburst. But never for an instant did his pistol vary in its aim, and Lieutenant Thomas Knowlton, after three years a living person again, stared fascinated down the black throat of that forty-five, expecting each second the explosion that meant the end.