The onrushing tanker’s bow was now abeam, no longer headed straight on, but close! The flare of the great profile overhung Eel’s deck, so far below. If that huge anchor nearly directly overhead were to be let go, it would land right on deck, crash clear through and carry Eel on down with it. Ludicrous for Eel, after all the dangers she had been through, to meet her fate here, in a well-known American harbor, at the hands of a lubberly U.S. tanker skipper! That must be he up on the bridge, or maybe the pilot — if he had a pilot — peering over at the wreckage he was about to cause. The wash from the tanker’s single propeller was up alongside her after deckhouse, reaching along the rusted slab-sided bulk of her gigantic hull. Her bridge was now abeam, and still she moved sideways under the impetus of her rudder. The turbulence from her screw began to reach Eel’s side. This might help to lessen the impact. Less than twenty-five feet between the ships now. Maybe the thrust of water from the tanker’s propeller would help to push Eel away, form a cushion between them.
But the huge vertical side of the tanker was also coming sideways. If it continued it would inevitably strike. No danger of being pierced by her stem now, but the whole side of the submarine, her light tank structure, would be bellied in, ribs crushed and bent, its clean symmetry ruined, Eel’s ability to float upright destroyed. She would be brought to the dock at Hunter’s Point listing to starboard, her side smashed, instead of clean and straight as she should be. Hunter’s Point could fix the damage, could build a new side if necessary, or replace the wrecked portion. But this was not the way the U.S. Navy had wanted to deliver the replacement for the Orca. Maybe Rich could reach the tanker skipper, or pilot, that seemingly impassive figure almost directly above. He, or whoever that was in some kind of uniform coat, looking as if mesmerized by the approaching collision, had not uttered a word, given an order, that Rich could see.
No megaphone. There should have been a megaphone. No doubt the tug carried one. Rich cupped his hands around his mouth, bellowed with all his strength. “Shift your rudder! Put your rudder right full!” Several times he repeated the words, pitching his voice at what he considered to be its best carrying level, straining neck, jaws and lungs to force the maximum response from his vocal cords. Once the pitch rose almost to a scream. No matter. Most people, except perhaps Keith and Buck, would call it a scream anyway.
There was some wind. The tanker’s engines must be making noise. The tug’s diesels were rumbling loudly behind him. The splashing of the water between Eel and the tanker was louder still as it was driven forward by the big backing propeller, was forced in white turbulence between the ships. The tanker was deep in the water, still moving forward with speed hardly slackened. The edge of her rudder post was barely visible under the counter stern. Her rudder was fully submerged, could not be seen. Had the tanker helmsman gotten the word? Had Richardson been able to reach through the noise and confusion? Again he shouted through cupped hands, his voice cracking with the effort.
A wave of the arm from the man on the tanker’s bridge. He turned, shouted something toward his enclosed pilothouse. Richardson had to hope it was an order to his helmsman. Was the rudder post turning? It was wet, gleaming. Rust-colored. No seaweed or bottom growth; a tanker’s waterlines are much too variable for anything to attach itself this high. Because of the slick shine of the round vertical forging, it was not possible to tell if it was turning. Even if the rudder was now at last reversed, put hard over right toward Eel, there was little effect it could have in the time remaining. Stopping the slide to starboard of that tremendous bulk, with its 50,000 tons of momentum, would take several hundred yards of forward motion. She was still crabbing sideways, would hit Eel’s thin ballast tanks soon.
Ten feet — five feet — separated the low-lying submarine from the overbearing steel cliff that was the side of the tanker. A huge, obscene, rust-streaked monster, nothing but an oil tank formed into a blunt bow at one end with an engine tacked on at the other, she towered shapelessly over the submarine and extended probably at least twice as far below the surface as above. From a fisheye view, Richardson thought, Eel must resemble a lifeboat just launched alongside. The thin canal of water between the two ships was insane with turmoil. Frenzied currents boiled to the surface, whipped themselves into frothing waves, surged into the narrow crevasse.
Because of her light condition, floating high, Eel’s rounded sides were essentially vertical where they entered the water, but beneath the waterline, as above, they curved away from the tanker. The point of contact would come right at the waterline, right where the screw wake thrown up by the other ship’s beating propeller would exert its greatest effect, obviously was doing so, for the water level between them was now raised, “bunched,” if such a word could be used to describe a fluid condition lasting only a few moments.
The tanker’s bridge and her unconcerned skipper were now well past. Her speed had not perceptibly slackened, despite the thrashings of her propeller. Perhaps her crabbing motion had somewhat reduced, if indeed the rudder had been shifted, or maybe it was only that the tug was at last beginning to drag Eel sideways and away from the approaching bulk. That big single propeller, now. Good thing this tanker had only a single screw. Twin screws were more dangerous, because they usually projected beyond the side, but the single propeller was bigger and would not be far below the surface, even with a deeply laden ship. And the tanker’s stern was still swinging toward, although more slowly.
The water channel between the two ships had widened toward Eel’s stern, but was correspondingly narrower in the vicinity of her bridge, Eel’s widest point, where Richardson, Leone and Williams were standing, helplessly watching the oncoming catastrophe. No longer, however, did it appear the ships would strike broadside to broadside. Now, the rounded portion of the tanker’s stern, where her ungainly middle section began its compound curve to meet the rudder and propeller cavity, would be the point of contact.
“Better step back, Captain,” said Keith suddenly. “There’s a lot of overhang coming our way.” Rich felt two pairs of hands gripping his shoulders, physically pulling him to the port side of the bridge just before the overhanging stern quarters of the tanker swept through the place where his head had been. There was a scraping, grinding, metallic crunch, oddly similar to the noise of a cardboard box being crushed, and then a higher-pitched sound of sheet steel being dragged over a rough surface. Eel heeled far over to port, heaved sideways, stayed there. Towering overhead, her stern quarter projecting into the airspace above the submarine’s bridge, crushing in its side plating, the huge ship scraped and ground past. In a moment she was clear, leaving a last indelible impression of the big letters emblazoned on her stern: Forward Venture. Monrovia.
Eel lurched back to an even keel. The three officers dashed back to the now ruined starboard side of her bridge. There was still a tiny water channel between the two ships, and the submarine’s rounded side was well into the concave space under the tanker’s quarter. Richardson wondered why he could not hear, or feel, Forward Venture’s big propeller blades slashing into the ballast tanks, instantly saw why. Water was no longer being churned up. The tanker had stopped her engine. Forward Venture’s skipper, evidently not quite so heedless as Richard had been willing to believe, must have ordered engines stopped just before contact.