By this time all the charred "flesh" had been knocked off Lobo's arm. Russo indicated the switchboard, looked at the electrician, who nodded. He reached behind the panel and pulled forth the remains of a can with, a blue paper wrapper labeled 'KLIM.' The edges were seared and melted; the con- tents, once a white powder, had bubbled up with the flame into large black globules. Covering and sticking to Smith's arm, this was what had given us the impression of charred flesh.
"I thought you was going to qualify in submarines, Lobo,"
Russo said roughly. "You get everybody mad at you and you'll be mess-cooking all your life, you'll never. qualify. Now you pull all this powdered milk out of here and stick it where I told you to and then you go get a rag and clean up the back of this here auxiliary power panel."
Larto grinned and nodded, and Lobo began to reach with trepidation toward the power panel. Tom Schultz, who had meanwhile arrived, and Jim were by this time grinning at each other, and Kohler and Larto broke into guffaws.
"Go wan, Lobo," said Kohler, "it won't bite you."
"Look out, Lobo," offered Quin, "it might burn off your other arm or maybe your head this time.
Lobo looked appealingly at me. After his experience he was obviously in deathly fear of the power panel. He had piled up cans of dried milk behind it until one of them had made contact with a copper bus bar. The resulting flash of fire had scared the wits out of him, not to mention the reaction at seeing his arm apparently burned off to the shoulder. I couldn't help chuckling a little despite his discomfort and terror.
"Go ahead," I told him, "there's no more juice on the board.
Larto's cut it off."
Larto grinned a large, even-toothed smile, nodded to the frightened Lobo.
"She's all right now, Lobo. I'll just sit and watch it while you clean it up so you don't make no more mistakes."
That ended the incident and the crowd gradually drifted away, but for the next two hours-we were aware of a running fire of sarcastic comment from Larto as he grimly supervised poor Lobo Smith's labors behind the once spotless electrical distribution board.
The next morning I presented myself in the Admiral's office.
"Come in, Richardson," said the Admiral. He led me into a room where a curtain had been pulled back to disclose a wall map of the Pacific. Various areas were outlined around the coast of Japan and elsewhere. Thumbtacked in some of them were paper submarine silhouettes, each bearing the name of a vessel. "Here's your area, Richardson," he said, indicating a spot off the eastern coast of Japan. "This is AREA SEVEN. you have one good harbor entrance here, — Bungo Suido, leading into the Inland Sea of Japan between the islands of Kyushu, Honshu, and Shikoku. There will be a lot of coastwise traffic and perhaps some ocean traffic in and out of the Bungo. Here is your Operation Order." He handed me a freshly made-up pamphlet. "Take a look at it now and take a good look at this chart. Maybe you'll want to study it a while and then we can talk further. You may not discuss it with anyone else until you're under way, not even your Exec."
And so a few hours later I stood on Walrus forecastle as preparations for getting under way were being completed.
The Admiral, as evidently was his custom, had come down to see us off and there was a small group of officers and enlisted men on the dock in addition to the line-handling crew and the band that we'd first seen on our arrival.
"You'll go via Midway Island," the Admiral had said.
"We've put a little mail aboard you for them. When you get to your area take it easy at first and explore the place. We've only had four other submarines bring us reports from there, and we want to get the lay of the land. Note particularly the traffic routes, what kind of ships seem to be using the Bungo Suido, whether there are any patterns of behavior, that is, whether they travel by night or day, morning or evening, zig- zagging, in convoy, or whatever. We would like you to try that night surface technique also."
Then the Admiral became grave. "The last boat to come back from your area went close inshore after a few days and was badly depth-charged. He thinks the Japs knew he was there the whole time. Anyway, he didn't have much luck and brought all his torpedoes back. Remember, Richardson, you have a submarine here. Don't let them detect you. Your mission is to inflict as much damage as you can on the enemy, not to get spotted or attacked yourself."
The band was playing as the Admiral said his good-byes.
"Oh, by the way," he said, as he turned to go back ashore, "a couple of old friends of yours are due in here soon. Captain Blunt is coming in to be my Chief of Staff and the Nerka will be here in two weeks from Mare Island. Aren't you a friend of her skipper, Kane?"
"Yes, sir," I said. This indeed was news. Stocker Kane, I might not see, because he would be gone on patrol long before Walrus was due back in Pearl Harbor. Blunt, however, would be there to welcome us back from our first patrol. "I'll be look- ing forward to seeing them, Admiral," I said. "Give them my best." I answered his salute to the colors as he walked across the gangway. Reaching the other side, he turned.
"Good hunting, Richardson," he called. "It's open season on monkeys."
Some wag had cooked up what he called a hunting license on monkeys and a copy of it was on my desk below.
The gangway was pulled ashore. I waved to Jim on the bridge and could hear the deeper note as our diesels com- menced to deliver power. Slowly we backed away from the dock and I waved one last time to the Admiral and his staff.
The band continued playing until we were out of sight.
7
Our first night out gave us fair warning that this trip would not be a repetition of our voyage from Balboa to Pearl.
I had just written the night orders and had gone below for a couple of hours' sleep, after which I would relieve Jim of the 'on-call duty,' is we termed our agreement to alternate wakefulness. On my bunk fully clothed, not having even bothered to remove my shoes, I could feel my- self slipping rapidly into slumber when there came a faraway call.
"Captain to the bridge!" I jerked into alertness, still not sure I had heard it. Running footsteps came from the control room and Lobo Smith, standing messenger watch, thrust his disheveled head past the curtain which I had drawn across the entrance to my room.
"Captain, wake up!" he shouted. "Captain to the bridge!"
"I jumped out of my bunk, thrust past Smith, dashed down the passageway into the control room, up the ladder, and was on the bridge within seconds.
"What is it?"
Jim was already there, standing beside Hugh Adams.
"There's a ship out there, Captain," Hugh said, pointing to our port beam.
It was a sticky, black night. I could barely see Jim and Hugh's shadowy forms. My binoculars revealed nothing.
"What kind of a ship, Hugh?"
"Can't tell, sir, low to the water-fairly small, I think, not too far away!"
"I saw him too for a minute, sir," said Jim. "That's about right, I think."
"Could you tell which way he was going?" I asked.
"No, sir," both answered at once. "Looked like nearly broad- side to," Jim added.
I leaned toward the hatch. "Conning tower," I called, "tell Mr. Freeman to come to the foot of the hatch."
"I don't remember anything in our Operation Order about any friendly ships in this area," I muttered. "We were sup- posed to be informed."
"Do you think it might be a Jap?" Jim broke in.
"No telling." I picked up my binoculars, searched the port beam again. There was nothing to be seen.
"Hugh, has the SJ radar picked him up?"
"No, sir," Adams answered. "I had it searching over there but no luck."