We would let her turn a bit longer, then straighten out.
"What's our depth?" I looked at Jim. "Passing eighty feet!"
His face worked as he spoke, and he tapped the glass face of the gauge to make sure it was not stuck. It had only been about twenty seconds since we had started down, hardly time for Walrus to have gained much depth yet. We had achieved a small down angle, however, should begin to go deep-rapidly now.
I put on the earphones, immediately became conscious of the high-speed screws of our enemy, and his rapid, steady pinging. Gone also, now, was any attempt to quietness or concealment on his part. The screws were becoming rapidly louder. The pangs were continuous, steady, practically with- out interval. He was well on our starboard bow, coming in at high speed, perhaps hoping to ram.
"Rudder amidships!" Our compass card slowed its spin, steadied. This would increase our speed across the enemy track, tend to make him shoot his depth charges astern.
Perhaps our torpedoes would prevent him from attacking immediately, possibly one might even, by great good fortune, hit him.
Forlorn hope! The whole inside of the submarine was resounding with the enemy destroyer's propeller beats. The pings of his echo-ranging apparatus were fast, short, continu- ous, implacable. I could hear the echoes rap off our bull al- most as soon as transmitted, could even hear a double echo- the return bounce off him. We had reached ninety feet when the destroyer's roar attained an excruciating, violent crescendo of sound, and coherent thinking became frozen. He could not have been more than thirty feet away from where I was standing, dead overhead, roaring like an express train. My brain throbbed in the furious convulsion of noise. There was a screaming of tortured gears, the whine of high-speed turbines, the spitting, churning, tearing fury of his propellers, the blast of water-all combined into a frenzied, desperate, sudden drive to send us forever into the black depths of the sea.
"Here we are!" I remember thinking. "Here comes the granddaddy of all depth-chargings!" Walrus moved bodily in the water as the destroyer passed overhead. We could feel his initial pressure wave, and we also knew, by the abrupt change in the pitch Of the noise, the exact instant he passed over. Just before he did so, the bearing from which the sound had been coming in widened until it encompassed the entire three hundred sixty degrees around us. Ninety-one feet the depth gauges said. It was time, it was time, here it comes!
WHAM! A prolonged, crushing, catastrophic roar! The lights went out. I was thrown to the deck, grasped the periscope hoist wires with both hands. They were tingling, alive. The deck plates were rattling likewise. There was someone lying on the deck beneath me-as I felt for him, amid the convulsive shudders of Walrus great steel fabric, my feet were jerked out from under me and I was flung bodily on top of him. He felt wet, warm-wet, and he didn't move.
Scrambling to my feet, I realized the motion of the ship had changed. We were on the surface. The ship still had a large angle down by the bow, but our rocking and pitching could only be the result of being on the surface in the wash of the vessel that had just passed overhead. No doubt our stern was well out, high in view-a beautiful target; I was still hold- ing to the periscope wires, and to my horror I saw light at the bottom of the periscope well Then the explanation occurred: the top of the periscope, though housed, was also out of water, and light naturally streamed out of the other end. To confirm it I reached for the other 'scope, looked down into the well, saw light there also.
Still black as ink in the conning tower. On rig for depth charge the hatch between us and the control room had been dogged down, and there was no communication except by telephone, useless at the moment, of course. The whole interior of the submarine was a huge, sounding cavern, rever- berating and reflecting the uproar. If only we could see!
"Turn on the emergency lights!" I shouted. I might as well have whispered. The emergency lights should have come on.
Standard practice called for them to be turned on auto- matically by anyone, if the main lighting went out.
No need to look at the depth gauge anyway. "All ahead emergency" I had already ordered emergency speed, sub- consciously wanted to reinforce the order after the attack.
In the shattering uproar I bellowed as loud as I could. Quin might hear me, might be able to get through to the maneuvering room, or Oregon, at the other end of the conning tower, could ring for flank speed again three times. They were probably having a pretty bad time back aft, but "emergency ahead," under the circumstances existing, would cause Larto to open the main motor rheostats as far as they would go, put everything the battery could give into the propellers.
The noise was subsiding a little. I had no knowledge of how many depth charges had gone off, perhaps a dozen all almost simultaneously, and there was no telling, yet, whether Walrus had survived. The conning tower, we knew, was still whole. With all hatches and ventilation valves shut tightly, there could he no telltale increase in air pressure as water came rushing into another compartment. Since our stern was on the surface, a hole there might give no indication at all, or merely a loss in what slightly elevated pressure Walrus' atmosphere might already have. We'd find out soon' enough as we drove her down.
The destroyer's rush had carried him well past. I could hear his screws again-now on our port quarter. He had passed directly overhead. Our only hope' was that the depth charges had been set too deeply, that, although blown to the surface, we were not seriously damaged-but there was no time to think about damage already received. Four-inch shells would be whizzing our way within seconds. We had to get back under immediately!
There was an emergency Light switch near the ladder to the bridge. I collected myself, gropingly reached for it, fum- bled a moment, turned it. Dim lights came on at either end of the conning tower.
The conning tower looked as if a cyclone had struck it.
Hugh Adams' chart table, shaken loose from its mountings, had fallen to the floor. Hugh himself lay still on the deck.
Evidently he had been the one I had stumbled over. Keith was still at his station, frantically gripping the handles of the TDC and bracing himself with his foot on the comer of the angle solver. Jim was standing shakily beside him, while as a sheet, but apparently unhurt. But these were not the im- portant ones at the moment. Oregon was still at his steering wheel, and there seemed to be no damage in his locality.
Quin was sitting on the deck holding his left arm- 'Mere was an ugly gash in it from which blood was dripping onto his trousers. He seemed otherwise in condition to be of assistance, however.
"Quin!" I roared. "All ahead emergency!"
Painfully the yeoman reached up with his uninjured arm, gave the order into the telephone mouthpiece. Fastened to the side of the conning tower beneath the firing panel was the hand telephone for routine communication throughout the ship. I reached for it, pressed the button. "Control!" The response was immediate.
"Control, aye aye!" It was Tom Schultz himself an the other end, and I could remember the instant feeling of relief to discover that at least part of the ship was still functioning,
"We're broached, Tom. Can you get her down?"
"Trying, sir!"
"Have you got your vents open?" Possibly some of the gases from the underwater explosions could have come up into our ballast tanks and now, having broached, we would be bound to have air in some of them.
"Yes, sir " Tom replied again.
"We're going ahead emergency speed. Drive her as deep as you can. Get on over to twenty degrees angle if you have to," I told him. The order was superfluous, since Tom knew very well the seriousness of our situation, and the ship had already attained. an angle of fifteen degrees down by the bow.