We could all hear the grim cascade, the torrent of suddenly released black water smashing through thin bulkheads, filling compartments with shocking speed, compressing the air with the frenzied pressure of the sea. Then another noise, crunching, rending. "He's hit bottom," announced Stafford.
"Any chance for them, Keith?" Williams turned serious eyes at the Exec.
"To escape from the sunken sub?" Keith snorted. "Not at the depth he's at, even though it feels pretty shallow when they're after you with depth charges. Besides, I don't think Jap subs carry escape gear."
"Right full rudder!" I called out. "All ahead standard! Keith, what was the enemy sub's course?"
"One-five-oh, Captain!"
"Steady on one-five-oh!"
I waited for Scott, the helmsman, to echo my commands be- fore explaining. "Keith, what would you do if you were Bungo and you heard an explosion in the general vicinity of a submarine you were responsible for?"
"I'd go over and take a look!"
"And what would you expect to see?"
"Well, if I got too close to the submerged sub, he'd probably broach to show me where he is so that I'd not run over him- only this time torpedoes will come instead!" Keith's grim smile of anticipation was oddly reminiscent of Jim's.
"Very good. Only, it's not Bungo who's coming!"
"What do you mean?"
"The tincan just signaled with a small searchlight to the Q-ship, and he's started to turn around instead. So, as soon as we get turned around and squared away on the Jap course, we'll broach for the Q-ship. It's so dark that I can barely see him, and if we give him our bow while he's still fairly distant he'll not be able to tell it from the Jap sub's.
"Bungo will be watching, too. He'll see us broadside."
"Yes, but he's farther away, and we're about the same color as the Jap sub was. Besides, we want him to come our way, though we'd rather it be unsuspectingly, damn this periscope!
It's fogging up. Give me some lens paper!"
A wad of paper was stuffed into my hand. Shutting my eyes, I swabbed at the glass, felt somebody wiping off my streaming face with a towel at the same time.
"Thanks!" I put my eyes back into the eye-guard.
"Skipper, how could the Japs figure on seeing OK at night when you can hardly make them out?"
"Their optical industry is excellent, Keith. I understand all their submarines have a very large and fine night scope."
"Steady on one-five-oh!" Scott brought us back to the problem at hand.
"Tell Al to blow bow buoyancy and stick our bow out," I told Keith. "Then flood negative and get us back down quick!
We don't want to get the whole boat on the surface!"
Eel's hull shivered as the lifting strain of the bow tank came on. Al must have at the same time put full rise on the stern planes to hold the stern down, and we took a large angle up by the bow. I saw our bullnose come out, stay for a long instant, go back down in a smother of externally vented air. There was venting and blowing inside, too, as negative was first vented to flood it, then blown dry, then vented again to take the pressure off.
This evidently satisfied the Jap, for he turned away again, and in a few minutes went off at an angle from his original course.
"They're beginning the zigzag plan," I told Keith. "We'll watch our chance and nail Bungo as soon as we can!"
For two hours Eel plodded along in the steadily worsening weather with the two Japanese vessels weaving back and forth in front of us. Several chances presented themselves to shoot at the Q-ship, but that would have given the whole show away, and with the already seriously depleted condition of our battery we couldn't stand the all-out search and attack which would have then ensued. Bungo's role was to be a lackadaisical escort vessel, to stay too far from the ship he was supposed to be protecting, thus to invite attack from the U. S. submarine, for whom the trap had been laid, us.
We could hear him echo-ranging in the distance, patrolling station back and forth first on one flank, then on the other. If we left our sanctuary astern of the bait and were picked up on his sonar, he'd attack us anyway, and we'd be right where we didn't want to be.
"Keith," I muttered, wiping my face while Oregon cleaned off the periscope eye-piece for the umpteenth time, "this isn't any good. Bungo is never coming close enough for us to shoot him, and we sure can't keep this up all night!"
"Maybe we'd better do like the Arab and silently steal away, Captain. At least, we know there's no Jap submarine around to worry about. The only one Bungo would allow would be the one whose place we're taking."
So it was decided, and shortly before midnight, several miles astern of Bungo and his baited trap-now short one important character-the Eel crept to the surface.
The instant we got on the surface it was evident that the storm was rapidly becoming worse. The barometer had fallen markedly, the wind was still from the east, and it was blowing hard. The sea Oregon estimated at force five on the Beaufort scale, which is a sailor's way of saying that it was a baby gale already. Not yet fully surfaced, the ship wallowed in the waves, every one of which rolled up on our water-level deck and splashed in great showers of spume and spray on the bridge.
Several huge combers rolled black water right over the bulwarks.
Keith and I, wearing hooded oilskins, were nevertheless instantly drenched, and we had to hang on firmly to the railing to keep our footing under the drunken rolling of the ship.
The wind shrieked around our ears, tore at our clothing, blew words right out of our mouths. We crouched under the forward overhang of the bridge to converse or give orders; I did not dare permit the lookouts to come up yet, nor to open the main induction, which would be the signal for the engines to begin pumping the vital electricity back into our battery.
Opening the main induction at this point-the cigarette deck above it was in a sea of white froth and black water-would have flooded our main induction line all the way back to the engine-room valves. First we had to wait for the turbo-blowers to lift the ship into a condition of buoyancy sufficient to ride the waves. I couldn't hear them, but I could see the results of their work; and when I finally gave the order, four main engines burst out almost simultaneously.
We were frantic for battery power, so three of them went immediately to recharging the battery, leaving the fourth for propulsion. Rapidly the life-giving amperes flowed back into the "can," and with every ten minutes of recharge, especially at this early stage, when the battery, being nearly flat, was most receptive, we could count on an hour's submerged running.
The surfaced routine safely under way, Keith and I were able to hold a council of war and take stock of the situation. The SJ radar, a newer and more efficient model than the one we had been used to in Walrus, still held contact with the two Japanese ships. If we could keep contact until our battery was at least partially recharged, we decided, we might be able to return to the offensive.
I seized the chance to go through the ship, talk to the men at their stations, and tell them how matters stood. We had found out Bungo's secret, I told them, and now we were after Bungo Pete himself.
After three hours we were about as ready as we would ever be, Keith and I figured. It was a lot rougher, too. A full-fledged storm was upon us, with seas fifteen to twenty feet in height, perhaps fifty feet across. We had gone back to battle stations, were heading toward the enemy, when Keith called up from the conning tower. The bridge speaker blared something unintelligible in the noise of the sea, and I had to make him repeat it: "Bridge! Bungo's gone over and joined the Q-ship! I think they've both reversed course!"
This could only mean that Captain Nakame had decided it was too rough to keep up the game, and was going to return to port. No doubt he was signaling for the submarine to surface.