“That’s what I’m wondering.”
“So am I,” said Isaac Bell, peering into the water. Bubbles were rising from the murk and hissing on the surface.
52
BACK AWAY!” ISAAC BELL SHOUTED. “BACK! FULL ASTERN.”
The helmsman and the engineer had quick reflexes. They reversed the engine in an instant. The propeller churned backward. Smoke and steam shot from the short stack. The boat stopped. But before it could gather way in reverse, a gray malevolent form rose swiftly under it.
“Grab ahold!”
Bell saw a pipe emerge just ahead of the launch-the periscope, a tube of angled mirrors, the submarine’s eye. A squat round turret broke the surface, the conning tower, rimmed with handrails. Then a mighty blow from underneath smashed into the bottom of the police launch and pushed its forty-foot hull out of the water. Its keel shattered with a loud crack of splitting wood, and still the police boat rose, lifted by a powerful steel hull that broke the surface like a maddened sperm whale.
The police launch fell onto its side, spilling Van Dorns, cops, and scowmen into the Kill.
Bell jumped onto the steel hull and waded through waist-deep water to the conning tower. He grabbed the handrails that surrounded the hatch on top and reached for a wheel that would open the hatch.
“Look out, Isaac!” Archie Abbott yelled. “He’s going under!”
Ignoring Archie and the water that was suddenly climbing up his chest, Bell threw his weight on the wheel. For a second, it wouldn’t budge. Then he thought he felt it move. Salt water rushed over his shoulders, his mouth, his nose, his eyes. Suddenly the submarine was surging ahead. He held the wheel as long as he could, still struggling to open it, but the force of the rushing water ripped it from his hands. The hull raced under him, and he realized, too late, that the propeller driving it was about to cut him to pieces.
He pushed off desperately with both boots and swam with all his strength. The water rushing past the hull sucked him back. He felt the hull sliding under him. Something hit him hard. It threw him aside and drove him deep. A powerful thrust of turbulence tumbled him deeper. Slammed about in the submarine’s propeller wash, he realized that he had been struck by cowling that protected the propeller and, in this instance, protected him, too, from the thrashing blades.
He fought to the surface, saw the conning turret racing up the Kill Van Kull, and swam after it. Behind him, Archie was helping Harry Warren climb onto the muddy bank, Richards and Gordon and the engineer were holding ropes dangling from the barge, and the police captain clung to his overturned launch. “Telephone for help!” the captain yelled, and two cops staggered toward the frame house.
Donald Darbee was climbing onto his oyster scow, which had broken free of the sinking launch.
“Uncle Donny!” Bell shouted over his shoulder as he swam after the submarine. “Pick me up.”
Darbee’s gasoline motor clattered, spewing blue smoke.
The submarine kept submerging. The top of the turret and the periscope tube were all that remained above the surface. The handrails around it, the periscope, and the hatch wheel Bell had tried to open left a wake up the channel, splashing like a mobile f ountain.
Darbee’s scow came alongside, and Bell climbed on, rolling over the low gunnel onto the flat deck. “After him!”
Darbee shoved his throttle forward. The motor got louder, the wooden boat trembled, and the old man muttered, “What do we do with him when we catch him?”
Bell heard gunfire crackling behind him. The cops running to the frame house to telephone for help dove behind shrubs. Pistol fire raked the lawn from every window in the house.
“Counterfeiters live there,” Uncle Darbee explained.
“Faster!” said Bell.
He jumped onto the square forward deck.
“Get me alongside of the turret.”
The mostly submerged Holland was headed toward the Upper Bay at six knots. Darbee fiddled with his motor. The noise deepened to an insistent growl, and the oyster scow doubled her speed. It halved the distance to the splashing handrails, halved it again, and pulled past the backwash of the submarine’s enormous propeller. Bell braced to jump to the conning tower. The wooden boat surged alongside. He could sense more than actually see the steel hull beneath the surface. He braced to jump, targeting the periscope tube, gambling that the thin tube was strong enough to hold him until he got a grip on the rails.
The Holland submarine disappeared.
One moment, the turret was just ahead of him. The next, it was gone, deep in the water. Bell could see trailing bubbles and the ripples from the propeller, but there was nothing to jump onto anymore, no turret, no rails, no periscope.
“Slow down,” Bell called to Darbee. “Follow his wake.”
Darbee throttled back to match the submarine’s six-knot speed.
Bell stood on the foredeck, watching the rhythmic swirls of propeller wash and signaling the old man when to nudge his tiller to the left or right. How the underwater ship was navigating its course was a mystery that was solved after they had gone half a mile. Shortly before the submarine reached the next bend in the channel, its periscope suddenly emerged from the water, and the submarine changed course.
The spy had plotted their route out of the Kill Van Kull by noting the time that would elapse between each turn. Bell signaled a similar change and the oyster scow turned with it. The periscope stayed above water. It swiveled around until its glass eye was facing him.
“Stop engine!” Bell shouted.
The oyster boat’s speed dropped as it drifted on momentum. Bell watched for signs that the Holland would back up or even turn around to ram them. But it held its course and pulled ahead of the scow, still showing its periscope.
“Darbee, did the test Holland you watched have a torpedo tube in back?”
“No,” Darbee answered to Bell’s relief, until he added, “I heard talk they might add one.”
“I can’t imagine he’d waste an entire torpedo on us.”
“Suppose not.”
“Speed up. Get closer.”
Ahead, the Kill took a sharp turn. The periscope swiveled around, and the unseen helmsman steered through it. Bell signaled for the oyster boat to accelerate. He drew within twenty yards of the stubby tube and the swirling propeller wash. But the water ahead was turning choppy as the Kill spread into the Upper Bay.
Staten Island and Bayonne fell behind. A chilly breeze cut through Bell’s wet clothes, and waves began curling over the periscope. Enormous bubbles burst on the surface, and he realized that the Holland was forcing air out of its floatation tanks and admitting water to descend deeper. The periscope dropped from sight. The windswept waves of the Upper Bay obliterated the swirling wake.