Cold is the Sea

6

It was nearly noon of the next day when Richardson carried into Rhodes’ office ninety-two sheets of ruled legal-size paper, closely written with pencil and ball-point pen. “Here it is, Dusty,” he said. His mind was still awhirl. Sometime during the all-night grind there had come on him some inner strength, an increased alertness, a mental second wind. He had been sixteen hours at his desk, except for necessary trips to the head, had used up all the pencils provided — and faithfully sharpened — by Keith and Buck, and had drunk many cups of coffee, also brought by his two friends. True to their word, they had split up the night so that one of them was always there. Shortly after midnight a large mug filled with hot soup had appeared, and at eight, wonder of wonders, a plate of scrambled eggs.

“Compliments of Mrs. Dusty Rhodes,” Buck had said, “only she doesn’t know it yet. Now that Dusty has to stay on the site she fixed him up with a hot plate in his quonset and will keep him supplied with stuff. He’s not allowed to do anything for you, you know, but he can’t help it if I swipe a couple eggs while he’s shaving.”

Richardson had expected to be exhausted, physically and mentally. To his surprise, he felt positively ebullient. He wanted to talk, could not sit still, paced up and down in front of Rhodes.

“You’d better turn in, Rich,” said Rhodes. “You’re so wound up right now you’d go boing if I tapped you with a pencil. We’ll start marking your paper right away; so when you get back over here we’ll have your grade for you. The old man will be pleased, I know. He’s called a couple of times this morning already, and I told him you were still hard at it. We’ll have your orders ready so that you can start for New London by the night plane out of the Falls, if you want.”

“The admiral must figure he’s doing us a favor,” grumped Buck from beside the driver of the Twelfth Naval District sedan. “There’s just no other explanation. First he treats Rich worse than a plebe at Annapolis, and then he sends us all three on a joyride to Mare Island, California. It doesn’t make any sense. We don’t even know what we’re supposed to do, except inspect the reserve fleet subs. Inspect for what? We’ve got no instructions at all. He must figure we need a vacation for a day in California, before heading back to the rigors of New England. If he’d sent Cindy out here and given us a week, maybe I’d feel different.”

“Mare Island is where we left the old Eel after the war, you know,” said Keith, thoughtfully. “I’ve not heard of her being moved or anything. Wonder if that might have anything to do with it.”

“No way, Keith. You know the last thing in the world Brighting is is sentimental.” Williams tossed his head as if to lob the words over his shoulder to Keith, in the back seat. The sedan, moving at only moderate speed, lurched frequently on the uneven asphalt road.

“The only thing everybody always agrees on about Brighting is that no one has yet figured him out, or ever will, probably.” Richardson, sitting beside Keith, spoke for the first time in several minutes. “I’ve been thinking maybe Keith’s right. I’m sure the old boat is still there, and our orders to come out here so suddenly just might have something to do with her. We’d all have known if she’d been put back into commission, and I’m positive we’d have heard if they’d scrapped her or used her for a target or something. So this will at least be a chance to look her over for a few minutes, anyway.” He paused. “There may be something going on, too. This car and driver were waiting for us at San Francisco airport. No word about that, either. He just met the plane. Driver”—addressing the uniformed sailor behind the wheel—“the Reserve Fleet Admin Office is back there in the shipyard, isn’t it? Why aren’t you taking us there?”

“Dunno, sir. My orders was to take you right to the reserve fleet berths. It’s upstream from the yard.”

“We have to catch the night flight out of San Francisco for New York. Are you going to wait for us and bring us back?”

“Nosir. I’m supposed to start right back for District Headquarters. Those are my orders, sir. I don’t know how you’re supposed to get back, sir.”

“We’ll have to work on that,” muttered Rich half to himself, as Buck turned around and Keith leaned forward the better to look at him. “We’re not going to have much time to inspect if we have to spend some of it scrounging up a car to take us back to South San Francisco.”

Ahead and off to the right, a large ship bulked high above a forest of masts. The car reached the end of the road, turned to run along the waterfront. “That’s the mothball fleet,” volunteered the driver. “There’s the tender, I don’t know its name, and there’s all kinds of old ships here, mostly little ones, like DEs and such. There’s a bunch of subs just beyond them, all moored together. They should be waiting for us on the tender, but if we don’t see anybody there I’ll run you down to the subs.”

The repair ship, or tender, floating extremely high in the water, loomed above the sedan as it passed. Ahead, a group of people stood in the road. There were about a dozen men, some in civilian work clothing, some in naval uniform, one showing the four broad stripes of a captain. Behind them a dozen old submarines were moored to heavy wooden pilings. Serried ranks of gray had faded to a ghostly white. The rounded hulls were streaked with dirt and rust, and rubbing scars showed where the paint had scraped off against the pilings. In two groups of six each, they floated so high that the curve at the bottom of each bow, where it turned aft to join the keel, was visible above the water. Torpedo tubes, normally below the surface, were totally exposed, bow and stern. The effect was incongruous. If submarines could fly, this was how they’d look just before lift-off.

Prominent on the deck of each of the submarines was a large silver dome about six feet high with a thick, stubby projection on one side and curved vertical ribbing intersecting at the top like longitude lines on a global map. This was the protective covering over a mothballed deck gun. One submarine displayed two such domes, one forward and one aft of the bridge. With a pang of sentimental attachment, Richardson recognized the Eel. This was where she had been left, abandoned, fifteen years before. This was exactly the spot, unchanged, except that now there seemed to be fewer ships of all kinds around. Eel was fourth boat out in a nest of six, exactly as she had been. She had been carefully prepared for the mothball fleet. All deactivation instructions had been meticulously, even lovingly, carried out. Her machinery files were complete; her spare parts were as up to date as they could be, with requisitions to fill deficiencies already prepared. Her batteries, ammunition, torpedoes, fuel and provisions had been removed, her propellers detached from their shafts and securely stowed on deck. Her interior compartments had been scrubbed clean, painted where necessary, at the end — just before the dehumidifiers were turned on and the hatches locked.

Her crew had gradually been diminished during the deactivation period, until only a few were left. Then these also departed, leaving Eel, covered with gray preservative paint, tethered with heavy lines through bow and stern chocks, floating a full ten feet above her normal waterline. And there she lay, now, exactly where she had been waiting all these years.

Could inanimate hulls that once were living ships have a personality, could they think in fact as sailors are accustomed to credit them in fancy, Eel might have spent the intervening years grieving for the masters she had once served. The thought was maudlin. Richardson had felt no compulsion to revisit his old ship. Yet now, the first time back, the forgotten emotions were with him, as if they, too, had lain dormant awaiting his return. He recalled that he himself, citing the tradition that the captain must be the last to leave his ship, had shut the last hatch, been last man over the side, on that final day of abandonment. It had been done as a matter of course, not with any show of emotion, but symbolic nevertheless. Eel was not, after all, to be done away with. She was not, like the Walrus, gone forever. She would someday be returned to the active fleet, to resume the glory of a free being in the limitless sea. And yet, there had been a feeling of abandonment. He had imagined her crying not to be left alone. There was the memory of a lump in the throat, a voice not quite ringing true, a hand secretly caressing the bridge rail and periscope supports as he took his final leave.

Much had happened since then, but he had not been back. Until now; and suddenly it was all alive again.

The man wearing the four-striped uniform came around the car to Richardson’s side as Rich stepped out the door. “Captain Richardson?” he asked, dubiously eyeing the civilian suit. “I’m Jim Boggs, reserve fleet commander. This is sure good of you. I can appreciate why you wanted to do this, and it solves a problem for us, too. Great idea, but why the civvies?”

“They’re all we had where we were. But what’s this about this being our idea? We were sent here to inspect something. That’s all I know. I figured you’d brief us on what it’s all about, and we’ll look over what we can while we’re here, but we have to catch the night flight to New York. So we’ll not have much time…”

“Oh, getting to San Francisco airport is a breeze from Hunter’s Point. They’ll run you over there in a car in fifteen minutes. You’ll have plenty of time to party with the Brazilians in the club before you have to leave — ah … What are you supposed to inspect?” The puzzlement on Boggs’ broad face was genuine.

“We thought you’d be able to tell us. All I know is that our original orders were modified by telephone. We’re to report to you, inspect the reserve fleet subs, and leave San Francisco tonight.”

Boggs’ face was increasingly clouded. “Nobody not in my own chain of command can give me a surprise inspection. Something’s funny about this. I got a telephone call last night, too, telling me that you three were coming and had volunteered to ride the Eel down to Hunter’s Point. We’re turning her over to Brazil, you know.”

“The Eel? To Brazil? We volunteered?” Rich was conscious of sudden acute interest on the part of his two car mates.

“That’s right. We were going to turn over the Orca, but she wasn’t in too good condition, and the Brazilians refused to accept her. So the Eel was picked to take her place. She was being saved in case our own Navy wanted to put her back in, and we know she’s in top shape. Whoever put her out at the end of the war did a good job.”

“We put her out ourselves, you know,” said Rich, “and I guess we were sort of proud of her. Some of the boats weren’t that lucky.”

“That explains it. Some of the relief crews didn’t care very much, I guess. Anyway, ComSubPac was so embarrassed about the Orca he wanted to send someone over with the Eel to present her, to square himself, like. I naturally thought that’s what you’d volunteered for. The Brazilians are going to meet her when she gets there, and I expect they’ll want to look her over before the yard begins ripping her apart. The best presentation committee ComSubPac could put aboard would be her old skipper.”

“I guess she’ll be a lot different when the yard gets through with her,” said Rich. “Snorkel, new radar …”

“And new sonar, new radios, streamlined bridge, take off the guns. You’ll not recognize her. She’ll be a brand-new submarine.”

“When are you shifting her across the bay?”

“That’s the whole point of this exercise, or at least, I thought it was. ComTwelve phoned that you were in and would be here as quick as the car could bring you. Otherwise we’d have sent her an hour ago. The tugs are here. We’re ready to break the nest and snake out your old ship as soon as you’re aboard.”

“Skipper,” said Keith, “this has got to be what we were sent here for. There’s no other way it makes sense.” Buck, standing beside Keith, nodded his agreement.

“Captain Boggs,” said Rich, “did your information say we had volunteered to do this?”

“Sure did. What’s more, I got a dispatch last night from ComSubPac authorizing me to turn the Eel and tug both over to you. The tug skipper already knows he’s to take orders from you.”

“What about charts, lights down below, people to handle lines, a below decks watch, interior communications, emergency gear…?”

“It’s all there. We’ve done this lots of times, remember. We have responsibility for safe passage, not you, even though you’ll be in nominal charge. The tugmaster’s spent his whole life on this bay. It’s his job to get your old boat over there and dodge the mud flats en route. He has the charts in his pilothouse, but we put a set aboard the Eel for you also. There’s binoculars, a big thermos of coffee, plenty of box lunches, portable hand lanterns if you want to go below. Matter of fact, you can make the whole trip down below if you want; all you really have to do is receive the Brazilian Navy when they meet the boat at Hunter’s Point. We checked out the sound-powered telephone system, so you do have interior communications. You won’t have any power, that’s all. No rudder, no anchor, and of course your propellers are just where you left them, on deck secured with welded straps. Eel is only a barge so far as this little trip is concerned. Your job is to show the Brazilians that we’re not passing off another crock to them.”

It still seemed unreal that the well-organized U.S. Navy bureaucracy could have been toying with them to this extent, but Richardson allowed himself to be convinced. Maybe Admiral Brighting had had something to do with this, too, along with everything else that had happened to him lately! “Okay,” he heard himself saying, “it will be our last trip in the old Eel, and we may as well enjoy it.”

“It’s a lovely time of year to be on the bay, Rich.” The puzzlement on Boggs’ honest face had cleared, and its broad features now held a cherubic smile. “You’ll find it full of sailboats. San Francisco will be a sight, too. I wish I could go along with you, but I’ll phone Hunter’s Point that you’re on your way. I’ll have to tell them that you’re not in uniform, anyway. They’re expecting you in all your official glory.”

The tug skipper, a heavyset warrant boatswain with a red face appropriate to the years he must have spent at his profession, extracted the quiescent Eel from her berth as soon as the two submarines moored outboard had been pulled clear by the assisting tug. With professional aplomb he put his bluff, heavily fendered craft on Eel’s port quarter, made fast, and with no ceremony whatever swung the submarine’s bow downstream and increased speed on his engine.

“It’s amazing how simple they make it seem,” said Buck Williams, as the three officers stood on Eel’s bridge, watching the maneuver. “I wonder why they call this ‘towing,’ though. ‘Pushing’ is more like it.”

“They do call it ‘pushing’ some places,” said Keith, “like the Mississippi River. You ought to see those Mississippi towboats. They can shove a couple of dozen big square-ended barges upstream, against the current, and maneuver them besides. Sometimes they handle more cargo in their barges than a big freighter could. A lot of the Mississippi is too shallow for a seagoing ship, and the big towboats are the answer.”

“Why don’t they just put a towline over their stern and pull the barges? Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“They do in the open ocean,” said Keith, “or anyplace where it’s rough. But in smooth inland waters this gives the tug better control. Did you ever steer a ship while towing something big, like a barge, astern? This way he can handle us as though his tug and whatever he’s pushing is simply one big ship.”

“That’s right, Buck,” said Richardson, joining the discussion. “Why don’t you visit over there before the trip’s over? Even though he’s pushing from alongside, you’ll see he doesn’t need any rudder to keep us going straight ahead. The way he’s made fast, his helmsman steers for us both.”

“Then that’s why he was so particular with his bow and stern lines, slacking them and heaving them in?”

“Sure. He’s got his bow toed in toward us just a little, just enough to balance the turning effect of pushing from the port quarter instead of from dead aft. That’s the whole secret.”

Keith grinned at Rich as Buck raised his binoculars and inspected the tug and its lines with renewed interest. “You should have been a schoolteacher,” he said. “You never could resist teaching a little whenever you got the chance.” Richardson grinned back. “You’re another,” he said, raising his binoculars.

A new thought struck Keith, and a slightly more serious expression settled on his normally open countenance. “You know, I guess all three of us agree that old man Brighting must have been the source of our ‘volunteering’ for this little chore. And I’ve got to admit I probably would have volunteered if I’d known about it. But isn’t the whole thing rather peculiar? I mean, keeping us in the dark the way he did?”

“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” said Buck. “This is sort of a surprise bonus. All the way out here, until around an hour ago when we found out, I’ve been cussing him for not letting us go right home after that sweatshop time in Idaho. Now I’m glad we’re here, but mad because he made such a secret of it.”

“The way I see it,” said Rich, “he well knows we were once together on this boat. So when BuPers wanted to know if one of us could come out here, he volunteered all three of us. Not telling us what he was up to is simply his way of doing things. He’s trying to do something for us. It’s like that time he sent us to look over the NEPA project. It’s a day off, a holiday trip, sort of.”

“Then he must be trying to make up for his bitchiness to you more than anyone,” said Buck, “and he must think you come pretty cheap. He knows doggone well it was you who kept the reactor running that day, and that it was you who saved that woman’s life in Arco, whoever she is. Both of these things make him look pretty good, you know. So, he holds up your exam long enough so that you had to stay up all night to do it, and on top of this, even though it was a tougher exam than ours and you got almost a perfect mark on it, he made Dusty hand you a lower-grade nuke certificate than we got. Don’t tell me what a grand old guy he is!”

“Maybe there was a little hazing going on,” said Rich, “but it didn’t hurt us. Don’t forget, he’s the source of our nuclear submarines, and we ought to overlook about anything because of that.”

“How about that telephone call after we finally got you to turn in?” said Keith. “Dusty tried to talk him out of it, but he said you had no business sleeping in the daytime when there’s work to be done. He knew our work was finished, and that you’d been up all night because of him besides! And then after he made Dusty get you to the phone, all he wanted was to say he’d decided to build the cafeteria after all! That had to be deliberate. He knew exactly what he was doing!”

“The main thing is, now all three of us have our nuclear ratings. I’m lucky he even let me join you two. He wasn’t going to at first, you know.” The look on Richardson’s face signaled his two juniors to leave the topic. Experience had taught them that his thought processes could not always be predicted. Something, perhaps their arguments, perhaps his own greater awareness of the political structure within the U.S. Navy, perhaps something totally unrelated to anything they had been doing, caused him to want to close it off. They would have been astounded could they have known they had evoked the memory of Joan. Might she have caused Brighting to reverse his initial rejection of Rich? Could she, just yesterday, have had something to do with his relenting on the business of the examination? Could it have been she who had suggested this last visit to their old wartime submarine? After all, she too, had had her connection with the Eel!

Boggs had certainly been right in his characterization of San Francisco Bay as a most pleasant place to cruise in. Smoky brown hills teeming with life surrounded it, a warm sun turned its mud-gray waters iridescent, great bridges vaulted across it, and in the distance the tall buildings of the fabled city of the hills beckoned. Nearer, like disorganized flocks of wild birds, the sails of countless pleasure boats followed their own aimless quests, some in a cohesive pattern, perhaps a race, others without discernible motivation or objective except that of simply being there.

The combined ambience of industry and pleasure could be both seen and felt. A group of cylindrical white tanks to port, marching away from the water in stubby silhouettes up a steep brown hillside, marked a refinery. Trim white sails, tiny in the distance, softened the outline of the land, disappeared against the white oil tanks and the nearby buildings, and stood out, etched in slowly moving white silhouettes against the salt-streaked hulls of two oceangoing tankers anchored in the distance. To starboard an old freighter, her broad bows pushing a bulging wave despite her slow speed, was heading for some unknown destination up one of the rivers feeding Carquinez Strait at the north end of the bay. Beyond her, another cargo ship, newer, a moving forest of masts and booms, was heading away, probably bound out the Golden Gate for a distant and foreign shore. A white-sided passenger liner, suddenly visible against the exotic spires of San Francisco, was also steaming toward the Golden Gate Bridge, and thence to Acapulco, Honolulu, Seattle — or anywhere. And the shores to starboard were pocked with the evidences of people: houses of many differing colors, glints of glass windows, shifting flashes denoting the speeding windshields of automobiles. Great numbers of small boats, both sail and power, clustered along the benign coast.

The sight of some member of the mothballed fleet being ignominiously barged through San Francisco Bay was probably a familiar sight on its waters. The tug skipper, indeed, had boasted having made the same trip countless times, sometimes to deliver a well-scavenged hulk to the wreckers, sometimes, as now, to start a discarded lady toward a new and different life. For the three submariners, once they had assured themselves that all was proceeding normally, that Eel was not unexpectedly taking water into her bilges, that the tugmaster’s charts of the navigation hazards agreed with theirs and the course he had laid out was to their liking, it was a pleasure trip with overtones of nostalgia.

Richardson found it was easy to stand on the bridge where he had stood so many times, shoulder hunched into one of the TBT wells (the target bearing transmitters themselves had been removed) and imagine Eel moving under his direction in enemy waters, responsive to his will, alert, alive, alive to the quintessence of being alive in the face of mortal danger. The pleasure boats, the friendly shores, even the distant ships on their peaceful missions, could fade out of consciousness. It could be a bright moonlit night; strange how well he used to be able to see at night, without lights of any kind to bother his eyes. More than once Eel had been in waters far more confined than this, had seemed to be hemmed in by the forbidding hills of the seacoast of Japan. More than once he had, somehow, summoned up the necessary — it seemed only days ago, instead of years — on this very bridge, at this very spot.

That tanker, now, about a mile ahead, crossing from starboard to port: were she an enemy he would have by now opened the torpedo tube outer doors. A small order to the rudder to reduce the angle between the torpedo course, controlled by its gyroscope, and that of the submarine (the less the gyro angle, the more accurate the old torpedoes); Keith would be giving the bearings, Buck running the TDC, the torpedo data computer, and shooting the fish at his command. The setup was so similar to one he remembered from Eel’s third patrol: the tanker, unescorted, moving confidently in the shallow waters where no enemy submarine had ever dared to enter; the submarine, keyed up, but equally confident because of past successes. Except that it was just before dawn, instead of broad daylight, as now. The ship, in fact, had looked almost exactly like this one. You had to hand it to her skipper. When he saw the submarine, he had instantly turned to ram. Stupid of Rich to have tried a surface attack with daylight so near! With the U.S. Fleet pressing ever closer to the mainland of Japan during those closing months of the war he must have forgotten the caution he had learned during previous patrols. A routine approach (no approach was ever “routine,” but this one had seemed simple, uncomplicated) had been suddenly converted into near catastrophe. The ships speeding toward each other, bow to bow. Too close to shoot! Get everybody below! The tanker opening fire (how had he been able to get his guns going so quickly?) — large-caliber shells whizzing overhead. Desperate maneuvers to avoid. The ships slipping past each other, the tanker swinging toward, trying to strike the submarine’s side, Eel turning toward the tanker, swinging her stern clear. Enemy machine guns spitting, striking the bulletproof bridge bulwarks (a good thing they were made of special armorplate); Rich ducking at the last minute, just in time, as the Eel rocketed clear.

Looking through his binoculars at the approaching tanker, musing at the coincidental similarity of ship and situation to the one creased in his memory, Richardson saw the curved front of her bridge growing wider. The tanker should be passing ahead; soon it ought not to be possible to see the front of her bridge at all — but instead the curved surface was becoming broader. Then it hit him. Were this war, were he on the alert for changes in enemy course and speed instead of in a nostalgic reverie, he would have seen it instantly. The tanker ahead was turning toward! Her rudder must have been put hard over left! This was exactly the way it had been! The bearing must soon become steady, a collision situation! Rich drew a deep breath to begin the maneuver to avoid, order the watertight doors shut through the boat. It was so much the same, but there was no one below to shut the doors, no one steering in the conning tower to handle Eel’s rudder and annunciators. In the binoculars the oncoming bow was tremendous. Somewhere behind — he had forgotten the tug — a series of angry blasts on an air horn. Eel began to vibrate as the tug’s engine went into full reverse. More blasts from the tug. Now some answering blasts from the tanker. What could they be thinking of, over there?

Swiftly, the distance narrowed. Eel’s speed, never great in her captive condition, was decreasing. She had almost come to a complete halt, was swinging left, the wrong way. Her whole fragile side would be exposed to the collision. If the loaded tanker could not stop her forward motion she would plow into the submarine’s starboard ballast tanks, surely rupture her pressure hull as well, ignominiously sink her in the middle of the ship channel.

Now it was clear the tanker had also gone into full reverse. Her bow was swinging again, away, to her own left. Her way had hardly reduced — a laden ship is very hard to stop — but her engines were thrashing water up under her counter. Her bow swung away more. No danger of a bows-on collision now, but she’s going to sideswipe us. Eel, now dead in the water, began to gather sternway. The tug captain had slacked his stern line, was now nearly perpendicular to the submarine’s side, backing frantically, as powerfully as he could, trying to drag Eel bodily sideways out of the sweeping path. One hundred yards — fifty yards. People staring over the tanker’s side, from her bridge, her bows.

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.

A quick evaluation. No visible dents or even scratches on Eel’s smooth rounded side. With the tanker propeller stopped as the two vessels ground past each other, it was even possible that momentary contact with the propeller had merely rotated it slightly to where the blades cleared. At worst, a single blade might be bent near the tip, and there might be a dent in the corresponding part of the Eel’s underwater surface. The only visible damage was on the submarine’s bridge, where the side plating had been smashed in and the TBT cavity crushed out of recognizable shape.

“Good thing he hit us on the bulletproof steel bulwark,” said Buck, grimacing. “That’s pretty strong stuff. With the tug pulling, that bump pushed us out of the way. I don’t believe we hit at all, down below, so there’s really no damage.”

“That’s what I think, too. This whole bridge is going to be ripped off in Hunter’s Point when the snorkel is put in, you know. So, far as Brazil’s concerned, there’s no damage at all. Looks like old Eel’s luck is still good.” The unalloyed relief in Keith’s voice matched Buck’s. Richardson also felt it. It would of course be necessary to alert the Navy yard people to check for underwater scrapes and dents, but the danger of crippling damage had passed.

Behind them, to port, a great froth of water continued to boil up along both sides of the tug. It had swung around so that the full power of its engine at Emergency Astern was pulling Eel away from the tanker. The tug’s bow was high, unnaturally so. Its stern squatted under the pull of its big tugboat propeller and the strain of the towing lines. Eel was moving sideways in a fairly satisfactory manner — and the tug’s diesels would need an overhaul when it got back to Mare Island. Now, the crisis past, Rich could see the tug skipper fumble with his engine annunciator. A moment later the wash from astern subsided. The man made a show of mopping his face, then picked up a megaphone near his feet.

“Any damage over there?” he yelled. “You look okay — any injuries?”

“We’re all right!” Richardson yelled back through his cupped hands. “He hit us up high. No damage to the hull!” He paused. Now that the emergency was over, another emotion was sweeping through his body. The adrenaline which had been commanding him was still surging through his system. He could feel the hot, impotent rage. “You get his name?” he yelled.

“No! Too busy!”

“Well, I did! I’ll file the report! That incompetent bastard ought to have his license lifted!” Rich could feel his hands trembling against his cheeks. Pilot or skipper, whoever had been conning the loaded tanker, should not get away scot-free. He should have known that his deeply laden ship could not have turned inside the approaching tug and tow, that the rules of the road required him, as the privileged vessel in a crossing situation, to hold his course and speed!

The tugmaster waved his megaphone in acknowledgment. Two men appeared on his forecastle and another pair aft to handle his lines as he began to maneuver back to his original position on Eel’s port quarter.

“He sure belongs to the Don’t Worry Club,” said Buck after a moment. “Me, I’m mad as hell at that tanker. What in the devil was that son of a bitch over there thinking of? Who taught him to handle a ship?”

“He was a fool, that’s for sure,” said Keith. “Maybe we looked farther away than we were because we’re so small compared to him. That’s no excuse, though, even if he didn’t have a radar.”

“He had a radar, all right,” Buck said. “I saw it turning on top of his bridge.”

“At least he reversed his rudder in time,” said Rich, the fury still strong in him. Then he added, “Good thing he had the sense to stop his engine, too, when he saw we were going to hit aft.” He could feel the anger leveling out, the hot blood cooling into more professional indignation.

“I’ll bet he was thinking more of bent blades than the damage the spinning propeller might do to us,” said Buck, angrily. “Besides that, some of us could have been hurt. You were right alongside the periscope shears. You could have been squashed between them and the overhang of that big tub of his.”

The thought of personal danger seemed suddenly calming. The determination to make an official report of the incident was still fixed — it was his duty in any event, and the Brazilian Navy would no doubt want to know. So would the commander of the shipyard at Hunter’s Point, who would have to allocate funds for whatever repairs were thereby necessitated.

Rich realized he was hungry too, as he heard Keith say, “Me, I’m all at once hungry. Do you think we might drop below and have one last meal in our old wardroom? Things look pretty clear now.”

The prospect of leaving Eel’s bridge unwatched went against the grain, but a short shouted conversation with the tugmaster from the main deck abreast his pilothouse took care of the matter. His instructions punctuated by massive bites from the spread of sandwiches before him on top of the binnacle, the warrant boatswain sent one of his crew members over to the submarine, where he could relay immediate information below by telephone. Once this was arranged, the operation of the ship’s phones explained, Rich climbed down the familiar ladders into the control room, ducked through a watertight doorway and joined the others.

Keith and Buck had arranged lanterns in the corners of the tiny wardroom — strange how small it looked — and they had spread a white tablecloth on the green linoleum of the tabletop. The cloth had seen better days. It was yellow around the edges and along its prominent creases. “Where did you find this?” asked Richardson, surprised.

“We were wondering if it was still here,” said Keith. “Remember our last meal aboard, back in ’45? There weren’t many of us left, then, just a couple of the chiefs and two other sailors, plus Woodrow and the three of us. So all of us were around this table for that last breakfast. The lights were already out, too, just like now, and we had to use the battle lanterns. Anyway, after it was over we cleaned up, and I folded the tablecloth and stuck it in a drawer under my desk. That’s where I found it, right where I left it.”

Keith’s words loosed a compartment in Richardson’s mind. Some locked door, as yet only imperfectly opened, suddenly flung itself wide. A naval career always involved leaving behind old friends, and old ships, and moving on to new ones. Knowing the day was coming when it would be necessary to turn the key on the ship and crew which had meant so much to him, knowing that things could never be the same anyway, he had nerved himself to go through the ritual. If he had been the only one to consider, he would simply have gone away. But there had been a decommissioning ceremony, a required inspection in company with the reserve force commander who was about to add Eel to the list of ships of which he was nominally commanding officer. There was completion of the machinery history and the deficiency list, and a hundred other items invented by Navy bureaucracy for the better administration of its ships. All were now unnecessary, outmoded, no longer relevant. They were required because some regulation, or some senior officer, somewhere, said so. But few were actually of any earthly significance in the particular circumstance of the postwar decommissioning and mothballing of the Eel. The last thing of all was the official terminal entry in the log, which he had made himself.

He had submerged himself in these details, railed at them because they could not be avoided, spent his time accomplishing them because some amorphous, unidentifiable authority, unnamed, unknown and probably nonexistent behind the myriad façade of Fleet Orders, Force Instructions, Navy Department Orders, Bureau of Naval Personnel Letters and rules and regulations of every conceivable kind, simply prescribed them. Now he realized he had secretly been glad they existed.

The reality, he had frequently reminded himself — it had been something like a placebo for his mixed-up feelings — was in that quonset hut in another part of the Mare Island Navy Yard, where he had brought Laura. Where, like a hundred other wives in like circumstances, she was struggling to create a home inside the curved walls and rudimentary facilities which were all the Navy could provide for seagoing personnel. He would never have believed, then, what he knew now, that even Laura’s gentle ministrations had not been adequate to assuage his depression, that he had welcomed the mountain of meaningless detail because it gave a sense of accomplishing something for the Eel (inanimate steel that she was) and her steadily decreasing crew. It was almost as though the Navy understood that wartime skippers of small, tightly knit ships like submarines or destroyers might need something to keep them from going mad during the enforced dissolution, and had deliberately provided it.

Buck Williams’ voice cut through, started a new train of thought. “We sure used to spend a lot of time thinking up big schemes in this little place. Remember the rockets we took on our third patrol, and how we finally used them on the emperor’s palace?”

“Getting there was really something,” chimed in Keith. “Those rockets had just one range, you know, and we couldn’t train the launcher, either. So we had to get to the exact spot we picked, and lie to there with the boat exactly stern-on to the palace. That’s when I earned my navigator’s merit badge. If old Doherty hadn’t been helping me we’d never have made it.”

“That was just one of the good jobs you did for us, Keith,” said Richardson. “More power to Doherty, too. He was a sharp navigating quartermaster. Wonder what he’s doing now — but it was really you, you know. Remember how you found our carrier? The ultra message was wrong, and you were the one to realize it. If you hadn’t made me change position at the last minute we’d not have found him.”

“Sure, Skipper,” said Buck, “and if you hadn’t got the damned torpedoes squared away earlier she’d never have sunk, either. We only had four fish left, remember.”

“Admiral Small gets the credit for the torpedoes in my book,” said Rich. “He’s the man who fought that fight all the way to the top. Joe Blunt was his honcho for the experiments, and I was lucky to be around with my bum leg after the Walrus. That was right before the Eel showed up needing a new skipper.”

“And crew, too,” said Keith. “That was some training period you put us through. After that, there wasn’t anything we couldn’t do. I guess chasing that convoy out of Tsingtao was the toughest thing, ending up in the fight with the Mikura tincan. But getting those Chinese coast watchers right out from under the Japanese Army on our next run was no picnic either. I’m still envious of Buck, too, for having the most fun of all, going ashore to blow up that train in the tunnel.”

“The British did the same thing in World War One,” said Buck. “Do you still have that book of yours, Skipper? We all read it for ideas. That Sea of Marmara submarine business of theirs was wild, the way they went through nets and minefields with those old simple boats. They didn’t have any of the special stuff we had for our Tsushima caper.”

The conversation was animated, each bringing up his own memory nuggets, each reliving the exciting days, hardly waiting for the preceding episode to be savored before claiming attention for his own latest recollection. They had, as a matter of course, ranged themselves in their habitual places in the wardroom. Richardson could almost imagine all of them turned back in time, himself included. All were fifteen years older: Keith and Buck designated to command new submarines the like of which had not even been dreamed of when last they had sat here; himself, now nearly as old as Joe Blunt had been, named to be their squadron commander. Yet, in Richardson’s eyes, all looked the same. Buck’s hairline had receded a trifle, lines had become permanently etched around his mouth and eyes, and he was a little heavier, though still the wiry, humorous activist. Keith looked precisely as before. His shock of brown hair was as full as ever, the wide-spaced light gray eyes looking as directly and sincerely as always from a still youthful, though more mature and self-confident, face. If anything, he was even more trim than before. Only his capable hands and stubby fingers, slightly more wrinkled, betrayed that he must be nearing forty years of age.

Richardson himself looked no different in his own eyes, certainly felt no different, although he had had to make the usual adjustment to growing astigmatism: glasses for reading in artificial light. His two juniors would have testified that the intervening years sat lightly on him, forgetting that the change in their own perspectives worked both ways. The sandy hair was farther back over the temples, the nose with that strange crease in it was slightly heavier, the skin under his chin a little more lined, looser. He, too, had kept his weight, although (his own confession) it had been a battle because of Laura’s good cooking.

The lunch, despite coming out of boxes, was excellent. All three were ravenous, ate swiftly. There was a tacit understanding that they could not stay too long below. Besides, San Francisco Bay had too much of interest.

“I wonder what Furakawa is doing now,” said Keith, pouring himself a second cup of coffee from the thermos jug. “He was one of those dedicated naval officers. Samurai, I’ll bet. Actually I rather got to like him, even though I was certainly afraid of him for a while.”

“Yancy said none of them would have lasted another day in the water,” said Richardson. “They were in a pretty bad way at first. But I agree with you. After he got back on his feet, he was a menace until the surrender.”

“Lining them all up outside the wardroom, in the passageway, to hear the surrender broadcast was a stroke of genius,” said Buck. “Remember the look on their faces? I’m sure it was old Hirohito himself, because they all bowed down to our radio. That was the day we realized for sure they were planning something really desperate. Old Furakawa had the oddest expression when we paraded him through the boat and showed him the stuff we had laid out to clobber his people with.”

“That was after his personal surrender, wasn’t it, Skipper? Didn’t he personally tell you the war was over so far as he was concerned? But I can recall being petrified when you let him come into your room alone. What if he’d tried to attack you right then?” Keith frowned at the memory.

“Well, I was ready for him, and we knew he had no weapons,” said Rich. “Besides, he was a man of honor, and I figured he’d keep his word. If it had been Moonface, now, from our second run, you can bet I’d have been a lot less accessible. I’d like to see Furakawa again, too. Someday he may be running the new Japanese Navy. He was an honest, dedicated man, as you said, and an enemy to be respected, even while he was a prisoner. I learned a lot about his country from him while we were waiting to get out of the Sea of Japan.” He glanced at his watch, lifted his cup for the last gulp of coffee.

The others were torn between the desire to preserve a delicious nostalgic moment and the need they all felt to go on deck again. Twenty minutes below, now exceeded, was long enough for almost anything to happen. But Buck tried to hold the magic an instant longer. “Speaking of Moonface,” he said, “makes me think of poor old Commodore Blunt. What a shame no one realized how sick he really was. He should have been in a hospital instead of being sent to sea as our wolfpack commander. I don’t suppose any hospital could have helped his brain tumor, but if you hadn’t had Yancy put him out that day …” he stopped uneasily. Something, a shadow intensified by the dim light, had crossed Richardson’s face. Keith’s smile had changed to a thundercloud. He should have remembered that Jobie Richardson’s real name was Joseph B., and that the middle initial stood for “Blunt.” “Sorry, Skipper,” he muttered, thoroughly abashed. “That was dumb of me. I know how much you thought of him.”

Richardson was looking at his watch again, rising from the table, his countenance expressionless. “That’s okay, Buck,” he said. “Joe Blunt was my first submarine skipper, and I wish none of that had happened, that’s all. But I think we’d better go back topside. Seeing San Francisco Bay like this is too good to pass up.” He strode purposefully into the passageway, did not hear Keith’s savage, low-voiced comment to Williams as they busied themselves with the cleanup Richardson had forgotten.

“What in God’s name made you bring that up, Buck? Both of us know it was about the only thing we could do, but I bet he’s been killing himself over that ever since. We never made any official report about giving Blunt that mickey, you know, and haven’t you heard some of the weird stories on the wives’ circuit?”

“No. What stories?”

“Peggy says the rumor is he didn’t die of a brain tumor at all!”

“What did he die of, then? That’s what the doctors found when we brought him back!”

“That’s what they said they found, Buck. Some folks will see dirt anywhere. You know that!”

“Like what, for Christ’s sake!”

“Like maybe someone did him in, if you want it cold turkey! We were pretty desperate during that depth charging, remember. He damn near got us sunk! Rich saved us. No one else could have. The whole crew knew it. The way we all felt after that, maybe someone could …”

“That’s crazy, Keith!”

“You know that. We all know that didn’t happen. But don’t forget, we were in damn bad shape. The idea must have crossed quite a few minds, about then. A lot of rumors get started that way. After the fact. And when did the truth ever stop one? It’s been fifteen years, and Peggy said some gal whispered it to her a while ago. I just hope it never gets back to Rich or Laura!”

“Do you think there’s a chance of that?”

“How should I know? I just know nobody better say anything like that around me. But I thought you must not have heard it.”

“Thanks, Keith,” said Williams somberly, as the two friends reached the watertight door leading to the control room. “Depend on me to keep my smarts from now on. This is plain sick—” They ducked through the door.

Richardson was standing there, one hand on the ladder leading to the conning tower, much as he had been accustomed to in times past. “I thought you might have gone up ahead of me,” he said. “I just took a quick turn through the after compartments. The dehumidification machinery did a pretty good job. She looks clean and neat, just the way we left her. I didn’t see any rust or moisture stains.”

“We’ll probably have one last tour through with the Brazilians, won’t we?” said Keith. “Isn’t that what ComSubPac wants?”

“No doubt, but this is our last look while she’s still ours.” Rich stopped. “You know,” he said after a moment, “I don’t know what I expected to find, or feel. It was good to sit in the wardroom and talk, and think about things that used to go on. For a minute it almost felt like those old days. But it isn’t the same to stand here and look at all this cold equipment. Even when we walked off the last time, back then, it didn’t feel like this. Up to now, I’ve always thought of this control room as being full of people, with plenty of room for all of them to do their jobs. Now, I can’t see where we put them all. It’s exactly the same place, and yet it isn’t. And I don’t think it ever will be again. It’s the same with the galley and crew’s mess hall, the whole after battery, and the engineroom. She’s a dead ship, and you can feel it.”

Keith and Buck nodded their understanding. Much the same thought had occurred to them as well. It was not something one could lay one’s hands on. The old atmosphere was gone. Their attempt to revive it in the wardroom had succeeded only for the instant, had collapsed because there was no way it could be perpetuated.

Richardson broke the silence. “Maybe this is why Admiral Brighting sent all three of us for this job that any one of us could have done. Matter of fact, anybody at all could have done it. I’m sure the Brazilians won’t really care very much who presents the ship to them, and I’ll bet ComSubPac doesn’t care either, just so it’s done right. That’s why we’re down as volunteers, so they couldn’t turn us down. This is Brighting’s way of showing us that you can’t live in the past.” He swung up the ladder, disappeared. Keith found Buck staring at him, unblinkingly.

Topside, a brilliant sun bounced countless glitters from the tall shafts of San Francisco’s skyline, accentuated because many of them stood on hills already high above sea level. To the right, high enough for the tallest ship to pass beneath, gleaming red above the infinite western sea, a great bridge leaped from promontory bluff to promontory bluff. The swooping curve of its suspension cables, the delicate traceries of wires supporting the roadbed, the complex steel structure of the span itself, all resembled an extraordinarily well-ordered spider’s weaving. The Golden Gate Bridge.

This was the Mecca of the war years, that one thing, above all others, which symbolized coming home again. Violently opposed before its building by claims it would disfigure one of nature’s masterpieces, when complete this bridge over the spectacular entrance to San Francisco Bay came to epitomize the meaning of the land. Men had died to build it. Novels had been composed around it. Movies had been made of it. Daredevils had dived from it, and some had lived to tell of their feat. Suicides had jumped from it. Ships had collided under it, or with its concrete piers. Songs had been written expressing the yearning for which it stood. It was the gateway to adventure and the all-embracing arms of the motherland welcoming home the traveler, at one and the same time.

To the left, the silvery suspensions of two more great bridges, end to end, spanned the bay from San Francisco to the mound of Yerba Buena Island with its flat, man-made beaver’s tail, Treasure Island. A tremendous truss-and-cantilever structure, tailing off to a long curved causeway, spanned the distance from Yerba Buena to Oakland, on the east side of the bay. Silent for long minutes, the three naval officers stood absorbed in the grandeur and the beauty, each feeling a stirring of the spirit within himself.

The tug, phlegmatically puffing along, was aiming to pass to the left of the tremendous block of concrete which joined the two Bay Bridge suspensions. Rich, Keith and Buck inspected them with interest through their binoculars as they drew nearer. Autos were crossing on two different levels, those traveling toward San Francisco on the upper level, those going to Oakland on the lower. The ceaseless movement of multicolored machines was steady, regular, as though they were connected by some invisible linkage. It wasn’t so, of course, for each car was driven by a different set of compulsions. But from the distant perspective of the water surface far below, the only impression that could exist was that of order, not the hurly-burly of highway traffic that must be there.

Not all was motor cars and traffic, however. There were workmen on scaffolds, painters carrying out the ceaseless maintenance the tremendous structure required. There was something else, too, and the three pairs of binoculars on Eel’s damaged bridge focused almost simultaneously on it. “Something’s wrong over there,” said Keith.

There were red lights flashing, a crowd gathered along the bridge rail on the lower level. At least half of them were in blue uniforms. Police. As the submariners watched, the blue uniforms gathered together, wedged what were evidently onlookers away from their focal point of interest. Then Richardson saw it.

“There’s a man down there,” he said. “He’s sitting out on the edge. Just sitting there. It looks like the police are after him, but they can’t reach him without going out there too.”

“It’s a suicide,” said Keith.

“The cops are getting a man out over the rail with a rope around his waist,” said Buck, “but it’s pretty far, and they’re moving slowly. They’re afraid he’ll go ahead and jump if they get too close too fast.”

“We’re heading to pass about underneath him,” mused Richardson half to himself. “If he jumps at the wrong time he might land on deck. That wouldn’t be very pretty to see.” Irresolutely, he lowered his binoculars, looked at his companions, put them back up again. “I suppose we ought to stand by to help the police pick him up if he does do it,” he said. Still no answer from Keith or Buck. The submarine and tug drew nearer to the span. So far as anyone on Eel’s bridge could tell, the tug skipper, still steering his craft himself, was paying no attention to the drama taking place high above him.

“At least, we ought to alert the tug to what’s going on,” said Keith. “He’ll probably alter course to pass under the other span, well clear of where the man might hit the water.”

“If I were going to jump off the bridge, I’d want us to get out of the way too,” said Buck. “Landing on a steel hull with hard-looking things like hatches and girders wouldn’t be quite as clean a way to go as dropping into the bay. I guess the cops hope he’ll wait until we’re clear. The extra time might be just what they need to reach him, or talk him out of it, or something.”

“That’s it!” said Rich, impulsively snapping his fingers. “Buck, you get down on deck to relay word to the tug! Tell the skipper to put us right under that fellow up there. I’ll help him conn from here and pass any changes to him via Keith and you.” Startled, both younger officers glanced away from their binoculars, still holding the glasses up as before, stared at Richardson. Buck recovered first.

“I’ve got it! Great! This may give them some time!” He swung himself through the bridge railing, climbed down to the main deck, ran aft. In a moment he could be seen talking earnestly through cupped hands to the tugmaster, who had placed his megaphone to his ear the better to hear over the noise of his diesels. Buck ran back alongside the submarine bridge. “He says okay, he’ll do it. But he can’t see straight up out of his pilothouse, so he’ll need you to tell him which way to go. Also, maneuvering sideways will be tricky with the current through here, so try to anticipate your orders as much as you can.”

“Tell him to put a line on his best swimmer and be ready to send him after the man if he does jump into the water!”

“Roger, Skipper!” Buck ran back to his station.

The welcoming committee at the San Francisco Naval Shipyard, Hunter’s Point, was within minutes of becoming vocally impatient when Eel and her tug finally appeared off the designated berth. There were some quizzical looks cast at her smashed bridge bulwark and the new scratches in the weathered gray paint as the tug brought her in starboard side to the pier. The ComSubPac representative on the scene was nevertheless able to report by telephone to the Twelfth Naval District Commandant, and by official letter to the Submarine Force Commander in Pearl Harbor, that the aristocratic Brazilian naval officers had been well impressed with the condition of their newest acquisition. They had felt particularly honored, he said over the telephone, that her wartime commanding officer and two others of her wartime complement, albeit in civilian clothes, had been on board to assist in the arrival inspection. And they deeply regretted that the unexpected lateness of the hour had made it impossible for Capitao-de-Mar-e-Guerra Richardson, Capitao-de-Fragata Leone and Capitao-de-Fragata Williams to attend the reception they had arranged in honor of the transfer of the submarino Eel to their Navy.

Richardson, Leone and Williams were in the landing pattern at Idlewild International Airport as the morning editions of the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle came off the presses. They never saw the little articles on the third and eighth pages, respectively, of the two newspapers, detailing that rescue of a would-be suicide from one of the main spans of the Bay Bridge had been possible because of the curiosity of a tug and decommissioned submarine which had stopped to rubberneck directly beneath her. The woman, who gave her name as Mrs. Susie Glotz of upper Geary Street, said she had prepared for the attempt by dressing in trousers and a jacket belonging to her estranged husband, but had lost her nerve for fear she would be horribly mangled upon striking the ships beneath. While she was thus delayed, a minister who happened upon the scene was able to dissuade her from her purpose, and police took her into protective custody.

The Chronicle also carried a short editorial in the same issue, decrying the morbid curiosity of those who would go out of their way to see someone commit suicide. It noted that in this instance at least, as a sort of poetic justice, the lugubrious onlookers below had unknowingly prevented the very tragedy they had stopped to watch.