Run Silent, Run Deep

13

The trip west made no conscious impression on my mind.

We topped off fuel at Midway, got on our way again the same day, kept on going. The only thing I could think of was Bungo Pete, or to use his proper name, Captain Tateo Nakame, Imperial Japanese Navy. He was no doubt a Jap hero because of the number of U. S. subs he claimed to have destroyed. To Keith and me he was a devil, and needed to be destroyed in his turn.

War rarely generates personal animosities between members of the opposing forces, for it is too big for that. The hate is there, but it is a larger hatred, a hatred for everything the enemy stands for, for all of his professed ideals, for his very way of life. Individuals stand for nothing in this mammoth hate, and that is why friends, even members of the same family, can at times be on opposite sides, and why, after the fighting is over, it is possible to respect and even like the man who lately wished to kill you. Bungo, however, had done us personal in- jury, really many-fold times personal injury, and had thereby lost his anonymity. We had learned to know him by his works and by his name; it didn't seem in the least strange to Keith and me that this time, this once, we should be consumed with bitter personal enmity toward a certain personality among the enemy. That this individual was only doing his duty as he saw it, as he had a right to see it, made not the slightest difference.

And it was not entirely one-sided. For Nakame knew the Walrus by name too, and was doubtless gloating in his own turn over the fact that he had at last squared accounts with the submarine which had dared to outwit him twice, even though accidentally, and had sunk one of the destroyers working under him, even if that also had been a fluke. He might know my own name, just as I knew his, it could not have been too hard to discover.

It was with this thought in mind that Keith, Quin, and I worked out one of our ideas for the campaign against Bungo.

We had previously prepared for it by bringing along stationery and other material originally belonging to the Walrus. All the way out to Kyushu, Quin worked an hour or two a day on the papers. We made certain that the name Eel would nowhere appear in our garbage sacks, but that the name Walrus would with normal frequency. And I wrote my own name in several normal places, as though on papers which had been spoiled or discarded for one reason or another and thrown away. In this way the Walrus would once again have escaped him. Keith and I were agreed that our personal revenge would take the form of robbing Bungo Pete of that satisfaction before destroying him.

And after his curiosity had been aroused by discovery that the Walrus had returned to make depredations in the home waters of Japan, after he had had plenty of evidence and would be searching for the answer to the riddle, then we would put the demolition charges in the garbage sacks.

The explosives might not get him, probably would not, for he would have subordinates dig through the sodden sacks of putrefying garbage. But they would amount to a message he could not ignore.

Eel was a new submarine, with a new crew. This would ordinarily have been a disadvantage for the fight in which she was about to engage, but not in this instance. For every man in that crew was a veteran of submarine warfare, and she had come all this distance with one single mission. We worked her guts out all the way over. When she passed through the Bonins, or the Nanpo Shoto, Eel was superbly trained, better than she had been when Captain Blunt gave her his approval, better than Walrus had ever been. And her torpedoes, of course, had the latest modifications, our new exploder. Something Walrus had never had while I knew her.

It was with a sort of defiance our first night in AREA SEVEN, that I directed the cook to bring garbage topside and dump it.

Twice before Keith and I had been here, but this time it was something special. We were beginning our mission of vengeance. Walrus had come back to haunt Bungo Pete and kill him if she could.

First it would be necessary to alert him, to cause him to come out after us. We wasted no time getting down to the southern and eastern portion of our area, near Toi Mistaki, where ships rounding Kyushu would have to make their course change to the north. Two nights and a day with nothing sighted, only the ubiquitous fishing boats, then a small tanker came by in the blackest part of the night. Our powerful radar picked him up two hours before we saw him. I held the new model TBT on his middle, thumbed the button in the handle of the built-in pressure-proof binoculars, felt two torpedoes start his way.

He was not a large ship, not worth more than two torpedoes.

Both of them hit and both exploded, and when the spray-and- water column came back down, he was no longer there. Our first calling card.

But he had had no time to radio in the warning, could not have accomplished what we wanted. We waited a few days longer, found another ship, a little larger. Freighter, also new.

Submerged periscope approach this time, two more torpedoes.

It took him about fifteen minutes to go down.

That night, having first dropped our garbage near where the freighter had been sunk and near where analysis of non- arrival of the tanker might show it, too, had gone down, we put everything on the line and headed for the other end Of AREA SEVEN, off the coast of Shikoku, between the Bungo and Kii Suidos.

Two days more, again with only fishing boats in sight, during which we were careful that trash and garbage was dumped in a specially weighted sack which sank immediately. We were sub- merged, close in to the coast, when we sighted masts. Two ships, hugging the coast. Then there was a third mast, a tincan, patrolling to seaward. Not Bungo, however. Smaller destroyer- type, probably sent out as a protective gesture now that another submarine was known to have entered the area. Eel maneuvered between the escort and his convoy. Four stern tubes at the tincan, close quarters, but there was time to get them off.

He joined his ancestors in a cloud of mingled flame, smoke, and spray. Then for the two ships. Three at the leader-just as he was turning. One hit, enough. He sagged down by the bow, water coming over his forward cargo well.

In the meantime the second ship in the convoy, an old rusty freighter, had put his rudder hard over. There was only one way for him to go, however; back where he came from. He had. to go toward the shoreline and back out again around a point of land, if he wanted to stay in shallow water. That was his mistake, one Bungo would never have let him make. He was not very fast. We didn't even have to pull much out of the battery to get across the mouth of the little bay in time.

Eel was waiting for him quietly when he came out.

That night we made sure our garbage would not sink and threw over a couple of extra bags of it for good measure.

Then we raced for the Bungo Suido.

We had left our calling cards liberally sprinkled on both sides of the entrance to the Inland Sea. Now it was time to play it slow and easy and to watch developments. The closer in we could get, the better. Bungo would no doubt expect us to stay well away.

For a day-three days and the nights between-nothing happened. Again we were making sure our garbage would sink without trace. And we allowed two old ships, proceeding alone, to enter the harbor unmolested.

"We'll let it jell for a while, Keith," I told him. "We've raised enough Cain around here. He'll come."

But he didn't. Keith put his finger on it the third day. We had the chart of the area out on the wardroom table, were studying it, as had become our habit in hope of ferreting out some clue to Bungo's operations.

"You know, skipper," he said, "this guy Nakame is no slouch.

He's a very particular operator. Have you noticed that he hardly ever shows his hand until whatever boat is in this area has been here for a while? Maybe he even waits until the boat is low on torpedoes."

"That doesn't hold for our first patrol in the Walrus," I told him.

"No, Sir, but it does for the rest of the cases. That must have been an accident. We'd only been in the area a few hours, and he couldn't have known we were there yet." — Looking back over the boats which had been lost, and the experiences of those, like Walrus on her fourth patrol, who had come through it, a certain pattern began to take shape. Stocker Kane and the Nerka had been in AREA SEVEN for three weeks before Bungo had got him. Jim likewise. So had we, on our fourth, before he came out.

Evidently he studied the tactics of his intended victim, waited methodically for them to become clear to him, then sallied forth to lay his trap for him. As Keith said, our first patrol had been an accident, in that the contact had been unexpected by Bungo as well as ourselves.

No doubt he searched the area of a contact or action, especially after he had depth-charged a submarine-for the telltale sacks of garbage, which might float around for several days, but if there were no submarine activity he would probably not bother.

Bungo would be puzzled at the apparent reappearance of Walrus, would remember that twice before he had thought he had sunk her, and twice before been fooled. Once he had even swallowed evidence of the existence of an entirely fictitious submarine. Furthermore, Jim's reputation had been made as a night fighter, on the surface, while every ship the pseudo- Walrus-ourselves-had sunk, with the exception of the first one, had been as a result of a submerged day attack. It was logical that Bungo would want to wait and evaluate for a while.

But how would he be getting information? We had seen no one enter or leave the Bungo, except the two freighters. It was possible, though hardly likely, that he had slipped by us to search for evidence…

"Of course!" I said aloud. "We missed one of the most obvious things!"

"What do you mean, Captain?" Keith looked puzzled.

"The fishing boats! Of course the fishing boats! They are his lookouts. Those are the people who find the sacks of garbage for him! No wonder we've not seen anything. They're probably just plain, simple, old Japanese fishermen, but he tells them where and when to look, and he sits back and analyzes the results!"

"Then you think he may be waiting for more garbage?"

"Nope! He's got that by now. But right now he doesn't know where we are. No point in just rushing out to where a ship was sunk-we'd be gone. He wants a contact of some other kind, one where there might be a chance of our sticking around for a while to give him time to come after us." An idea was growing.

The fishing boats-there were quite a few around, and more up and down the coast, in both directions from the Bungo Suido.

"Keith," I said, "let's go find us a fisherman, hey?"

"Going to put a bomb in the garbage sacks and teach him a lesson?" Jim might have gone for that idea, but Keith, I could see, was a little dubious.

"Not quite. We're just going to let him find us!"

Keith relaxed in a wide grin as he got the point.

It was the next day, a bright mid-morning, before we found one. We had purposely moved a goodly distance away from the Bungo Suido. It was a regular wooden boat with a sort of plat- form on which a half-dozen straw-hatted figures sat cross-legged, tending fish lines and poles. The day was balmy, bright, and sunny, though in the eastern sky storm clouds were gathering.

"These fellows will want to be back home by nightfall, be- fore the wind blows the sea up," I told Keith.

The Eel swam sibilantly toward the fishing boat, passed close alongside. Nothing disturbed the monumental calm of the wizened graybeards under the straw hats. I was looking right at them with the periscope, only a hundred yards away as we went by. We turned around, came back. Closer this time, about fifty yards abeam. Still no sign of having seen us.

"Keith," I muttered, as he took a look at them, "if this is the best kind of help Bungo has got, the old rascal is slipping badly."

Keith chuckled as he put the scope down. "Don't waste too much pity on him, skipper. Nobody ever tried to get discovered before. These guys have probably never seen a submarine in their lives, and never expect to."

"We'll fix that!" I crossed to the hatch, looked down to the top of Al Dugan's head. "Control, watch your depth. We're going to go right underneath this little guy!"

"Watch the depth, aye, aye!" Al leaned his head back, acknowledged the caution.

Eel turned around again. Instead of going right under, Keith suggested we pass within a very few yards. This would permit continual observation of the fishing boat, whereas passing right under would require dunking the 'scope. We must have been less than five yards away from the boat as we passed this time, and I was looking through the periscope in low power practically under one of the straw hats. Keith had the other scope up, was doing likewise.

He was an old Jap in the classical mold. A long gray beard, about twelve inches long, wispy, and doubtless silky to the touch, ended in a point on his chest. His face was leathery, seamed from years under the sun's unshaded rays. No telling his age. It could have been anywhere from fifty to eighty. His eyes were closed, or half-closed, and he was the picture of peace and contentment as he sat there, balanced bolt upright with his bare toes sticking up from behind bony knees.

The picture changed radically and suddenly when the old man opened his eyes. It must have been the noise of the water rippling past our extended periscopes, or perhaps the shadow of the most tremendous fish he had ever seen passing beneath him. Whatever the immediate cause, his peaceful contemplation was shattered beyond reclaim. His eyes grew as large as two butter plates, and his mouth, startlingly red, popped wide open. I could have sworn I heard him scream with terror, he jumped to his feet, forgetting the fishing pole he had been so blissfully tending, pointed frantically right at me.

The other five old men hopped up as if stung, crowded to his side, all six mouths wide open, an even dozen eyes staring with stupefied terror. They looked over into the water on both sides of their boat-no doubt our gray hull and black topsides could plainly be seen down beneath them-gesticulated violently, pointing down, raised their hands to their heads, waved them around helplessly.

"No more fishing for those fellows for a while," Keith commented grimly. "Guess we taught them a lesson at that!"

"I hope they have a guilty conscience for helping old Bungo,"

I laughed. "Serves them right!"

Through our sonar equipment we could hear the high- pitched putter of a light gasoline engine. Our fishermen friends had started for home, as fast as their little craft could carry them. We watched them fading out of sight toward the shore, in the meantime set our own course at best-sustained speed back toward the Bungo Suido.

"Let's see," mused Keith over the charts a few hours later.

"Let's see. Give the six old men three hours to get home and another hour to get the news through-they'll have a phone somewhere in their village, don't you think? Old Bungo ought to be stirring his stumps some time this afternoon. Maybe he'll come on out tonight."

"That's the way I've got it figured, too, Keith," I answered.

"He'll have us pegged for a day-submerged operator, so he'll plan on flushing us at night."

Buck Williams had been an interested listener. "Do you think maybe we might have overdone it?" he asked. Buck's apparent nervousness was just a mannerism, I had already decided. His brain was clicking all the time.

"Could be," I answered him. "But we've already used up fourteen torpedoes leaving our calling cards on Bungo Pete's doorstep, and we have only one full load left for our torpedo tubes. The best way would be to try to sink another ship, but then we'd have some dry tubes when we finally did meet up with the old rascal!"

Buck nodded, convinced. "I guess he'll be sufficiently sure of himself to come after us anyhow," he said.

"Well," responded Keith as he folded up the charts and handed them to Oregon, "he surely knows we're around any- way, and has enough reason to wonder what is happening out here in his back yard. If he can, he'll be out tonight. Otherwise, tomorrow for sure. That's my guess!"

"Mine tool Bungo will have a pretty good idea of where to look for us tonight-at least he will think he has. And that's why we should get back as near to the Suido as we can tonight.

Maybe we'll be on him before he suspects we're laying for him!"

All the rest of the day Eel raced for the entrance of the Bungo Suido, where we had been only the day before. It wasn't much of a race, as races go, for we had to balance our consumption of battery power against our speed and calculate carefully the degree to which it would be wise to allow it to be run down in prospect of the battle with Bungo Pete. We got in as close as we dared, right into the shallow water where the channel leading out of the Bungo Suido joined the open sea. It was dangerous because there was not enough water to go really deep-we'd hit bottom first-but it was the place to be if we hoped to nail Nakame before he realized what was going on.

It presented our best chance.

As the last rays of the setting sun were cut off behind the hills of Kyushu, the clouds to the east had grown until they covered nearly the entire sky. Through the periscope we could see that a freshening wind had already built up. Choppy waves four to five feet in height were running in from the east, and it was apparent that the wind also was coming from that direction.

Shortly before it was dark enough to surface, Keith sought me out in the conning tower where I had gone to get ready.

"It looks like a storm to me," he said. "We've had no radio warning of it, but all the signs are exactly like the description in Knight's Seamanship." He handed me the ship's copy of the classic, open to the on hurricanes. The page showed diagrams depicting the behavior of storms in northern and southern latitudes.

I already had my red goggles on; so I didn't try to read the text. I had studied it all at the Naval Academy anyway. "I've been thinking the same," I told him. "With the weather coming in from the east, it looks as though the storm is to the south, and if it behaves the way storms are supposed to it will curve to- ward the east as it moves north. The storm center will pass just to the east of us, and this area will get a good lashing."

"When will it hit us?"

"Tonight, before morning, unless it goes erratic on us."

"Maybe that will foul up things for tonight!"

"It can't be helped, if it does. But old Bungo might think it will give him an advantages I had raised the periscope, was slowly swinging it around in a circle. It was growing dark rapidly.

"Five-eight feet!" I ordered. "Stand by to surface!" The waves were high enough that I would need the two extra feet for better visibility.

"Five-eight feet, aye, aye. Standing by!" Williams on the dive.

He would have the first bridge watch, too. The whole ship was in a special state of super watchfulness. Keith and I had both napped, or tried to, during the afternoon, and we had put out instructions to the crew to do likewise. Our electric torpedoes had been given a specially loving last-minute check, including a freshening battery charge. Tonight there would be special extra lookouts on, and one torpedo at each end of the ship was in readiness for instant firing, needing only to open the outer doors-hydraulically operated, hence the work of a second. Eel was as ready as we could make her.

I went around again, slowly. Something caught my eye to the northwest, in the direction of the Bungo Suido. Steady now, I fixed on it. "Keith. Mark this bearing!"

"Three-two-eight! What is it?"

"Dunno-ship, I think." I shifted the periscope from side to side ever so slightly. It was getting so dark it was hard to see. My eyes were not completely accommodated, for the red goggles are not one hundred per cent effective protection. It was growing darker faster than my eyes were accommodating themselves.

But the object-ship, it must be-was getting nearer, too.

"Bearing-Mark!"

"Three-two-eight and a quarter-just a hair more than be- fore!"

I spoke without taking my eyes away from the periscope eyepiece. "Keith, are all lights out in the conning tower and control room?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well." I spoke distinctly, still looking. "Sound the general alarm!"

I could feel the bustle through the ship. Keyed up as we were, the tension mounted like steam in a boiler.

"What is it, Captain? Do you think it's Bungo himself, already?"

"Don't know, Keith," I admitted. "It doesn't look like a destroyer." We waited. Time had slowed down. This might be it, our big fight. No time to take a chance. Still getting darker, and the waves — bigger. The ship drew closer.

"I can see him now. Big freighter. High, anyway, dark hull, no visible waterline-angle on the bow about starboard ten." I looked searchingly astern of him. Something was ringing a bell in my brain, something wrong with the setup, somehow…

"Control! Five-five feet." Three more feet of periscope out.

Have to watch it-that's eleven feet of it exposed, although the size of the waves makes for some reduction. We're in good position to shoot him on this course, just as we are, if he doesn't suddenly zig. He hasn't zigged yet. Wish I could get rid of the feeling there's something wrong with this whole thing. It's too easy. I have a feeling we're looking right into a trap, just like that time off Palau…

Palau! The Q-ship! High out of water. Short and stubby, because floating high! No doubt loaded with cellulose, or balsa wood, or Ping-pong balls! So she could not sink, of course, even with half her side blown open!

"Give him eighty feet, Oregon. Range-Mark!"

"Three-five-double-oh!"

"Angle on the bow starboard thirty! Mark the bearing!"

"Three-four-five!"

I could hear Buck Williams whirling the TDC cranks. "Set!" he said.

"Ready to shoot, Captain!" Keith. He had anticipated everything. All I had to do was give the word.

"We'll wait while the situation improves," I said. This smacked of something Bungo might pull. I kept looking for the destroyer, couldn't find him. But something else caught my eye, astern. Low and bulky. Not a tincan. My heart leaped into my throat-a submariner Coming along astern of the Q-ship!

"Rig for silent running! Six-oh feet!" This would barely let me see over the tops of the waves, if I could see at all for long.

I could feel sweat on my face around my eyes inside the rubber eye-guards, didn't dare take them away. "Boys, this is it! I think Bungo is on his way out to look for us!"

How fortunate it had been that we had come back so quickly, had taken station so close to the harbor exit, despite the shallow water!

We watched while the high, stubby Q-ship, for there could be no doubt of it now, went by. The submarine swept forward.

Then I saw the tincan. A dull, dark shape on the far side of the sub, running about abeam of it.

This was a quandary. We might get the sub, but then Bungo would have us exactly where he would like to get us, submerged, in shallow water. And the Q-ship was no slouch at depth-charging, either. No doubt they'd work a coordinated attack on us.

"Range to sub-Mark!" Instinctively I spoke in a low key.

Oregon read it right away. "Three-oh-double-oh!"

"We have the sub on sonar!" Keith murmured in my ear, "The bearing checks."

The sonarman's name was Stafford. An old-timer. He'd been around submarines for years. Suddenly I heard his voice, raised for me to hear him directly. "The submarine is diving!"

So this was the play! This was how they had gotten Stocker Kane and Jim! Slow-speed convoy of a single ship, escorted by a single destroyer, zigzagging radically and making slow speed so that the submerged submarine could keep up! Walrus and Nerka had probably come in on the surface, fired their torpedoes, and been fired on in their turn by the submarine. A very, very slick stunt indeed! If the Jap sub didn't get a shot off at first, he must have had plenty more chances while Jim and Stocker came back in for another try at the cellulose-loaded Q-ship! And I could imagine old Bungo watching it all in his tincan, playing the part of an unwary and incompetent escort but ready to mix it if he had to.

I could see the diminishing silhouette of the submarine, now, and seconds later couldn't see him at all. "Do you still have him on sonar?"

"Yes, sir. Coming in like a threshing machine!" Stafford turned the sonar to loud-speaker so that I could hear it, a pounding, thrashing, gurgling noise. "He's pumping and blowing at the same time, I think!"

"Keith," I said, speaking rapidly. "We've got to get the sub first! They won't expect us this close, probably won't settle down to a good sonar watch for a few minutes anyway. What range will he pass abeam?"

Buck answered. "Twelve hundred yards!"

"Good! We'll shoot him when he gets there! Figure him to be at periscope depth!"

On and on came the bearing of the Jap sub, slowly creeping up to where we had decided to shoot him. It was a perfect sonar approach, exactly like those we had practiced for years at New London and Pearl Harbor, and rarely used in the war. The only new twist-funny we had never thought of it, was that it was sub against sub.

"We'll shoot one mark-eighteen electric fish," I decided.

"He'll probably not even hear it, and if it doesn't work we'll try another."

"He's approaching the firing bearing, Captain!" Keith's voice.

I was still on the periscope, now staring at Akikaze, now the Q-ship, now making a sweep all around just in case Bungo might have other ships in his convoy.

"Shoot when he's on, Keith!" One advantage of firing with a ninety track as we were doing was that the range in that precise situation drops out of the problem. No matter how far the target is, or how close, your torpedo will hit, if aimed properly and if it runs long enough.

"Fire one," said Keith. The Eel jerked under me.

"One fired electrically," said Quin's familiar voice.

"Torpedo is running!" said Stafford. I could hear it, a high whine, not as loud as the old steam fish.

"How much longer, Keith!"

"Thirty-three seconds!"

I spun the scope around. "How long now?"

"-fifteen seconds-ten-five-Now!"

Nothing. You could hear the ticking of the stop watch in Keith's hand. Then-BOOM! A loud roar filled the conning tower. I looked on the bearing, helped by Keith's hands on the periscope handles. A froth of white water, an angry spume Rung into the air, followed by a mushroom of white. Nothing else.

Stafford was yelping. "He's sinking!" His voice raced excitedly on, much like a football-game announcer's: "Listen to the water pour in! Somewhere they've got a watertight door shut — there's another one slamming — his screws are slowing down — listen to the water pour in! I can hear things falling inside him! He must be standing right on end, straight up and down!"

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.

Getting no answer, there was an excellent chance he would realize that something was amiss.

"Keep watching them, Keith," I yelled in reply. "Try to keep oriented as to which one is Bungo!"

We built up to standard speed, fourteen knots. Eel smashed and bucked into the seas, quivering in every solid frame as the big ones came over the bow and crashed on the bridge. It was absolutely black. Blacker than I had ever seen it, a musty, smelly black, dirty and clank and malevolent. I could see per. haps five hundred yards, hardly more. The wind tore at my bin. oculars, ballooned out the back of my rain hood, beat at my face with the salt particles it whipped out of the ocean.

I couldn't use both hands to hold the binoculars, had to keep one free to hang on with. The deck heaved and pounded under me, the water rising and draining away through the wooden slats.

"Bridge! Range to Bungo, four thousand! To the other five thousand! They're milling around, Bungo is dead the other on our starboard bow!"

"Bridge, aye, aye!" I answered him. "Let me know the range every five hundred yards!" We couldn't attack quite yet; not before the enemy settled down to a definite course. "All ahead one third," I ordered. This was easier. Eel's motion still resembled a bent corkscrew, but fewer seas came on the bridge.

"Bridge! We've got the sonar gear down, and he's calling on, sonar!"

No need to wonder what this was for, or to whom addressed.

"Let him call!" I answered.

"He's hove to, bridge! Range, three-five-double-oh!"

This might be our chance. With Bungo concentrating on trying to raise his several hours' dead consort, his lookouts might just happen to be less alert than they should, especially in the storm. "All ahead standard What's the course to head for him!"

"Zero-zero-eight!"

"Steer zero-zero-eight!" I yelled to Scott through the hatch.

Again the pounding, battering. Our bow would rise to one sea, smash down on the next, and go completely under water, allowing the wave to roll aft, unimpeded, till it broke in fury over the bridge. Cascades of cold ocean rolled off me. The lookouts were likewise drenched and miserable. I sent my binoculars below-they were soaked and useless anyway-and used the built-in pressure-proof TBT binoculars. Mounted on gimbals and fitted with handles, they also gave me some measure of support, though because of their stiffness it was a bit awkward to use them for ordinary purposes.

"Range, three thousands The starboard lookout lurched against me. His binoculars were in worse shape than mine had been, I saw, and he was giving full time merely to hanging on anyway. In the shape he was in, he was more hazard than benefit.

"Lookouts below!" I said. That left Al Dugan and me the only ones on the bridge, and I called him up forward from the station he had been occupying on the after part.

"Range, two-five-double-oh! Still hove to, and we can still hear him pinging!"

There was a new note to the wind. A higher shriek; louder, too. Three seas in succession came over the bridge front, left us gasping. "Range, two thousand No change-we're opening outer doors!"

"What speed we making?" I yelled into the bridge mike.

"Ten knots!"

Ten knots. It should be fourteen under ordinary conditions.

About right for firing torpedoes in this kind of sea, however.

"How does he bear now!"

"Dead ahead-still dead in the water!"

Less than a mile away. I couldn't see a thing. Nervously, I rubbed the front lens of the binoculars with lens paper. Al silently handed me a fresh sheet when I threw my sodden one away.

"Fifteen hundred yards! Shall I shoot on radar bearings?"

"No!" A subconscious need to see him. "Wait!" Work like hell to get into position, then take your time! Don't waste time, but don't throw your one chance away, either! First Blunt and later poor Jerry Watson, long gone with the old Octopus, had sung the same song to me. And I had repeated the same words to Jim Bledsoe in my turn.

Fiercely I searched the horizon. "Range one-three-five-oh!" came on the speaker, and that was just the moment I saw him at last. It was an Akikaze-class destroyer, all right, broadside on.

Two fairly short stacks, medium close together, small bridge but rather high for its length, turtle-back forecastle with a gun on it, and a deep well between forecastle and bridge. He was making heavy weather of it, I instantly saw. The canvas over, the well deck had been blown away, and part of the bridge canopy also. Water was streaming in sheets off his decks, pouring in great torrents off the forecastle down into the well deck. I was taking all this in as I shouted into the bridge mike: "Target! Starboard ninety! TBT bearing!" I pressed the marker plunger down with my right thumb.

"Set!"

"Shoot!" The way the command "Fire!" came out almost before I finished saying "Shoot!" was the measure of the crew I had with me. Keith was holding the bridge speaker button down on purpose.

Four times more the command "Fire!" came on the speaker, and all five torpedoes we had remaining forward went on their way. I couldn't see their wakes, for they were electric, nor could I feel the familiar jerk to the hull of the ship because of. the motion and noise already going on. But I did see one torpedo broach the surface momentarily, then dive back under- and continue on its way, with a flick of instantly extinguished. spray. It had come up exactly on a line between me and the destroyer's bridge.

But this was not the time to play the spectator. "Left full rudder!" I yelled down the hatch. Akikaze's lookouts would see us in a moment, if they had not already, and Bungo would certainly get some kind of a salvo off at us. That we could depend on. Heedless, too, I gave the order I had held back all this time because of the weather: "All ahead flank!"

Before the Eel could feel the effect of the increased power, and before she had turned more than a few degrees, there was a flash from Bungo, and the brief scream of a shell overhead, immediately swallowed up in the storm. Then another flash- no scream this time. You certainly had to hand it to him, under the circumstances, for even getting the guns going at all.

But those were all the shots he got a chance to pump out at us, for about this time the torpedoes got there. Two certainly hit; maybe more, but two were enough. I saw the spout of water forward, and Akikaze's bow disappeared, broken short right at the well. The other hit under the stacks, breaking his back, lifting the center of the ship for a moment and then dropping it, like a broken toy.

We really began to take it over the bridge then, but neither Al nor I would have cared if the waves had been periscope high. We slowed after a few minutes of it upon Keith's report that the Q-ship, the only one left by now on the radar, was not chasing us, but had instead gone over to the spot where Akikaze had last registered an echo on our radar scope, and hove to.

The radar had also some other pips, three tiny ones, which came in and out on the scope and which clustered around the Q-ship when it got there. Lifeboats, without question.

It would take a feat of seamanship for Bungo's consort to pick them up, though probably no more than Bungo himself had showed in getting them launched in the first place. I didn't doubt that he could do it, all right. A wave of hopelessness swept over me when I realized that barring his own demise, hardly to be planned on, Bungo would return to port, get another Akikaze, and go blithely back to the same old business as though nothing had happened.

If we could sink the Q-ship, but how? We had four torpedoes, all aft. None at all left forward. And he was loaded with cellulose or something else equally floatable.

I don't remember making any conscious decision about it.

There didn't seem to be any decision to make. A red haze flooded my mind, and I ordered Scott to put the rudder over once more.

"Keith," I gritted, "come on up here I"

For several minutes we talked out our tactics of how to get the stern tubes to bear. The wind was howling and the sea were pounding and the water poured in buckets off us, streamed off Keith's face, off his nose, into his mouth every time he opened it. The same with me, but neither of us took any heed.

We ducked those we could, turned our backs to those we saw coming, ignored the rest.

We decided the Q-ship would not expect us to come back.

Doubtless he would realize that making a reload was virtually an impossibility unless we dived for it, which would take extra time, and he would hardly expect us to come back otherwise, He would think, at least, that he had time, and his attentions would be entirely taken up with the problem of getting Bungo, aboard. If we could hit him with all four fish, fairly high up on his side, the weather might well finish for us what we had started.

"Three thousand yards!" said Quin's voice on the conning- tower speaker. Keith swung his dripping form to the ladder, slipped for an instant on the slick hand rail, caught himself, and disappeared.

"He's not under way, bridge! Target speed is zero!" Keith was back in charge down below, on the speaker again.

I pressed the button on my mike, let the insane howl of elements make the acknowledgment for me. We were coming in at standard speed again, with our four engines on the line just in case. As the stern heaved up to a wave I could see the tip ends of four big pipes pouring out their hydrantlike exhaust. Then a smother of angry water would cover everything, and the four mufflers would be drowned, spluttering feebly, sending up little splashes which the wind instantly whipped away. On this course, chosen to bring us in to windward, presumably the skipper of the Q-ship would elect to pick up the boats to leeward-we were coasting downwind. The bow lifted as a huge sea ran under us, dropping our stern precipitantly and then racing on out beyond our bullnose; black water, streaked with white, capped with a boiling, dirty-white crest.

Our speed, which increased with a downhill sledding effect when the stern lifted, decreased abruptly when it turned into uphill. Al Dugan and I were alternately thrown backward against the periscope supports and forward against the bridge cowling-almost as though we were riding a balky horse in slow motion.

The bow disappeared in a welter of white foam as the succeeding wave came under and over our after parts. Nothing at all forward of the bridge, now. Nothing aft, either. Just buffeting, angry, noisy ocean. Our bridge was like a disembodied statue, the upper part of a submarine riding on an angry sea-cloud.

"Two thousand yards, bridge!" I would be able to see him soon. Al helped me wipe off the lens of the TBT binoculars.

We did a thorough job before I put my eyes to it.

"Fifteen hundred!" Through the flying spume and blackness I could make out the outline of a ship, a tall, stubby ship.

He was nearly broadside to and rolling violently in the furious sweep of the wind and sea; occasionally, as we neared, he steadied up for a moment under some vagary of the elements, perhaps a nullifying combination of them. These were the moments in which he would attempt to pick up Bungo and his men. Probably throw them ropes, haul them aboard one at a time. A fantastic attempt, but seamen had done more fantastic things-history is full of the tales. Normally our role would have been that of the helpful bystander, regardless of the nationality of the shipwrecked mariners. Shipwreck at sea has its own code, its own morality-a joined constant fight for life and survival against the implacable ocean, with its pitiless nether- world of death. But we were out of our normal role. There was a war, the basic immorality of which transcended temporarily the more lasting and better motives of peace. It was our job to try to prevent that rescue by sinking the rescuer.

"Twelve hundred yards!"

Of course, one did not have to think of it that way. We had the duty of sinking any Japanese ship we ran across, and this one was surely as much a ship-of-war as the biggest battleship, or the fastest aircraft carrier. Furthermore, it was a menace to our side, particularly to my own special segment of our side There never could be any argument, except on purely philosophical grounds, and war is the rejection of philosophy.

"One thousand yards!" This was the turning point we had decided on. We had to get close to give us the maneuvering room to turn around. They would find it hard to look into the scud upwind; we could reach one thousand yards from that direction with a fair degree of impunity. Even if they did see us, accurate gunfire from that pitching, rolling platform would be impossible. Only a real director system, with a gyroscopically controlled stabilized firing circuit, could handle these conditions.

Of course, there was always the chance of a lucky shot "Right full rudder! Starboard stop! Starboard back full!" It would be a job even swinging into the wind. Eel started to swing nicely enough, got halfway around before the wind really hit her. I could feel the combined force of the wind and sea as our bow rose and exposed itself freely to the effects of both We stopped dead, as though we had hit a wall of mush. The gyro-compass repeater indicated that we had actually swung back a few degrees.

"Port ahead emergency!" With both screws racing, she would have greater force to push her around. Now I regretted having reversed the starboard propeller, for doing so had killed our forward progress and removed much of the effect of the rudder. And besides this, our straining engines were having all their exhaust fumes blown right down on the enemy ship. A keen nose would detect the characteristic odor of diesels, might just have the flexibility to do something about it.

Still no good. We gained a little, then lost it as the bow came up again.

"Control!" I thumbed the button for the speaker, spoke into it. "Open bow buoyancy vent!" This would lessen the buoyancy of the bow, reduce the area the wind would have to work on.

If we could only keep the bow from coming up at all!

"All Go on down to the control room." I had to cup my mouth and hold it close to his ear to make him get it all.

"Secure the engines and shut the main induction. Put the battery on propulsion. When I give you the word, open the forward group vents, hold them open for three seconds, and then shut them again!" I gave him a shove toward the hatch.

On diving, bow buoyancy vent and all the main ballast tank vents are opened and left open until the ship goes under. The main ballast tanks are handled as two groups, a forward group and an after group, with a set of controls for each.

Opening the forward group of vents for about three seconds would not permit all the air entrapped there to escape, but would vent off a large percentage of it. We would not dive because the after group would be still holding all its air in addition to what had not had a chance to whistle out of the forward group vents.

But much of our buoyancy forward would be destroyed, and our bow would sink deeper in the water. This would reduce the sail effect of the forward section of the ship-probably eliminate it alto-ether because we would inevitably ride under all the seas instead of only some of them.

Shutting off the main engines and going to the battery was merely precautionary, so that we could close the main induction valve under the cigarette deck. Otherwise we'd pull tons of water down the huge airpipe when the bridge went under.

I grabbed the mike. "Keith, raise the night periscope and see if you can make out the target!" One of the scopes had a slightly bigger light path than the other and hence the name "night periscope." If Keith could see the enemy vessel through it, perhaps it would do to take bearing to shoot the torpedoes with, and I could repair below and do it from the relative safety of the conning tower. I waited a few seconds.

"No luck, skipper. Can't see a thing!" This might be because Watching the dials and instrumentsespecially the radar scope had cost him his night vision. We couldn't wait, however.

"All right, Keith. Station somebody in the bridge hatch ready to shut it if necessary."

"Roger."

"Bridget" Al Dugan, from the control room. "Ready below!"

There was no more exhaust aft. I had not heard the main induction go shut, but it no doubt had.

My little microphone went only to the conning tower. I had to press the bridge speaker button firmly and yell into it to reach Al. "Control! Open and shut the forward group vents!"

Instantly white spray whirred out from between our slotted forward deck, was blown, just as instantly, to nothingness. I counted three to myself. The spray stopped at "four." Nothing happened at first. We heaved up as before to a passing sea, rolling far over to port, losing the few degrees of turn we had managed to accumulate during the past several seconds.

Then we dropped, far down. The next sea swept across our deck as though there were no deck there, poured over the bridge side bulwarks, inundated the whole place, filled it with foam- topped green water.

Instinctively I had sought the leeward side, the port side.

And just as the roar of the approaching wave heralded its closest proximity, boiling up from beneath as well as overwhelming us from on top, I saw the hatch slam shut. Tons of water roared around me. Frantically I gripped the lookout guard rail, felt my feet swept from under me. Sick despair engulfed me. The bitter certainty filled my brain that with the lack of buoyancy forward and the heavy seas rushing at us we had driven completely under. If we did not come up soon I was done for, and Bungo Pete would have won again.

Somehow, buoyed up by the water, I managed to pull myself up a little higher on the lookout rail-my lungs felt as though they would burst if I couldn't get a breath of air, and then I was out of it. The water had rolled past and part of our bridge reappeared. The after TBT came up, mounted on its tripod legs, just abaft of the periscope shears. My mike was gone, lost, but there was a bridge speaker installed under the TBT. Floundering in the water, I struggled aft to it; standing hip-deep I put my eyes to the binoculars. It was blurred-I wiped it off with my fingers, sucking the salt from them first.

Still blurred. There was a piece of lens paper in my pocket, somehow only damp, not dripping-wiped it off with that.

"Captain! Are you all right!"

The speaker startled me, booming right into my chest. I pushed the button, twice.

I "That did it! We're coming around! I'll steady up on course zero-eight-zero and slow down-all we need is the bearings, skipper!"

The last words were engulfed in another deluge of water.

This time I relaxed, twining my arms and legs into the TBT stanchions, waited for it to pass. Twice more the ocean buried me, welling up from beneath the deck and hurtling over the side at the same time, before the welcome voice of my Exec announced that the ship had reached the desired heading.

There was now some protection from the bridge bulwarks and periscope supports behind me, as well from the fact that the seas in sweeping in from dead ahead could not pick up quite so much of solid substance through the submerged forepart of the ship.

I wiped off the TBT lenses again, squeezing water from the precious piece of lens paper to do it, sighted through. "Ready'

Keith! Single shots! Don't shoot unless I'm holding down the button!" This was to take care of the possibility that I might be temporarily unable to aim. I turned the TBT slowly from side to side, centered the cross hair in the middle of the Q-ship's wildly tossing stack.

"Range, nine hundred! Can you see our stern, Captain?

Give us a bearing of the stern light!"

I sighted on to the stern light, which Keith and I had long ago designated as the bore-sight target for the after TBT, just as the center of the bullnose was for the forward one. It was a good precaution in case the seas had done some sudden unsuspected violence to the precious instrument, took only a second.

When you get there, take your time! I pushed the button on top of the right handle twice.

"OK! Give us the target for the first fish!" Another deluge of water, not so long, this time. I hardly felt it, got the TBT on as soon as my head came out, blurred or not, held the button down.

"One's away!" I let go the button. We'd watch to see where the fish would go, we had decided. Wipe off the lenses again.

BLAM! A stunning flash of light, followed by a solid explosion! Amazingly, I heard it, and almost immediately!

"Hit, skipper!" The speaker-how could Keith have heard, with the ship battened down as it was? Then the obvious explanation: the phenomenon had been noticed before; the sound had traveled four times as fast through the water as it could through air. Occasionally one torpedo would thus produce the sound of two explosions, if fired under conditions permitting the noise to be heard through both air and water.

The hit had been forward of the stack. I put the TBT cross-hair midway between the stack and the stern, thumbed the button again.

"Two's away!" This time I was under when the explosion came in. It shocked my eardrums. They were ringing when I came out again, just in time to see the column of water sub- siding, falling on the ridiculous foreshortened stern.

One forward and one aft. Not bad. I aimed the third one at the stack once more.

"Three's away!" The wait again. This was getting to be the payoff. To be reasonably sure of the destruction of the Q-ship, we had to hit her with a lot of torpedoes-three anyway, prefer- ably all four. A quick, secret flash of orange-gunfire! He had unlimbered one of his broadside guns, was shooting in our general direction I didn't even hear the passage of the shell, wouldn't have cared if I had. This was the payoff, this the moment of revenge. This was getting even for the Walrus, and for Jim, Hugh, Dave, and the rest. And it was making it up also for Stocker Kane, who never would have any children to speak proudly of the father who gave his life for his country, and for Hurry Kane, and Laura, and the rest of the people whose lives had been shattered by this fool war. Roy Savage and Needlefish, too, gone these long years, rusting their bones, somewhere not far from where we were at this very moment…

WHRRUMP! Number Three went home, right under the stack. The explosion flash of the shallow-running torpedo momentarily obliterated him from sight. The water spout came up, I thought the motion of the stack looked a little strange, different from the crazily tossing masts of the rest of the ship, when the white water deluged down, the smokestack was leaning drunkenly, slowly toppled forward. And there was some- thing a bit different in the way he rolled, too. Slower, farther over each time a sea tossed him.

The fourth fish. Same place-where the stack had been. Hold the button down: "Four's away, skipper!"

Maybe we could have saved that one. The masts had not come back from the last roll, were still leaning toward me. thought I could see part of the deck, grayer than the black hull.

There they go-back up again, slowly, however-no, just a wave rolling past. Down came the two masts, lower than ever to- ward the black, eager water, the deck now clearly visible as a gray slash at the top of the black outline.

Our fourth torpedo smashed squarely into it, right into the black spot in the center of the gray where the stack and central deckhouse had been.

Supplicatingly, as if tired of conflict and travail, the masts lay on the water. The hull separated into two parts, and I saw the outline of the bottoms of both, intermittently, as the seas raced upon them.

"Radar shows he's sinking, skipper! We're blowing up now!"

The Eel's forward half-rose quickly; they were using high pressure air instead of the low-pressure blowers. In a moment it seemed, we were fully surfaced, and Keith and Al joined me.

I pointed silently astern. There was the thump of the main induction beneath my feet.

"I ordered it opened, skipper," said Keith. "We'll be putting the engines on in a minute." We were all three looking a when four exhaust plumes shot out, and the roar of our engines came faintly upwind to us. Al handed me a clean piece of lens paper, helped me do a thorough job on the TBT binoculars.

We could barely make out the low-lying hulks of the two halves of our antagonist, more by their dark red color than by their shapes. Every succeeding wave which tore down upon them buried them, and finally there came a time when we could see only one.

"What's the range, conn?" I called into the after speaker.

"Eight hundred yards, sir!" We had been drifting backward during the whole time of our attack. "We still have four pips on the radar, bridge!"

At this moment the second red blob failed to rematerialize.

A long instant we watched for it to rise into sight, finally knew it too had gone. "One pip's gone, bridge! Three left, coming in and out!"

"He doesn't know what he's talking about!" muttered Al.

"No, he's right. Those are the lifeboats!" Keith's voice was matter of fact.

Of course, the lifeboats. And Bungo was just the man to weather the storm in them, too. Less than fifty miles from shore, he'd be back in business with his crew of sonar and depth-charge experts within a week!

"Go below, both of you!" I spoke roughly, an unaccustomed dryness in my mouth.

"Why, what's the matter…?" one look and Keith shut up- I waved him impatiently to the hatch.

"Right full rudder! All ahead flank!" This time there was no trouble turning, with the wind helping. And then it was pushing us, blowing at my back, the seas alternately lifting first stern, then bow, as they steam-rollered on by. Every time our bullnose lifted clear of the water it must have heaved twenty feet into the air, before the sea caught up with it.

I pushed the forward speaker button. "Radar! What's the bearing and distance to the nearest pip?"

"Three-zero-zero, one thousand!"

"Keep the ranges coming!" I shouted. Then to the helmsman: "Steer three-zero-zero!"

We came right a little. After a little I could see it, a little boat with oars out, tossed up against the sky. It was not so hard to see; dawn was breaking, I realized. A little to starboard.

"Steer three-zero-five!" That put it right ahead. On we came.

Now they saw us, lay on their oars, looking. A row of faces staring out of hunched-over bodies, heads sunk between their shoulders. They had had a rough night, and a rougher morning. I gritted my teeth. "Steer three-zero-four!"

They suddenly realized their danger. Oars moved jerkily, frantically, not in unison. They had been in the "no-quarter" business too. They knew what was coming. We were right on them, towered above them, our huge bow raised high on a wave, poised in deadly, smashing promise, pitiless; the row of freeing ports at the base of bow buoyancy must have looked like foaming dragon's teeth. I looked the steersman right in the eye as he stood at his oar, dead ahead and far below-the wave passed. Our bow dropped like a guillotine.

The boat never even came up. One black round head swam by, looking up with horror-filled eyes, arms and fists raised out of the water, skidded down our rounded belly, vanished aft spinning in our wake. I steeled myself. This was how they had looked in Walrus when the unexpected fatal torpedo explosion had hit them. This was the look Jim had given to Rubinoffski, that Knobby Robertson had exchanged with Dave.

Push the button again. Go on with it! This is what you came out here to dot You have to kill Bungo and all of his crew!

"Radar! Range and bearing to the nearest pip!"

"North! Six hundred!"

I could hardly talk. My voice suffocated in my chest. "Steer north!" I croaked.

"Skipper, may I come on the bridge?" asked Keith.

"No! Goddamit! Stay below!" The choked swear words came easily. "Keep the hell out of this!"

"What's the bearing now!"

"Three-five-nine!"

"Steer three-five-nine!" I could catch the note of disbelief in the helmsman's voice as he acknowledged. Scott had not divined my purpose the first time, but he knew now. The rules. of discipline held firm, however, and the lubber's line settled one degree left of due north.

It was getting lighter, and I could see better all the time. I didn't feel the wind and spray on my face, or the pounding of the sea coming aboard over our exposed starboard beam.

I aimed the juggernaught, myself, exactly at the center of the boat. As before, they watched at first in surprise, suddenly in terror, when they knew. They rowed better than the first boat, started to edge out of our way. I was ready.

"Left ten degrees rudder!" We curved left a little. "Amid- ships!"

We smote it amidships with our bullnose rising, smashed in the side, tumbled it over, rolled it down and out of sight under our keel. Some sticks of kindling came up in our wake, nothing that could be recognized as a boat.

"Radar, give me the bearing and range to the last pip!"

No answer. "Radar! Acknowledge!" The voice was weak, hesitant. "Nothing on the radar, sir!"

"You're lying!"

"Zero-six-three, one thousand!" Keith's voice, strong and dominant.

This time it was right into the teeth of the storm. Mindful of our former difficulty in turning, I gave no order to the screws, only to the rudder. I staggered back as the wind hit me over the edge of the cowling, had to duck periodically as the seas came aboard and broke with great sheets of solid black and gray water yards over my head. The boat came into sight at around eight hundred yards, a tiny dot in the water, an infinitesimal oasis in the great sea-desert. Rolling, pitching, staggering, like a drunken man, we headed for it. Five hundred yards. One hundred yards.

"Zing!" A rifle bullet. "Zing!"

"Zing!" A sharp rap, as one hit the armored side plating at the front of the bridge, and the whine of a ricochet. Somebody was still fighting. Maybe he had seen us ride down the other boats. The boat turned bow on as the Eel approached, making the most difficult target it could. I aimed right for its stern, watching carefully. Our bullnose rose above it with the short, quick, choppy movement of a ship plunging into a sea, just grazed it on descending, had it a little on the port bow.

"Left full rudder!" I ducked at the same time as I gave the order, a split second before a bullet smashed into the TBT binoculars.

Peering over the bridge cowling, I saw our bow alongside, pushing the boat as we began our swing to port. They were fending us off with their oars. Once the bow came by, of course, our stern would swing wide and clear by many yards. I ducked again.

"Shift your rudder to full right!" Scott had not yet reached full left, reversed himself immediately. We bumped them again with our belly, sideswiping.

The man with the rifle had been standing in the stern, along- side the steering oarsman. I caught a quick glimpse of a short, fat fellow with an impassive moon face as the boat skidded by.

He looked mean, hard, in the oily dead-pan way that only certain Orientals can. Then the exhaust of the two port engines poured into the boat. A sea lifted it, set it down on the turn of our tanks, cracking the ribs with a loud smash of splintered wood. It bounced off, half-capsizing, drifted aft into our wake, bilged and flooding.

I left the rudder at full right, and we came around in a circle.

This time there was no avoiding us. The lifeboat was completely filled with water. The rifle pocked the front of our bridge before we hit.

Our stern knifed through the fragile sides as if they were match sticks. It split in half. A final shot cracked overhead.

I saw the gun flying out into the water at the instant of the collision. There were bodies in the water on both sides as we hurtled past. One shook his fists at us, his mouth open in a scream no one could have heard, and tried to swim over to us.

It was only a few feet, and he managed to put both hands on the smooth skin of our ballast tanks back near the stern. But the speed of the ship and the heaving of the ocean were too much for him, and I last saw him spinning in the wash as our flailing propellers sucked him down and under.

"All ahead one third!" I yelled down the hatch. Then in the speaker, "Radar! Are there any more pips on the scope!

Keith answered, as before. "Nothing on the radar, Captain."

My hands were trembling. They wouldn't stop. My knees too. I felt as if I were about to fall over. I wrapped both arms around the shattered TBT, and deep, wracking sobs came boiling up out of the hard, twisted knot that was my belly.