CHAPTER SIX

They Watched From the Dock

He pointed to the 3-inch gun mounted on the flat deck forward of the conning tower. It was tightly covered with what appeared to be a canvas cover. March knew that the crew could have that cover off and the gun in action in a matter of seconds.

March and Stan walked across the gangplank and looked up at the officer on the bridge of the conning tower. Saluting, they reported, and received a welcoming smile and the words, “Come on up!”

They scrambled up the ladder and found themselves on the crowded bridge with two other men.

“I’m Lieutenant Commander Sutherland,” said the man who had greeted them, “Executive Officer.” He turned to the other officer on the deck. “Captain Binkey—Lieutenant Anson and Ensign Bigelow reporting.”

The Captain smiled as he returned their salute and then lapsed into his customary informal role.

“Glad to have you aboard,” he said. “First ride, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” March and Stan replied, feeling at ease at once in the old veteran’s presence.

“Sutherland will show you around after we get started,” the Skipper said. “I imagine you’ll want to stay up here till we’re under way.”

Sutherland turned to them. “You probably know from your studies what most of this is about,” he said. “Just a matter of seeing and feeling it to be at home. I know I don’t have to tell you every little detail the way the Chief down there is pointing out every steel plate to those ratings.”

March and Stan glanced down to see that the Chief had led his enlisted men on to the deck of the submarine, where they were mingling with the regular crew who were preparing to cast off when the Captain ordered.

“Whenever you want to know anything,” Sutherland went on, “just ask me and I’ll try to give you the answer. I imagine we’ll be casting off in a minute.”

They saw the Chief Petty Officer leading his students down the torpedo-room hatch to the interior of the submarine, and for a moment March wanted to join them.

“That will come later,” he said. “It’s important to see them cast off.”

And that operation came without delay. At a word from the Captain, the executive officer began barking orders to the crew and to the enlisted men who stood at the controls on the bridge. The gangplank was taken away by men on the dock, the electric motors began to turn in the ship far below them, and lines were cast off. Slowly, trembling slightly beneath their feet, the pigboat slid back into the river away from the shore, churning up the water only slightly as it moved.

Then suddenly, with a roar, the Diesels caught hold and white smoke poured from the exhaust vents on the sides of the boat. Stan grinned as he heard them, and March said, “Makes you feel at home to hear them, doesn’t it?”

“Oh—is he a Diesel man?” Sutherland asked.

“He dreams about them,” March replied. “I think he’s going to marry a Diesel some day!”

The pigboat was now in the middle of the river and swinging about to head downstream. On the deck below there remained only a few men of the regular crew needed for duties there. March looked around, feeling the thrill of pleasure that always came when a ship set out. The cool breeze fanned his face, and he looked at the shore slipping by, then the buildings of the city. It seemed only a short while before they were in the choppy open water of the Sound. Here there were almost no other ships, and the waters were deep. Soon they would dive!

Below, he knew, the regular crew were at their stations, with the students looking on—each specialist observing the work he would one day do himself. Engine men were in the crowded engine room, peering eagerly at the huge Diesels which powered the ship on the surface. Scott, the radioman, would be standing beside the regular radioman, and Sallini would be going over supplies and equipment of the regular pharmacist, while keeping his eye out for everything else he could learn, too. Every crew member had his special duties, but every one had to beable to take over the duties of any other in an emergency. That was one of the reasons they all liked submarine work, officers and men alike. They learned so much, in so many different fields, in such a short time!

“Rig ship for diving!” said the Captain quietly, and Sutherland, who served also as diving officer, spoke the order into the interphone on the bridge. Throughout the ship below, March and Stan knew, men had sprung to their stations in every compartment. The cook was “securing” the sink, stove, pots and pans. Men at the huge levers controlling the valves of the ballast tanks tested them. The diving planes were rigged out. Below on the deck, the last of the crew slid down the hatches and made them fast from the inside.

Then the reports began to come back over the phone that all was ready inside the boat. An officer in the control room below heard the different rooms of the submarine check in one by one.

“Torpedo room rigged for diving!”

“Engine room rigged for diving!”

When all rooms had reported, the officer below phoned to the Captain on the bridge that the ship was rigged for diving.

“All right, Mister Anson and Mister Bigelow—down you go!”

March quickly moved to the opening and slid down it, his feet reaching for the steps of the straight steel ladder. He was followed at once by Stan and then by Sutherland. Next came the enlisted man who had stood at the controls on the bridge, and finally the Captain himself. The hatch was made fast behind him and everyone was inside the boat.

March glanced around him quickly. And despite the number of drawings and pictures he had seen of the control room of a submarine, he gasped. Never had he seen such a myriad of instruments and wheels and levers and dials! Everything in the entire submarine was really controlled from this one central room. Beside him, in the middle of the room, were the two thick steel shafts which he knew were the periscopes. Their lower ends were down in wells in the deck and would not be raised until after they were submerged and the skipper wanted to look around.

Facing the bow of the ship, March saw the forward bulkhead of the control room. Yes, there was the huge steering wheel with the helmsman holding it lightly. It seemed strange for a helmsman to be looking at a wall, or instrument panels on a wall, rather than at the open sea over which he steered. March knew that the controls were electrically operated by the wheel and thus easy to handle. But every man was made to steer it by hand on occasion—and that took real strength!—in order to be ready for that emergency that might come when the electric current failed.

Forward, also, were the wheels controlling the angles of the diving planes. There was the gyro-compass dial, and near by the little table at which the navigation officer sat.

“Some day that’s where I’ll be,” March said to himself.

He didn’t have time to look carefully at the many other dials against this wall, but he knew they showed the ship’s depth under water, the pressure, and other essential data. Along the sides were still more dials showing the amount of fuel in tanks, the number of revolutions per minute being made by the propellers. He recognized the inclinometer, which showed just exactly the angle of tip assumed by the boat in diving or coming up.

On another side were the long levers and wheels controlling the big Kingston valves which flooded the ballast tanks with sea water when the ship was to dive, the air vents, the pumps, and other equipment used in diving and surfacing. The regular crew stood tensely at their posts without a word, and the students who stood near by were completely silent.

March glanced at the Skipper and saw that he was looking at a huge panel on one wall. Yes, this was the “Christmas Tree!” It was a large electric indicator board covered with red and green lights. It showedthe exact condition of every opening—hatches, air induction vents, and all—into the ship. Everything having anything to do with diving had its indicator there on the board. March saw that most of the lights were green, but many were still red. He knew that every light had to be green before the ship could dive.

“Stand by for diving,” said the Skipper in a quiet voice.

Sutherland, standing behind him, sang out, “Stand by for diving!” The telephone orderly repeated the order over the interphone to all parts of the ship and March jumped as the klaxon horns blared out their raucous warnings. For a moment their sound reverberated in the small steel room, and then Sutherland barked new orders.

“Open main ballast Kingstons!” March saw the men move the levers as he repeated the order, and a few lights turned to green on the “Christmas Tree.”

“Stop main engines!” The order was repeated over the phone to the engine room. March felt the trembling of the ship stop as the Diesels were shut off and the electric motors switched on again, taking their current from the huge banks of storage batteries under the deck of the ship. At the same time other lights turned to green on the board.

“Open main ballast vents!” called Sutherland.

One after another the necessary orders were called by the diving officer, they were carried out with precision and reported back at once. Finally, the last red lights on the board winked out as the main air induction valves were closed. Then Sutherland ordered, as the last test, that air be released from the high-pressure tank into the interior of the ship. March watched him look at the dial indicating air pressure within the ship. The hand moved up a little, then held steady. This showed that there was no leakage of air from the boat.

Sutherland turned to the Skipper. “Pressure in the boat—green light, sir.”

“Take her down!” said the Captain with a nod.

When the diving officer repeated the order the klaxons blared again their final warning before the diving officer called out one order after another. March had been able to keep close track of everything up to this point, but suddenly, just at the crucial moment, there was too much going on. He heard an order that sounded like “Down bow planes!” and felt the ship tip forward slightly. But at the same time he heard the roar of water as it rushed into the ballast tanks between the inner and outer steel hulls of the ship, the rush of air forced out of the vents by the inrushing water, and the whine of the electric motors.

Sutherland gave an order about the trim tanks which March did not catch, then heard the Skipper say, “Steady at forty feet.”

As the order was repeated, March found the dial which indicated the ship’s depth and saw the hand approach the forty mark. There the ship leveled out again. The sound of rushing water and bubbling air had ceased and the only sound was the steady hum of the motors.

“We’re down!” Stan muttered, almost to himself. March had almost forgotten his companion’s existence, but now he turned to him.

“That’s right!” he said. “I was so intent on what was happening I almost forgot about that. There’s nothing special about it, is there? I mean—being here in this room where you can’t see outside—it doesn’t make much difference whether you’re on top of the water or underneath it.”

“Only when I heard the water rushing into the ballasts,” Stan answered. “Then I had a little sensation of going under water. It was fast, wasn’t it?”

“So fast I couldn’t keep track of everything,” March replied. “I wonder how long it took from the time the Captain ordered the dive until we leveled off at forty feet.”

Sutherland overheard him. “Just sixty-eight seconds!” he said.

A REAL SUBMARINER

“Scoot Bailey never will have an experience like this as long as he lives!” March said to himself. He was peering through the periscope of the submerged pigboat, looking over the tossing waters of the sea.

When the Captain had called “Up, periscope,” the long shaft had moved up by electric motor until the eyepiece and handles were at convenient height. The Skipper had a look around, and March noticed that he turned the handles to adjust the focus.

“Here, have a look, Mister Anson,” he said, standing away.

So March had fitted his eyes against the rubber cup and looked. He saw water, a long stretch of open water with nothing on it. It was not completely sharp so he turned one handle slightly, saw the image fuzz up, turned it the other way until it came sharp. Next he moved the periscope around, stepping with it as he did so, looking over the horizon in a sweeping arc.

Then he saw something! It was the shore of Long Island, almost two miles away. He stepped back and said, “I saw the Long Island shore, I think. How far can one see through the periscope, sir?”

“About two and a half miles,” the Skipper replied. “Have a look, Mister Bigelow.”

Stan stepped forward eagerly to look through the ’scope. He swung it around in a different direction from which March had moved and suddenly exclaimed, “A ship!”

The Captain took over for a look, then said, “Yes, small freighter. Just think how easily we could sink her!”

March looked at the ship. “Looks as though I could knock her down with a BB gun,” he said.

“On later trips we’ll simulate attacks on some of the ships in the Sound,” the Skipper said. “So you’ll get a chance to practice something a little more powerful than a BB gun.”

For fifteen minutes the pigboat traveled under the water. Sutherland took Stan and March around the control room, explaining the various instruments and levers, answering their questions.

“What beats me, sir,” Stan said, “is the number of different things you have to remember! I just can’t conceive of doing all that so fast and not forgetting a thing.”

“It seems like that at first,” Sutherland said. “But after you do it a few times, you get used to it. Just think—driving a car is pretty complicated if you’ve never even seen a car before. You’ve got to see the emergency brakes are on, that transmission’s in neutral, then turn on ignition, step on electric starter, perhaps choke it a little to start, then push back choke,step on foot throttle, warm up engine, release emergency brake, push in clutch, move gearshift lever, let in clutch, step on throttle, shove in clutch, take foot from throttle, move gearshift lever in another direction, let in clutch and step on throttle for a time, then shove in clutch, take foot from throttle, move gearshift lever, let in clutch, step on throttle again. And all this time, steer the car where you’re going, watch out for pedestrians, for traffic lights, for cars behind, for cars on side streets. Why, there are dozens of things you have to do, but when you’ve driven a car a little while, most of them are almost automatic.”

“I’d never though of it that way,” Stan said. “But it must take quite a while of handling a dive to get used to it.”

“Not so long as you think,” Sutherland said, “if you’re any good at all. If not, you wouldn’t be here. And don’t worry—before you leave this school you’ll be able to take her down—in three or four different ways—without worrying about it for a second.”

The executive officer then led them through the rest of the boat, giving them a quick once-over of the entire ship during their first trip. Stepping over the high door edges of the bulkhead doors leading from one compartment to another, March realized that a fat man would have difficulty getting around on a submarine. He noted how the doors could be fastened watertight and airtight so that any compartment could be sealed off from all the others.

They saw the engine room, with its two banks of heavy Diesels, now quiet and at rest as the ship traveled under water. Stan would have stayed there for the entire trip, talking to the engineers and looking over the power plants, but they moved on to the motor room where the whine of the two electric motors was loud and high-pitched. March knew that the motors could be switched to act as generators driven by the Diesels when the ship surfaced, charging the batteries.

The battery room did not hold their attention for long, although the two banks of huge cells were impressive, but the torpedo room fascinated them. Here was the real reason for the existence of the entire ship, which was nothing more than a vehicle to get the deadly TNT charges into the side of an enemy ship. It was almost the largest of the rooms they had seen, perhaps seeming so because of the additional clear space in the middle. There had to be plenty of room to swing the big torpedoes into position before their tubes.

First March and Stan saw the two racks of torpedoes along the walls. The long cylinders, twenty-one inches in diameter and about twenty feet from end to end, looked deadly. March noted the chain hoist by which they could be swung from their racks into position for loading into the tubes.

The tubes—there were four of them—stuck back into the room a little way, and March and Stan knew they were about twenty-five feet long altogether, their openings at each side just back of the bow of the boat. The tight-fitting doors closed the tubes, and the sub was ready to fire its charges at any moment.

“It must take a terrific blast of air to start these babies on their way,” Stan said, running his hand along one of the big torpedoes.

“Yes, it does,” Sutherland replied. “But the air doesn’t have to move it far. It just expels it from the tube, where there are trigger catches which trip switches here on the torpedo to set its own machinery going.”

“Wonderful piece of mechanism, aren’t they?” March mused.

“Yes, they’re really little submarines with an explosive charge instead of a crew,” the executive officer agreed. “And the TNT takes up only a small space, really. Half the length is compressed air to drive the torp. It’s got to move pretty fast, you know, to get to the target accurately. There’s about four hundred horsepower packed into that little fellow there—from compressed air, heated by an alcohol flame, blowing like fury against two trim little turbines turning the propellers.”

“The aiming devices must be very accurate,” Stan said.

“Wonderful!” Sutherland exclaimed. “You probably know there’s a little whirling gyroscope that keeps the torp on the course which can be set by the operator in advance of firing. Then there’s the compensating chamber and pendulum to keep it at its proper depth. It can’t very well get off course.”

“But don’t you have to aim chiefly with the sub itself, sir?” March asked. “I mean—doesn’t the sub have to be aimed right at the target for the torpedo to get there?”

“Not at all,” Sutherland replied. “The sub doesn’t have to be any closer than sixty degrees in facing its target. You set the proper course on the torpedo itself and the automatic devices put it on that course right away—and keep it there!”

“Then the important thing,” Stan said, “is for the skipper to get the course right, not necessarily to line up the sub with his target.”

“That’s right,” the older officer agreed. “The skipper must determine the course to his target and call it out. If he’s good, he gets his ship.”

With a last look around the torpedo room they turned to go back to the control room.

“Later,” Sutherland said to them as they stepped through the bulkhead door, “you’ll have target practice with special torpedoes that don’t blow up what you’re aiming at. As a matter of fact, there won’t be anything you can’t do by the time we get through with you.”

They Inspected the Torpedo Room

In the course of the next few weeks, March remembered that statement often. He went on countless trips in the training subs, until he felt as much at home in them as he did in his own quarters. For the first few times he observed. Then he took over one position after another and executed its duties.

Stan was with him on all these trips, but often they were at different ends of the boats during their short journeys. One day, March would take his position at the steering wheel. The next he would handle the big levers controlling the Kingston valves on the main ballast tanks. Then he would work with the men in the engine room, after having studied Diesels in some of his classes. He did a stretch in the torpedo room several times when they shot the practice torps at special targets towed by a surface boat. He worked the interphone system as orderly, took over the little radio shack, spent several hours in the battery room, working the diving planes.

“I’ve done everything so far but cook lunch and cut the crew’s hair,” he said to Stan one day, as they relaxed wearily for fifteen minutes after dinner before going to their studies.

“Same here,” Stan said. “But I haven’t been assistant pharmacist yet.”

“Oh, that’s right,” March recalled. “I haven’t passed out any pills yet. And I don’t think I’ll have to.”

“Do you feel that you know the crew’s jobs pretty well now, March?” Stan asked.

“Most of them,” March replied. “I know I could take over most of them without any trouble. But I’d like another trip or two in the torpedo room, and I want to be at the diving controls for a crash dive before I’ll feel sure of myself.”

“I agree with you on the diving controls,” Stan said, “but I feel okay on the torps now. What I want is a little time on the sound-detector devices.”

“You can never have too much time on those,” March said. “Every additional hour of experience with them makes you all the better, I think. But it’s wonderful that they teach every officer to do every job on the boat—not just the work of the other officers but of every enlisted man on board.”

Not only did they handle every job of the crew on the sub, but they spent hours every day in classroom and laboratory. They studied engines and motors and navigation and torpedoes, and—above all, lately—theories of approach and attack. In addition to their work on the training subs themselves, they carried out attack problems in the wonderful “mock-up” control room in one of the buildings. Here was a real control room, with controls and periscopes complete. Standing in position at the ’scope, as if he were the Skipper of the ship, March sighted about on the artificialhorizon which looked quite real to him. Suddenly he saw what seemed to be two ships appear on the horizon. First he had to identify them. Then he had to judge their speed and course accurately while they still looked like only tiny spots in his periscopes.

Calling out orders, he directed the course of the “submarine” he was commanding so that he would be in position to fire torpedoes. Then the ’scope went down, as would happen in actual combat. His “sub” was traveling under water, without even the revealing ’scope-ripples to show the enemy where he was. Then he surfaced again, looked through the ’scope to see if he and the “enemy” ships were where they ought to be in relation to each other.

If he was right, he ordered the setting of the torpedo courses and then called “Fire one! Fire two!”

Then he would go over his record with the instructors. He would find out just how well he had done in handling the complete tactical problem that had been presented to him. Had he identified the ships correctly as to nationality, type, size? Had he judged their speed and course correctly? And finally—had his torpedoes hit home? If he had handled the problem correctly, he felt almost the thrill that might have come with sinking an actual enemy ship.

Several afternoons a week, March went out on the training subs. He asked for more time at the diving controls and got it. He asked for two torpedo-roomwatches and his request was fulfilled. Then he began to take over the duties of the various officers. He served as communications officer, engineering officer, electrical officer, navigation officer—and finally as diving officer. The first time he gave the orders to take the ship down, his heart was in his throat, even though Sutherland was standing by his side to take over at the slightest mistake. He didn’t believe that he could possibly remember all the things he had to, but he found, as the orders started coming from his mouth, that his mind ordered them out without his thinking about them. He knew so well, by this time, the logical order of events, that his mind went straight along that path without a hitch.

What pleased March most of all after this experience—even more than the pleasant commendation of the executive officer—was the word spoken to him by Scott, the radioman. Scott had been on the training subs during most of March’s trips, too, and they had spoken to each other frequently. But on the dock after March’s turn as diving officer, Scott saluted and nodded with a smile.

“If you’ll pardon me, sir,” he said, “I’d like to mention that you handled that diving like a veteran.”

“Thanks, Scott—it’s swell of you to say that,” March mumbled.

“You know—a bunch of students is likely to get a little funny feeling when we know a new officer’s goin’ to take us down,” Scott said. “But we couldn’t have been safer with the Skipper himself than we were with you.”

March wrote about that in the letter he wrote to Scoot Bailey that evening. He had been so busy, working hard sixteen hours a day, that Scoot seemed miles and years away.

“I’m beginning to feel like a real submariner at last, Scoot,” he wrote. “For a while I thought there was so much to learn that I’d never get there. But I’m at home now, and I think I can make it all right. I suppose you’ve been feeling much the same way—despite the fact that flying is so much simpler than pigboating—and that you’re getting the feeling of being a pilot, without having an instructor in your lap every minute.”

ORDERS TO REPORT

Scoot Bailey read March’s letter and grinned.

“So flying’s easy, he says?” he muttered to himself. “He should have been here going through what I’ve been through! Aerodynamics, engines, controls, meteorology, gunnery, navigation, bombing, figure-eights, barrel-rolls, spot landings!”

He shook his head and looked at the row of textbooks on the desk before him.

“He’s right, though,” he said. “I do begin to feel like a flier. At first, before I’d ever been up in a plane, I thought I was one—one of those so-called natural fliers, only there isn’t any such thing. Then when I first flew I realized I didn’t know much of anything. Next, when I got so I could handle the trainer pretty well, with the instructor right there, I decided flying was pretty simple after all.”

He sat back and recalled the day that had changed his mind about that.

“But when he finally told me to take it up alone—boy, oh boy! There I sat in that flying machine with no teacher there to hold my hand. That’s when I thought I didn’t even know what direction the stick moved, I didn’t know which way to push the throttle.What ever gave me the nerve to give her the gun and take off I can never figure out. But when that was over and I was still alive and in one piece, I’d got over the worst of it.”

He realized that a submariner had no equivalent of soloing in a plane to go through. He’d have to remember to write that to March.

“After that I straightened myself out,” Scoot’s thoughts went on. “I wasn’t too cocky and I wasn’t too scared. I just knew that I had learned to fly a little bit, that there was still a tremendous amount to learn, and that if I worked hard enough I could learn it and turn out to be a pretty good pilot.”

Scoot was on the advanced Navy trainer now, a fast ship that came closer in speed and maneuverability to the fighters he would eventually fly.

“In another week I’ll be heading for the training carrier,” he said with a glow of satisfaction. “I’ll get my wings and I’ll be a real Navy pilot, but I’ve still got a lot to learn. Taking off from those heaving decks—and landing on ’em again—is going to be quite different from the same moves on these nice flat Texas plains.”

As Scoot thought about it, about the work March had been doing, he realized that there was a great deal in common in their fields. Flying a plane wasn’t much like handling a submarine, but both of them got away from the normal positions of most people.The flier got away from the earth’s surface in one direction. The submariner got away from it by going under. They both handled craft that could travel in a three-dimensional sphere, not just over the surface like a tank or a battleship.

“March practices coming up with a Momsen Lung,” Scoot told himself, “while I practice coming down with a parachute. That Lung’s just a sort of underwater parachute.”

A plane was just a vehicle to get explosives into position for firing at the enemy and so was a submarine, Scoot concluded. And sometimes they even handled the same explosives—torpedoes!

“Now if someone would just invent a flying submarine,” Scoot thought, “March and I could get together again. But I guess that’s not very likely outside the comic strips. When you think of the terrific water pressure a sub has to stand, you can’t very well imagine hooking wings on to something that heavily plated with steel. And think of the batteries! No—I’m afraid March and I will be separated for some time. It seems a shame, though, sub and plane ought to make a mighty fine team.”

The next week, as Scoot started off from Corpus Christi for the training carrier off the shores of Florida, March was setting off on one of the most important underwater trips of his training. It was a trip of two days on which March was to act throughout asnavigation officer, still his specialty despite his training in every other job on the ship. March knew his navigation thoroughly while he was still on surface ships, but with the intensive extra study he had gone through at New London, especially on dead reckoning and “blind” navigation for underwater travel, he was a master.

During the trip, on which Stan Bigelow also acted as engineering officer in charge of the Diesels and motors, they got the real feeling of being on patrol. They simulated traveling through enemy waters and so ran submerged most of the daylight hours, the Skipper taking a look around occasionally with the periscope.

Numerous drills were also rehearsed during the voyage—fire drills, man-overboard drills, crash dives. They simulated a chlorine gas danger, acting as if the sea water had got into the batteries to give off the deadly fumes. Gas masks were out in a hurry and the battery room was sealed off with only two “casualties.”

“The only thing we haven’t tried on this trip,” March said at mess the first evening, “is some of the first aid we’ve learned.”

“Well, if someone will volunteer to simulate appendicitis,” the Skipper laughed, “I’m sure Pills will try an operation. But you forgot something else we haven’t tried—a depth-charge attack.”

“I’d just as soon skip that, sir,” Stan said, “at least until the real thing hits me.”

“No way of simulating it, anyway,” the Captain commented. “But it’s about the only thing we leave out in this training.”

“There’s one big difference,” March said. “In training, if you make a mistake, why you just get a bad mark from the teacher. In real submarining in war time, you’re likely to get—dead. And carry a lot of others along with you.”

“What do you mean?” the Skipper asked. “That’s true at the beginning, of course, but not now. You’re really navigating this boat, Mr. Anson. Nobody else is doing it, and nobody’s checking up on you. If you do it wrong, we’ll pile up on Montauk Point!”

March gulped. And Stan looked a little worried.

“What’s the matter, Stan?” March asked. “Are you scared? Think I’m not a good enough navigator?”

“No, I was just wondering,” Stan said, “if the same thing applied to me—if I’m really totally responsible for all these engines on this trip.”

“Of course you are, Mr. Bigelow,” the Skipper smiled. “And I’m sure you’ll handle them very nicely, just as I’m confident Mr. Anson will take us just where we’re supposed to go. You are not allowed to take over these duties until you have proved conclusively, in your previous work, that you could do so.”

As darkness descended over the waters of Long Island Sound, the training sub surfaced and found herself just where she was supposed to be at that time, much to March’s relief. Hiding behind a point of land near the end of Long Island, they charged their batteries, while a skeleton crew stayed on watch. Most of the others went to bed for a few hours’ sleep in the bunks which lined the walls of most of the rooms. March and Stan shared a tiny cabin, but were not in it at the same time, as their watches followed one another.

Before dawn the next morning the sub set off from its cove, submerged, and followed the next course under water. Sending up the periscope at about ten o’clock, the Skipper saw the target boats at the designated spot and the sub went through a series of simulated attacks on enemy shipping, crash diving to get away from “destroyers” attacking them, lying on the bottom with all motors shut off for a spell, then sneaking away at a depth of two hundred feet in a circuitous course to outwit the enemy waiting for them.

During all the trip the Skipper and Lieutenant Commander Sutherland were closely observing, without seeming to do so, the actions of March and Stan, and of the student diving section which had shipped with them for this special trip. They were interested in seeing not just whether the men could handle their jobs, buthowthey did it—if calmly or with too much tension. On occasion one or the other of the two senior officers would give a conflicting order or misunderstand something reported by Stan or March, just to see what happened. Not once did Stan or March become upset, and the two older men smiled at each other meaningly.

The Sub Set Off and Submerged

“Two good officers,” the Skipper said. “I wish I could get out on patrol again and take along a couple of new young men like that.”

“I’d go anywhere with them myself,” said Sutherland. “Why do we have to be so old, Skipper?”

“Didn’t you have enough action in the last war?” the Captain asked.

“No, sir, and neither did you!”

“Well, men like Anson and Bigelow will have to do it for us this time, I guess,” the Captain said. “And I suppose we’re doing an important job if we help at all to make them such good pigboat officers.”

“They’re ready to be assigned now, don’t you think?” Sutherland asked.

“Yes, without a doubt. They can’t learn any more except through actual experience. They might as well start getting it right away.”

March and Stan felt sure that their training was coming to an end. So far as classes were concerned, they knew that they had covered just about all the work that the school had to give them. They had studied so hard that they felt mentally exhausted.

“I don’t think I could cram one more fact into my head,” Stan said. “It’s going to take some time for the facts I’ve been putting in there to assemble themselves and settle down in some orderly fashion.”

“We’ll be leaving before long,” March said. “But there’s one thing I want to do before I leave. I want to see Winnie and Minnie.”

“Oh—in the escape tower?” Stan exclaimed. “Of course—we’ve never made the hundred-foot escape.”

“We don’t have to, but just about everybody does,” March said. “Want to do it with me tomorrow?”

“Sure, if there’s a group going through,” Stan agreed. “By the way, what happened to that fellow Cobden who flubbed the fifty-foot escape?”

“He made it,” March said. “And he’s already done the hundred-footer, too. The psychiatrist found out what was bothering him. When he was just a kid he was swimming with a gang and one of ’em ducked him and held his head under water a bit too long. He got some water in his lungs, passed out, but they revived him. He’d forgotten all about it, really—except underneath, of course. He said that later when he made up his mind to learn how to swim well, it took a lot of grit to make himself do it. He didn’t know why it bothered him, but he had the guts to fight it out and really learn how to swim. Never did any diving, though—didn’t like being completely under water.”

“And after all these years that old experience pops up!” Stan exclaimed.

“It just goes to prove that all these tests are so sensible!” March said. “What if he hadn’t found that out until he got in a sub on duty somewhere? His going to pieces then might have wrecked it, or caused plenty of trouble.”

“He’s all over it now?” Stan asked.

“Sure,” March said. “As soon as the doc got the story out of him and explained it, Cobden just laughed and said he felt foolish. Went right over to the fifty-foot level and did the escape. He even joked with the Chief and said that he shouldn’t hold his head under water—it might make a neurotic out of him.”

“That’s swell!” Stan commented.

“Yes, and he insisted on taking the hundred-foot escape right away, too,” March went on. “But they were smart. They wouldn’t let him. They thought he might be acting under a temporary fit of courage and bravado and the old fear might come back on him later. So they made him wait a couple of weeks. It went fine, though.”

Before going to the escape tower the next day, March looked up Scott, the radioman, and reminded him of their date to look at Winnie and Minnie together. So Scott and March and Stan went to the hundred-foot tower together that afternoon, donned their swimming trunks, their Momsen Lungs, andstepped under the metal skirt in the water at the bottom. As March started up the long cable leading to the surface, he realized that the hatch and platform there were made exactly like the top of a real sub. And there on the walls were the two beautiful mermaids, Winnie and Minnie, smiling at him. He could not smile back, because of the Momsen Lung mouthpiece, but he waved at the girls and went slowly up past them.

At the fifty-foot platform an instructor swam out and around him, waving his arms to indicate that March was moving up at the correct speed. As he broke the surface he felt fine, as if one of the last acts at New London had been accomplished. Stan and Scott followed him quickly, and then the three of them were presented with the special diplomas, decorated with pictures of Winnie and Minnie, stating that they had made the hundred-foot escape.

As March and Stan walked back to their quarters, March said, “Now I feel ready for anything!”

And waiting for him were his orders—to report in two weeks to Baltimore, Maryland, for duty aboard the new submarine,Kamongo.

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