Run Silent, Run Deep. Edward L. Beach

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      Blockman’s round countenance was no longer stolid. It looked scared, in fact, but this was as nothing compared to the look that would be there after Hansen and the submarine-school authorities got through with him. Now the danger was past, I derived grim pleasure from the thought, and an insane urge to batter in that wet, stupid face shook my self-possession.

      All the way back to our dock in New London my nerves were as tight as a violin string, and about as ready to screech if anything scratched across them. It was dark when we got alongside—luckily the tide was with us and the landing was easy—and as soon as the boat was safely snugged down for the night I went below. I needed something to sooth my jumpy nerves, to relieve the tension which had grown worse instead of relaxing. The muscles in my arms and neck were jumping spasmodically.

      An hour later, in seldom-used civilian dress, I stood at the bar in the club, with my second drink as yet untasted in my hand. The first had not helped a bit, for suddenly I knew what the real trouble was. The old naval saying that an emergency properly prevented never becomes one was ringing loudly in my ears. Had we become a casualty this afternoon—joined the S-51 and the S-4—or even merely suffered superficial damage, I knew that it would have been my fault more than Blockman’s. I should never have permitted our safety to rest upon such a narrow margin. I had waited too long to take over the periscope; I had let the situation develop too far before asserting myself. My job was to help protect the trainees from their inexperience—it had been MY fault, not Blockman’s.

      I hadn’t decided whether my drink was shaking because my taut nerves had not yet unwound or because of the sudden realization of my own shortcomings, when Jim’s familiar voice interrupted.

      “Captain, we were hoping we’d run into you here. This is Laura Elwood.”

      Jim’s arm through hers drew her gently forward. His voice ran on, receding into the general background hum around us. Laura was tall and slender, erect of carriage, and her hand felt cool as she placed it in mine. I remember looking straight into gray-green eyes, wide-spaced in a soft golden tan. Everything in the room dropped away.

      Jim was still talking, but it didn’t register. The smooth line of her throat vanished in the suggestion of gently rounded fullness. Her blonde slimness was set off by a soft green jersey dress which left her arms and throat bare and gave her an elusive air of feminine innocence.

      “You’re going to have a hard time living up to the buildup Jim’s been giving you, Captain,” she said.

      “Call me Rich,” I said.

      “That’s right, Laura.” Jim grinned in high good spirits. “Don’t pay any attention to me because I’ll still have to call him ‘Captain’—it’s that good old Navy Tradition I’ve been pumped full of.”

      “That suits me fine, Rich,” Laura said. Then, turning to Jim with mock concern, “Will you look this serious when you get to be a Captain, too?”

      Jim hesitated. Laura’s eyes flicked to me with sudden apprehension. “I’m sorry, Rich. Did I say something wrong?”

      “Of course not,” I told her. I made room for both of them at the bar.

      “We almost had a little trouble today, but it came out all right,” Jim told her. “It was just one of those things that could have happened to any sub in this training racket. It was over so fast that nobody had any time to get really scared except the skipper.”

      The light from the candles above the bar wavered in the depths of Laura’s eyes. As she waited I thought quickly for the right words to get it over to her without becoming too technical.

      “One of the officer students was making his graduation approach,” I said, “and he got us right in front of the target at close range. So there was just enough time to pull the plug and go deep to clear before the other ship passed overhead. It didn’t actually hit us, but I guess it passed pretty close.” As I said the words I could again see the huge white numbers on the Semmes’ bow, the geometric furrows turned on either side of the steel stem of the destroyer as it rushed directly toward us, the rows of rivets I could practically have counted, the fact that had the two ships struck, even very slightly, we might have been dragged, or knocked, upward enough to permit the old destroyer’s heavy low-slung propellers to rip into our hull.

      The strain of the scare must have communicated itself to my voice in spite of all I could do, for Laura’s face filled with sympathy. But she said nothing, for which I mentally thanked her. The nerves were jumping steadily in my right arm.

      “I don’t blame you for feeling a little rugged about it, skipper,” said Jim, “but, after all, we got away with it so why worry. A lot of boats have had close shaves that we never heard about.”

      Laura turned to him, “Jim, can’t we take Rich in with us to dinner? He needs cheering up.”

      I thought Jim seemed just a trifle taken aback, but he grinned quickly at her. “Sure,” he said. “Why don’t you ask him?”

      She had already turned back to me, slipped her arm impulsively through mine, hugged it to her. “You will, won’t you, Rich?”

      Emotions submerged for four and a half years flooded to the surface. Had the events of the afternoon and then this meeting with Laura opened me up emotionally? Had they taken me back to those firmly forgotten days when I had decided that a career was more important than marriage? I had been very young and noble about it—too dumb to realize that I could have had both.

      I could see now where I had been wrong. This was one of those decisions which need not have been made. Marriage or a career—you couldn’t launch them both at the same time. But other men had, and successfully, too. The day that Stocker Kane married Hurry and I was best man, I knew then I’d been a fool. But Sally had gone away with the wound I had dealt her. Later I heard she had married.

      And now, here was Laura, and what was I going to do about it?

      Laura, I soon learned, had come down from New Haven, where she had been working since the death of her father as combination secretary and assistant to the head of a small accounting firm. Professor Elwood, a widower of many years, had taught economics at Yale, and it was there that she had first met Jim. She wrinkled her nose impishly at him when they got on the subject—it was a straight nose, slightly aquiline, with delicately chiseled nostrils and barely the suggestion of an upturned tip.

      I needed to know more about her, searched desperately for a suitable conversational gambit. “Laura,” I finally lamely asked her, “are you one of those whizzes at balancing books?”

      She made a gesture of deprecation. “It’s surprising what a mess the average storekeeper will make of his accounting,” she answered, “and that’s what gives us our business. For a small fee we’ll come in and straighten things out for him. Otherwise, some of them never would know from one year to the next whether or not they’re making money.”

      “You mean you’re one of those stony-hearted business women like in the movies?” I teased.

      “I’m not, but my boss can be pretty hard-boiled,” she smiled, “especially when it comes to cheating, which we find now and then.”

      “You don’t look tough enough for that kind of a job.”

      She laughed outright. “You’d be surprised to see what an efficient little accountant Katherine Gibbs turned out. I majored in accounting СКАЧАТЬ