Run Silent, Run Deep. Edward L. Beach

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СКАЧАТЬ being a girl sometimes helps you to find out things, too.”

      There was a trace of thoughtfulness in her voice and a hint of a wiry core to her character.

      But she was changing the subject, asking me about life in the submarine service, and I found myself telling her all about it and about my most terrifying experience on board the Octopus—when the carrier Yorktown rammed us during a fleet problem. The Octopus’ welded hull shuddered violently under the impact of the Yorktown’s speeding bow, recoiled drunkenly into the depths. Tons of foaming sea water, backed up by rapidly increasing pressure as the boat careened downward, roared through the hold.

      Laura listened with rapt attention, her face reacting to the different aspects of the crisis as I recounted them. The tips of her fingers rested on my arm as I told her about our struggle in the control room—the absolute blackness, the ship almost on her beam ends, sinking rapidly by the bow. Frantically working with the lights of battle lanterns and flashlights, we split our high-pressure air manifold so as to concentrate all the air remaining in our air bottles into the forward tanks. Thus we gained the precious air volume necessary to blow our forward tanks completely dry against the compressive force of the sea and start the ship back up to the surface before it was irrevocably too late.

      “Is that why you’re so disturbed over this afternoon?” she breathed.

      I was startled. I had to think this one over. “Why, yes. I guess subconsciously it is,” I responded slowly, feeling for the solid ground. It had not yet occurred to me to make the comparison, but Laura had hit it unerringly. This was undoubtedly the core of it, the background reason for my distraught nerves, the subconscious reason why our own near-disaster had hit so hard and had stayed with me. But now that it was out in the open, there was a sensation of a knot slipping at the base of my brain, the pressure in my temples that was almost a headache beginning to disappear. I could feel myself, for the first time, slowing down.

      Dinner passed in a haze of delight. Not for years had I so enjoyed merely being with a girl. I had almost forgotten the completeness the right girl can bring in life. Laura’s eyes, now gay, now thoughtful, now sober, contained enough promise to drown in. I began to wonder whether I would have a chance to dance with her after dinner, when a bustle in the lounge heralded the arrival of the orchestra. Jim was on his feet in a moment. They were the first couple on the floor.

      I waited a respectable time and then cut in on them. One of the arresting things about Laura was the steady straightforwardness of her personality. It was typical of her, I realized immediately, to come simply and directly into my arms from Jim’s without self-consciousness. Nor was she unaware, and in my heightened sensitivity I appreciated the compliment.

      All my senses responded to hers. She moved when I moved, stayed when I stayed, and in a little while the side of her forehead rested against my cheek, and I felt the brush of an eyelash. I couldn’t tell whether we were dancing or drifting on a cloud, and I fiercely willed the music to play on and on and on—but after a while it stopped and Jim was standing there with his hand outstretched to claim her.

      I have no further specific recollection of the rest of that Saturday night. I danced with Laura once more, then said good-by. Back on the S-16, I turned in to a deep, thankful slumber, punctuated by a recurring dream of having Laura for my very own for ever and ever down a long, white, slick marble stairway.

      A feeling of well-being possessed me the next morning. For the first time in months, ever since leaving the Octopus, I felt completely relaxed. This was Laura’s doing.

      And then the reasoning part of my brain took charge. I had seen her only once. I had met her at a moment when mental and physical tension had been high and were yet to unwind themselves. She had unwound them, true, but I should not try to infer too much from that. As far as I was concerned, she belonged to Jim. Sternly I concentrated on that salient fact.

      During the following months I came to see more and more of Laura. She came to New London nearly every week end when Jim and she could be together. The hectic training schedule and the fact that the 16-boat had only three watch-standing officers did not allow them much time.

      I had to admit that I welcomed every opportunity chance threw my way to see her or dance with her. Though there were no further moments of strain comparable to the one which she had banished on our first meeting, the heightened awareness remained with me, and she reciprocated with a generousness and basic good will which warmed me every time we met and I resolved that if Jim ever dated another girl that would be my chance. But he never did.

      Jim and Laura made a handsome couple, and little by little, as the months drifted by, it came to be accepted that some sort of understanding had been arrived at between them. It was on December 7, a cold, rainy Sunday in New London, that I, for one, knew it must be so.

      I had gone to the Club for lunch, and finding Laura and Jim there, accepted their promptly wigwagged invitation to join them. Afterward we settled on one of the deep-cushioned divans in the sitting room. It was about 2 P.M., there was a crackling fire in the fireplace, and someone at the bar had turned on a radio. We could hear music playing and occasionally the strident voice of an announcer touting something or other. And then we sensed an electric change in the program. A new voice was talking on the radio; the excitement he conveyed was real, altogether different from the synthetic sales talk of a moment before.

      There was a sudden tenseness in Laura as she looked quickly from Jim to me, and a studied casualness as her hand sought his. I stood up.

      “Guess I’d better go find out who robbed what bank,” I said, and marched into the next room feeling a little heroic and a little foolish.

      I’ll never forget the look on Laura’s face, and the round horror in her eyes, when I came back. “I’ll have to go right back to the ship,” I said. “Jim, there’s really not much either of us can do, but you know what the regulations say. You’d better take Laura back to her hotel and help her get the next train.”

      Jim nodded without speaking, but Laura interposed quickly, taking his arm in an unconsciously revealing gesture as she did so. “I’d appreciate help finding the nearest bus from the submarine base, but I can certainly catch a train in town by myself. The place for Jim is right back on the S-16 with you, Rich, and the quicker he gets there the better. Why, you might get orders to go to sea right away—and—never come back!”

      For all her brave words, Laura’s chin trembled as she finished, and the last words were uttered in a sob. She hid her face on Jim’s shoulder. Awkwardly he patted her, put his arm around her, and suddenly her shoulders shook with deep, uncontrolled sobs, as she clung to him.

      “Stow it, Laury,” Jim gently whispered. “It’s a bad break for a lot of people—a lot of them must have been killed this morning. It just can’t be helped what it does to us.” He pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket, handed it to her.

      Controlling herself, Laura pushed herself away from Jim, sat upright. “I’m all right. I’m sorry, Jim—it’s just—just—so horrible. Everything’s so terribly mixed up—nothing will ever be right again!”

      They had completely forgotten my presence, and somehow I felt myself an intruder. “Excuse me a minute,” I mumbled. “I’ll be right back.”

      At the bar old Homer was talking into a telephone. “Yessir! Right away, sir!” he was saying as I arrived. Then he picked up a microphone beside it.

      “There will be a bus leaving the front of the Club for New London in ten minutes,” he announced. “All visitors are requested please to leave the base, by order of the СКАЧАТЬ