Run Silent, Run Deep. Edward L. Beach

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СКАЧАТЬ a sober crowd, and sober good-byes were said. I shook hands quickly so as to get out of their way, waited quietly a few feet distant. When Jim approached he said nothing, but his mouth showed a trace of lipstick, and his face was grim and downcast.

      Tom was waiting for us on deck near the gangway as we approached the S-16. He wore a heavy overcoat against the frigid wind sweeping the river, had buckled a service forty-five automatic around his ample middle, and the gangway watch was similarly armed. I noticed with approval, also, that he had stationed additional men on watch, one on the bow and another on the stern, likewise wearing pistols.

      “Are those guns loaded?” I asked him.

      “Yes, sir!” said Tom. “A full clip in each gun but none in the chamber. I’ve instructed the sentries they have to pull the slide back before the first shot. Besides that, each man has two loaded clips in his belt.”

      I nodded approval. “What instructions have you given them?”

      “Remain on their feet and alert for sabotage or other unusual incidents in the river or on the beach,” he answered. “Be particularly alert for any unusual movement in the water at night. Challenge anything suspicious immediately in a loud voice. If no answer, or not satisfactory, draw gun and fire one shot in the air. If still not satisfactory, shoot to hit. By that time the rest of us will be up here.”

      “Good man!” I said. “Where did you pick up all these ideas so quickly?”

      Tom looked pleased. “I was in the old S-31 in China when the Japs sunk the Panay,” he said. “The place was swarming with bumboats, and we expected any minute that a whole gang of Japs would come jumping out of one of them.”

      I looked up and down the river, and at the other submarines peacefully tied up to their docks. It was hard to imagine that, for all we knew, at that very moment sabotage attempts were being planned against them, perhaps actually being carried out.

      My watch said two-thirty when Captain Blunt showed up. His manner was incisive and to the point. What additional security measures had we taken? What percentage of our crew was aboard? How much fuel and provisions did we have on hand, and how many warshots were there in the torpedo rooms? He made notes quickly in a battered notebook and departed as abruptly as he had come, en route to the next boat of his squadron.

      I was grateful to Tom for having enabled S-16 to come through from the inquisition with credit. Some of the other submarines, I could see, were still getting men topside, and I was morally certain that some of them had few, if any, officers on board in addition to the duty officer. Not that we would have been much better off ourselves, had Jim and I not happened to sit within earshot of a radio after lunch.

      I looked at my watch again. Two-forty. It had taken us just forty minutes to go to war.

      But neither the Japanese nor the Germans attacked us, and after a few days, with the imposition of additional security patrols on the base and in the river, and more men on watch at a time in the submarines, life was permitted to resume much of its former habits. Except that the frenetic pace of our underway operations had virtually doubled.

      So far as Jim and Laura were concerned, it had not been good-by after all. We received no orders to leave New London, continued doing exactly what we had been doing, with less time off than ever. And next week Laura resumed her weekly visits to New London.

      By Christmas time, when the matter of Jim’s qualification for command came up, I should not have been surprised at learning that as a contingent plan, he and Laura would very shortly thereafter be married. Before the beginning of the war a more leisurely and considered approach, with announcements, parties, and the like, would naturally have been in order. But now all such plans had to go into the discard. Many couples were marrying with only a few weeks in prospect during which they could be together. I should have realized what the prospect of an assured year in New London would mean to two people in love.

      Jim had figured it out pretty accurately. He had correctly guessed the reason behind my sudden decision to recommend him, and his analysis of its effect was equally correct. There was not much the Bureau of Naval Personnel could do except let him stay in New London, while he waited until it was willing to give him a fleet boat of his own. Lucky was the couple, during these tortured times, who had this indefinitely long prospect to look forward to!

      But I couldn’t prevent a twinge of jealousy, or envy, when Jim gave me the news of his and Laura’s plans. And then when I had to destroy it all, there came the strangest feeling of nakedness, as though for an instant he had looked right into my innermost soul—had seen there things I hadn’t even admitted to myself, or suspected until that moment—which he hated me for.

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