about it. Maybe nothing, just put it down as another Jap pilot gone
wacky. Anyway, they won’t feel there’s any danger. But they might send
another plane up to have a look and see what’s wrong. I’d just hope to
be on my way by that time and out of his reach. Anyway, that’s one of
the chances we take. While I’m flying there I can get the Jap radio in
shape, so that I could radio a message to you if I saw I was going to
be shot down. You could surface for a short while about the time that
might be happening, so you’d get any message.”
“Well,” Larry said, “there are a lot of _if’s_ in this whole
proposition, but for some reason I like it.”
“What’s the gamble?” Scoot demanded.
“You,” Larry said. “Your life.”
“And that’s mighty little chance for the U.S. Navy to take if it means
finding this convoy early enough to wipe it out before it reaches Truk.
If the idea doesn’t work, then we’ve just been wrong and missed our
convoy. Maybe you pick me up safe and sound as planned and maybe not.
That’s all.”
“What do you think, March?” Larry asked.
“Well—” March hesitated. “Well—I think it’s worth a shot, if Scoot
thinks he can get that plane away.”
“That’s the easiest part of it,” Scoot said. “Remember what a good
swimmer I am. I swam to get to the sub and now I’ll swim away from it.”
Larry Gray thought for a while before making up his mind. It was his
responsibility, this decision, and he had to weigh it carefully.
Finally he spoke.
“All right, we’ll try it,” he said, and Scoot allowed himself a mild
whoop of pleasure. “Here’s the plan, to get it clear. We surface in
about six hours, when everybody except a sentry or two will be asleep.
Scoot is ready to go and he swims to the plane. We stay up just long
enough to see that he gets away, then we dive and set out on our course
which Scoot knows. He flies toward the passage above Mindinao, where I
think the convoy might be. If he doesn’t sight it within two hours
flying he turns around and flies back, landing on the sea at a spot
agreed on in advance. If the weather’s bad, that’ll be tough, of
course. We surface for a while, riding the vents and ready to
crash-dive. So we can pick up Scoot if he’s even near the designated
spot.”
Larry paused for a moment and the others remained silent.
“If Scoot sights the convoy, he can tell fast how many ships, what
speed, what direction. He heads back for that spot on the ocean as
planned and we pick him up. If the Japs send up a plane or planes to
get him, and if they attack him, he’ll try to parachute out with his
life belt, or get his plane down whole or something so he can be picked
up on our course. Anyway, if attacked, he may radio us about the convoy
first if he’s been able to get the plane’s radio going.”
“What do we do,” March asked, “if Scoot does find the convoy?”
“Then we radio,” Larry said. “The Japs may hear us, but we can’t help
that. But we’ll go on in to the attack alone. We’ll try to get under
and come up in the middle of the convoy so as to scatter it in time for
the other subs and the planes that will be coming after they get our
radio message.”
“All clear,” March said. “Now let’s set our course and select our spot
for picking up Scoot.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DOWNED AT SEA!
“Not a sign of life there,” Larry said as he looked through the
periscope. “Beach fires all out. Down ’scope. Take her up.”
They moved toward the ladder leading up to the conning tower, Larry
first, Scoot immediately behind him, in trunks. He held a bundle in one
hand.
“Hope I can keep these clothes a little dry,” Scoot said. “I’d like to
be dressed when I do this if I can.”
Larry unfastened the hatch cover and hurried up on to the bridge. Scoot
was behind him in a second, followed by March and two enlisted men who
manned the machine guns at once. Everyone moved swiftly and noiselessly.
Scoot was already sliding down the ladder to the deck, with March right
behind him. Larry stayed on the bridge, looking sharply toward shore at
every minute.
“So long March,” Scoot whispered as he slid into the water. “I’ll be
seeing you.”
“Good luck, Scoot,” March whispered back. And that was all. For just a
second he watched Scoot strike out toward the plane, holding aloft his
bundle of clothes and making no splashing sound. Then March turned and
went back up the ladder to the bridge.
There he stood quietly beside Larry, who said nothing. March picked up
Scoot’s dim figure in the water, listening at the same time for the
sound of an alarm on the beach in case a sentry saw the black hull of
the submarine offshore.
“He’s reached it,” March whispered to Larry.
“Good.”
“Must be unfastening the buoy now,” March said. Again they waited in
silence.
“Can’t be sure, but I think he’s climbing up on the pontoon,” March
said. “Yes—I can just barely make him out. Can’t be seen from shore.”
Then there was a long silence, tense, expectant. March tried to picture
Scoot slipping into trousers and shirt, climbing into the plane’s
cockpit, feeling for the switches and controls in the dark. He’d
probably have to wind up the starter. And suddenly at this moment,
March wondered how much gas the Jap plane had in it.
“Must be enough for it to get back to its battleship,” he told himself.
March jumped. A coughing roar split the silence and the darkness.
Flashes of flame came from the exhaust pipes of the plane as the engine
roared, subsided, roared again. Scoot had taken just half a minute to
warm it up. Then he gave it the gun and March saw the plane begin to
move.
“Down, men!” Larry shouted, and the two men left their guns and slid
down the hatch. “Get on down, March,” Larry said, “and take her down.
I’m right behind you.”
But at that moment shots rang out from the shore. Figures were running
along the beach, shouting and gesticulating wildly. The seaplane was
roaring away over the water and some men were firing at it.
March, his feet on the rungs of the ladder, looked up, startled. And
then Larry fell at his feet.
“I’m hit, March,” Larry said. “Don’t waste a minute. I can get down.
Hurry.”
Grabbing his Skipper, March hauled him to the companionway. He heard
the spatter of bullets against the sides of the submarine. He lowered
Larry quickly down the hatch and men below grabbed him and helped him
from the ladder. March slid down after him, shouting commands to take
her down while he was still closing the hatch.
“Call Sallini,” he said to one of the men. “Take the Skipper to his
quarters. Mac, go in with him.”
The roar of water into the ballast tanks flowed over them, and the
whine of the electric motors told them the ship was under way.
“Steady at fifty,” he said. “Hold course. We’ll surface in a little
while. Stan, will you take over here? I want to see how the Skipper is.”
“Sure, March,” Stan said. “Pat him on the back for me. Hope it’s not
bad.”
March stood at the door of Gray’s quarters. There was not room inside.
Larry was on his bunk, looking up to smile with an effort, but with
pain marking his face.
“This was one _if_ we didn’t think of, wasn’t it, March?” he asked.
“How are you, Larry?” March asked.
“It hurts like the devil,” the Skipper replied. “I think there’s two or
three slugs in my chest somewhere. Sallini will be able to tell in a
minute.”
The pharmacist was ripping off Gray’s shirt and undershirt, which
showed spreading stains of blood. McFee helped him, trying to move Gray
as little as possible. Then Sallini examined the wounds carefully for a
few moments.
“Three’s right, Skipper,” he said. “And they’re still in you. I don’t
see how this one missed the heart but it must have or you wouldn’t be
talking now. This one up here busted your collar-bone. That’s what
hurts so much right now. And the other, on the right side must’ve gone
right through the lung. I can’t tell if any might be lodged in the
spine or not. Doubt it or you’d have passed out—couldn’t move much.”
“Can’t move much anyway,” the Skipper replied weakly.
March saw that his face was draining white, and his eyes began to cloud
over.
“Sulfa tablets, anyway,” Sallini said. “And bandages to stop the
bleeding here, though there’s not much likely to come out while he’s
lying down. May be some internal bleeding but I couldn’t do anything
about that. Don’t know what else I could do right now.”
“Okay, Sallini,” March said. “Go get what you need and do it as fast as
you can.”
The pharmacist left and March stepped close to the Skipper, leaning
down close to him as Mac was.
“March,” Gray said. “I don’t know what the devil this is, but I feel
like passing out. Anyway—and this is an order from your Captain—carry
out plans exactly as we have laid them out. You’re in command of this
submarine when I’m—er, incapacitated. McFee will help you carry on. Go
get that convoy!”
“We’ll get it, Larry,” March said. “But you’ll do the job, because
you’ll be up and around by the time we get there. Or at least you can
direct the battle from your bunk.”
Gray smiled and let his head fall back. He seemed to be sleeping. Then
Sallini reappeared and Mac and March stepped to the companionway and
watched through the door while the pharmacist did what he could for
Gray.
The Skipper was unconscious and they had done all they could. March,
with a heavy heart, stepped back into the control room and took the
interphone from the orderly.
“The Skipper’s been wounded,” he said to the entire ship. “I know that
makes you all feel just as badly as I feel right now. Sallini’s done
all he can for him and he’s resting. Can’t tell much about his
condition, but I’ll let you know regularly how he is.”
Then he gave the order to surface the boat and they went ahead on
course in the darkness. March stood his watch on the bridge, looking
ahead in the blackness, wondering how Scoot was making out up there,
and how the Skipper was making out in his own blackness down below.
Sallini had given Larry some blood plasma to overcome some of the loss
of blood that the Skipper had suffered, but Gray was still unconscious.
When March went below as Stan came to relieve him, he found Sallini
worried.
“His fever’s going up,” he said. “I’ve just given him more sulfa. Don’t
know what it can be but there’s infection somewhere. Wish I could get
those slugs out of him, but that’s a ticklish business.”
“We’ll wait and see,” March said. “Maybe the sulfa will lick the
infection and the fever will come down. If not—well, we’ll decide then
what to do. Meanwhile, get some sleep. You’ve been up all night.”
March lay down on his bunk for a while and managed to drift off to
sleep for three hours. Just as dawn was breaking he got up and had a
cup of coffee, had the boat submerged to periscope depth, and traveled
ahead more slowly, checking regularly to make sure he was exactly on
the course he had agreed on with Scoot.
[Illustration: _The Skipper Was Still Unconscious_]
“I wonder how Scoot’s making out,” he said. “He might be pretty near
that convoy now—if there’s a convoy there.”
Scoot was at that moment disgusted. He had been able to do nothing with
the Jap plane’s radio during all these hours, and now, even with more
light to see by, he could not get it working.
“Maybe when the Japs order radio silence,” he told himself, “they
enforce it by gumming up the radio some way so it _can’t_ be used.
Anyway, I can’t do anything with this baby. I’m going to be keeping
radio silence whether I want to or not.”
So he turned his attention to the sea ahead of him, where he hoped to
sight the convoy. Looking at the chart occasionally and checking his
speed, he calculated where he must be.
Then he saw it! First a few clouds of smoke far ahead on the horizon.
Then little dots below the smoke—dots that were Jap ships. More and
more and more of them he saw, line after line in orderly procession. Up
ahead and at the sides were destroyers and near the front a
battleship—no, two battleships. As he flew on further he made out a
carrier in the center and at the end three cruisers and more destroyers
kept a rear guard.
“Don’t want to get any closer than I have to,” Scoot spoke aloud to
himself. “But I want to get all the dope I can and as accurately as
possible. Got to stick around long enough to check their speed and
course.”
He flew on, counting, checking, making another estimate to compare with
his first.
“About fifty-five ships,” he said to himself. “Eight miles long, three
miles wide. Pretty slow—there must be some old freighters in there.
About ten knots.”
He grabbed a chart and quickly plotted the convoy’s course, wrote brief
notations of his conclusions, tucked the paper into a waterproof pouch
and stuck it in his pocket.
“Won’t trust to memory, anyway,” he said.
Then, feeling that he had learned all he could, he banked the plane and
turned away, still about two miles ahead of the leading ships. He
looked back down at them as he headed eastward once more.
“Right now they’re wondering what’s going on,” he said to himself. “Up
to now they haven’t thought a thing. They saw the plane coming in and
just thought it was a little earlier than they had expected. That maybe
made them wonder if I had some special report. But now they really are
in a dither! They just can’t figure out why I should come so close and
then turn back.”
He laughed. “Well, that’s their problem, not mine.”
He gave the little plane all the speed he could. If they were going to
send up a plane to have a look at him, he wanted to get as far away as
possible. They might send up several planes.
“If they’re fast, then I’m sunk,” Scoot said. “But why should they send
up a flock of planes to look at one Jap seaplane that acts a little
funny?”
He checked his course often, so that he could land where the submarine
could pick him up. And he kept looking behind for the Jap plane that
might be coming after him.
He did not have to wait long for that. Half an hour away from the
convoy he saw the fast little pursuit ship behind him, coming like the
wind. He wished his own plane could travel twice as fast, but he could
not urge another mile per hour from it. Gradually the gap closed
between the two planes.
“Now what?” Scoot asked himself. “What should I do? I’ll keep right on
this course, first of all. And I’ll just keep flying straight ahead as
if I were minding my own business. Nothing much else I _can_ do. That
plane’s got three times the speed and ten times the fire power of this
one!”
The pursuit was only a few hundred yards behind. It stayed there for a
while, apparently awaiting some kind of signal from the seaplane. Then
it came around to one side, and Scoot tried to hide his face.
“First and only time I ever wished I looked like a Jap,” Scoot said.
The fast plane flew alongside the other for a time, slowing down to
keep pace with it, but still some distance to one side.
“What is this?” Scoot asked. “Are we just going out for a spin
together? I wish he’d do something.”
The Jap flier obliged by cutting back and coming up on the other side,
then speeding up and circling around in front. It was at this moment
that he looked full into Scoot’s face. Scoot could even see the alarm
that filled him, the wide eyes, the gasp of amazement, as he realized
that an American was flying the Jap seaplane.
At that moment, Scoot pressed the trigger on his own machine gun, but
it was too late. The Jap had darted out of range just in time. He was
so fast that Scoot could not possibly maneuver his slow ship to battle
him.
“There’s only one chance,” Scoot said to himself, “and I’m going to try
it. If this monkey is the bad shot most of them are, he may miss on his
first try, even with a set-up like me. If he does, that’s my chance.”
The fast pursuit was diving on the seaplane’s tail. Scoot heard the
staccato rattling of the ship’s machine guns.
“Good!” he cried. “Firing while he’s still too far away, like all of
them! Too anxious!”
But then Scoot’s plane wobbled, tipped over, and went spiraling down to
the sea in a slow spin. The pursuit plane circled above and watched.
About fifty feet above the water, the seaplane lurched a little, seemed
to come out of its spin. The pursuit plane pilot looked puzzled, but he
smiled again as he saw the plane stall, slip back and hit the sea, tail
first.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ATTACK!
It was the cold water that brought Scoot to his senses, cold water
creeping up over his chest. When he felt it, he scrambled forward, but
fell back in his seat at once. The arm he had reached out to pull
himself up with would not work. It hung limp at his side. He glanced
down and saw blood streaming from it.
“Got to do something about that!” he muttered dazedly. “Anyway, it
worked. He thought he hit me. I did a nice slow spinning dive. He
thought he’d got the pilot and the plane just went out of control, fell
into a natural slow spin. And did I keep it slow! He must have thought
it was funny when I pulled out of it just over the water, but I didn’t
make it look too good. Couldn’t. But I’d slowed her down plenty, then
put her into a stall and let her flop back tail first.”
The water was creeping higher as Scoot sat there thinking of what had
just happened. Then he shook himself to clear his head, reached up with
his good arm and pulled himself forward. The door of the cockpit was
already wrenched half off, so Scoot crawled out easily enough. But then
he slipped and fell into the water.
The shock revived him a little more so that he grabbed one pontoon.
Slowly and painfully he pulled himself up on it. Then he looked up into
the sky. Far to the west he saw the dot that was the Jap pursuit ship
heading back to its convoy. Scoot smiled weakly.
“He thinks he’s killed an American flier,” he mumbled. “He doesn’t know
how hard that is to do.”
The plane was not sinking any further. Its tail and most of the
fuselage were covered but the nose and wings and pontoons were above
the surface.
“Only one pontoon busted,” Scoot told himself. “The other’s holding us
up—that and the wing tanks that are almost empty.”
Then he saw his broken arm again. He had to stop that flow of blood. He
wriggled forward a little on the sloping pontoon so that he could wrap
his legs around the brace leading from it to the plane’s fuselage. Then
he used his good left arm to rip off most of one side of his shirt.
Holding one end of the strip in his teeth, he wound the cloth around
the bad arm above the break, making it as tight as he could. It slipped
a little as he tied it, but it was fairly tight. The flow of blood did
not stop, but it was greatly reduced.
“Don’t know how much longer I can keep my strength,” he said to
himself. “Better make myself fast somehow.”
[Illustration: _He Tied Himself to the Strut_]
Slowly he struggled out of his trousers, after taking the waterproof
pouch with the convoy information and putting it in his money belt.
Next he tied himself to the strut with the legs of his trousers. Then
he sat, looking eastward in the direction from which _Kamongo_ must
come.
“I’m not quite as far as I ought to be,” he thought, feeling
consciousness leaving him. “They’ll probably go right under me.”
It was there that March found him. He had brought _Kamongo_ to the
surface a short distance before the spot agreed upon for the meeting.
But there had been no sign of Scoot. Keeping steadily ahead on course,
March had ordered all men to stay below at their stations except for
himself and the controlman on the bridge. They were riding the vents,
with main ballast tanks open, and air vents at the top closed. The
water rushed in to fill part of the tanks, but not all of them, because
of the air trapped inside. That still allowed _Kamongo_ enough buoyancy
to keep on the surface, but not at full speed. All that was needed for
a dive was the opening of the air vents at the top of the ballast
tanks. That might save twenty seconds in the diving operations and
twenty seconds might make all the difference in the world.
March had looked frantically over the sea when they reached the
designated spot. Still no sign of Scoot. And no report from the radio.
“Something happened!” he muttered to himself. “Something happened!”
So he continued on the surface—mile after mile beyond the assigned
spot, in danger every minute from enemy planes that might sight him.
Still no word over the radio.
He was just about to give up and order the ship to submerge when he saw
the dot on the sea ahead. He was ready for a dive at any moment—but it
might be Scoot instead of an enemy craft. So he stayed on the surface,
and looked, looked, looked as they came nearer. Then he saw it was a
plane, crashed in a crazy position. He ordered main ballasts pumped and
full speed ahead. Next he ordered men up to man the guns in case this
should prove some trick of the enemy’s.
But long before they reached the plane they knew what it was. When they
were still some distance away, they saw the figure on one of the
pontoons. As they neared the plane, men were ready with a collapsible
boat. Quickly they rowed to the plane, lifted Scoot into the rocking
boat and took him back to the submarine. Lifting him up to the conning
tower, they heard him mumble something. He reached the bridge just in
time to have March lean close to his lips and hear, “Money belt—convoy.”
In another minute Scoot was below in March’s bunk and Sallini was
hovering over him. And March was looking at the chart and the
information about the big Jap convoy. He rushed to the interphone.
“We’ve found it!” he called to all hands. “Scoot Bailey found it. We’re
radioing headquarters, then going in to attack.”
There was a whoop of joy throughout the ship. This was what they came
out in pigboats for—to find a flock of Jap ships and send them to the
bottom!
Quickly March gave details in code to Scotty at the radio and soon the
message was flashing out over the water. In a moment there would be
action on submarines, at airfields, in navy bases to the south and east
where the Americans were waiting for just this news.
Then March took the ship down and they moved forward on a new course,
planned to bring them to the convoy at the earliest possible moment.
March figured it would take about two hours. By that time other ships
and subs would be on their way, and planes would be roaring overhead
soon after he reached the Jap ships.
He went in to Scoot and found Sallini smiling.
“He’ll be fine,” the pharmacist said. “Broken right arm, bad jagged cut
severing the artery. But we’ve got the blood flow stopped now, got the
wound clean and dressed. He’s had some blood plasma and I’ll keep
giving him more as long as he needs it. He lost plenty of blood, but
he’ll be okay fast.”
“Nothing besides the arm?” March asked.
“Just some cuts around the head and one leg,” Sallini said. “Nothing
serious. And exhaustion, too, but we can pull him out of that fast. He
ought to be talking in a few hours and walking in a few days.”
“How’s the Skipper?” March asked.
“Still unconscious. Fever high but receding a little bit. Maybe he’ll
make it.”
“Here I am going into battle with my Skipper and my best friend out
cold!” March exclaimed.
“You’ve got the whole crew with you, sir,” the pharmacist said. “Every
man of ’em. Let’s get in the middle of that bunch of Jap ships and
blast the daylights out of ’em!”
Tension began to rise in the boat as they neared the convoy, traveling
at a hundred and fifty feet where no shadow of a sub would be likely to
be seen from the air. March got on the phone and told all hands the
plan of attack, not minimizing the dangers.
“We’re going into the middle,” March said. “Alone. It was the Skipper’s
plan. We’ll be the first there, and we’re to scatter them so the planes
will find easy pickings and the other subs can pick them off as they
scamper away. We’ll have all tubes ready to go at just about the same
time—six fore and four aft. Then we’ll duck for all we’re worth and
we’ll go mighty deep and lay low.”
There was another shout through the ship and the men stood eagerly at
their posts. And then came waiting, tense waiting, as the ship moved
forward. Men had a cup of coffee, smoked a cigarette, walked back and
forth nervously. But they did little talking. They were waiting,
listening.
Finally the sound man picked up something.
“Propellers,” he said, “plenty of them—ten degrees to port.”
“Take her to two hundred feet,” March ordered, and then gave a slight
change in course to the helmsman.
“We’ll get right in their path and lay low without motors running. The
sound detectors on the advance destroyers won’t catch us, then. When
they’ve passed over we can pick up motors again because their own
propellers will kill all the sound ours make. We’ll come up in about
the middle, pick our spot and let go. I’ll want the periscope up for
just about five seconds.”