Part 2
Moreover the salt water had apparently seeped through the deck in the battery-room and reached the batteries, probably causing them to go dead, but what was much worse, it was forming chlorine gas. This gas, which is so deadly that it was used during the war for gas attacks, was finding its way into the control-room through small leaks around supposedly watertight fittings in the battery-room bulkhead. Faint whiffs of this gas began to be noticed, both by its pungent smell and by the effect on the throat, which caused dry hacking coughs. While we might fight the carbon dioxide and live for a week, the chlorine gas was a much more serious matter. It cut down our breathing limit from a possible week to two days at most.
The Captain was everywhere, encouraging the men. His leadership and resourcefulness were an inspiration to us all. In the face of the coming horrors which hour by hour were stealing in on us, he was somehow able to imbue us all with that “never-give-up” spirit which accomplishes miracles.
* * * * *
Some time after the lighting system failed, the Captain called the officers together to discuss possible ways of getting some message to the surface. He tried to keep us from seeing how discouraged he was, but we sensed it in spite of his efforts. The Exec advanced a theory that we might shoot out some calcium—obtained from the torpedo torch-pots, a few of which were in the magazine. This could be done through the submarine signaling device which was used in wartime for sending secret smoke signals to the surface to make friendly but overzealous vessels stop trying to sink you with depth mines. This calcium, when ejected, would form gas which upon rising to the surface, and coming in contact with the air, would burst into flame. In this way, the oil which we had blown out might catch fire and thus attract the attention of any passing ship, particularly at night. It seemed rather a far-fetched theory, but we had reached the stage where we had nothing to lose by trying it.
Then escape through the conning-tower was considered. As a last resort we could try that! But as the Captain put it: “At this depth, I’m afraid that the pressure would get us, for with a pressure of two or three tons per square foot, our lungs would probably collapse, in which case we would sink instead of rise. If we did get to the surface alive, we would probably get the ‘bends’ or lose consciousness from the pressure, and drown. Life preservers wouldn’t prevent that, and we only have a few aboard anyway. That gives me an idea, though! We might roll up a kapoc mattress lengthwise, cut our message into that piece of oilcloth I saw lying around here, and sew it around the mattress. We could shoot that through the conning-tower escape hatch; the air bubbles would carry it to the surface, and as kapoc floats, it might be picked up by some ship, particularly if by that time they were looking for us. We will need a volunteer for this, for someone will have to manipulate the conning-tower hatch, and that man, to have any chance of withstanding the pressure, must be one of the strongest among us.”
“When you’re ready, Captain, I want to be that man,” spoke up Bowers, “for I can probably stand the pressure better than anyone else, as I’ve had some deep-sea diving experience. What’s more, I caused all this.”
“All right, Bowers,” said the Captain, visibly moved, “when the time comes, if I don’t take on the job myself, your offer may be accepted. But I don’t want to try that yet, for it would mean draining a lot of water into the boat, just making us that much heavier; and I don’t want to do anything that will jeopardize our chances of getting our stern to the surface, for I have not given up hope of that by a damn’ sight and won’t so long as this chlorine gas allows us to keep moving weight forward.”
* * * * *
The calcium ejection was tried out, and was to be tried again that night. The results, of course, we unfortunately could not tell.
The hydrophone listener reported that he thought he detected a ship passing about five o’clock that evening. It was encouraging to know that ships did occasionally pass, but they couldn’t help us yet for we had no way of letting them know where we were, unless they passed almost over us, in which case we might attract their attention by the oil slick, or blowing out big bubbles of air through the tanks. However, the Captain used the news to encourage the crew as much as possible.
[Illustration: Just as we took our big angle, a mess-cook, passing through the control-room, was thrown off his balance; soup and broken dishes were sprayed all over the deck.]
All through the night we worked—with no thought of sleep. Most of the flashlights had gone out. The men, in relays, worked at the hand pumps, pumping away in the darkness, hoping against hope that they would live to see the light of day.
The chlorine gas in the forward, now the lower part of the ship, had become almost too much to work in. Fortunately, we had a few gas-masks left over from our war allowance which were used by those whose duties kept them working forward. There were not enough to go around, however, as part of our allowance was kept in the flooded torpedo-room.
The futuristic effect of men in gas-masks, working their way up and down in a ship almost standing on its head, with the occasional flicker of a flashlight, was a sight to haunt one in one’s dreams.
The uncertainty of our fate made the suspense almost unbearable, and the chlorine gas wouldn’t let us think of anything but a terrible end.
At six the next morning—to think that meant glorious sunshine to those sailing tranquilly above us!—we had finally, by superhuman effort, got all after tanks dry, and nearly all movable weights forward. And our angle was only seventy-three degrees!
If we moved all hands forward and then could not get our angle, we were probably doomed, for it would take days to break down the heavy engine parts and move them, all in darkness; time would defeat us, as it has in other cases we all remembered but too well.
So we played our last card.
Forty-two men dragged themselves forward—that meant down into the chlorine gas—one man remaining aft in case of emergency, while the Captain watched the angle indicator with one of the two last remaining and fast-dimming flashlights.
We had done it! We had made her do what we wanted her to do, and with a little to spare, for she settled just a hair above seventy-eight degrees. At last we could commence cutting the hole in the hull. This hole, to be above water, had to be way aft where the ship tapers to almost nothing, and as all such corners are utilized for special fixtures, storage, etc., the working space was very cramped. Then too, this now being the top part of the ship, the air was so foul that a man could only work ten or fifteen minutes before he would become exhausted and have to be relieved.
Twenty-five hours after our crash dive, the cold chisel—for we had to use hand tools—finally pierced the hull, and brought daylight!
Four hours more of body-racking work before we had a hole big enough to stick the head through.
No ships in sight!
* * * * *
A long pole made by joining several sections of the pipe-frames of the crew’s bunks together with a mattress cover painted with red lead tied on the end, was, after some trouble, finally forced through this hole. The slight roll of the ship from the ground-swell caused our distress signal to wave back and forth. We also tried to give it additional motion by sliding it up and down as much as our cramped quarters would allow. From time to time the signal was pulled in to look for ships. Just before sundown the Captain took a final look. Again nothing in sight! It looked like another night in hell, perhaps several more, if we could live that long.
He had just pulled his head in when he thought he heard a steamer’s whistle. Were his senses deceiving him? The thought came to him that he must be losing his mind. Now even his eyes were deceiving him, for there certainly seemed to be a ship out there where none had been before—and not more than a few hundred yards away. Could it have approached at such an angle that the projection of the stern kept it out of sight until close aboard?
* * * * *
It turned out to be a Coast Guard destroyer which had seen the flag, thought it looked suspicious—some rum-runner’s trick—and had come over to investigate.
Well, we were soon out of our death-trap, thanks to some good seamanship on the destroyer’s part in keeping our stern up with her anchor-chain, while they quickly enlarged the hole so that we could be pulled out, many of our crew being half-dead from gas, strain and exhaustion.
As the Captain, the last to leave the ship, climbed exhaustedly up the side of the destroyer, grimy, oily, unshaven, weary in mind and body, with throat and lungs raw from the chlorine gas, he was handed a radio from his Division Commander which had been intercepted by the destroyer, asking: “Why do you not make position reports?”
He turned to his officers, who were waiting to see that he got aboard safely, and handed them the message. “Here, one of you answer this for me. My brain won’t work any longer; I am dead on my feet. Seems to me you had some sort of a bet on these messages, anyway.”
“That’s right, we did,” said Bud, as he glanced at the radio, and out of force of habit, was about to turn to Jack Lansing and start in on who had won the bet, but he too was so exhausted he could not remember just what the bet was about—and what’s more, decided he did not care.
“All right, Captain, I’ll attend to it for you. Shall I give the Division Commander the whole story?” he asked.
“Hell, no! Get some sleep. Just reply ‘Position Vertical!’”
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the May 1929 issue of Blue Book magazine.]