LITMIR.BIZ

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truth was, he simply felt more secure knowing that the boat was manned. Now he had good reason to be glad of his caution.

      He stood at the edge of the bulkhead and shouted to his men, but no one heard above the noise of wind and fire. The usual way to board, along the pier and across the decks of the other two subs, was obviously out. He scanned the edge of the bulkhead; if necessary, he would swim. That might not be necessary, though. Fifty feet along, an iron ladder led down to the river, and he thought he saw a dinghy in the deep shadows at its foot. He grabbed Charlie’s arm, pointed, and shouted in his ear. Moments later they were in the dinghy, and moments after that they were clambering up the tumble home of the submarine, helped by eager hands from the crew. Jack’s climb to the bridge was made harder by a right shoe full of river water.

      “Right, Fuller, I relieve you,” he snapped. “Report.”

      “Aye, aye, sir. The maneuvering watch is at its stations. The men on deck are line-handlers.” His shoulders slumped a fraction from attention, and a look of worry crossed his face. “I didn’t know what to do, skipper. I’ve never gotten a boat this size under way, but I figured if worse came to worst, I’d rather go aground on the other side somewhere than watch her burn to the waterline.”

      Jack clapped him on the shoulder. The kid couldn’t be more than twenty-two, barely old enough to buy a beer, but in an emergency he would have to be ready to take responsibility for the ship and the lives of her crew. By the time Jack was through with him, he would be. “Good work, Fuller. I’ll want you on the bridge with me. Charlie, stand by in the maneuvering room.”

      “Aye, aye, sir.” Andrews slid quickly through the hatch and disappeared.

      Jack thumbed the button on the squawk box and shouted, “Maneuvering!”

      “Maneuvering, aye, aye,” came the distorted reply.

      “This is the captain. Prepare to answer bells on four engines.”

      “Aye, aye, sir!” The engine-room jockeys must have been hoping for that; the command was answered instantly by a whine as number-one diesel turned over and caught with a roar, followed rapidly by the other three giant engines.

      He cupped his hands and leaned over the metal fairing that protected the bridge. “Line-handlers!” he shouted. “Single-up fore and aft!” The Manta was linked to her neighbor by twelve thick hawsers, three from each of the four stanchions spaced along the deck. The men leaped to the nearest stanchion and started untying two of the three hawsers, or ‘singling-up,’ in preparation for casting off. Jack watched them for a moment, then turned to study the fire. It had continued to spread through the wooden building, but more slowly, he thought. Perhaps the fire crew was beginning to get the upper hand. They would not be in time to save the sub closest to the pier, though. He thought of the sweat and treasure that had gone into the building of that boat, and of the lives that might be lost because the Pacific Fleet was short a vital warship, and made an instantaneous decision. “Belay that!” he shouted to the line-handlers. “As you were!”

      Fuller was staring at him, wondering what had happened. He was not in doubt for long. “Fuller, I want you to take three volunteers across to that far sub and cut her loose from the dock. Take fire axes; you’re not going to want to waste any time around the campfire. Work from stern forward, and as soon as the bow lines are cut, hang on; this may be a bumpy ride. What’s the tide now?”

      The ensign glanced at his watch. “Still ebbing, sir; half an hour to slack.”

      “Very well; off you go.”

      Fuller gave him a snappy salute. “Aye, aye, sir!”

      As soon as he was on his way, Jack started having second thoughts. What he was proposing to do was to use the Manta to tow the entire nest of three submarines away from the burning dock and out into the river. He had no idea how such an ungainly raft would handle. The lines connecting the boats might break under the strain. The repeated collisions of one boat against another might do major structural damage, in spite of the thick rope-fenders placed between them along their lengths. He might overstrain Manta’s engines, delaying her commissioning and his formal assumption of command. No one would blame him if he saved his boat and left the others to their fate, but if he went ahead with this crazy scheme and failed, plenty of people would be ready to second-guess him and claim that the other subs would have been safer left as they were.

      Fuller and his men had reached the inboard sub and were sheltering from the flames behind the conning tower, preparing their dash to the stern moorings. There was still time to call them back. Jack gnawed briefly at his knuckle. No, by God! He was not going to leave a brand-new submarine to such a doom. Better that all three should sink in the middle of the Thames River—not that he expected that to happen—than that he should desert that boat at a time like this.

      Four figures ran across the deck of the distant sub, brandishing axes and reminding Jack for a moment of an old engraving of the Boston Tea Party. One of the firemen saw them and directed a spray of water at them, to cool them down and protect them from the heat of the flames. Jack hoped they wouldn’t freeze instead.

      The Manta trembled slightly as the thick hawsers parted under a rain of ax blows. Jack leaned over the bridge speaker. “Conn!”

      “Conn, aye, aye.”

      “Who’s on the wheel?”

      “White, sir; quartermaster.”

      “Okay, listen up, White: we’ll be under way in a minute, and you’re going to feel like you’re steering a runaway truck by dragging your foot behind it. So stay awake, and whatever you do, do it handsomely.”

      A gruff but enthusiastic “Aye, aye, sir” from the speaker. Fuller’s crew had disposed of the second bunch of lines and were starting on the third. When those let go, the three submarines would be linked to land only by the bow of one of them. Under pressure from the wind and the ebbing tide, the boats would swing at that point, crushing the bow of the Manta into the concrete bulkhead along the shore. As one of the men raised his ax for a final blow, Jack ordered, “Rudder amidships—all back one-third.” The water foamed under the stern of the Manta as the powerful electric motors drew current from the generators and turned the huge bronze propellers. The boat shuddered, and an unearthly shriek came from one of the hawsers as it slipped under the strain, but the three boats maintained their position, safe from a collision with the bulkhead.

      The four men were at the bow now, chopping furiously at the last bunch of lines. What should Jack do when the boats were free? As he backed out into the river, the sterns would swing downstream. His wisest move would be to go with it, ending up in the fairway, well away from both banks, the bows facing into the wind and current, then try to hold the boats there until help came.

      The last line was severed, and the linked boats started to move slowly backward. As the stems began to come out of the lee of the pier, the wind and tide caught them, just as Jack had expected, and started a lurching counterclockwise swing. Now it was the bow of the inboard sub that was in danger of colliding, with the burning pier. “Rudder left one-third! All aback full!”

      Foam boiled up between Manta and her neighbor and was caught by the wind. Jack was drenched instantly. The water of the Thames tasted foul, and he resolved not to think what might be in it. The boats were backing straight into the river now, and the bows were almost clear of the pier. “Rudder amidships—port back two-thirds!” That would pull the tail around into the fairway, leaving him where he wanted to be. He spared a moment to watch Fuller and his three men leap across onto the Manta’s deck. The boy had a lot of guts; he would do well if he survived.

      Time to stop this do-si-do. “Rudder left full—all ahead full!” Three submarines, at two thousand tons apiece, gather a lot of momentum once they start moving. It was not easy to stop the swing with their bows pointing upriver, then to balance the force of tide and wind with the force of the Manta’s motors, to keep the boats alongside the Electric Boat complex, but Jack and his quartermaster managed for nearly a quarter of an hour. At that point two of the shipyard tugs showed up and took the straying submarines under their wing, and half an hour after that

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