Attack of the Seawolf

But Vaughn wouldn’t be much use dead, to Morris or the ship. Reluctantly he finally left the bridge, fought the water flooding the access trunk, jumped down the hatch and shut it after him. He hung onto the ladder in a blacked-out tunnel, dogging the hatch above. He climbed down the ladder in the unlit tunnel and banged on the lower hatch. He could hear the latch being spun open, then saw the crescent of light from the passageway below as the hatch was opened.

He stepped down onto the step off pad and into the control room, soaked, and found the men in the room looking at him. He could see the questions in their faces. Where was Commander Morris …?

He told them without being asked … “He’s overboard,” Vaughn said, his voice dead.

“His lanyard got caught in the screw.”

“I know,” Commander Lennox said, lowering the periscope.

“I saw it all in the type 20. Vaughn, there was nothing you could do.”

Vaughn looked at Lennox in surprise for a moment, wondering if the XO had gotten over his dazed confusion when the ship went aground. He seemed to be functional now, if still somewhat haunted. Perhaps thinking he was losing Vaughn had startled him back to reality, for if Vaughn had gone overboard with Morris, Lennox would have been the only man capable of driving Tampa to freedom.

“Is the screw still stopped?”

“Yes,” Lennox said.

“I took the conn when it looked like you were having trouble, but we’re still at all stop.”

“Order up ahead standard and plane up to the surface,” Vaughn said.

“Do an Anderson turn and come around to the point we lost him. I’ll try to see if I can spot him. You keep looking on the scope. Get a boat hook from the first lieutenant’s locker and pass it up.”

“Helm, all ahead standard,” Lennox ordered.

Buffalo Sauer turned the needle on the engine indicator to STANDARD. An answering needle matched the ordered needle.

“Maneuvering answers ahead standard,” Buffalo called out.

Vaughn waited at the ladder to the bridge, his face grim.

* * *

Through the haze of panic that had taken over Jack Morris’s mind, there was, amazingly, still a kernel of rational thought, though it was fast disappearing. It was that one point of dim light left in his mind that allowed him to feel the screw begin to rotate again, slowly at first, then speeding up, spinning Morris like a pinwheel. As the massive brass screw moved it sliced through the canvas of his lanyard. The screw turned even faster until the blood rushed to Morris’s head, the force of the motion nearly snuffing out what little life was left in him.

At sixty-four RPM of the fifteen-foot-diameter screw, Morris’s remaining harness strap broke, and the motion of the spinning propeller sent him twisting off into the sea. His body rose up toward the surface some twenty feet above with such force that he was tossed out of the water and up into an arc. Finally he crashed back down into the black bay water, submerging again for just an instant, then bobbing back to the surface.

Instinctively his body coughed up a lungful of water and sucked in the air.

He was not aware of breathing or coughing or floating.

He had lost consciousness, partly from the lack of oxygen, partly from the rush of blood to his head while spinning on Tampa’s propeller. He floated in the water of the bay, his face raised to the cloudy sky, wheezing as he breathed in the sea air. Off to the south, lightning flashed. Moments later the thunder rolled over the water and the rain began.

* * *

“I see him,” Vaughn shouted into the radio.

“All stop.

Right full rudder … rudder amidships! All back one third. All stop!”

Vaughn had pulled the ship up so that Morris was just a few feet forward of the sail, against the hull, but the hull was thirty-three feet in diameter, which put Morris sixteen feet away from the deck. At least where the deck used to be — as soon as Vaughn stopped the ship it began to sink. It was trimmed too heavy, and in spite of pumping out the depth-control tanks and the bilges, the ship was too heavy to stay up on the surface at low speed with the ballast tanks full. As Vaughn watched, calling out to Morris, the sail was going down until the water lapped at the lip of the sail. Once again Vaughn dived down the hatch and emerged below, the boat hook in his hands.

“You want to try again?” Lennox asked.

“I couldn’t pull that close to him in ten years of trying,” Vaughn said.

“Without being stable on the surface I can’t reach him. And I can’t maneuver because I’ll suck him into the screw.”

“He might already be dead—” “We. He was breathing.”

“You could tell that in the dark, in the rain?”

Vaughn was silent.

“Lube Oil, we have to leave him. It’ll be light in a few hours and with the rain we may never see him again. Save the ship, Eng.”

“Wait.” Vaughn moved to a console set into the overhead immediately aft of the periscope stand. He screwed in two fuses that were taped to the front of the console and nipped up a toggle, pulled a microphone off a hook, stopped and looked at Lennox.

“We got a call sign

Lennox nodded.