The Watch Below Read Online Free PDF Page A

coffer dam, and if the dam

was flooded with the ship on the surface and completely undamaged there

would still be considerable pressure down here. And we are not sinking --

or if we are it is very slowly! The pitch and roll is as bad as it ever

was, and if we were even a short distance below the surface the wave

motions would have been damped out. My guess is that we're completely

awash, maybe with just the poop and bridge decks showing -- these tankers

are very hard to sink, you know -- and we could drift that way forever."

It sounded good, Wallis thought. So eminently sane and logical that he was

beginning to believe it himself. When he went on his voice was steady and

quietly confident.

"As for the breaking-up noises," he said, "I think you are mistaken there.

Breaking off , yes, but not breaking up. The bows have been hit and the

torpedo probably blew the whole forepeak off the ship. The noises we hear

are loose plating and deck gear being pushed about by the waves. Some of it

is breaking off and falling away. And good riddance, because the more

we lose the greater will be our buoyancy and the higher we will ride in

the water. . . ."

Neither of them spoke for a long time after that. The motion of the deck

caused the lamp to slide away and the lighting on the doctor's face became

less stark. The mad glitter went out of his eyes and the features softened

until they again became those of the dour and competent surgeon lieutenant

whom they had all known but had not exactly loved. Finally Radford spoke.

"If you think there is no immediate danger, sir," he said stiffly,

"I will return to my patients."

Wallis nodded. He said, "I'll join you later. At the moment I'd like to

have another look around. . . ."

But when the doctor and his lamp disappeared into Number Three, Wallis

did not do anything for a very long time. Alone at last, he was having

a fit of the shakes.

IV

Someone had tied the girls very securely to a raft when their ship had

been going down. Possibly the same person had tied himself to the raft

but had not been able to do such a thorough job of it and had been swept

off, or maybe he had not been able to hang on, or had not wanted to hang

on when the raft drifted into the patch of burning oil. But someone had

kept his head amid the flames and explosions and roaring steam to spend

precious minutes seeing that two girls were given a chance to live.

There was very little known about this person other than that he had been

a Lascar seaman with a badly scalded face. The dark-haired girl had babbled

this information several times during her delirium even though the doctor

had failed to elicit from her her own name. The blonde girl had not spoken

at all.

"We must speak quietly," Wallis said, looking at the two bandaged figures

across the room. "This will have to be broken to them gently or they might

. . . Well, they've been through a lot."

Radford nodded silently.

From the stretcher which lay on the deck between them, First Officer Dickson,

his head bandaged, his left arm splinted, and his cracked ribs bound

tightly with tape, said, "I couldn't talk loud . . . if you paid me."

In all probability it was late in the day after they had been torpedoed,

although they were not sure of this because the doctor had banged his

watch against the coaming of one of the watertight doors and there was

now no way of telling the time. But enough time had passed for the early

feeling of panic to disappear. Panic, it seemed, was an extremely violent

and short-lived emotion. When it was not followed shortly by escape or

death or some other form of relief it degenerated quickly into simple

fear. And when their surroundings remained steadfastly, monotonously the

same -- no change in the attitude of the ship, no failures of watertight

doors, no threatening occurrence of any kind -- even their fear began

to subside.

Wallis had spent a long time going through the tanks and searching