Chapter VIII: Under the Sea

The sailor indicated two upper bunks and left them by way of the forward hatch to their own devices. There was a table where the passage was widest, a greasy, much-stained affair that evidently came to pieces when not wanted and was stowed away somewhere. It was the only thing in the quarters that offered a seat, aside from the bunks, and Pete perched himself on it and looked about him.

“Well, here we are, Kid,” he said, cheerfully. “Say, I never expected to be entertained on board a German sub! What do you think about those bunks?” He nodded toward the two that had been awarded them. “Not what you’d call invitin’, eh?”

Dave shook his head. “I hate to think of sleeping in them,” he answered. “But I suppose we’ll have to.”

“I guess so. Others is doin’ it.” The fact was evident from the sounds that came from several of them. “Well, I’ll try anything once.”

“I guess they don’t mean to shoot us, anyway,” said Dave.

“No, they’ll hand us over to their friends on shore and we’ll kick our heels around one o’ their prison camps for the rest o’ the war, I guess.”

“But that’s fierce!” protested Dave.

“Yeah, ain’t it? Well, then, what we’ve got to do is find a way out o’ this.”

Dave looked uneasily about him. The compartment was illy lighted and the bunks were gloomy caverns, but a number held occupants, and there was always the chance that one of the latter might understand English. He reminded Pete of that fact.

“That’s right, too,” agreed the latter, sinking his voice. “Anyway, there ain’t anything we can do right now. I wish I had some chow. I’m starved. Wonder when they eat on this Pullman.”

“Maybe there’s a buffet on board,” suggested Dave, making a weak attempt at a joke.

“Sure, why not?” Pete slid off the wabbly table and went prospecting forward. The compartment was about forty feet in length and held twenty-two bunks in two tiers, twelve on one side and ten on the other. At the forward end, in place of the last two bunks on the port side, stood an electric range, a cupboard for dishes, a small sink, and a big coffee tank whose copper surface glowed dimly in the half-light. There was also, below the cupboard, an ice box. To Pete’s delight the coffee, although the electric coil beneath the tank was not going, was still lukewarm, and he found two aluminum cups and held them under the spigot. There was no milk in the coffee, but it was sickeningly sweet. They were not fussy, however, and drank two cups of it. Then Pete discovered another cupboard across the passage and rightly suspected that it held food. But as it was locked he couldn’t profit by the discovery. They peered through the forward bulkhead door and were confronted by gray gloom through which loomed big tanks and huge pipes and long metal cylinders.

“Torpedo compartment,” murmured Pete. “If they catch us lookin’ they’ll shoot us through a tube, I guess.”

They went back, and finding an unoccupied lower bunk, made themselves as comfortable as they might against the supporting uprights. From the tiny round hatch overhead a golden column of sunlight slanted down. From the engine room, far aft, came the deafening noise of the Diesels. There was a rather soothing side-to-side motion quite different from that of an ordinary boat.

“She must be a pretty big one,” said Pete. “’Most two hundred feet long, I guess. What was the number on her?”

“_U-H-37._”

“What’s the H for, do you guess?”

“It’s the class number. The U stands for _Untersee_.”

“They wouldn’t have to tell us that,” jeered Pete. “Any one could tell it wasn’t a flyin’ machine. Wonder what it’s like when the crazy thing sinks. Blamed if I see how we’re going to get away from here, Kid. I talked sort o’ big to the cap., but I guess our chance of makin’ a get-away ain’t worth a whole lot.”

“S-sh!” cautioned Dave. There was a stirring in a nearby bunk, and slowly there emerged the lower body of a sailor. There was a prodigious yawn and then the rest of the man came into view. He looked to be about thirty, and was small and thin. The face that turned in their direction was pale and tired and apathetic. Later they found the same true of most of the countenances seen on the boat. The man disentangled himself from a gray blanket, and thrust his feet into a pair of boots. Then, yawning again, he arose and came toward Dave and Pete. In front of them he stopped and stared hard. Then:

“Where’d you fellers come from?” he asked in good English.

“Your old man pulled us out o’ the water an hour or so ago,” answered Pete. “Say, I seen you before somewhere, ain’t I?”

“I don’t know. Maybe so. I lived in New York a good while. You come from New York?”

“Sure! Where was you in New York?”

“All around. I’m a waiter. I worked in ’most a dozen places there. I was there nine years.”

“Well, I seen you somewhere, all right. How do you like this job? Beats waitin’, eh?”

“It beats everything,” said the German with grim humor. “It is awful.” He scowled darkly. “Pretty soon I’m going to chuck it. Where did you live in New York?”

“All around.” Pete waved a hand vaguely. “Vanderbilt, Astor, Plaza――all them places.”

“You’re joking,” replied the other, without a smile. “What has happened? I went to sleep after we chased a little American yacht. Were you on that?”

“We was. Now we ain’t. It’s the fortunes o’ war. Say, what happened to her? Did you thugs get her?”

The man shrugged. “I do not think so. It was very foggy.”

“Fine! What time do we eat here?”

“Twelve o’clock. It ain’t eating, though. It’s just――just――” He shrugged his shoulders, at a loss.

“Don’t sound good to me,” said Pete, shaking his head. “Your captain told us we’d get treated fine an’ have plenty of food. If the chow ain’t good, I’ll leave. I give you fair warnin’, friend.”

The German didn’t seem to have a smile left in him, however. He only shook his head glumly. “They won’t let you go,” he said. “If you behave, maybe they’ll take you ashore, and you’ll go to a prison.”

“If we behave!” ejaculated Dave. “What will happen if we don’t?”

The German shrugged again. “I don’t know. I guess the captain will throw you overboard and let you drown.”

“I don’t think I like your captain,” said Pete. “Drown is what we’d do, too, for the thief swiped our life-vests.”

“You mustn’t call the captain a thief. If he heard you he would punish you. I must go now. I hope all goes well with you. I like Americans. I have many good friends in New York.”

“You mean you had,” said Pete, gruffly. “If you like Americans, what in thunder are you fighting ’em for?”

“But it is not my country, America. I fight for my country.”

“Go to it, bo! It won’t get you much!”

“I hope he chokes,” growled Pete when the sailor had taken himself aft down the long, dim passage. “They make me tired, that sort. Come over to the U. S. A. and make a good livin’, an’ then, when trouble starts, beat it back here an’ try to strafe us. If I had my way I’d dump the lot of ’em in the harbor before they got a chance.”

“But there are lots that haven’t done that, Pete. Many German-born men are now good Americans.”

“Sure, that’s so. But guys like that gets my goat. Hello, what’s happenin’ now?”

“_Tauch station!_” came the command along the passage.

There was a sudden silence, for the moment more appalling than the former clamor, followed by a rushing sound of water on all sides. The light from the hatch was cut off and they heard the latter clanging shut. A man hurried into the compartment, climbed the ladder beneath the hatch and secured it with bolts. The rushing of water continued for a full two minutes and then stopped, and in the ensuing stillness they heard low voices of command from the central station. What the words were were beyond them, but the result was soon perceptible, for there came, instead of the noisy clatter of the oil engines, the low purr of the motors, the forward end of the submarine tilted downwards, producing a disconcerting effect on the boys’ stomachs, lights sprang into brilliancy up and down the compartment and they knew that the _U-H-37_ was submerging. Somewhere at hand an electric gong rang loudly. Mutters came from the depths of light-flooded bunks and, one by one, five occupants crawled forth.

“We’re diving,” murmured Pete in an awed voice. “I never thought I’d be scootin’ around under the ocean, Kid. Say, supposin’ they couldn’t get the blamed thing up again!”

The newly awakened sailors, a weary-eyed, listless looking lot, viewed the boys with a mild curiosity that had changed to indifference by the time they had donned their sea boots and shuffled out. The submarine was on an even keel now and, save for a slight sidewise motion, they could not have told whether it was going ahead, astern, or lying still. But the swing and the hum of the motors suggested progress. Pete’s countenance bore an uneasy look and he viewed the moist walls with a striking absence of enthusiasm.

“I didn’t count on this sort o’ thing when I enlisted,” he demurred. “Do you guess that captain knows what’s he up to?”

“Or down to?” suggested Dave. “I guess he’s done this before, Pete. Do you suppose we’re just under the surface, or way down?”

“Way down, because she was slanted a long time. Say, it’s sort o’ wonderful, ain’t it?” Pete grew more reconciled as nothing alarming followed the plunge. “Think of sailin’ along under the ocean like this, with electric lights an’ beds――sort o’――an’, I hope, food! You got to hand it to ’em, Dave, these Germans. They’re cute, all right!”

“We invented submarines ourselves,” Dave protested, patriotically.

“Sure, I know that. An’ maybe that guy Napoleon invented war, but the Germans improved a lot on it, Kid! I guess the trouble with us fellers is that just as soon as we’ve gone an’ invented a thing we lose interest in it, an’ some other guy has to take a hold and fix it up shipshape an’ proper. Look at the flyin’ machine. We invented that, too, didn’t we? Well, they tell me that all the flyin’ machines we’ve got you could put in your eye.”

“But we’re building a lot of them.”

“Yeah, an’ submarines, too. That’s where the Huns have the edge on us, see? They ain’t buildin’; they’ve built!”

Presently another man crawled out of a bunk at the galley end of the quarters, yawned, and busied himself about the stove and food lockers. If he saw the prisoners he paid them no attention. Presently he donned a dirty white jacket that covered him to the knees, and began the preparation of the midday meal. Pete sniffed approvingly as the odor of cooking began to permeate the already none too fresh air of the compartment.

“Wonder will it be beefsteak?” he said. “What’s it smell like to you, Kid?”

“Something horribly German,” replied Dave, disgustedly. “Maybe some of their beastly sausages.”

But it proved later to be neither beefsteak nor sausage, but a thin, watery stew that held many half-cooked vegetables and little meat. With it there was plenty of grayish bread and some greasy substance that was used as butter, but that had certainly never seen a cow. There was coffee, too, and, as dessert, dried pears stewed in molasses. Dinner was consumed by the crew in relays. The warrant and petty officers ate first and then the men. No one sat down to the table, although some perched themselves on the edges of the nearby bunks. There was little conversation. The men ate methodically and without apparent enjoyment, drinking cup after cup of the over-sweet coffee, now heated to boiling temperature. The air in the quarters was hot and stagnant and filled with all the odors of the boat and of the cooking.

As none offered food to Dave and Pete, they presently helped themselves from the bowls on the table and presented their cups to the silent, phlegmatic cook for coffee. One or two of the sailors tried to talk to them in German, but soon desisted when Pete replied in English. There were black looks from some, but for the most part petty officers and men seemed absolutely indifferent to the boys’ presence there. Perhaps, thought Dave, prisoners were frequent aboard the _U-H-37_!

The afternoon passed slowly. The promised work didn’t materialize. Dave amused himself trying to read a German magazine that he found under a bunk, but what little he had learned of the language was not equal to the task. Pete whistled or hummed and frequently expressed a longing for chewing gum. Once the torpedo crew went forward and busied themselves mysteriously, but nothing interesting followed, and after an hour or so they returned, muttering gutturally as they passed. They didn’t see the English speaking man again until supper time, and then not to talk with. After washing his pots and pans the cook crawled back into his bunk and was seen no more until just before the evening meal. Pete said he guessed that if he had to be on a submarine, he’d prefer to be the cook. Once or twice water gurgled and rushed through the pipes and the submarine tilted her nose up or down, but she didn’t get back to the surface. Dave had removed his watch from a trousers pocket before relinquishing his own togs, and now he managed to get it going again, setting it by guess work. It was a long, dull afternoon, unbroken by any incident of interest. Men crawled in and out of bunks, snored or read papers, made periodical trips to the coffee tank and paid no more attention to the prisoners than to so many flies.

Supper was worse than dinner because there was less of it. The atmosphere got staler and heavier with every passing hour, and Dave found that he could hardly keep his eyes open after he had consumed a small portion of tasteless canned meat. Even the coffee he drank failed to exert the usual wakeful effect, and after being banished from the bunk they had perched themselves on by the scowling owner of it, they climbed to their own dirty mattresses and stretched out. Dave stared a while at the white arch of steel above him, with its cluster of white pipes and yellow stains and trickling drops of water, and tried to realize the strangeness of his circumstances, but his eyes were too heavy to stay open and his brain too sleep-drugged to work, and in a very few minutes he was sound asleep.

It seemed but a few minutes later, although it was in reality many hours instead, when he was awakened by the tocsin-like alarm gong. Up and down the long compartment, bunks were emptying. Hurrying feet echoed in the passage. He caught the word “torpedo” among others. Another bell rang, this time farther away, and with a tinkling sound. The junior officer, whom Dave had not seen since they had boarded the submarine, passed on his way to the forward torpedo compartment. From that mysterious chamber came strange sounds, the rushing of water in tanks, the sounding of grating metal, the rolling of heavy wheels, sharp words of command. He scrambled from his bunk and climbed to where he could awaken Pete. But Pete was already awake.

“What’s the silly row?” he demanded, blinking.

“I don’t know for certain,” answered Dave, excitedly, “but I think they’re going to make an attack!”

“Who is?” asked Pete, dazedly.

“Why――why, the Germans!”

Pete threw his legs over the side and searched for his boots. “Are, eh? Well, this is no place for your Uncle Pete, Kid! Gangway!” He landed on the floor with a thud. “If one of our chasers gets to droppin’ depth charges around I want to be where I can run!”