overdue and presumed lost

Aoogah! Aoogar! The vintage Model T horn bellowed urgently in response to the exec's rapid punches. Air began to whistle and hiss from the diving vents, producing a series of miniature fountains along Sailfin's already-awash main deck. Cooper could feel the submarine dip downward as incompressible seawater slammed into the bow planes even as they dropped from their stowed position. Performing like steeply tilted airplane wings, they forced the submarine's bow under, sending great torrents of water crashing into the lower superstructure.

Dawson lay sprawled on the bridge deck. Still stunned from the shock wave of Sailfin's last torpedo--when it blew up minutes ago in the previous destroyer’s galley--he had barely managed to extricate himself from the ludicrous fetal position. The effort had released a whirlpool of nausea. The resulting dizziness sapped his tenuous reserve, forcing him to lie perfectly still for fear that he might pass out entirely.

"Come on, Captain. We're going below." Tapping the almost superhuman surge of strength, which the electrifying adrenaline had unleashed, Cooper grabbed a fistful of his commander’s shirt-front and yanked upward. Having thus pulled Dawson onto rubbery legs, he guided him to the hatch, kicked the dangling feet into the opening, and still using but one hand, unceremoniously lowered his semiconscious captain into the conning tower with the words, "Catch him!"

Then, yielding to morbid curiosity--which he excused with the subterfuge that he needed to know exactly where the enemy ship was before Sailfin submerged--Cooper wasted several precious seconds staring in horror at the rapidly-growing shadow. The Japanese commander, having abandoned his earlier evasive tactics, had pointed his ship directly toward the slowly descending submarine. It was evident that, like his colleagues before him, he intended to ram!

Even before he was halfway down the steep ladder, Cooper yelled out, "Flood negative! Full dive angle!" At the same time he grabbed the wire lanyard and, free-falling the remaining distance, pulled the hatch down with a resounding clang. He waited impatiently while Riley spun the circular handle two full turns clockwise to dog the hatch cover onto its smooth metal gasket.

"Green board." Granger’s voice, rising upward from the control room, sounded matter-of-fact. He had served in boats too long to be intimidated by a mere crash dive.

Using Granger's report as cue, the auxiliaryman on the opposite side of the compartment hammered open a large valve, thereby releasing a carefully rationed burst of high-pressure air. The air quickly sought out every nook and cranny inside Sailfin's pressure hull. Finding no leaks to the outside, it remained trapped within the hull--as validated by the movement of a needle in the gauge located above the diving manifold. Granger glanced at the gauge and called out, "Pressure in the boat."

"Very well." Cooper’s acknowledgment was automatic. "Does Keim have the dive? I have to stay up here . . . the skipper's injured."

"Yeah, Coop. I’m on it." The engineering officer’s traditional soft-spoken reply conveyed that as far as he was concerned, conditions were normal in the control room.

"Thanks, Keim. Better sound the collision alarm."

Sailfin's quirk of hanging suspended near the surface for several moments before continuing to plunge downward generally produced little more than a fleeting exasperation. This time, it brought the men in the tiny conning tower to the brink of panic, the self-same panic of a mother watching her recalcitrant child stand defiantly in the path of a speeding automobile. Instead of a roaring car engine, the sound reaching the terrified submariners was the steady whoosh . . . whoosh . . . whoosh . . . whoosh . whoosh . . . of the destroyer's swirling propellers. Growing steadily louder, the foreboding sound soon filled their entire universe. And still the killer came, nearer and nearer, until the men, too choked with fear to speak, automatically crouched as they braced themselves for the inevitable tearing, ripping impact and the imploding cascade of cold, death-dealing seawater. But only water sounds entered--a reverberating cacophony of swishing, swirling, thrashing that was held at bay by the steel chamber in which the men cowered. The destroyer passed harmlessly overhead, its sharp-edged screws churning within inches of Sailfin's slowly descending superstructure. Whoosh . . . whoosh . . . whoosh . . . whoosh . . . whoosh . . . whoosh . . .