However, the automatic device was set for action at the required depth and the word given.
In this same middle compartment—the operating compartment of the ship—was a man with the spiritual face of one who keeps lonely, intense vigils. He sat on a camp-stool, and his business seemed to be not ever to let his rapt gaze wander from several rows of gauges which were screwed to the bulkhead before him. Since I first stepped down into the sub I had spotted him, and had been wondering if his ascetic look was born with him or was a development of his job—whatever his job might be. Now I learned what his job was. He was the man who stood by the automatic safety devices. If anything happened to the regular gadgets and it was life or death to get her at once to the surface, he was the man who pressed a button, or moved a switch, or in some highly mechanical way applied the mysterious power which would get her safe to the surface.
The skipper gave the word, the main ballast lad opened his outer valves, and down she started. We knew this, as always, by the moving green finger on the wide-faced gauge. Downward she kept on going, and to a man not too long shipmates with the creature she certainly did seem to be going down in a hurry. She was nearing the appointed depth; she made the appointed depth, and—went on by. "What's this!" said one observer to himself, and directed an interested eye toward the saint-like lad on the camp-stool.
But it was only for a few feet. The indicator slacked up, fluttered, stopped dead. And then—without the husky tank boy to lift a finger—we heard the rumph-h and rumbling of the valve-seats as the sea-water was driven out of her ballast-tanks; and then up she started. Soon there she was—did it all by herself—atop of the water. And the face of the young fellow of the automatic devices was like the face of the devout missionary who has just put something over on the heathen.
Later, when you express the feeling of almost holy comfort which these little automatic safety devices give you, the manager—the same with the stop-watch and the note-book—says, "Puh! Look here," and sits down and details—drawing good working plans of them on a pad while he talks—three different ways by which a submarine crew can beat the game should any evil happen to the ordinary and regular means of getting to the surface.
She has a turn at porpoising then; that is from a moderate depth the diving-rudder man shoots her near enough to the surface for the captain to have a look through the periscope—a long-enough look to plot the enemy on a chart, but not long enough to give that enemy much of a chance to pick him up; and then under again. And then up for another peek; and quickly under again, the captain at the periscope taking each time a fresh bearing of the enemy, who is supposed to be at some distance and steaming at good speed. After two or three such quick sights, changing course after each sight, it will be time to discharge a torpedo or two at her. And—the layman may note it—with expert men at the periscope and diving-rudder, a porpoising sub can sight, discharge her torpedo, and dive—all within five seconds.
Steaming back to harbor after our trial run that day, we caught the first rip of the gale which the gummed-over moon and the low barometer had forecast the night before. It was too rough to tie her up to the supply-ship, so the sub was anchored—they carry anchors too—a short distance away, with three men left on her for an anchor watch, the idea being to take them off later for a hot meal. But after the rest of us were safe and warm and well fed aboard the mother ship, the increasing winds came bowling over the increasing seas, and the crew of the sub had to wait.
At intervals we could hear them emitting beseeching, doleful, disgusted moans and shrieks and howls from her air-whistle. But it was too rough for any little choo-choo boat to be battling around. It was 9.30 that night before they could safely be taken off. They were a moderately good-natured lot; but that was the blear-eyed trouble with making sub trial trips with bad weather coming on—a man never knew about his regular meals.
The supply-ship was quite a little institution herself. Approaching her from shore the night before, her lights beneath the dull moon and thin, drifting clouds had loomed up like a dancing-hall across the lonesome harbor waters. When we got aboard, we found her the relic of what had once been a fine block of a three-masted coaster; but moored forward and aft she was now, as if for all time, and no longer showing stout spars and weather-beaten canvas—nothing but two floors of white-painted boarding above her old bulwarks.
She was a boarding-place, a sort of club, for the crew and attendants, as well as a supply station for the submarines which in these New England waters were being tried out for one of the warring Powers. Voices and cigar-smoke as we stepped aboard, and more or less quiet breathing, with partly closed and open living and sleeping rooms, denoted that men were discussing, arguing, sleeping, and otherwise passing a normal evening. Looking farther, we saw that down in the insides of her—where formerly she stowed noble freights of coal or lumber or, sometimes, hay and ice—were now a boiler and engine room, and a good, big repair-shop.