‘Yessir, she went off very well.’
‘Good,’ replied Seagrave, looking at the volt-metre on the low-power switchboard. ‘Keep the lighting down to a hundred and ten.’
He wandered off under the mess tables, clipped up to the steel ceiling of the compartment to examine the gyro master-compass, a large mushroom-shaped object of steel and electricity, whose rotor buzzed round at the rate of over eight thousand revolutions a minute.
On his left were the electric cooking range, lockers and battery ventilators, and overhead were the great vents which let the air out of the main ballast tanks when the boat dived.
Presently, satisfied with the ‘Sperry’ compass, he stepped forward through the watertight door into the control room, a regular holy of holies, on whose shrine were offered many tins of ‘Brasso’ daily and much elbow grease and bad language by heated and voluble ‘matlows.’[5]
Here were the levers which opened the great Kingston valves in the bottom of the boat and flooded the tanks for diving. Here was the adjusting pump, by means of which water could be pumped from any one tank to another and into or from the sea. Aft was the periscope, a long steel tube sticking up through the roof, fitted with an eye-piece and graduated rings at its lower end. On the port side were the hydroplane and diving rudder wheels, and the depth and pressure gauges. Forward was the air manifold, by means of which, on opening the Kingston valves, air could be blown into the tanks at a pressure of over 75 lbs. to the square inch, and so force the water out of them when the captain wished the boat to rise.
In the centre, up through the ceiling, was the conning-tower shaft, gained by a steel ladder, above which was another periscope and the torpedo firing gear.
Another watertight door led into the fore compartment where the battery-ventilating fans were running, and the ceiling was interlaced with the usual profusion of vents and shafts. Right aft an operator was tuning the wireless installation, beyond which were the crew’s lockers and the flag racks. On the port side was the chart table and two bunks, one high up, and the other formed by a drawer, which on being pulled out and stayed up, disclosed the bedding all neatly stowed away. Underfoot, as in the after compartment, was the great hundred-and-twenty volt battery which fed the hungry motors, and forward were the air bottles and fuel tanks.
In the bows were the torpedo-tubes, whose brass doors winked in the electric light, hiding the wicked torpedoes behind their shining faces. A turn of the bow cap and a pull at a lever, and they would be off at forty knots to reap a harvest of death and destruction. Abaft the tubes were spare torpedoes, shining steel cylinders with copper war-heads, holding sufficient T.N.T. to sink a Dreadnought.
The men were moving quietly about their work, the watch below preparing to turn in while the remainder were cleaning and adjusting and getting ready generally for the coming sea trip.