“Must be enough for it to get back to its battleship,” he told himself.
March jumped. A coughing roar split the silence and the darkness. Flashes of flame came from the exhaust pipes of the plane as the engine roared, subsided, roared again. Scoot had taken just half a minute to warm it up. Then he gave it the gun and March saw the plane begin to move.
“Down, men!” Larry shouted, and the two men left their guns and slid down the hatch. “Get on down, March,” Larry said, “and take her down. I’m right behind you.”
But at that moment shots rang out from the shore. Figures were running along the beach, shouting and gesticulating wildly. The seaplane was roaring away over the water and some men were firing at it.
March, his feet on the rungs of the ladder, looked up, startled. And then Larry fell at his feet.
“I’m hit, March,” Larry said. “Don’t waste a minute. I can get down. Hurry.”
Grabbing his Skipper, March hauled him to the companionway. He heard the spatter of bullets against the sides of the submarine. He lowered Larry quickly down the hatch and men below grabbed him and helped him from the ladder. March slid down after him, shouting commands to take her down while he was still closing the hatch.
“Call Sallini,” he said to one of the men. “Take the Skipper to his quarters. Mac, go in with him.”
The roar of water into the ballast tanks flowed over them, and the whine of the electric motors told them the ship was under way.
“Steady at fifty,” he said. “Hold course. We’ll surface in a little while. Stan, will you take over here? I want to see how the Skipper is.”