March lay down on his bunk for a while and managed to drift off to sleep for three hours. Just as dawn was breaking he got up and had a cup of coffee, had the boat submerged to periscope depth, and traveled ahead more slowly, checking regularly to make sure he was exactly on the course he had agreed on with Scoot.
The Skipper Was Still Unconscious
“I wonder how Scoot’s making out,” he said. “He might be pretty near that convoy now—if there’s a convoy there.”
Scoot was at that moment disgusted. He had been able to do nothing with the Jap plane’s radio during all these hours, and now, even with more light to see by, he could not get it working.
“Maybe when the Japs order radio silence,” he told himself, “they enforce it by gumming up the radio some way so it can’t be used. Anyway, I can’t do anything with this baby. I’m going to be keeping radio silence whether I want to or not.”
So he turned his attention to the sea ahead of him, where he hoped to sight the convoy. Looking at the chart occasionally and checking his speed, he calculated where he must be.
Then he saw it! First a few clouds of smoke far ahead on the horizon. Then little dots below the smoke—dots that were Jap ships. More and more and more of them he saw, line after line in orderly procession. Up ahead and at the sides were destroyers and near the front a battleship—no, two battleships. As he flew on further he made out a carrier in the center and at the end three cruisers and more destroyers kept a rear guard.
“Don’t want to get any closer than I have to,” Scoot spoke aloud to himself. “But I want to get all the dope I can and as accurately as possible. Got to stick around long enough to check their speed and course.”
He flew on, counting, checking, making another estimate to compare with his first.