Minutes later he awoke to the knowledge of something hot and fragrant at his lips and a voice saying “Drink.” He obeyed and a warm glow permeated his chilled body. For a brief instant he opened his eyes wide enough to receive an impression of a painfully white place that, to a vision so long accustomed to darkness, seemed ablaze with lights. Forms moved hazily. The air reeked of oil. An appalling tumult assaulted his ears. The force that held his head up was removed and he sank back with a sigh and went to sleep again.
When he next awoke he was still in the white place and the lights still gleamed, but the noise had ceased and the smell of oil had given way to an odor he could not describe even to himself. And, which was stranger than all, instead of the pitching and tossing he remembered, the place where he lay was almost motionless.
Painfully, for he felt weak and dizzy, and every bone and muscle in his tired body ached, he stopped gazing at the bottom of the bunk above him and moved his head so that he could view his surroundings. He began to remember slowly as he did so, and by the time he realized his surroundings the events of the night before were in orderly sequence. He sighed deeply, and:
“Gee! I’m still alive!” he muttered.
It was a strange place in which he found himself, but his visit to the submarine in New London that time enabled him to recognize it. He was lying in one of the lower bunks in the forward battery compartment which is the men’s quarters. There were twelve of these bunks in all, six on each side, three in a tier. One or two of those opposite were occupied. An iron ladder led from the floor to a closed hatch above. Everything was painted white and sweated moisture. A table disputed the center of the compartment with the ladder and about it four men, in soiled and greasy dungarees, were seated. Further aft a sixth man was in evidence. He was drawing coffee at a steaming urn, and Nelson knew him for the cook. There was an electric range beside him, and, opposite, food lockers. Beyond the galley end of the compartment a watertight door stood open, revealing a vista of further compartments. Everywhere ran pipes and wires, with a multitude of valves and switches. The odor which had puzzled him at first now yielded certain recognizable ingredients: hot coffee and food; battery fumes; moist clothing.
He was beneath a cover of two gray blankets. They had removed his outer clothing and it lay, half dried, across his feet. He sniffed longingly at the coffee streaming from the faucet of the shining urn, and when, after a moment, the cook approached the table with three aluminum cups of it in hand, he found his voice.
“May I have some, please?” he asked weakly.
The cook, a lad not much Nelson’s senior, with an unmistakable Irish countenance, looked over his shoulder, and the men at the table craned their heads.
“Hello, kid!” said the cook. “You comin’ to? Sure you can have some. All you want, I guess.”
One of the others stepped across to the bunk. “How are you, Jack?” he asked.