“Hold her at fifty,” said the captain.
“Ay-y-y, sir!”
The men at the diving rudder controls moved imperceptibly.
“Fifty-seven! Fifty-five! Fifty-three!”
The captain swung the lever again. The sensation of climbing upward passed and the submarine rode on an even keel, the men at the wheels turning them slowly, their eyes on the indicators. The Q-4 was in less quiet water now, for she swung sidewise and dipped fore and aft. The first officer spoke across the compartment.
“Still at it up there.”
The captain nodded, peered at the gyroscopic compass and turned about. “We’ll give her another three hours, I think. Pass the word for all hands off watch to bunk in and get some sleep.”
Nelson climbed into his bunk, after removing boots and jacket, which was as much as any of the others took off, and did his best to get to sleep. But, although he couldn’t keep his eyes open save by an effort, sleep was elusive. He finally fell into a sort of doze during which he was more than half aware of movement and sound about him and of the unquiet swinging of the boat. He felt much as he had felt once several years before when a dentist had given him gas to extract a tooth, sort of half here and half there, as he expressed it to himself. He dreamed ridiculous things, although he would have declared afterwards that he had not been enough asleep to dream. One vivid nightmare, in which he was astride a torpedo and shooting along the surface of the water at something like a mile a minute making straight for the towering side of the biggest dreadnought that human imagination had ever visioned, brought him awake with a yelp of terror.
“’Tain’t so,” said a sleepy voice from across the passage.
The clock in the central station said ting-ting, ting-ting, ting! Relieved to find that it really wasn’t so, Nelson settled his head in the crook of his arm again and again closed his eyes. But just as drowsiness was stealing back he heard from beyond the door the short command: “Rise!”