Book cover

Book jacket

MARCH ANSON and SCOOT BAILEY

OF THE

U. S. NAVY

Story by

GREGORY DUNCAN

Illustrated by

HENRY E. VALLELY

WHITMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY

RACINE, WISCONSIN

Copyright, 1944, by

WHITMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY

Printed in U.S.A.

All names, characters, places, and events

in this story are entirely fictitious.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

“She Was a Swell Ship!” Said Scoot

MARCH ANSON
and
SCOOT BAILEY
of the U. S. Navy

CHAPTER ONE

FAREWELL TO THE PLYMOUTH

The launch purred smoothly across the calm waters of the harbor, making for the Navy Yard pier. Their feet braced against the slow roll of the boat, two young men stood looking at the huge gray ship they had just left.

“I’m beginning to have my doubts,” Scoot Bailey said almost to himself.

“Same here,” the other replied. March Anson was shorter than his friend, but more solidly and compactly built. His gray-blue eyes were steady and cool, matching the set of his jaw, but the crinkling lines at their corners showed that this apparently serious young man spent a good deal of time smiling or laughing.

“She was a swell ship,” Scoot said sadly.

“Was!” exclaimed March. “She still is! Just because Bailey and Anson have left her, don’t you think she can carry on any longer?” A slow smile spread over his face as he turned to look at his friend. But Scoot was serious.

“Oh, sure, March,” he replied. “But she’s out of our lives now. She’s past tense for us. And—well, she’s been just about everything to us for a year now—home, mother, and sweetheart!”

“I know what you mean,” March said. “And it’s natural for us to wonder if we’ve done the right thing in being transferred. Right now we’re looking at what we’re leaving. In another ten minutes we’ll be concentrating on what we’re going to!”

Scoot Bailey turned around and sat down.

“I’m going to start right now,” he grinned. “No use getting sentimental about the old Plymouth at this point. I’m going to start thinking about the Lexington or the Shangri-La or whatever aircraft carrier I’ll be on in a few months.”

“Good idea,” March agreed, sitting beside the tall and gangling young man who now stared ahead at the Navy Yard. “But that’s one trouble right now, Scoot. Neither one of us knows exactly where he’ll be. If you knew exactly what ship you’d be attached to, you could make your thoughts more specific. When you get there, you know you’ll love her just as much as you’ve loved the Plymouth—more, in fact, because you’ll be flying at last!”

“Yes, I know, but what about you?” Scoot asked. “I still can’t figure out why you want to be a pigboat man. And what can you dream about now as you look into the future? The name of some fish, that’s all.”

“Sure, subs are named after fish,” March replied. “And they have some swell names, too—the Barracuda, the Dolphin, the Spearfish, the Amberjack!”

“Yes, they sound all right,” Scoot grinned. “But what if you’re assigned to the Cod or the Herring or the Shad? No, I can’t figure out what you see in those stuffy, cramped, oversized bathtubs!”

This light-hearted argument had been going on ever since March Anson and Scoot Bailey had been in the Navy together. Neither one minded the jibes of the other, but the dispute as to the respective merits of air and underwater craft never ended.

“Cozy and snug,” March said stoutly, “that’s what subs are! Not cramped and stuffy! Why—they’re all air-conditioned now!”

“Maybe so,” Scoot said, shaking his head, “but no air-conditioning can match the clear blue sky a couple of miles up there where I’ll be flying! Boy—what a chance! Just what I’ve always wanted!”

Their departure from the cruiser Plymouth was forgotten now as they thought of their futures. Only one aspect of that future was rarely mentioned by either of them, and they tried not to think too much about it. In their new activities they would not be together—these two who had been inseparable friends for so many long years.

They had met in the first year of high school, back in that small Ohio city which now, during war, seemed so many miles and so many years away. Scoot had lived in Hampton all his life, but March had just moved there from the farm which his mother had sold when his father died. A widow with a son only thirteen years old could not run a 160-acre farm, she had decided, not if her son was to get the education she had determined he would have.

So the farm had been sold, and Mrs. Anson and her young son had moved to the near-by city of Hampton. March started high school, and his mother went back to teaching, her profession before she married Clement Anson and settled down to farm life. The money from the farm sale was tucked away in the bank, to be forgotten until the time came for March to enter college.

March and Scoot had sat next to each other in the big assembly hall of Hampton High School on the first day. They had taken to each other at once and from that time had been the closest of friends. Some people had wondered at the deep friendship of these two who, in some ways, seemed so different. Scoot had always been a noisy and boisterous kid, eager for any activity that meant speed, excitement, and a little bit of danger. The more conservative parents shook their heads and called him a little “wild” although he never got into serious trouble.

March Anson, on the other hand, was quiet and serious. On the farm he had worked hard and had learned the value of hard work. In school he studied thoroughly and carefully. Even in sports he was serious, playing games as though he looked on them as work, not as pleasure.

But March and Scoot recognized in each other at once the hidden qualities that lay beneath the surface indications of their character. Scoot saw that March really enjoyed life tremendously. He just didn’t whoop and shout about it. He felt a thrill of pleasure in a tough football game played hard. He loved the talk and chatter of a gang of boys discussing the game afterward, even though he spent more time listening than talking himself. He liked the school dances, even though he was somewhat timid with girls and danced so quietly that he stood out in contrast to the majority of wildly capering youngsters.

Scoot learned to appreciate the slow smile that spread over March’s face when he was enjoying himself. When something amusing happened, he could look at March and see the twinkle in his eye that others seemed to miss.

In the same way, March saw that beneath Scoot’s noisy impulsiveness there was a great deal of calm courage, a daring that had in it nothing of foolhardiness but—on the contrary—a good deal of confidence. Scoot had a serious side that none of his friends, until March came along, had penetrated. He never seemed to study much, but his grades were always good. That was because Scoot never announced, “No, I can’t do that—I have to go home and study now.” Scoot was ready to do anything suggested by anyone, but he still managed to get his studying done, after the play was over.

By the time they graduated from high school together, Scoot and March had both changed a good deal, each one influenced by the other. At a first glance they seemed just the same as always, but March was less retiring, less timid, while Scoot did not always hide under his playful spirit his more serious interests in life.

When they went off to the state university together, they wondered how long it would last, for war was already in the air.

“It’s coming,” Scoot said, “just as sure as shootin’, war’s coming. And I’m going to be in it just about five minutes after it starts.”

“They’ve been staving it off for a long time,” March said, “and maybe they can keep it up a few years longer. But I don’t think they can ever satisfy that Hitler guy. Giving in to a pig won’t work—he’ll just keep demanding more and more! But maybe we’ll get our college education before the guns start popping!”

But the guns had started firing in Europe before their second year. When the first peacetime selective service act was passed in the United States, Scoot was very excited at being below the twenty-year age, and wanted to enlist at once. But it was March who persuaded him against it.

“We can do more good going right on getting our education until they need us,” he insisted. “Then we’ll be that much better equipped to do a good job.”

His argument prevailed over Scoot then, but the war became their favorite topic of conversation from that time on. Many others in the college were not interested. They felt that the war was thousands of miles away, that two big oceans were enough insulation to keep it away from America.

But Scoot and March felt sure it was coming. They followed the war news carefully, their hearts sinking as Hitler’s gangs overran one country after another in Europe. They spent their spare time reading books and articles about the war, the new weapons and tactics that were being used. It was then that Scoot knew that he wanted to be a flier, and then that March first developed his interest in submarines.

“This is an air war!” Scoot insisted. “It’s going to be fought and won in the air!”

“The whole thing?” March demanded. “I wouldn’t deny the importance of planes, but I’d never agree that they’ll do the whole job alone. The country without planes can’t win, I’ll say that much. But look at Germany’s U-boats! Look at the damage they’re doing! If England can’t get her supplies by sea—why, she’s sunk!”

The argument that never ended was begun right then. March and Scoot read everything they could lay their hands on about submarines and airplanes. And when the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, Scoot wanted to get in a plane and fly by instinct out over the Pacific, to give them a taste of their own medicine. He had just decided to enlist when the Navy’s program for college students was announced—the V-12 plan which carried students through an intensive training course which resulted in commissions as Ensigns.

For March there was no doubt about what course to follow. He signed up for V-12 at once, already sure that he would be sailing in a submarine before the year was out.

Scoot could not make up his mind for a few days. When he had thought of flying, he had always thought of the Army Air Forces. But the Navy had fliers, too. Eventually it was his burning hatred of the Japs that decided him.

“There’s a lot of water between us and them,” he said. “The Navy will have the biggest job in knocking them over—and aircraft carriers will be the answer! Navy it is for me, too!”

So March Anson and Scoot Bailey had joined the Navy. Gone were all thoughts of football, baseball, dances, and parties. And suddenly there seemed to be little difference between the two. Both were now serious, hard-working, for in the Navy’s program there was room for little but serious, hard work. Together they crammed into their heads more mathematics than they had thought of studying in a whole college course. Navigation, engineering, English, Navy custom and tradition—all were crammed into them with an intensity of which they had never thought themselves capable.

Both had put in early their requests for assignment to submarines and to air service. And, though they knew that the Navy tried to place men where they wanted to go, they realized that the Navy’s needs would come first rather than their wishes. So they were disappointed, though not surprised, when both requests were turned down. The submarine school at New London, even though greatly expanded, was full to overflowing. And the applicants for Naval Aviation exceeded by ten times the number that could be accepted.

New warships were coming off the ways in shipyards all over the country, and men were needed to man them. So, after some further specialized training—Scoot in engineering and March in navigation—they found themselves assigned to the new cruiser Plymouth which had been rushed to completion four months ahead of schedule.

On their shakedown cruise they had been too interested in their new life—the huge ship and the men they worked with—to feel disappointment over missing out on their chosen fields. They knew they were already a part of the war, and the job they were doing was important. As Ensigns, they were two very junior officers on the ship almost as large as their home town, but they had their jobs, and they learned more about them and about all ships every day.

The Navy lost no time, after ship and crew were deemed fit and ready for action, in getting them to the Pacific where the losses suffered at Pearl Harbor had put the United States at a great, though temporary, disadvantage. By the time they had made the long trip down the eastern coast, through the Panama Canal, and across almost half the Pacific to Pearl Harbor, Scoot and March felt like veterans. The Executive Officer of the Plymouth, Commander Seaton, had taken a liking to them because of their application to their jobs and their desire to learn all they could. He saw to it that they got varied experiences, shifting to different jobs carried out by junior officers from time to time.

In company with a battleship, two light cruisers, and twelve destroyers, they left Pearl Harbor as a task force heading for action in the southwest Pacific. And action was not long in coming.

In the Coral Sea, the small task force ran into a Jap convoy, heavily screened by warships, trying to sneak an end run around the corner of Australia. Two U.S. aircraft carriers had gone out to break up the convoy, but they were so outnumbered by the enemy that they were in a bad way when the Plymouth’s force arrived on the scene under full steam. The Japs were taken by surprise, lost their tight organization, and fled north, leaving behind three troopships and four destroyers heading for the bottom.

Scoot had been joyful at his first battle experience, but was angry that he had not been on the guns.

“Just when the fighting starts I have to be down in the engine room,” he moaned. “Didn’t even see anything, let alone take a shot at those dirty Nips!”

“Well, I saw plenty,” March replied, “but navigation officers don’t get a chance at much shooting, either!”

Scoot, by dint of much pleading and arguing, got Commander Seaton to transfer him to gunnery, but then eight weeks went by without a sight of a Jap. The first shots Scoot fired were into shore installations of the Japs at Munda airfield in the Solomons, after the Marines had consolidated their hold on Guadalcanal and had decided to move forward to another island.

The big battle had come almost ten months after they had shipped aboard the Plymouth, up in the Bismarck Sea northeast of New Guinea. Finally finding the sizable Jap force for which he had been looking, Admiral Caldwell, in charge of the U.S. force, had steamed right into the middle of the bevy of Jap ships and opened fire with everything he had. For seven hours, mostly at night, the battle had raged. Jap planes were attacking overhead, at least until U.S. planes drove them off at dawn. The firing on all sides was so deafening that no one could hear even Scoot’s whoops of glee and happiness. When three of his gun crew went down under a hail of flying fragments from a shell that landed on the Plymouth’s deck not fifty feet away, Scoot carried on with the few that were left, but the rate of fire was cut. So he rounded up a cook and a messboy and turned them into expert gunners in five minutes and knocked three Jap planes out of the sky with his improvised gun crew in ten minutes.

Meanwhile, March had not been idle. The shell whose fragments had laid low part of Scoot’s crew had landed squarely on one of the 12-inch gun turrets forward. March was the first man into the smoking and wrecked turret, pulling out the wounded and dead who were there. At any moment the ammunition below might have exploded—for no one knew if the shell had penetrated that far—but March had no thought of such a thing. Three of the men he lugged from the turret were still alive, though closer to death than March had ever seen anyone. Later, the medical officer told March those three had lived only because they got medical attention so fast.

When it was all over, and half the Jap force lay at the bottom of the sea while the rest ran for cover, pursued by American planes, the men on the Plymouth wearily surveyed the damage done to their ship. It was plenty, but a month in port would fix her up again. As they headed slowly for Pearl Harbor for repairs, Scoot and March got the big surprise of their lives. They had no thought of making heroes of themselves, and they never could figure out how, in the heat of battle, any officer could have seen just what they did.

Yet when the citations came along, Scoot and March both found themselves on the list commended for conspicuous gallantry in action.

“My golly, we didn’t do anything,” Scoot had objected, even though he was beaming all over with pleasure. “Everybody else did the same kind of thing. All the crew were fighting just as hard as we were!”

“Yes, but they didn’t all keep their heads under fire and show the spontaneously clear thinking that you two did,” Commander Seaton said to them in a friendly talk later. “That’s what counts—that’s what makes leaders of men. And the Navy needs leaders these days. By the way, the Skipper asked me if there was anything special we could do for you two—anything you wanted especially. I told him that you, Scoot, had wanted to be a Navy flier and that March had wanted to be a submariner. If you still feel that way, the Skipper’ll recommend your transfer to those branches.”

March and Scoot were dumbfounded! And it had not been an easy thing to decide, though a few months before they would not have hesitated for an instant. Scoot still wanted to fly. March still wanted to go into the pigboats. But they had lived on the Plymouth, gone through battle with her, and they didn’t like the idea of leaving her now.

It was March who made up his mind first. “I’m going to ask for the transfer,” he said. “I hate to leave this ship and the men on it and the action I know she’ll be seeing. After a battle or two you don’t feel like going back to school again. You want to go on to more battles. But I love the idea of submarines so much that I know I’d be a better man in a pigboat than I can ever be on a surface ship. So I’ll take a few months out, learn what I have to learn, and come back to this part of the world and really send some of those Jap ships to the bottom.”

“Guess you’re right,” Scoot agreed. “It won’t be long!”

So they had said farewell to the Plymouth sadly as they stepped into the launch taking them ashore. And they had stood looking at the great gray ship as the little boat moved toward the Navy Yard pier.

But now their eyes were set forward. They had a long way to travel to get home, a lot of hard work and studying to do before they could accomplish what they wanted.

They stepped from the launch and stood on the pier. For a last moment they looked out at the Plymouth once more.

“So long, old gal,” Scoot said. “You’ll be getting your face lifted here at Pearl Harbor and you’ll be back in the thick of it soon. Maybe I’ll see you out there—when I’m up in the blue sky flying my Grumman Wildcat.”

“Yes, and some time when I’m submerged and hear the throb of a cruiser’s engines,” March added, “I’ll stick up the periscope for a peek, wondering whether that ship is friend or foe. And it’ll turn out to be my old friend, my old sweetheart, the Plymouth.”

Together, the two young men turned and walked toward their new lives.

CHAPTER TWO

BACK TO SCHOOL

March felt lonely as he stood on the corner opposite the railroad station in New London, waiting for the bus. It was cold and there was rain in the air. The wind whipped about him as he stood close to the building.

The Plymouth was a world miles away by this time, although it had been less than a month since he left it. First there had been the wait of a few days in Hawaii before they found space in a plane heading back for the United States. But those had been good days—interesting in that they saw how completely erased were the effects of the first terrible Jap attack. Then, too, there had been time to rest, to swim and to lie in the sun on the beach.

Finally the long over-water hop had brought them back to America, which they had left so long before. It was the first time either March or Scoot had been in San Francisco, and they enjoyed the two days spent there before taking the train east. Finally there had been two weeks’ leave back in Hampton. They had seen their parents, visited their old friends, slept late and eaten huge meals. They had even been persuaded to make an embarrassed appearance—supposed to be accompanied by speeches—in the assembly hall of the old high school.

Their leave had come to an end all too soon. Then both young men had been faced with the prospect of saying goodbye not only to their folks and their friends, but to each other. It was one fact that both of them had tried to avoid thinking about, but as the time approached they were very aware of it. For so many years they had been together almost every day—but they had taken each other for granted. It never occurred to them that they were closer than many brothers, that each one supplied something necessary and important to the other.

They couldn’t say much, of course, when they finally did say goodbye. It was March’s train which left first, although Scoot would be heading south only two hours later. They were all at the station in Hampton—March’s mother, Scoot’s father and mother and kid sister. March had to say goodbye to all of them and step on to the train alone.

He shook hands with Scoot. “My golly,” he stammered, “I’m going to be worried about you, Scoot. You’ve had me around to look after you and keep you out of trouble so long, that I don’t know how you’ll make out alone.”

They all laughed a little, and Scoot tried to kid back at March, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Don’t worry about me,” he replied. “I think the baby is busy worrying about the nurse this time. Anyway, if it makes you feel good, March, maybe you’ll have a chance to get me out of trouble later—out in the Pacific somewhere.”

“Say—maybe I will at that!” March tried to act serious. “I can just see myself dashing up in my trusty submarine and rescuing you from a bunch of Japs.”

Later, when they did meet under circumstances not very different from March’s joking suggestion, it was Scoot who remembered what his friend had said back in the station in Hampton, Ohio.

But at the time it was nothing but banter, the kind of talk made to cover up real thoughts that are too deep to be expressed easily. And in another moment the train came thundering down the track. There was a last hurried round of goodbyes and March was on the train, waving and smiling from the car platform as it pulled away from his home.

Because the train was crowded, March had been busy trying to find a place to sit. His suitcase on the same platform was the seat he finally chose, until they pulled into Pittsburgh and he found a more comfortable seat.

The ride had been dirty and uninteresting and March felt himself getting depressed long before they reached New York. There he had to rush to get the train for New London, and now he stood on that windy, rainy corner waiting for a bus, feeling sorry that he had ever won the chance to get into submarine work.

Then he remembered the one thing that had made him feel good since he had left Hampton, and he glanced down at the cuff of his sleeve. Yes—there it was—the extra stripe that had been added when he became a Lieutenant instead of the lowest of commissioned officers, an Ensign.

The promotion had come to them when they were in Hampton on leave—for both Scoot and March. They had quickly added the new stripes to cuffs, to shoulder boards, and had got the gold bars to wear on their work uniform shirts. March felt very proud and pleased, for the promotion had come quickly for such young men in the Navy. Going to the submarine school as a Lieutenant, even if only j.g., or junior grade, was much better than walking in as an Ensign.

He was staring at the stripes on his cuff and smiling so that he didn’t notice the salute of the three men who approached him. Only when the first man spoke did he look up.

“Going to the sub base, sir?”

March saw a sailor with the insigne of a petty officer, third class, on his sleeve, a sturdy, smiling young man with his seabag over his shoulder. Behind him appeared three more men of the same rank. The first, March noticed, was a radioman, two of the others fire controlmen, and the last a pharmacist.

“Yes, waiting for the bus,” March answered with a smile. “Is this the place to wait for it?”

“That’s what we were told, sir,” the radioman said. “You see, we’re just reporting there for the school.”

“Oh, so am I,” March said. “I thought maybe you men were there already and just in town on liberty. But you wouldn’t have brought your seabags along in such a case, would you?”

In a moment the bus appeared and they all climbed aboard. On the long ride out of town and along the river they talked together about the school they were going to, and March caught again, in these men’s enthusiasm, his old feeling of excitement about going into submarines. The men, who had obviously just met as they went to the bus together, were discussing their reasons for volunteering for submarine duty.

“I had two uncles in the Navy,” the pharmacist said. “I’ll never forget the way they talked about submariners. They had both tried, but couldn’t pass the tests. They thought the pigboat men were the cream of the fleet.”

“Speaking of the hard tests,” one of the fire controlmen said, “that’s really why I first got the notion of applying for sub duty. I heard it was the toughest branch of the service to get into and stay in—and I just kind of like to try any challenge like that. When I hear about something really tough, I like to take a crack at it. This is harder to get into than aviation!”

“Going to the Sub Base, Sir?”

March smiled and thought of Scoot who had been worrying about his ability to meet the strict qualifications for naval fliers.

“I like the life on a sub,” the radioman said. “You know—a good bunch of guys doin’ something big together, all workin’ together like a team. And the—well, friendliness between officers and men is swell. Not that I don’t believe in strict discipline—” he glanced at the officer’s stripes on March’s cuff—“but I still think it’s a good idea for officers and men to get friendly, get to know each other well, the way they do on subs.”

March agreed, and noticed that not one of the men had mentioned the extra pay for submarine duty as one of the reasons for entering that branch, and a dangerous branch, of the naval service.

“That’s a good sign,” he told himself. “Of course, they’ll like the extra pay—no doubt of that—but it’s not the reason they volunteered for sub duty. They really go into it for its own sake.”

The bus turned and entered the driveway of the sub base grounds and all the men looked eagerly out the windows. Their first look was for the river, where they hoped to see submarines.

“Look!” cried Scott, the radioman. “There’s one in dry dock!”

“And over there by the pier,” called another, “there’s a bunch of ’em lined up.”

March looked at the long slim lines of the pigboats and felt warm inside. He wondered just how soon he would take his first ride beneath the waters of Long Island Sound in one of them.

The bus passed a few buildings, but the sailors had no eyes for such ordinary things. Another structure had caught them—a tall round tower looming up above the trees on the gently sloping hillside.

“What’s that?” one of the men asked. “A water tower?”

“Water tower’s right!” exclaimed Scott. “But a special kind. That’s the escape tower!”

“Oh-oh, that’s the baby I’m wondering about,” said the pharmacist. “I don’t know how I’ll like going up through a hundred feet of water with just a funny gadget clamped over my nose and mouth.”

“Well—you better not let it get you,” one of the others put in. “It’s one of the first tests, I hear. If you can’t handle the escape-tower tests, you’re tossed out of submarines pronto!”

The bus pulled up in front of a large brick building and stopped. Everyone got out and walked up to the front door. Inside, March left the men with a smile and reported to the personnel man in charge of receiving new officers assigned to the school. In another half hour he found himself in his quarters in a building some way up the hill above the main buildings of the base. Here the school itself was situated, with its buildings for classrooms, barracks for enlisted men, and quarters for officers without wives. Married officers were allowed to live in New London with their families and commute daily to the school.

March’s room was small but comfortable, and he was neatly settled in it in a short while. His time in the Navy had taught him already to travel light, with only the necessary belongings, and to settle himself quickly. He was at home and comfortable by the time he reported to the officers’ mess for dinner.

There he met other young officers who also lived at the school, and a few of the instructors. The latter were older men, full of years and wisdom in the submarine service, every one of whom would much rather have been on active duty hunting down Jap or Nazi ships on the oceans of the world. But they were too valuable in the great task of training the hundreds of new officers needed for the subs coming off the ways of the shipyards. Here in New London they could pass on to the younger men like March Anson a portion of their knowledge of pigboats.

March felt, during dinner, the quiet good-fellowship of these men. On the Plymouth the officers with whom he ate and talked and played were pleasant and agreeable fellows, but there had been all types there—the quiet ones, the back-slappers, the life-of-the-party men with practical jokes and loud guffaws, the grimly serious officers, and everything in between. But here the men were more alike.

“Not that they’re all the same,” he told himself, as he looked around the table. “McIntosh here next to me is quite different in most ways from that Lieutenant Curtin across the table, for instance, but they have something in common. Something similar in their personalities, I suppose. They’re sociable, but in a quiet way. They’re serious, but not without a sense of humor.”

March did not realize that he was describing himself when he thought of the other officers in this way. But he might have known that this question of personality was one of the most important in considering men who volunteered for submarine service.

No man in the Navy was ever assigned to sub work without his request. It was an entirely volunteer service, but there were always far more applications, among both officers and enlisted men, than could be accepted. So it was possible for the Bureau of Navy Personnel to keep its standards very high in selecting men for the pigboat branch.

When a man already in the Navy was recommended by his commanding officer for assignment to the sub school at New London, as March had been, this did not mean that the recommendation was accepted just like that. The Bureau looked over the man’s record with the greatest care. And just bravery such as March had displayed was not enough, even though it counted strongly in his favor. What they looked for in the “Diving Navy” was the kind of man who was brave, cool under fire, far above the average intelligence, with the ability to get along well with other people under all circumstances, and the kind of nerves that didn’t crack or even show strain under the greatest danger, the worst crowding, or seemingly fatal situations.

As March thought of this, he swelled with pride to think he had been chosen for the submarine school.

“But that’s just the beginning,” he told himself. “I feel pretty darned good to know that I’ve got this far, but they’re going to watch me like a hawk every moment I’m here. I think I can pass all the tough physical tests okay, because I’m in good shape. The studies are hard but if I work enough maybe I can handle them. But how will I act the first time I’m in a submerging sub? How will I react to a crash dive? They’ll be watching me. And even if I get through the school I’m still not a submariner. Why, on my first real trip or two my commanding officer can transfer me back to surface ships just by saying the word!”

After dinner, in the officers’ lounge, March spoke with the executive officer of the sub base, a kindly, gray-haired man with skin that still looked as if he spent a few hours every day facing the salt breeze on a ship’s bridge. Captain Sampson chatted easily with March as they looked out the windows at the gathering twilight.

“Glad to have you with us, Anson,” he said. “Hope you like it here.”

“I’m sure I will, sir,” March replied. “I’ve been looking forward to it long enough.”

“I had an idea this was no sudden impulse of yours,” Sampson replied. “First off, you’re not the kind, I take it, that acts on sudden impulses. And I imagine that subs always appealed to you.”

“Yes, before I was in the Navy that’s what I wanted.”

“Then you ought to do very well,” the Captain said. “You’ll want to make your call on the Commandant tomorrow, I suppose?”

“If it can be arranged,” March said.

“Yes—tomorrow will be all right, I’m sure,” Sampson said, “for you to present your compliments to him. There’ll be a few more officers arriving for the new class tomorrow morning early. I’ve set aside a couple of hours in the afternoon for the calls. Report at fifteen o’clock.”

“Yes, sir,” March said.

When the Captain had gone, March went back to his quarters and sat down to write a few letters. The first was to Scoot Bailey.

“Dear Scoot,” it began. “I’m here at last—at the Submarine School in New London! Tomorrow things will really start!”

CHAPTER THREE

FIFTY POUNDS OF PRESSURE

Things really did start the next day for March! In the morning he had a physical examination that made all his previous examinations look like quick once-overs. Eyes, ears, lungs, heart, stomach—they went over March’s body so thoroughly that he felt not a microbe, not a blood cell, had escaped their detection. But he knew, without waiting for the report, that he had no difficulty in meeting all the requirements.

In the afternoon there was the official call on the Commandant, which was not the stiff and formal ceremony such Naval customs often are, but an interesting and heart-warming experience. The “Old Man” really took the time to talk informally and in very friendly fashion with the new officers who came to the school.

March met the new officers who were just beginning their work at the school with him, got his schedule of duties for the next few days, and managed to work in a letter to his mother in the evening.

The next day, when March learned that he had passed his physical examination with flying colors, he also learned that one of the doctors examining him had been a psychiatrist.

“That’s the smartest thing yet!” he muttered to Ensign Bigelow, another new officer-student who had just come from a teaching assignment at one of the Navy’s technical schools. “Usually the psychological examination is separate. You know you’re going to be questioned by a psychiatrist who will ask you all sorts of strange questions about how you get along with girls and what you thought of your fifth-grade teacher, and—”

“And what your dreams are like,” added Bigelow.

“Sure, and you’re self conscious,” March went on. “A smart doctor probably sees through that and gets the real dope as to what makes your personality tick, but it has always struck me as a sort of silly business.”

“Same here,” Bigelow agreed. “Even though I know those Navy psychiatrists have been right about ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“But this was wonderful!” March exclaimed. “I just thought those three docs were all looking at blood pressure and listening to my heart and such things. Sure, one of them was especially friendly and talked to me a lot, but that was just natural. And, come to think of it, he talked a lot about what I did when I was on the Plymouth, and how I liked its Skipper, and where I’d gone to school.”

“I remember now,” Bigelow said, “that he asked me about my leave before I came here. Mentioned big drinking parties. I didn’t go in for any and said so. I thought he must be a heavy drinker from the way he talked, but he was just finding out whether I was or not.”

“He pulled the same line on me,” March said, “and I just thought it was making talk—you know, the way a dentist does before he does something that hurts, to take your mind off what’s happening.”

“Well, that won’t be the end of the psychological tests,” Bigelow said. “I understand that a psychiatrist is always there when we make our first dives, and he’s just happening to be around in the escape-tower tests. He’s keeping an eye on us all the time.”

“Some people might not like that idea,” March said. “I suppose they wouldn’t like the idea of having somebody looking them over to spot their bad reactions to everything that goes on.”

“Like a guilty conscience,” Bigelow added.

“Always on hand,” March grinned. “But I don’t think it’s a bad idea. After all, it’s for our own protection. They’ve got to try to weed out the guys who will crack at the wrong time. And nobody thinks he will, so you can’t find it out just by asking. If I’m that kind, then you don’t want to find yourself out in the Pacific undergoing a depth-charge attack with me alongside you, suddenly going nuts inside a very small submarine.”

“I should say not,” Bigelow said. “And it’s nothing especially against a fellow if he can’t stand this particular kind of strain that he gets in a sub. Maybe he’s got a kind of claustrophobia—fear of being shut up in small places—without knowing it. Maybe he’d make a swell aviator or bombardier or the bravest PT-boat Skipper in the world! It’s just that submarining takes certain qualities, that’s all. You’ve either got ’em or you haven’t.”

“And those docs find it out before you go out,” March agreed.

March spent the evening with Bigelow and began to like the red-headed young man more as he got to know him better. Stan Bigelow was a chunky, broad-shouldered fellow who looked so hard that a tank could not bowl him over. A broken nose, covered with freckles, added greatly to his appearance of toughness, even though it had come, as he told March, from nothing more pugilistic than a fall out of a tree when he was sixteen years old.

“Landed just wrong on a pile of rocks,” he said. “Didn’t hurt a thing but my nose. I was at a summer camp and the doc there didn’t fix it up right. By the time somebody tried to put it back into a decent shape the bones had set too well.”

Despite Stan’s look of a waterfront bruiser, he was really a serious-minded student. He had graduated from one of the country’s top-flight engineering schools just before going into the Navy, and then had attended one of the Navy’s technical schools. Diesel engines were his specialty and he felt sure that this knowledge would quickly get him into submarine work where he wanted to be. But his work at the technical school had been so brilliant that they kept him on as an instructor despite his pleas for transfer to New London. Finally, after a year of teaching, he had been recommended for submarines by an understanding commanding officer.

“So here I am,” he concluded. “And right now I’m scared to death that it won’t make any difference how much I want to be a submariner or how much I know about Diesels. If I get jittery in the pressure tank tomorrow—out I’ll go!”

“You don’t even need to get jittery,” March laughed. “How do you know whether you can stand pressure or not? Even in perfect physical shape, some people just can’t, that’s all. I don’t mean because they’re nervous. Maybe their noses bleed or their ears won’t make the right adjustment or something.”

“Well—we won’t know until we try it!” Stan exclaimed. “I’m just going to keep my fingers crossed.”

After breakfast the next morning March and Stan Bigelow, along with the other new officer-students, reported to the little building at the base of the tall escape tower. They were joined by the new class of enlisted men who were to undergo the same tests. During preliminary training, there was no difference between officers and men in the examinations and work they had to undergo. Only later, when actual classes of study began, did they separate—for the enlisted men to learn their particular trades in reference to submarines and for the officers to get the highly technical studies and executive training they must have.

March saw Scott, the radio petty officer, and the others who had ridden to the sub base on the same bus with him. He called a friendly hello to them as they all stood waiting for the Chief Petty Officer in charge to call the roll.

After roll was called all the students were instructed to strip to the swimming trunks they had been instructed to wear, eyeing the pressure chamber suspiciously all the time.

“Looks like something to shut somebody up in if you never wanted him to get out,” Stan Bigelow said, nodding at the huge gray-painted cylinder with its tiny portholes and small hatch-like door.

“Anyway, we can look out,” March said, “even if the portholes are tiny.”

“I wonder if that psychiatrist will be peeking in one of those deadlights at us,” Stan mused, “making notes about every flicker of an eyelash.”

But then the grizzled old Chief Petty Officer opened the small door to the chamber and ordered the new men inside. Stooping as he stepped in, March saw that the sides of the chamber had long benches, about twenty feet long, on which the men were to sit. The compartment was brightly lighted, and March noticed a fan in one corner.

“I guess it gets a little warm,” he told himself, “with so many people in a small closed space like this.”

Stan Bigelow sat beside him on the bench, and the other students filed in after them. March saw that Scott, the radioman, sitting opposite him, looked a little frightened, and he wondered if he appeared the same to the others.

“Funny how this gets you,” Stan said in a low voice. “There’s not a thing to be afraid of, of course.”

“No, the most that can happen is that your nose will bleed or some small thing like that will show you can’t stand pressure,” March agreed. “But some of the older guys around here have had a lot of fun, particularly with the enlisted men, building up some fancy pictures of what the pressure tank and escape tower are like. They say you get weird sensations in your head, feel flutters in your heart.”

“Oh—just a little bit of subtle freshman hazing,” Stan laughed. “Well, I think the reason I’m nervous is that I don’t want anything to happen to toss me out of submarines.”

They looked toward the door of the compartment as the Chief Petty Officer stepped inside and tossed a bunch of robes on the seat near the door.

They Filed into the Pressure Chamber

“Wonder why the robes?” March muttered. “If anything, it’s going to be too hot in here—that’s why there’s a fan.”

“Maybe this is a combination test,” Stan said with a grin. “They want to see if we can stand pressure—and heat.”

The CPO closed and fastened securely the door, and they all heard someone on the outside testing it to be certain it was tightly shut.

“You’re goin’ to be out of here pretty fast,” the officer said to the students, “so don’t fret. We get fifty pounds of pressure in here, that’s all.”

His tone was casual and reassuring, but none of the men sat back in relaxed positions, even though they tried to appear completely at ease and even unconcerned. They almost jumped when the CPO banged his fist lustily against the end of the chamber as a signal to the man handling the valves outside.

They jumped again as a hissing sound filled the small compartment. The air was pouring in, and the men sat listening to it in silence. March saw that the Chief had his eyes on a dial at the end of the chamber and he looked there, too. Stan noted the direction of his glance, and in another moment every student was staring at the hand that moved up slowly to indicate one pound of pressure, then two pounds, then three pounds....

The CPO banged on the side of the chamber again. The hissing stopped. Everyone looked up in surprise, wondering if there was something wrong. March glanced around quickly. Was one of the students too jittery? Had a nosebleed started already? But everyone looked all right, except for an expression of worry.

“There’s only three pounds pressure now,” the Chief said. “Even fifty’s not really a lot, but three’s almost nothing. Still, just to give you an idea that air pressure is real pressure and not just something like a billowy cloud, I thought I’d tell you that we couldn’t possibly open that hatch now. You see—when I say three pounds of pressure, that means per square inch. There’s about a ton and a half of pressure on that door right now. Figure out how much there is on you.”

With another bang the hissing of the inrushing air began once more and the hand on the dial began to creep around again, passing the figure five, then the figure ten, then fifteen. March began to feel uncomfortably warm, and then he saw that most of the other men were beginning to sweat. Stan leaned over and put his lips close to March’s ear so that he could be heard over the sound of the air.

“Air under pressure gets hot,” Stan said. “Remember your physics? It’s the whole basis of a Diesel engine, incidentally, but the pressure is considerably greater. The temperature in a cylinder gets up to about a thousand degrees.”

“Around a hundred in here now, I’d say,” March replied in a loud whisper, and Stan nodded in agreement. Then he swallowed with some difficulty, and smiled in some surprise afterward.

“My ears popped when I swallowed;” he said. “Feels better.”

“That’s right,” boomed the CPO, who had apparently noticed what Stan did. “Everybody try swallowing a few times if your ears feel funny.”

March swallowed and then almost laughed as he saw the two rows of students earnestly swallowing. Then he realized he had not looked at the pressure dial for some time. He was startled to see it at thirty-five pounds. It was a good deal hotter now and everyone was sweating profusely. March looked around at the others carefully, forgetting his concern about himself in his interest in the others.

There seemed to be less tension now than at the very beginning. A few of the men talked to each other, comparing their reactions, laughing at the way their ears popped, expressing surprise at the increasing heat. Suddenly there was another banging on the wall of the chamber, and the hissing stopped. Everyone’s eyes went to the pressure dial, and saw the hand standing at fifty pounds.

So this was it! Well, it wasn’t so bad. March felt that way himself and saw the same feeling spreading to all the others, who smiled slightly as they knew they had withstood the pressure test successfully.

“So far, anyway,” March told himself. “Some things happen occasionally, I guess, when the pressure is reduced.”

Already the hand on the dial was moving downward again, as the air was released from the chamber by a man handling the valves on the outside. March began to feel cooler, and in a few minutes he shivered suddenly.

“Better put on the robes,” the Chief said, tossing the robes to the men on the benches. “The temperature was up to a hundred and thirty for a while there, and it drops just as fast as the pressure drops.”

“Feels good!” Stan said, as he slipped into the robe.

“Sure, but I’d like a couple of blankets, too,” March replied, feeling his teeth begin to chatter.

They heard another pound on the wall and saw that the dial hand stood at ten pounds of pressure inside.

“We’ve got to stop it here for a while,” the CPO explained. “There’s a regular rate at which a man’s got to come out of pressure to keep from getting the bends. You probably know something about the bends—every sailor does—but here’s the idea. Your blood’s under pressure in the arteries and veins, too, just like the rest of you, and there’s oxygen and other things carried in that blood. When pressure is reduced too much too suddenly, some of the gases in your blood form bubbles—just like a kettle boiling. And those bubbles in your blood can cause plenty of trouble.”

Stan turned to March. “Sure,” he said. “Remember those experiments everybody has in first-year chemistry? Making water boil when you put it on a cake of ice? The water’s under pressure in a closed container, and cooling it condenses the steam vapor so that pressure is reduced. So the air forms bubbles which escape when pressure goes down.”

“I remember,” March said. “They’ve got the bends licked now, though, since they know just how fast to reduce pressure.”

More air was let out until the dial showed five pounds of pressure for a while, and then it was reduced to zero. The door was swung open by the Chief and the men stepped out of the chamber with smiles on their faces.

“One test passed,” March said. “What’s next?”

“The escape tower,” Stan replied. “Tomorrow.”

CHAPTER FOUR

UNDERWATER ESCAPE

When March returned to his quarters that afternoon he found a letter from Scoot Bailey waiting for him. It was full of excitement and enthusiasm, and it filled March with a good deal of envy.

“I’ve flown already!” Scoot wrote. “I didn’t think we’d get around to it for quite a while, but I got up the third day I was here. Of course, I didn’t handle the plane, really, but I just held my hand lightly on the stick while the instructor took me through a few simple turns and climbs. Just to give me the feel of it, he said, and so I’d know I really came here to fly, not just to study in classes.”

March shook his head. “And to think that I’ve hardly seen a submarine!” he muttered to himself. “And I surely haven’t been inside one. But Scoot’s already been up in a plane! It just goes to show,” he told himself, “that submarines are tougher than planes. Just think of the tests we’ve got to go through before they can even let us take a ride in a sub. With a flier all he’s got to do is pass a physical test!”

“And speaking of classes,” Scoot’s letter went on, “they are really tough! Remember back in college we used to think we had to study fairly hard? Boy, we just had a picnic in those days! We’d look on that kind of business as a hilarious vacation down here.”

March felt worse than ever. “I’m just wasting time!” he complained to himself. “Not even a class yet, and Scoot’s studying already!”

He finished Scoot’s letter quickly, learning that he had made a few good friends already, that he felt fine, that he loved flying. Then March sat down and wrote Scoot a long letter.

“I’ll tell him about the pressure chamber,” March said. “I’ll show the lad that we’re doing plenty here that he never even dreamed of. And I’ll tell him about the escape tower we’re going to have a try at tomorrow. That ought to show him that he’s picked just an easy branch of the service.”

So March wrote, and he told Scoot plenty. He made the test in the pressure chamber sound much more harrowing than it had actually been, even inventing one man who passed out, bleeding profusely, in the middle of the test.

Then he felt better, and went down to dinner feeling once more that he was in the cream of the Navy. As he walked down the hill he heard the drone of an airplane motor overhead.

“Simple,” he said to himself. “See how easy it is? Just push a stick this way or that, just push a couple of pedals, and keep your eyes on a couple of dozen instruments. Why, in a sub we’ve got more instruments and dials than in twenty-five bombing planes!”

When he sat down next to Stan Bigelow, it was even better, for Stan agreed with him completely about the super-importance of the submarine service, thinking up a few additional reasons for its superiority over Naval Aviation that had not occurred to March. Then they began discussing the escape tower test the next day.

“Do you know much about this Momsen Lung they use?” Stan asked. “I saw some today when we took the pressure test, but I don’t know the details of how they work.”

“Yes, I read all about them a few years ago,” March answered. “They were invented by an Annapolis man—then Lieutenant Charles Momsen—not much more than ten years ago. And you know, Stan, that guy conducted every single experiment himself—wouldn’t let anybody else take the chance.”

“Boy, he should have got a medal for that!” Stan exclaimed.

“He did! Distinguished Service Medal,” March said. “And the Lung is one of the biggest things ever invented to make subs safer. Simple—really, like most good things. The good thing about it is that there’s no connection at all with the outside. Most such devices had a valve system for letting the exhaled air out into the water. But the valves jammed shut—or open—too often. There’s nothing like that to go wrong in the Momsen Lung.”

“How does it get rid of the carbon dioxide that you breathe out?” Stan asked.

“There’s a can of CO(2) absorbent inside it, that’s all,” March explained. “Of course, in time it wouldn’t absorb any more, but how long are you ever going to use a Momsen Lung at one stretch, anyway?”

“Ten or fifteen minutes, I suppose,” Stan replied.

“Sure,” March agreed. “And the can of absorbent can take care of your carbon dioxide for a lot longer than that. And the rest of it is really just as simple. It’s an airtight bag that straps over your chest. There’s a mouthpiece you clamp between your teeth for breath, and a nose clip to close your nose so you won’t breathe through it. When the bag’s filled with oxygen—there you are!”

“Wonderful!” Stan said. “But doesn’t that bag of oxygen, plus your own tendency to float, send you shooting up to the surface in a hurry?”

“It would if you let it,” March replied. “That’s why there always has to be a line or cable up to the surface, so you can hold on to it and keep yourself from ascending too quickly.”

“And get the bends,” Stan concluded. “If anything, I know I’ll go more slowly than they tell me.”

The next morning they had a chance to look more closely at the Momsen Lungs before they put them on, with the instructor explaining their workings and showing the students how to adjust them. March did not see Scott, the radioman, among the group, although all the others were the same that had gone through the pressure test the day before. He spoke to the young pharmacist, asking about Scott.

“Got a cold,” was the reply. “Just a little nose cold, but they wouldn’t let him do the escape test with it.”

“Too bad,” March said. “But he’ll be able to catch up with the rest of us soon.”

The Chief Petty Officer in charge was explaining the test to the men, as they got into their swimming trunks.

“First we’ll have twenty pounds of pressure in the chamber,” he said, “just to be sure noses and ears are in good shape before going into the water. And then you’ve got a long climb ahead of you. You see, the bottom of this tower is a hundred feet from the surface at the top. You won’t be taking the hundred-foot escape for quite a while yet. Today we go up to the eighteen-foot level.”

March thought that ought to be simple. He had been almost that far beneath the water sometimes when he went in swimming. But then he remembered that this test was to teach the men the proper use of the Momsen Lung, the rate of climb up the cable to the surface. It wasn’t the pressure at eighteen feet that would bother anyone, unless it was somebody who had some deep fear of being under water.

“Such a person wouldn’t very well select the submarine service, though,” he said to himself. “Of course some people have these fears without knowing it. Nothing has ever happened to bring it out, that’s all.”

The time in the pressure chamber seemed like nothing after their fifty-pound session of the day before, and soon the students found themselves ascending to the eighteen-foot level of the tower.

“Up at the top,” the Chief was saying, “there are plenty of men ready to take care of you. Nothing much is likely to go wrong with such a short escape, but we don’t leave anything to chance. So if you get tangled in the cable or decide to go down instead of up, or anything like that, there’s a few mighty good swimmers to do the rescue act. There’s one thing to remember—we send you men up one after the other, pretty fast, just the way you’d be doin’ it if you were getting out of a sub lyin’ on the bottom of the ocean. So get away from the cable buoy fast, and without kickin’ your legs all over the place. You’re likely to kick the next one in the head, especially if he has come up a little too fast.”

“How fast are we supposed to go, Chief?” one of the men asked.

“About a foot per second,” the officer replied. “You hold yourself parallel with the cable, body away from it a little bit, and let yourself up hand over hand. You can put your hands about a foot above each other, and count off the seconds to yourself. We’ll be timing you at both ends, so you’ll find out afterwards whether you went too fast or too slow. Then you’ll catch on to the rate all right.”

March was among the first men who stepped into the bell at the eighteen-foot level. The water of the tower came up to his hips and was kept from going higher in the little compartment by the pressure of the air forced into the top of the bell-shaped room. He saw a round metal pipe shaped like a very large chimney extending down into the water.

“That skirt goes down a little below the water level in here on the platform,” the Chief said. “When you go up, you fasten on your Lung, duck under the skirt, and go straight up. First, I’m going to check to be sure that the cable’s set okay.”

March and the others watched closely as the Chief adjusted his nose clips and mouthpiece deftly, turned the valve opening the oxygen into the mouthpiece, and ducked under. In a moment he reappeared and removed the Lung.

“All set,” he said. “Okay, you—” he pointed to the young pharmacist, “you go first. Your Lung’s filled with oxygen, plenty of it. There’s the carbon dioxide absorbent in there to take up everything you breathe out. Remember to go up hand over hand, about a foot per second. And don’t be surprised if a couple of guys go floatin’ past you in the water on your way up. There’re other instructors swimmin’ around up there and once in a while one of ’em swims down to see how you’re makin’ out. All set?”

“Yes, Chief,” the pharmacist answered. March thought he looked completely calm, though he felt himself growing excited at even this short escape.

“Okay, mouthpiece in place,” the Chief said, making sure that the student did it correctly. “Now, nose clips on—that’s right. Finally, open the valve so you can get the oxygen. Okay?”

The pharmacist nodded that he was all right. “On your way, then, my lad,” the Chief said. “Duck under.”

March watched the young man duck under the water and disappear as he went under the metal skirt. Then he saw the Chief go under, too, right behind him. Up above, he knew, the instructors would see a tug on the yellow buoy fastened to the cable, and would begin their timing of the first ascent. One of them would dive down and have a look at the student coming up, would make him pull away if he were hugging the cable too closely, speed him up or slow him down if necessary, with a gesture and a pat on the shoulder.

Suddenly the Chief reappeared.

Hand Over Hand He Ascended

“Okay, you,” he said, pointing to March. As he put the mouthpiece in place, he thought how strange it was that in the tower in a pair of swimming trunks he was just plain “you” to the Chief Petty Officer, while in uniform outside he would be “sir.”

“Right now,” March thought as he adjusted the nose clips and turned the valve, “this man’s my superior and my teacher. A young officer can learn plenty from these boys who’ve had so much experience, if they give themselves a chance by forgetting for a few minutes that they’re commissioned officers.”

As the Chief patted his shoulder, March ducked under the water, found the bottom of the round metal skirt, and went under it. Looking up, he saw the long shaft of darkness made by the walls of the tower, and the filmy, cloudy circle of half-light at the surface which suddenly seemed a great distance away. His hands had already found the cable, and he held on to it as he felt the upward tug of the Lung which tried to carry him swiftly to the top.

Putting one hand about a foot above the other he began to count to himself, hoping that his counts were about a second apart. For every count he put his hand up what he judged to be another foot in distance. Then he realized that his legs were unconsciously starting to twine themselves around the cable, and he pulled them away, holding his body straight up and down a short distance away from the escape line.

“That’s funny,” he told himself. “I guess I always twined my legs around a rope when I was going down it, so I want to do the same thing going up.”

He looked up again quickly and saw legs kicking above him. That would be the pharmacist pulling away from the buoy. How much farther did he have to go? It was hard to judge the distance. He had reached a count of nine, so he should be halfway if he had been putting his hands a foot apart.

His eyes blinked at a form moving up close to him. He saw a man in trunks floating toward him in the water, waving his arms slowly. No, he wasn’t waving—he was swimming! He wore a pair of nose clips but no Momsen Lung. One of the instructors from above, March concluded.

The man motioned his arms upward urgently. Unmistakably March knew that he had been going too slowly, so he increased the tempo of his count slightly. And before he knew it, his eyes blinked in the sunlight and he felt water running down his face. He was up!

“Clips off! Valve off!” an instructor in the water beside him said.

March moved away from the buoy toward the side of the tank, where he saw other men standing on the little platform, and as he did so he removed his nose clips with one hand, shut the oxygen valve. Then he remembered that it had not felt a bit strange to breathe through his mouth instead of through his nose.

“I guess as long as your lungs get the oxygen they need, you don’t much care how it gets there.”

He felt a hand helping him as he climbed up on the little platform at the top of the tower. Standing there, he removed the mouthpiece and then took off the lung itself. As he dried himself and slipped into his robe, the man behind him broke the surface and started toward the edge.

Suddenly March felt a little dizzy. He had looked out the window and had seen how high he was from the ground. And then he smiled.

“What would Scoot think of me?” he thought, “getting dizzy even for a second only a hundred feet off the ground?”

Down below was the river, and March saw a sub making its way down toward Long Island Sound. It looked very tiny and slim.

“How did it go, sir?” asked a voice behind him. He turned and saw the pharmacist.

“All right, I guess,” March replied. “Didn’t mind it, anyway. I guess I was a little slow. They had to send a man down to hurry me up.”

“They sent one down to slow me down,” the pharmacist said, “but I came out just about right. They told me it was a better sign if you went too slow than too fast.”

“I suppose it indicates you’re not overanxious about being under water,” March said.

A familiar head broke the water of the tank and March saw Stan Bigelow moving over toward the platform. When he had got out and removed his Lung, he smiled at March.

“Nothing to it, was there?” he called. “I’d like to try the fifty-foot level right away.”

“Same here,” March said, “but I guess we wait a day or two.”

Later, when they did make the fifty-foot escape, they found that it went just the same as the eighteen-footer. Sure, it took fifty seconds, but the sensations were about the same. There was more pressure on the ears, but not enough to bother anyone. March was very surprised to hear that one of the enlisted men, near the end of the group, had suddenly gone panicky just before it was his turn to go.