Down Among the Dead Men by S Read online

  Munsey’s Magazine. October, 1915

  Down Among the Dead Men

  by S. Ten Eyck Bourke

  “T HEN you’ll not go to Newport?” submarine won’t last another ten hours on the chief said. “I tell you, man,

  bottom, locked fast. They can’t get a local they need a diver badly. There’s

  man to risk it; and it means money to you, no government man to be had and that Mac, let alone the mercy of it.”

  Munsey’s Magazine

  2

  I could guess why the local divers

  Still dumbly unbelieving, I reread the would not take a chance at the sunken letter that I had received only a few minutes submarine and her imprisoned crew, but I did before I was summoned by the chief.

  not mention it. I had had a bitter hard day in the harbor, clearing the ship channel, and that Dear, Darling, Cruel Daddy:

  was excuse enough, let alone the other men I am going to him—Lieutenant

  hurrying homeward to help.

  Gerald—isn’t that grand, daddy? I have never I am a violent but God-fearing man, or dared to tell you. When everything is all right, I would not be telling of the judgment that fell you will forgive us both; but, darling, cruel, upon me, as a warning to others. I shook my stupid, dear dad, I had to see him before he head. The boat was down too deep, the divers took his first command—a submarine at said.

  Newport; so we’ll be together a little while, at Then let me tell you, John least—

  MacGregor,” the chief cried in a rage, “I know why you will have nothing to do with the navy I had forgotten that. A submarine at or navy men! You cast your own son off Newport!

  because he ran away to sea, and that Puritan I did not fully realize yet what Jeanie stone that you have for a heart hates men of had done—that she had left me for a villain in his kind—men that fight for their country—”

  a uniform. I had not heard the name—never a

  “Aye, and shed innocent blood, and

  rumor, till the letter struck me like a blow in make widows and orphans—I know the the face. Lieutenant Gerald—a submarine! It argument! With your permission, sir, having seemed like a terrible jest of fate; but it was a reported, I’ll go home to my girl. Your jest that took me back to the chief’s office submarines and your war engines must take with a hope and a vengeance gnawing in me.

  their chance!”

  The chief sat where I had left him,

  I am a violent man, as I said, but

  reading a telegram.

  Godfearing, like my forefathers before me,

  “The roster of that submarine—her

  who turned the sinner from the door in the officers?” I said, as he glanced up with a wintry night and snow, to live or die as scowl.

  Providence might decree. Folks call me a hard His face cleared wonderfully.

  man, but just; nor does my calling make for a

  “I’ve just got word. Lieutenant Gerald gentle nature, groping among the blind fishes and—”

  for coffers full of gold or human tenements

  “I’ll go!” I said.

  empty of soul.

  Neither the chief of the divers nor the II

  men with whom I worked side by side that day knew of the heart of lead inside me, nor the I HAD not been at home the night before, and bitter hatred I bore for all men who wore the Jeanie’s letter had been left at the chief’s uniform. I had spoken of my daughter Jeanie office the previous day, while I was working with a smile on the lips. There was no reason at the bottom of New York harbor. So she was why any one should know of the letter which in Newport at the time of the accident to the had struck me to stone that morning, or maybe submarine! Not that it mattered, for her letter the chief would have understood, and would went on to speak of many meetings with the have forborne to curse me for my hardness of man, and the “plans they had made for the heart.

  future”— poor girl! I did not read the whole

  Down Among the Dead Men

  3

  letter at the time.

  As the special bore me to Newport,

  with the right of way cleared for the “rescue train,” I was not thinking of the judgment that had intervened so much as of the part I should play, I had a vision of that helpless submarine lying in the deep water, and of the last act that Providence had left to me—to avenge my poor Jeanie, if not to save her.

  In the launch that took me out to the scene of the accident, I learned more facts.

  “The

  submarine’s

  the

  Shark; she’s

  down in more than twenty fathoms, and her air compressor’s leaking,” the officer in charge told me. “Of course, we’ve got no news from her, but by the way the air bubbles up they’re alive aboard and fighting the leak.”

  “No diver’s been down?”

  “One tried it.” The officer hesitated, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “He came up unconscious—suit torn, too,” he said finally.

  I nodded, I had known from the first that the depth of the water was enough to knock out a man in an ordinary diving-dress, but my suit was reenforced for deep diving. It would help to protect me, too, from the dangers of an encounter with sharks or dogfish, such as had apparently been the cause of the other diver’s torn clothes.

  The safety of the job, or its certain peril, was the last thing I thought about. I wanted to ask for news of Jeanie—whether she knew that the scoundrel who stole her from me was at the bottom of the sea, awaiting a terrible death; but my lips seemed sealed, and the navy man was sharp business.

  I don’t know whether he suspected anything, but he had watched me closely from the moment we started out in the launch, making for the group of boats a mile from shore.

  “You’re not a government man, but I

  take it you know what to do,” he said to me as we neared the big lighter that was anchored

  Munsey’s Magazine

  4

  over the sunken submarine. “The other man name’s MacGregor. Can it by any chance be said the pressure crushed him before he could you’re a relative of—”

  make her out at that depth; but if you can get

  “I haven’t a relative on earth. Finish, the hoisting cable and the air-tube to her, or let some one else finish,” I snarled back at that’s all we’ll ask of you. You’re taking him.

  chances, I tell you straight.”

  He snapped on the helmet, and the last I laughed again—the laugh he didn’t

  word I heard was a muttered threat, or seem to like—and we sprang on board the command, or curse, I could not make out lighter. The diver who had been down was which—nor cared.

  there, sprawled out, white and helpless, but I The terrible mockery of the situation didn’t stop to talk with him, though he seemed possessed me. For all I knew, Jeanie had heard to want to tell me something.

  of the catastrophe and come out. The man Among the crowd of craft near by a

  must have connected our names that way, and torpedo-boat was snapping and crackling her Heaven knows what she may have said in her wireless.

  despair. The thought fired the rage within me.

  “Trying to call a battle-ship—if we

  Half-way down the weighted rope ladder I ever get a chance to derrick up those poor stopped to have another grim laugh, and to chaps,” the officer told me. “It all depends on wait for the pressure of the water to give the you, MacGregor—and God be with you!”

  warning “snap” in my ears. The pressure of That gave me a start. Till that moment, grief and shame had already snapped my from the time I left the chief in New York, I brain.

  had moved like a man in a dream.
The only clear thought in my numbed brain was that III

  Providence was in some way shaping events, and that I was the instrument called to a To this day I do not know how deep the certain end.

  submarine lay; but below me, a man’s height It was in my mine! that here, in a steel from the bottom of the ladder, I saw the gray coffin at the bottom of the sea, lay a man who floor of the sea, dotted here and there by had wronged me as much as one man can moving black shadows that seemed to be wrong another; and on me, the father of Jeanie prowling round a long, cigar-shaped vessel MacGregor, depended Lieutenant Gerald’s which rolled slightly in the ground swells.

  salvation.

  Only a strong man could live where my leaden The irony of it swept over me at the shoes landed me, and I knew by the sluggish moment when one of the men on the lighter motion of the submarine that she was resting knelt to lock on my copper helmet, and I heavily, all her buoyancy gone from her.

  threw back my head and laughed like a man Beside her, on the bottom, another long, gone mad. I saw the terror and suspicion leap narrow shape showed that she had shed her into his eyes, and I finished roughly: keel—her commander’s last desperate attempt

  “Bah, man! I’m but thinking how the

  to rise to the surface. The ship was helpless, dogfish will gnash their big teeth on my dead already.

  armored suit. ’Tis my trade, remember, diving

  “Aye, Providence did a good game

  down among the dead men!”

  when at it, and left the finish to me!”

  The fear was still on him that my nerve Snarling at the helpless craft through had broken, and suddenly his eyes flashed.

  clenched teeth, like a savage beast, I drew

  “Good Heaven!” he cried. “You’re nearer. I saw now why the men within had

  Down Among the Dead Men 5

  been unable to save themselves when she

  “They’re almost out of compressed air.

  sank. The blunt bow of the ship, like the It’s not hours they have to live now, but stubby neck of a bottle, was jammed against a minutes!”

  wall of rock, blocking her torpedo-tubes and Moved by a will stronger than mine—

  preventing egress by that way.

  the habit of saving life, I suppose—I grasped

  “The hand of Providence!” I gloated.

  the long air-hose which the men on the lighter In the implicit faith that all things were had lowered beside the ladder, and made it ordered. I had thought only for the man who fast to the brass standard that I had already had wronged me, none for the imprisoned located in the bow of the submarine. Signaling crew, though I knew that five men besides the up top, I waited till the leap of the air in the commander were within that steel shell. Over hose told me the pumpmen were at work, and her glowed a pale nimbus of light.

  made my way back to the turret.

  I knew where I should be most likely I could tell by the commander’s face to find Lieutenant Gerald. I made my way to that the air was pouring into the ship.

  the turret like structure amidships, and peered Suddenly my heart gave a great leap. Maybe it through the thick glass band that circled the was the uniform cap, or the fair hair that conning-tower. Within, I caught a glimpse of a curled on his head; but thought of my own lost distorted white face that stared out at me—the boy leaped back to me, and now I knew why face of a man already dead and buried.

  Jeanie had loved the villain. He looked like

  “He knows I’m here. I’ll let the villain my lost Jerry!

  see me before I talk to him.” I thought.

  They say that training makes most men I was so deep down that a spring alike; but it was more than that—it was the landed me on the lateral fin that ran round the defiant courage that shone in the man’s eyes, boat. As I stood upright, glaring into the turret, the courage that never gives up to the end, Lieutenant Gerald’s hand flickered up at whatever the odds —that made me want to salute and I shook my fist against the glass, spring on the fellow and tear him down, to anger mastering

  proclaim who and what I was and utterly

  “Wait—just wait!” I snarled.

  destroy him, at the very moment when hope Pressing my vizor against the thick

  surged up in him.

  glass, I could dimly see other forms in the He seemed puzzled himself at

  submerged ship, some crawling on their hands something—though he could only have had and knees; and then I knew that the lights the vaguest sight of me through the vizor of were still going in her. I could make out the my helmet. He was trying to motion with his swinging electrics, the brass staircase, and the lips. Suddenly he snatched up the head-piece sheen of machinery—even a box of cigars, of the turret telephone—the emergency drenched by the sea water that had rushed into instrument, used only in talking “up top” and the ship when she sank, so quickly and to divers, when the ship is submerged.

  unexpectedly that the commander had hardly He had seen the receiver inside my

  time to swing the lever that closed the trap helmet, or he was chancing it; but I had come cover when she dropped to the floor of the prepared—prepared to denounce that

  sea.

  handsome, smiling scoundrel, and to put the For hours the living death had mowed fear of death into him, as I had already given at them, had clutched at their throats. I knew him the breath of life.

  well enough why some of them were

  “You’re a dead man already, but I’ll crawling—it was from sheer weakness.

  let you know that there’s no escape from me I

  Munsey’s Magazine

  6

  was growling at him like a wild animal, while talking; it was some demon of the deep. Who I was working with the copper pegs that I had knows a man’s soul? And mine was in

  taken from my belt and screwed into the plate torment.

  on the turret-sill. My last words must have But the man in the turret was an officer reached him, for he stopped just as he was and a gentleman. Yes! That’s what they call about to speak. Then, evenly and clearly, his

  ’em, in spite of what he’d done. I knew while voice came to me—the voice of a doomed I swore it that no power of life or death could man in a steel coffin, yet the voice of an make that man show the white feather.

  officer talking to a sailor.

  Helpless he was—dead, did I give the word—

  “Who are you? You are not a and yet the cold feeling of defeat crawled over government diver! I am the commander of the me, lying like an icy hand on my heart.

  Shark, Lieutenant—”

  In that moment I could have crushed

  “I know who you are! And I am John

  the world. Think of what I had gone through!

  MacGregor!”

  Think of what I had lost, through the villainy of that smiling, scornful blackguard in the IV

  turret. That I should beat him down to shame, he would not permit—no, though his life and WHAT else I said in the first rush of rage I do the lives of all aboard paid for it. I knew that.

  not know, only as I knew it by the change that I turned away from the turret, and

  seemed to pass over his face, as I glimpsed it looked out into the surging water. Help had staring at me through the wavering lights of come. The great shadow over me, which I the lenses and the sea. I left little to be said, knew was the battle-ship, waited. The when the cold cruelty of my forebears came hoisting-cable swung from her huge steel upon me. I wanted to kill the man, but most I derrick. Above, I knew that every man held wanted to hear him beg for mercy; and he only his breath—impatient, too, as I could tell from smiled!

  the swaying of the cable and the quick, The great hawser was hanging behind

  anxious twitches that came from my signal-me, a few feet away from the ship to which it cord.

  was my duty to make it fast. He saw it in the They knew, up above there, that the

  refraction of light from the turret,
and submarine was getting air; they must know motioned over my head.

  that I had already had speech with her

  “There’s your duty—do it!” he said.

  commander. But it rested with me how much

  “For the rest—I will answer to that on top, or to tell them of the black drama being played Jeanie MacGregor will answer for me. Now out below.

  make fast that cable!”

  A thought came to me, and I stifled it I laughed. I heard the sound of my own like a thief in the night.

  voice, and shuddered.

  “It’s the way I’d like a son of my own

  “I have only to disconnect the air-hose, to act,” it came into my mind; and I hated and where are ye?” I retorted. “Aye, there’s a myself for the thought.

  ship overhead—a big one. She can pull out a Just then a shadow, grayer in tone and boat of this size—and will, when you get closer to me than the war-ship’s shadow, down on your marrow-bones and swear the swung slowly athwart the sea, passing over oath I’ll put to ye. Decide, or—the hose is as the sunken submarine. It swayed aside the handy as the hoisting-cable.”

  hanging cable and came back again, playing It was not John MacGregor that was

  with the new toy. It was a shark.

  Down Among the Dead Men

  7

  hurled myself through the water, clutching at the swaying cable.

  “If he will have it so, then he shall have it. Providence shall judge between us!”

  Well I knew that the monster of the

  sea, wandering so far out of his range in the great deeps, had come to the sunken