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But to get back: the tank man has done his part and our sub is sinking. There is no unusual feeling to inform a man she is sinking. Only for the starting of the engines, the diving-rudder man getting busy, and the wide-faced gauge's long green finger beginning to walk around, a man who didn't know could easily believe that the sub was still tied up alongside her supply-ship.
He was the busy man while we were under water. The others could now and again grab a moment of relaxation from their tenseness, but while the sub was moving the diving-rudder man never took his eyes off the little brass scale with the electric light playing on it.
She has a turn at porpoising then; that is from a moderate depth the diving-rudder man shoots her near enough to the surface for the captain to have a look through the periscope a long-enough look to plot the enemy on a chart, but not long enough to give that enemy much of a chance to pick him up; and then under again.
The crew of the sub described were not sailors. The captain was an old seagoer yes; and it would be a safe guess that the diving-rudder man had a seagoing experience; and one other perhaps; but the fellows who stood by the other things below came straight from the boat works. They had helped, most of them, to build her: which was one good reason for having them along on her trial trip.
And the layman may note it with expert men at the periscope and diving-rudder, a porpoising sub can sight, discharge her torpedo, and dive all within five seconds. Steaming back to harbor after our trial run that day, we caught the first rip of the gale which the gummed-over moon and the low barometer had forecast the night before.
The least deviation of the sub's course from the horizontal and these two instruments, lit up by electric lamps, showed it at once. There was a big dial, with a long green hand, which also marked the depth of the sub; but that was an insensitive and rather slow-acting gauge all right for the crew to look at from half the length of the sub, but not fine or quick enough for the diving-rudder man.
This was the diving-rudder man, a most expert one, we were told, who had been known to hold a submerged sub at full speed to within six inches of one depth for two miles at a stretch. A thin brass scale and a curved tube of colored water with an air bubble in it helped out the diving-rudder man's calculations.
But the long green finger is walking, and marking 5 feet, 10 feet, 11, 12, as it walks. At 16 feet the finger oscillates and stops, and to that depth our diving-rudder man holds her while she speeds on for a mile or so. That first little dash is by way of warming her up. The officer for whose government this submarine was built is aboard. He now asks for a torpedo demonstration.
The bright electric lights helped out the machine-shop illusion. For a time during the run the diving-rudder man had his troubles keeping her on a level, whereupon the skipper an easy-going man ordinarily jerked his head away from his periscope and had a peek for the reason.
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