U-327 was a torrid, cigar-shaped prison.

        Captain Harold Nerwitz, a tall, dark-haired man of strapping proportion, heard the deep, steady droning high above the conning tower.  The crew of two and a half dozen sailors switched off their transmitters and listened in silence for the next incoming.  They took it as an unavoidable natural phenomenon, not the work of the enemy but a higher power; the dispersed yapping of the flak seemed totally absurd, like shooting a revolver at the moon.  And the droning went on undiminished.

        They went up to Executive Officer Jon Stevenson's room on the second floor.  In the searchlight beams the falling bombs looked like the pearls of a broken necklace.  Around the city the whole sky was blood red.  They stood by the window, breathing in the bitter smell of fire borne on the wind, and listened to the crash as the bombs landed.  Now and then a great flame shot sky-high, as though someone were signaling with a flare gun. 

        Later the sky turned a sulfurous yellow.  The fires were still raging; the air blowing into the room bit their eyes and caught in their throats.  But the planes were gone.

        “They'll be back,” Stevenson radioed down. “Stay alert.”

        It had happened so quickly.  The fires spread like a red carpet unrolled by invisible arms, and pursued ally boats.  As the carpet overtook a ship, tongues of flame leaped up the side, higher and higher, until the whole vessel was ablaze.  Ships rammed each other in their frantic efforts to escape; the air was foul with burning oil and was almost sultry.  The seamen on the bridge looked on ineffectively.  They had no need of binoculars; they could see men in the water, living torches, and every now and then they could hear their screams.  They saw them, hundreds, struggling and splashing, and they could smell the burning flesh.

        “There's nothing we can do for them; they're too far out.  Look to port instead,” the captain ordered. “Get your eyes used to the darkness.  I'll survey for more wreckage.”

        “Yes, sir.”

        But it was impossible to look away from this inferno; the screams rang in their ears.  The smell of death crept over the water like a hideous monster while the flames crackled into the night sky, a sky studded with innumerable stars glittering and a pale frostiness; and as if they were freezing in this icy night in which sailors were burning up like used coal. 

        Then the sun appeared and suddenly everything was changed.  Thin as silk threads, the first tender rays felt their way hesitantly across the horizon.

        “All ahead.  Right full rudder,” motioned Stevenson.

After the submarine put out to sea, the first thing that happened was the bombings.  Yet nothing had showed up on the radar.  Chief Officer Wilbur Cantrell, second in command only to Stevenson, saw the first bomb falling and coming straight toward him; then, in a flash, like an unexpected close-up in a movie, it was right in front of him, a big round tower, immense and yellow.  He heard screaming and fell flat, and then there was the clang of metal (pressure tanks? bilges?) repeatedly striking metal.  It seemed to have struck a yard abaft the bridge.  The men had stood as though paralyzed.  The captain, in his quarters thumbing through Melville, threw on his pants and hurried up from below.  He stood there trembling with rage, and when he could speak it was as though he forced the words through his clenched teeth: “Put that thing overboard.  Now!” Then he turned his back to the bomb, as if it didn't exist. 

It had grazed the bridge after-rail, driven through the steel deck covering, and left a slight dent in the pressure hull.  The contact with the rail had turned it slightly around; it had struck with the detonator upward.  It was easy enough to deactivate the bomb, but it was another story controlling the streaming inrush of water and getting the explosive overboard.  With the help of an immediate tackle and four crowbars, they managed it in twenty minutes.  Meanwhile the second watch manned the AA gun in case the Germans returned.

The captain gave the final command to submerge.  He ordered the engineers to take her down to three hundred feet, an unusually low depth when the vessel was not under attack. “All this fancy equipment the government provides us,” he muttered angrily, “all this radar apparatus the OSS and Roosevelt fund¾worthless! Experimental garbage, in my opinion.  We should have seen that incoming!”

“Yeah, but sir, I think something got in the way of the radar,” one of the sailors said. “Something big.” He looked at his control panel. “Visibility is practically nil.  Thirteen of our other Allied Force ships have reported repeated success with this radar.”

“Well, we're surely not among those thirteen, officer.  Back to work.”

The captain was still fuming.  At the same time it was as though he wished to stage the resulting scene in his own uncontested domain. 

He sat in the wardroom, feeling someone was to blame onboard.  Someone who had taken their eyes away when they should not have.  Facing him stood the four men of the first watch, including Cantrell.  The doors were closed.

“From which sector did the plane come? And was it German in origin?”

“From mine, sir,” said Cantrell, stepping forward. “Still not sure if it was German.”

“The after lookouts are dismissed.”

The three lookouts saluted and departed.

“One question, Wilbur.  An answer in the affirmative will simplify the proceedings.  Were you asleep?”

“Captain, I respectfully request you to withdraw that question.  In my time with the Royal Navy, I regard it as an insult.”

“I don't give a damn how you regard it.  I want an answer.  Or are you just standing in for the others, taking the blame?”

“No, sir.  And if you don't believe me, then I request that you bring charges against me…”

“You needn't worry, Wilbur.  I'll bring charges and have you court-martialed when I'm good and ready.” With this the captain was smirking. “You may regard the present proceedings as a preliminary hearing.  I now ask you for the last time: were you sleeping on shift?”

“No.”

“What's your explanation, then?”

“I have no explanation, sir.”

Thus far the captain had been speaking in his usual, slightly contemptuous manner, but now he changed his tone.  Softly, cautiously, and more patiently, as though waiting for his adversary to fall into a trap, he said, “Visibility?”

“Two miles tops, sir.”

“Atmospheric condition?”

“Hazy streaks of mist, sir.  Like something was in the way.”

“Elevation of clouds?”

“Three or four thousand feet, sir.”

“Very well.” The captain's voice grew loud again: “Supposing the enemy craft had attacked by the shortest route¾because I highly doubt this was a case of friendly fire¾ and with the weather conditions you have just described, as well as the issues with radar tracking, you would have seen it at a distance of eight thousand yards and an altitude of at least two thousand feet.  Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.  But I don't think the plane was flying horizontally.  It dived and came out of the clouds about five hundred yards ahead, dropped its bomb, and went back into the clouds.  And I'm sure something underwater got in the way of our new radar where we would have missed the plane at such a short range.”

“If that's the truth, the plane must have been piloted by Lucifer himself.”

“I have no further explanation to offer, sir.”

The captain took his hands out of his pockets and shook his head.  A second later he sat up straight and leaned forward.  Placing his elbows on the table, he looked hard for a moment at Cantrell, as though seeing him for the first time.  And then, in the matter-of-fact tone one might use to reassure an upset child, he said quietly, “Wilbur, there's more at stake than your person or mine or this sub.  I've got to know how such an attack could have been possible.  Now, surely you must have heard the sound of whirring engines?”

“Only as the enemy was leaving, sir.  We were submerged slightly, so definitely not on approach.”

“Did you hear engines?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don't know whether to believe that memory of yours or not!” Nerwitz shook his head once more. “Send me the three after lookouts.”

When they had come, the captain asked them about engine sounds.  Their reply was the same as Cantrell's.  They were dismissed.  The radioman thrust his head in and said, “Cook to captain: breakfast is ready.”

“Not interested.”

“Request permission to serve then, sir.”

“Refused! Now go! And you too, Wilbur.” He swiveled around in his chair and saw the date on his mantel's nautical calendar.  He tore off the page marked January 1^st 1945. “Oh, by the way…Happy New Years, Wilbur.” He was much calmer now. “Be assured, though, today's events are far from over.”

“Yes, sir.  And Happy New Years to you, too.”

The captain still looked uneasy, even after Cantrell left.  The U-327 had once been in the hands of the Germans, before Allied Forces pillaged it and outfitted it with radar and their own torpedoes.  This had been done covertly for over sixteen months of the war to deceive the enemy.  Make the Germans think they were German U-boat tankers or ships, created from their own pig-iron stocks, when in actuality the Americans or English were behind the helm; in some cases, behind the periscope, for those that could dive.  Nerwitz couldn't understand it.  If it wasn't friendly fire, how could they be seen? How would an enemy unaware of Allied Forces, piloting their top-secret vessels, be able to see them and make such a quick drop-and-run assault? It had to be that newly outfitted radar! Had to!

Nerwitz had been sick of pondering, to the point of nausea, and he had laid witness to too much death and destruction on the open sea already.  He could only describe that day's events as horrid, and either being at war with an invisible enemy or a faulty radar-tracking device.

***

On January 13^th 1945, the crew of the U-327 put out their last patrol.  The sailors had waited for this day to come, hoping by the time they reached the Straits of Gibraltar they would be reunited with their families and friends, and once and for all abandoning their maritime life of deceit and treachery for the Allied Forces. 

The captain had asked for and obtained Cantrell now as first lieutenant; he had only partly forgiven him.  He still spoke softly, because of the previous weeks' events.  But in speaking to the captain, he exerted himself and, out of sheer nervousness, lost part of his voice.  Stevenson was still executive officer.  After months at sea his hair had practically turned gray, but that lent him a certain air of dignity.  Otherwise, he was still very much the same.  Of those who had cracked up under the reigns of war, only the radioman and eighteen sailors remained.  As for the captain, he had his predawn mug of coffee in hand and kept a count of all the battles they had endured in a small log. 

The U-327 had undergone, he realized, no fewer than fifty-four air attacks.  She had battled fog and icebergs, incoming torpedoes and depth charges, and yes¾some kind of an invisible enemy.  He was still sure of it, even though he had finally come to trust the new radar machinery.  Now standing on the bridge in a fitful wet spring, he considered the absurdity of the last sixteen months of warfare.  Out of every five Allied submarines, three or four were regularly lost.  Even the stolen U-boats.  And even fewer enemy ships sunk, as if all this time something had been following the ships and preying on them; or, as before, something had gotten in the way. 

Still, those that returned went out again.

Now bitterness rose up in him¾bitterness over the mystery surrounding the waters they traversed, as well as the inhuman obstinacy of war itself.  And it was not the fear of death¾that was bad enough, but everyone had previously resigned to it¾but rather the senselessness of dying in this way.

There is no country in this world, he thought as the sea poured down on him, where men are so docile about dying; they like to call it bravery, yet it struck him as perverted courage.

The wayward path to Gibraltar gave them a harsh reception.  It drove over the boat with its mountainous seas, green and black and glinting white at the summits.  Violently the waters released the steel cylinder, only to seize it again, shaking it, stamping on it, or even worse, sweeping it in maddening circles that threw two of the after lookouts from the bridge and the captain himself almost overboard.

“What the devil was that?” Nerwitz reached for a side rail just in time.

“Cantrell hit his head, sir!” Stevenson shouted up. “He's bleeding pretty bad.”

“For heaven's sake, give him a band-aid.  What just catapulted us?”

“We almost lost pressure from the hull with that turn, sir,” one of the lookouts said. “No evidence of a hurricane either.”

But it still felt like a storm to Nerwitz. “Dive! Now!” He immediately took the chair. “Something's out there, something big.”

“Another submarine?”

“Impossible.  There's nothing on record that size that could have magnified the rolls we just went through.  It's a miracle we weren't ripped in two.”

But because of the weather the sky was empty of planes, and any submarine chasers that might have been patrolling those waters undetected could congratulate themselves if they, too, didn't capsize.

Twenty-five fathoms down, and evidence of a storm brewing was unnoticeable.  For a moment there was silence, as Stevenson bandaged up one of the after lookout's broken arms and Cantrell's head.  Engineering suffered minor damage, and the firemen hurried down with the pump to work on the diesel.  They removed parts of the main engine and cursed because they could not agree on how to repair it.  The port engine had been taken almost completely apart¾with the hope that it could replace the main one¾but another hour later engineering informed the captain that it could not be fixed with the materials available onboard; the camshafts were cracked. 

The submarine crawled homeward submerged, at a rate of three knots.  Some of the crew were not the least bit dismayed over the recent turn of events.  Those who had time went to the engine room for a look at the dismembered engine.  The engineers gave their comments, pointing here and there with their grease-blacked arms.  The seamen blamed the firemen and made disparaging remarks.  The head engineering officer stood by with the parts of a broken camshaft in his great hands.  He examined it gloomily, then held it out for the captain to see: “Even a torpedo impact couldn't have torn this sucker!” Those words rang in the seamen's ears even after they had left the engine room.  They knew that an unknown enemy outside the boat and beneath the water had destroyed the main engine.

“Well something did!” Nerwitz insisted. “And nothing's showing up on the radar.” He smacked the camshaft out of the engineer's hand. “No confirmation of a hurricane or a storm at the moment.  So how do you explain it?”

The head engineer shrugged his shoulders. “Something must've got in the way.”

The captain's face turned beet red.

“What the captain's trying to say,” Stevenson came forward and said, “is that we've been here two hours and you show no results.  We're submerged like we're supposed to, but our current damage intake makes us half-helpless.  If the camshaft's gone, how long till pressure in the hull goes?”

“It won't take long to mend, sir,” the engineer said. “I'm sure my boys can¾”

Suddenly all life froze in the boat.

The U-327 was rocked and pulverized some more, just as it had hours before¾only not as worse.  This time, however, the metal looked as if it was contorting inwards and the vessel, now stretching, seemed as if the very life was being squeezed out of it.

The men were thrown off their feet again, and U-327's lights turned red. 

From the floor, Stevenson whispered, “What happened now?”

The captain grabbed the nearest rail and got on one knee. “I don't know.  We're too low to be in a storm.” He was just as confused as Stevenson. “It's something we missed.”

“But what? Another plane? A U-boat? A whole fleet surrounding us perhaps?”

“Shh!” The captain held up his finger. “Do you hear that?” he whispered back.

“No,” Stevenson said, trying to hear what he was hearing. “What?”

“A grappling noise.”

“Sounds more like a swishing across the aft side,” the engineer remarked nervously.

Everyone heard the sound¾a metallic swishing object out there in the water, hitting and scraping against the U-boat's roof.  It was unmistakable.

No one moved¾or even breathed.  Out there, barely a yard away, steel struck steel.  And every man heard it.  Death had laid its bony hand on the hull.  As it passed over the starboard end, the men's eyes followed as though a naval commander was passing them in review.  It had started behind the bow, and now it was moving slowly along the side.

The captain spoke. “Everyone back to their stations.  Quietly.  Right full rudder,” he commanded, hoping to clear the bow and after plane.

But the helmsman didn't have time to carry out the order.

A giant arm pierced the corridor next to the motor room.  It tore open the pressure hull and killed the men in the motor room and the engine room, the radioman and cook in the galley, and two petty officers.  In less than five seconds all the rooms surrounding engineering were completely flooded.  One of the after lookouts slammed and bolted the aft side watertight door; the rest of the men in the petty officers' quarters were drowned.  As he stepped back and splashed away from the door, he held onto the nearest portside window for support.  He stopped when he heard a rustling sound coming from behind the steel shutter.  He put his head up to the window and listened, then slowly raised the metal lid and looked out the six-inch thick glass.  A great big yellow eye opened up and stared back at him.

“Captain, captain!” the lookout yelled, falling backwards into the water in fright. “A monster! There's a monster out there!” Then the lights went out altogether.

Now it was completely black and the vessel stood vertical in the water, entangled in something; the men forward in the control room fell off their feet and rolled down to the watertight door where the head engineer lay, his lower jaw and left arm smashed.  Then a dull thud was heard as U-327 struck bottom, and settled on an even keel.

A flashlight went on.  The captain held it, directing the beam on the depth gauge in the control room.  The blinding light remained in place much longer than was necessary for reading it.  The needle of the depth gauge stood at two hundred and thirty feet.  And then total darkness again.

The silence was complete, both inside and outside the boat.  Nerwitz and Stevenson felt something unearthly about the silence, as though everything that had ever lived had gone out of existence.  Never had the men's ears heard anything so quiet.  Never had the captain seen a metallic arm or tentacle rip through the motor room like it did.  Stevenson still wondered how they managed to breathe so silently; it seemed to him that he himself was wheezing as though each breath were his last.

“We need to work our way up to the bridge,” Nerwitz finally said.

“I agree,” Stevenson whispered back, as the water filled the stairs up to his waist.

They regulated their breathing and their brains spoke up: what it told them was that the boat was lying on the bottom, she couldn't rise, and they were shut up inside; but for now, getting to the bridge was their first priority.

Cantrell was sitting at the radar panel when they arrived, holding his head. “There's something on the screen, I think,” he said, waving for them to come over. “It's very faint though.” He turned a dial on the switchboard and pointed to a light green fluctuation of movement. “There.  That blotch.”

“Let me have a look.” Stevenson leaned forward. “Could just be a school of sharks, nothing more.  Unless the enemy knows we've stolen their boats and have finally come for us.”

Cantrell shook his head. “I don't think so.  They're broke, losing the war.  Been that way for several months now.” 

The captain spoke. “I only saw a glimpse, but it must be some kind of new sub, and it must be what caused those other ally ships to vanish without a trace.”

“I don't believe it.”

“For God's sake, Jon! Then what will you believe? This thing is what got in the way of our tracking back on the First.  This mechanical contraption is what jammed our radar and blocked our visibility from incoming fighters.”

“If it's mechanical,” Cantrell interrupted, “then it must be some kind of metal squid, because the radar's showing eight to ten leglike appendages.  It's blurry, but have a look for yourselves.”

“A mechanical squid?” Stevenson couldn't believe it.

“That's what he said, Jon.” The captain's tone was much louder now. “Now let's get out of here!”

Silence again.

The three commanding officers, along with the remaining after lookouts, froze and grabbed onto the nearest side rails, preparing once more for the worst. 

Stevenson went to the bridge's aft-end portside window.  He stretched out his hand and raised the window's steel shutter.  A metal sea monster? He had to see for himself. 

When he had seen the mechanical entity swimming in the water and running circles around the sub, his jaw dropped.  It was indeed a giant mollusk made out of silver steel, with arms the length of the U-327's aft side.  And when he saw the Swastika emblazoned on the head of it, just above the great yellow eye, he had become a firm believer.  He had succumbed now, like Nerwitz and Cantrell, to that very silence.  It was more out of awe, though, than anything else.

The silence continued unbroken.  And now that everything around them had ceased to live, they realized that they were no longer afraid.  Engineering was gone.  The motor room was gone.  Seamen were gone.  They looked into one another's faces and suddenly knew more about each other than in all the years spent fighting side by side.  They lay at the bottom of the sea in the place to which they had sent so many enemy ships, the place where all ships ultimately go.  Never had they been less afraid.  Their minds and bodies had got used to the fear as one gets used to a job. 

Death could not have come more easily, more peacefully, or pleasantly.  There was something almost splendid, almost luxurious, about this kind of death.  They knew how evil death could be, with what subtle cruelty it could strike, promiscuously and unjustly.  Yet now it had come so gently, and at the hands of an unfathomable creature.  They had learned that the main thing in war is the way death comes, not the mere fact of death.  In the end they saw no ground for complaint.  They had known it would come one day or another.  Now they found it acceptable; even the silence around them was soothing.  No more depth charges, no more torpedoes.  The war was over.  They had made their peace.  This was how they felt when the captain said, “Stand by to leave the boat.” The captain had spoken in the same tone as he had used hundreds of times to command. “Stand by to surface.” But the remaining men of U-327 cowered as though he were holding a club over them.

“Surface?” Stevenson couldn't believe his ears. “And how will you manage that?”

“It's perfectly simple,” the captain replied. “We have plenty of time, there's no need to hurry.  We have the escape lungs.  I will explain everything in detail.  Incidentally, the depth presents no problem.”

The men did not listen.  They understood nothing.  Only the sounds of the tentacles tearing through what was left of engineering.  They gaped at the captain like bewildered children. 

The captain broke off.  He saw that he was not understood and his face changed; his lips became lines and his eyes turned to slits.  He climbed up into the tower.  They heard him unlocking the tower hatch, pushing back the latch.  Then he climbed back down and said, “I won't be taken in by some Nazi crustacean.  Get your escape lungs ready.  Stand by to flood tube four.”

This time they listened.  And after he had explained how the tower's hatch could be opened in spite of the high pressure and lack of a motor room, they were convinced that escape was a simple matter even at this depth.  They went forward for their escape lungs and hurried back to the bridge.

At 0900 the flooding began.

Cantrell went alone into the forward torpedo room.  For a few seconds he remained hesitant in the darkness, as if to think the whole thing through one last time.  He looked toward the tubes, where the water would stream into the boat; he suddenly realized that he was starting a process that could not be reversed.  Then he looked back into what had remained of the control room, just below the bridge.  A few of his shipmates, themselves illuminated by a flashlight, were peering after him, unable to see him in the darkness of the torpedo bilges.

He turned the wheel, opening the outer door of tube four.  Then he let compressed air into the tube and fired the torpedo.  He could hear it bouncing along the bottom and waited for all to be still.  Then he closed the outer door, opened the breech, and removed the piston from the tube.

The sea poured in with the shrill note of a teakettle.  He then ran back to the bridge.  Nerwitz stood by the forward door at the top of the stairs, holding the flashlight for him.  For the second time the men were seized by a kind of panic.  They moved together like a herd of sheep. 

Cantrell turned out his flashlight.  The gush of water sounded hideously loud in the darkness.  At the same time the torpedo being released had angered the squid.  So much it began ramming its head into the outer hull of the bridge.  

But above it the words of the captain could be heard: “Don't be afraid of the water.” Then he flashed the light from face to face. “And don't be afraid of the squid.” The men were too frightened, though, to move a muscle.  When the light went out, the howling of the water was twice as loud as before.

Each group of three¾one led by Nerwitz, one led by Stevenson, one led by Cantrell ¾was tied together with a line slung around their waists in case anyone should lose his nerve and rise too quickly.  The water rose steadily.  When it was chest-high, the captain had to flash on his light while the lines were being disentangled.  The group that was to go first stood in a line under the bridge stairs; the second and third groups stood behind them.  But when the water reached the lower edge of the bridge and rushed inside, they floated toward the ceiling, squeezed together and tugged at the lines.

Just then a horrible scream was heard from the control room.  A third wave of panic came over the men.  They had never heard anyone howl like that.  They knew it was too late to go back, too late to close the tube and that the after lookout with the broken arm, had been cut away and forgotten.  Nerwitz realized that he had been to blame.

He felt a tug on his party's line and realized that Stevenson was drowning.  He had seen him gagging, unable to hold his mouthpiece between his lips or maintain his jacket.  A quiver went through Stevenson, and his hands moved convulsively.  Then, as the steel monster outside pierced the belly of the boat, he fell underwater slowly¾all movements are slow in the water.  It was as if he was tired and wanted to sleep for good.

“Stevenson!” The captain jerked his own line.

Cantrell, at the back, pushed forward. “He's gone, sir! Move to the aft! He's gone!”

The captain struggled in the water. “No! We have to go back!”

Cantrell drew the captain after him.  He took the lead position and, with the help of the last few seamen, who were now second in line, passed Nerwitz through the conning tower hatch on the after end, opposite the bridge. 

Cantrell had to untie him.  He cut the front line and tied whatever loose ends there were together with his own.  He was frantic to get out of the boat like the next man…but even he knew that ambition seemed unlikely.  The lieutenant hadn't the strength to close his knife and put it away.  He simply let it drop and, pulling four seamen from different lines behind him, groped for the rungs of the ladder.

Up top the captain waited in the darkness. 

Cantrell and his team never ascended.

Everything around him was filtering liquid and there was nothing to hold on to.  He   saw his life flash before his eyes.  But he saw that Cantrell's line was still there.  When he looked down, the water was dark green.  He climbed down and let air bubbles out of his mouth in order to slow the rise, and at once the line tautened.  Underwater he could see large tentacles with pincers at the end of them piercing the lower end with driving force.  Angry force.  Without knowing what he was doing, he let more air out of his mouth.  He pulled on the stray line and it grew rigid, and then it pulled him into a slanting position.  Then it occurred to him he had used too much oxygen in his lungs and that there would be none left in which to stay any longer. 

Cantrell was gone.  There was nothing he could do for him.

Now alone in a flooding vessel that was being ripped apart by a monster, he flailed about with his legs, trying to rise faster, trying to snap the lid of his oxygen bottle, trying to rip the cord on his lifejacket.  The water around him became light green.  For fear that his lungs might burst, he let out some more air bubbles.  The ladder was there.  It looked so close yet so far.  He had a feeling that the escape lung would be ready for him.  But as he grabbed the top rung of the ladder, a tentacle shot up through the water and snatched his leg, wrapping itself around it.  

At over twenty-five fathoms and over three hundred feet beneath the sea, inside the U-327's aft side conning tower, the last thing Nerwitz saw was himself being pulled into the abyss.  He felt ice cold as the water entered his lungs and filled his tall, thin frame.  It bit into his body, just as the creature had bit into the boat, and he shivered.  He saw dark spots above him, as he was pulled lower and lower into an early grave.