"Well, we've got our orders at last," begins the commander, addressing
his crew of thirty, and the crew look solemn. For this is the U-47-1/2's
first experience of active service. She has done nothing save trial
trips hitherto and has just been overhauled for her first fighting
cruise. Her commander snaps out a number of orders. Provisions are to be
taken "up to the neck." Fresh water is to be put aboard, and engine-room
supplies to be supplemented.
A mere plank is the gangway to the little vessel. As the commander,
followed by his officers, comes aboard, a sailor hands to each of the
officers a ball of cotton waste, the one article aboard a submarine
which never leaves an officer's hands. For of all oily, grimy, greasy
places the inside of the submarine is supreme. The steel walls, the
doors, the companion-ladders all sweat oil, and the hands must be wiped
dry at every touch. Through a narrow hole aft the commander descends by
a straight iron ladder into a misty region whose only light comes from
electric glow-lamps. The air reeks with the smell of oil. Here is the
engine-room and, stifling as the atmosphere is with the hatches up, it
is as nothing compared to what the men have to breathe when everything
is hermetically sealed.
Here are slung hammocks, where men of one engine-watch sleep while their
comrades move about the humming, purring apartment, bumping the sleepers
with their heads and elbows. But little things like that do not make for
wakefulness on a submarine.
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