The long gray ship shows no other sign and the struggle to increase buoyancy ceases as air spurts from the muddy valves. Lazily at first, but gathering speed rapidly, there rises from a small hatch a bobbing float which struggles upward on the end of the small cable still attached to the boat. To those at the bottom the smoking beacon of the buoy released is an another world, a world of air and sunshine, calling for help. Above the surface intense activity must be starting and, in this other world of sunshine and air the alarm is already spreading to shock into purposeful action the resources of the American Navy. The lives of a crew of trapped men has become, in an instant, the major concern of a nation.
Silent hours pass.
The gradual darkening of the ceiling above the inert submarine indicates the fading of daylight. Those above have established the fact that life still exists in the sunken hull and the gently rocking sister-ship stands by at the upper end of a slender anchor chain which slants through the murky depths to the ocean's bottom. Lighter and lighter grows the greenish tint of the water's surface and deeper and deeper into the profound darkness penetrates the light of dawn. The shadowy shape of the sunken craft is discovered still held in the grip of the sucking mud. Darkness saturated with fear and uncertainty must certainly still grip the souls of the hidden men who cover their desperation by mocking it with ribald story and song.