Fresh Air at Last!
“When the salvors had done their part it was for the prisoners to do the rest—to remove the inner plate as quickly as they pleased. But when it came to explaining this not very complicated operation by tapping out messages in Morse on the deck it was by no means easy to get K-13’s survivors to take it in. By patient repetition that was done at last, and then the divers busied themselves with fixing up the tube. They had to measure the screw threads, so that the adaptor might be made to fit accurately and to prepare a packing of tow soaked in tallow to exclude the water. A salvage steamer is a traveling workshop and divers are skilled mechanics, so that this part of the job, though it might consume time, presented no difficulties. By eight o’clock on the Wednesday morning the tube had been screwed firmly into place, the inner plate of the hoist had been removed, and the men, who had for forty and a half hours lain buried in a steel coffin, were at length enabled to draw into their impoverished lungs air which was free from pollution. It was scarcely the fresh air of heaven, for it came out of an E-boat’s bottles, but though tinned it was a draught of infinite refreshment. The pumps of K-13 were at once set working and the two days’ accumulations of foul smells and gases were thankfully expelled. A pipe run down the now open tube brought blasts of high-pressure air which were allowed to expand and to blow away all festering impurities; this pipe also brought replenishment to K-13’s bottles. With the power of her charged batteries and her refilled air-bottles, she was now ready to play her part in the work of salvage.
“The salvors had got through in time to save, but the margin was small. At 6 a.m., two hours before the tube was opened into the sunken submarine, the water leaking through the after-bulkhead had short-circuited the lighting cables, and K-13 was utter darkness. To the men imprisoned it must have seemed the darkness of the tomb. Even the strongest among them could not have borne up very much longer. They were so little capable of excitement that not a man cheered when the air-tube was opened.