To Kill the Leopard by Theodore Taylor

Author:Theodore Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Sully stayed out on the deck a little longer and then decided he’d go back into the saloon and get pass-out drunk.

Fifty hours later, the Atlantic ignored the holidays. She began to provide her own activities for U-122 and the other four boats that crept toward America. Gales raged back and forth between northwest and southwest, attacking the hull with sleet, snow, and hail. They tore the tops off waves that rose up thirty or forty feet and sheeted them over the conning tower. The bridge watch struggled to keep from being washed away, harnesses straining.

The slender hull, creaking and groaning, surged upward on each new crest, hung a few seconds at the top, and then plunged downward on the back slope. Screws beat the air frantically until submerged again in white water. The U-122 was charging batteries and trying to make miles westward.

Clad in oilskins, Kammerer strained against the steel-wire tethers that held him between the periscope and the bridge coaming. Razorlike wind threatened to rip off his goggles.

Down below there was chaos. Glassware and crockery shattered. To move about required hand-over-hand; even then, feet couldn’t stay on the floorplates. Water sloshed down when the hatch was open, adding to the clamminess, the smell of oil and vomit.

On the radio a dozen signals from the mid-Atlantic could be heard. Ships were in distress from the storm, not from U-boat attack.

In the late afternoon, after two straight hours of battling the storm, Kammerer sent the beaten-up watch below. He remained alone on the bridge like Ahab.

Graeber asked Dörfmann, “Why are you being relieved?” helping the Second out of his wet gear.

“I don’t know.”

Graeber quickly pulled on his oils and climbed the ladder. He stuck his head above the deck level and peered around. In the meager gray light he saw the commander defiantly yelling into the howl of wind. He’d taken off his goggles and sou’wester and was letting the sleet pound his face. In his safety belt, he was riding the boat like it was a wild horse.

Graeber watched for a moment in alarm and then dropped back down, saying guardedly to Bauer, “He’s mad, I tell you.”

“Just angry at the storm,” said Bauer.

As darkness settled, the heaving ocean still streaked with wide phosphorescent veins and foam, Kammerer descended from the bridge; his cheeks, forehead, and nose were fiery red from the cutting spicules. He shouted hoarsely, “All hands to diving stations.”

U-122 went to the basement, stabilizing at 150 feet, riding almost motionless horizontally, peace and quiet enveloping it.

The Atlantic gales lasted another three days, Kammerer ducking 122 under when it became almost unbearable for the crew.

The Tuttle sailed early morning December 30, as scheduled, with a partial load of Jusepin crude. Caripito harbor was too shallow for ocean tankers to take on a full load. She lifted up to the safe mark inside Maturin Bay and then went outside to top off at Guiria, on the Paria Peninsula.

She now had her full 78,000 barrels aboard and, riding low

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