Around the World Submerged: The Voyage of the Triton

Enthralled, I counted fourteen gaily decorated sails of different hues and patterns, and half as many slatternly ones, which we took to be fishing boats. At the same time, we made frequent observations all around for the many navigation checks demanded by Will and to detect in good time any sailboat approaching too close. Our photographers, led by Joe Roberts and Dick Harris, snapped as many pictures as they could. This was something of a chore, for to take a picture I had to aim the scope, permit it to be defocused to a predetermined setting, then duck my head while the photographer held his camera against the eyepiece and fired away. Demands on periscope time were heavy, and I was conscious that we were leaving it up too long and raising it too often.

1146 Upon raising the periscope I am looking right into the eyes of a young man in a small dugout, close alongside. Perhaps he has detected the dark bulk of our hull in the relatively clear waters of the Bay, or he may have sighted our periscope earlier. He and I study each other gravely. His boat is a small dugout, perhaps 12 feet long, devoid of any paint and without mast or sail [which is why he got so close in on us]. He has a paddle with which he easily maintains a position abeam of us at our present slow speed. He looks ahead and looks behind, looks down in the water and maintains position about 50 yards abeam with occasional muscular sweeps of his paddle.

Down goes the periscope. At my startled comment, everyone had pressed in closer to it.

“Can we get a picture?” Joe Roberts asked.

“No. We can’t fool around with him.” But the look on Joe’s face would have melted a much harder heart than mine.

“You ought to let us snap him,” he begged. “Later on you’ll wish you had …”

“OK,” I yielded. “No time to argue. Up periscope!”

I fielded the handles as they came out of the periscope well, put my right eye to the eyepiece, rose with it to nearly its full extension, then stopped it with a sudden signal to Beacham.

“There he is—here!” The picture in the eyepiece blurred out of focus. I drew my head to the side, felt the warmth of Robert’s face near mine, his arm pressing on my shoulder. “Click” went the camera, then “click” again, and a third time.

Our friend is a dark-complexioned moon-faced young man with a well-fed physique. His clothing is tattered and he wears some kind of a battered hat for protection from the sun. Our photographic party obtains several pictures of him which will be interesting to look at later.

“Down periscope!” The steel tube slithers down into its well as I describe the scene above to the people in the conning tower. They would all like to get a look at him, but that isn’t too practical.

I motion for the scope to slide up once more. Sure enough, there is our friend impassively leaning on his gunwales and staring right at the periscope as we raise it barely two inches out of the water. “We’ve played with this gent long enough,” I mumble in-audibly. Spinning the periscope around for one last cut on the now-familiar landmarks and to say aloha to Magellan and his intrepid spirit, I sight a fair course between the nearest set of tree trunks, take a final look at our friend in the dugout canoe, and snap up the periscope handles as a signal for it to start down.

“All ahead two-thirds…. Right full rudder!” This is something our swarthy friend won’t be able to handle. Triton slips neatly ahead of him and away to the right. Upon slowing for a look a few minutes later, I spot the dugout many hundreds of yards away, being paddled rather strongly in the wrong direction.

For some reason, the concern I had expected to feel if some unauthorized person saw our periscope did not come. We had, it is true, discussed this possibility at that long-ago conference in the Pentagon. Our entry into Magellan Bay would expose us to detection, but the decision to go ahead had been made nevertheless. Though nothing more had been said, I remember feeling that Admiral Beakley was not too concerned over the possibility.

Still, there was a risk that some notice would be taken of our presence, and I might have worried more had not some of our more perceptive conning tower crew unconsciously said exactly the right thing: