While in the Gulf Stream we had an outer temperature of 28° Celsius. This was about the warmth of the surrounding water. Fresh air no longer entered. In the engine-room two 6-cylinder combustion motors kept hammering away in a maddening two-four time. They hurled the power of their explosions into the whirling crankshafts. The red-hot breath of the consumed gases went crashing out through the exhausts, but the glow of these incessant firings remained in the cylinders and communicated itself to the entire oil-dripping environment of steel. A choking cloud of heat and oily vapour streamed from the engines and spread itself like a leaden pressure through the entire ship.
During these days the temperature mounted to 53° Celsius.
And yet men lived and worked in a hell such as this! The watch off duty, naked to the skin, groaned and writhed in their bunks. It was no longer possible to think of sleep. And when one of the men fell into a dull stupor, then he would be aroused by the sweat which ran incessantly over his forehead and into his eyes, and would awake to new torment.
It was almost like a blessed deliverance when the eight hours of rest were over, and a new watch was called to the central or the engine-room.
[Illustration: Redrawn from The Sphere. Permission of Scientific American.
A Submarine Discharging a Torpedo.]
But there the real martyrdom began. Clad only in an undershirt and drawers, the men stood at their posts, a cloth wound about their foreheads to keep the running sweat from streaming into their eyes. Their blood hammered and raced in their temples. Every vein boiled as with fever. It was only by the exertion of the most tremendous willpower that it was possible to force the dripping human body to perform its mechanical duty and to remain upright during the four hours of the watch....
But how long would we be able to endure this?
I no longer kept a log during these days and I find merely this one note: "Temperature must not rise any higher if the men are to remain any longer in the engine-room."
But they did endure it. They remained erect like so many heroes, they did their duty, exhausted, glowing hot, and bathed in sweat, until the storm centre lay behind us, until the weather cleared, until the sun broke through the clouds, and the diminishing seas permitted us once more to open the hatches.[4]
[Footnote 4: ©]
The Deutschland was now near her goal. Without any trouble she entered Hampton Roads and was docked at Baltimore. There her cargo was discharged and her return cargo loaded. This latter operation involved many difficulties. During her stay a United States Government Commission made a detailed inspection of the Deutschland to determine beyond all question her mercantile character. But at last the day of departure, August 1, had arrived. Properly escorted she made the trip down the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay. On her way down she made again diving trials which Captain König describes as follows:
In order to see that everything else was tight and in good order, I gave the command to set the boat upon the sea bottom at a spot which, according to the reading upon the chart, had a depth of some 30 meters.
Once again everything grew silent. The daylight vanished the well-known singing and boiling noise of the submerging vents vibrated about us. In my turret I fixed my eyes upon the manometer. Twenty meters were recorded, then twenty-five. The water ballast was diminished--thirty meters appeared and I waited the slight bump which was to announce the arrival of the boat at the bottom.
Nothing of the sort happened.
Instead of this the indicator upon the dial pointed to 32--to 33--to 35 meters....
I knocked against the glass with my finger--correct--the arrow was just pointing toward thirty-six.
"Great thunder! what's up?" I cried, and reached for the chart. Everything tallied. Thirty meters were indicated at this spot and our reckoning had been most exact.
And we continued to sink deeper and deeper.
The dial was now announcing 40 meters.
This was a bit too much for me. I called down to the central and got back the comforting answer that the large manometer was also indicating a depth of over forty meters!
The two manometers agreed.
This, however, did not prevent the boat from continuing to sink.
The men in the central began to look at one another....
Ugh! it gives one a creepy feeling to go slipping away into the unknown amidst this infernal singing silence and to see nothing but the climbing down of the confounded indicator upon the white-faced dial....
There was nothing else to be seen in my turret. I glanced at the chart and then at the manometer in a pretty helpless fashion.
