March felt lonely as he stood on the corner opposite the railroad station in New London, waiting for the bus. It was cold and there was rain in the air. The wind whipped about him as he stood close to the building.

The Plymouth was a world miles away by this time, although it had been less than a month since he left it. First there had been the wait of a few days in Hawaii before they found space in a plane heading back for the United States. But those had been good days—interesting in that they saw how completely erased were the effects of the first terrible Jap attack. Then, too, there had been time to rest, to swim and to lie in the sun on the beach.

Finally the long over-water hop had brought them back to America, which they had left so long before. It was the first time either March or Scoot had been in San Francisco, and they enjoyed the two days spent there before taking the train east. Finally there had been two weeks’ leave back in Hampton. They had seen their parents, visited their old friends, slept late and eaten huge meals. They had even been persuaded to make an embarrassed appearance—supposed to be accompanied by speeches—in the assembly hall of the old high school.

Their leave had come to an end all too soon. Then both young men had been faced with the prospect of saying goodbye not only to their folks and their friends, but to each other. It was one fact that both of them had tried to avoid thinking about, but as the time approached they were very aware of it. For so many years they had been together almost every day—but they had taken each other for granted. It never occurred to them that they were closer than many brothers, that each one supplied something necessary and important to the other.

They couldn’t say much, of course, when they finally did say goodbye. It was March’s train which left first, although Scoot would be heading south only two hours later. They were all at the station in Hampton—March’s mother, Scoot’s father and mother and kid sister. March had to say goodbye to all of them and step on to the train alone.

He shook hands with Scoot. “My golly,” he stammered, “I’m going to be worried about you, Scoot. You’ve had me around to look after you and keep you out of trouble so long, that I don’t know how you’ll make out alone.”

They all laughed a little, and Scoot tried to kid back at March, but his heart wasn’t in it.

“Don’t worry about me,” he replied. “I think the baby is busy worrying about the nurse this time. Anyway, if it makes you feel good, March, maybe you’ll have a chance to get me out of trouble later—out in the Pacific somewhere.”

“Say—maybe I will at that!” March tried to act serious. “I can just see myself dashing up in my trusty submarine and rescuing you from a bunch of Japs.”

Later, when they did meet under circumstances not very different from March’s joking suggestion, it was Scoot who remembered what his friend had said back in the station in Hampton, Ohio.

But at the time it was nothing but banter, the kind of talk made to cover up real thoughts that are too deep to be expressed easily. And in another moment the train came thundering down the track. There was a last hurried round of goodbyes and March was on the train, waving and smiling from the car platform as it pulled away from his home.

Because the train was crowded, March had been busy trying to find a place to sit. His suitcase on the same platform was the seat he finally chose, until they pulled into Pittsburgh and he found a more comfortable seat.

The ride had been dirty and uninteresting and March felt himself getting depressed long before they reached New York. There he had to rush to get the train for New London, and now he stood on that windy, rainy corner waiting for a bus, feeling sorry that he had ever won the chance to get into submarine work.

Then he remembered the one thing that had made him feel good since he had left Hampton, and he glanced down at the cuff of his sleeve. Yes—there it was—the extra stripe that had been added when he became a Lieutenant instead of the lowest of commissioned officers, an Ensign.

The promotion had come to them when they were in Hampton on leave—for both Scoot and March. They had quickly added the new stripes to cuffs, to shoulder boards, and had got the gold bars to wear on their work uniform shirts. March felt very proud and pleased, for the promotion had come quickly for such young men in the Navy. Going to the submarine school as a Lieutenant, even if only j.g., or junior grade, was much better than walking in as an Ensign.

He was staring at the stripes on his cuff and smiling so that he didn’t notice the salute of the three men who approached him. Only when the first man spoke did he look up.

“Going to the sub base, sir?”

March saw a sailor with the insigne of a petty officer, third class, on his sleeve, a sturdy, smiling young man with his seabag over his shoulder. Behind him appeared three more men of the same rank. The first, March noticed, was a radioman, two of the others fire controlmen, and the last a pharmacist.

“Yes, waiting for the bus,” March answered with a smile. “Is this the place to wait for it?”

“That’s what we were told, sir,” the radioman said. “You see, we’re just reporting there for the school.”

“Oh, so am I,” March said. “I thought maybe you men were there already and just in town on liberty. But you wouldn’t have brought your seabags along in such a case, would you?”

In a moment the bus appeared and they all climbed aboard. On the long ride out of town and along the river they talked together about the school they were going to, and March caught again, in these men’s enthusiasm, his old feeling of excitement about going into submarines. The men, who had obviously just met as they went to the bus together, were discussing their reasons for volunteering for submarine duty.

“I had two uncles in the Navy,” the pharmacist said. “I’ll never forget the way they talked about submariners. They had both tried, but couldn’t pass the tests. They thought the pigboat men were the cream of the fleet.”

“Speaking of the hard tests,” one of the fire controlmen said, “that’s really why I first got the notion of applying for sub duty. I heard it was the toughest branch of the service to get into and stay in—and I just kind of like to try any challenge like that. When I hear about something really tough, I like to take a crack at it. This is harder to get into than aviation!”

March smiled and thought of Scoot who had been worrying about his ability to meet the strict qualifications for naval fliers.

“I like the life on a sub,” the radioman said. “You know—a good bunch of guys doin’ something big together, all workin’ together like a team. And the—well, friendliness between officers and men is swell. Not that I don’t believe in strict discipline—” he glanced at the officer’s stripes on March’s cuff—“but I still think it’s a good idea for officers and men to get friendly, get to know each other well, the way they do on subs.”

March agreed, and noticed that not one of the men had mentioned the extra pay for submarine duty as one of the reasons for entering that branch, and a dangerous branch, of the naval service.

“That’s a good sign,” he told himself. “Of course, they’ll like the extra pay—no doubt of that—but it’s not the reason they volunteered for sub duty. They really go into it for its own sake.”

The bus turned and entered the driveway of the sub base grounds and all the men looked eagerly out the windows. Their first look was for the river, where they hoped to see submarines.

“Look!” cried Scott, the radioman. “There’s one in dry dock!”

“And over there by the pier,” called another, “there’s a bunch of ’em lined up.”

March looked at the long slim lines of the pigboats and felt warm inside. He wondered just how soon he would take his first ride beneath the waters of Long Island Sound in one of them.

The bus passed a few buildings, but the sailors had no eyes for such ordinary things. Another structure had caught them—a tall round tower looming up above the trees on the gently sloping hillside.

“What’s that?” one of the men asked. “A water tower?”

“Water tower’s right!” exclaimed Scott. “But a special kind. That’s the escape tower!”

“Oh-oh, that’s the baby I’m wondering about,” said the pharmacist. “I don’t know how I’ll like going up through a hundred feet of water with just a funny gadget clamped over my nose and mouth.”

“Well—you better not let it get you,” one of the others put in. “It’s one of the first tests, I hear. If you can’t handle the escape-tower tests, you’re tossed out of submarines pronto!”

The bus pulled up in front of a large brick building and stopped. Everyone got out and walked up to the front door. Inside, March left the men with a smile and reported to the personnel man in charge of receiving new officers assigned to the school. In another half hour he found himself in his quarters in a building some way up the hill above the main buildings of the base. Here the school itself was situated, with its buildings for classrooms, barracks for enlisted men, and quarters for officers without wives. Married officers were allowed to live in New London with their families and commute daily to the school.

March’s room was small but comfortable, and he was neatly settled in it in a short while. His time in the Navy had taught him already to travel light, with only the necessary belongings, and to settle himself quickly. He was at home and comfortable by the time he reported to the officers’ mess for dinner.

There he met other young officers who also lived at the school, and a few of the instructors. The latter were older men, full of years and wisdom in the submarine service, every one of whom would much rather have been on active duty hunting down Jap or Nazi ships on the oceans of the world. But they were too valuable in the great task of training the hundreds of new officers needed for the subs coming off the ways of the shipyards. Here in New London they could pass on to the younger men like March Anson a portion of their knowledge of pigboats.

March felt, during dinner, the quiet good-fellowship of these men. On the Plymouth the officers with whom he ate and talked and played were pleasant and agreeable fellows, but there had been all types there—the quiet ones, the back-slappers, the life-of-the-party men with practical jokes and loud guffaws, the grimly serious officers, and everything in between. But here the men were more alike.

“Not that they’re all the same,” he told himself, as he looked around the table. “McIntosh here next to me is quite different in most ways from that Lieutenant Curtin across the table, for instance, but they have something in common. Something similar in their personalities, I suppose. They’re sociable, but in a quiet way. They’re serious, but not without a sense of humor.”

March did not realize that he was describing himself when he thought of the other officers in this way. But he might have known that this question of personality was one of the most important in considering men who volunteered for submarine service.

No man in the Navy was ever assigned to sub work without his request. It was an entirely volunteer service, but there were always far more applications, among both officers and enlisted men, than could be accepted. So it was possible for the Bureau of Navy Personnel to keep its standards very high in selecting men for the pigboat branch.

When a man already in the Navy was recommended by his commanding officer for assignment to the sub school at New London, as March had been, this did not mean that the recommendation was accepted just like that. The Bureau looked over the man’s record with the greatest care. And just bravery such as March had displayed was not enough, even though it counted strongly in his favor. What they looked for in the “Diving Navy” was the kind of man who was brave, cool under fire, far above the average intelligence, with the ability to get along well with other people under all circumstances, and the kind of nerves that didn’t crack or even show strain under the greatest danger, the worst crowding, or seemingly fatal situations.

As March thought of this, he swelled with pride to think he had been chosen for the submarine school.

“But that’s just the beginning,” he told himself. “I feel pretty darned good to know that I’ve got this far, but they’re going to watch me like a hawk every moment I’m here. I think I can pass all the tough physical tests okay, because I’m in good shape. The studies are hard but if I work enough maybe I can handle them. But how will I act the first time I’m in a submerging sub? How will I react to a crash dive? They’ll be watching me. And even if I get through the school I’m still not a submariner. Why, on my first real trip or two my commanding officer can transfer me back to surface ships just by saying the word!”

After dinner, in the officers’ lounge, March spoke with the executive officer of the sub base, a kindly, gray-haired man with skin that still looked as if he spent a few hours every day facing the salt breeze on a ship’s bridge. Captain Sampson chatted easily with March as they looked out the windows at the gathering twilight.

“Glad to have you with us, Anson,” he said. “Hope you like it here.”

“I’m sure I will, sir,” March replied. “I’ve been looking forward to it long enough.”

“I had an idea this was no sudden impulse of yours,” Sampson replied. “First off, you’re not the kind, I take it, that acts on sudden impulses. And I imagine that subs always appealed to you.”

“Yes, before I was in the Navy that’s what I wanted.”

“Then you ought to do very well,” the Captain said. “You’ll want to make your call on the Commandant tomorrow, I suppose?”

“If it can be arranged,” March said.

“Yes—tomorrow will be all right, I’m sure,” Sampson said, “for you to present your compliments to him. There’ll be a few more officers arriving for the new class tomorrow morning early. I’ve set aside a couple of hours in the afternoon for the calls. Report at fifteen o’clock.”

“Yes, sir,” March said.

When the Captain had gone, March went back to his quarters and sat down to write a few letters. The first was to Scoot Bailey.

“Dear Scoot,” it began. “I’m here at last—at the Submarine School in New London! Tomorrow things will really start!”