Dust on the Sea (29 page)

Finished at last, he pushed the tray aside, lumbered to his feet, waved his arms again in a beckoning motion. “Come, my friend,” he said, with the leering grin. “I have something to show you.” He led Richardson to an area below decks in the after part of the ship, turned on a single light bulb in the overhead. There was a man huddled against the side of the ship. Irons were clamped on his legs. His hands were manacled to a beam over his head. Dried blood matted his hair, covered the front of his blouse. His head was hanging down, but Richardson could see that both eyes were swollen shut, and there was a deep gash across the top of his head. The skin had pulled back, exposing the bone beneath. The man was unconscious.

“This is one of my crewmen who defied my authority.” The familiar titter. “My grandfather would have cut off his head immediately for such presumption. I have been kinder. I have given him a day to repent. Tomorrow you shall see me cut his head off with a single blow of this sacred sword I am wearing.” He spat upon the wretched man, kicked him heavily in the side.

He turned to Richardson. “You see, my friend, what I can do. Think carefully when I send for you. Poetic, is it not? You see, my friend, what I can do. Think carefully when I send for you.” He made the phrase into a little singsong chant. Still singing to himself, he turned and went back up the ladder.

His guards were looking at each other. They had evidently been given no instructions. Richardson smiled mirthlessly, pointed with his chin toward the bow. Wordlessly, they accompanied him back to his cell, walking stooped under the low overhead. When his arms were unbound and he was about to re-enter his prison, he looked the three men in the eye, tapped his forehead significantly. In a loyal crew this would have brought a reaction. It was, in a way, a test. The faces remained impassive, but there was an underlying unease as they closed the door upon him.

He did not believe any bones were broken, but every part of his body ached. The expected summons had come in midafternoon, and although feeling light-headed from lack of food and drink, he had
managed to stick to his determination to give only name, rank, and serial number. The result had been a beating by several crew members who obviously hated their job but had, nevertheless, cuffed him about heartily enough to allay any suspicions Moonface might have had as to their willingness. Toward the end Moonface had himself lent a hand with a short stout piece of timber, and it was from these blows around the head and ribcage region that Richardson suffered most. Perhaps a rib had been cracked. His skull felt as if spikes had been hammered all over it. By twisting and squirming in the grasp of the men who were supposed to hold him, he had succeeded in some measure in protecting his head and soft abdominal area. His arms and legs were by consequence covered with deep bruises. His skin had been broken in several places where Moonface had struck it with his club, and finally he was bleeding quite profusely around the face and from his nose. It was perhaps this that brought the interview to a close. Doubtless the kudos for bringing in an enemy submarine captain alive would be greater than bringing him back dead.

Richardson had stopped feeling the blows as they fell upon him. Somewhere, in his remaining awareness, he realized he was only semiconscious. He perhaps actually did pass out for a moment or two. His next recollection was of being roughly carried along the deck and down the companionway into his cell. The roughness ceased as they passed through the companionway—out of sight of Moonface—and to Richardson's surprise, when after a little delay he was laid gently on the floor of the cell, someone had dumped the rags out of the bag and had spread them around into the semblance of a bed for him.

He was never clear how long he lay there. Again his state of near-unconsciousness changed imperceptibly to sleep. When he awoke, it was because of a tremendous need to urinate, almost like a surge from within his body. Moonface, of course, had given no thought to sanitary facilities. He would have to use the same stratagem as the previous night. Painfully he crawled to his knees, pulled the rags away from the lowest corner of the sloping deck, made a little pile of the most absorbent of them. His urine was full of blood and reeked with the smell of it. The thought—almost a detached observation—crossed his mind that he might have suffered permanent damage. Well, it could not be helped, and probably did not matter, for neither his kidneys nor he could stand a repetition of today's inquisition. He pitched the reeking bloody mess out the porthole.

Night was falling again, the end of his second full day aboard the Japanese patrol boat. She had not run her engines for twenty-four hours, had simply drifted all day long in the light haze, no doubt supposedly
carrying out a sonar watch. With her demoralized crew and psychopathic skipper, she could be of very little benefit to the Imperial Japanese Navy. A couple of hours of lying quietly on his bed of rags had somewhat restored Richardson's strength. He was able to think clearly once again. If his hopes and assumptions had been correct, if
Eel
had indeed been keeping the patrol boat under surveillance, something was likely to happen around the end of twilight, after the dying tendrils of the day had been replaced by the secrecy of night.

He had moved again, painfully, to the porthole, was staring out of it as he had for so many hours during the past two days. He could only see out to port, more or less to the eastward, he judged. The other side of the patrol boat, the starboard side, was his blind side. If
Eel
attacked, she would probably attack from the port side, simply because that was where he had painted the name. She would realize he had painted it from the porthole, would hope he was nearby, would want to avoid damaging that part of the ship. She would probably execute a battle surface attack close alongside. She would have to keep good way on to hold herself down while she blew her tanks, therefore would approach from well astern. Then, when her ballast tanks were well emptied and she could no longer be held down by bow and stern planes, the planes would suddenly be reversed and she would pop to the surface, riding high, presenting a good gun platform for her gun crews. He regretted that the turn of the patrol boat's bows confined his view to her port forward quadrant only. He would have liked to see
Eel
as she suddenly and dramatically burst from beneath the sea. Probably he would not see her until she came abeam, already fully surfaced, guns blazing. She might sink the patrol boat, with him in it—a distinct possibility. An unlucky shot, or a ricochet, might finish what Moonface had started. What did it matter?

The scenario was fully played out in his mind, and he was therefore unprepared for a small disturbance in the water, perhaps 200 yards away, slightly forward of the patrol boat's beam. Almost, he thought, it might have been a periscope feather, but this was the wrong place for it. Perhaps it was a fish jumping. He watched the spot, saw it again. It was too early. It was in the wrong place. It was still not dark enough. This could not be the
Eel
!

But it was. Suddenly she burst out of the sea, less than fifty yards away. Bows on, her bullnose cleaving up from the depths, she reared high above the water, splashing tremendous cascades of foam from the freeing ports at the bottom of her bow buoyancy tank. He could clearly see the tightly closed torpedo tubes as they came above water. She was moving fast. There was frightened yelling on deck of the
patrol boat.
Eel
's bow lowered as her stern came up. There was already someone on her bridge. Thirty yards—twenty yards—the distance closed rapidly. Her bow had lowered to approximately four feet above the water, about half its usual fully surfaced height, as she smashed perpendicularly into the stout wooden side of the pseudo sampan.

Richardson had his face pressed to the rim of the porthole, felt the force of the blow communicated to his forehead and chin. The patrol boat heaved massively to starboard. There was a horrendous crashing of timbers, a massive pouring of water, confused shouting and yelling.
Eel
's bow had passed from his sight, must be buried in the side of the wooden boat. Men were boiling out of her bridge, jumping out of the gun access trunk opening, which he could see on her port side. The forward torpedo room hatch flung itself open, came to rest vertically, partly shielding the area behind it. Two men leaped out, placed a machine gun in one of the mounts which had been built there. Swiftly a belt was produced, clipped in. Then one man jumped back into the hatch while the other sprawled at full length on deck, and using the open hatch as a shield, opened fire. The stuttering roar of the gun overwhelmed all other sound. On
Eel
's bridge another group of men leaped over the wind-deflector shield to cast loose the forty-millimeter gun. Ammunition clips were appearing magically from over the bridge and up through the gun access trunk. Within seconds the forty-millimeter began to speak in a steady, monotonous pounding. Tracer bullets and solid armor-piercing shots stitched their angry message into the amidships section of the patrol boat. Rich could see several rifles on the bridge, all aimed with precision into her midship section, all of them firing rapidly.

There was yelling and confusion among the patrol boat's crew. Moonface was roaring orders. There were other voices shouting, the rapid thumps of many running feet.
Eel
had not backed clear. She was still driving ahead, holding her nose in the hole she had made. The patrol boat was in fact impaled on
Eel
's bow. The submarine's steel bow, with its heavy bullnose casting, had driven deep into its side.

The firing increased in fury. Two more fifty-caliber machine guns opened up from
Eel
's bridge, one on either side, and at the same time more men scrambled out on
Eel
's deck through the gun access trunk. They were weirdly accoutered. Some carried rifles with a bandolier of ammunition slung around their shoulders. Others had pistols in their hands, the corresponding belt and holster strapped around their waists. Several carried coils of heaving line. Two men had grapnels with short pieces of chain attached to them, and additional coils of rope. Several of them carried an assortment of tools: a crowbar, sections of pipe, a fire ax. They crouched nervously on deck just forward of the bridge,
only a few feet beneath the deafening banging of the forty-millimeter cannon raking the patrol boat's wooden decks. Richardson could hear the bullets striking the superstructure and hull of the patrol boat. There was a distinctly splintering impact as they shattered the thick wooden timbers.

There was the blast of a horn from the vicinity of
Eel
's bridge. It was her compressed-air foghorn, commonly used as a signal to clear the decks of gun crews prior to an emergency dive. Instantly all guns ceased firing. Rich heard Buck Williams yell, “Come on!” The men who had been crouching on deck dashed forward, leaped past the forward torpedo-room hatch with its now quiet machine gun, passed out of view.

Some were yelling words Richardson could not understand. Others were imitating what they evidently supposed must have been the rebel battle cry during the Civil War. Still others were screaming like Indians.

There was much hoarse shouting, more splintering and smashing of wood. Richardson could distinguish the blows of the fire ax and the characteristic noise made by the crowbar as it tore apart wood panels and pried open barred doors. Obviously there was no organized resistance from the Japanese crew. If the patrol boat had had any arms she had been unable to cast them loose or use them. There were several heavy splashes, much shouting and yelling in Japanese. Then suddenly all was quiet.

Now he could hear what it was that the
Eel
's crew was shouting, in between the rebel war yells and the Indian war whoops. It was his own name, his nickname. “Rich!” they were yelling. “Rich! Where are you, Rich?” Some of them were also shouting for Oregon.

“Here,” he shouted, banging on the door of his tiny cell, but it was much too solid. He could not even rattle the door. Perhaps a paint can would do better. He grabbed one, began banging the door with it, but the resulting noise hardly seemed satisfactory. He went back to the porthole, shouted through it. “Here I am,” he yelled. “Up forward.”

Whether they heard him or not, he could not tell, but it seemed to make no difference. A crowd of men was heading his way. He could hear them clumping through the between-decks area, smashing lockers and scattering equipment about as they came. Buck Williams' voice was in the lead. “He must be all the way up forward,” he said. “Rich, can you hear me? Can you hear me, Skipper?”

“Here I am,” he yelled again.

Then Buck's voice was just outside the door to his prison. “Here we are, Skipper,” he said. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine, Buck. Get me out of this place.”

“Stand clear of the door,” said Buck. “It's got a big iron hasp and padlock over this beam. We'll have to chop it down!” A series of heavy blows rained upon it. He could hear the ax biting into the thick wood. It must have been difficult to swing the ax in the confined, low-head-room area, especially with the heavy list the patrol boat had now taken. She was slanting well over to starboard, obviously waterlogged, might even sink once
Eel
pulled her bow out of the hole she had made. In their haste and eagerness the men must be getting in each other's way. He heard Williams give instructions to some of them to stand back to give the others room to work.

A shiny ax blade bit through the heavy wood of the door, was jerked out, bit through again. Next came the edge of the crowbar, and several men must have heaved on it, for a section of the door was pulled out. He was face to face with Buck Williams.