Dust on the Sea (30 page)

“Hi, Skipper,” said Williams. “They sure have this thing bolted down, but we'll have you out in a jiffy!”

A few more blows with the ax, and then came the tip of the crowbar again. Many men placed brawny arms on it, heaved with irresistible force. There was more splintering of wood.

“That did it,” said Buck, and with the words the door fell open.

“How are you, Skipper?” said Buck again. “Are you okay? You don't look so good.”

“I'm all right, Buck, but I'm sure glad to see you fellows.”

“Where's Oregon?”

“They killed him yesterday,” Richardson said. He could sense the effect of his announcement upon the men gathered around. Suddenly silent, they helped him from the storeroom, supported him as he painfully climbed the companionway to the open deck above. A dozen Japanese sailors were huddled in a group against the deckhouse, under the leveled rifles of half as many
Eel
men standing guard. It was difficult to stand on the slanting deck, and hard to find room, for much of the deck of the patrol boat was splintered and smashed. Timbers lay where they had been tossed by the force of the blow from
Eel
's bow, and there was a huge hole in her wooden side. Beneath the shattered deck, framed by smashed timbers, rested the scarred forepart of the submarine, driven into the side of the patrol boat almost half its width and, like a huge wedge, splitting the wooden patrol boat virtually asunder.

Richardson's whole body hurt. His head throbbed. His leg muscles ached. His stomach felt nauseated. “Where are the rest of the Japs, Buck? Where's Moonface?”

“Moonface? Who's he?”

“I mean the Jap skipper. I'd just like to see that son of a bitch . . .” Richardson stopped. Despite the injuries he had received, his hatred of the Jap skipper, now that he had gained the upper hand, should be more dignified.

“Oh. Well, some of the Japs jumped overboard, and I guess we hit a couple of them before our boarding party got aboard. One of those in the water is a great big guy with swords and medals hung all over him. Is that the one you mean?”

“Yes, that's the one I mean. Where is he?”

“Over there.” Williams pointed. There was a group of men in the water clinging to the side of the ship—its rail on the starboard side was at the water's edge—and others were floating a few feet away, holding on to various pieces of debris.

“Why don't you go back to the ship, Captain, and let Yancy look you over? We'll take care of things over here.”

“I will, later. Let's get things straightened out here first. Except for Moonface, these guys were all pretty decent.”

“Well, we've captured their ship, but we sure can't use it, and neither can they any more. Maybe we can help them get their boat in the water.”

Richardson had not previously seen a boat, but he looked in the direction Buck pointed and saw one inverted on the roof of the deckhouse. “Have some men take it down and look it over,” he said. “See that it's patched up if it needs it, and be sure it has provisions and water. Get that raft over the side also.” Richardson pointed to a wooden float-like structure about ten feet square built on oil drums. Then he thought of something. “There's a prisoner in irons below. Get him out. And search this boat for any more like him.”

“Right, Skipper, will do. Maybe some of these Japs will give us a hand,” responded Williams, indicating the prisoners crowded against the side of the deckhouse.

The crowd of prisoners proved very willing indeed to assist with launching the boat and raft. One of them, who seemed to know what was needed, went below under guard and returned with a sack full of provisions.

“A couple of these guys are hurt, Skipper. Also, we found two more in irons, shackled to the bulkheads down there. This fellow led us to them. One's in pretty bad shape.”

“Lay them out on deck and send for the pharmacist's mate. Have Yancy take a real close look at the men who were in irons.” Richardson gave the orders without much thought. He had identified Moonface in the water, clinging to a piece of timber. He was separated some distance
from the others. Moonface's own men were avoiding him. The expressions on their faces, once so impassive, told their own stories.

Moonface was no Bungo Pete. Richardson's revenge was already perfect. Nothing he said or did could add to or stand comparison with the obvious disgust and hatred the Japanese crewmen held for their own skipper.

“We figured you must be up forward when we saw that signboard you painted there, and the reason we didn't do a regular battle surface was that we didn't know what they might do to you before we could get to you. So we figured to come right in with the bow flooded down, smash her side, and board right over the bullnose. We blew up high after we backed clear, and Buck went down on a line to take a good look at the torpedo tubes. They work fine, and there's not even any scratches around the shutters.”

Richardson was sitting at his accustomed spot in the wardroom, having just finished a delicious dinner. Yancy,
Eel
's tall pharmacist's mate, had put a number of bandages here and there to cover a skin injury, had applied copious quantities of liniment to the bruised areas, and categorically forbade Richardson to gorge himself on food—as he might have done had he followed his own inclination and that of
Eel
's cooks, who wanted to produce the most prodigious meal ever served by a submarine. Grouped around him were Keith, Blunt, and the rest of the wardroom. It was Keith who had just finished explaining the decision to ram and board as quickly as possible. There was an atmosphere of tremendous happiness. The whole ship's company partook of it, as Richardson saw from the many euphoric smiles which had greeted him when he came aboard. The only cloud in the general happiness was the story of how Oregon had been brutalized and murdered. When the details were learned, the gladness turned to rage. Several crew members proposed returning to wreak vengeance upon the Japanese lifeboat or the raft, and finally Keith had to forbid any further discussion of the topic.

The patrol boat's decks had been the scene of a second funeral, for the fusillade of automatic-weapons fire had killed two of her crew. Both were horribly shattered by fifty-caliber machine gun bullets. In addition, the Japanese crewman whom Moonface had threatened to behead was dead when Yancy reached him. Three Japanese were treated for injuries from flying wood splinters, and the other prisoner in irons was suffering from a prior beating by Moonface. Several, apparently only slightly hurt, among them Moonface, stubbornly stayed in the water and refused the proffered help of
Eel
's pharmacist's mate.

By contrast, there were no injuries at all among the submarine crew. No doubt the overwhelming surprise of
Eel
's attack contributed to this. From beginning to end, the shooting had lasted less than three minutes. Bandaging the injured, requiring all the survivors who remained on board to witness the triple funeral, disengaging
Eel
's bow, and allowing the smashed wooden boat to roll over and sink to the water's edge took an hour and a half.

After serious thought, Richardson had decided against attempting to take prisoners. Moonface was the only one he would have wanted in any case, but the man was patently a psychopath and therefore almost certainly of little value to intelligence authorities. He would, however, be a distinct and permanent nuisance, not to say a danger, to the
Eel
and her crew for the month or more that he would have to be on board. Furthermore, the only way to take him prisoner was to go into the water after him. This was less than a desirable prospect in view of the swords and knives he might still have about his person. In the end, after the wounded had been bandaged and a broken leg splinted,
Eel
simply backed clear of the wreck, leaving the boat and life raft surrounded by debris but floating safely and stocked with food, already half-loaded with survivors who were busily picking up the rest. The boat contained a simple magnetic compass, and Keith carefully handed the most self-possessed crewman (the one who had brought up the provisions and helped locate the prisoners chained below) a slip of paper on which he had written the course and distance to the nearest land: Saisho To, or Quelpart Island, seventy-five miles to the northeast.

It was not until after he had slept for several hours that Richardson was able to speak privately with his officers. The opportunity came during an inspection of the work to restore the flooded engines to operation. “Writing
Eel
on the bow of that boat was what did it, Skipper,” said Keith. “After we dunked we had a lot of water in the conning tower and control room. The main induction was flooded solid up to the inboard flappers, and there was a lot of water in both enginerooms. Also we flooded these two engines here through their exhaust lines before the enginemen were able to crank the inboard exhaust valves shut. We're still checking them over pretty carefully, but I don't think we damaged them. Anyway, with all that water on board we went right down to the bottom of the Yellow Sea. Good thing the bottom was there, too! Al was shifting the main vents over to hand power and getting them shut by hand, and we'd have been able to blow soon. So even if we had been in deep water I don't think we'd have lost the ship. But it was mighty comforting all the same to feel her squash down into the mud.

“Then we had to drain all the water out and pump it over the side; so it took us several hours before we were squared away and able to come back to the surface. When we did, we found that sampan on radar right where the plot showed we had probably left you swimming. So we hung around and watched him all day.

“But”—and here Keith's voice dropped, and Buck Williams looked uneasy—“Old Man Blunt wouldn't let us plan a rescue operation. He said we couldn't be sure that you had been picked up by the sampan and that it would just be risking our lives on a hunch. There was nothing he could say, though, when that signboard of yours showed up. Matter of fact, he didn't say anything, but he still would have no part of what we were doing. So Buck and Al and I cooked up this little operation by ourselves. I hope you don't think it was too unorthodox.”

Keith was obviously a little anxious, for no submarine had ever made an attack in the manner
Eel
had. Endangering the all-important torpedo tubes, however successful the outcome, was a matter for serious concern.

“It was just right,” Richardson assured him. “You did exactly right. But what about the commodore? What do you mean, he took no part in your planning?”

Keith obviously had thought through what he was to say to this expected question. “We know he's your old skipper and all that, and your friend too,” he said carefully, “but we're really worried about him, sir. There's something wrong with him. Not all the time, but part of the time. Sometimes he makes sense, and sometimes he doesn't.” Keith's voice, already lowered in tone, had developed a flat, monotonous quality. His wide forehead bore an unaccustomed pair of vertical creases. The gray eyes, looking steadily and unblinkingly at Richardson, were troubled. “We talked about this just the night before we dunked and left you and poor old Oregon topside. We're sure now that the hydraulic accumulator suddenly bled down at just the wrong time and caused all the trouble. Lichtmann, Starberg, and Sargent were all three in the control room, about to drop through the hatch into the pump room, and they heard it bleed off. Along with Al, they've been knocking themselves out working on it ever since.”

Keith instinctively moved closer, spoke even more softly. “The commodore has told just about everybody in the wardroom that Lichtmann is sabotaging the plant on the sly. No explanation how he knows. He says it's obvious, and that Lichtmann's name is even German. He says if anyone catches Lichtmann fooling around with the plant, he should shoot him on the spot! It's got so that beginning last night we set up a watch list of officers to stick with Blunt all the time. Larry
relieved Buck, just now, so that all three of us could talk to you about it.”

“Nobody in the crew has heard of this yet, Skipper,” said Al, “but they know something peculiar is in the wind. There's nobody sabotaging the hydraulic gear—that's just the commodore's idea. We think we know where the problem is, and we think we're closing in on it. But nobody can work looking over his shoulder all the time for fear somebody will come along and shoot you!” Dugan was breathing deeply. He was obviously under heavy stress.

Richardson felt himself treading the edge of an abyss. Its depth could not be known, but the boundaries were clear, the paths that led to disaster well marked. If
Eel
's crew were to learn of the concerns just stated, the effect would be instant. In the taut confines of a submarine on war patrol, the one all-encompassing fact, from which all others automatically flowed, was the total interdependence of all its parts, human or mechanical. The unreliability of the hydraulic system had already taken its toll in terms of effectiveness and confidence. If to this must now be added the dreadful fear of hidden disloyalty, it would be like a cancer, eating at the heart of morale. Thenceforth, no member of the crew could go about his duties in the certain knowledge, so imperative in their exposed condition, of complete support. What lookout did not already harbor the secret fear of being late to the hatch, of a miscount of persons through it, of finding it shut in his face with the boat diving? What maneuvering room electrician, receiving a signal for emergency speed, did not fear the circumstance which had caused it? What member of the crew, officer or enlisted man, upon hearing the call for battle stations did not feel a clutch of apprehension lest the enemy, this one time at last, be able to overwhelm their own best efforts?