Dust on the Sea (49 page)

In the ensuing confusion
Eel
would have her best chance to evade the escorts. Then, if she could somehow get on the surface unobserved, and providing she had not been forced to expend her two now doubly precious torpedoes—how fortunate that he had insisted on taking the two extra fish!—there might yet be an opportunity to pick off the third troopship. Even if
Eel
's torpedoes were all gone by then, there were still the deck guns. Or, by re-engaging the escorts (for they would have raced to rejoin their injured charges)
Eel
might still be able to provide the ingredient which would enable Whitey Everett to make one final effort.

The dangers of the course he was setting for
Eel
were, however, also very clear. With only two torpedoes remaining, and both of them in stern tubes, she was not in a good defensive position. There were, of course, the deck guns, and a single unescorted troopship might be attacked with surface gunfire; but the transport, too, would have guns. Furthermore, she would be calling for aircraft on her radio. A long fight would undoubtedly ensue, and the longer it lasted, the more the probability that an airplane would abruptly terminate it. A fight with the two escorts was even more out of the question; and should there be only one, whatever the outcome of such a battle,
Eel
would almost certainly be in no condition to pursue and attack anything.

The only place in the ship which seemed to offer what he sought—the silence, the solitude, the contemplative peace—was the alert quiet of
Eel
's darkened bridge. Here he could come closest to the privacy his troubled thoughts craved. It was cold, but he had protected himself with foul-weather clothing. The air was calm and relatively dry. The cold did not seem to penetrate, even though
Eel
was surging through the quiet waters at maximum speed.

There must be a following wind. The exhaust from four main engines, spewing their diesel defiance into the dark Japanese-controlled sea, proved him right. With
Eel
fully surfaced and the sea quiet, the exhaust pipes were a good six inches or more clear of the water. The water spray and smoke were directed downward, but the smoke reversed itself, rose lazily in four tiny plumes which hung suspended above the ship as they continually rose and were continually fed from beneath, until they disappeared above into the dark night.

He stood silently against the after rail, bracing himself in the corner it made with the forty-millimeter gun cradled there. A few feet forward of him, two lookouts and a quartermaster, maintaining their vigil, paid him no attention. Farther forward loomed the bulky after portion of the periscope standards, and beyond them the bulletproof bridge bulwarks and windscreen in which he could dimly make out the round heads of the Officer of the Deck and two more lookouts. He had forgotten to notice who had the deck—no, he hadn't forgotten; it was Al Dugan, who had reported as Rich came on the bridge that the most recent survey of the hydraulic system indicated it was performing as well as could be expected, but would require another thorough overhaul upon return to Pearl Harbor.

Bungo Pete had not been in his mind of recent days, had been pretty well driven out of it by the emergency over Joe Blunt. Moonface had also helped him forget for a time. It occurred to him that he might have happened upon the motivations behind the pseudo samurai. Ambitious
he undoubtedly was. He was also imbued with the idea of rediscovering an ancestral culture, which, in California, must have been ridiculed. Had he been able to bring in the broken commanding officer of a second submarine, after the destruction of
Chicolar
, his status among his fellows would have risen high indeed; but it would have risen highest in his own recently repatriated mind.

Now, in a moment of understanding, Richardson could see why his occasional images of Bungo Pete, in reverie or nightmare, almost always were a composition of persons he knew and admired. Sammy Sams, from
Walrus
' training days in Balboa; funny that he should have so stuck in his mind. Joe Blunt, naturally—before the present patrol. Jerry Watson, occasionally. Admiral Small. But never Moonface. Moonface was the antithesis of Nakame, of all he admired in his superiors, all he could admire and appreciate in an enemy. Yet even though Rich could admire such an enemy as Nakame, he could at the same time set in motion the events which, because there was a war, might result in Nakame's death no less surely than that of an enemy despised.

Or his own death. That was never far from the equation.

In the effort to restore Blunt there had been another motive, of course: that of regard for a once-adored superior. He had done all he could, all he knew to do. And he had failed—that he now recognized. The occasional strangeness, the lack of sensitivity, even Blunt's new habit of speaking in a series of tired clichés, were evident at Pearl before the patrol began. The wonder was that Admiral Small had noticed nothing. Perhaps more accurately, the admiral had not realized that what he had seen was deeper than mere staleness at a desk job. Otherwise Small would never have permitted Blunt to go to sea.

Lately Rich had begun to feel Blunt's difficulty was more than psychological. The mind which only a few months ago had been so precise, so capable, so courageous, now could not stand stress or responsibility. Keith must be right: while some sort of psychological breakdown could not be ruled out, the signs pointed to something physical. His shifts of mood, even of capabilities, were too sudden, too extreme, to be merely a state of mind or emotion. Keith had suggested taking Yancy, the pharmacist's mate, into their confidence, but Rich refused, agreeing finally only to Keith's borrowing, without explanation, some of the texts Yancy had stowed in his medical locker. But the books, which both Keith and Richardson studied surreptitiously, gave little enlightenment beyond appreciation that a number of obscure influences could be at work.

Bungo Pete and Moonface were both now in the past. He had killed
Nakame. This was something that had to be done. But he had refrained from killing Moonface when he had the chance. And of the two, Moonface unquestionably deserved destruction far more than Bungo Pete. But the destruction of Moonface would have had no meaning. Bungo had been an honorable opponent, a respected—if feared—enemy. Moonface was a sadistic maniac. Why had he stayed his hand with Moonface? Why had he not taken him prisoner when he had the opportunity? Was his failure to do so an indication of an unexplained weakness within himself that responded in some peculiar inverted way to the stresses of war? Or was he losing his sense of proprieties under the stresses of war and combat? Was he, somehow, equating the mercy shown Moonface as, in some strange way, expiation of the blood sin he had committed against Nakame?

But in a larger sense, what was sin? In a disordered world, could one hold to any fundamental of order, or must one's basic sanity, one's sense of right or wrong, also be laid upon the altar of conflict? The war had been begun by evil men controlled by ambition and greed, but even they had ceaselessly announced the holiness of their aims, the legitimacy and rightness of what they sought to accomplish. Did they believe their own propaganda? Of this, of course, he had no way of knowing, but it was at least possible that they did believe it. Furthermore, millions of good men, not involved in the high political machinations which had resulted in the war, believed it because they had to. They had no other choice. Yet, in so doing, they sacrificed their own individuality, their own clearness of perception, their own birthright of humanity.

He, Edward Richardson, Commander, U.S. Navy, encased in his steel prison which was also his instrument, his pride, and his weapon, his submarine
Eel
, his samurai sword, was only a tiny piece of flotsam amid the jetsam of the world. Yet he was master of the destiny of eighty men on board, in a way controller of the destiny of eighty more men in another submarine a few miles away. He had set them once again hurrying through the night on an errand at the end of which, if all went as he planned it, lay death and destruction for hundreds, possibly thousands, of human beings who had neither done him offense nor could do so even if they were aware of his existence.

Joan and Laura. The second his ideal (he now admitted this to himself), but for a hundred reasons forever unattainable. The other real, warm flesh and blood, greatly giving, yet somehow soiled by the war that had blemished him too. They also were flotsam among the jetsam of the world, drifting helplessly down the path fate had allotted to them. Just as he was.

Eel
dipped gently in the slowly rolling sea, speeding forward into
the darkness. Destination: the coast of China, her four diesel engines roaring at flank speed, carrying fate within her bowels. But fate, real enough in so many ways, had little to do with the two torpedoes she had remaining of her original armament.

Deep under the surface of the Yellow Sea, a single shielded light had burned long in an otherwise darkened compartment. Two men had sat hunched in their seats, the corner of the table between them, staring at the chart spread upon it, measuring distances and dimensions with navigator's dividers, studying every feature. Committing it to memory, as though it had not been before them nearly every night, in one form or another. Conversation was low, sparse, and in quiet tones. It would not be right to awaken those who needed their rest. It was against the unspoken code of the combat submariner to disturb anyone's sleep except to call him for a watch, or because of some emergency. But this was not the reason for the deep quiet in which Keith and Richardson had conducted their private conference.

Elsewhere in the submarine, the regular ordered bustle of one-third of the crew standing watch prevailed as usual. The men on telephone watch in each torpedo room; the enginerooms with their great, indomitable diesels; the electrician's mates with their extraordinary, complex, switching cubicles; the cooks in their tiny, efficient galley; the quiet, methodical nerve center in the control room; the silent, ominous conning tower. Here, in the empty wardroom, with the others busy elsewhere or snatching a few hours' rest in their bunks against the next day's trials, skipper and exec spoke in lower than normal voices in intuitive recognition that they were planning to force action upon another man, and the eighty men of his crew, whom the fortunes of war had placed temporarily under their control.

Whitey would not run his ship close in to shore. He could be efficient only where he had sufficient depth of water to be comfortable, though no submariner could really be comfortable in the Yellow Sea. But he would not run into shallow water. Yet the coastline of China, particularly in the area around Tsingtao, was virtually all shallow water. And it went without saying that the enemy ships were choosing the shallowest water of all, barely deep enough to avoid running aground in the ageless muck the rivers of China had been carrying down since the beginning of history.

It was up to Richardson to bring the
Whitefish
into combat, to pass the rapier of action from his own spent hand to that of Whitey Everett, and, in the name of Blunt, cause Whitey to fulfill the mission on which so much depended.

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10
  
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T
he United States Ship
Eel
lay to quietly off Tsingtao. Her diesels were silent, their customary mutter stilled. Less than a mile away to starboard, the bulky outline of land brooded over the placid water. There was no moon. Darkness was complete. The only sense that could really be said to be receiving stimulation was the sense of smell. Reaching across a small stretch of shallow water, permeating everything, was the sweet-sour odor of land. It was the same smell so frequently referred to as “the smell of the sea,” but the seaman knows it as the smell where sea and land join.

Below decks, the highly structured life of a submarine on war patrol in enemy-controlled waters was going on as usual, except for one important difference—an extreme, unnatural quietness. Only the absolutely necessary machinery was running: the ventilation blowers and the air-conditioning sets. In every compartment men went about their routine duties with a special softness about all their movements. Some had removed their shoes. All were walking about very quietly, avoiding all unnecessary noise, speaking to each other in low, somber tones. What work was necessary was performed slowly, carefully. Tools involved were carefully wrapped in rags, so that there would be no inadvertent noise of the striking of steel upon steel to be transmitted through the hull to the water and to unfriendly ears.

It would not be correct to infer that
Eel
's crew was at battle stations, for no such signal had been given. In fact, it had been announced that the general alarm would not be rung. If needed, the call to action would be transmitted by telephone to all compartments. Everyone was enjoined to remain in the vicinity of his battle station—not a difficult order to comply with in view of the submarine custom of doing this without orders when action was believed imminent. Even those on watch, required by the ship's organization to tend certain machinery or remain in certain areas, were, by Keith's careful design, on their battle stations as well.

On the bridge the silence was oppressive. There was almost a crowd there, for in addition to the regular watch, consisting of Buck Williams, Scott, four lookouts, and Ensign Johnny Cargill, assistant OOD, there were also the executive officer, the captain, and the wolfpack commander.
All kept their binoculars ceaselessly to their eyes, and each, had he been asked, would have confessed nervousness over the excruciatingly loud hum of the few pieces of machinery still running. Surely this could be heard many yards away, perhaps as far as several hundred yards! It could awake a trained ear to the fact that the unusual silhouette floating so quietly in the shallows was actually the upper part of a nearly submerged submarine, full of tense, foreign-looking men.