Dust on the Sea (5 page)

Almost, for a blessed instant, there had again been a feeling of peace and normality, an ordinary gladness at the return from patrol at once safe and successful, relief from the latest emergency passed, anticipation of the good times in store for the next two weeks or so until the demands of getting ready for another patrol would take up all their time and energy. But, as usual, the mood could not last. Richardson would not go to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. He could not join his officers and crew there. He would remain aboard during the refit, perhaps ask for a room in the submarine base BOQ if things became too impossible on board. His lips unconsciously compressed into the hard line which had recently become so often his expression. He released the binoculars, allowing them to drop with unaccustomed disdain on their leather thong and strike his chest. Keith was beside him.

“I've been relieved of the conn, sir. Buck has it again.” Then, in a less officious tone, looking squarely at him, Keith added “We hope you'll be able to join us at the Royal tonight, Skipper. ComSubPac and Captain Blunt will probably want you for dinner, but will you promise to come on out after?”

Instead of the petulant negative he intended to utter, Richardson found himself answering, “Well, there'll be a lot to do here, but maybe . . .”

Keith didn't let him finish, maintained a note of heartiness which instantly betrayed itself as a substitute for anxiety. “Come on, Boss, you can't let us down. Al Dugan and Buck and I have planned a big party to celebrate the boat's first run. If you expect me to let anyone put any paperwork in front of you today, you're crazy!”

Probably the party had been less than a minute in the planning stage. It was even possible that Keith and some of the others had set up some sort of cabal to keep him from brooding over the lifeboats, to see to it that there was always one of them with him. Perhaps that was why Buck had refused to go below. Clever of them! Well, he would not be taken in.

“You know I'll probably not be able to make it, Keith—It's almost routine for a returning skipper to have to go to dinner at the admiral's house the first night.” This was a non sequitur. Keith had already mentioned that probability. But the admiral's dinners rarely lasted late, and in any case the wardroom party would be held in one of the hotel rooms, where Rich too would be assigned.

Keith was not giving up. “How about after, then?”

Richardson hardened his voice. “No. It's your party, not mine. I'd be a drag on you fellows. Besides, with the curfew, I'd have to break some of the rules to make it out there after dark. You can all get just as drunk without me, anyway.” He gave his voice all the finality he could muster, while pretending to grin.

Keith recognized defeat in the covert contest. “Okay, Skipper. But you won't get away from us tomorrow—by the way, shouldn't we send down for some dry clothes for you and Buck?”

A few minutes later, as
Eel
rounded Hospital Point, there was indeed a larger than usual group watching. Several pairs of binoculars were also in appearance, being handed from one patient to another by solicitous nurses who were not above looking through them themselves as they did so.
Eel
was the only ship they had seen pass their lookout point so far that morning, and they made all the right deductions, save one, having had much experience in the meanings of the signs they could identify. Several among them muttered comments that Kona weather must not be all they had been led to expect: this rust-streaked sub, obviously just back from a very successful war patrol, probably to Empire areas, showed no signs of having been in the least discomfited. The two or three waves they had seen from a distance did not seem big. They were inadequate reason for the lack of other ships in the normally busy channel. Probably the authorities had been overcautious.

But no one was able to give a plausible reason why, as well as could be seen from a distance, there were two naked men among the group on the bridge, toweling themselves and then apparently hastily donning their clothes.

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T
he reception at the dock in the submarine base was exactly as Richardson had imagined it would be, exactly as it had always been for a submarine returning from patrol. The number one docking space in front of the submarine base headquarters had been cleared for
Eel
. A trim and alert crew of enlisted line handlers stood prominently in the foreground, and a ten-piece band played popular music at the head of the pier. A crowd of khaki- and dungaree-clad submariners had gathered around the place where a long bridgelike wooden structure, the Admiral's extra-wide ceremonial gangplank, or brow, its rails wrapped in shellacked white cord, was waiting to be put over to
Eel
's deck when she came to rest. Conspicuous near the brow, standing in the foreground and a little apart from the others, Rich could see the stocky figures of Admiral Small and his chief of staff, Captain Joe Blunt. Near them a burnished five-gallon milk can stood out among mail sacks, crates of fruit and vegetables, and a large sealed cardboard box which could only contain the traditional ice cream. All these still rested in the small cart that had been wheeled down to the dock, where friendly hands would eagerly pass them across the submarine's rail and onto
Eel
's deck even while the arriving ceremonies were still in progress.

But all did not seem quite the same as usual. At least, not to Richardson. Greater than ordinary warmth exuded from the crowd even before the docking maneuver had been completed. The smiles of welcome were broad, even broader than usual. Were they lacking a little in spontaneity? The wisecracks exchanged with
Eel
's crew as her black-and-gray, rust-splotched length slowly eased up alongside the dock into her allotted mooring, on the other hand, seemed less ribald than his memory recalled, somehow more subdued. Everyone present must know how he had destroyed Bungo Pete. His radioed report of the action in which
Eel
had sunk a submarine, a Q-ship, and a destroyer, and then rammed and sank three lifeboats, had been classified Top Secret and was deliberately sparse of details. But the Pearl Harbor grapevine was renowned.

The patrol report, laboriously composed and typed on mimeograph stencil sheets ready for reproduction, lay sealed in Quin's tiny yeoman's
office near the wardroom. Contrary to usual practice, it had been typed in two parts. The second part, labeled “Top Secret Addendum to Report of First War Patrol of USS
Eel
,” contained all the details of the fight with Bungo. This, Richardson planned to hand to Admiral Small or Captain Blunt personally.

Williams, as Officer of the Deck, was making the landing. Keith was on the bridge ready to lend a hand. Richardson could not divest himself of responsibility for the safe handling of the
Eel
, but he could clearly demonstrate his confidence in Buck Williams and Keith Leone by ostentatiously paying no attention as they maneuvered the ship alongside the dock.

As
Eel
slowly traversed the last few feet to her appointed mooring space, Richardson quietly left the bridge, climbed down the steel rungs at the break in the cigarette deck rail, and made his way forward to the forecastle.

Instinctively, because he knew exactly what they would be doing and what space they would require, he avoided the practiced maneuvers of the line-handling parties on the submarine deck. As
Eel
's way gradually petered out through the last few feet of still oily Pearl Harbor water, he found himself exactly opposite the submarine force commander and his chief of staff.

At about the right time—for it would not do to be premature with the ship not yet fully in, nor to be too late, Rich saluted, encompassing both Admiral Small and Blunt with the same salute.

“Good morning, Admiral,” he said. “Morning, Commodore.”

Neither Small nor Blunt was interested in the traditional formalities. Both returned his salute, Blunt rather condescendingly, Richardson felt. Both called across a welcome.

The admiral's words could not be faulted. “Rich,” he said loudly, obviously intending that everyone should hear, “that was a magnificent patrol! I'm delighted you had no trouble this morning coming in. Congratulations on a great run!”

Captain Joe Blunt had been Richardson's greatly admired skipper in
Octopus
, his first submarine, during the years before the war. He was short and spare, though lately the spareness was less evident and his close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair had a lot more “salt” in it. So did the extraordinarily heavy eyebrows. Before the war, sub skippers were older. Blunt must now be in his fifties. His face had always appeared weathered and craggy to Rich, no doubt from the years he had spent on an open submarine bridge. He had been the epitome of the professional submarine officer, considerate and helpful to his subordinates,
demanding of performance, confident of himself and his ship. He knew more about
Octopus
, and could handle any part of her better, than anyone else aboard. Since the
Octopus
days, he had been squadron commander and training officer at New London for both Richardson's previous commands, the old
S-16
and the new
Walrus
. Now both
Octopus
and
Walrus
were gone, lost somewhere in the Pacific. It was natural that it should be Blunt's greeting which Richardson would afterward recall most clearly. “Welcome back, Rich,” he said. “We weren't expecting you until late this afternoon. Didn't you receive our weather warning this morning? We told you to remain outside until this Kona weather passed!”

Four heaving lines flew out to the pier, to be caught in midair by the line-handling parties at whom they were aimed. Swiftly
Eel
's mooring lines were hauled in, the eye splices on their ends placed over the waiting cleats. The cheerful bustle of warping the submarine in the last few feet until she lay snug against the wooden pilings that formed the edge of the pier prevented further conversation. It was just as well. There could be no answer to Blunt, except the obvious one that a message not received was as if never sent. Somehow Richardson had the idea that Admiral Small had not wanted the matter brought up at all.

In a few moments all was secure, the brow placed aboard, and the crowd of well-wishers, preceded by Small and Blunt, took over
Eel
's deck.

It was an honor, Richardson realized, for both the submarine force commander and his chief of staff to descend to
Eel
's tiny wardroom and drink coffee at the table where he and his officers had held so many councils of war. Certainly they wanted to talk about the patrol just completed, but they must have known this could not be. There were too many others milling about during this first hour of return from patrol. There would be time for confidences later. The visit was a ceremony.

In the far corner of the wardroom, ensconced on the settee which sometimes doubled as a bunk for the most junior of all the officers, Keith Leone was already deep in conversation with someone who could only have been the submarine base engineering and repair officer. They started to rise when the admiral and Captain Blunt entered, but there was obviously nowhere for them to go; Small, in a single motion, bade them retain their seats.

Things were no better in Richardson's own stateroom, to which the three adjourned briefly after the coffee ritual.
Eel
's well-ordered existence had been totally disrupted. There were strangers everywhere
bustling up and down the narrow passageway, loud conversation, the general brouhaha of holiday.

“I'm sorry for the confusion, Admiral,” said Rich. “It always seems to be this way when you come in from patrol. . . .”

“I know, Rich,” interrupted the admiral, “I just wanted to get a feel for how you are after that fantastic patrol of yours, and tell you how proud we are of you. I read all your messages personally, and I want you to know I am in complete accord with everything you did.” Small had spent his entire career in submarines, and had many times voiced regret he could not make war patrols himself. He was a short man, though taller than Blunt, and now, in middle age, had begun to verge on stoutness. His face was heavy, elephantine with a prominent hooked nose but his forbidding countenance faded with the genial friendliness he always displayed to his “submarine drivers,” as he sometimes referred to them.

“That's right, Rich,” said Blunt. “We just want everyone to know we think old Bungo had it coming to him. . . .” Was that a look of disapproval in Small's unexpectedly bleak eyes? Blunt changed the subject. “How about giving me your patrol report just as it is? I take it you've put it on stencils?”

“Yes, sir, Commodore,” said Richardson. “Also, we have a special Top Secret addendum, separately submitted.”

Admiral Small nodded his eyes shifting back to Richardson. “Good thinking, Rich. We'll take both of them right now.” Richardson rose from his seat on his bunk and pressed a button built into the top of his desk. A moment later Quin thrust aside the green baize curtain which had been pulled across the doorway to the stateroom.

“Let me have our two patrol reports. . . .” began Richardson.

“Here, sir. I figured that's what you wanted, Captain,” said the yeoman. Quin was always one jump ahead of everybody else, mused Richardson as his guests stood up to leave. In single file, the admiral leading, the three made their way topside.

“Again, Rich, that was a magnificent patrol,” said Small, extending his hand. “I won't ask you to lunch. I know you have a lot of things to do. But will you join me for dinner at my quarters tonight? We eat early because of the curfew you know, so come on up about five o'clock for a drink, and we'll see that you get out to the Royal Hawaiian before they chase everybody off the streets at ten.”