Dust on the Sea (66 page)

Through the periscope Richardson inspected the object. It seemed totally innocuous in the distance, floating quietly on the calm sea. A fifteen-degree course alteration put it more nearly dead ahead for a closer passage and a more careful inspection.

“It's a raft,” he finally said. “There's birds flying around and pecking at something on it.”

It was as though a vague intuition were tugging at Richardson's memory, calling to him. The raft drew nearer. He was paying entirely too much attention to it. Nervously he spun the periscope around several times, dunked it, raised it again. There was nothing else in sight. The sky was clear in all directions, and so was the horizon. Always he returned to the raft. Always its outlines grew more clear, more familiar.

Suddenly Richardson whirled to Lasche. “Larry, do you have our position on the chart?”

“Yes, sir. Over here on the chart table.”

“And where was it we had that tangle with Moonface and that fake fishing trawler of his?”

“I don't remember exactly, sir, but the log will have the position. . . .”

In a moment the general location of Richardson's short imprisonment in Moonface's patrol boat was marked off on the chart. His skipper's next words brought a strange sensation to Larry Lasche's scalp. Nervously he rubbed his hand across the top of his head.

“Call Keith and Buck,” Richardson said in a repressed, tight voice. “We're not twenty miles away from our position when you fellows had that fight with Moonface's patrol boat and got me back aboard. That's their raft out there, and Moonface is still on it!”

Keith, Buck, and Al Dugan, who had insisted upon joining the excited group in the conning tower, all took turns looking through the periscope.

“But how can it be?” said Keith. “He wasn't badly injured so far as we could see, and he had his whole crew with him and a good-sized boat in the water. It had a mast and sails, and plenty of water and food. They should have been able to reach land in a couple of days. If the boat could carry all the people, it probably made sense to abandon the raft, but . . .”

“When they abandoned the raft, they didn't take their skipper with them,” said Rich in the same repressed tone.

“You mean, they deserted him?” burst out Lasche. A meaningful silence took possession of the conning tower.

It was Richardson who had the closest view when
Eel
passed by less than twenty-five yards away. Suddenly he lowered the periscope.

“What's the matter, Skipper?” asked Buck, who happened to catch the fleeting look of disgust on his face.

“It's pretty nauseating,” he replied. “Moonface has been dead a long time and lying on that raft in the sun.”

The moment of silence was the second of those uncomfortable stillnesses
everyone expects someone else to break. Richardson could visualize the scene: the bellowed orders, the imprecations, the denunciations, finally the shouted pleas. The stolid silence which must have been its own answer. The pitiless sun, cold nights, and lack of water, combined with the effects of his wound, could end only one agonizing way. For a time Moonface might have hoped for a change of heart among the crewmen, and after he was alone, perhaps, he must have hoped someone else—some other ship—would happen upon him. Toward the end he must even have hoped that an American submarine, possibly the
Eel
herself, might turn up. All the while, until delirium began, he must have tasted in full measure the bitterness of being contemptuously cast aside, spurned, condemned not only by his fellow men but by his own crew. No degradation, no deserved retribution, could have been greater.

And now Moonface lay spread-eagled on his raft, his tremendous body burned black by the sun, bloated by the swelling of the gases within, the facial tissues of his cheeks drawn tight in a ghastly grimace showing his large, stained teeth. His eyes had been already gouged out by the birds gathered around him. The inside of his mouth, his tongue, the tender tissues of his lips, the softest skin of his neck, even his private parts, now exposed and distended, had been prey for days to an obscene flock of feathered sea-vultures.

The periscope, with its magnification of six, brought Richardson within a few feet of the horrible spectacle, and it was from this he recoiled in disgust and dismay.

“Well,” said Buck Williams, breaking the hush, “I can't say I feel too terribly sorry for him. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving fellow.”

“I sure agree,” simultaneously said both Dugan and Lasche. Cornelli and Scott, who had unobtrusively mounted to the conning tower, showed by the looks on their faces that they, too, shared the sentiment. Only Keith put a different shape on it.

“One thing we have to remember, though—he was sick. Considering what he said about going to school in California, and his ability to speak English, he must have lived there quite awhile. Probably Japan and the Jap Navy didn't accept him very well because of all that, too. He must have been a tormented man. Still, he was trying to serve his country. Just as we are. The commodore gave us a lot of trouble, but that's what he was trying to do, too.”

“And so was Bungo Pete,” observed Richardson unwarily. Again, there was silence. No one in the conning tower spoke in response. With a start, Richardson realized he had broken a taboo. There had
been a conspiracy of silence on board the
Eel
. It was the first time, in his own hearing at least, that the name “Bungo Pete” had been voiced aloud. The looks in the eyes of the others, even of the normally impassive Scott and Cornelli, told him they had understood his inner turmoil. From the beginning they had understood. They knew he had done it for them, and for their contemporaries, living and dead, in other submarines; though he could not excuse himself, must always suffer for what he had had to do, which they also understood—yet he would have had to do it all over again. Although this continuous self-immolation must be his personal and private sacrifice, they had tried to help in the only way they could.

The circumstances in which war sometimes places men, their prior training, the decisions they have to make and the time they have to make them—all are mixed, intertwined, involved in the mammoth conflict between ideals of which war is the ultimate expression. The human being, caught in such circumstances, may find hidden elements of his character of which until then he had been unaware, which he would never know except through the eyes of others.

Mirrored in the faces of the small company in the conning tower, Richardson for the first time sensed that they had supported him not only as their titular leader, but for his own sake. The U.S. Navy had made him their commander, but the intuitive alchemy of men, their personalities interacting with his—or what they were able to see of his—created a bond far stronger than that of simple discipline. They would follow him, had followed him, not because the organization and the system demanded it, but through a higher order of loyalty, regard, appreciation of the man they thought him to be.

And then he knew that he had once felt that way about Joe Blunt. But Blunt had not measured up to the trust and confidence his junior, Richardson, had placed in him. He had failed the standard he had set for himself, the standard to which Richardson, by consequence, had held him. It was a high standard, but not unattainable; it was the one to which Richardson also aspired. Blunt had taught it to him. He must never betray it. It was for this reason, he now saw, that he had felt Blunt's failure so personally and so deeply.

Eel
's crew had not known Blunt as the man he had been, but only as he was at the last. Vainly, Richardson had been telling them the old Blunt was the real one. But the real Blunt, to them, could only be the man they had all known. It was he, the man they had seen and felt, whom they would always remember. They had supported Richardson willingly in what he had been trying to do for Blunt, but they had done it for him, not for the wolfpack commander. The subconscious
reason behind his heightened reaction to Keith's criticism of Whitey Everett now also stood clear and tall: man must stand by man, by the higher qualities of man implicit in the meaning of humanity. Even enemies must learn to recognize their ultimate brotherhood. Most important of all, man must stand by himself, must never betray the image he has created of himself, for that image is the only reality.

He knew, then, what he must do. There was one thing he could do for the memory of Moonface, but really it was not for him at all but for Tateo Nakame, an enemy he had been forced to destroy without opportunity for thought; and for Joe Blunt, a friend and superior who had destroyed himself. It was in the nature of the expiation of a blood debt, a debt brought about by forces beyond his own control but for which, nevertheless, he must make what restitution lay in his power. It was the debt of the decent man.

Not everyone would understand, but some would.
Eel
would not surface, should not surface. Not only had Everett's order forbidden it; he could not expose his crew to yet another hazardous hand power dive to avoid a fast-approaching aircraft.

He put it into as few words as he could. Someday, if the moment of truth fell on them, they would remember. It would be like that other time when he had sent everyone below, and alone on
Eel
's bridge had made the dreadful decisions. He would again act alone, bearing the full responsibility. It would be a moment of religion. He allowed himself only one comment, to allay any possible fears. “We ourselves put that raft in the water,” he said. “We know there aren't any booby traps on it.”

The others listened as he gave his instructions. “I'll take the conn,” he said. “Cornelli, take over the helm. Al, I'll need your fine hand on the dive. Alert the pump room that the hydraulic system is likely to be exercised a little. Also, it may cost us a little of your air.” He started to order Keith and Buck below as well, hesitated at the silent plea in Keith's eyes. Buck, not waiting for any word, purposefully stepped to the after end of the conning tower and started up the TDC. The whine of its synchros filled the tiny cylindrical compartment.

The order to go below unfinished, Richardson turned to Keith with a brief, quizzical smile. It was a shaky smile, he instantly realized, and then one final point came home. This, after all, was exactly as it had been during that final fight with Nakame. For it had been Leone, in the conning tower, who had loyally supported his every move and had backed him up at the radar and the periscope; Scott, whose perfect steering in that crucial encounter, well knowing what he was doing, had enabled him to hit the lifeboats; Dugan, with his inspired
handling of
Eel
's semisubmergence in the sudden tiny typhoon which had enveloped them, who had enabled him to get the attack off perfectly. Williams, who had set up the torpedoes and fired them at his order. All of them, who had shared everything then, and had shared everything since.

Although he relived the episode in his mind many times afterward, Richardson was never able to explain to himself or anyone on board the
Eel
that day just how it was that he made all the unfamiliar maneuvers exactly correctly. Through some intuitive sense he made all the calculations, added all the factors, did everything exactly right.

As
Eel
approached the bobbing life raft on which lay the putrefying form of Moonface, the man he had once hated more than anyone else in the world, he called down to Dugan, “Stand by bow buoyancy! Stand by forward group blow!” He gave a couple of tiny course corrections to Cornelli.
Eel
's speed was set at two knots, sixty-seven yards per minute. Scott, with a stopwatch, was counting the seconds aloud. Buck Williams had set up the TDC with a target speed of zero. From a range of 1,000 yards on, Rogers on the radar gave him continuous information as to precisely the distance to the life raft.

At the critical moment, when Scott called, “Mark!” he shouted the expected orders down the hatch to Al Dugan.

“Blow bow buoyancy! Blow forward group! Full rise on bow planes!”

He stood looking through the periscope at the raft and the bloated body on it, now sweeping rapidly toward him. If the raft struck the periscope, it might damage it. He must be quick to lower it in time, if he missed.

The conning tower deck tilted sharply upward under his feet. He could feel the lifting strain of the forward tanks as Dugan lavishly expended high pressure air. The periscope seemed to lean back as it rose swiftly out of the water. Suddenly he was looking down from a great height. He had to shift to low power and tilt the periscope exit pupil lens down to its bottom limit of depression to keep the raft in sight.

Rising from the depths,
Eel
's bow struck the under side of the raft, splintered the timbers which held it together, knocked apart the metal drums on which it was built. Impaled on the submarine's bow, it rose out of the water and tipped to starboard. The startled sea birds went flying. The raft slid crazily aft along the top of
Eel
's steel bow buoyancy tank until some underportion of it caught against a cleat welded on the tank's surface. There it hung momentarily. It tilted even farther, still hooked, tipped more to starboard. Finally, as the carrion
sea creatures flapped and shrieked their displeasure, the decaying flesh of what had been Moonface became dislodged from its position on the slatted boards to which it had stuck, rolled over once as it slid off the raft—a stiffened arm waved thanks and farewell—and fell into the sea.