Microcosmic God (8 page)

Blood came out.

It drove me absolutely screwball. He wouldn’t watch what he was doing! Harry was working on a pile of scrambled eggs, and the mate was looking at me, and my stomach was missing beats. I muttered something and went up to the bridge. Every time there was some rational explanation developing, something like that had to happen. Know why I couldn’t pipe up about what I had seen? Because after the ink and the blood hit their coffee it was cream! You don’t go telling people that you’re bats!

It was ten minutes to eight, but as usual, Johnny Weiss was early. He was a darn good quartermaster—one of the best I ever sailed with. A very steady guy, but I didn’t go for the blind trust he expressed in the skipper. That was all right to a certain extent, but now—

“Anything you want done?” he asked me.

“No, Johnny, stand by. Johnny—what would you do if the officers decided the captain was nuts and put him in irons?”

“I’d borry one of the Old Man’s guns an’ shoot the irons off him,” said my quartermaster laconically. “An’ then I’d stand over him an’ take his orders.”

Johnny was a keynote in the crew. We were asking for real trouble if we tried anything. Ah, it was no use. All we could do was to wait for developments.

At eight bells on the button we floated again, and the lurch of it
threw every man jack off his feet. With a splash and a muffled scraping, the
Dawnlight
settled deeply from under our feet, righted herself, rolled far over to the other side, and then gradually steadied. After I got up off my back I rang a “Stand-by” on the engine room telegraph, whistled down the skipper’s speaking tube, and motioned Johnny behind the wheel. He got up on the wheel mat as if we were leaving the dock in a seaport. Not a quiver! Old Johnny was one in a million.

I answered the engine room. “All steamed up and ready to go down here!” said the third engineer’s voice. “And I think we’ll have that generator running in another twenty minutes!”

“Good stuff!” I said, and whistled for the skipper. He must have felt that mighty lurch. I couldn’t imagine why he wasn’t on the bridge.

He answered sleepily: “Vell?”

“We’re afloat!” I spluttered.

“So?”

“What do you want to do—lay here? Or are we going some place?”

There was silence for a long time—so long that I called and asked him if he was still on the other end of the tube.

“I vas getting my orders,” he said. “Yes, ve go. Full speed ahead.”

“What course?”

“How should I know? I’m through now, third. Y’u’ll get y’ur orders.”

“From Toole?”

“No!”

“Hey, if you ain’t captain, who is?”

“I vouldn’t know about dat. Full speed ahead!” The plug on his end of the tube clicked into place, and I turned toward Johnny, uncertain what to do.

“He said full ahead, didn’t he?” asked Johnny quietly.

“Yeah, but—”

“Aye, aye, sir,” he said with just a trace of sarcasm, and pulled the handle of the telegraph over from “Stand-by” to “Full ahead.”

I put out my hand, and then shrugged and stuck it in my pocket. I’d tell Toole about it when I came off watch. “As you go,” I said,
not looking at the compass.

“As she goes, sir,” said Johnny, and began to steer as the shudder of the engines pounded through the ship.

The mate came up with Harry at noon, and we had a little confab. Toole was rubbing his hands and visibly expanding under the warmth of the bright sun, which had shone since three bells with a fierce brilliance, as if it wanted to make up for our three days of fog. “How’s she go?” he asked me.

“Due west,” I said meaningly.

“
What?
And we have a cargo for the Mediterranean?”

“I only work here,” I said. “Skipper’s orders.”

Harry shrugged. “Then west it is, that’s all I say,” he grunted.

“Do you want to get paid this trip?” snapped Toole. He picked up the slip on which I had written the ship’s position, which I’d worked out as soon as I could after the sun came out. “We’re due south of the Madeiras and heading home,” he went on. “How do you think those arms shippers are going to like our returning with their cargo? This is the payoff.”

Harry tried to catch his arm, but he twisted away and strode into the wheelhouse. The twelve-to-four quartermaster hadn’t relieved Johnny Weiss yet.

“Change course,” barked the mate, his small, chunky body trembling. “East-nor’east!”

Johnny looked him over coolly and spat. “Cap’n changes course, mate.”

“Then change course!” Toole roared. “The squarehead’s nuts. From now on I’m running this ship!”

“I ain’t been told of it,” said Johnny quietly, and steadied on his westerly course.

“Well, by God, I’m the mate!” Toole said. “You’ve had no orders from that lunatic to disregard a command of a superior officer. Steer east!”

Weiss gazed out of the wheelhouse window, taking his time about thinking it over. The mate had made his point; to refuse further would be rank insubordination. Though Johnny was strong in his loyalty to the skipper, he was too much of a seaman to be pig-headed about
this until he knew a little better where he stood.

“East it is, sir,” he said, and his eyes were baleful. He hauled at the wheel, and a hint of a grin cracked his leathery face. “She—won’t answer, sir!”

I saw red. “Go below!” I growled, and butted him from behind the wheel with my shoulder. He laughed aloud and went out.

I grasped the two top spokes, hunched my shoulders and gave a mighty heave. There was suddenly no resistance at all on the wheel, and my own violence threw me heels over crupper into the second mate, and we spun and tumbled, all his mass of lard on top of me. It was like lying under an anchor. The wind was knocked out of him, and he couldn’t move. I was smothering, and the mate was too surprised to do anything but stare. When Harry finally rolled off me it was a good two minutes before I could move.

“Damn that quartermaster,” I gasped when we were on our feet again.

“Wasn’t his fault,” wheezed Harry. “He really tried to spin the wheel.”

Knowing Johnny, I had to agree. He’d never pull anything like that. I scratched my head and turned to the mate. He was steering now, apparently without any trouble at all. “Don’t tell me you can turn the ship?”

He grinned. “All it needed was a real helmsman,” he ribbed me. And then the engines stopped, and the telegraph rang and spun over to “Stop,” and the engine room tube squealed.

“Now what?”

“I dunno,” came the third’s plaintive voice. “She just quit on us.”

“O.K.; let us know when you’ve shot the trouble.” The engineer rang off.

“Now what the hell?” said the mate.

I shrugged. “This is a jinxed trip,” I said. I verified the “Stop” signal on the telegraph.

Harry said: “I don’t know what’s got into you guys. The skipper said somethin’ about a new charter. He don’t have to tell us who gave it to us.”

“He don’t have to keep us in the dark, either,” said Toole. Then,
glancing at the compass, he said, “Looka that! She’s swingin’ back to west!”

I looked over his shoulder. Slowly the ship was turning in the gentle swell, back to due west. And just as she came to 270° on the card—the engines began to pound.

“Ah!” said the mate, and verified the “Full ahead” gong that had just rung.

The third whistled up again and reported that he was picking fluff off his oilskins. “I’m going on the wagon,” he said. “She quits by herself and starts by herself, an’ I’m gonna bust out cryin’ if it keeps up!”

And that’s how we found out that the ship, with this strange cargo, insisted on having her head. For every time we tried to change course, the engines would stop, or a rudder cable would break, or the steering engine would quit. What could we do? We stood our watches and ran our ship as if nothing were the matter. If we hadn’t we’d have gone as mad as we thought we already were.

Harry noticed a strange thing one afternoon. He told me about it when we came off watch.

“Y’know that box o’ books in the chart room?” he asked me.

I did. It was an American Merchant Marine Library Association book chest, left aboard from the time the ship was honest. I’d been pretty well all through it. There were a few textbooks on French and Spanish, half a dozen detective novels, a pile of ten-year-old magazines, and a miscellaneous collection of pamphlets and unclassifiable.

“Well, about three o’clock I hear a noise in the chart room,” said Harry, “an’ I have a look. Well, sir, them books is heaving ’emselves up out of the chest and spilling on th’ deck. Most of ’em was just tossed around, but a few was stackin’ in a neat heap near the bulkhead. I on’y saw it for a second, and then it stopped, like I’d caught someone at the job, but I couldn’t see no one there.” He stopped and licked his lips and wheezed. “I looks at that pile o’ books, an’ they was all to do with North America an’ the United States. A coupla history books, an atlas, a guidebook to New York City, a book on th’ national parks—all sech. Well, I goes back into the wheelhouse, an’ a few minutes later I peeks in again. All them books on America
was open in different places in the chart room, an’ the pages was turnin’ like someone was readin’ them, only—there just wasn’t nobody there!”

What the
hell
was it that we had aboard, that wanted to know about the United States, that had replaced our captain with a string of coincidence, that had “chartered” the ship? I’d had enough. I firmly swore that if I ever got back to the States, police or no, I’d get off this scow and stay off her. A man can just stand so much.

About three days out the torpedo boat picked us up. She was a raider, small and gray and fast and wicked, and she belonged to a nation that likes to sink arms runners. One of the nations, I mean. I had just come off watch, and was leaning on the taffrail when I saw her boiling along behind us, overtaking.

I ran forward, collaring an ordinary seaman. “Run up some colors,” I said. “I don’t give a damn what ones. Hurry!”

Pounding up the ladder, I hauled Toole out of the wheelhouse, pointed out the raider and dived for the radio shack, which was some good to us now that the generator was going again.

I sat down at the key and put on a headset. Sure enough, in a second or two I heard: “What ship is that? Where from? Where bound?” repeated in English, French, German and Spanish. I’d have called the skipper, but had given him up as a bad job. Toole came in.

“They want to know who we are,” I said excitedly. “Who are we?”

“Wait’ll I look at the flag the kid is running up,” he said. He went to the door, and I heard him swear and whistle. “Give a look,” he said.

Flying from the masthead was a brilliant green flag on which was a unicorn, rampant. I’d seen it—where was it? Years ago—oh, yes; that was it! In a book of English folk tales; that was supposed to be the standard of Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of … of the fairies, the Little Folk!

Dazed, I turned to the key and began pounding. I didn’t even realize what I was sending. Some imp controlled my hand, and not until it was sent did I realize I had said, “S.S.
Princess of Birmingham
, Liverpool, bound for Calais with a load of airplane parts.”

“Thank you!” said the raider, and put a shell across our bow. Toole had gone back to the bridge, and I sat there sweating and wondering what the hell to do about this. Of all stupid things to say to an enemy raider!

The engine vibration suddenly became labored and the ship slowed perceptibly. Oh, of course, the old wagon would pick a time like this to become temperamental! I beat my skull with my fists and groaned. This was curtains.

The raider was abeam and angling toward us. “Heave to!” she kept buzzing through my phones. Through the porthole beside me I could already see the men moving about on her narrow decks. I turned to my key again and sent the commander of the raider some advice on a highly original way to amuse himself. In answer he brought his four swivel guns to bear on us.

The bridge tube whistled. Toole said, “What the hell did you say to him? He’s fixin’ to sink us!”

“I don’t know,” I wailed. “I don’t know nothing!”

I ripped off the headset and put my elbows on the port ring across the room, staring out to sea with my back to the swiftly approaching raider. And there in the sunny waves was a conning tower, periscope and all!

Now get this. Here we were, lying helpless, going dead slow with crippled engines between a surface raider and a sub. We were meat for anyone working for any government. Most of us were Americans; if the raider took us it would mean an international incident at a time when no one could afford one. If the sub took us, it was the concentration camp for us. Either might, and probably would, sink us. We were outlaws.

I went up on the bridge. No sense doing anything now. If we got into boats, we’d likely be cut down by machine-gun bullets. Toole was frantically tugging at the handle of the engine room telegraph.

“I’m trying to stop her!” he gasped. “She’s going dead slow; there’s something wrong with the engines. They’re making such a racket back there that the first assistant can’t hear the tube whistle. The telegraph is jammed! The helm won’t answer! Oh, my God!”

“Where’s your quartermaster?”

Toole jerked a thumb toward the bridge ladder. “I sent him aft to run down to the engine room, and he tripped and fell down to the boat deck! Knocked himself out!”

I ran to the port wing and looked out at the sub. True to her kind, she was attacking without asking questions. There was a jet of spume, and the swift wake of a torpedo cut toward us. At the rate we were going, it would strike us just between the after dry-cargo hold—where the “farm machinery” was stowed—and the fire room. It would get both the explosives and the boiler—good night nurse!

And then our “coincidental commander” took a hand. The crippled, laboring engines suddenly raced, shuddered and took hold. Grumbling in every plate, the
Dawnlight
sat down on her counter, raised her blunt nose eight feet, and scuttled forward at a speed that her builders would have denied. In fifty seconds she was doing fourteen knots. The torpedo swept close under our stern, and the raging wash of the tanker deflected it, so that it hurtled—straight toward the raider!