Pacific Interlude (33 page)

As they rounded the island of Samar and passed through San Bernardino Strait the great mountainous islands that Syl had admired so much on the way to Mindoro dropped their veils of morning mist and stood with their foliage still sparkling in dew. Perhaps because on their last voyage the glory of that sight had proved to be a prelude to disaster, Syl was not so lost in admiration of it now. Their very beauty struck him as somehow sinister, an elaborately conceived spectacle that could serve as bait for the great trap that the Philippine islands had become for the thousands of men who were now dying there. Perhaps the sailors swabbing the decks and oiling the guns sensed something too. They rarely glanced up to look at the fantastic scenery they were passing through … Syl was surprised when Willis came up to him and asked the names of the islands they'd passed.

“Can I go up the mast?” Willis said. “I'd like to look around up there.”

“Go ahead.”

Willis scrambled up and stayed aloft almost all morning swinging on a boatswain's chair he had hauled almost to the top. He did not look comfortable and Syl wondered if he stayed because the mast top was an escape for him.

Whatever, the men on the bridge soon began to crack jokes about Willis's long stay aloft.

“He's scared to come down,” Murphy said.

“He's been singing, ‘Nearer My God to Thee' too much,” Thompson put in.

There was laughter when Cramer yelled from the deck, “Hey, Lucky. What you doing up there?”

Willis ignored him.

“Damn it,” Syl said to Simpson, “tell Cramer not to call him that.”

“There's no regulation against calling a man ‘Lucky'—”

“You know damn well why he's doing it—”

“Yeah, but I don't think Willis knows.”

“He'll find out about the monkey soon enough. Did you warn Cramer about this sort of crap?”

“I did. I told him he'd hang if he got out of line with Willis.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he knows all about how to handle niggers. Legally too because he used to be the law himself.”

“I see. Big deal.”

“He said they had a lot of regulations in prison too, but the guards still managed to get obeyed most of the time.”

“You better remind Cramer that this ship isn't a prison.”

“Who says?” Buller asked, appearing on the bridge for the first time that day.

He was blinking out sleep and looked bleary-eyed.

“You ready to take the deck, Mr. Buller?” Simpson asked.

“I am ready to relieve you, sir,” Buller said with a burlesque of a salute. “Where the hell are we? This sure don't look like New Orleans.”

“The course is three four eight, speed eight knots, steaming in convoy,” Simpson replied stiffly. “I'll show you our position. Have you read the convoy instructions?”

“Sure.”

After a brief glance at the chart Buller said, “I got her. Maybe I'll wake up and find myself back in New Orleans—”

“Mr. Buller, the bridge of a ship is a bad place for jokes.” Simpson shook his head and stalked off below.

Buller took up the binoculars and studied Schuman's ship, which was steaming along about a thousand yards on their port beam.

“Have you known that Schuman from way back?” he asked Syl.

“Since our days on the Greenland Patrol.”

“Does he always win at cards?”

“Usually. He's an expert.”

“Nobody is good enough to win all the time without cheating.”

“Do you really think he cheated you last night?”

“Cards just don't fall on their own the way they did for him. He always had a pair or at least an ace in the hole.”

“Paul Schuman is no cheat—”

“I hear his friend talking, but I'm not exactly a beginner myself—”

“He refused to take your money last night. He wanted me to give it back to you but was afraid you'd be insulted.”

“You're damn right I'm insulted, unless it's an admission he was cheating.”

“It's not. He said he didn't like taking money from an officer on my ship and felt guilty because you were drinking—”

“The son of a bitch … I can take care of myself—”

“You weren't exactly doing it last night.”

“That was just money. Easy come, easy go …” He paused, then added, “What the hell happened to all that dough?”

“I asked Mr. Wydanski to put what you had left in that box back in your stateroom.”

“I found that. Did 'ol Paul take the rest with him, overcome his bad conscience?”

“He asked me to save it for a ship's welfare fund. I've got it locked up. You want it back?”

Buller laughed. “Skipper, use it to buy all the ass you can find in Manila. You'll never find a better welfare case than
that
.” And a moment later called to Murphy on the tank deck, “Hey, Murph, bring me a cup of coffee, will you? I want it hot, sweet and black as a nigger's ass …”

Syl was almost sure that Buller wasn't aware of Willis at the mast top and doubted whether his voice even carried that far, but there was a tense moment as others glanced up, their nervous laughter ringing.

“Get me a sandwich too,” Buller said, still unaware of what he might be stirring up. “I don't want no horsecock. See if the cook has any ham.”

“Okay, Mr. Buller,” Murphy said, and walked to the galley.

Willis was staring up, apparently studying the gulls wheeling over his head. Buller, Syl told himself, was so hung over he hadn't known what he was doing or saying.

Or so he hoped, but didn't really believe …

CHAPTER 26

A
S THE CONVOY
steamed through island-sheltered seas calm as a mountain lake, they passed dugouts and native fishing boats. Some of the canoes had outboard motors, and a few of the launches and old lifeboats piled high with nets had Diesel engines that drove them faster than the tankers and freighters. Crowded with men, women and children they paralleled the course of the ships. Hoping to go close enough alongside to beg canned goods or to conduct trade by catch, which they sometimes began by trying to toss coconuts and bananas to the decks, they veered in close, but the ships had been warned that the Japs had made suicide boats out of some native craft by concealing bombs in the bows, and what looked like coconuts tossed aboard might easily turn out to be hand grenades. Syl and the other captains gave short blasts to their whistles when the small boats came too close, and the officers on the bridge shouted over loud hailers and through cupped hands, “Keep clear. Veer off.”

Perhaps the natives did not understand English, or their engines made so much noise that they couldn't hear. A few of them kept on coming in with children standing in the bow waving stalks of bananas. The orders in the convoy instructions were clear: “Shoot across the bow of any native craft that disregards warnings. If it keeps on coming, sink it.”

A machine gun on the stern of one of the minesweepers stuttered as this command was carried out. The fifty-caliber slugs raised a curtain of spray across the bow of a boat loaded with people whose straw hats obscured their faces. It quickly turned, but some farther ahead did not get the message. Seeing a whole flotilla of canoes stretched across the bows of the convoys, the escort commander revved up the huge engines of his destroyer and speeded in a circle around them, his curling wake almost swamping them. They turned and scattered, the men in canoes without outboards paddling frantically. One small dugout capsized. It lay in the water with natives clinging to its bottom as the rows of ships slightly altered course to pass on both sides of it.

“They'll take care of their own,” Syl said as he studied them through his binoculars. Canoes with motors were already angling in, dodging the ships as best they could. Bobbing in the wakes, they came alongside the overturned dugout and took the people out of the water.

“Hell of a way to make friends with our little brown brothers,” Buller said. “They were probably trying to welcome us. One kid back there was waving an American flag—”

“He was probably a goddamn Jap,” Cramer said. “Hathaway says the bastards are shooting civilians by the thousand in Manila right now. They're going crazy.”

It was difficult for the men of the
Y-18
to identify with radio reports of the Japanese rampage in Manila. The
Y-18
was their world … somehow it would get them to Manila. The fighting would have stopped before they arrived. “The Pearl of the Orient” had a reputation as a great liberty port, and that was what they most talked and thought about as they took their dress whites from their mildewing seabags for washing and airing, shined shoes, shaved beards growing since Brisbane, cut each other's hair on a stool on the fantail.

In the midst of all this heady preparation, someone also made off with Willis's seabag.

Willis had left it on his bunk with his clothes neatly rolled inside. He found it missing when he came down from the mast top to stand his watch. He was spluttering with anger when he reported this to Simpson.

“Have you told Cramer?”

“He's probably the one who took it—”

“There's no reason to think that,” Simpson said. “He's the master-at-arms. He won't allow stealing aboard this ship—”

“I don't know nothing about no seabag,” Cramer said when Simpson and Willis talked to him on the fantail, where Sorrel was cutting his hair, “but I'll try to find out about it.”

Waving the scissors aside, he went to the forecastle, where the men off watch were napping and reading.

“All right, you bastards, which one of you took Willis's seabag?” When no one answered he strode through the ship asking everyone the same question, got no answer. He came back to Simpson. “I don't know who took the damn thing … Willis, are you sure you didn't stow it somewhere and forget it? We've never had stealing aboard here—”

“I left it in my bunk this morning,” Willis said stonily.

“We've never had no trouble like this before—”

“And we're not going to put up with it now,” Simpson said. “Until that seabag is found there'll be no liberty for anyone. We're going to put a stop to this thing right now—”

“Somebody probably dropped it over the side last night,” Cramer said. “It ain't fair to punish the whole crew for what one man did—”

“I left it on my bunk
this morning
,” Willis repeated.

“It still could have gone over the side,” Cramer said. “The water's full of trash around here. No one would have noticed it in the wake.”

“If the bag ain't found, maybe the men will chip in stuff to make up a new outfit for him,” Simpson said. “Anyway, till Willis is outfitted no one is going to get liberty.”

Simpson went to report to Syl, who was resting in his cabin.

“What the hell's the matter with them?” he said.

“You got to face the fact that they just don't want Willis aboard,” Buller said a little later. “They'll do everything they can to drive him off.”

“All the men don't feel that way. I saw Sorrel working out with him on Morse code. So was Hathaway. The kid's a nut on code. He's already pretty good at it.”

“They're the only ones. Any one of the others could have taken that bag.”

“They'll pay for it. They won't go ashore—”

“If you take away their liberty in Manila, the whole crew will be browned off. They'll just hate Willis more. How long do you plan to keep the men restricted? It can't go on forever.”

“I figure they'll make up a new outfit for him. Plenty of the men are about the same size.”

“What if they don't?”

“They'll get sick of being restricted, especially if the fighting's over by the time we get to Manila.”

“They'll kill the poor little bastard,” Buller said.

“If the going gets rough they'll forget about Willis,” Simpson said, and left.

Syl stretched wearily. There was no good simple way to handle this situation. Now an issue had been made out of a damn seabag, what would he do if it weren't found or replaced? The longer the men were restricted, the angrier the ones who'd had nothing to do with the thing would become. If he gave in and granted liberty he'd be undermining Simpson's authority. He held a no-win hand and realized unhappily that now he too was resenting Willis—

Syl was taken out of his dilemma by Sorrel, who suddenly appeared at his door … “Sir, the tin can is flying a signal, says enemy aircraft in the vicinity. Mr. Buller wants to know if you want to sound general quarters—”

“Of course …” Syl jumped up, took his helmet and life preserver from his locker. He was also supposed to wear his .45 automatic at such times, and although he usually left it in his drawer with its belt, he buckled it on now. The polished leather holster felt good at his hip. As the Klaxon horn shrieked he ran for the bridge.

No enemy aircraft or planes of any description were in sight. The sky was mostly clear blue with a few fluffy white cumulous clouds floating lazily overhead.

“Probably a false alarm,” Buller said, sounding disappointed. He hadn't bothered to get his helmet, his life preserver or pistol.

At battle stations there actually was little for most of the crew to do. The six men assigned to the two fifty-caliber machine guns opened the ready boxes and loaded. Cramer ran out hoses and tested the water pressure. The joke was that aboard a gas tanker the entire ship's company fell on their knees and prayed when the general alarm sounded, that that was probably as useful a response to bombs and torpedoes as any …

“Mr. Buller, I better send a messenger for your general quarters gear,” Simpson said.

“What the hell's the point of a helmet and life preserver on this gas bucket? If she blows, we'll lose our asses. You want the pickup crew to send home our heads all safe in their helmets in hat boxes?”