Torpedo Run (23 page)

Jason slid into the Bofors turret and cranked the gun down until the long barrel was depressed below the horizontal. As Peter lowered the glasses he saw the barrel moving slowly in phase with the movement of the boat. "Hold it," he said. "I can't figure it out."

"Probably a recon deal," Goldberg said. "Just feeling us out. Probably a couple hundred more beyond that point just waiting for some sort of signal."

"Then let's wait. Let 'em think we don't expect 'em and then let them have it all at once."

Murph had borrowed the glasses again. "I guess they're lying down in the boat because I don't see anybody."

"Neither did I," Peter said, borrowing the glasses back. "Wait. There's one guy anyway."

"Somebody's got to sit up and look where he's going," Murph decided. "A boat that long could carry twenty or thirty men, couldn't it, Peter?"

"Be a little crowded."

"Maybe fifty," Murph declared.

Suddenly the sail of the outrigger collapsed. Peter could hear the yard rattling down on the wooden hull. The lone man in the boat hauled the canvas in out of the water and then began to paddle.

"Maybe he's just out here fishing," Peter hoped.

The man turned the boat directly toward
Slewfoot
and kept on paddling.

"Fishing, my eye," Jason said. "I could take 'em out with one round now, Peter."

"No, hold it," Peter said, studying the man in the boat. Then he lowered the glasses and looked at Goldberg and Murph. "It's Archer," he said.

For a moment they all stood there, no one with anything to say. Then Peter realized what Archer had done and whirled to Goldberg. "Get all the food. And the water. And the carbines." Then he looked at the big man. "Can you hand hold a .30, Goldberg?"

"I can try."

"Then unlimber one of those, too."

As Goldberg started running forward, Peter called, "And the flag, Gerry. And the charts and codes."

Then Peter jumped down off the stern and ran through the shallow water toward the narrow bow of the outrigger sliding silently toward him. "Archer, are you all right?"

Archer's voice sounded weak, but there was still a trace of the old commanding tone in it. "Bear a hand! They're right behind me."

Through the moonlight the men came running as Peter pulled the bow toward shore. They dumped in food and water and guns, running back and forth between the outrigger and
Slewfoot.

Peter was positioning the stuff to balance when Sko came up. "I saved some of the gas, Peter," he said.

For a moment Peter didn't understand and then, when he did, he looked over at
Slewfoot.

They walked back to the boat together and climbed aboard. Goldberg met them on deck, carrying one of the .30-caliber machine guns in his arms, belts of ammo strung over his shoulders. "That's all," he said.

"Okay," Peter said. "Get all the men in the outrigger and sort of balance 'em—you amidships."

Goldberg went on down the ladder. Sko, who had gone below, came up now with two cans of gasoline. In silence he handed Peter one of them and then walked forward. Peter stood for a moment and then, tipping the can, he walked aft, strewing the gas on everything as he went. When the can was empty he walked back to meet Sko, who was carrying a gas-soaked length of rope. He tied one end to the bridge structure and then climbed off
Slewfoot,
paying out rope as he went.

On the beach Peter and Sko stood for a moment longer looking at
Slewfoot
in the moonlight. "She was a good boat, Peter."

"The best," Peter said. "So let her go."

Sko got a lighter and lit the rope. The pale flame in the bright moonlight ran swiftly up the rope toward
Slewfoot.

Such a tiny flame, Peter thought, watching it.

Then there was a loud, sucking noise as
Slewfoot
was suddenly completely ablaze from stem to stern.

They turned and ran down to the outrigger where the men all sat, their faces lit by the flames as they looked back at the boat.

Peter got in beside Archer. Goldberg and Mitch had the only two paddles and Peter did not have to tell them to shove off.

"How do you sail this thing?" he asked Archer.

Someone was already pulling the sail up the short mast.

"Simple," Archer said. "Get her on the starboard tack and keep her there. That's all you can do. If the wind gets any stronger Mitch and Goldberg are heavy enough to hold her down if they get out on the outrigger."

They turned her seaward with the paddles, and the wind suddenly caught the long, lateen sail. Peter looked up at it and saw the light of the yellow flames wavering on it as the long, narrow boat began to move, her hull hissing softly through the water.

"Here, you steer her," Archer said, moving down off the narrow little seat. Peter moved up and took the smooth-handled tiller.

He could not look back at
Slewfoot
burning now as he sat, facing forward, watching the belly of the sail and beginning to get the feel of the rudder in the water.

But the men looked back, watching. No one said anything.

After a while Peter asked, "How close are they?"

"You'll see them in a minute," Archer said.

"Are you all right?" Peter asked, for Archer's voice sounded very weak and he was sitting, slumped over, his head down on the gunwale.

"I'm all right," Archer said.

Then Peter saw the lights. Hundreds—
thousands—
of them. Little flickering spots of light all across the sea.

"Torches," Archer said.

"What can we do?"

"Nothing. But you're ahead of them and they can't sail any faster than you can."

The burning torches sent firelit smoke up past the pulling sails, and to Peter it looked like hundreds of sails bearing down on him.

"Take all you can," Archer said, raising his head and looking at the sail. "Turn her into the wind until the sail begins to shake a little and then ease her off."

"This way?" Peter asked.

"That's it. Now ease her just enough to fill the sail."

The boat seemed to go faster that way, the lights no longer gaining on him.

Peter looked forward at the men crouched in the narrow hull, the bilge water sloshing around their hips. They were so silent, so motionless.

"How's it going, you guys," he asked.

"Man,"
Murph said, "we're really
moving.
Mitch, get off my foot!"

"I thought it was a brick," Mitch said, moving as much as he could.

"They're turning," Goldberg said. "Doesn't it look like they're turning?"

They were, the sails now flapping loosely in the light of the torches. In a moment the lights began fading away.

"Murph, did you bring a compass?" Peter asked.

"I forgot it."

"It doesn't make any difference," Archer said. "You can only go where the wind wants you to go."

"Can we get back to New Guinea?"

"I think so."

Peter looked down at him. "How'd you get this boat?"

Archer laid his head back down on the gunwale. "I had to kill some people," he said.

"Mitch," Murph said, aggrieved, "get
off
my foot!"

"You're not using it," Mitch argued.

"Is there anything to bail with?" Goldberg asked. "My barbecued pig is getting wet."

The Professor found the bailing gourd. He looked at it in the moonlight and began to laugh. "Pass this back to Peter," he said.

The handle on the gourd was a carved crocodile swallowing a naked girl. In the moonlight Peter could see the simple smile on her face as though she was enjoying the whole operation. He laughed and passed it back.

"We must be making eight or nine knots," Peter told Axcher.

"Ten. These are the fastest sailing boats in the world."

Peter did some rapid short division. "Hey!" he said, surprised. "Hey, you guys. We'll be home in thirty hours."

"I never thought I'd call that stinking jungle home," Goldberg said, "but when I get there I'm going to sink right down to my knees in the mud and kiss it."

Peter turned and looked back. The island seemed far away now, a darker mass above the moon-silvered sea.
Slewfoot
was now only a low, dim glow against the darkness of the island. He turned forward again. "If they give us a new boat, what will we call her?" he asked the men.

"Slewfoot.
What else?" Murph demanded.

"Slewfoot Two,"
Mitch said.

"Slewfeet," Goldberg said.

It was the first time they had all laughed for a long time, Peter remembered, as he sailed on to the south, the long boat going very well.

The sun came booming up with little warning and, in a moment, the cold night was gone and a fine, clear, hot day began. The cramped men stirred around in the boat, moving in the sunlight. Goldberg unwrapped a chunk of the barbecued pig and waved it around.

"What do you call that horrid thing?" Murph asked.

Goldberg stared at him. "That's a Goldberger, Murphy. And a piece of it will cost you a month's pay."

Peter looked down at Archer, who had curled up on the bottom of the boat and gone to sleep some hours before. He was still asleep, his face gray and loose looking.

One of the morphine Syrettes, empty, lay beside him.

The Preacher was next to Archer and, as he moved around to loosen up, he touched Archer's leg. Then, slowly, he touched it again, putting his palm down on it. Then he looked up at Peter. "Peter," he said. Then he pointed at Archer.

Peter leaned over and shook Archer's shoulder.

Archer rolled over, face up in the boat, his eyes and mouth open.

"He's dead," the Preacher said in a low voice.

Peter knew it but touched him anyway and found no pulse.

"Why?" the Preacher asked.

The other men had noticed now and were looking aft.

"The skipper's dead," Peter told them quietly. "Shall we take him home?"

The men thought it over, looking at Archer lying now so ruined. The Professor said quietly, "The sea is as good a place to be buried as any, Peter."

"All right," Peter said. "Lash the machine gun to him."

"We may need that," Jason reminded him, then held up a belt of ammunition, "but I don't see how we can use all this."

The Preacher and Peter got the belt wrapped around him and then they lifted him up on the gunwale. The wound in Archer's belly had been sewn back together, but it had not healed and was awful. Peter glanced at it and then away and said, whispering, "He must've gotten hit the night the barge hit us. All this time … " Peter looked over at the Preacher. "Say something real good, Preacher."

The Preacher thought for a moment as all the men in the boat watched him and waited, each one sad now, remembering what they had thought of Archer and done to him.

"Our heavenly Father," the Preacher began, "this is the third man we've had to send You and he was as good as the other two. As good even as Jonesy, only we didn't understand him and we didn't give him a chance. We even planned to mutiny against him. But in spite of what we did to him he gave his life so that we could have this little boat and live. Please, Lord, be good to him. His name is Adrian Archer."

The men looked away as Archer's body, sinking, drifted down the length of the boat and was gone.

The long, bright, hot day ended with a brilliant splash of emerald lying on the far horizon as the sun went down. It had been a peaceful and quiet day. To Peter it seemed that all the men had withdrawn into themselves, for they, like him, had a lot to think about and the remembrance made them all a little sad.

But with the coming of night and the day's restoring of their strength and the feeling of going home there was a change in them. Slowly they began to talk quietly among themselves, and then to laugh and finally to begin horsing around. Peter let it go until they threw Murph out of the outrigger and promised him that they would not go back and get him. The little Irishman's wails in the night were most heartrending.

Peter turned the boat into the wind and let it drift while they hauled Murph back aboard. "Don't throw anybody else over the side," Peter ordered. "We may need him for food ourselves."

Toward midnight the wind veered around to the northwest and became strong and gusty. At first Peter didn't know how to handle the boat in what was now a following wind; but as soon as he picked out a star he knew was in the southeast and eased the sail, the boat began to
fly,
staying well ahead of the waves, which were now coming from astern.

"Holy mack-e-rel, Amos!" Mitch said. "If this thing had a couple of torpedoes we could put her in the squadron."

All day Peter had marveled at this frail craft and had grown completely confident that it could go anywhere in the world through any wind or sea. It was just a long hollowed-out log with the outrigger booms lashed to it with some sort of flat vines. The outrigger was a shorter, solid log, carved smooth and also tied to the booms with the vines. The mast was a marvel of engineering, for it stood without stays from a step fairly far aft in the hull and supported the long, slanting top yard of the sail.

At this sizzling speed one man had to bail all the time, for water kept slipping in over the side. Other than that, she was perfectly seaworthy.

At midnight Peter turned the tiller over to the Professor and then carefully he stood up, one foot on the hull, the other on the outrigger boom. "I figure we've come over two hundred miles," he told Murph, "so we ought to be seeing something pretty soon—New Britain or New Guinea."

"What's the matter with California?" Murph asked. "Or even Mexico. I dig that Latin beat, man."

Peter was standing there, and later he swore he heard it go by, it was that close. In the dark water the familiar white spout rose, hung up there and fell back, while from off to port the
car-umph
of the gun floated over to them.

The men began scrambling around in the boat, grabbing the carbines. Goldberg hoisted the heavy .30-caliber machine gun up in his lap and worked the bolt while Mitch laid out the belt as well as he could in the crowded space.