Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  His whole life was going wrong. He was sliding downhill, he was getting fat, sick, crazy in this heat, with madmen flying planes into ships. The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became the Jefferson City was doomed. Her past — that night of terror and cowardice off Savo Island — was pursuing her.

  He should have said something that night. He should have stopped Parker before Kemble got to the bridge. He should have been a man, a fighting sailor. Instead he had been afraid too. He had never been able to forget that. He had been afraid.

  Had Captain Kemble been afraid? Wilkinson had never been able to penetrate his silence. The captain had said nothing, while Parker babbled. The boatswain's mate hoped Kemble was afraid. But somehow he doubted it. There was another reason for what he had done, a reason Wilkinson did not understand.

  The mystery tormented him. Now it threatened him. It seemed to be part of the madness, part of things happening without a reason, like the kamikazes.

  He crawled out of his rack and rolled up his mattress. Maybe he could sleep topside. At the head of the ladder to the second deck, he peered down the dim passageway. There was someone there, standing just behind a red battle lamp.

  He seemed to be an officer or a chief petty officer. He could see the gleam of a visor above the shadowed face. "Is that you, Mr. MacComber?" he said hopefully. MacComber was cracking up too. He had been passed over for promotion about four times. Sometimes he got drunk and came down and talked to Wilkinson about the captain. The bastard had given MacComber a bad fitness report for protecting Wilkinson. MacComber would ramble on about the stupidity and injustice of the Navy, telling him things every enlisted man knew five minutes after he came aboard.

  There was no answer from the shadowy figure. Wilkinson repeated the questions. It was probably MacComber, too drunk to talk.

  The figure stepped in front of the battle lamp. Blood streamed from his right eye. It was Captain Winfield Scott Schley Kemble.

  The next morning, a still terrified Wilkinson told Joe Garraty, the first class boatswain's mate who ran Deck Division Two, what he had seen. Garraty had a big mouth. In four hours the story was all over the ship. The three mesquiteers told Flanagan, who told the chaplain. Flanagan wanted to make it the lead story in the next edition of The Hawthorn.

  "Out of the question!" Bushnell said. Flanagan was amazed by how agitated the chaplain became.

  "Do you believe in ghosts?" Flanagan asked.

  "I believe in the soul's survival, Frank. But in what form and whether the dead have any power or influence on us, I can't say.

  "I can," Flanagan said with the heady confidence of the twenty-year-old skeptic. "When you're dead you're out of it."

  "I wonder if anything that lives for a while is ever really out of it? Life is a vast continuum, Frank."

  "Sounds like more of your atheistic mysticism to me, Chaplain."

  "Don't mock me, Frank."

  "Why not? Mock me back. I'm a lot more confused than you are.”

  Flanagan had begun to like the chaplain, even though he considered his tortuous theological musings ridiculous.

  "My brother was killed in World War One. My wife started seeing him in our house. Eventually she confessed she loved him more than she ever loved me. I had known that for a long time. But I was enraged because she could see him and I couldn't. It seemed to imply a lesser love on my part. Which wasn't true. I loved him more than any other human being I ever met. Including my wife. It was the beginning of the end of our marriage."

  Flanagan barely listened. He had no interest in the passions of middle age. "Wilkinson's probably going bananas without any prettyboys to screw," he said. The mesquiteers had told him about Wilkinson's style of leadership in Division One.

  "I find it hard to believe that really went on, Frank."

  The chaplain still had a great reluctance to accept the existence of evil. Flanagan was inclined to see it everywhere he looked. Goodness was what he found hard to accept.

  The story soon reached the wardroom. No one took it very seriously except Bushnell and Lieutenant MacComber. "I grew up in a house haunted by my grandfather, who was killed in 1862 at Malvern Hill," he said.

  "You think Kemble has come back to haunt us? Why?" Montgomery West asked.

  "I have no idea. My grandmother thought Grandfather was taking revenge on her for remarrying too soon. He was an imperious bastard."

  "Has anyone talked to Wilkinson?" Dr. Cadwallader said. "He may be cracking up."

  "Wilkinson's not the crack-up type," MacComber said.

  "He isn't the type who sees visions, either."

  "You think he really saw something?"

  "Yes! If you want to know the truth, Mr. West. Yes." MacComber reached for his water glass and knocked it over. He was trembling.

  "It's all too possible," Chaplain Bushnell said.

  For the first time, Montgomery West felt a tremor of unease. He looked around the table. Ensign Brownmiller looked vaguely frightened. So did. Lieutenant Commander Moss. Were they afraid of seeing Captain Kemble too? Was he afraid?

  Oz Bradley grunted. "Maybe he'll finally pay a visit to the engine room.

  The Other Enemy

  As usual, the Jefferson City's aerographer sent her weather balloon aloft from the highest point in the superstructure, the space between the main battery gun director and main forward. Flanagan watched him, predicting, also as usual, that he would be wrong as usual.

  "How much will you bet," Flanagan said. "Come on. Jack Peterson made a living off you. I've got Jack's job. I'm entitled to the same income."

  From Minnesota, the aerographer fancied himself a direct descendant of the Norse chieftain Eric the Red. He had the name and the red hair, but the rest of his physique was closer to the ninety-seven-pound weakling in the Charles Atlas ads. He used rhetoric to compensate for his lack of muscle.

  "Be silent, you elongated Celtic clod. My ancestors were carving yours up in the eighth century. I'm at least a hundred years ahead of you on the evolutionary scale."

  "Give us a chance to get even."

  "Peterson was a reincarnated Norse warrior. One of nature's gentlemen. I was glad to contribute to his well-being."

  "You're as bad at judging character as you are at the weather."

  Down came the balloon, leaving the weatherman up to his knees in fifteen hundred feet of line, which his striker stolidly wound around a spool. The man of science studied the thermometer and other instruments attached to the balloon.

  "At this time tomorrow," he said, "we'll be in the middle of a typhoon."

  "Hey, give me a piece of that one," Flanagan begged. The sky was a cerulean blue. The wind was barely caressing the surface of the sea.

  "Fifty bucks."

  "You're on," Flanagan said.

  Even if he lost, at least it would take his mind off getting killed by a kamikaze.

  "I hear the kamikazes got another carrier yesterday. The Princeton. When the Birmingham pulled alongside her to fight the fires, the Princeton blew up and killed just about everybody topside on both ships."

  "Makes me glad I work in the fire room," Marty Roth said.

  "The guys in the fire rooms on the Princeton got roasted alive when burning gasoline came down the ducts."

  Standard conversation at breakfast, dinner and supper aboard the Jefferson City.

  Nobody laughed at Tokyo Rose any more. Everybody talked about going home, how the J.C. was overdue for leave. No one ever got a full night's sleep. Every time an unidentified plane appeared on the radar screens, every ship in the fleet went to General Quarters. The kamikazes had changed everyone's feeling about the war. Part of it was exhaustion, part of it was the feeling that it was unfair. They had won their slugging match with the Combined Fleet. It was at the bottom of the ocean.

  "Why don't these bastards admit they're beaten?" George Jablonsky wanted to know.

  To keep from growing crazy, he had shaved himself bald and planned a career as a professional wrestler. O
thers had grown beards. Flanagan had not gotten a haircut in weeks. The captain seemed to understand. He let them break trivial rules as long as they did their jobs.

  "They like dying for a noble cause. I dig that," Flanagan said. "It's better than dying for no particular reason."

  That was what the sailors hated about the kamikazes. They destroyed the exultant sense of survival everyone experienced for a day after the battle of Leyte Gulf. Everyone had to resume wondering if he would get killed. But dying no longer seemed noble, sacrificial. There was no danger of losing the war. No one had to worry about mothers and sisters and fiancées being bombarded by Japanese battleships, bombed by Japanese planes, raped by Japanese armies. Dying now would be dumb, meaningless. It would be like getting drunk and falling overboard. Or getting hit by a shell from another American ship. It made the idea of death more intolerable.

  Homewood sat down beside Flanagan at the mess table, with double portions of everything on his tray, as usual.

  "How's it look topside?" Flanagan asked. He was worried about his bet with the aerographer. The sunny skies had vanished. Thick gray clouds were scudding up from the south.

  The ship suddenly rolled thirty degrees to starboard. Trays, food, sailors went sliding across the compartment in a crashing, cursing torrent.

  "I think you're gonna lose fifty bucks," Homewood said. He had hooked his legs around a table leg and continued to eat his ham and beans.

  They were about to discover the kamikazes were not the only Pacific wind that could kill.

  "Why doesn't Halsey get us the hell out of this?" George Tombs asked.

  The executive officer gazed uneasily at the forty-foot swells looming around them. A gale-force wind lashed spray against the bridge's windshields. Ahead, two destroyers were trying to refuel from a hulking oiler. They had spent the last two hours at it. Twice the hoses had parted, spilling thousands of gallons of oil into the heaving ocean.

  "He wants to get in one last punch at the airfields in the Philippines," Captain McKay said

  The kamikazes were driving everyone zooey, from the sailors to the admirals. Here was Bull Halsey, trying to refuel the Third Fleet in the path of an oncoming typhoon. He should be running for the open ocean, but he was sure if he could get in one more strike at the airfields of Luzon the kamikazes would disappear. Halsey was allowing his contempt for the Japanese to muddle his judgment. The kamikazes were not going to disappear. You could hide the flimsy planes they were using on obscure dirt airfields in the jungle, in mountain caves, you could move them around on trucks. It was the Japanese answer to American steel and high explosives, to the enormous fleet, the swarms of planes advancing across the Pacific toward them. They would triumph through spiritual supremacy, now that the last of the Combined Fleet, their hope of physical supremacy, lay at the bottom of the ocean.

  As daylight faded, the destroyers still had not managed to refuel. A sinister red glow filled the western sky. The sea was deep black, with white spindrift whipping off the tops of the waves. McKay called the aerographer to the bridge. "Where do you locate this storm, Eric?" he asked.

  "I don't have all the reports they're getting on the flagship," he said. "I'm using the old seaman's rule of thumb. 'Face the wind and the center lies ten points to your right.'" He put his finger on the map. "Just about here."

  "We're sailing right into it?"

  "If I'm right."

  "What do you think, Boats?"

  "It's a good rule. I seen a lot of captains use it out here," Homewood said.

  By morning the wind had risen to sixty knots. Saltwater was blowing horizontally at bridge level, making it almost impossible to see anything dead ahead. An unearthly wail emanated from the radar antennas as the wind whipped through them. Conversation on the bridge was possible only in shouts. Waves kept building to awesome heights. The barometer began to fall with meteoric speed, going from twenty-nine to seventeen in the space of an hour.

  The wind began whirling counterclockwise, driving waves to new heights and making it impossible to maintain a headway of more than three knots. The ship was rolling thirty and forty degrees to port and starboard. The weight of her five-inch and forty-millimeter guns had never been figured into her original design. There was a serious possibility of capsizing.

  Over the radio came frantic reports from captains of destroyers and escort carriers. Destroyers were rolling seventy degrees. One call from the Monaghan simply said, "We're going over." Then there was silence. On the escort carriers planes ripped loose and caught fire. Aboard the Jefferson City there was another worry.

  "Captain," said Edwin Moss on the telephone, "I don't like the way the bow is working. We're taking water through a half dozen sprung plates. I'm afraid it could snap off if this storm gets any worse."

  It got worse. The wind rose to a hundred knots, with gusts that screamed to a hundred twenty. The sea and sky blended into a blinding wall of flying water. On human skin, it was like a sandblaster. Lookouts, signalmen, anyone who exposed his face to it sought shelter with blood streaming from his forehead and cheeks.

  Edwin Moss reported water was pouring into the ship through supposedly watertight hatches. The chief electrician's mate reported some of this water had caused short circuits in the main electrical switchboard, located just above the steering-engine room. They were fighting a half dozen small fires down there. Oz Bradley said that with each roll to starboard the forced draft blower intakes were sucking a thousand gallons of water into the fire rooms.

  That was only the beginning of the ordeal in the fire rooms. They turned off the blowers, and the temperature soon rose to 140 degrees. Another wild roll to starboard burst open the hatch on the weather deck that Amos Cartwright had loosened for emergency escape. Water cascaded down on the boilers. Marty Roth clawed his way over blistering steam lines and up the escape ladder inside the ventilator. Hundreds of gallons of water poured down on him while he fought to close the hatch. Twice he got knocked off the ladder and started falling. Clawing frantically, he grabbed a rung after a few feet and returned to the struggle. Half drowned, he finally got the hatch dogged shut and spun the wheel to secure it.

  As he returned to the fire room, drenched and seared, he could have sworn he heard Amos Cartwright's voice whisper, Nice goin', Jewboy. Nobody on watch said a word to him. They were too busy trying to rig hose pumps to get rid of the three feet of water on the deckplates. With every roll they grabbed the overhead pipes or anything else that offered a grip. Otherwise they were flung from one side of the work space to the other with the sloshing tidal wave of oily water. One watertender first class had blood streaming from a cut over his eye. A fireman first class had broken his arm. He crouched on the ladder, whimpering, "We're goin' over. I know we're goin' over."

  By now Captain McKay had been on the bridge for twenty-four consecutive hours. So had Executive Officer Tombs. From the after steering room came ominous reports of the loss of lubricating oil suction on the port engine every time they rolled to that side. They had to shut down the engine to prevent a catastrophic burnout. Commander Moss reported the bow was starting to wobble one or two degrees off the keel. There was three feet of water in the mess compartment. Another cascade of water knocked out the main switchboard. Below decks, the only light came from the eerie red battle lamps.

  "What do we do, Art?" Tombs shouted.

  "Shut down the engines," McKay said.

  "What?"

  "It's an old merchant captain's trick. I heard one of them describe it in a bar in Shanghai fifteen years ago. I can still hear him saying, 'You can't fight a typhoon.' Now that I've seen one, I'm sure he's right."

  Tombs clearly did not agree with him. "You're sure you want to do to it, Art?"

  “Yes."

  "Shut them down," Tombs said to the engine telegrapher operator.

  The sailor shoved the annunciator handle to zero. Almost instantly, Oz Bradley was on the telephone from the engine room.

  "Is that signal correct?"


  "Yes," McKay said.

  "Captain," cried a quavering voice over the telephone, "this is Emerson Bushnell. Have the engines failed?"

  "No. I shut them down."

  "Is that a good idea?"

  "We'll soon find out"

  "Is there anything I can do?"

  "Try prayer, Chaplain."

  In the engine rooms and fire rooms, where faith in the ship's survival was essentially faith in the power plant, fear rampaged. "Parker was right, the bastard's crazy," cried the machinist's mate known as the Throttleman. "He's been waitin' for a chance to kill us."

  "Shut up," Oz Bradley said. "He knows what he's doing."

  "Have you ever heard of anybody turnin' off the goddamn engines in a typhoon?" the Throttleman screamed.

  "I'm not a fucking sailor and neither are you," Bradley answered.

  The words tormented him, but they were true. He had to admit for the first time that their ultimate survival on the ocean depended on the seamanship of the captain, on knowledge and skill that predated his beloved engines.

  "I'm goin' up. I'm gonna get topside before we roll over," the Throttleman screamed.

  He started scrambling up the ladder to the upper level, where Bradley was standing. Oz blocked him. "Get back to that goddamn throttle," he said.

  The machinist outweighed Bradley by fifty pounds. But twenty-five years of giving orders were on Bradley's side. The Throttleman retreated to the deckplates. He could not look at anyone in the engine room. He just slumped in front of the throttle mumbling, "I got nothin' left. I got nothin' left."

  In the CIC, Radarman Whizzer Wylie looked at his blank screen and started to blubber. "We're going over, just like those destroyers, Lieutenant."

  Harold Semple put his hands over his ears. "Tell him to stop, Lieutenant, please. He's making me nervous."

  "The captain knows what he's doing," Montgomery West said. He realized that was a statement of faith, not fact. He did not have the slightest idea whether Arthur McKay was doing the right thing. Shutting off the engines made no sense to him. It seemed to expose the cruiser to the uncaring violence of the sea.