by Robb White
Chapter 8
The four big diesels went to work. The exhaust gases burst from the stern of the Shark as she rammed forward, swinging to the new course.
By letting sea water into tanks on the port side they got the boat on a more even keel, although deep in the water and sluggish.
Phil Carney on the bridge glanced up at the sun in the absolutely cloudless sky. “Let’s put a couple of lookouts out here, Frank,” he suggested. “And let’s keep the guns manned and ready. What about having them stand by both bow and stem torpedo tubes, too? If we get caught we’ll just have to fight it out on the surface.”
Doherty said, “Aye, aye, Skipper,” and then gave orders to double the lookouts and to stay at battle stations. Into the phone he said, “Stand by all tubes. No target in sight, but we may have to shoot.”
Carney went back to studying the chart. “The only way we can patch this boat is to beach her, Frank,” he said at last. “Put her on the ground at high tide, patch those holes at low tide, and float her off on the next high.”
Doherty nodded, but looked doubtful.
“Even beached she’s going to be low in the water,” Carney went on. “So we can’t do any welding if there’s any wave motion. We’ve got to keep it dry.”
Doherty nodded again.
“See this?” Carney asked, pointing to the chart.
Ken looked too. Carney was pointing with the tips of his dividers at an island named Eugalin. “That bay looks deep and perfect. The bottom is sand, it’s got a deep-water entrance and, inside the bay, the surface should be calm as a pond. We’ll nose her into here, and then let her more or less drift aground. High tide is at four in the morning, which will be perfect if we can get there in time.”
“How about Japs on the island, Skipper?”
Carney shrugged. “That’s what I don’t know. I’ve been trying to remember but I’ve never heard of any enemy activity on Eugalin. In the book it’s just listed by name and nationality, but there’s no mention of whether it’s inhabited or not. And I can’t remember anything in the news about the Japs’ taking it over.”
“They might have—without saying anything about it,” Frank argued.
Carney nodded. Then he looked forward at the sea rushing toward the bow of the boat and breaking in clean white waves which foamed all the way back to the conning tower structure. Finally he said, “Do you think a plane can get much of a radio bearing on us if we open up for just a few seconds?”
Doherty thought it over and then said, “They’d have to be shot with luck, Skipper. They’d have to be right on top of the frequency and have a direction finder beamed right on us to do them any good. Of course, if the transmission went on too long they could nail us.”
Carney reached for the phone. “Communications? Who’s this? Oh, Shelton. How long would it take you to send a dispatch to Pearl with a four-word message?”
Carney listened, then hung up. “Shelton says he could get it out in less than fifteen seconds, provided Pearl is on the ball—which he doubts.”
“They couldn’t get a bearing in that time,” Doherty decided.
“All right. Ken, encode and send this. Address it Action JICPOA—that’s Joint Intelligence Center, Pacific Ocean Area -message to read: ANY JAPS ON EUGALIN.”
Ken repeated the dispatch, then climbed down through the hatch. On his way forward he met Pat Malone in the control room. “What’s up?” Pat asked.
“We’re heading for an island.”
Ken went on to the tiny radio shack, where a first class petty officer was sitting, the headphones on. He pushed aside one earphone as Ken asked him for the coding board.
The radioman looked worried. “May I see your authorization, sir?”
“I haven’t got any. The Skipper just made me Communications Officer.”
“I wish he’d written it down, sir.”
Then the phone rang. Ken could hear Carney’s voice saying, “Shelton, from now on Lieutenant Braden is the Com Officer. Help him all you can, will you?”
“Aye, aye, sir.” The radioman grinned at Ken. “Just a formality, sir. Just orders from headquarters.”
Sure.
The radioman opened the safe and got out the coding board and strips. “Where’s it going, sir?”
“Pearl. Action JICPOA.”
“You don t have to code that—I know it already.”
Ken, trying hard to remember how to work a coding board, began putting in the strips for date and time. As he went on, more and more of the method came back and soon he was getting the message broken down into the proper groups.
“Here you go,” he said. “I hope there aren’t any garbles in it.”
The radioman took the penciled groups of letters which now spelled nothing. Starting the transmitter, he reached for the bug.
Ken watched with admiration as he sent the message. He was so fast on the double key that it sounded like an almost continuous sound. It took him less than ten seconds from start to finish.
As the radioman turned off the transmitter, he said, “I bet every radioman in Pearl is down on Waikiki watching the hula girls. They don’t even know there’s a war on.”
Ken sat on the wastebasket while the radioman listened.
“Well, what do you know?” he said. “Pearl says stand by.”
Ken called the bridge and told the Skipper what was happening.
“Here it comes,” the radioman said, writing. In a little while he handed Ken some groups of letters.
Ken decoded the thing as fast as he could and, not bothering to paraphrase it, wrote it as it came out.
NO DEFINITE INFORMATION REGARDING JAPS CIVIL OR MILITARY ON EUGALIN STOP BEST GUESS IS NOT INHABITED STOP ADVISE APPROACH WITH CAUTION STOP.
Ken took it up to Carney on the bridge.
“Wonder who’s doing the guessing,” Carney said.
“When we get near the island why don’t you let me go ashore and take a look?” Ken asked.
“Good idea. It’ll have to be a quick look, though, because if we miss the tide we’ll have to wait another twelve hours.”
For the rest of the day the Shark, wounded and wallowing, steamed toward Eugalin Island.
At midnight Ken climbed back to the bridge. “I’m all set, Skipper,” he told Carney.
A dim red light flowed on the chart while above them the sky was ablaze with stars. Carney picked up the dividers. “Eugalin should be showing up on the radar soon. I plan to approach on the surface, circle it once, and take a look. If we see lights, then we’ll stand off and you can go in and find out who’s there. If there aren’t any lights I think I’ll take her right into the bay and you can go ashore from there.”
“Wouldn’t you think, sir, that if there are people on the island they would have some sort of boats? And if they have boats that they’d keep ‘em there in the bay?”
“That’s logical, and the bay’s the only place small boats could be sheltered.”
“Then I’ll search the whole bay front first.”
“No boats—no people,” Carney agreed. “Even if there are Japs—say, a garrison—they would still have a boat to fish from, or to use to go out to any ships bringing in supplies. Natives would, of course, have boats.”
Ken looked at the shape of the bay on the chart. “If I could get ashore here,” he pointed out, “I could walk the whole bay front and get back in the water over here. That’d save me having to go over the same ground twice.”
“I’ll see whether we can get in there. But here’s a thing that worries me, Ken. Suppose, while you’re ashore, we get jumped. We’ll have to go to sea to fight. We’ll have to pull out and—leave you.”
“I’d thought of that, Skipper.”
“Have you thought much past that, though?”
“Only this far. I won’t need any underwater gear to get ashore and back in the dark. Just compass, fins and a mask. But, just in case, I thought I’d take along a lung. I could sink it near the beach and mark it. Then if you
had to take the boat back to sea, you could come back when you got through. You could stop right here in the mouth of the bay and I could swim out to you. I’d swim out every midnight and look around until you showed up.”
“Sounds good. Let’s make it that way. If we have to leave you behind we’ll come back as soon as we can. I’ll put the boat right here.” Carney pointed to the middle of the entrance to the bay. “That’ll give you only about half a mile to swim. I’ll be there at midnight and will stay until an hour before dawn. I’ll come every night for a week. Then if you don’t show—well, I’ll put a landing party ashore and try to find you.”
Ken nodded.
Now the sea was breaking over the bow of the submarine in sudden waves. The water was pitch black except for the breaking waves, which glowed with pale, horrible color.
A voice close by said, “Bogey, Captain. Dead ahead.” Carney bent to the voice tube. “Is it moving?”
“No, sir. Big and stationary.”
“Stand by to dive the boat. Lookout, do you see anything?” The lookout above them swung his night glasses slowly back and forth. “I’m not sure, sir, but there seems to be a dark mass dead ahead.”
“Must be Eugalin,” Carney said. Then he bent to the tube again. “Sound, when we get into sixty feet of water start reporting, will you?”
“Sound, aye, aye. Report at sixty feet.”
“I can see it now,” Carney said, pointing.
As Ken peered into the darkness, at last, he, too, could see a darker place, a low-lying dark, broad line.
“I’ll go get my gear,” Ken said.
In his cabin he stripped off his clothes and got into a light suit which covered him ankles to throat. It was grayish in color and, although it had no cold-protection qualities, it would be almost invisible on a beach at night, and it would also protect him from sunburn if he had to be exposed during the daytime. Into a watertight canister he put a diving lung with cylinders, a gallon of drinking water, some C rations, some extra ammunition for the .38-caliber revolver, the wrist compass, and an extra mask. Closing the canister, he attached a light blue buoy line with, on the end, a plastic float which was shaped and colored like a dried coconut.
Ken lugged the canister up the hatch on the foredeck and then went aft to get his fins and mask.
Waiting on the bridge, he watched the island sliding slowly by on the port side. From the voice tube came the monotonous reporting of the soundman as he called out the depth. Frank Doherty was now on the bridge with Carney and they both studied the island with their night glasses.
“That clump there looks like houses to me, Frank.”
“Me, too. But I don’t see any lights anywhere.”
“No. You all set, Ken?”
“All set, Skipper.”
Carney glanced at him in the dim red glow. “Wow! You look like an 1890 bathing beauty. Where’d you get the fancy long johns?”
Ken glanced down at the suit. The red light made it look exactly like old-fashioned red flannels.
They could now see the entrance to the bay.
“Let’s nose in there,” Carney said. “All engines ahead one third. Come left to nine zero and hold it.”
“All ahead one third.”
“On course nine zero.”
“Let’s be heads up on the guns, gents,” Carney said. “The bushes might be full of ’em.”
Shadowy figures down on the deck stood motionless at the guns while the machine gunners on the bridge swung their pieces slowly back and forth.
Ahead now they could see the long gray curve of the beach like a knife cut between the dark of the island and the dark of the sea.
“All right, Ken,” Carney said. “This is your stop, I believe.”
“Hollywood and Vine—all out,” Doherty said.
“All engines stop.”
Slowly movement of the submarine ended and it lay in the water quietly, with only a tiny lapping of the bay’s little waves against the ugly old hull.
“I’ll wait right here for you until an hour before dawn— oh four hundred, Ken. If you’re not back by then I’ll have to pull out. But I’ll be back at midnight tomorrow.”
Ken nodded. “One other thing, Skipper. If there are Japs and it looks like they’re going to get me, what can I do to let you know it won’t be necessary to come back for me?”
“Take a Very’s pistol and a flare,” Doherty suggested.
Carney thought that over and then said, “There’s no use telling the Japs how you got there, Ken. Isn’t there some other way?”
“I think this’ll work,” Ken told him. “I’ll drop the canister right here. Then if I get back tonight I’ll pick it up. But if the Japs get me it’ll still be here, so you’ll know.”
“Good.”
Down on the foredeck Ken dropped the canister over the side. The plastic coconut floated low in the water and bumped hollowly against the sub.
As Carney said, “Good luck,” Ken put on the fins and mask and slipped over the side.
The water was black, calm, and warm. Ken headed for the southern end of the bay and began to swim.
At the beach he lay in the quiet water and listened. He could hear the wind in the dry fronds of the coconut trees and he could hear the singing and squeaking of thousands of bugs and small animals. But there was no sound which he could identify as being made by man.
There were no footprints on the beach, nor any boats. Walking along in the shadows the starlight made under the trees, he went, stopping at every opening in the undergrowth to peer inland.
About halfway around the beach he finally made out a dark, foreign object lying under the palm trees. Taking the pistol out of the shoulder holster, he crept toward it and, when he was near enough to see that it was a boat, hid behind a clump of bushes and studied it.
There was no movement, no man sound from the jungle. At last, creeping in the deep darkness, Ken got to the boat.
It was old and rotten. The bottom was gone and the ribs stabbed down into the sand.
Farther away from the beach there was a house in a little clearing. The floor was raised above the sand about two feet and the walls were of woven coconut leaf.
That, too, was old and deserted, the leaf walls rotting, gaps showing in the thatched roof.
Convinced now that the island was uninhabited, Ken nevertheless went on until he had covered the whole stretch of beach.
Swimming back, he soon saw the dark shape of the Shark lying low in the water. It had drifted a little so that he couldn’t find the buoy marking where the canister was. But, he reasoned, it would be easy to pick it up in daylight.
Hands helped him over the life line and Carney asked, ‘What’s the word?”
“I don’t think there’s a soul there,” Ken told him. “There’s one beat-up old boat and a falling-down house, but everything looks as though it was abandoned years ago. No footprints anywhere.”
“Perfect. Bridge,” Carney said, “all ahead one third.”
“All ahead a third, sir.”
Ken followed Carney back up the outboard ladder and explained about leaving the canister in the water.
The submarine began to move slowly ahead toward the long gray line of the beach.
Carney bent to the voice tube. “Frank, just keep steerageway on her. Close all bottom valves so we don’t pick up a load of sand. And keep the depth reports coming.”
The boat, barely moving, drew closer and closer to the island.
Carney said quietly, ‘We can get murdered in here. But I don’t know what else to do.”
Doherty came up through the hatch. “Five minutes to high tide, Skipper.”
“All right. Hold her where she is. We want every inch of water we can get. Then, at four o’clock, ram her aground.”
Doherty laughed nervously in the darkness. “I’m glad nobody in COMSUBPAC in Pearl heard that order, Skipper.”
Carney chuckled. “It’d make good listening in a general court-martial, wouldn’t it?
And so the Skipper said, ‘Ram her aground.”’
“You’d only get about twenty years in the Portsmouth Naval Prison.”
Carney laughed out loud. “I’d almost swap those twenty years for these twelve hours coming up. Because we’re going to be right here until tomorrow afternoon. All ahead full.”
The diesels began to roar. The Shark drove forward through the water as the soundman chanted out the depths.
She hit hard and slid a little way up the beach.
“All stop.”
There was a deep, still silence around the boat.
“Perfect,” Carney said. “Now all we’ve got to do is wait for the tide to go out, patch her up, and we’re on our merry way.”
“Provided we can get off again,” Doherty said.
Carney nodded. “Provided.”
Chapter 9
The men of the Shark waited for the sun to rise above the darkness of the Pacific. They knew that it would come suddenly with very little of that pre-dawn grayness which they were used to back in the States. The darkness, broken only by starlight and the faint light in the moving water along the hull, would simply disappear as the sun lunged up.
There wasn’t much talking going on. Phil Carney, Frank, Pat, and Ken were on the bridge with the lookouts. Above them the radar antenna swung steadily, around and around, invisibly and silently searching for the enemy.
Down on deck the gun crews were standing by, dark shadows beside the long, greasy barrels of the guns. Farther along another group of men was waiting, standing beside the oxygen and acetylene tanks, one of them already wearing the welders mask, pushed back high over his head.
Down inside the boat hardly anyone was still asleep. Willy was in the service pantry making sandwiches and coffee. In the crew’s galley breakfast was on the stove. The men on watch worked, cleaning and repairing, adjusting and testing.
In the after torpedo room all bunks were empty of sleepers. The tubes were closed, the round, slightly bulged steel doors polished until they glittered. A man stood by each tube, the manual-firing lanyard in his hand in case the electric-firing mechanism failed. Overhead the torpedo loading tracks were cleared, the chains and hoists ready to swing new torpedoes from the racks along the walls of the compartment and on into the tubes.