by Robb White
Coming down to the boat, stomping through the rain and mud, Murphy, the Irish quartermaster, was in a wild Irish fury. They couldn't do this! The stupid, ignorant Navy sitting in their swivel chairs in Washington, D.C., couldn't do this!
He banged across the gangplank, stomping some of the mud off his feet, and stomped across the deck and went below to where Sko and Peter Brent were sitting. From inside his dripping poncho Murph took out the damp dispatch a~nd laid it on the mess table, pressing it out flat with his hands. "There must be a mistake. They must mean some other boat," he said.
Peter Brent read the damp typing and then looked at Sko. "This answers your question, Sko. The new skipper of Slewfoot is a jaygee named Adrian Archer who is on his way out here now." Sko stared at Brent, not believing him at first; but when belief began to come Sko began to feel the way he did every time just before a patrol. A sort of sick, queasy feeling in his stomach and cold spit running around his teeth.
Murphy began to yell. "Adrian! What kind of name is that? That's a girl's name! Adrian!"
They didn't pay any attention to the little Irishman. Sko said, "Where's he coming from—one of the other boats? I never heard of him, though." Murphy was still yelling. "One of the other boats. In a pig's eye! He's coming straight out of that school in Rhode Island." Murphy slumped down on the bench. "So they send us a man with a girl's name who's never even seen this ocean, never even seen one of these stinking islands. Never had one of those Japanese searchlights bore a hole right through his eyes—followed by a bullet. They can't do this to us, Mr. Brent."
Peter said, "Calm down, Murph. This guy might be the best PT-boat skipper in the world."
Murph turned his fury on Brent; but he kept it under control and only said, very quietly, "The best PT-boat skipper in the world is lying out there in the water, dead." And then all the fury went out of him and he just sat, staring across the table. "When Jonesy got it," Murph said, "I felt like my own father had gotten it. No, I guess it wasn't like that because I never knew my father. Like it was my own brother. Of course, Jonesy was an officer and all that, but I thought a lot of him."
"We all did," Peter said. "But he's dead, and the boat's getting a new skipper. Maybe he doesn't know as much about things as we do, so it'd be a good idea to help him learn—fast. Because the faster he learns the better it's going to be for all hands."
Murphy said, "I just hope he isn't one of these Stateside tigers going forth to war and not knowing his belly from a belaying pin." Then he laughed. "I don't know what a belaying pin is myself."
"It's something to hit Irishmen on the head with," Sko told him.
Murphy glared at Sko. "If you had a name I could pronounce, I'd call you something."
Brent stood up. Then, with his fingernail, he scraped the wet dispatch up off the table, folded it, and put it in his pocket. "Okay, let's go yachting," he said.
Slewfoot was no yacht but there was a little space below decks that wasn't filled with engines, gas tanks, ammunition, and running gear. Forward, in the forepeak, there was a chain locker for ground tackle, and then the dayroom with the tiered bunks for the crew. Then Sam's tiny galley where, in spite of having nothing to cook with, he could come up with some pretty tasty chow. On the port side, just under the bridge, there were two tiny staterooms—one for the captain, one for the executive officer—and between these and the cramped engine room was another small space for the crew. From there on aft it was all engines.
Peter went into the Captain's cabin to get the charts of the area the boat was going into.
Jones's cabin was a lot like Jones: neat, his clothes all folded and stowed, his bunk made up and the corners squared. There were no pin-up girls on the bulkheads, only a picture of Jones's parents in a silver frame. There were a few books, mostly technical; Jones's Navy file; some personal letters; a little pile of magazines; and, on the fold-down desk, Peter's own fitness report half filled out.
Jones had written in the space on the fitness report:
Ensign Peter Brent, USNR, is an outstanding officer in all respects. Courageous but not foolhardy, loyal, intelligent; a natural leader of men; an excellent seaman; a dignified and decent man of the highest integrity. He is highly qualified, and strongly recommended, for command.
Jones had not signed it, so Peter tore it up and dropped it in the little wastebasket.
When they got back from this patrol, Peter decided, he would inventory all Jones's belongings and somehow ship them b?.ck to his parents. He would also have to write that letter telling these gentle, handsome people in the silver frame that their son was dead—killed in action against the enemy.
On deck Peter could hear the footsteps of the crew—soft in the flight-deck boots—moving around, preparing for sea; but, for a moment, he stayed in the closed cabin.
Peter had wanted command of Slewfoot and had thought that the crew wanted him to have command. With the months of Jones's example of absolute bravery and beautiful boat-handling and the subtle but tremendously effective method Jones had for training the crew until they were the best in the Navy, Peter thought that he could have made a good skipper for Slewfoot. Not so good as Jones, but good enough.
He took out the dispatch and looked at the name Adrian Archer again. Who was he? What was he like?
And why, Peter thought bitterly, did they have to send this Adrian Archer to take over command? Why couldn't they have let him have it?
Murphy stuck his head down through the hateh and yelled, "Ready for sea, Captain."
"Coming up," Peter said. Then he tore up the dispatch and dropped it into the wastebasket with his useless fitness report.
The sun had not yet set, but the rain clouds made it almost dark as Slewfoot slid down the muddy river on the center engine. When she reached the open sea, Sko cut in No. 2 and No. 3; Peter shoved the throttles forward until the tachometers read 1900; and Slewfoot, as though enjoying it personally, went up to a slam-banging 35 knots.
Peter called back to Murphy, who stood at the dimly lit table in the little chart house just abaft the bridge, and gave him a northwesterly course. Murph laid it out with the parallel rulers. The course went through the Dampier Strait between New Guinea and New Britain and then back along the coast of New Guinea.
In a moment, Murph stuck his head out of the chart house and said to Peter, "If you hold that course you're going to run right over Vadang Island."
"That's where we're going," Peter told him.
Jason, the gunner's mate, said over his shoulder, "What's to shoot there?"
"Nothing, I hope," Peter said. "The Army's thinking about using Vadang as a close-in staging area and wants to know if there're any troops to be cleared off first."
Murph was indignant. "So the Army's got eight million fine young American boys and they have to send a Navy man to see if there's any enemy around."
"Not like that," Peter told him. "I just broke the first law of the Navy."
Murph stared at him in exaggerated horror. "You didn't … volunteer?"
Peter nodded. "Well, not exactly. I heard the Army talking about it; so I said since we went past the island on most of the patrols, I'd be glad to take a look for them."
"Who's going ashore?" Murph asked.
"I am," Peter said. "And you are."
"So we have a stroll in the tropical moonlight," Murph said, "with rain running out of our ears. There's nobody on that island. We've been past it a dozen times. There aren't even any of those dusky maidens with their red teeth filed down to the gums."
Jason, the gunner, who was a very serious young man, said, "If there were any Japs on Vadang why haven't they opened up on us?" He patted his guns affectionately. "I wish they had." "Well, we'll have a look," Peter said. "Why don't we just anchor the boat, have a good night's sleep, and tell the Army in the morning there's nobody there?" Murph asked.
"Tell the Army a lie?" Jason asked. Murphy's ideas frequently shocked him.
"What's a lie?" Murphy cried. "There's no enemy on
that island, so what's a lie?"
"Oh, well … " Jason said, and turned back to his guns.
"Find out how close we can get to it," Peter told Murphy. "I don't want to row that raft more than fifty miles."
"I'll put you so close we can step ashore, skipper," Murph said, and went back into his little house.
Peter stood on the steering platform looking from the dimly lighted compass to ahead and around and back to the compass. The crew was settling down now—at battle stations, but relaxed, some lying on the deck in any shelter from the spray, others sitting around yakking quietly. This crew was used to the long, tedious patrols—sixteen, eighteen, twenty hours at a stretch—and they took it easy when they could because, at any instant, they might be in the middle of a battle.
Peter stood alone on the bridge thinking his own thoughts. Going ashore on Vadang wasn't bothering him—he and Murphy could explore the whole island in three or four hours; and if anything came along while they were ashore, the crew could take Slewfoot out of there and come back later.
Vadang wasn't bothering him, but this Adrian Archer was.
Slewfoot and her crew had been fighting for a long, long time, and it was beginning to tell. The men weren't keeping the boat shipshape the way they once had; there was more oil in the bilges than water; there was a dank, unhealthy smell of unaired bedding in the quarters; rust was beginning to show where it should not have shown; the decks hadn't been swabbed down for weeks.
The neglect of the boat was one thing, and you could excuse it. The men of Slewfoot were living in misery, patrolling the dangerous sea at night from early dusk until late dawn; then they came "home" to the mud and bugs and crummy chow and silent jungle.
It was telling on them, Peter realized. There were more fistfights among them now; bitter fights over nothing at all. More griping, more talk of Stateside, more homesickness—and more real sickness: malaria; the "crud," which made any scratch, any leech bite a real wound; dysentery.
His men had, he thought, just barely enough strength left to fight when it was time to fight.
What was this Adrian Archer going to do to them? These were tired, worn-out men living on a razor's edge between sanity and the polite phrase for insanity: "combat fatigue." They had to be handled with care and treated with respect and decency—which they so truly deserved—and, above all, leniency. If Adrian Archer turned out to be one of these big, bull-necked men with a loud voice and a hard nose the crew of Slewfoot was going to slip off that razor-edge; and it wasn't going to be on the right side. Just a little of orders being bellowed at them, just a little criticism instead of praise, and this crew in the dark around him now would fall apart. Just a little oi that "black-shoe Navy" would totally demoralize and defeat the weary crew.
Peter hoped that Adrian Archer would turn out to be a kind and intelligent man, a man who would listen a little, and learn a little.
Above all, Peter hoped, let Adrian Archer have some courage. When you got down to the bottom of it, all that had held this crew together so far had been that courage of Jonesy's. If Adrian Archer had only a little of that the crew could go on fighting for a long time to come.
Peter turned in the semidarkness and looked over at the starboard corner of the bridge. Now it was empty. The chair wasn't there. Jones wasn't there.
How many times, Peter wondered, had he seen Jonesy sitting over in that corner during the long, long nights? In the early days, Jonesy had used an ammo can to sit on, but in some port some member of the crew—no one asked who—had swiped from somewhere a canvas folding chair like the ones movie directors use. From then on, as soon as it got dark and the boat was on its way and squared away, Sam, the Negro cook, would come up on deck with the Skipper's Chair and unfold it and set it up in the after starboard corner of the bridge for Jonesy to use when he didn't have the wheel.
Jonesy had not been the kind of man who went around saying that because he was the Captain, you do this and you do that. Whatever he wanted done always seemed to you to be, first, a thing that would make you feel better, or safer, or more useful and important. Then, second, it would be a thing to make Slewfoot more shipshape, more dangerous, more effective.
Jonesy never said, nor even by his actions gave you the idea, that this was his chair and for you not to sit in it. But no man on Slewfoot would have sat in the Skipper's Chair. It wasn't, Peter thought, that they wanted to but were afraid to. They just didn't want to. It was the Skipper's Chair, and he needed it and deserved it.
It was a very nonregulation chair with the wooden, folding frame painted white and the canvas dyed blue. From somewhere else one of the crew had purloined a set of those rubber feet that fit on crutches and put them on the chair so it wouldn't slide all over the bridge.
Peter remembered the night of the name. Jonesy had been using the chair for a few weeks by then; and, on this night, Peter had had the wheel and they were ghosting along the enemy shore when, from behind him, he heard the Skipper laughing out loud.
"Look what these crazy guys have done," he said to Peter.
On the canvas back of the chair someone had stenciled queen mary in white letters.
Peter, facing forward now, was startled by someone behind him touching him on the shoulder. -He whirled around and it was Murph.
"You want me to steer her, Skipper?" Murph asked. And then he made a movement to starboard with his head.
In the dark, Sam was unfolding the Skipper's Chair and setting it up in the corner.
Peter stepped down off the steering platform as Murph stepped up; but he didn't go over to the chair, just stood looking at it as Sam finished putting it in place.
There's no reason, Peter thought, why I shouldn't sit in that chair. No reason at all. Until Adrian Archer turned up he was skipper and so should sit in the Skipper's Chair.
He went over to Sam and said, "I won't need that, Sam. We're only going up the coast a little way."
"Well, you ought to rest when you can rest," Sam told him.
Somehow the men had gathered and were watching Peter. Even Sko had come up out of the engine room.
"Thanks anyway," Peter said, "but I won't need it."
One of the men said out of the dark, "Go ahead and sit in it, Captain."
Without saying anything, Peter sat down in the chair. Around him in the dark the men stood for a moment longer, and then they drifted away to their stations.
It took four hours to get to Vadang. Peter conned the boat slowly toward the dark, deserted-looking island, with the bosun standing forward with a lead line and whispering back the depths of the water. When he was in as close as he could get, Peter motioned for the anchor to be dropped and then cut the throttles.
Murph came out of the chart house looking like a one-man war. On a cartridge belt he had not one, but two big Colt .45 automatics, and every loop was filled with an ammo clip. Around his neck he had an aviator's shoulder holster with a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver and a bandolier of bullets. He was also carrying an M-1 rifle and his pockets were bulging with clips for it. In case all this failed, he! had a Marine fighting knife stuck in his belt.
Peter looked at him in the dark and said, "Shoot much?"
Shadows forward came out of the hatch with the deflated rubber boat and put it down on the deck as Peter and Murph came around the bridge.
They unlashed the boat and then began pulling the CO2 bottles, which went off with a loud hissing.
In the dark Peter waited for the gas to inflate the rubber compartments, blowing them up into the shape of a more or less rectangular boat; but as the gas bottles emptied themselves and stopped hissing, the outline of the boat did not change. It just lay on the deck, a limp rubber wad.
Then one of the men said, "Look at the hole in this thing!"
They picked the boat up then and, against the dark sky, they could see where the shell that had killed Jonesy had also gone through three folds of the boat.
"What about the patch kit?" Peter asked.
"It's no
t meant for holes that big," the man said. "It's just for little holes, bullet holes—not for cannon."
"Is this the only boat aboard?"
"Yes, sir. You remember, the skipper of that One Twenty boat borrowed our other one; and I guess it went down with the One Twenty. They never issued us another one."
Peter looked over at the dark outline of Vadang Island. Now, with no rubber boat, it looked a lot farther away.
"Can we get in any closer, Murph?" he asked.
"Lots of coral in there," Murph said. "We might get away with it, but if we didn't it'd take the bottom out of the boat." Peter looked at the distance again. The island was at least two miles away—a long swim in anybody's league. And he didn't particularly want to meet one of those New Guinea crocodiles in the middle of the night—they were bad enough in the daytime.
He had only told the Army he would take a look, and this was as good a look as he could take. J
"Okay, let's get the anchor up and get out of here. We'll get a new boat and try it tomorrow i night."
Over on Vadang nothing moved, no light showed, no smoke.
3
To stop the advance of the United States forces through the jungles of New Guinea the enemy was pouring troops, guns, j ammunition, planes, and supplies into its great staging area on the northeast corner of New j Britain Island with the town of Rabaul as a base. No United States attacks on Rabaul had been able to stop this flowing in and, worse, flowing out of j the enemy. The best we could do was to force him to move only at night. In the daytime, U. S. Navy and Air Corps planes had just enough edge on the ! enemy's air cover to make it dangerous for him to try to get his convoys of troops and supplies under way. But at night we could not stop him.
From all over the Japanese Empire, ships carrying the stuff of war flowed through the night into Rabaul and, at night, flowed out again, bound for New Guinea.
For us it was an all-Army show except for the little PT boats of the Navy. Their job was to stop this flow of the enemy out of Rabaul into the area of the fighting on New Guinea. It was hard and dangerous work and the kind of fighting that is most dreaded by all men.