by Robb White
Instead of diving, he lowered himself off the bow and down into the dark, warm water. As he started to swim toward the island he felt the wash of Mike's boat as he put her astern and backed slowly away.
He had been swimming for a long time, using a slow-stroke steady crawl, before he paused for a moment to see how he was doing.
Peter was appalled. The island still seemed miles away. He turned to look back at the boat.
It had disappeared! Vanished. There was no sign of it and no sound of it.
This was the quietest place Peter had ever been in. The sea was calm so there wasn't even the comforting sound of breaking waves. There were, too, none of the land sounds—the jungle sounds of birds squawking or animals grunting or screaming or barking or jabbering. There wasn't a sound here except that of his own breathing.
He was trapped. He and Mike had figured approximately how long it would take to swim to the island, get the pouch, and swim back, so Mike wouldn't come back in this water for a long time. There was nothing for it but to go on toward Vadang—just go on swimming as long as he could.
He put his head down and started the slow, steady crawl. Once, underwater, he opened his eyes. He didn't do that again. The water was streaked and blotched with lines and patches of phosphorescence. His own arms looked as though they were trailing filmy, thin green gauze as they swept down through the water, and below him in the water, things moved, leaving curving streaks of green or rolling green explosions.
The next time he stopped to look around he found himself almost into the little cove. He could see the dark wall of the jungle beyond the white sand beach and, at the far end, the yellow boat.
He started swimming toward it fast and suddenly stopped. What if they had found it, taken the codes out, but left the boat there as decoy for just such an attempt as this? They would be squatting up there in that dark jungle, a hundred guns covering the beach.
There was only one thing going for Peter. The moon was behind him, shining into their faces—if they were waiting for him. He started swimming again, but now he dog-paddled, keeping his arms and legs below the water and only his head above it.
It was a slow and terrifying journey, but at last his moving knees struck the sand. Now he crawled along the bottom through the shallowing water toward the boat lying so peacefully there on the beach.
When the water ran out from under him he stayed flat on the ground and used his elbows and knees to shove himself on toward the boat. Finally he reached out and grabbed one of the lifelines which were looped along the gunwales.
With the thin rope in his hand he was suddenly paralyzed with fear. Suppose, he thought, this is all they're waiting for. With their whole field of fire converging on this boat, they were just sitting up there in the jungle waiting for it to move.
Peter found some strength somewhere and began to pull on the rope.
The noise of the boat scraping across the sand was enormous. A terrible, grinding, grating noise that seemed to him to be loud enough to be heard all over the island.
Then it stopped as the boat slid out over the water.
Peter raised up high enough to see that the pouch was still there and then began to swim frantically away, pulling the boat along by the rope.
He had gone about a hundred yards when another fear hit him, and he stopped moving and looked back at the silent island.
The smart thing for the enemy to do, he suddenly realized, was to take the code out of the pouch, copy it, and then put it back. That way, the Navy wouldn't suspect that the code was broken and would go on using it. That was the smart thing to do.
There was one advantage for Peter if they had thought of that. They would want him to come and get the pouch. They would want him to think that they had not found it. Thus they wouldn't molest him in any way when he came to get it.
He would have to go back to the island. He couldn't just assume that they had found the boat.
Peter raised his face well clear of the water and turned it slowly from side to side, feeling the faint wind on his wet cheeks. It was still from the west, blowing toward Vadang, and steady.
He left the boat floating there and swam back to the beach.
In the moonlight his own tracks, the deep elbow and knee dents and the trail of his body, were clear. So was the faint imprint where the boat had lain. Staying low Peter walked slowly along, around and around where the boat had been until, at last, the debris of the jungle so littered the sand that he could not have seen tracks if there had been any.
He didn't believe that they could have found the boat, walked to it, taken the pouch out, walked back, then walked again to the boat to leave the pouch and walked back again. The sand was too smooth and clean and unmarked—and uniform for yards around.
Peter turned and ran from the rim of the jungle, splashing out into the warm sea. He grabbed the drifting boat by the lifeline and swam away from Vadang as hard as he could—straight out into the moonlit emptiness of the Bismarck Sea.
He swam that way for a long time and then stopped to look back. Vadang seemed dark and silent and faraway.
He pulled himself up into the boat and was about to reach for the pouch when he suddenly stopped himself. Perhaps the intelligence people could tell by the fingerprints whether or not the pouch had been opened since Murph had closed it.
Peter got out the little paddle, attached the handle to it, and began paddling along, the bow of the rubber boat lifting high.
He was happily singing as loudly as he could:
"Oh, a capital ship for an ocean trip … "
When a voice from behind him joined in:
"Was the 'Walloping Window-blind.'
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the Captain's mind."
The PT boat was almost on top of him, looming up dark and enormous in the moonlight.
11
Squadron Six boats sailed very short patrols, Peter decided enviously, as Mike nosed his boat into her berth before midnight.
By one in the morning the boat had been secured, and Peter and Mike were flemished down in the elegant beds in Mike's tent.
Just before going to bed Mike had shown him still another bit of swank. Under each of the beds there was a sliding tray. You pulled a short lanyard and this tray came sliding out with all the goodies on it: a flashlight, a fire extinguisher bottle, first-aid kit, a Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver (he must have stolen it from the aviators), and a .30-caliber carbine.
Peter looked at this arrangement with admiration, thinking of his own tent with his carbine hanging from a rope over his bed and getting so rusty he doubted if it would shoot. On the other hand, was all this artillery necessary? It had been months since any Japs had infiltrated the lines and gotten into the tents of any of the PT squadron people.
Mike turned out the light and, for a little while, they lay in bed discussing the boats and the war and the thing at Vadang; but then Mike drifted off to sleep.
It must have been two o'clock in the morning, Peter figured later, when he saw the shadow of a moving man fall across the floor of the tent and then heard the sound of footsteps on the wooden steps outside.
Mike must have heard it too, for Peter saw him stir in the other bed and raise himself on his elbows.
After it was all over Peter wondered if, at any time, he could have stopped it or, at least, made it a little less gruesome. He decided that he could have but was glad that he had not.
Without so much as a polite knock on the door, the man flung it open and strode into the tent. Peter saw Mike reaching down for the carbine and at the same time recognized the man. It was Adrian Archer. Peter made a little hissing noise for Mike not to shoot him as Archer, striding as though in a parade or something, came on into the tent.
Then, in a loud and commanding voice, Archer bawled, "Is Ensign Peter Brent in … "
The "here" trailed off as Archer strode into the square, deep hole Mike had cut into the floor of the tent. The sharp edge o
f the hole must have banged him across the shins for they heard him groan with pain as he collapsed into the hole.
Peter and Mike both raised themselves on their elbows and looked at Archer sitting in the hole, the moonlight strong on him. He was rocking back and forth with pain and, Peter thought, humiliation.
Then all his Navy indoctrination returned with a rush. This was no place or position for a commissioned officer in the United States Naval Reserve. It was undignified.
Archer came up out of the hole like a rocket and started to bawl out his question again.
But he came up too fast, too straight.
The sound it made was rather odd, for the heavy steel bucket was full of water for Mike's next bath and as Archer rammed his head against the shower head the sound was a little like clung.
It drove Archer back down into the hole, and they watched him down in there slowly moving his head back and forth as though to find out if it would move.
Again, as the pain subsided, the indignity of it all swept over Archer. But this time, instead of rushing straight up out of the hole, he came up fast and with dignity to the left.
This time it sounded like a miniature war as Archer's head slammed into the shelf made out of the clear glass of the jeep windshield. There was the solid smack of head against glass, then the rattling of bottles as they danced around and fell over.
The windshield folded up on its hinges and unfolded straight back down and hit him, and this time the broken bottles of foo-foo juice and indigestion medicine poured down on him as he collapsed back into the hole.
The man just wouldn't stop. Wiping the gunk off his face, he came clawing out of there, grabbing anything for a handhold.
He grabbed the rope that held the shower bucket up against the top of the tent. If he had held on to it, Peter decided later, it wouldn't have happened, but when the rope went slack Archer turned it loose.
The heavy steel fire bucket with the chrome shower head welded into its bottom held two and a half gallons of water. It fell like a pile driver straight down on Archer and drove him, like a pile, straight down into the hole. Then it rolled over and poured the water on him.
That did it. Archer must have decided that he was being ambushed, for now he assumed all the cunning and caution of a Marine combat infantryman. He came creeping out of the hole, slowly and silently—except for the water dripping on the floor—and, as a good Marine would, got out of open territory and up against the wall of the tent.
Now he was in deep shadow, and they could no longer see him. But he was evidently playing it smart, creeping cautiously along the wall toward the door, and so silently that only the drip-drip of the shower water marked his progress.
But then the glass bottles with the fish swimming around in them began leaping, one by one, off the high shelf. They fell, spilling water and fish, through a band of moonlight and disappeared into the dark shadow where Archer was. Peter and Mike could hear them smashing on the floor. When they had all come down, they could hear a number of odd sounds: the little motor still pumping away, but with the air hissing out of the plastic tubes like the sound of snakes; the fish, not knowing where they were, flapping around wetly on the floor; and Archer, taking deep, agonized breaths.
They could see nothing in the darkness so they sat up in the beds and peered.
Suddenly Archer came rearing up out of the darkness and into the band of moonlight.
He had become absolutely wild as he fought against the slimy, wet, hissing tubes that now entangled him. He tore at them with his hands and all the time kept up a fantastic sort of writhing dance.
In all this grabbing and pulling he must have caught the rope that held up the plywood.
Mike whispered frantically, "Look out!" and Peter just had time enough to lie down flat.
The plywood was three quarters of an inch thick, six feet wide, and twenty feet long and was hinged at the top of the tent along the twenty-foot length.
It fell with rapidly gathering momentum, went over Peter with a vicious "whoosh," and slammed Archer and his tubes up against the side of "the tent, pinning him there.
When that was all over there was no sound except the hissing of the tubes, the flapping of the sad fish, the drip of water off Archer, and a sort of muffled, odd noise as Mike and Peter rammed their faces down into the pillows because they couldn't keep from laughing any longer.
They didn't see Archer get out from under the plywood, free himself of the tubes, and on his hands and knees, a broken man, crawl to the door, slide out of it, and disappear.
When he could, Peter took the pillow away and sat up. Outside in the moonlight Archer was standing perfectly still, some of the slimy tubes still dripping from him.
Mike, too, was sitting up, looking at Archer. "Well," he whispered, "that's the end of him."
"No," Peter said, "he's got to come back and try again. He's got to. Or he'll go through life a broken and bitter man."
Archer came back. They watched him strip the slimy tubes from his neck, squeeze some of the water out of his uniform, straighten himself into a military posture, and come striding back to the tent. Peter and Mike collapsed into the beds. Archer's hard shoes crashed up the two wooden steps of the tent but then stopped.
There was a most polite, quiet little knock on the door. And a polite voice asked, "Is Ensign Peter Brent in there?"
Mike, Peter decided, did it very well. For a long moment he didn't do anything. Then he rolled over in bed with a sleepy groan.
Archer asked again, "Is Ensign Peter Brent in there?"
Mike raised up slowly, and his voice was full of sleep as he said, "Wha … at? Who?"
"Peter Brent?"
"Oh. Oh, yeah," Mike said. Then he said, "Peter! Wake up! Somebody wants to talk to you!"
Peter went along with it, rolling over slowly and saying, "Who wants to talk to me? What's the matter?"
"I don't know," Mike said. "Somebody."
"It's me, Archer, Mr. Brent."
"Oh. Hi, Adrian." Peter swung out of the bed and then, because he didn't want Archer ever to know, he added, "Be out in a minute."
Archer must have found out about the missing codes, Peter thought as he pulled on his shoes. Perhaps he had also found out about the missing Murphy and had probably already put the little Irishman in the brig. He might even have drawn up court-martial charges against him.
The fish were still flapping wetly around and the tubes were still hissing as Peter left the tent and joined Archer in the moonlight.
"What are you doing over in this area?" Archer demanded in that cold way of his.
"We've got to get a tug to pull the boat off," Peter said.
"I would prefer it if you would notify me when you want to leave the squadron area. It might have occurred to you, Mr. Brent, that you also left your post of duty while on watch. I consider this a very serious breach of the regulations."
"What do you think the enemy is going to do to a PT boat with a hole in her hull stuck in the mud off the Morobe River?"
"That's not the point. You were on watch, and you left without permission. So did Murphy. This is flagrant disobedience of orders."
"I brought him with me," Peter said. "I've found out, Mr. Archer, that if you want a favor from anyone—like a tug or spare parts—Murph and Mitch, the bosun, always know who to talk to."
"Then you had better prepare yourself to do without the services of Murphy."
Peter looked at this cold man in the moonlight. "Why?"
"Because I'm preferring charges for a general court-martial against him."
Peter felt oddly cold all over. Cold and remote and suddenly stronger than he really was. "Why?" he asked.
"For the careless loss of top-secret codes, which, if found by the enemy, could cause the loss of many ships and men."
"Was it all Murph's fault, Adrian?" Peter asked.
"Of course!"
"Adrian," Peter said quietly, "I don't know what you think a war is, but I'm going to tell you
what it is not. You're out here to fight the Japs, not the men in your boat."
For the second time since he had known him Archer seemed to have an emotion. It showed in his low, furious voice. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that so far all you've done in this war is read off regulations to the men, parade your authority, and act like a fool."
Archer stood in the moonlight and looked at him for a long, silent moment. When he spoke again there was no more emotion. "I can prefer charges against you for insubordination, leaving your watch station, and—"
Peter interrupted him. "I wouldn't," he said.
"I'm not going to," Archer went on. "But I will accept and will forward, recommending approval, your request for a transfer from my command. In the morning, Mr. Brent."
"I stay with Slewfoot," Peter said quietly.
"Then you force me to prefer those charges."
"Did you give Murph orders to put those codes in the rubber boat, Mr. Archer?"
"Of course."
"Did you give him orders to take them out again?"
Archer started to say something and then stopped and thought for a while. "He should have known enough to take them out. Do I have to give an order for every detail?"
"Suppose somebody at Murphy's trial tells how you ordered those codes to be dropped into the boat just because we were aground but, at the time, in no danger of being taken by the enemy? Suppose the judges decide that the codes were your responsibility, not an enlisted man's?"
"You talk as though I were being court-martialed instead of Murphy."
"Perhaps you will be," Peter said.
"Mr. Brent, your insubordination is going to force me to take action against you."
"No, it isn't," Peter told him. "I have the codes."
"How did you get them?"
"That doesn't matter. The thing is I have them. So let's just forget the whole thing." He turned back toward Mike's tent, but then stopped and said, "And unless you want to get shot, you'd better knock before you come into a tent, Mr. Archer."
BOOK TWO: The Sea
1
Slewfoot was a sad boat as, at last, she sailed again from the mouth of the Morobe and into the Pacific on what was to be her longest patrol.