by Robb White
The plane continued to dive as it straightened out of the turn and was now coming directly at them. Peter estimated from the angle of the dive that the plane would pass over them at about a hundred feet. "Hold the flag up so he can see it!" he yelled down to Goldberg.
The men were yelling again and jumping around in pure joy as the plane came on toward them.
Peter was the first to see the little winking lights along the leading edges of the wings. "Get down! Get down!" he yelled as, across the bright blue water, the little vicious white footsteps raced toward Slewfoot.
It took the men a few seconds to realize what was happening and, even after they did, they stood a moment longer staring in utter disbelief at the machine-gun bullets striking the water and now seeing the faint lines of the tracers through the sunlight. And then they dived for cover.
Except Goldberg. He stood out on the foredeck, a big, unmissable target and waved the flag, holding out as much of it as he could with his long arms.
The streams of bullets missed Slewfoot, slamming past on each side of her. And then the little spinning black barrel dropped out of the bottom of the plane.
Peter watched it coming with a feeling of absolute helplessness. It looked to him as though the bomb was flying horizontally through the air and spinning slowly, but as it came closer and closer it seemed to drop down as though pulled by some magnet in Slewfoot.
It was all so slow and lazy, the black thing floating down toward the boat, the tin vanes on the end of it making it turn around and around.
The hard hammering roar of the plane smacked down on them for an instant and was gone.
The bomb struck the water with a bright, white splash and then exploded. The sea rose first in a curious, smooth, rounded hump and then that burst open and dirty-colored water gushed upward, hesitated, then curled and fell back on Slewfoot.
"He's coming back!" Stucky yelled. "Get him! Get him!"
Archer dragged himself out of the seat and screamed at Stucky, "Hold your fire!" Then he swung forward and screamed again, "Hold your fire. Get away from those guns! Wave that flag!"
But the plane was shooting again, the muzzle flashes twinkling like little yellow lights along the leading edges, the bullets again walking toward them in bright splashes across the water.
Goldberg and the Preacher held the flag up as high as they could and waved it as the plane roared toward them, the sound of its engines drowning out everything.
And then Peter heard the Bofors cannon crumping away behind him, heard the clang of the empties hitting the deck. He spun around to see Stucky jammed against the gun as it fired and recoiled, fired and recoiled.
The plane swept close over them, Stucky swinging the gun up, and then it turned suddenly straight down and struck the water.
The impact tore the wings off and broke the fuselage in half. For a moment the empennage stood upright in the water and then slowly sank.
No one came out of the plane.
Archer said, "Have Stucky report to the bridge, Mr. Brent."
"It's too late now," Peter said.
"It's never too late to enforce discipline, Mr. Brent."
Peter climbed slowly down off the bridge and walked slowly aft. Perhaps in the last moments that pilot had seen the flag. Thinking back, it seemed to Peter that in the last few yards of his flight his guns had stopped firing. If only Stucky had held his fire they might have been recognized. Recognized and saved.
But then, he thought, perhaps not. The pilot might have kept on, never seeing the flag, until he hit them and killed them all.
Nobody would ever know.
Stucky was sitting down among the empty shell cases, his back against the gun mount. Mitch was standing back by the smoke generator looking down at Stucky with a curious expression.
As Peter approached he knew that all hands were now thinking the same thing, wondering the same thing. If Stucky had not fired the Bofors, what would have happened?
"Stucky," Peter said, and hated having to do it, "the Captain wants to see you. On the bridge.'1
Stucky must now be realizing what he had done, Peter thought, as he just sat there against the gun mount. Peter looked over at Mitch, who was still staring down at Stucky. "Well, it was good shooting anyway," Peter said. Then he walked around in front of Stucky and said, "Okay, Stucky. On the bridge."
Stucky's face was gone.
5
The hot, blazing sun poured down from an empty sky upon an empty sea. Archer, who knew the ritual for burial at sea, said the words as he stood beside the depth charge racks, his face white and strained.
And then Stucky, wrapped in one of the canvas gun covers, slid away from Slewfoot and struck the water and was gone.
"All right, men," Archer said, "return to your duties."
For once, Peter thought, the man had had some compassion in his voice. He watched Archer walk slowly forward and go below.
Mitch picked up one of the Bofors empty shell cases and stood for a moment just holding it and looking at it and then, with sudden violence, he flung it away. Peter watched the bright brass case turning end over end through the air until it struck the water with a bright splash and sank, wobbling down through the blue water.
"If Stucky hadn't shot him down, we'd be on our way home now," Mitch said savagely. "Even an Army pilot would have recognized that flag after a while."
"After he'd blown us out of the water," Peter said. "Come on, Sko, let's see what we can do. Mitch, you keep the deck. Try to find us another plane. A Navy one, if you can."
Below, in the engine room, Skeeter and the Professor were already at work clearing away the last of the wreckage made by the exploding shell. Now, with sunlight pouring down through the hatch, things didn't look so hopeless.
But by nightfall Peter realized how hopeless it actually was. While Sko worked on the engines Peter had gone over the side to look at the propeller shafts and jammed rudders. With Mitch and Jason standing shark guard with carbines, he had dived under the boat to find the rudders hopelessly jammed hard over, one propeller gone, the other two frozen in the outboard strut bearings, the shafts badly twisted.
As the sun went down with an almost startling suddenness, Sko climbed wearily up into his tractor seat. Through the open hatch the now dark sky began to twinkle with far-away stars. Peter started to turn on the lights but thought what's the use and sat down on a toolbox and leaned wearily back against the bulkhead.
"The only chance we've got," Sko said in the darkness, "is to pull one of the engines and get some new bearings in it. For that we need an A-frame built up on deck. We haven't got an A-frame or anything to make one out of."
"Even if we got an engine running," Skeeter said from his darkness, "what could we turn with it?" "Pull the best shaft," Sko said, "straighten it and put it back. For that we need shallow water so a man can stand up and work on it. What have we got here, Peter?"
"About a thousand fathoms," Peter said, not caring much, for anything over one fathom was too deep.
The Professor went over and turned on the lights. "This is what is known as an academic and footless conversation," he told them as he got out a notebook and studied it. "You said we were drifting north about a hundred miles a day, didn't you, Peter? Okay, if we could build an A-frame and if we could pull an engine and if we could fix the props and rudders in this deep water: it would take at least four or five days to do all those things. I figure longer. So what good would it do? We've got enough gas to run"—he looked at his notebook—"three hundred and ten miles on one engine at dead slow. Say we had drifted five hundred miles by the time we could get her under way. We run back three hundred and where are we? Right where we are now—nowhere."
Peter looked past the dim light and up at the stars in the now black sky.
"Any chance of getting some chow out of the Captain?" Skeeter asked him. "That little snack we had at noon isn't holding me."
"I'll see," Peter said, "but I doubt it."
As he went forw
ard, he stopped in his cabin and got the sextant and chronometer, wondering as he did so why he was doing it. What difference did it make where Slewfoot was on this limitless ocean.
He went on into the dayroom to find Goldberg feeding Britches some water.
"It's pretty salty," Britches said.
"It's the best we've got," Goldberg told him. "Next time it rains we'll get some good water."
"How you feeling, Britches?" Peter asked.
"Fine," the boy said, "Just fine."
"Don't hurt?"
"Not much, but I sure could use some fresh water."
"There isn't any," Peter said. "But it'll rain pretty soon. It always does."
"I never thought I'd be praying for rain," Britches said.
"Keep it up," Peter said and climbed up on deck. No one was forward, or amidships, or aft. Peter climbed on up to the bridge to find Mitch sound asleep in the canvas chair, his feet up on the tank compartment. Peter woke him up by sliding his feet off so that they flapped down on the deck. "You supposed to be on watch?" Peter asked. "Not me," Mitch said. "Nobody told me I was on watch."
"Who is then?" "Jason or somebody, I guess." Peter handed Mitch the chronometer. "Are you awake enough to read this thing?"
Mitch looked at the chronometer. "Ten-twenty."
"I want it down to split seconds, Mitch."
"What's up, Skipper?"
"I'm not the skipper. Go in the chart house and when I holler 'Mark' write down the time. It's got to be exact, Mitch."
"Exact it will be," Mitch said, getting out of the chair.
Peter hadn't taken a star sight since his days in the school in Rhode Island, and now he found that taking a sight from the moving bridge of a small boat adrift in a restless sea was a lot different from standing on dry land with a professor at your elbow.
He braced himself in the bridge with his knees and elbows and held the sextant up with both hands. For a long time he could not hold a star in the little mirror long enough to bring it down to the horizon, but after a while he caught on. "Mark!" he called out to Mitch in the chart house. Mitch called the time back and Peter read him the angle.
He shot three of the brightest stars he could find and then went into the chart house to work out the sight. It took him more than an hour, but at last he had a tiny triangle penciled in on the chart of the Bismarck Sea. He pointed to it with pride and told Mitch, "That's exactly where we are, Mitch, me boy. Right there." Then he got the dividers and measured off the distance between the star fix and the last dead-reckoning position. "We've moved a hundred and fifty-seven miles since we got hit," he said. "I guess the storm really shoved us for a while."
He got the parallel rulers and laid them across the two positions and then walked the rulers up the chart on the same course, lightly penciling in the line.
The islands of the Bismarck Archipelago form a long, rather narrow horseshoe lying on its side with its open end pointing toward the west. New Guinea forms the southern curve of it, New Britain and its string of westerly islands the northern. At the extreme tip of the northern islands are the Admiraltys.
The penciled line of the course Slewfoot was being moved along passed by the last little group of the Admiralty Islands.
Passed them. To the west.
Peter got the dividers and measured over from the penciled line to the dots of the islands.
Twenty-two miles.
"Twenty-two miles," Peter said to himself.
"To where?" Mitch asked.
"See those islands? We're going right by them."
Mitch leaned over the chart studying the islands. "Who lives on 'em."
"Natives," Peter said. "Like the ones in New Guinea."
"With those red gums?"
"I guess so."
"Any Japs?"
"I don't know. Probably some—a few, anyway."
"Mr. Brent," Archer's cold voice said from behind them.
Peter turned to see Archer standing in the doorway, one hand gripping the frame.
"I have walked from one end of this deck to the other, Mr. Brent," Archer went on, "and I have not found a single man on watch."
"I think he just went below for a moment," Peter said, hoping that Jason would appear as suddenly as Archer had.
"Then he should have gotten a relief. What sort of ship are you running that in these perilous waters you allow her to be totally unguarded?"
"Well, I'm here," Peter said.
"Do you consider lallygagging in the chart house standing an alert watch, Mr. Brent?"
"I'll get someone up here," Peter told him.
"I think it's time for this crew to realize that discipline is all that will save their lives," Archer said. "From now on, night and day, I want you to see to it that there are five men on watch, on deck, at all times." Without waiting for an answer, Archer turned and disappeared in the darkness.
When Peter turned back to the chart he found Mitch looking at him with a curious, hostile expression. "Are you going to let him get away with that?" Mitch asked.
"Go read the book," Peter said, picking up the dividers again. "We're still in the Navy."
Archer's voice suddenly blasted out of the intercom. "Jason, Mitchell, Welborn, Goldberg, and White report immediately to your watch stations."
Mitch was still looking at Peter with that disdainful, questioning expression. "Why should five men have to stand on their feet all night when all it takes is one man?" he asked quietly. "Why don't you go tell Archer to get with it?"
Peter didn't answer as he unpinned the chart, rolled it up, and left the chart house.
On his way down the hatch he ran into Jason and the Preacher coming topside. "What's going on?" Jason asked.
"You're on watch," Peter said and went on down to his cabin.
As Jason and the Preacher came out of the hatch, Mitch on the bridge whispered down, "Hey! You guys. Up here." Then he leaned over as Goldberg and the Professor appeared on the foredeck. "Up here! Up here!" he whispered to them.
When they had gathered, Mitch said, still whispering, "Jason, you watch aft, Goldberg, you watch amidships and Professor, you watch forward. If Archer shows, break it up."
"What is this, Mitch?" the Preacher asked..
"This is a mess," Mitch said. He looked at the five men in the dark and went on. "I thought Brent was a man. I thought he was about the only officer who really cared what happened to a crew. Well, I was wrong. He's just like all the rest of the officers—all he's interested in is keeping his thumb on his number, getting himself promoted, and nabbing some shiny medals he doesn't deserve."
"Take it easy, Mitch," the Preacher said.
"I've taken it easy with him as long as I'm going to," Mitch said. "You weren't here, Preacher, when Archer told him to post a heel-and-toe watch for all hands. What did he do? Nothing! He just stood there like a little sailor boy and let that maniac get away with it." Mitch stopped and looked at them again. "I thought all we had against us was Archer, but now I know he's against us too. What are we going to do about it?"
"What can we do?" the Preacher asked. "What good will mutiny … "
Mitch cut him off. "Don't preach to me, Preacher. This won't be mutiny. This'll just be saving our lives. Don't you see what's going on? Archer and Brent are going to eat all the chow. They're going to stay alive while we drift around until we die. So here's what we do—there're ten of us, not counting Britches, and two of them. Now I just saw Brent chart the course we're on, and we're going within twenty miles of some islands. When we get there—maybe tomorrow night or the next—we'll get what chow they haven't already eaten, then we'll take the raft and row over to those islands. Man, we'll be like in paradise. Plenty of food, plenty of those dusky maidens, plenty of everything … "
The Preacher said quietly, "Aren't enough people getting hurt without this sort of thing, Mitch?"
"Who said we'd hurt 'em? If they want to ride the boat, let 'em ride it. We'll just tell 'em we're leaving and if they don't try to stop us n
obody gets hurt."
"It makes more sense than drifting around until we starve to death," Jason agreed. "Two thousand miles … we'll all be dead."
"Except them," Mitch said. "They've got the food."
"They'll share it," the Preacher said.
"In a pig's eye they will!"
"Even if they did," Jason said, "it won't be enough for thirteen people. Do you realize how long we might drift, Preacher? Weeks! Months!
"I think the only guy we'll have trouble with is Sko," Mitch said. "He still thinks Brent's the fair-haired boy."
From the darkness Goldberg said quietly, "Sko and me, Mitch."
"What are you, Goldberg, chicken or something?" Mitch whispered angrily. "This boat is never going to reach the Philippine Islands, and even if it did, so what? The Philippines are crawling with Japanese. Archer and Brent wouldn't live ten minutes after they hit the beach. Neither would we if we went along with 'em."
"I'm going where Brent goes," Goldberg said.
"Listen, Gerry," Mitch said, calmer now and persuasive. "Brent was a good guy. I admit that. When he was Exec under Jonesy he was a good guy, and even when he was skipper he was a good guy. But this Archer has beaten him down to nothing at all. He isn't like he used to be."
"You can say that again," Jason agreed.
"He's the same," Goldberg said.
"All right!" Mitch said angrily. "You and Sko stay and drift around until you die … Okay, what about the rest of you?"
"Sounds good to me," Jason said.
"If there's no violence, Mitch … Nobody gets hurt … " the Preacher said.
"I know Murph and Sam'll go. So will Skeeter and Willie. What do you say, Professor?"
"I say let's look at the character of Peter Brent," the Professor said in that way of his. "When we were fooling around with those transports I think you said he was a coward, didn't you, Mitch?"
"Well, at first … "
"That's what I mean," the Professor said. "At first he looked like a coward, but when he got going he went pretty well, didn't he?"
"That was before Archer," Mitch argued.