Torpedo Run

by Robb White

"Nothing. But you're ahead of them and they can't sail any faster than you can."

  The burning torches sent firelit smoke up past the pulling sails, and to Peter it looked like hundreds of sails bearing down on him.

  "Take all you can," Archer said, raising his head and looking at the sail. "Turn her into the wind until the sail begins to shake a little and then ease her off."

  "This way?" Peter asked.

  "That's it. Now ease her just enough to fill the sail."

  The boat seemed to go faster that way, the lights no longer gaining on him.

  Peter looked forward at the men crouched in the narrow hull, the bilge water sloshing around their hips. They were so silent, so motionless.

  "How's it going, you guys," he asked.

  "Man," Murph said, "we're really moving. Mitch, get off my foot!"

  "I thought it was a brick," Mitch said, moving as much as he could.

  "They're turning," Goldberg said. "Doesn't it look like they're turning?"

  They were, the sails now flapping loosely in the light of the torches. In a moment the lights began fading away.

  "Murph, did you bring a compass?" Peter asked.

  "I forgot it."

  "It doesn't make any difference," Archer said. "You can only go where the wind wants you to go."

  "Can we get back to New Guinea?"

  "I think so."

  Peter looked down at him. "How'd you get this boat?"

  Archer laid his head back down on the gunwale. "I had to kill some people," he said.

  "Mitch," Murph said, aggrieved, "get off my foot!"

  "You're not using it," Mitch argued.

  "Is there anything to bail with?" Goldberg asked. "My barbecued pig is getting wet."

  The Professor found the bailing gourd. He looked at it in the moonlight and began to laugh. "Pass this back to Peter," he said.

  The handle on the gourd was a carved crocodile swallowing a naked girl. In the moonlight Peter could see the simple smile on her face as though she was enjoying the whole operation. He laughed and passed it back.

  "We must be making eight or nine knots," Peter told Axcher.

  "Ten. These are the fastest sailing boats in the world."

  Peter did some rapid short division. "Hey!" he said, surprised. "Hey, you guys. We'll be home in thirty hours."

  "I never thought I'd call that stinking jungle home," Goldberg said, "but when I get there I'm going to sink right down to my knees in the mud and kiss it."

  Peter turned and looked back. The island seemed far away now, a darker mass above the moon-silvered sea. Slewfoot was now only a low, dim glow against the darkness of the island. He turned forward again. "If they give us a new boat, what will we call her?" he asked the men.

  "Slewfoot. What else?" Murph demanded.

  "Slewfoot Two," Mitch said.

  "Slewfeet," Goldberg said.

  It was the first time they had all laughed for a long time, Peter remembered, as he sailed on to the south, the long boat going very well.

  The sun came booming up with little warning and, in a moment, the cold night was gone and a fine, clear, hot day began. The cramped men stirred around in the boat, moving in the sunlight. Goldberg unwrapped a chunk of the barbecued pig and waved it around.

  "What do you call that horrid thing?" Murph asked.

  Goldberg stared at him. "That's a Goldberger, Murphy. And a piece of it will cost you a month's pay."

  Peter looked down at Archer, who had curled up on the bottom of the boat and gone to sleep some hours before. He was still asleep, his face gray and loose looking.

  One of the morphine Syrettes, empty, lay beside him.

  The Preacher was next to Archer and, as he moved around to loosen up, he touched Archer's leg. Then, slowly, he touched it again, putting his palm down on it. Then he looked up at Peter. "Peter," he said. Then he pointed at Archer.

  Peter leaned over and shook Archer's shoulder.

  Archer rolled over, face up in the boat, his eyes and mouth open.

  "He's dead," the Preacher said in a low voice.

  Peter knew it but touched him anyway and found no pulse.

  "Why?" the Preacher asked.

  The other men had noticed now and were looking aft.

  "The skipper's dead," Peter told them quietly. "Shall we take him home?"

  The men thought it over, looking at Archer lying now so ruined. The Professor said quietly, "The sea is as good a place to be buried as any, Peter."

  "All right," Peter said. "Lash the machine gun to him."

  "We may need that," Jason reminded him, then held up a belt of ammunition, "but I don't see how we can use all this."

  The Preacher and Peter got the belt wrapped around him and then they lifted him up on the gunwale. The wound in Archer's belly had been sewn back together, but it had not healed and was awful. Peter glanced at it and then away and said, whispering, "He must've gotten hit the night the barge hit us. All this time … " Peter looked over at the Preacher. "Say something real good, Preacher."

  The Preacher thought for a moment as all the men in the boat watched him and waited, each one sad now, remembering what they had thought of Archer and done to him.

  "Our heavenly Father," the Preacher began, "this is the third man we've had to send You and he was as good as the other two. As good even as Jonesy, only we didn't understand him and we didn't give him a chance. We even planned to mutiny against him. But in spite of what we did to him he gave his life so that we could have this little boat and live. Please, Lord, be good to him. His name is Adrian Archer."

  The men looked away as Archer's body, sinking, drifted down the length of the boat and was gone.

  10

  The long, bright, hot day ended with a brilliant splash of emerald lying on the far horizon as the sun went down. It had been a peaceful and quiet day. To Peter it seemed that all the men had withdrawn into themselves, for they, like him, had a lot to think about and the remembrance made them all a little sad.

  But with the coming of night and the day's restoring of their strength and the feeling of going home there was a change in them. Slowly they began to talk quietly among themselves, and then to laugh and finally to begin horsing around. Peter let it go until they threw Murph out of the outrigger and promised him that they would not go back and get him. The little Irishman's wails in the night were most heartrending.

  Peter turned the boat into the wind and let it drift while they hauled Murph back aboard. "Don't throw anybody else over the side," Peter ordered. "We may need him for food ourselves."

  Toward midnight the wind veered around to the northwest and became strong and gusty. At first Peter didn't know how to handle the boat in what was now a following wind; but as soon as he picked out a star he knew was in the southeast and eased the sail, the boat began to fly, staying well ahead of the waves, which were now coming from astern.

  "Holy mack-e-rel, Amos!" Mitch said. "If this thing had a couple of torpedoes we could put her in the squadron."

  All day Peter had marveled at this frail craft and had grown completely confident that it could go anywhere in the world through any wind or sea. It was just a long hollowed-out log with the outrigger booms lashed to it with some sort of flat vines. The outrigger was a shorter, solid log, carved smooth and also tied to the booms with the vines. The mast was a marvel of engineering, for it stood without stays from a step fairly far aft in the hull and supported the long, slanting top yard of the sail.

  At this sizzling speed one man had to bail all the time, for water kept slipping in over the side. Other than that, she was perfectly seaworthy.

  At midnight Peter turned the tiller over to the Professor and then carefully he stood up, one foot on the hull, the other on the outrigger boom. "I figure we've come over two hundred miles," he told Murph, "so we ought to be seeing something pretty soon—New Britain or New Guinea."

  "What's the matter with California?" Murph asked. "Or even Mexico. I dig that Latin beat, man."

&n
bsp; Peter was standing there, and later he swore he heard it go by, it was that close. In the dark water the familiar white spout rose, hung up there and fell back, while from off to port the car-umph of the gun floated over to them.

  The men began scrambling around in the boat, grabbing the carbines. Goldberg hoisted the heavy .30-caliber machine gun up in his lap and worked the bolt while Mitch laid out the belt as well as he could in the crowded space.

  Whatever it was fired again, this time coming closer. Peter, standing up like a statue, felt as though it was shooting at him personally, and he wanted to duck down into the boat; but he stood a little longer searching the darkness and praying that he would make out the low, long sleek outline of a PT.

  And there it was, lit now by the muzzle flash of a Bofors. The shell screamed overhead and crashed into the water.

  It took Peter a few seconds and some embarrassment when he realized it, but he had been yelling, "Whoa!" for quite a while. He stopped that and began to yell, his hands cupping his mouth, "Don't shoot. We're Americans."

  And then Goldberg's big, booming voice drowned out everything. "Slewfoot!" he boomed. "Slewfoot!"

  "I think they want us to stop," Peter said, when he thought he could be heard. "Take the sail down. And keep on bellowing, Goldberg."

  Peter watched as the PT swung toward them and approached, coming ahead dead slow the engines muffled so that she was silent and dark. Fifty yards away she swung again, broadside on, and now Peter could see the men standing at the guns.

  No wonder, he thought, the Japs were terrified of the PTs. It was an awesome sight—a floating arsenal—and every gun on board seemed to be aimed right at him.

  A voice on the PT said, very calmly, "If they make a move, blast 'em."

  "Mike," Peter yelled. "Mike Myers! It's me."

  The voice, still calm, floated back. "I'm me so who're you?"

  "Peter Brent. You know me. Slewfoot."

  The PT began to move, slowly swinging toward them again. Then it was looming over them, the machine guns pointing down at them.

  "Hello, Peter," Mike said pleasantly. "What are you doing in that contraption?"

  "Yachting, what else? Come on, take us aboard."

  Mike at last seemed surprised. "Is that the whole crew? Where's your boat? You're not supposed to be here in a thing like that."

  Peter was trying to get a grip on the PT, but he wasn't tall enough. "Yak-yak-yak," he said, as the outrigger began sliding away. Mike said to someone in the dark, "Get the boarding ladder. I guess we're going to have to let these bums get on our nice, clean boat."

  They climbed aboard one by one, Goldberg bringing the last of his barbecued pig.

  When they were all on board, Mike said, "Okay, guns, sink that bunch of junk."

  "No," Peter said. "Tow it home. We'll mount a cannon on it and use it for a PT until we get a real one."