by Sloan Wilson
As the bay narrowed and the water shoaled, even Mowrey appeared tense as he stood on the port wing of the bridge staring through the fog into nothingness. Once he called for the engine to be stopped and they glided silently through a slight groundswell. Paul heard nothing but the lonely cries of invisible sea gulls, but Mowrey said, “I hear breakers about a mile to port. Bring her right slowly. Ahead slow.”
About twenty minutes later Paul heard a terrifying high hum in the void ahead which rapidly built to the throbbing of huge engines and the rush of water.
“Something on the starboard bow!” the lookout yelled.
“Left full rudder,” Mowrey said. “Ahead full. The bastard won’t hit us anyway. If he’s going that fast in this shit, he’s got radar.”
Almost as soon as he had spoken, the bow of a destroyer loomed from the fog ahead, and suddenly the long, low hull of the powerful ship was only three hundred yards abeam of them. Near the top of her short mast a screen which looked like wire mesh slowly revolved.
“He’s got radar all right,” Mowrey said. “You’d think they’d give it to the Greenland Patrol, but before we get it, every admiral’s barge will have a set, even in the goddamn South Pacific, where they never get fog. The Coast Guard is part of the navy in time of war until it comes time for getting the new stuff.”
“The radar they have in production is still pretty primitive,” Green said. Now that the ship was no longer rolling heavily, he already sounded and looked like a new man.
“What do you know about radar?” Mowrey barked.
“I helped a little with some of the R and D at General Electric.”
“Then I don’t wonder that they say that the thing never works once you get to sea,” Mowrey said. “Come right to course three two zero, damn it. Ahead half. And lookouts, keep your eyes peeled! If you don’t have radar, you got to have eyes, ears and brains. No wonder they give it to the navy. That’s the only way those poor bastards can find their way around.”
As they reached the narrow end of the bay, they suddenly emerged from the banks of fog, finding themselves surrounded by a stern landscape of rocky cliffs and granite hills which rolled back from the sea, not much different in shape from huge ocean waves. Ahead of them loomed the great naval base of Argentia, a collection of perhaps a hundred great gray ships of all kinds, both merchant and navy, anchored and moored to wharves which spread out from a city of Quonset huts and hastily erected warehouses. A blinker light on a steel tower by the edge of the harbor flashed at them.
“Captain, he wants our identification,” Flags, a blond young signalman called from the port wing of the bridge.
“What does he think we are, a fucking submarine?” Mowrey replied. “Tell him we’re the U-2 out of Hamburg, Germany. Tell him we’re looking for his biggest aircraft carrier.”
“Do you really want me to say that, sir?”
“Christ, just send him identification signals and request berthing instructions. Sooner or later you bastards are going to have to learn to shit without asking me how to wipe your ass.”
The lights flickered for what seemed to be a long while before Flags said, “Proceed to small ship wharf and moor outboard minesweeper Redbird.”
The Redbird proved to be a trawler much like the Arluk, except that she was navy, not Coast Guard, and was painted gray. She was moored at the end of a narrow slip between a refrigerator barge as big as a warehouse and a nest of Canadian corvettes. The confined space and an outgoing tidal current which swept through the harbor like a fast river made ordinary maneuvering impossible.
“Put three big fenders on the port bow and get the number two line out fast when I give the word,” Mowrey called in the curiously pleasant voice he used when he wanted really instant obedience.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Boats, a red-headed boatswain’s mate who had boarded the ship just before it left Boston, answered and began coiling a heaving line in his hands.
To avoid losing control of his ship in the swift current, Mowrey approached the stern of the Redbird at a speed which struck Paul as incredibly reckless. Seeing the Arluk approach at such close quarters with a bone in her teeth, an ensign aboard the Redbird gave a shout of alarm which brought a dozen startled men to her rail.
“Mind the helm now,” Mowrey said in an even more pleasant voice as the bow of the 300-ton trawler seemed about to crash into the minesweeper. “Right full rudder.” After a pause that seemed endless as the bow of the Arluk swept across the length of the Redbird with almost no space to spare, he added, “Stop the engine. Back full. Get out number two. Shift your rudder.”
The Arluk suddenly squatted, spun and settled gently against the minesweeper with almost a sigh of content.
“Get out lines four, one and three,” Mowrey said. “Stop the engine. Move lively now, lads. In a current like this, you have to get lines out fast”
The Coast Guardsmen on the bow and well deck moved like a well-drilled football team, but one of the navy men was slow to make a line fast to a bitt.
“Boats, go aboard that bird and show that lad how to make a line fast,” Mowrey said with genial tolerance.
“We’ve got it,” the ensign aboard the Redbird said. “Jesus, for a while there, skipper, I thought you were going to cut us right in half.”
“You can’t move a ship slow in fast water, sonny,” Mowrey said. “Yale, come here. Get Flags.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Paul said.
Mowrey led the way from the wing of the bridge into the pilothouse!
“Now you two fucked up once and I’m going to tell you once,” he said in his sweetest voice.
“What did we do, sir?” Flags asked.
“I suppose you don’t know either, do you, Yale?”
“I thought everyone did fine, sir. I thought it was a great job of tying up.”
“Yale, this is a United States Coast Guard cutter tying up alongside a navy ship in a naval base. What the fuck was the matter with our flag?”
“Flag, sir?” Flags asked.
“A United States Coast Guard cutter flies her ensign at the gaff of her signal mast while under way, and at her stern staff while moored. The moment our first mooring line is made fast, I want the ensign snapped down from our signal mast and another ensign snapped up on our stern staff simultaneously.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Flags said.
“Another thing. Flags, do you know what the third repeater is?”
“It’s a pennant we put up when you go ashore, sir, to show that the commanding officer is not aboard.”
“You got it, Flags,” Mowrey purred. “Now, I want that third repeater snapped up the moment my foot leaves this vessel when I go ashore, and I want it snapped down the moment my first foot touches the deck again when I come back. Do you understand?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Just by watching a vessel’s flags every man in the harbor can tell whether she’s a taut ship,” Mowrey said. “Now, they don’t call me Mad Mowrey for nothing. If you fuck up just once more, Flags, you’ll stand your watches in the crow’s nest for a week, and it will be damn cold up there when we get to Davis Strait. And Yale, it’s your job to make sure that Flags does his job. If he fucks up again, I’m going to put a notation in your fitness report that you’re no good at the detail of ship’s routine. It won’t take many notations like that to get your ass shoved ashore in the worst job they can find.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Paul said.
“But sir,” Flags protested, “how will I be sure when you’re going ashore and just when you’re coming back?”
Mowrey gave a genial grin. “There will always be a man on watch at the gangway, won’t there? You rig a flag halyard where he can reach it fast. You’re a petty officer, ain’t you? Don’t you know how to train your men?”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Flags said. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“You’ll learn, sonny,” Mowrey said, and gave the boy what appeared to be an affectionate pat on the cheek, except for the fact tha
t his huge fist became a hand only at the last moment. “Now I’m going ashore to the officers’ club. This once I give you warning.”
The third repeater, a white triangular pennant with a black stripe across the middle of it, snapped to the yard of the signal mast a few seconds later, just as Mowrey jumped from the rail of the Arluk to the deck of the Redbird. Paul smiled. The whole rigamarole was ridiculous, of course, but he was beginning to feel almost in spite of himself that there was a certain beauty in it.
CHAPTER 12
When Paul went to the wardroom, it was so quiet that something seemed to be wrong. The throb of the engine, the creaking of the wooden hull and the clicking of every small, unsecured object in lockers and drawers as the ship rolled, all this had of course stopped, and now the wardroom was silent as a library, an impression that was increased by the activities of Seth Farmer and Nathan Green. As he did immediately upon arriving in any port, the old warrant officer was writing his wife a long letter on a pad of lined paper. Nathan was taking books from three big cardboard boxes and was storing them on every available shelf and in lockers.
“Where did all the books come from?” Paul asked.
“I bought them just before leaving Boston, but never got a chance to unpack them,” Nathan said. “Feel free to use them if you want.”
“What kind of books be they?” Seth asked, peering over his steel-rimmed spectacles.
“Kind of a varied lot. They have lists of books people would want on a desert island, but I picked my own. I found a lot of stuff on Greenland up at Goodspeed’s. The skipper got me curious.”
“I wouldn’t take him too serious when he talks about Greenland,” Farmer said mildly. “I always been told there ain’t nothing there but rocks and ice.”
“It says on the dust jacket of one of the books that Greenland has been called both the Land of Desolation and the Land of Comfort,” Nathan said. “Except for Eskimos, it was first settled by Eric the Red way back about the year nine hundred, but all the Norse colonies just disappeared after about five hundred years. No one knows why. I’ll tell you more after I read the book.”
“Let me borrow it when you’re done with it,” Paul said. “Can you guys hold down the ship for a few hours if I go ashore to look around?”
“Sure,” Seth said. “Ain’t nothing here but a navy base. If you’ll mail my letter, I don’t want to go ashore at all.”
“Now I know how to sound a fire alarm, I guess I can stand a watch in port if no one wants the ship moved,” Nathan said.
“If they want the ship moved, I guess any of us would have to call the skipper from the officers’ club,” Paul replied. “I have an idea we’ll always be able to find him there.”
After showering, changing into a clean uniform and polishing his shoes, Paul went on deck. The sun was still shining brightly near the horizon and he was momentarily confused when he glanced at his watch and saw that it was a little after nine in the evening. On the way north from Boston he had been too sick really to notice the lengthening days. Now there was a strangeness about the gradual retreat of night which gave him an old-fashioned sense of adventuring which he had not felt since first going aboard the Arluk. As he stepped from his ship to the Redbird, he saluted his quarterdeck with studied casualness and found himself wishing that there was a little pennant which could be run up when the executive officer left the ship. Absurd, absurd! For days he had been too sick even to think about smoking, but as he climbed a hill between two rows of Quonset huts, he felt in his breast pocket and found a cigar he had bought in Boston. Before meeting Mowrey he had always smoked cigarettes, and it was odd to realize that he was in some ways already starting to copy a man he detested so much. Still, it was fun to walk cockily along in the bright northern night waving his cigar with authority. He was twenty-two years old and was already the executive officer of a United States Coast Guard cutter on the Greenland Patrol. If he could get over his seasickness and learn fast, he might get command of his own ship inside of a year. In wartime things move fast, Mowrey had said.
Paul did not have to walk far before he found the officers’ club. It was a big Quonset hut and so crowded that there was small chance of his running into Mowrey, he was glad to discover. A triple line of officers at the bar was keeping a half-dozen Filipino bartenders busy and perhaps a hundred more officers were drinking at small tables. At the back of the room were several long, rectangular tables at which officers were playing cards. Tobacco smoke swirled up to the domed ceiling of the Quonset hut and a jukebox blared, “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me.”
For a few moments Paul stood staring at the men at the cardtables. The green felt tablecloths were littered with poker chips. Paul strolled toward the bar. His cigar was making him feel slightly dizzy and he left it in a large can full of smoking cigarette butts. After buying a glass of ginger ale, he walked toward the cardtables. At two of them men were playing with coins as well as chips, but at a third many of the officers had stacks of bills as well as chips in front of them. Paul waited silently until a lieutenant commander lost a big pile and left the table in disgust. Moving forward, he put his hand on the empty chair and said, “Can you use new blood in this game?”
Naval officers, Paul soon discovered, do not ordinarily play poker much better than fraternity boys do, and most of them made the same ridiculous mistake of drinking while they gambled for fairly high stakes. At the end of two and a half hours Paul had made almost three hundred dollars and was wishing he had arranged for a telephone call to summon him from the game. After deliberately losing twenty-three dollars, he glanced at his watch and said he had to get back to his ship before midnight. There was some grumbling but no real objection as he cashed in his chips, pocketed a profit of slightly more than two hundred fifty dollars and quickly left the table.
At the bar Paul paused to order a double scotch. In the sea of men around him he saw two young navy nurses sitting surrounded by commanders and captains. They were nowhere near as pretty as his wife, but one of them had a figure plump enough to fill out even her stiff navy uniform attractively and their high excited laughter sounded beautiful. It had been only about five days since he had seen Sylvia, but somehow it seemed a century, and he was suddenly aware that it would be months, maybe years before he again saw his wife, or any woman at all, probably, except the Eskimo women, who really would not interest him, he was sure, even if he had not really meant his vows to be faithful to Sylvia forever, as he most surely had. He was not going to have a woman for years, maybe never again if he got killed, he thought with a sudden flood of anger and self-pity. The plump nurse’s throat looked so good as she tossed up her chin and laughed! Even if a man were not bound by a vow to remain faithful to his wife, what chance would he have as an eternal transient in places where there were at least a thousand men to each woman? War, despite its adventurous aspects, meant no sex, no sex for years and years. Like Sherman said, “War is hell.”
When he had won at gambling in Boston, Paul often had bought a new dress or a little bracelet to surprise Sylvia with, and such presents had often put her into a delightful mood. Now he had no idea what to do with the money except mail it home to her or hide it under his mattress aboard ship, neither of which seemed to make gambling even worthwhile.
When he arrived back aboard his ship, Paul found that both Nathan and Seth had gone to sleep. Stripping to his underwear, he crawled into his bunk. Seth’s soft but irregular snoring irritated him and he was too tense to sleep. The memory of the young nurse’s throat and bosom as she laughed plagued him and to get his mind off it, he began to let himself think of his wife. His last night with Sylvia in Boston was still too painful and complex to contemplate directly, but he had many other memories of her which still brought pleasure. Lying sleepless during the brief hours of an April night in Newfoundland, Paul thought about the good days with his wife.
They were at a football game on a cold October afternoon. She was wearing a muskrat coat which h
er father had just given her, “fake mink,” she called it, but it was glossy and warm and when she turned the collar up, it came above her ears, framing her delicate chin. Their side was losing badly, and the crowd all around them kept booing and cheering and jeering.
“Get me out of here,” she said suddenly. “Let’s go to the boat.”
A lot of other people were leaving early. They had to walk through a jostling crowd, and when they finally got to the car, they were caught in a traffic jam for almost an hour. A boisterous party was making the yacht club even noisier than the streets. All this was good, because when they finally rowed out to the yawl and climbed up on her decks, the almost complete silence was like a blessing.
“Maybe we should stay here forever,” she said.
It was cold below decks. The crumpled newspapers which he put into the galley range were so damp that he had to blow into the stove to start a fire, but the kindling wood blazed up fast, and there was that sharp smell of burning pine. The little cabin heated up quickly. She took off her fur coat and tossed it on a bunk. She was wearing a moss-green cashmere sweater and a brown tweed skirt.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” he asked.
“No,” she said, “I think I want to make love.”
Never before had she been so open with him. He rushed to embrace her.
“Only not so fast,” she said. “Maybe we ought to have that tea.”
He put the kettle on after adding more wood to build up the flames. She stood by a porthole looking out.
“Come see,” she said.
The sun was turning the still waters all around them to burnished copper, which slowly turned to gray. He lit a brass lamp over the cabin table. When the water boiled he made a pot of tea and she laughed because his hand trembled when he handed her a cup.