The Military Megapack, page 34
“Why, if you so loved and cherished the armed guard,” Captain Banning continued, “did you arrange for transfer?”
“I never, sir!” Wolver replied sadly. “‘Twas a young ensign, let out a year ahead of time, that arranged ever’thing. He was assistant personnel officer, cap’n. An’ he come up as I was helpin’ out some of the boys with their splash practice, and he never liked what I was sayin’. I tried to explain to him, cap’n, that I was just figurin’ a short cut, like. But he says I was insolent, and I never was meanin’ to be, a-tall. But he shanghaied me out of the armed guard pronto.”
“Dear, dear!” sighed the captain. “But in spite of that, you want to go back and fight the battles of democracy upon the fo’c’s’le of a cargo boat; protect with the faithful three-inch the supplies intended for our gallant boys over there and so on.”
“If I could be sent over to one of them—” Wolver suggested, nodding toward the merchantmen. “I certainly do want to git back onto the armed guard, sir. It’s the only duty in the navy that lets a man use the inside of his head, Texas style.”
“No, I fear me not. You’ll have to stay with us. We can’t transfer you here. But—you’ll have to go on to Queenstown. Perhaps a way will open for you, to return some day.”
“Oh, I’ll git back, a’ right, sir,” Wolver said calmly.
“In the meanwhile, lay below and turn to! And make up your mind that the war isn’t to be finished in a day, You’ll have a chance to smell powder yet—this very trip, it may be. So make yourself one of us—and move on the double!”
Wolver recognized the new note in Captain Banning’s voice that now replaced his bantering manner. But as Wolver saluted and turned toward the port ladder, with Purdy following, he sniffed. He would smell powder, would he? That was a good one, when on his first and only trip across with the Cohoxon, they had fought and sunk a sub. He and the trainer had sunk it, after he had killed the German skipper and a lieutenant with an automatic, pulling the battle out of the bag when it was lost.
* * * *
That night, he stood his gun watches and his lookout with the rest of Purdy’s section of the starboard watch. And he admitted that Purdy was all right; the cox’n made no distinction between Wolver and any other of his section. He was square, if he did get hard-boiled. But that eased Wolver’s homesickness none at all, as he looked across the moonlit water and saw the black hulls of the merchantmen in their columns. That was where he fitted—out there on one of them, standing watch at the guns, with no formalities if a sub heaved in sight.
The days slid by evenly, as they do at sea. Five of them—six. The seventh day out of New York drew to a hazy twilight. Wolver looked out at the moonless, cloud-obscured sky and shook his head. Mechanically—as if all this were his private responsibility—he looked at the Shenandoah’s decks, from which the deckload of coal was vanishing, looked at the shells and powder bags under the tarpaulin by number nine, the fo’c’s’le gun. Have to watch out, tonight!
The convoy was shifting formation, as all early convoys did. Ships which had been file leaders had dropped back until they lagged in the rear of columns they had led. One twin-screw, shining Philadelphia freighter, apparently the best ship in the seventeen the Shenandoah was escorting, had dropped out of the convoy entirely, her starboard engine out of commission.
Wolver had drawn pointer of the forecastle gun. On the mid-watch, shortly after midnight, there was an odd phosphorescent-like glitter to the sea. There was a glimpse of the hull of a freighter, as the Shenandoah turned from her post in the van, to go back around the convoy’s rear and up through the files, to see how everything was going with the ships. You could see a hull for a split second, quite clearly, but the eye was tricked so that details evaded you.
They were not zigzagging; Captain Banning had decided to make as much speed and as many sea miles as possible, while there was no actual sign of danger.
As the Shenandoah came around the rear of the convoy, Wolver and the trainer were muttering to each other. Wolver, staring with those plainsman’s eyes of his out at the sea, thought he saw something low down on the water, perhaps a hundred yards astern of the nearest cargo boat. He stiffened, with tawny head thrust out and his mouth drawing to a thin line. He grunted to the trainer and without thought, the trainer spun his wheel; number nine came around to starboard and Wolver hunted that half-seen shape through the telescope sight, as he depressed the muzzle out of horizontal.
“What the hell y’ guys doin’?” snarled Purdy, who was gun captain.
But Wolver, concentrating rigidly on his hunt for that half-seen, half imagined shape out there, heard Purdy’s voice if at all, only as an angry and far-away murmuring. It looked like a sub, but might be only a blackfish or a porpoise. Still—
“Steady on it!” he muttered, to himself rather than to the others of the crew.
His thumb tensed on the firing button. But at that moment the helmsman, in obedience to an order of the officer of the deck, who chanced to be Ensign Robards, the first division officer, twirled his wheel to starboard. The fo’c’s’le five-inch roared, but Wolver had seen the grayish shape vanish, sliding out of the cross wires of the sight, even as he fired. The shell skipped across the gleaming water perilously close to that ancient tramp so magnificently named The Burmese Rajah.
Wolver tore off his blue knitted watch-cap and hurled it to the deck. Furiously he stamped upon it, all the while glaring at the bridge.
“Oh, what’s the use?” he snarled, “Spoiled as purty a shot as ever I see! Yanked me right off—”
“Who fired that shot?” came Ensign Robards’ voice shrilly from the bridge. “Who gave orders to fire that shot?”
“This bright and shinin’ light out of the armed guard, sir!” Purdy answered angrily. “Nobody give him orders. He was just runnin’ things to suit hisself, sir!”
“Relieve him! Send him up here instantly!”
When Wolver got to the bridge, he faced not only the ensign, but all the senior officers of the cruiser, who had arrived at the run, wakened by the roar of the five-inch.
“Who told you to fire that shot?” Captain Banning demanded grimly. “Don’t you know that we’ve been trying to move through this zone with the absolute minimum of noise? And you nearly sank the Burmese Rajah! Answer up! What have you to say for yourself?”
Wolver sagged wearily before them. Regulations! Formalities! Orders! Everything on the earth and the sea but some common sense. And how could he say anything that would explain his point of view.
“Nobody told me, sir,” he said slowly. “I just let go on my own hook.”
“Oh, you did! Well, well, well,” the captain said unpleasantly. “And I presume it was merely to relieve the tedium of your watch? You wearied of monotony, perhaps?”
“I figured, sir, that sinkin’ subs was what I was supposed to be there for. Hadn’t been for the helmsman changin’ course just as I whanged away, there’d have been a right sick tin fish out there now. I was steady on it, and as I pressed the button, the ship heeled over to sta’b’d, and my shot went wild. Two seconds more and I would have gethered him in.”
“Utter nonsense, sir!” Mr. Robards said disgustedly. “I was scanning the water all around the ship with my glasses. There wasn’t a sign of anything there, except the Burmese Rajah’s wake.”
“It looked like it was just comin’ up,” Wolver said without interest. “Just barely awash. I got a glimpse of the connin’ tower, seemed like, with a double bow wave a-runnin’ aft along the sides.”
“But nobody else could see it, of course,” Mr. Robards said ironically. “We have only one pair of eyes on the ship—yours. Very peculiar. Very!”
* * * *
Wolver waited with weary patience. He was headed for grief, as usual. But three years of the navy had taught him to expect it. Every time he tried to stand on his two feet and use his own judgment in some matter which didn’t permit a long wrangling over the best procedure, he got it.
“Why didn’t you report what you saw?” the captain inquired. Wolver was surprised; the Old Man seemed merely curious; his first anger had slipped out of his voice.
“If it was a sub, it was cruisin’ awash, sir,” Wolver explained. “That’d mean the connin’ tower could be open. If I was to have yelled out, why couldn’t that German hear me? Well, sir! Wouldn’t he’ve acted like any sensible man? Slammed his hatch to, and dived and got off, anyhow? Mebbe have let go a torpedo at us, or at the Burmese Rajah? If you go out wolf hunting sir, and you catch a wolf over the front sight by havin’ luck, you don’t howl and raise the neighborhood, just to let ever’body know you found a lobo. You crack down on him, while you got a chance. Or, anyway, you do down in Texas.”
“Probably a blackfish,” suggested Captain Banning, his black eyes steady on Wolver. The other officers—the exec, the navigator, the engineer officer and Ensign Robards—all stared curiously at the skipper. They seemed puzzled at the delay in disciplinary action.
“Might’ve been, sir,” Wolver nodded. “But when a blackfish looks so blame’ much like a tin fish—well, if he monkeys around me when I got somethin’ to shoot and he’s goin’ to be hash! I did what seemed best, sir.”
“Lay down to your watch again,” Captain Banning grunted abruptly. “I think you saw a blackfish.”
“But, captain,” the exec began as Wolver saluted and went down the ladder, “the orders—”
Wolver did not hear what they said. But what Purdy said a moment after was quite clear and pointed. “An’ y’ll stay on life-buoy watch the rest of the time y’re in my section, too!” Purdy finished his statement of opinion.
Wolver spent the rest of his watch pacing a beat between the two copper Franklin buoys that hung in racks on each side of the cruiser’s stern. It was a dark and lonely watch, on the poop. For number ten, the poop gun, was not manned. He saw nobody but the quartermaster coming aft to read the patent log at hourly intervals.
He had turned in at eight bells—four a.m.— and had just fallen asleep when the general alarm gong roused the ship. He came out of his blankets in a wild leap and glared around him. The insistent, spine-crinkling clamor of the big brass gong vibrated up and down the decks. Wolver was topside in leaps. On the fo’c’s’le he found the gun crew tense at the gun. And the Shenandoah was racing down between two files of merchantmen.
It was the dark hour preceding dawn—but not dark enough to hide that grim spectacle at the tail of the file on their right. A ship had lifted her nose in air like a stricken live thing. She was poop under, already; the lighter underwater section of her bow giving the appearance of a gasping mouth. But of the sub which had torpedoed her, there was no trace.
The Shenandoah circled like a fierce eager dog, hunting something at which to snap. But quickly she gave over this futile hunt and returned to lower boats, throw lines overside and rescue the freighter’s crew from the water. She had barely got the last survivor up and darted away, when the ship sank.
Grim-faced, Wolver Dean stared at the spot where the ship had gone under. There was no doubt in his mind that he had seen a sub; that if the Shenandoah had not changed course as he fired, the freighter and her cargo would have been safe this minute.
He stood his life-buoy watch though. Neither Mr. Robards nor Purdy had said anything to him, directly, about his shot of the night before, or the torpedoing of the merchantman.
During his watch, he saw one ship frequently, as the Shenandoah circled from front to rear of the convoy. It was an old, well-decked seven-knotter, without a gun crew that Wolver could make out. There were what seemed to be oil drums, stowed on her well deck, clear to the bulwarks.
He was standing on the forecastle near twilight when the Shenandoah, making one of her circuits, alert against that sub which had shown itself like a wolf following a cattle-herd, came up to this old ship and ran alongside it.
“Willamette, ahoy!” Captain Banning hailed her.
On her bridge a man moved, coming at the born sailor’s rolling gait with a sort of contemptuous deliberateness to lean upon the port wing rail. He was a short man, but tremendously wide. He wore an old blue knitted jersey, and above his square, changeless red face was—of all headgear at sea—a greenish-black old derby hat. His eyes were pale blue and very steady, squinting under yellow-white brows.
“Yeah?” he answered the navy skipper’s hail, with a rising inflection. Somehow, it gave the impression of a disgusted, belligerent accent.
“You’re steadily dropping behind,” Captain Banning said briskly. “And with that submarine about, it isn’t safe. Can you keep up tonight? Seven knots?”
“Dunno,” the Willamette’s skipper said indifferently, spitting over the side, “Jedgin’ from what happened last night, I’m as well off by myself. Reckon ’twasn’t no blackfish, after all, your gunner was a-firin’ at. Too bad he never connected!”
“Never mind all that!” Captain Banning snapped. “The point is, will you be able to maintain the standard speed of the convoy? You’ve a valuable cargo there—and a dangerous cargo. I don’t want you dropping out of convoy if its avoidable. But on the other hand, we’re well below a safe speed as it is, thanks to your boat and a couple of others.”
“Then what the devil did they load me with depth bombs and Y-guns for? An’ all in such an all-fired hurry I never even got a navy gun crew? I dunno what my engines’ll do. If we can stick at seven knots, we’ll stay with you. If we can’t, go on ahead without us! We’ll come as nigh collectin’ that tin fish a-heavin’ spuds as anybody’s done with gunfire this fur!”
With which Parthian shot, he turned his back upon the United States navy, as represented by the Shenandoah’s skipper.
* * * *
Wolver was on life-buoy watch from ten to twelve that night. There were scattered shafts of moonlight, showing briefly through scudding clouds. Captain Banning himself was on the bridge. He made a circuit of the convoy. Wolver, listening in that quiet, heard him hail the Willamette again—the Willamette that was steadily lagging behind.
“You can’t be doing over five knots,” Banning told the freighter’s skipper. “We can’t wait for you. I’ve all the others to think of. I’m sorry to see you go it alone, but there’s nothing else for it, if that’s the best you can do.”
“Don’t bother about me!” the Willamette’s skipper returned calmly. “I’ll come in, or I won’t come in—dependin’. An’ it’s nothin’ to you, either way.”
Wolver grinned. He liked that bird sitting on top of a deckload of T.N.T., without a thing bigger than a rifle, with which to protect himself, and due to go sky-high if a shell from a sub landed in those ash cans that were consigned to the American destroyers at Queenstown. Yes, he was pretty thoroughly a man, that hairpin in the derby roof!
“I’d like to be sailin’ with him,” Wolver told himself.
Then he stiffened. His eyes narrowed, then widened. He grinned. The Shenandoah had come about and was rounding the Willamette’s stern, passing within thirty yards of its side. It was a moment without moonlight. Wolver looked for’ard. He saw nobody. He bent under the life line and his body described a clean arc, parting the sea without a splash.
He swam furiously under water, thinking of the Shenandoah’s twin screws. When he came to the surface, she was increasing her speed and vanishing in the murk ahead of him. And straight at him came the dark bulk of the Willamette.
“I’m mebbe a damn fool,” Wolver said calmly to himself. “But nobody can ever prove I never fell overboard as I was regulation-like inspectin’ them Franklin buoys. An’ once I land in Queenstown, it’ll be hard luck if I can’t scrabble around and hook up wi’ some gun crew. That damn—baby battlewagon makes me tireder ’n a whole winter’s work!”
He swam with powerful strokes toward the freighter, until her bow wave rocked him. He went drifting along her rusty side, until he came to a dangling line that tailed from a slovenly sea ladder. He clung here for a moment; then painfully he went up it, hand over hand. He tumbled over the low well-deck bulwark and found himself lying on those tarpaulined depth bombs. He crawled under the ancient and shabby canvas, out of the faint breeze, to warm himself a little and think and grin.
He would not announce himself to the derby-hatted skipper too quickly. For if his scheme was to work, he must not sight the Shenandoah again this cruise! He thought that his absence would not be discovered for an hour, or nearly that. Not until the quartermaster came aft for log reading. And when they found that he was lost overboard, they would never turn back to search for him. Not with fifteen ships to escort.
He considered the ash cans on which he lay—destined to smash tin fish in the Irish Sea. Depth bombs were strange things to him; the Wilmerton had received none, prior to his transfer off that cruiser. Nor had he encountered any in Brooklyn Navy Yard. There had been some aboard the Shenandoah, but they were in a track on the poop and “Hands off” had been the order concerning them. Wolver had been too much occupied with his troubles to worry about them.
“Kind of creepy business—hunkerin’ on this many of the blame’ things,” he pondered. “Wonder how much splash one’d make, if it’d drop overboard? But I reckon the fuses are out of these. Still—what was that chief gunner a-sayin’ about ’em. The big uns had a kind of automatic detonator; drop to a set depth and the pressure of the water sets off the charge. So, mebbe these have got fuses. I ain’t monekyin’ with ’em a bit— to see!”
He judged that a couple of hours had dragged by. He was fairly comfortable, despite his wet clothing, under the tarpaulin. He looked out at the moonlit sky, where the clouds were disappearing. By turning a little, he could see the sea. The old Willamette was creeping along; not zigzagging either. It was all very peaceful and pleasant. You wouldn’t have thought that anybody, anywhere, was fighting a war.
Then suddenly there was a loud report, from somewhere out on the starboard beam. As Wolver started to sit up, mouth dropping wide open, a terrific splintering crash sounded, from the freighter’s fo’ca’s’le.
