At the Midway (77 page)

He glanced at the first lieutenant.

There was an ugly practical side to Singleton's offer.  Oates could not shake the belief that the doctor was fundamentally expendable; he was every bit as much a drag
-
weight as the pontoons on the torpedoes.  His wireless
-
guided weapons were clever, no doubt, but someone else would have come up with the idea, given time.

Yet there was something also piquant about Singleton's request.  He was the only man on board the
Florida
as old as Oates.  They were both men who were writing the final chapters of their lives.  Fame had bypassed each of them, and each of them had stumbled upon the philosophical curiosity that said fame did not matter.  Now, by outrageous chance, the prospect of youth had suddenly become the prospect of old age.  One way or another, Oates believed he would go down in the annals of naval lore.  There seemed no good reason to deny Singleton the same opportunity.  Mortality, after all, was only a secondary consideration.

Oates nodded.

The first lieutenant looked up and eyed both men coldly.

1830 Hours

Not five minutes after their sluggish departure from the landing stage, Singleton turned green and heaved over the side.  "I don't understand," he gasped.  "I've never been seasick before."

Waves that were small on a big boat were large on a little boat and the doctor was incapable of handling the drastic change in scale.  A sick sheen coated the starboard torpedo as Singleton vomited over the gunwhale.

Garrett and Amos continued to look away until the old man had finished puking.  Neither one of them could believe Oates had saddled them with the good doctor.  For that matter, they were both finding it hard to comprehend that they were stuck with each other, too.

"You mean I'm going to die with a nigger?" had been Garrett's response when told Amos would comprise a third of the launch crew.  This was Oates' lowest blow.  It went beyond meaningless vengeance.  It was a slap in the face to all the white men who had pooled their courage and talents for this endeavor.  And for what?  Spite against a common, lowly ensign.

Garrett stood in the cockpit, unwilling to hand the helm over to Amos.  The launch wallowed between its awkward load and the ensign had a tough time maintaining her course.  The motor launch had not been constructed for this kind of work.  From a speedster of the sea it was reduced to heavy labor.  The engine barked frequent protests.  Two hundred yards behind them the
Florida
moved at a snail's pace.

They were, in effect, acting as external bow tubes for the
Florida
.  Using a grappling hook, Singleton would reach out and flip the engine switch superimposed on the immersion chamber.  The activated torpedo would be unlashed.  From high on the
Florida's
signal bridge, Hart would take over.

"You going to be all right?" Garrett asked Singleton.

Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, Singleton leaned back and nodded.  There was little conviction in the gesture.

"We have enough gas to circle the island twice," said the ensign.  He warily eyed a patch of coral and put some distance between them.  The armorers had had to remove the protective cones before lowering the torpedoes into the water.  As soon as the boat started forward the warhead sleeves fell off.  The firing pins were exposed.  One wrong bump and the launch, with its heavy burden, would instantly become lighter than air.  "When we go back to refuel I'm letting you off.  All right?  I can't take you back this moment.  We can't waste what light there's left.  All right?  All right?"

The doctor nodded wanly, then leaned over for his hat, which had fallen behind the gear box when he became sick.

Amos dourly scanned the ocean.  Garrett wondered what the captain had said to him after the wardroom door was closed.  Later, as Singleton lectured them on operating procedures for the torpedoes, the black man had looked away as though bored.  Not a good sign.  He certainly did not act as if he was watching for brute death incarnate as he leaned against the gunwhale and glowered at the sea.

Turning north, Garrett spotted a knot of marines watching from the beach.  They were not signaling or gesturing, so the ensign presumed they did not know where the serpent was, either. What if they couldn't find it?

Glancing back at Macklin, Garrett yelled, "Why'd they have that guard on you, lolly-banger?  You take a shit in the captain's soup?"

Amos said nothing.  He was too deep in the justice and injustice of the sentence that had been pronounced upon him by Captain Oates.

Fireman Gilroy had told him about the discovery of dynamite in the stokehold after they departed Buenos Aires, a fact that the
Florida's
officers had kept to themselves.  This was the secret Gilroy revealed to Amos, while in the South Atlantic, in exchange for a fifth of gin--though of course most of the ship's sailors learned of the imminent danger via the usual rumor mills.

The plague of anarchism continued to dog the Fleet.  More dynamite was found after they left San Bernadino.  Once again, someone had planted the stick in the coal before it was loaded.  Captain Oates again tried, and failed, to keep it a secret.

Then came the hurried midnight coaling in San Francisco.  In a rush to answer the distress call from Midway, they had not had the opportunity to perform a preliminary search for explosives before the coal was loaded.  Gilroy saw this as his main chance.

His minute search of the coal bins had born deadly fruit.  He'd barely discerned the two soot-covered sticks of dynamite in the black heap.  Of course, he did not report his discovery.  Only one man knew the secret and the secret was power.

The temptation to toss them into the nearest boiler then and there was overcome by his thirst.  There were others on board who felt as he did, even if they weren't cognizant of the omnipresent golden scarab.  And Amos Macklin could be counted upon to trade fair.

Hiding the sticks in a canvas pouch, Gilroy passed them on to Amos.  Winking, he told the steward:  "Things get too bad, just pop it down the funnel and
boom
!  All your troubles are gone."

"You're crazy."

"A fifth of conk-buster for each stick, now.  A fifth for
each
."

"If I used these you would die, too."

"I don't care," the stoker had waved casually as he walked away.  "I don't care."

Instead of reporting Gilroy to the Master-at-Arms, he had done the most foolish thing possible: stashed the explosives with his personal belongings.  Later, he considered tossing them overboard at night, with no one the wiser.  But as Gilroy had said, they presented an option.  And he felt he had too few options to surrender even this one.

Gilroy never received payment for his deadly bargain.  As Amos was bringing him his first fifth of gin, the stoker began his drug and heat-induced rampage.

The greater fool deserved the greatest punishment.  Watching Singleton wipe vomit off his mouth, Amos concluded the captain was right.  He belonged here every bit as much as Garrett and the doctor did.

Garrett sniffed and turned.  Fumes were rising from the stern.  The engine was already overheating.  The resident genius had not calculated
that
into his plans, he thought sourly.

There was no signal from the
Florida
.  She had not yet spotted the serpent.

1840 Hours

The same possibility exasperated Captain Oates.  He stood next to Hart at the front of the pilot house, where the wireless had been moved.

"They can't circle all night.  Once it's dark, I'll have every searchlight left spotted on the launch.  But they're bound to hit coral, sooner or later."

"And then…" Hart said gloomily.

"Yes.  'And then….'"  Oates glanced at the lookout phone, then thudded the binnacle with his fist.  "Where could the damn thing be hiding?"

"We could always chum for it," said the first lieutenant.

"By Godfrey, you're right!  Let the bastard come to us, instead of wasting fuel like this.  Get down to the galleys and see what you can find.  Even if it means going hungry
-
-
"

"I don't think buckets of beans will do it, sir.  I was thinking… we already have the chum we need, ready
-
made."

Oates' momentary perplexity was replaced by hideous awareness.  "I didn't think we had a monster on board, too."

"Why not, sir?  We have to bury our dead some time.  And soon.  They might even have approved of the idea."

"Those poor dead lads…
approve
?"

"They can still help their mates."

A thunderous silence fell over the bridge as they contemplated sliding their too
-
numerous dead overboard as bait.  The worst thing about it was its plausibility.  In their hasty departure from San Francisco they had not been properly vittled.  They wouldn't starve, but in all probability they would be reduced to stiff rations before reaching Honolulu
-
-
even with so many fewer mouths to feed.

Oates was saved from further grisly contemplation when the phone jangled wildly.

1841 Hours

The sea blurred, became a fuzzy nap on a blue-white carpet.  Midshipman Beck drew away from the telescope and blinked to clear his eyes.  They still burned from the salt water that had hit them after he'd broken the faceplate against the ram.  He had not had much time to count his luck.  After a nearly miraculous journey from the bow to the landing stage, he'd barely doffed his diving suit before he was ordered into Number One Turret.

Because of the severe casualties, many men found themselves reassigned to different stations.  One of the turret's pointers had been transferred to the aft twelve-incher.  This left Beck to take his place.  He was only vaguely familiar with the periscope grid and wondered how in hell he was supposed to call out the range.  Dare he ask the gun captain for instruction?

He would not get the opportunity.  The man in the seat above him tensed suddenly and put a hand to his headset.  He was receiving instructions from Central Station.

Which meant they had a target.

1843 Hours

"Signal from the bridge," said Amos.

Glancing back through the failing light, Garrett read the flags, then turned his attention north.  Several minutes later he spotted the creature.

It was lolling on the waves, its wounded flipper jutting overhead.  From this distance and angle, it looked like a gigantic, basking sunfish

"She's in range of the big guns," Singleton observed.  "Why don't they try a shot?"

Garrett had no patience to lecture Singleton on the skittish art of ranging in on a target.  Two or three salvoes were usually needed before an enemy could be bracketed.  By which time the creature would be thrashing about at high speed, making a hit virtually impossible.

"Let's start the marbles rolling," he murmured.  After a quick scan for coral, he brought the launch about.  "Macklin!  Get off your black ass!  I'm closing to forty yards.  You'll have to be quick with those lines.  Doctor?"

Singleton raised the grappling hook to indicate his readiness.  His eyes were wide with fear and wonder, but neither emotion paralyzed him.

A fine, fat sitting target.

Surely, the serpent could hear them coming…?

On the Cliffs of Time

The world was loneliness--the creep of distance without end and an absence of song.

Of course, the female heard the vessels approaching.  She would have heard the massive, clanking
Florida
a hundred miles off.  Yet the noise did not annoy her so much as it had before.  Almost any sound was welcome, now that the young ones were gone.

While she was finding it increasingly difficult to associate the dead giant below the reef as her offspring, the memory of her daughter alive filled her with a sense of loss.  She ached for things that could never return.  There was no hint of Tu-nel music in the murmuring of the waves. Only traffic and steam cacophony.  But at least that distracted her from the profound grave-like silence of her kind.

It did not, however, keep hunger at bay.  There was food on the big metal ship.  And the food was coming closer.  Overcoming the lassitude of sadness and the pain of her wounds, the female rolled on the long axis of her body and prepared to meet the
Florida
.

1848 Hours

There was always talk of inventions in the navy and indeed a great deal of inventing got done.  There had been talk of fitting searchlights with shutters so that they could be used as signal lamps, making Morse a visual as well as electronic means of communication.  But that particular invention had yet to be realized on the ships of the U.S. Navy.