At the Midway (79 page)

But there was another race, also black.  The Heroic Negro.  The Negro of Cuba and Kettle Hill.  The Negro
-
-

"Hell, what are you saying?  You mean the race of the dead niggers!"

He glared at the
Florida
.  Night loomed behind the battleship with all the blackness in his heart.  He knew the instant Oates saw him throw Garrett and Singleton into the water every gun would be trained on him.  Even if he made it past the big guns, a few men manning the rails with rifles could pick him off easily enough.  Hell, the serpent was almost harmless compared to--

He whirled.

There it was.  So close.

Amos was midway between ship and serpent, each closing in from the opposite direction.

"All right, Methuselah," he murmured, thinking not of Singleton, but the old black crustacean back in Virginia.  "Either I'm hanged or I'm a hero.  Hanged either way."

He thought of his black mates back on board and on the island, watching.  Did it matter what they thought of him?

No.  He was no longer the foe of the white man nor the friend of the black.  By holding on to Gilroy's dynamite he had removed himself from the realm of human companionship.  Because
everyone
would have died had he thrown it in one of the boilers.  There was only one option now:  He would accommodate the game.

Oh Jesus, the thing was fearsome.  Especially when you were alone, in a small boat...

...racing towards it.

Before he'd been banished from the Fleet with the rest of his brethren, a Japanese steward had told Amos of an old Samurai trick.  When they were scared out of their wits and nearly paralyzed by terror, the warriors of old would reach down, grab their testicles, and give them a good squeeze.  On hearing this, Amos laughed until tears came.  But the offended steward insisted it was not only true, but that it worked.  With their courage restored, the Samurais would charge into the fray, hacking their enemies to pieces.

If he could have done so, Amos would have grabbed his balls and squeezed them dry.  The serpent… and those eyes!  Those fucking eyes!  It was looking at him!

But the pontoon and torpedo were battling the launch sideways.  To keep his course, he had to keep both hands on the wheel.

So he howled.

"C'mon, Jack Johnson!  C'mon, Jack Johnson!  C'mon, Jack Johnson!"

The great swell of turbulence that preceded the beast shook the boat.  Amos gripped the wheel more tightly.

And there was the head.  Raised.  Now coming down on him.  But too late.  The creature had misjudged his speed, never anticipating he would come right at it.  He was under the gun.

Yet the neck stretched forever.  Thick, brown, scarred.  Until the mighty chest came up, hiding a heart as big as a man.

June, 1908

28°20'N, 177°22'W

From the
Deck Log of the
USS Florida
:

Found this entry in the diary of one of our marines, PFC Henley:  "I'm alive!  Oh mother, I'm alive!  I'll live!"  Private Henley died in the last attack.

"Why aren't you at your station?" were Garrett's first words when Beck reached down to help him.  The midshipman had raced all the way from Number One to the judas ladder amidships to give a hand to the floundering survivors of the motor launch.  The ensign's words hit like stones.  There was as much pain as purpose when Beck let go and Garrett fell back into the water--which was surprisingly cold.  When both men were finally on board they stood shivering on the deck like explorers caught naked in the snow.

"Ah
-
ah!" Garrett chattered.  "T
-
towels, t
-
towels!"

"The captain wants to see you immediately," came a voice once they were finally on board.  "Put some blankets on them and bring them up."

Garrett raised his hand against the glare of the searchlights.  A silhouette loomed above him.

"Is it dead, sir?"

"We don't know.  Up, now.  Doctor, if you can't climb, I'll have someone assist you."

"I can climb," said Singleton uncertainly.

The first lieutenant had emerged from Central Station soon after the explosion.  To Garrett, he seemed like someone who had just stepped out of a boardroom.  He led the way up the series of short ladders to the pilot house.

Inside the wheelhouse, Captain Oates sat pale and exhausted on his bolted-down sea chair.  He looked up at Singleton and smiled.  "You've lost your hat, Doctor."

"Sir," Garrett ventured, "we couldn't see much."

"The launch and the serpent disappeared at the same moment.  We thought that was the end of it.  But just before the sun went down the lookouts spotted a blood trail."

The engine room telegraph rang like a firebell as Oates ordered flank speed.

"Why did he ram?" asked Hart, coming up to Singleton.  "The torpedoes worked.  We only needed--"

"The seal broke," the doctor said.  He looked old and sheepish under the battle lanterns.  "There wasn't any pressure in the flask."

"Ah..." the captain nodded.  "That explains part of it."  Noting how the two men shivered, he brushed the air with his hand.  "All right, get below.  Get some warm clothes and hot coffee.  We'll discuss this at length at another time."

Almost three hours later the searchlights picked out something large off the port bow.  The ordnance officer had already begun calling his gun captains when Hart leapt up and shouted, "It's my balloon!"

The ship was stopped and a whaleboat lowered.  Hart was among the first to jump in.

The balloon hovered not twenty feet above the surface, yet no one could be seen in the gondola.  Rowing under the pillow-like mass, Hart noted the absence of sandbags on the rim.

"He didn't have much longer.  He's cast off all his ballast."  He cupped his hands around his mouth.  "Halloa up there!  Halloa!"

A moment later, a face appeared.

"Fritz!" Hart shouted delightedly.  "Jump in the water and we'll pull you out.  It's not far."

Lieber frowned at them, then raised his eyes to the light-dappled decks of the
Florida
.  He said nothing, nor did he jump.  Instead, he turned the release valve.

"He's going to come down dry!"

The sailors chuckled.  The very idea... to float this far out to sea and come down dry!  Deftly, they maneuvered the boat so that it remained under the car.

The moment after the basket touched the centerboard, the deflated balloon began settling down all around them.  Hart caught a whiff of coal gas, but most of it had dispersed, and they were safe.

The men in the boat had been under a strain for months and the deadliest kind of pressure for days.  First, one man laughed out loud.  Then another.  Until the entire boat was doubled over their oars in unfettered mirth.

"Fritz!  Where are you?" Hart called, battling the baggy muslin.

"Over here.  I hit my head.  I thought I was asleep and dreaming.  Is that you, Mr. Hart?"

Hart found the German and gripped him by the arms.  "It's a miracle."

There was no laughter in the rescued man.  By the spasmodic jerking of his shoulders, Hart knew he was fighting tears.

Light shown through the balloon envelope.  The
Florida's
searchlights, piercing the fabric like an impatient mother at a bedroom door.  The petty officer in charge finally got a grip on himself and asked, "You see anything from up there the last few hours?  We wounded the serpent.  We're looking to finish the job."

"No," Lieber answered in a strained voice.  "Before dark I saw storm clouds to the north.  I was losing height.  There was nothing to do but sleep."

The crewmen's laughter abruptly ceased when he added:

"Wait!  Some time after dark... a noise woke me up.  I thought it was the
Florida
running without lights and I shouted.  It could have been hours ago.  Or minutes.  Maybe it was a dream."

But the men were already desperately pulling and tearing at the balloon.  In a few minutes they were free and rowing like mad back to the mother ship.

"Damn thing must be bled dry by now."

"Twice over."

Oates overheard the whispers of his lookouts, but said nothing.  He raised a hand.  Automatically, his servant appeared from the sea cabin and handed him another cup of coffee.

The first lieutenant caught the captain's eye and cocked his brow.

"Keep going," Oates said firmly.

"Aye, sir."  He made a show of glancing up at the bridge clock, repaired only an hour ago.

"Damn it, man!  We have fuel for two, three hours yet before we have to turn back!"

"Yes, sir.  But the coal log--"

"To hell with the coal log!"

"If we could reduce speed--"

"
Flank
speed
!" Oates shouted hoarsely.

The searchlight beams glared off the water.  The blood streak was often impossible to discern in the increasingly choppy water.  Only by virtue of keeping a man on the leadsman's platform were they able to follow it at all.

"Keep going," Oates ordered.

"Sir, the blood's thinning out.  There's a storm coming."

"Keep going."

"Sir, the Chief reports--"

"Keep going."

"Sir...."

"Sir...?"

At half past midnight the first lieutenant pried the mug from Captain Oates' dead fingers.  He looked at the sagging body a moment, then proceeded to finish off the lukewarm coffee.

"Ring back one-third."

The helmsman licked his lips and took several deep breaths.  "Back one-third, sir!"

"Right full rudder.  Bring us about one hundred eighty degrees.  The bastard's dead.  Let's go home."

No one dared ask who he was talking about.

From the
Deck Log of the
USS Florida
:

Nothing of interest to report.

Fortunately for the salvage team, the storms washed away some of the smell.  But the mother Tu
-
nel had been a sloppy eater. Had she not been lured away by the
Florida's
galley scraps, she would have been more assiduous in cleaning the meat off the dead male's bones and would have broken open the ribcage for the offal inside.  In any event, a great deal had been left to rot.  The squalls only partially dampened the stench.  The men who attached lines to the skeleton and arranged the floats to either side of it were compelled to wear brine
-
soaked handkerchiefs over their faces.  They looked like bandits robbing the paleontology exhibit at the Smithsonian.

It had been Singleton's idea to haul the skeleton on board intact, rather than chopping it up into more manageable portions.

"You want me to ferry that giant stinking corpse halfway across the Pacific?" the first lieutenant had asked him wryly.

"You could hack it to pieces, of course.  But look at it this way:  Think of how many questions could be answered at a glance if you sail into Pearl Harbor with the serpent draped over your aft decks.  Think of the questions that will be answered in the States when people see photographs of it."

There could be no denying there would be plenty of questions.  One for each dead man, at least.  And a passel more for the damage to the battleship.  It did not take much consideration on the acting commander's part to grant Singleton's request.

The doctor was overwhelmed with gratitude.  Scientifically speaking, he was benefit to the boon of all time.  Not only would he have the complete skeleton of a denizen of prehistory, he would have it intact.  A fact more precious than all the tea and tin and silver and gold in China to scientists who, up to now, had had to deal with incomplete skeletons and conjecture.  Now they would know how the joints articulated.  They could pickle the serpent's innards and speak of flesh rather than fossil.

And Singleton would be a made man.  Rich beyond dreams, sought more than suffered.  He wanted to kiss the first lieutenant's hand for his concession.  The first lieutenant would probably not have minded.

So the salvage crews were sent out.  Once Midway's remaining barge was used to glut the
Florida's
bunkers with coal, it was converted into a sea
-
going hearse of major proportions.  Using the powerful winches of the sea tug, as well as portable donkey engines from the
Florida
, the corpse would be hauled onto the barge, hence to the battleship.  A break in the weather had been needed to begin.  When it came, every man not at work stood out to watch.