Dust on the Sea (26 page)

The water somehow felt warm. The air was colder. He had not noticed it before, wondered how long he could last in these conditions. He had read that in the North Atlantic in the winter a man could live only minutes in the water before his body temperature became so far reduced that his vital forces simply came to a halt. Here it was not so bad. Maybe he could last until morning, perhaps even longer if he were lucky. Surely the
Eel
would come back soon!

Paddling with his hands, he turned completely about, searched in all directions. His binoculars still hung around his neck. He shook them as dry as he could, tried to use them. They were little help. Although the sea had seemed nearly calm from the deck of the submarine, there was, in fact, a small swell which effectively prevented his seeing more than fifty or a hundred feet in any direction. He debated taking the leather thong from around his neck and allowing the binoculars to sink in the water, decided not to. He might be able to use them after dawn broke. That was, however, nearly twelve hours away.

He thought he heard something, a distant hail, a voice shouting something. Again he turned around, paddling with his hands, tried to determine the direction from which the voice came, listened intently.

“Ahoy!” the voice shouted. He turned toward it.

“Ahoy!” he yelled. He could see nothing. “Ahoy!” he yelled again.

“Here! Over here!” the voice said.

He began torturously to swim, encumbered by his clothes and the life belt around his middle. He had not even removed his shoes, feeling that the maximum protection he could get against the ultimate cold of the seawater would be to his benefit.

He swam several minutes, stopped, and listened. He was making progress. The voice was louder. Soon he was able to recognize it. Oregon, also floating in the sea, also supported by a life belt.

“Jee-sus, Captain! When I saw the ship go under with you perched on top of the hatch under the bridge overhang, I never thought you'd make it out again!”

“What happened, Oregon? What did you see?”

“Nothing, sir. I fell in the water, and when I got up I saw you trying to get the hatch shut, so I started climbing up the periscope shears. She went down like a rock, sir. I could hear water going into the main induction. That must have made her really heavy, and when the periscope shears went under I just floated off the top. After a while I started yelling, figuring if you came up maybe you'd hear me, and anyway, the
Eel
should come back looking for us. They'll be up pretty soon, don't you think, sir?”

“Any minute now, I think,” reassured Richardson, but he wondered
if he could believe his own words. With the hydraulic system out of commission, whatever the cause, the main vents somehow open—though they could, with difficulty, be closed by hand—and with the main induction system flooded,
Eel
would be having many problems.

But how could the vents have been opened in the first place? Especially without hydraulic power? The explanation, the only possible explanation, was that the last time the vents had been cycled they had not properly closed. Cycling the vents—opening and shutting them—was customary once or twice a watch while submerged, to release any air that might have leaked into the ballast tanks. If they did not close properly, the fact should have been evident on the red-and-green “Christmas Tree” light panel; but it might have escaped attention. When goggles were worn in a redded-out, darkened compartment, green lights could not be seen at all. Without goggles, they were so brilliant as to hurt the eyes, which then, somehow, could not separate the reds. Understandably, the absence of some green lights might not have been noticed!

If so, if this was what had happened, the fault for the casualty could only be one of command. He should have noticed that
Eel
was not floating normally, that her freeboard was decreasing as the air blown into the tanks leaked out through the partly open vent valves. It would have been so easy for Oregon and him to step quietly inside the hatch again! He could blame no one but himself. Dark shadows descended on his mind. His own incompetence, his failure to keep his mind on his job, had brought his ship and his crew to this disaster!

Sensing Richardson's mood, Oregon too was silent. Side by side the two men floated in the Yellow Sea. Several minutes—a quarter of an hour—passed. Rich aroused himself. He still owed a duty to the one member of his crew destined to share with him whatever the uncertain future held. “Oregon,” he said, “I shouldn't try to kid you about what shape
Eel
might be in. Even if they do make it back up in a short while, there's no telling if they'll be able to find us with the kind of visibility we've been having around here. Do you have any line on you? We should lash ourselves together. We may be floating here a long time.”

“I've been thinking the same, Captain,” said Oregon. “You don't lie so good neither, sir. Maybe these lacings from our parkas would do for a light lashing.”

Then another thought struck Richardson, dissipated the lethargy that had engulfed him. “Oregon,” he said, “there's something else besides
Eel
around here.”

“Sir?”

“Remember that radar contact we had just before the boat slipped under? . . . Well, it must have been a ship, probably a small one, because we didn't see it before we surfaced. We didn't have it on the radar right away, either. It could be anything. Even another submarine. But I'm guessing, whatever it is, most likely it's made of wood, and it's got to be Japanese!”

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E
xcept for the cold air, his life belt supported him so well that he was not physically uncomfortable at all, thought Richardson. He and Oregon pulled out the strings around the bottoms of their parkas, twisted the cords together into a single strand of double strength, and then lashed themselves together. They left enough slack so that each man could have a modicum of individual motion without discomfort to the other. Perhaps they could last thus several days, but he doubted it. Even though he could feel the cold only slightly, it was already sapping the strength from him. Without food or water, or sleep, the longest he could honestly hope he and the quartermaster could survive was about twenty-four hours. Despite his rather pessimistic second prediction to Oregon, he had in fact privately thought that
Eel
would be back very soon to look for them. Her failure to reappear could mean only one thing: that the situation on board was serious, possibly downright critical. Gradually his secret optimism gave way to a more sober assessment. In twenty-four hours he and Oregon would simply drift off to sleep. They might float for days, dead in their life belts.

Richardson judged it must be about midnight—his watch, advertised “waterproof,” had not been proof against depth—when he became aware that he was hearing something. He turned about, trying to orient himself to the slight breeze, equalize the sound in his ears.

There was no doubt about it. He could hear a motor, or an engine, running. The two men strained to hear more clearly: The sound was approaching, grew more defined. Finally both were forced to admit that by no stretch could it be a submarine diesel.

“Maybe it's that contact we had on the radar just before we dipped under,” said Oregon.

“That's what I was thinking too,” agreed Richardson. He fumbled with his life belt. One of its attachments was a single-cell waterproof flashlight for just such contingencies. He brought it up, held it in his hand, looked at it.

“Going to signal them, Skipper?” asked Oregon.

“I was thinking of it. If we don't, the
Eel
might come back, but then, she might not for a while. How long do you think you can last in this water?”

“I don't know, sir,” said Oregon. His normally ruddy face showed ghostly white in what light there was. “I'm okay, but I'm starting to feel the cold, I think. Maybe a day, or a couple of days.”

“Me too,” said Richardson, inspecting the flashlight carefully. Maybe it would be better to let the noise go past and take their chances in the water. At worst they would die a peaceful death as their body machinery slowly ran down. Perhaps this was to be his atonement. Too bad Oregon had to be involved too.

The sound grew louder. The ship, or boat, would pass fairly close aboard. “Well, what do you say, Oregon?” Richardson asked. “If I put on the light, we go to a Jap prison camp, maybe worse. If I don't, we may float around here forever. Maybe the
Eel
will come back in a day or so, maybe not.”

The quartermaster did not answer. Richardson hesitated. Oregon's face was working, “I don't know which would be worse,” he finally said. “I—I guess you'll have to decide, Captain. It'll be worse for you than for me, I think, anyhow.”

“You mean if they find out about the last patrol?”

“No sir, no sir, I wasn't thinking of that—the war can't last much longer, don't you think? We won't be too long in prison camp—it's just that you're the skipper. They always treat the skippers worst, don't they?”

But Richardson was sure that Bungo Pete was exactly what Oregon was thinking about. Japan obviously could not hold on much longer. Soon the island-hopping campaign would bring the U.S. Navy to her front door in force that could be neither denied nor delayed. Imprisonment in a POW camp would be of short duration for the average, run-of-the-mill prisoner. Not so for the man who had killed Bungo Pete. There was little prospect he would live that long.

But that mattered little at the moment, Richardson quickly realized. What mattered, instead, was Oregon's loyal attempt not to permit his own hopes for survival to affect his skipper's thinking.

The noise of the engine—it could now be identified as a lightweight diesel engine, or possibly even a gasoline engine, poorly muffled, besides—approached closer. Richardson waited until he felt it was as near as it was likely to come. Having had no opportunity to test the light, he was surprised it functioned.

Richardson's captor was the biggest and heaviest Japanese he had ever seen, and it was soon clear that the boat he commanded was far more than an ordinary Japanese fishing boat. While superficially similar to a large sea-going sampan, the boat must have been built like an
ancient war-junk. She had two masts with the usual mattinglike sails, which were furled on deck, and she was large, half the length of
Eel
, even broader of beam. She was newly built of extremely heavy timbers, with the exception of the masts, which seemed light and spindly for a craft of her size. Between the masts there was a wooden deckhouse with a gently domed roof of long thin reeds. But beneath the reeds there was clearly a strong wooden roof as well. The whole structure of the craft seemed to be much more solid than an ordinary fishing sampan, even a sea-going one, might need to be.

More, Richardson had not been permitted to observe. He now sat uncomfortably on a stool in the deckhouse, arms bound behind his back, facing someone who could be no one else than the Japanese skipper. The man was tremendous in size, and he spoke perfect English.

“So,” he said, “will you tell me again, please, how you came to be here?” He carefully pronounced the word “please,” but there was otherwise no hint of the traditional Japanese difficulty with the letter L.

“We escaped from that submarine that was depth charged and sunk.”

“You're lying!”

“I am telling you the truth. The submarine was disabled. We waited until the depth charging stopped, and then some of us escaped with breathing apparatus.”

Without warning the Japanese jumped to his feet, struck Richardson in the face with a clenched hammy fist. He knocked him off the stool, kicked him several times in the stomach. As Rich tried to roll away from him to protect his abdomen, he shouted a stream of orders in Japanese. Two men came in the compartment, picked Richardson up, sat him again on the stool.

“Now,” said the moon-faced Japanese captain, “you are going to stop insulting my intelligence!” He held a heavy stick in his hand, waited a moment for Richardson to answer, then struck him across the side of the head with it. Richardson saw the blow coming, ducked his head so that the club struck the upper part of his skull instead of the thin area of his temple. There was not enough room in the tiny compartment for the big Japanese really to swing the timber. It hurt excruciatingly, nevertheless. Tiny amoebalike blobs drifted back and forth in front of his vision. Still he remained silent. He saw the second blow coming, could not dodge it. It struck the side of his face. He could feel the blood in his mouth, the pain along his jawbone and in his head as he lost consciousness.

He came to as he was being carried across the deck. He felt himself being lowered through a companionway, and then apparently a door
was opened and he was placed, fairly gently, it seemed to him, inside a small room. His head ached, and there was blood in his mouth, but the surcease from beating felt heavenly. There was not sufficient floor space to lie at full length. He curled up in the position in which he had been placed and, his arms still bound behind him, fell again into a comatose state which gradually transformed itself into sleep.

Morning came a few hours later, and with it Richardson's inquisitor had apparently decided to change his tactics. Richardson was tightly held by the two crewmen who had brought him. He faced him, standing. “Listen carefully,” the huge, round-faced Japanese captain said. “Point one, just in case you wondered, I grew up in Berkeley, California, and graduated from Cal before the war. So don't try anything funny with me. Point two, this ship is a patrol unit of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Point three, three of our larger antisubmarine escorts destroyed one of your submarines last week, not far from here. It was damaged and sank to the bottom, where we heard it making desperate efforts to save itself. We located it by dragging with grapnels, and after we hooked it, we blew it apart by sliding depth charges down the grapnel wires. Point four, there were no survivors.” He looked Rich in the eye with a malevolent grin.