The frogmen

by Robb White

  The vast emptiness of the Pacific shrank the little outrigger into a splinter of wood.

  John Nash was almost gone. Lying in the bottom of the boat, completely covered by one of the copra sacks, he was a corpse who sometimes came to life for a moment to whisper to them and then die again.

  It was hard to tell which were worse, the days or the nights. The nights were ice-cold—long and dangerous and lonely. But at least they provided relief from the terrible, flesh-flaying sun.

  Amos and Max hoped for rain, but when the sky darkened with it and the squalls came, the rain saved their lives with water and almost killed them with

  wind and seas which swamped them, filling the narrow hull so that, while one caught rain in a half coconut shell, the other bailed with the other half, all the while keeping John's head above the water.

  This night was ending, the glow of the awful sun beginning in the east. John was still alive, a pulse faintly beating. Amos dropped the limp hand back into the bilge water and looked despairingly around at the empty horizon.

  The only assurance he found that they were even in the world was the sight of Sundance. Each day it had grown more distant, so that, this morning, it was only a purple shape that seemed oddly detached from the sea, as though the purple mountains were floating above the surface of the water, hanging there in the brightening sky, between the blue water and a heavy bank of low, ugly clouds.

  In the stern Max sat cradling John's head in his hands to keep his face clear of the water. Now he moved his legs a little and rested John's head on them so that he could stretch out his arms.

  To Amos he looked like some huge, gaunt, black bird.

  "What day is it?" Max asked.

  He had asked that every day and Amos said the same thing every day. "It's been a long time since my watch stopped. I should've wound it."

  "How many days have passed isn't important," Max said. "It's how many are left. And that's not very important either." He began to bail with the coconut shell. "One day we stopped paddling. That's

  one. Then we caught that big yellowtail, that's a day. Then when we turned over, but was that the same day or the next day?"

  "The next, I think."

  Amos began unlashing the scuba. There was a better chance of getting a fish early in the morning before the heat drove them too deep in the water.

  This was their last tank of air. When it was gone there would be no more food. Amos had mixed feelings about that, for eating the raw fish they caught was not an easy thing to do.

  John made a sound under the sack and Max lifted it away from his face. "What'd you say, buddy?"

  It was just a whisper. "Is there any water?"

  The coconut shell was empty, but Amos said, "There're big clouds over Sundance. It'll rain after a while, John." He lifted the sack from John's legs, and it made him sick to see them.

  "I can hear the thunder," John said.

  Amos looked back at Sundance and saw the yellow-black streaks of lightning shooting through the heavy clouds. The sound of thunder was almost constant.

  With each storm, they had hoped that it was not thunder, not lightning, but those hopes had died. At first they had searched the sea all day long, watching for the gray ships to appear, but now they didn't talk about it any more and didn't look at the emptiness very much.

  Max helped Amos swing the tank around to his back and get the hoses over his head. "That's a whole

  lot of storm," Max said, holding the weight belt for him. "I never heard so much thunder."

  It seemed to shake the ocean and came rolling over them in waves.

  "Big," Amos said. "I hope it wears itself out before it hits us. We couldn't handle it the way it is now."

  Max's eyes grew anxious. "Listen to that wind coming."

  Amos raised his head, listening. The wind was a sweeping, hammering sound, growing louder and louder as it came toward them.

  Max said, "We'd better put John in the water now before he gets thrown in."

  And then Amos saw them.

  The bluish-gray planes were down so close to the water that they were hard to distinguish from the sea itself, but soon he saw the bright disks of the propellers.

  The planes came over them in waves, one after the other, the blast of their prop wash flattening the sea and buffeting the boat.

  "Lift his head," Amos yelled above the roar.

  But the sound of them began to die, and no more came.

  Amos followed them with his eyes and saw the ships, just small, ragged breaks in the smooth, straight line of the horizon.

  And then the sound began again, not as loud now; a remote, lonely sound of hammering.

  A single plane appeared, flying back toward Sun-

  dance. As it neared them it came down low over the water and began a slow circle around them.

  Amos was waving both arms. He could see the pilot looking down at them; he could even see the man's expression. Stern but interested. At last the pilot raised a gloved hand, waved once, leveled off, and flew away.

  "Did you see that, John?" Amos asked, yelling with excitement. "Did you see it I"

  "U. S. Navy," John said. "It was written on it." He lifted his head out of Max's hands. "I told you," he said. "They can't kill me."

  Robb White has actually lived the adventurous life most people only dream of. He was born in the Philippine Islands, where his father was a missionary, and almost got killed there as a naval officer aboard a carrier in World War II. Determined to be a writer since he was thirteen, he attended the Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, and was graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. As an officer on inactive duty, he began the wanderings that have taken him from the caves of Kurdistan to his own private island in the Caribbean to his beach house in Malibu. He has flown as a pilot and served in submarines, carriers, battleships, and sailboats. He has written a great many short stories and twenty-three books, including The Survivor, Silent Ship, Silent Sea, and Deathwatch, as well as Up Periscope, Candy, and Our Virgin Island, which were made into movies. While in Hollywood he wrote many screenplays and dozens of TV scripts. Now a retired Navy captain, he lives with his wife in Montecito, California.

  I

  —ifci