Time and Tide

by Thomas Fleming

  The first torpedo knocked everyone out of their chairs and sent flames roaring down the passageway from Officers' Country. The second one hit just beneath them, and the whole room burst into flame, like the inside of a giant firecracker. West rolled under the table to escape the first gush of flame and in one continuous movement worthy of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., escaped the second flash by coming out the other side and diving headfirst through the pantry window, landing on top of the mess steward of the watch, Willard Otis.

  The flash fire died away. West stumbled back into the charred wardroom and found Bob Mullenoe lying on the deck, his hair, his arms, his chest aflame. West tore off his own jacket and beat out the fire. "Get him up on deck," he said to Otis.

  "There's fire everywhere!" Otis said. Flames were roaring through the hatches fore and aft.

  The chaplain crawled over to them. "I think Dr. Cadwallader's dead," he said. "So is Lieutenant MacComber."

  Smoke was rapidly filling the wardroom. West dashed to a porthole and tore it open. He stuck out his head to get a gulp of air and a manrope dangling from the main deck hit him in the face. With the help of the chaplain and Otis, he lifted the semiconscious Mullenoe through the porthole and hoisted him to the main deck. He went down to pull out the chaplain. When he returned for Otis, the steward lifted MacComber up to him. "I heard him screamin'. He was lyin' in the fire," he said.

  MacComber's face looked like underdone steak. The flames were roaring all around Otis. "Put your arms around my neck!" West said.

  "I'm goin' below to see if I can help my buddies!"

  "They're all dead. That second torpedo hit right under their compartment," West said. "Get out here. That's an order!"

  Otis climbed out the porthole and grabbed West around the neck. As sailors hauled them up to the main deck, flames leaped out the porthole, searing West's legs.

  Marty Roth had been standing the top watch in the after fire room when the torpedoes hit. Looking down on the four men on the deckplates before the boilers, he saw a wall of water and oil from the reserve tanks burst over them. He leaped to the ladder that led to the ventilator shaft. The water was swirling around his feet as he got to it. Behind him, he saw the terrified face of his striker. Roth had calmed his fear of the engine room by showing him how to get out fast, the way Amos Cartwright had showed him almost three years ago. Now Roth grabbed the striker's outstretched arm and hauled him onto the ladder. Together they scrambled up the dark narrow tube to the top, where Roth shoved open the hatch and stumbled onto the main deck.

  Where was his abandon ship station? Where was a life preserver? "What's gonna happen? Are we sinking?" the striker asked.

  "I think so," Roth said. He was amazed at how calm he was. Amos, he prayed, if you've got any influence where you are now, help me out.

  An officer came by. It was Commander Moss. He was handing out life jackets. He had Marines with him, each carrying a half dozen of the bulky things. "Is there anyone here from the black gang?" Moss asked.

  "Here. Watertender Roth, sir."

  "We can't get them on the telephones. Go down there and make sure everyone knows we're abandoning ship."

  It was a terrifying reversal of the race he had run three years ago, when Amos Cartwright showed him how fast he could escape from the fire room. Down the ladders Roth clattered to the after engine room. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating. Lights blazed, throttlemen stood before the annunciators, the turbines throbbed. Oz Bradley was on the telephone, urgently calling the bridge.

  "Abandon ship. They told me to pass the word," he shouted from the top plates.

  "Who told you?" Bradley roared.

  "Commander Moss."

  "That birdbrain hasn't got the authority to give that order," Bradley growled. "We're staying here till we get it from the captain."

  "Everything amidships is gone. Power, lights. The forward fire room and engine room are under water."

  Terror blanked the faces of the throttlemen. Bradley was unmoved. "All the more reason for us to stay on duty."

  The ship listed another ten degrees to port. It was time to stop arguing with Commander Bradley. Roth fled up the ladders to the main deck. As he got there, the list became a lurch. The Jefferson City was starting to roll over. Roth decided it was time to get in the water.

  Outside the captain's cabin, shipfitters and machinist's mates directed by George Tombs attacked the crumpled bulkheads and twisted steel beams with sledgehammers and welding torches and metal cutting saws.

  "We'll get you out, Captain, don't worry," one shouted.

  Above the crunch of the hammers and the rasp of the saws, Captain McKay heard the shrieks and groans of his ship's death throes. The deck shuddered beneath him.

  "Art," George Tombs shouted, "are you badly hurt?"

  "Yes. I'm pretty sure my neck is broken."

  "I recommend we abandon ship. She's losing seaworthiness fast. Should I pass the word?"

  "Yes. Abandon ship. Take those men with you. She's going to roll over any minute, George."

  "Captain, I swear to Christ we can get you out," the shipfitter roared.

  "Abandon ship. That's an order."

  The deck tilted steeply under Captain McKay, sliding him against the crumpled bulkhead. He looked up and saw Win Kemble standing beside the painting of the Chinese traveler. They were in darkness now, the blackest imaginable darkness, but Arthur McKay somehow saw the friend of his life, pointing to the image of the sage descending the mountain in the mists of Asia a thousand years ago.

  Blood streamed from Win's eye. He glared triumphantly at Arthur McKay. Now do you believe me? he said. Do you still believe in your ridiculous ideas about loyalty, compassion, brotherhood?

  Win was asking for his soul. He was asking Arthur McKay to join him in eternal loneliness.

  No. In this moment of supreme terror and grief there was still a sense, a knowledge, of purpose. They were playing two parts. One was innocence, courage, honor, crucified by meaningless accident. That was the way the world would see the fate of the Jefferson City. The way her crew would see it for a long time, perhaps forever. But the captain saw they were also playing another part in a larger drama. They were the sacrifice, the bullock laid on the sea's altar to warn men that God still watched over the world. From an immense distance His hand could still reach out to warn, to teach, to chastise.

  Would Americans see the meaning? He doubted it. But he saw it. It gave Arthur McKay the strength to repudiate Win Kemble's choice, one last time.

  Tears of grief for his friend, for himself, streamed down his face. "It was still wrong, Win. It's not all illusion. I won't come with you."

  Win's face contorted into a mask of rage more terrible than anything Arthur McKay had ever seen. From his mouth came the wail of a damned soul. Then he was gone and the Jefferson City was gone too. The sea thundered up through the compartments to swallow the living and the dead. Captain McKay heard it rumbling toward him. Mingled with it were the screams of men still trapped below decks.

  His men, his crew! Would any of them ever understand, accept, the sacrifice they were becoming? All he could offer was a captain's version of the skeptic's prayer. O Lord, I believe, help thou their unbelief. Without reproach to God or man, Arthur McKay accepted his sailor's death.

  On deck, Homewood seized Flanagan's shoulder. "Did you hear that?" he shouted.

  All Flanagan and everyone else heard was another unearthly shriek, not so different from previous ones coming from the hull. But it was the signal Homewood seemed to be waiting for. "She's finished," he said. "Let's get in the water. Remember what I told you about stickin' together. We're five hundred miles from land. Stick together and the Navy'll be here by noon tomorrow."

  The deck suddenly turned into a vertical skidway. There was no need to jump into the ocean. The sea rose to meet them. Flanagan got a glimpse of the mainmast crashing down on men already in the water. He went in headfirst and swallowed a nauseating mouthful of oil. Homewood was bes
ide him, shouting to the others to push the raft free. No one paid any attention to him. They were too busy trying to get away from the ship.

  The stern of the Jefferson City loomed over them for another few seconds, one of the screws still slowly turning. With a sucking sigh she plunged beneath the surface. They were alone on the dark face of the Pacific.

  Oh Here Us When We Cry To Thee

  For Frank Flanagan the first hours in the water were pure nausea. The oil he had swallowed made him violently ill. He puked until his whole body ached. So did almost every other member of F Division. The heavy chop of the sea sloshed more oil into their faces. It burned their eyes and nostrils and puckered their lips. In the moonless darkness, they rapidly became demoralized. Flanagan heard men sobbing and praying.

  Homewood spent the night steadying them. He swam around them, urging them to stay together. "They'll be out to get us as soon as it's light," he shouted.

  The sun rose to reveal they were part of a pod of perhaps a hundred and twenty men in the middle of a vast heaving slick of oil. About a half mile north was another pod of about three hundred men, also in the oil. Smaller groups were spread out almost to the horizon. In the center of Flanagan's pod was a life raft. In it were Harold Semple, Jerome Wilkinson and a half dozen of his friends.

  Some men had no life jackets. They clung to cork-rimmed floater nets which had been attached to the turrets and bulkheads above decks and automatically rose to the surface when the ship went down. Others were depending on rubber belts, inflated by a capsule of CO, Others were using crates, empty ammunition cans and other pieces of flotsam to raise themselves a few inches above the surface of the sea.

  Homewood circled the pod and swam back to Flanagan. "I can't figure it out. There ain't no officers worth mentionin'. What happened to them?"

  "The two torpedoes bracketed Officers' Country," Montgomery West said. "Most of them never got out of their staterooms."

  West was unrecognizable, his handsome face smeared with fuel oil. He was supporting another man, equally smeared. It took Flanagan a moment to realize it was their gunnery officer, Commander Mullenoe. A few feet away, Mess Steward Willard Otis was holding Lieutenant MacComber's head above water. He was babbling a woman's name. It sounded like "Melanie."

  "Somebody's got to take charge of these guys, fast, Lieutenant," Homewood said to West. "It looks like you're it."

  Dr. Levy swam over to them. "We've got a lot of wounded men," he said. "We can't do anything for them in the water. Let's get as many as possible on the life raft."

  They pushed through the ring of men around the raft. "Make way, make way," Homewood roared. Flanagan, his strength returning as his stomach settled, helped Otis drag Lieutenant MacComber. Neither had a life jacket.

  At the raft, West said, "If you people aren't hurt, get in the water. We need this raft for the wounded."

  "Go fuck yourself," Wilkinson said. "I cut this fuckin' raft away and it's mine. No one's gettin' in it who ain't a pal of mine.”

  "That's mutiny, you son of a bitch," Homewood said.

  "Yeah? Put me on report, you butt sucker," Wilkinson said.

  Mullenoe opened his seared eyes. In a voice that was barely a croak, he said, "Wilkinson, get out of that raft."

  "I'll get out. But I ain't goin' more than a foot away from it. I'm gonna be the first guy back in when the sharks arrive."

  A ripple of fear swept through the men in the water. There were about a dozen manropes on the side of the raft. Wilkinson kicked away six men clinging to them and appropriated them for him and his friends. West and Flanagan got into the raft and started pulling Mullenoe aboard.

  "No, no," he said. They paid no attention to him. They assumed he was crying out from the pain of his burns.

  "Put me back in the water," he said as Homewood towed a half dozen wounded men toward them.

  "No, Bob," West said.

  "The men come first," he said. "I don't think I'm going to make it anyway."

  "Yes you are!" West said.

  "Put me back."

  They lowered him into the water, and someone gave him a manrope. To their amazement, when they tried to haul Lieutenant MacComber aboard, he imitated Mullenoe's example. For the next half hour, Flanagan and Homewood towed other wounded men to the raft. West and Levy hauled them aboard, jamming a half dozen on the oval bottom, sitting them on the sides if they had the strength. At least twenty others drifted nearby in their life jackets, many barely conscious. Levy did what he could for them. But he had no instruments or medicine, except some surettes of morphine which he had grabbed as he fled sick bay.

  Maybe there was a god after all, and He was mocking him, Levy thought. All he could offer these men was Cadwallader's kindness and a few shreds of scientific information. He told badly burned men they were fine, they were going to be all right. When he knew they would not live another twenty-four hours, even if they were rescued. He gave a lecture on how to survive a shark attack. "Just float as quietly as possible on your back. The chances are good they'll go away." He spent even more time lecturing them against drinking saltwater. "It causes convulsions. It's a horrible way to die," he said.

  By ten o'clock they had discovered another enemy: the sun. It beat on them with tropic ferocity. Flanagan could feel his lips swelling, blistering. The glare on the water was unbearable. Soon there were cries of panic. "Doctor, I'm going blind."

  "It's photophobia," Dr. Levy said. "Like snowblindness. Close your eyes. It'll help."

  Flanagan and others obeyed and were horrified to discover that their eyes glowed like two red balls in their heads. Some of them could not handle it.

  "We're turning into freaks," one of the Bobbsey Twins cried. "Into deep-sea fish," the other one said.

  "No you ain't," Homewood said. "Cut the bullshit. The less talkin' the better."

  "Mr. West," asked fire controlman Ralph Bourne, West's old nemesis in main plot, "did we get off a distress message?"

  "I'm sure we did," West lied.

  The sun beat down. One of the wounded men sitting on the side of the raft pointed to the edge of the pod. "Oh, Christ," he said.

  "What is it?" Flanagan asked. It was difficult to see above the heads of the men around him. He boosted himself up on the raft and saw a half dozen black fins moving back and forth through the dark blue water.

  "Ahhhh!"

  A scream from a man on the fringe of the group. He flailed the water with his hands, and Flanagan saw the froth swiftly turn to blood. Dr. Levy stared in dismay as hysteria annihilated his scientific advice. Men beat the water to chive the killers away. At least a dozen abandoned the group and swam off to form a small pod of their own around a crate. Wilkinson climbed back on the raft, flinging wounded men into the water. The sharks struck again and again. Then for no reason anyone could discern, they vanished.

  West ordered Wilkinson back in the water. Spewing curses, he obeyed.

  "Where's the fuckin' chaplain?" Homewood said. "We could use some prayers.”

  Chaplain Bushnell was with the 300-man pod. Discipline was much better in this group. The executive officer, George Tombs, and the damage control officer, Edwin Moss, were with them; Tombs took charge. They too had their quota of badly burned and wounded. There were two rafts in the center of their pod, and the wounded were placed in them with no arguments. Bushnell did his best to console them. Like Dr. Levy, he assured everyone they were going to be fine, and rescue was certain to come before the end of the day.

  Commander Tombs promptly made a fool out of him. Someone asked him if an SOS had been sent.

  "I ordered one, but with all the power knocked out I doubt if they got it off," he said.

  "When'll they start looking for us?" Marty Roth asked. He had swallowed oil when he hit the water and had been sick most of the night, like Flanagan.

  "Tomorrow is the soonest we can hope for," Tombs said. "That's when we're due at Leyte."

  "Tomorrow?"

  The thought of spending another night in
the water horrified everyone.

  Chaplain Bushnell urged them to pray. While they said the Our Father in unison, he asked himself why he had been spared from the flash of flame that had incinerated the wardroom. What was the purpose behind it? His intellect told him there was none. It was all part of the cosmic joke nature had played on man two million years ago, when it allowed him to develop a brain that asked why. But his battered heart persisted in asking the question and in hoping for an answer.

  Tombs told him and others around them how the captain had died refusing to let them rescue him. Opaque, the captain remained opaque to Emerson Bushnell. He had repudiated Bushnell and all his works. He had denounced him for undermining the resolution of Captain Kemble. But he had allowed him to stay aboard the ship. He had told him he hoped he would change his mind about what he had done before the war ended. He seemed to have faith that this change would take place.

  How? Why? Emerson Bushnell prayed.

  "A plane! Oh, Christ, look, a plane!" someone yelled.

  Photophobic eyes were lifted to the glaring sky. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, 1600 hours Navy time. They had been in the water sixteen hours and it already seemed like sixteen thousand.

  The murderous sun glinted on a silver fuselage, no larger than a fingertip. It had to be flying at 25,000 feet. They watched it bore into the blue distance.

  "They've got to be lookin' for us," Homewood said.

  "Why are the dumb bastards flyin' so high?"

  "They're afraid we might shoot them down," Flanagan said. "There's a Very pistol in the raft. Should we fire it?" Dr. Levy asked.

  "What do you think, Boats?" West asked.

  "Too high," Homewood said.

  As night fell, the wind rose and the water turned cold. For many it seemed like death was creeping from the deep with icy fingers. For some death was real.

  "West," Mullenoe. whispered. "I can't hang on any longer. I wanted to stay till dark, so the men wouldn't see me go. Take off my life jacket and give it to someone who needs it."

  "Bob, they'll be here tomorrow. We're due at Leyte tomorrow. They've got to start looking for us."