But the galley was a catastrophe. Pots, pans and utensils were strewn over the deck. These could be explained away. But not the duff sauce.
Tossing a rag at William, he hissed, "One hand or not, you got me in this. Help me clean up!" Then he grabbed a mop and plied it desperately across the tiles. What was happening topside? The former Seaman Second Class was stuck cleaning gunk off the deck while chaos reigned overhead. Reef or war mattered little compared to what would happen to him if the Fust Luff caught them. No doubt he would accuse Macklin of dragging the sick boy out of the infirmary to practice voodoo in the galley.
When they were done, Amos gave vent to his anger. "You're more trouble than you're worth. Go back to sick bay! Clean yourself off. Get back in bed!"
William followed him out the rear galley hatch. Both of them stopped when Ensign Garrett was marched past them, obviously under arrest. Dreading the armed guards, Amos ducked back into the galley. "Get away from me!" he shouted at William, then ran through the dining hall and into the corridor.
The air was still potent with the stench of the twelve- and eight-inchers. Amos didn't know what was happening, but from the clanging of the ammunition hoists he concluded more action was imminent. One could not shuck the Navy overnight. He had to get back to the work detail in case they were ordered into damage control reserve.
He was passing one of the ventilating trunks when he heard the deep thrum of guns pounding overhead. The shaft acted like a giant voice tube, conveying the reverberations into the depths of the ship. He raced ahead, oblivious to the looks of disgust given his duff-odor as he passed sailors in the narrow corridors.
Suddenly, the aisle tilted crazily like a game box, splaying him against the wall. He heard a familiar sound. Desperate to get back to the work party, he let out a shout of dismay when the horizontal bulkhead doors slid shut.
Nearly every other battleship in the Fleet was fitted with bulkhead doors operated by a central electrical switch. But the ancient Florida had the same kind of hydraulically operated doors that had given ships of the last century endless trouble. Even on a steady sea they had a tendency to close spontaneously--for no other reason, it would seem, than that they had a mind to. Amos was trapped with seven other men in a twenty-yard stretch of corridor. A dull pounding aft signaled others in the identical predicament. The hatches were made to resist the efforts of desperate men as well as the indifferent sea.
Amos was not about to wait. Help might be dead and gone and they wouldn't know it until they were dead and gone, too. The local controls were on the other side. Knowing how useless his action was, he began hacking at the steel door with a chain lever.
He'd been at it several minutes when he heard a voice on the other side and the grunts of someone twisting the hand-control valve. The door began to open. The ratchety click echoed up the corridor like a siren song.
"Out you go! All hands report starboard. We got a fire there has to be snuffed. Come on, let's keep the marbles rolling."
"There's more trapped aft," Amos informed Ensign Garrett.
He nodded at a seaman holding a crank lever. "See to it. Everyone else, follow me!"
1605 Hours
In the forward twelve-inch turret the gun crew was devastated by fear. A shell had been clanking up from the handling room when the creature boarded. There was a ferocious wham! as the car struck the side of the elevator, then a telltale thump as it fell on the safety catch.
Their relief was short-lived. On a separate car the powder charge had continued to rise. Just as it reached the chamber the ship lurched again.
The bags were catapulted against the top of the cage. They burst against the upper hoist and a downpour of explosive powder covered the chamber and gun crew. Mingling with their sweat, it formed a deadly paste on their skins. Only the gun captain, who had been able to keep his perch through the turmoil, was spared. Which did not disguise the fact that he was trapped with the rest of them. The tiniest spark would be enough to kill them all. Even if they were able to get out, sparks from the smokestacks and the eight-inchers above could turn them into human bombs.
"They'll have to flood the chamber." The gun captain twisted slowly around until the lines attached to his leather headgear brought him up short. "Unless we can get a hose in here." He spoke lowly, as though a shout could ignite the powder. No one could hear him through their Eliott Ear Protectors. He raised his voice. "Mr. Beck!"
"Aye!" the midshipman said tremulously.
"We need a hose in here. Fast. You're the closest to the hatch."
"Aye aye, sir...." Cautiously, he edged towards the hatch. So carefully, because if any tool fell, if metal clapped against metal, a spark....
But when he cracked the hatch open and smoke blew in, he was forced to close it quick.
"Maybe it's from the funnels," said the plugman hopefully.
The gun captain gave him an admonishing glare, but dared not reach out to hit him.
"No," said Beck. "That wasn't coal smoke."
"If we go out there... we can't go out...."
The powder looked like an oil slick in the dim battle light. Some of them thought they could feel the temperature rising.
Garrett was lucky after all, thought Midshipman Beck.
1616 Hours
The fire on the starboard beam was almost out of control. Grissom ordered a one hundred and eighty-degree turn so that the smoke would blow leeward, but the starboard exits were still choked black. Garrett and the men following him were compelled to use the forward hatches.
The main deck was a shambles. Wounded men had been laid out beside Number One, their cries stinging the air. Smoke wound around the double-decked turret, though as yet it was not threatened by the flames.
"Dammit," Garrett shouted. "Too much water and not enough."
They had to plug the fire mains to stop water getting down the ventilating trunks. If they failed in that, the men in the engine and boiler rooms could drown. But they needed to hook up hoses to the centrifugal pump to combat the blaze that was about to engulf the entire starboard gun deck.
"All right, half of you--" The ensign sliced the air with his arm, chopping the men into two parties. "--cover the ventilating shafts with rubber sheets. Shove them in hard--use those deal flats. But make sure they're secure, because if we don't burn we drown. The rest of you follow me."
The smell was horrendous. The fire had found the life jacket compartment abaft the forward casemates. Black smoke boiled out as the rubber burned and melted. Where the deck was warped by heat, resin had squeezed through the corticone covering and caught fire. In turn, the precious teakwood caught. Men overcome by fumes staggered blindly. Some reached for the weather rail, only to fall overboard. The rail had been removed for General Quarters.
"We'll use the port mains!" Garrett coughed. Then he saw one of the fire teams had already attached hoses and ordered his men to take hold. Before he could give another order, a badly burned gunner came up and shouted something in his ear. Fear struck Garrett's face. With a twirl of his arm he commanded the men to continue, then he left with the gunner.
Amos had taken hold of the nozzle. As he walked backwards, the hose was yanked out of his hands when the other men pulled in the opposite direction. His curse was cut short when something knocked him hard on the back of the head and sent him sprawling. With lights shooting in his eyes, he turned over to see what had hit him.
Poised behind a lifeboat was one of the creatures from William Pegg's nightmare.
Amos shook his head. It was not the beast that had struck him, but the lifeboat. Although cleared for Action Stations, the jib locking it below the gundeck had broken and the davits had dropped down. The boat swung back and forth with a violence the ship's motion did not explain. He soon saw why. The creature was nudging the boat with its snout. It seemed to be... enjoying the sight of it rocking in the davits. Amos was amazed by its ability to keep pace with the Florida--until he spotted a huge flipper draped over one of the gun sponsons.
It was hanging onto the ship! A fact soon proven when Amos began to slide starboard. The creature's weight was so great it was causing the battleship to list. He grabbed hold of a pylon to keep from sliding further.
The creature banged its snout against the boat again, this time knocking one of the pulleys loose. Amos had to move fast to keep from being crushed. Splinters of painted wood exploded off the lifeboat's hull. It twisted sideways when the boatfall caught at the bow.
A dark blur darted at him. Something white flashed--then stopped. A scream of horror boiled in Amos' gut as the creature held its head inches from him. So close. Its eyes molten malevolence. Blank hunger. The devil out of disguise. Its teeth, at this angle, seemed larger than its body.
The enormous black eyes appeared to glisten and shift. Then quick as a gun-spring it streaked sideways and grabbed a man trying to hide behind the turret.
Amos crawled as fast as he could to port, then stopped to watch as the creature made a quick snack out of the petty officer it had captured. Amos had no idea of the man's identity, was too frightened to care, so long as he had not been the snack.
Why was that?
And then came the same wondrous realization that had struck William Pegg in the whaleboat: the duff sauce!
The creature remained hitched to starboard for another minute, apparently waiting for another morsel to present itself. Then it grew tired of all the smoke and all the waiting. When it fell away, Amos could feel the weight shift off the Florida.
1616 - 1630 Hours
It was the helmsman who first noted they had been boarded again. The wheel jerked in his hands.
A lookout shouted. Grimly, Singleton and a midshipman stepped through the blood of the dead OOD to look through the bridge screen. Noting the jagged, fatal shard still jutting from the casement, Grissom punched it out with an angry fist.
Below, they could see the almost loving grip the beast had on the sponson. They shouted unheard warnings to Amos as he backed towards it, then watched stupefied as the creature declined the easy meal and instead strained after the hapless man at the turret.
Inside the wheelhouse, Lieutenant Grissom called the ordnance officer to the voice tube. "Wepeat my od-has!"
Because of Grissom's missing teeth, the chief engineer at the other end was finding it impossible to understand him. The ordnance officer leaned over the voice pipe and repeated the exec's commands.
1616 - 1630 Hours
Garrett wasn't thinking. He strongly suspected he wasn't thinking. Had he been thinking, he would never have thought up the idea.
There had been a small explosion below the ammunition hoist leading to the starboard casemates. No one knew what had caused it. Had fire from the deck flashed through the trunk to the handling room, there would have been a lot less left of the lower tier. In fact, all the pounding had ignited a cordite charge. The flood cocks had been opened, but only a small amount of water was coming in. This had prevented the magazine from instantly going up. But the fire still burned and at any moment they might be watching Hell from the front row.
When Garrett arrived, men were attempting to douse the fire by pouring bucketfuls of water through the scuttle in the door. But the water was hitting only the bottom of the magazine. Through the vent, they could see the fire was at the top.
"We're finished, Mr. Garrett," the injured gunner said. "You've got to tell the captain."
"Abandon ship? Hell if I'll be a meal for those things." There was no more time to talk, no time to take into account, to press issues, to pray. Buttons flew as Garrett began ripping off his tunic. As an officer, he had not stripped down to his skivvies like the others. "Fuck, fuck, aw, fuck, fuck...."
The diminutive stature that had made his life an ongoing battle for status finally found some use. Ignoring the amazed shouts of the onlookers, he squeezed through the scuttle and leaped into the middle of the smoldering magazine.
There was a half inch of water on the deck. His tunic was already soaked from dragging it through. He gave the briefest glance at the smoke oozing down from the upper racks, then began beating at the shoots of fire with his wet garment. He had to stretch the length of his body to reach them. Every time the wet cloth struck, a loud hiss popped out of the bags.
"Fuck, fuck, aw, fuck, fuck...."
As much as he needed the help, he could not open the hatch to let the others in. The sudden draft would have fueled the fire and ignited the packed charges. This was a bitter one-man show. He felt he was only delaying the inevitable. The magazine would go and he would be the first with the news--an atomized human broadcasted over several miles of desolate ocean.
Fire singed his hands. Again and again he dunked his tunic in the pool of water at his feet and flailed at the bags. Every breath he took was weighted with reluctance as the fumes burned his lungs. He counted it lucky to still be conscious, but the smoke curls had dissolved into a solid mass at the ceiling--a cloud that moved steadily down. Torn by a fit of coughing, he leaned down to splash water on his face.
What was this? He reached down again. His hand and half his forearm disappeared. Whatever had jammed the flood-cock was gone.
Hope fueled renewed effort. Garrett beat at the flames like a blind maniacal matador. He knew success was within reach when he heard men calling for him to get out--not because he might blow up, but because he would drown. Desperately, he propped himself on a powder carriage. He caught sight of one last tongue of flame. He threw the soggy tunic at it and heard a satisfying hiss as it was doused. Then he jumped off the carriage and half-swam to the ladder. He climbed to the hatch. A cluster of hands pulled him out.
"You did it, Mr. Garrett! By Godfrey, who'd've thought--"
The ensign did not hear. For him, the world had been reduced to one gigantic cough.
On the Cliffs of Time
Below the reef.
The mother Tu-nel followed the blood trail. Swooping across the coral like a dark cloud. Parrot fish flitted out of her wide path. Larger life--hammerheads, rays--had been absent since her arrival.
The visible trail was as pronounced as the olfactory one. Wending downward, she soon found her dead progeny.
Green Stripe's neck was curled around a stubby pillar of apple-green coral, the result of her death spasm--her final attempt to bite her own wound, an ancient animal conviction that pain was an enemy to be attacked and slain.
The mother nibbled at the enemy: the gaping wound in her daughter's neck. The neck juggled. Lifelike. Like life. When her nibbling and nudging stopped, so did like-life. Slowly, she realized she herself was the like-life and that her daughter had no life.
The young male was ravenous. The sailor in its belly only reminded him of his hunger. Detecting fresh blood, he bore down.
And nearly lost his life in the effort. The mother whipped around to intercept him, knocking over several mounds of coral making her turn. Had the young male not flinched in time, she would have bitten through his neck. They raced nearly a league before the female broke off her chase. She did not want to leave her daughter too far behind. There was a chance like-life would return. If so, the young female would need help getting to the surface to breathe, just as when she was born.
The young male had not been taken by surprise. The giant female often thwarted him when he tried to share a meal. But as he cautiously made a wide turn and watched from a distance, he was puzzled by the way she doted over the corpse. Why wasn't she eating? If she would only hurry up and finish, he'd be able to take what was left. If she rushed, he could get most of what remained before Green Stripes arrived.
He did not recognize the corpse. To him, Green Stripes was an animate being. He could play, flirt, bond with her. This was not Green Stripes. Merely food.
It had been four years since he was separated from his own mother near Bogoslof Island. It was not unusual for young Tu-nel to lose track of their mothers during the commotion of the mating season. After the ritualized chaos, mothers and offspring would use their songs to locate ea
ch other.
Only this time, the young male had been baffled by the noise of steam engines as a large whaling fleet coursed through the Bering Strait. He had been lucky enough to find a large female and her green-striped daughter. And unlucky enough to have his shoulder mauled when he first tried to join them. But he persisted and the giant female grew tired of chasing him away. Intuitively, he knew it was dangerous to remain in close proximity. But the other side of intuition needed the adopted mother, no matter how grave a threat she posed.
He circled for a quarter of an hour, antagonized not only by hunger, but also by the awful noise from the Florida.
He was wary of returning to land, so full of smoke and noise, but the smell of blood sharpened his appetite to an unbearable pitch. The ship had proven a meager source of food. So, as the men overhead battled to save their vessel, the young male slipped into the lagoon and headed for Sand Island.
1647 Hours
Sergeant Ziolkowski looked almost fondly at his ruined leg. It would be gone, soon, and he was offering his farewell. The medical assistant with the landing party had given him a blue pill only a few minutes before being killed. Opium. And it worked wonderfully.
He had been carried to one of the launches. As the two smaller serpents bounded up the beach, the lieutenant in charge of the party and several others made a futile attempt to reach the compound and the fieldpieces. In their haste, they did not moor the launch. Gradually, the Top found himself adrift in the middle of the lagoon. Everything wore a gentle glow. His leg throbbed--he didn't care.
The screams on shore faded.
Sun and thirst woke him. The air simmered and swam. A halo of smoke shown above the superstructure of the Florida. From the funnels, Ziolkowski assured himself. He hummed the melody to a marching ditty, then brought forth the words that went with it: "Prettiest white girl you ever seen.... Then she had her nigger baby.... Hi-Ho! the rolling river...!"
At the Midway Page 42
