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.
XXXIII
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.
On the aft wing of the bridge, Singleton glimpsed the first lieutenant out the side of his eye and rushed up to him. "This is a great day in history, Cap‑‑ Lieutenant."
"It'll be a long day, that's certain." The officer glanced up at the overcast sky. "If it weren't for the weather, I'd tow it to Hawaii on the barge."
"Too much risk. Believe me, you don't want to lose this. Not this."
From across the water there came a series of cracks.
"Gunfire!" the startled doctor yelled. "What are they shooting at?"
"Calm down. It's only the funeral."
The riflemen on Eastern Island were not only firing volleys over the graves of marines. All of the Florida's dead seamen had also been interned on land. No one wanted the sailors buried at sea, now that they knew what the sea could dish up.
"There's the Top Cut," said Lieber, looking up from the barge.
"There's Anderson. And all the others."
"It was a bad time." Lieber scratched his new beard. It had been weeks since he'd last had an opportunity to shave. Now that the beard was in, he discovered he rather liked it and declined the loan of a razor from one of the chiefs. "Victory is the price."
"I think I know what you mean," Hart sighed. "And I think we lost." He peered back at the tug. "You think there's too much slack in those cables?"
The plan was simple. Two sets of pulleys were strung between the outcrop of coral where the beast lay and the Iroquois. The barge was anchored aft of the tug, directly under the pulley guys.
Large floats‑‑built by the same carpenters who'd made the floats for the torpedoes‑‑were arranged to either side of the corpse. It would be pulled off the outcrop and semi‑floated across fifty yards of water.
"I don't like it. She'll be mostly underwater."
A prediction proven correct as soon as it was pulled into the water. Only a few segments of ribcage showed above the surface. To Lieber, it was as if the creature was slipping into its element. That, in a new and even more ghastly guise, it would rise up to smite them all.
More shots from the atoll. The German half expected to see Ziolkowski on the rifle range again, giving hell to his trainees. But it was just another funereal volley.
"How many more times are they going to do that?" he snapped irritably.
The floats around the creat
ure were bound in pairs. Each pair was held together by large swatches of canvas waterproofed with gutta percha. The float‑pairs formed a series of slings under the body. Presumably, this would alleviate much of the strain on the pulley system. But the Iroquois jerked violently as her hawsers took the weight. The sea tug had two anchors down, but it was the lines stretching out to the Florida that kept her from reeling inland and smashing into the barge. As it was, every few cycles the tug thudded into the fenders. Hart and Lieber had to grab hold of whatever was at hand to keep from falling. They were not always successful. Both of them were coated by the coal dust powdering the width and length of the barge.
"This is bad," Lieber moaned.
"Stop fretting, Fritz. Look…." Hart pointed towards the outcrop. The men there were waving for them to continue. The lines were still secure at their end.
"Hart?"
"Yes?"
"Did you know my name is Heinrich Lieber?"
"No." Leaning against the barge wall, he squinted aft. "Look at that. You think one of the floats is coming loose?"
They clambered over the side into a small boat and rowed out. Sure enough, the stout canvas had been partly torn out of its clamps. Peering into the water, Lieber said, "It's one of the flippers, I think. It's hanging down‑‑"
The twelve‑ and eight‑inch guns of the Florida boomed. The men in the rowboat darted their heads up in horror.
"It's come back."
"Or there's another one."
The shells exploded out to sea, westward. When the spray cleared they saw a disturbance in the water. Coming closer.
"We have to get back!"
"Wait!" Lieber leaned over onto the float and reached down for the loose flap of canvas. If he could only get it up to the clamp....
"Are you crazy, Fritz?" Hart shouted. He had to keep hold of the other end of the float so that Lieber would not fall in.
There was so much weight on the canvas it was like trying to budge steel. Lieber stretched further to improve his grip. The stern swung out and Hart lost his handhold. The next instant, Lieber was splashing in the water, muttering Teutonic invective against non‑German saints and godheads.
"Grab a‑hold!" Hart yelled frantically, holding out an oar. "Hurry! It's getting closer!"
"Isn't it going after the ship?"
"No!"
Good swimmer though he was, Lieber was now a thoroughly frightened man. His coordination vanished when he heard a new sound, just under the racket of the donkey engines. Deep and vibrating. The ocean was boiling with life. He took hold of the oar and Hart pulled him up to the gunwhale. Then Hart shifted to the other side of the boat to act as counterbalance.
His hands clamped tightly next to the oarlock, Lieber had just started to lift himself out of the water when he heard splashing directly behind him. Something banged against his legs.
"No, God no!"
Launched by sheer terror, he propelled himself athwartships, clear into Hart's chest. By throwing him to the bottom of the boat, Hart just managed to keep them from capsizing.
There was a loud thudding against the planks. Moaning, Leiber craned his head from his peculiar position, expecting any instant the giant head of death to appear over the gunwhale.
"Hart...."
"Take an oar, Fritz. We have to get out of here."
"What is it?"
"Not the serpent. Almost as bad."
Lieber pushed up onto his knees and gasped. Sharks. All around them. At least a hundred deadly hammerheads. The veteran shark‑killer was appalled. They had not come in with the slow, circular approach they usually employed when investigating a potential victim. They had charged in, drawn by the blood oozing from the noisome mass under the dead creature's ribcage.
It was a colossal feeding frenzy, the freakish‑looking hammerheads snapping at flesh, bone and cable. In their madness, they pounded the boat again and again, unintentionally, with no knowledge of the men, the fresh meat, inside. But if the boat tipped over the two of them would be thoughtlessly and instantly torn to shreds, like just about everything else in sight.
The boat was too small to sit side by side and neither man was willing to perch himself on the seat and take both oars in hand. So they kneeled at the bottom and paddled canoe‑style away from the scene. Once away from the turbulence, they paused to catch their breath.
"Here comes the cavalry." Hart nodded towards the Florida. A boatload of rifle‑toting marines was racing in their direction."
"No," Lieber shook his head. "We've lost the serpent."
"No, we can--"
"They can shoot a dozen, two dozen, and that'll only make it worse. The more blood you stir up, the madder they become."
"I've never seen sharks crazier," Hart commented. He was staring at a hammerhead half out of the water, its jaws clamped on one of the pulley cables. More destructive, though, were the sharks coming from below, slashing through the canvas slings to get at the meat. First one set of floats broke loose, then another. The pulley cables were taking on more and more weight.
"They'll have to cut bait."
A series of thunderous cracks bore this out. The Iroquois was slamming repeatedly into the barge. The hawsers reaching out from the Florida could slow but not stop the backslide. If this kept up, they would snap. Hart spotted frantic movement on the decks of the sea tug.
"There she goes…."
The pulley lines slapped into the water. There was a loud hiss as noxious gases of decomposition escaped from the dead creature's gut. Then the corpse disappeared completely underwater.
The men in the rowboat caught a whiff of the invisible cloud and covered their faces. "So this is 'Rotting in Hell!'"
The marines came up. A few shots were fired, but only in anger. There was nothing else they could do.
"Now what're we going to tell the folks back home?" one of them yelled in dismay.
Hart tossed up his hands.
Beck found Garrett in the night galley, sipping coffee and nursing his bandaged nose.
"The Fust Luff wants to see you in the captain's wardroom, Mr. Garrett."
"What's he doing up so late?" Garrett pushed his mug away, but did not stand. "Son of a bitch, just leave me alone."
"He said right now, sir."
"Do something useful. Jump off the bridge." He paused, then grinned up at the midshipman. "That was one mean nigger, I mean to tell you. He did this--" He indicated his nose. "--with a jab. Something you couldn't do in an hour of trying."
"No, I was just trying to kill you, sir."
Garrett began to laugh, but was stopped abruptly by the pain it caused him. "I guess you're supposed to escort me. Then let's do it. I know it's past your bedtime."
As they entered officers' country, they heard someone singing drunkenly down one of the corridors.
"That would be Dr. Singleton," said Beck. "He took it hard when the sharks stole his prize."
"The big one that got away. I'll drink to that."
Garrett knocked on the wardroom door.
"Enter."
"Good luck, Mr. Garrett," Beck smirked before returning down the passageway.
Garrett went in and closed the door behind him. He cast his eyes around the large room where Oates had held court so many times. Up until now, he'd been the Florida's only skipper.
"We're alone. Come over here."
A globe lantern cast a cold light on the first lieutenant, who seemed to have all the ship's logs and reports spread out on the desk before him.
"You look like a clown."
"They say we look a lot alike, sir."
"Shut up, Ensign. You sound like a clown, too."
Garrett shut up.
"I'll make this brief. The late commander didn't like you very much. I suppose you know that. What you don't know is that he reserved a special deck log just on you." He tapped a folder at the edge of the desk. Garrett felt his heart pinch. "I believe he had in mind a Court of Inquiry."
"Yes, sir?"
; "I said shut up. Now, let's see...." He began running his finger down the line of entries in the open logbook before him. "Last year... December... Number One Turret.... Ah, here it is. 'Failure to arm weapon in the face of a possible enemy attack.' You said something about loose powder. That doesn't seem to have bothered Oates until he caught you fishing while we were in the Observation Ward. Then he decided to hold the powder incident against you. Petty, wouldn't you say? This is where it begins.... All right." Reaching to the top of the page, he ripped it out in one swift movement. Garrett jumped in shocked surprise. He had just witnessed a court-martial offense. The acting executive officer compounded the offense when he murmured, "I think we can find something a little better to replace that."
"Ah...."
"You were about to say something, Ensign Garrett? Don't." He slipped the page from the log into the folder, then handed the folder to Garrett. "Don't thank me. Just burn it. I know I can count on your discretion."
"Sir," Garrett blurted, "I'm sorry, but--you can't be doing this as a kindness to me."
"Of course not. I'm doing it for the good of the Navy. You understand? We go home with a poppycock story about sea monsters, Congress will never let us live it down. And what do you think will happen to our careers? No. From this point on we start over. I want a clean slate. Or as clean a slate as I can get. And I'll need the cooperation of my ship's company to get it. That's all. Carry on."
At the door, Garrett ventured a glance back. The first lieutenant was hunched thoughtfully over the bridge log, as though contemplating what pages to tear out next.
Table of Contents
Part One Skirmishes
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
At the Midway Page 55
