Pacific Interlude

by Sloan Wilson

  “Do you have to do that now?”

  “It’s just that I want to change my beneficiary,” Wydanski said. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to me before I did that.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to you today—”

  “But if I don’t change it now I won’t get a chance to mail it until we get to New Guinea and maybe we won’t even stop there. Do you have our orders yet?”

  “No.”

  “Sir, I’d like to change my beneficiary right away. I won’t have any peace of mind until I do. I owe Mildred something. I don’t want every damn thing I’ve got to go to my wife. Mildred’s done more for me than anyone ever did.”

  “See Mr. Simpson about it. And while you’re worrying about Mildred, please don’t forget to check the spare parts for the engine room.”

  Wydanski got the message and took off.

  As soon as the fuel tanks had been filled, Higgins strode down from his office. “You’ve got to move this bucket out of here—go to the north pier. I’ve got three more ships waiting to take fuel.”

  Syl glanced at the mountains of cardboard boxes and crates that crowded the decks from stem to stern, covering the mooring lines, bitts and cleats.

  “Give me half an hour, Mr. Higgins.”

  “All right, but move it as fast as you can.”

  Cramer, hearing this exchange—his right hand was bandaged and his face was bruised—sang out, “All right, boys, move it, move it. We’re going to wrap this ship up and take her to sea. So get your asses moving. You got twenty minutes to clear these decks.”

  An American destroyer circling off the end of the wharf while she waited to take fuel blew her whistle imperiously, and Syl went to the bridge. He called down the voice tube to the engine room. “Mr. Wydanski. Is the engine room ready to get underway?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Stand by to test the engine.”

  After checking the mooring lines, Syl ordered slow ahead, then slow astern. The old Enterprise Deisel had a deep hollow cough and spat too much smoke up the stack, but the ship obediently surged back and forth in her slip. She was as ready to go as she would ever be.

  When enough cartons had been cleared off the deck to clear the lines, Syl clicked on the loud hailer. “All right, chief, call the men to mooring stations. We can finish the stowage when we get to our new berth.”

  “Mooring stations it is, sir,” Cramer called and put a shiny boatswain’s pipe to his lips. Not all wartime boatswain’s mates even knew how to blow one, and its shrill treble call at least lent a professional note to the confusion on deck.

  Simpson appeared on the wing of the bridge and spat over the side, watching the current move the spot he made on the water.

  “Captain, we have a little tide setting us off the wharf, but a lot of wind pushing us on,” he said. “When she’s light, she handles funny in conditions like this. I’m used to her. Do you want me to handle this operation?”

  “I’m sure you can do it, but I always do my own ship handling,” Syl said. “Since I’m responsible, I might as well bust her up myself.”

  The truth was that he had always been at his best when handling ships around wharves, had always loved it, but had also been scared by it. This was a small tanker but she still weighed five hundred tons. With nothing but her single low-powered engine and her blunt, high-sided hull he anticipated she would be damn near unmanageable, sailing sideways and probably refusing to back straight until she got up a dangerous amount of sternway. Any miscalculation could result in serious damage; injury or death to the men, a board of inquiry, a court-martial for incompetence. At least the cargo tanks had been steamed out and not yet refilled. After the first load of gasoline she would be a floating bomb that any collision could set off. He was lucky to be able to get used to her while she was still relatively safe.

  “The men are at mooring stations,” Cramer called from the tank deck through cupped hands.

  Syl stepped to the starboard wing of the bridge and studied the situation. With the help of the slight current it should be simple to spring her off the wharf against this wind and back her smartly out of this slip, but if that high bow blew off, she would crab around and that could be a mess. There was a lot of weight in this wind and despite the current, she was squeezing her fenders thin. This was no small boat you could push off with your arm or foot. Five hundred tons. No, this wasn’t the Queen Elizabeth, but the big ships used tugs. If he got in a mess, the first crack out of the barrel the crew would lose whatever confidence they had in him now. He saw Higgins standing on the wharf with folded arms, his expression impatient, almost contemptuous. Finally Syl glanced at the windward side of the slip, maybe twenty-five yards away.

  “Mr. Simpson, let’s do this the easy way,” he said. “Put four men over there and pass heaving lines to them. We’ll warp her out.”

  “That’s not necessary, sir—”

  “I think so. Use the bow and stern winches to haul her alongside the windward side of the slip and then we’ll just walk her out, keeping a strain on the weather lines. When I get to know her better I may give you more dramatics.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  It was a sensible decision—Simpson must know that—but maybe he had hoped to see his commanding officer foul up right from the start. He sounded disappointed as he gave the orders.

  When Higgins saw the warping begin, he shrugged and went back to his office. The destroyer stopped blowing her whistle and backed off to give sea room. Buller came to the bridge to watch.

  “I don’t know too much about this kind of thing,” he said, “but give me a couple of weeks, and I’ll get the hang of it. There ain’t nothing too complicated about it, is there, skipper?”

  Syl didn’t answer him.

  “Move it, move it, move it.”

  Cramer kept repeating that refrain after the ship moored at the north pier of the yard and final preparations were made for going to sea. The men picked it up, sometimes sarcastically, as they cleared the decks of supplies and found stowage for all the gear below decks.

  Their hangovers had worn off, and like most sailors Syl had known, they were eager to go to sea after a few weeks in harbor, even if the port they were leaving was as good as Brisbane had been. Syl had not yet received his sailing orders, but the men had been listening to news broadcasts in the radio shack and to Tokyo Rose, whose predictions, damn her, generally turned out to be accurate. They assumed they were bound for New Guinea and then on to join the invasion of the Philippines, or a nonstop voyage to Mindanao, the nearest of the Philippine Islands, where the battle was expected to begin.

  Syl too was anxious to get going. Teddy had gone to Sydney and there was nothing for him to do ashore. He sensed that she never wanted to see or hear from him again, despite or because of the good hours they had shared. If the ship’s job was to lug gas, why not start doing it? The only way to end this damn war was to get out and fight it. Good patriotic noises, but genuine all the same. Time to get on with it. After too long a time in port, the sea seemed especially clean. Military precision, neatness and efficiency were in a sense welcome antidotes to constant hangovers. At least for a while. At sea a man could earn some self-respect and the ways of other sailors were simpler to cope with than those of women, who seemed to offer too much or too little.

  Only Wydanski seemed genuinely sorry to leave. He had installed his girl, Mildred, in a small apartment and had promised to return to her after the war. On that last day, the job of supervising final repairs and checkups in the generators and main engine kept him aboard until midnight and the ship was due to sail at dawn, but he shaved, showered and put on a freshly pressed uniform to go ashore for the last few hours.

  The ship’s detailed sailing orders came at the last possible minute. At five o’clock in the morning an army lieutenant drove his jeep into the yard and gave Syl the brown manila envelope and a roll of the latest charts. The typewritten instructions filled three pages but their import was sim
ple. The Y-18 was to take a cargo of aviation fuel from a large merchant tanker in Brisbane harbor and go to Hollandia, New Guinea, there to wait for further orders.

  The date was October 3, 1944.

  “Of course everything is supposed to be top secret,” the lieutenant said, “but I’m sure the Japs know the biggest buildup of all time is underway. You’ll be lucky to find room to anchor in Hollandia harbor. Rose says we’re going to hit Mindanao next week—she’s been moving the date ahead a long time. Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m betting MacArthur is too smart to go where we’re expected. I’ve even picked up rumors that we’re going to jump straight into Manila.”

  Syl’s stomach contracted. There sure as hell was going to be a showdown. He wished he could go into battle on a fighting ship with some speed and guns instead of riding this slow, defenseless, explosive target. Well, they couldn’t have a war without gas any more than they could have a party without booze, or so someone had said …

  “Captain, the ship is ready to sail,” Simpson was saying, “except Mr. Wydanski ain’t aboard. Shall I send one of the boys up to look for him? Some of them know where he’s been staying—”

  “Give him a few minutes,” Syl said. “He’ll show up.”

  He had hardly finished speaking when a taxi rolled into the yard; Wydanski jumped out and ran toward the ship, holding his cap on his head. His face looked pale and drawn as he jumped aboard, but his voice was firm when he said, “Sorry to be late, skipper. The engine room is ready to go.”

  “Very well,” Syl said. “Are all hands aboard now, Mr. Simpson?”

  “All present and accounted for.”

  “So let’s go. Pipe the men to mooring stations. Put the engine room on standby. It’s time to move her on out.”

  Syl found he felt good as he stood on the wing of the bridge, rapping out the familiar orders and hearing the men echo them.

  “Take in number one.”

  “We’re taking in number one, sir!”

  “Take in number four.”

  “Number four is coming in!”

  “Number three now.”

  “Number three, sir!”

  Yard workers trotted from one piling to another on the wharf, casting off the heavy lines. The crew made a game of snaking them in so fast that they never got wet.

  “Mind your helm now,” Syl said. “Right full rudder.”

  “The rudder is right full, sir,” the helmsman said, spinning the old-fashioned spoked wheel.

  “Ahead slow.”

  “Ahead slow, sir,” the quartermaster echoed, and there was the jingle of the engine-room telegraph. “The engine is ahead slow, sir.”

  “Very well.”

  Syl leaned over the wing of the bridge and spit into the water, observing that a slight tidal current was pushing him against the dock, but this time there was little wind here. The ship nudged her bow closer to the wharf and the stern swung out, but not enough.

  “Ahead half,” Syl said.

  “Ahead half, sir. The engine is ahead half.”

  The old Diesel increased its beat. The high stern slowly moved away from the wharf.

  Stick your ass out in the stream, Old Girl, and move it, move it on out, Syl thought with a rare flash of affection for this ungainly ship. Aloud he called, “Stop the engine. Rudder amidships. Back slow. Take in Number Two.”

  As the orders were repeated Syl stood watching the bow. The current was shoving it dangerously close to the wharf, almost grazing it, but now it was clear. The last mooring line splashed into the water—this one they didn’t keep from getting wet, but they brought it in before it could get into the screw.

  “Back half,” Syl said. “Give three blasts on the whistle.”

  The air horn did not give a satisfyingly dramatic sound, though it was loud, like blasts from a large truck. The workmen ashore turned without a wave and trudged on to other work. The gap of muddy harbor water between the ship and the wharf widened fast.

  Last voyage?

  These words flashed quickly into Syl’s mind, and he as quickly erased them.

  “Stop the engine,” he said. “Ahead slow. Helmsman, head for the end of that breakwater out there. Mr. Simpson, bring me the harbor chart.”

  He had already studied the harbor chart and had only to glance at it as he conned the ship through the channels to the outer harbor.

  “Sir, can the men secure from mooring stations?” Simpson asked.

  “Yeah, but they won’t have time for more than a cup of coffee. In fifteen minutes we’ll be coming alongside the big tanker to take cargo.”

  “Aye, aye, sir. May I warn all hands that we’ll want spark-free conditions in fifteen minutes?”

  “Very well. And have someone bring me a cup of coffee up here, Mr. Simpson.”

  It was a nice morning, Syl thought as he sat on a stool on the wing of the bridge, sipping the hot sweet coffee. Here in the outer harbor, a brisk wind was piping up, and the American flag on the gaff of the signal mast stood out stiffly against the azure, almost cloudless sky. The green paint on the decks made the little tanker gleam like new in the bright sunlight. Seagulls wheeled around the wake, diving on scraps of breakfast which the cook was throwing out.

  “Mr. Simpson, have you got a Baker flag ready to break out when we come alongside the big tanker?” Syl asked.

  “Yes, sir. Sorrel has already bent it onto the halyard.”

  “What’s that all about?” Buller asked. He had been sitting with unaccustomed silence in the pilothouse, apparently studying the procedures for maneuvering the ship.

  “Baker, Mr. Buller, is a red flag,” Syl said. “It means, ‘Danger, I am carrying an explosive cargo.’”

  “We better nail that damn thing to our mast,” Buller said.

  “We’ll fly it only in harbors. There’s no use identifying ourselves as a prime target.”

  “Hell, what do you think the Japs will figure we’re carrying, beer?” Buller said. “Come to think of it, that would be a fairly explosive cargo.”

  And then, back in character, he farted loudly.

  The merchant tanker, the American Exporter, was a twenty-thousand tonner which dwarfed the Y-18. As he neared her Syl called the men back to mooring stations. Sorrel, the eighteen-year-old signalman who looked like a blonde California beachboy, flashed his light and reported, “He wants us to come along his starboard side, sir.”

  “Very well. Mr. Simpson, have fenders rigged on our port side.”

  This looked like an easy enough maneuver. Both ships were heading into the wind, and it was necessary only to approach slowly at a good angle. But Syl soon discovered that the Y-18 did not handle well at low speeds. When they were almost close enough to heave a line, a gust of wind hit her high bow and shoved it directly toward the belly of the high tanker.

  “Right full rudder!” Syl said.

  “The rudder is right full, sir,” the helmsman said, stopping to spin the wheel fast. A moment later he added, “She is not answering the helm, sir. We’ve lost steerageway.”

  The Y-18 was still moving fast enough to cause one hell of a crash if she hit. The bow was only about twenty feet from the barnlike side of the merchant vessel now and was inexorably creeping closer. Syl had an immediate decision to make. He could give her a burst of speed ahead to try to turn her or he could back her down. If the first ploy failed he’d hit hard. If the second choice failed, if the reverse could not stop her in time, he could still mush in with enough force to drive his bow right through the thin plates of the American Exporter, releasing a Niagara Falls of gas …

  “Back slow, back full, back emergency flank!”

  The engine-room telegraph jingled frantically.

  “The engine is backing emergency flank,” the quartermaster said with studied casualness.

  His decision made, there was nothing Syl could do but watch. The bow of the Y-18 thrust forward, narrowing the gap until it looked as though the man on the bow could touch the larger vessel. The crew
of the merchantmen came running with fenders. The engine of the Y-18 raced, sending up clouds of black smoke. Syl braced himself for the impact, but before it came the Y-18 seemed to shudder in anticipation, stopped, and slowly pulled back.

  “Jesus Christ.” Buller’s contribution.

  “God,” Simpson said, and stood with his head bowed.

  During the emergency Syl had been aware of neither of them. Now his face and shirt were wet with sweat and his knees felt weak.

  “Back slow,” he said. “I’ll take her around and try it again.”

  “Captain, Mr. Wydanski is on the tube,” the quartermaster said. “He wants to know if the emergency is over.”

  “Tell him yes.”

  Guilt now rose in Syl’s throat, like sour bile. He had almost caused a collision and probably an explosion that could have blown up the whole harbor less than an hour after getting underway.

  “Stop the engine,” he said.

  What had he done wrong? He had simply been too cautious, he had approached so slowly that he had lost steerageway, and he hadn’t realized how fast the wind could pivot that high bow. Next time he’d have to come in faster and count on his reverse to stop him when he got close alongside. Maintain steerageway at all costs. That way he could turn out if something went wrong and come back again. At least his instincts had saved him. He never could have turned her in time and the reverse, after all, had been powerful enough to stop her.

  “Sorry about that, boys,” he said. “I guess I judged that one a little too fine. This time it will be easy. No sweat.” Sure …

  That prediction actually turned out to hold true. With a little more water flowing by her rudder, the tanker nestled alongside the big merchantman like a baby ready to nurse.

  CHAPTER 11

  “PUT OUT ALL lines,” Syl said. “Hoist the Baker flag. Observe spark-free conditions. Rig the cargo hose. Take over, Mr. Simpson. If anybody wants me, I’ll be in my cabin.”

  Lying down on his bunk, he found he needed a drink, wanted a smoke, and of course could have neither. Getting to his feet, he washed his face in cold water, took off his shirt, sponged off his chest with a towel and put on a fresh shirt. As he was combing his hair there was a knock at the cabin door. He expected Simpson or Buller with snide comments but it was a small bald merchantman, the mate of the American Exporter. Probably he wanted to tell him how angry the tanker men were for the narrow escape, or even to make a formal complaint.