Point of Honor

by Maurice Medland

  “When it reaches four-four-zero, secure the superheater vent and stand by to start the main turbines.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “Chief, let’s activate the lube-oil purification system,” Blake said. “When the temperature reaches one-zero-five degrees Fahrenheit, start the main lube-oil pumps and start applying oil to the main-propulsion turbines and reduction gears.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the chief said.

  By 0430, Blake and the chief had gone over the checklist twice, meticulously calling out each item, and Blake was satisfied that all systems were go to start the main engines. He held his breath as Robertson engaged the jacking gear, spinning the main turbines to life. The ship trembled and surged beneath them with a steady vibration. Blake blew out a long breath and looked at Robertson. “Okay,” he shouted over the noise. “Let’s get the other boiler lit off.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n.” Robertson mopped his face with a damp shirt-sleeve.

  Blake smiled at the title but let it pass. “Chief, can you finish up here?” He looked at his watch.

  “Yes, sir, I think so. After we get the port boiler up to speed, all that’s left is to fire up the steering gear and stern tube lube-oil system,” he said flipping to the last page of the checklist. “Then we’ll be able to answer a bell.”

  “Good,” Blake said. “I’ve got some work to do in the pilothouse. I’ll call down for Doc later to break him in on helm watches, along with Kelly and the girl. I’d like to be under way by 0500. Stand by to answer.”

  The chief turned to Blake, saluted smartly and said, “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

  “Let’s not get carried away, Chief,” Blake said, ignoring the salute.

  “Like it or not, that’s what you are, sir,” the chief said. “A ship under way on the high seas has got to have a captain. It’s the oldest law of the sea.”

  Blake chuckled but saw the serious look in the chief’s eyes. “Call me anything that makes you feel better,” he said. “Just be ready to answer a bell.”

  Blake emerged from the engine room into a dawn that had broken on a sky nearly as black as the night that had preceded it. Dawn. He was jolted by the realization that it had been nearly twenty-four hours since they’d left the Carlyle. He wondered if he’d ever see the old gray lady again.

  He glanced up at the sky. Red and green running lights on the mast traced wide arcs against the black skies, now churning with fast-moving stratocumulus clouds. He steadied himself against the hatch cover as the ship shuddered from an explosion of green water across her forecastle, pushing her bow deep into solid water. Awed by the thunderous display of white foam, he held on to the hatch cover and waited for the bow to surface. He took a deep breath. The fresh sea air cut deeply into his lungs, clearing his head from the stuffy confines of the engine room.

  As the bow surfaced, spewing frothy sheets of green-and-white water back into the sea, he quickly made his way across the pitching deck, struggling head down against the wind. He stopped and blew out a deep breath when he reached the safety of the superstructure.

  He paused near the place where Kelly had been tripped by El Callado and glanced around, wondering which bulkhead he was hiding behind, which crack he was watching him through. He could feel his presence, his eyes on him, watching, waiting to kill him when he was no longer needed. He wanted to shout out in frustration but knew it would be pointless.

  He glanced around at the huge ship, shaking his head. He suddenly had what he wanted, something he’d thought would take twenty years to achieve. Command at sea. He smiled bitterly. When the Gods want to punish you, they give you what you want. He thought about Kelly and the girl, the chief, Doc and the others. They were counting on him to get them through, and he didn’t have the first clue. He was no more qualified to conn this ship than was Alvarez, the coxswain. In fact, the seaman had probably been more qualified. At least he had conned something before in his life. He took a final look around, shaking his head. His first command. He turned and walked up the ladder to the bridge, hoping it wouldn’t be his last.

  “This device is the engine-order telegraph.” Blake raised his voice to be heard over the wind shrieking through the pilothouse. “It sends a signal to the engine room with the direction and speed we want.”

  Dana Kelly stared at the brass handle and nodded. “Okay.”

  “Straight up, it’s at ‘All Stop,’” Blake said, gripping the handle. “If you push it forward, it’s back. If you pull it toward you, it’s ahead.”

  “That’s backwards,” Kelly said.

  “That’s a good way to remember it,” Blake said. “If I give the command, ‘Dead slow ahead,’ you pull it toward you to the first position. The next position is ‘Slow Ahead,’ then ‘Half Ahead,’ then ‘Full Ahead,’ which is maximum engine power.”

  “Got it,” Kelly said.

  “If I say, ‘Full astern,’ you push it forward all the way.” Blake said. “In heavy weather, fast execution of those orders is critical to the safe handling of the ship. You sure you’ve got it?”

  Kelly glanced out at the raging seas and nodded. “Yes, sir, I’ve got it.” Her voice sounded tense but firm.

  “Good. When I give you a command, give it back to me, so I’ll know you heard it,” Blake said.

  Kelly nodded again. “Aye, aye, sir. When do we start?”

  “Right now,” Blake said, glancing up as Doc Jones appeared in the doorway to the pilothouse. The corpsman’s face and hands were smudged with grease from the engine room. Blake motioned him over to the ship’s wheel. “Doc, you take the helm.”

  “Sir, I don’t know anything about it.” The corpsman walked up and stood before the wheel, rubbing the palms of his hands on his dungarees.

  “Nothing to it,” Blake said. “It’s just like driving a car.”

  “Hell, sir, I told you, I’m from Queens,” Doc said, looking at the mahogany wheel. “I’ve never driven a car in my life.”

  “This steering is even easier,” Blake said. “Hold the wheel this way. If you turn it to the right, the ship will turn to starboard. If you turn it to the left, the ship will turn to port.”

  “How do I know in which direction to turn?” Doc asked.

  “This device is the compass,” Blake said, pointing to the bronze, liquid-filled bowl mounted on the binnacle. “It’s a standard seven- and-a-half-inch magnetic compass. Think of it as a circle with 360 degrees. I’ll give you the heading when we get under way. It’s your job to hold her steady on that course until I give you another one. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir, I think so,” Doc said. He squinted at the compass dubiously and gripped the wheel. “But what’s El Callado going to be doing while we’re doing this work?”

  “Hanging on for dear life. He won’t bother us,” Blake said, looking over his shoulder. “At least I don’t think so.”

  “Did something suddenly give him religion?” Doc asked.

  Blake nodded. “The storm did.”

  “If this cyclone wouldn’t put the fear in you, nothing would,” Doc said, looking out into the dark skies. “I just hope you’re right, Lieutenant. Hope that dude stays away, let’s us be.”

  “He’s our biggest fan right now,” Blake said. “We’re the only hope he’s got to save the ship, not to mention his own hide. He’ll leave us alone, long enough to get through the storm, anyway.”

  “And after the storm?” Kelly asked.

  “That’s another story.”

  “Well it’s nice to know we have something to look forward to,” Kelly said.

  Blake glanced at Doc and Kelly. Behind them, Maria was watching intently from the window of the chart room where Blake had placed her for safekeeping.

  “Everybody straight?”

  Doc and Kelly nodded and said, “Yes sir,” almost in unison.

  “All right, let’s do it,” Blake said. “Dead slow ahead.”

  “Dead slow ahead, aye, sir,” Kelly repeated in a high-pitched voice. She pulled the handle on the en
gine-order telegraph back to the first position with a muffled clang.

  Blake held his breath, waiting for Chief Kozlewski and the engine room crew to respond. Outside, rain squalls rattled the bridge windows with pellets of water. The ship pitched and yawed, seemingly oblivious to the order to move. Blake clung to an overhead stanchion, waiting, not daring to breathe. A full minute passed. “Come on, girl,” he said under his breath. He started to reach for the sound-powered phone to the engine room. Then slowly, like a sleeping giant being prodded awake, the vibrations in the wheelhouse began to intensify. Blake’s heart began to beat faster, responding to the growing vibration in his feet and in his hands. The Latin Star shuddered, then eased forward, cutting into the sea.

  “Well, kiss my granny,” Doc said, wide-eyed. “You did it, Lieutenant. This big mother’s really moving.” The corpsman gripped the wheel with a look of amazement and turned it a few degrees to starboard. The freighter groaned, slowly coming around to starboard three degrees by the magnetic compass. His burnished features spread into a broad grin. “How you doing?”

  Blake started to breathe again, feeling the thrum of the turbines and the bite of the screw through the water, grateful that the steering gear was still operable, something he hadn’t really thought of until now. “Our course is zero-eight-one degrees,” he said. “Bring her around.”

  “Zero-eight-one, aye, sir,” Doc said.

  Blake grinned at the instant comeback. “I thought you’d never done this task before, Doc.”

  “Who, me? I’m an old hand,” Doc said. “I was called to the bridge once when the Carlyle was leaving the San Francisco Bay. Telephone talker passed out. Combination of bad liquor and choppy seas. Heard the OOD and the helmsman talkin’ that trash.”

  “You’ve been holding out on us.” Blake scanned the horizon with binoculars. “Slow ahead.”

  “Slow ahead, aye, sir,” Kelly repeated, pulling the lever down to the next position. The ship vibrated and gradually picked up speed.

  Doc continued to twist the wheel to the right, staring at the compass, the tip of his tongue appearing in the corner of his mouth. The ship eased slowly to starboard, coming around to a heading of 081 degrees. The corpsman let out a deep laugh. “Piece of cake. I can drive the shit out of this thing.”

  Blake smiled at the expression on Doc’s face, a kid riding his bike for the first time without training wheels.

  Kelly emitted a doleful laugh, looking out at the sea. “How about driving it to California? Drop me off in San Jose.”

  “No way,” Doc said, staring at the compass. “I’m gonna take this sucker through the Panama Canal, drive it all the way to New York City, run it aground on the first pier I see. We’ll grab some of that loot in the number three hold and hail a taxi for the Topper Club on Forty-Third street. Best modern jazz in the city. You guys’ll love it.”

  “Sounds like more fun than we’re likely to have here.” Blake hung from the stanchion with one hand and continued sweeping the horizon with the binoculars draped around his neck. The line where sea and sky met sporadically appeared, then fell away, hidden by huge waves. He elevated the binoculars slightly and focused on a mass of white cirrus clouds converging over the southern horizon.

  “Half ahead,” Blake said, wanting to put as much distance between the ship and those clouds as possible. He wanted to get up to full speed quickly but had agreed with the chief to ease into it. It made sense with a plant they knew nothing about, but he was nervous about taking any longer than he had to to get there.

  Kelly repeated the order and pulled the lever down to the third position, clinging to the telegraph stand to keep her balance. The ship shuddered and surged forward. “What are we going to do, Lieutenant? What’s the plan?”

  “First, we’re going to try to outrun this thing,” Blake said.

  Kelly brightened. “Do you think we can?”

  Blake shook his head. “Not very likely. Cyclones can travel at 20 or 30 knots. But it makes sense to try.”

  “How fast will this thing go, Skipper?” Doc asked. “Balls out.”

  “Design speed’s 15 knots,” Blake said. “But we’ll be lucky to get half that in this weather.”

  “What if we can’t outrun it?” Kelly asked. “What do we do then?”

  “Depends on which half of the cyclone we’re in,” Blake said.

  “Which half?” Kelly asked. “What difference does that make?”

  “One half is called the navigable semicircle; the other’s called the dangerous semicircle,” Blake said.

  “Which half do we want,” Doc said, “or do I need to ask?”

  Blake laughed. “Neither, if we can avoid it. Cyclones spin in a clockwise direction below the equator, so the navigable semicircle should be on the right of the cyclone as we face the direction it’s moving toward. If we’re lucky enough to catch that side of it, we’ll bring the wind on the port quarter at a relative heading of 225 degrees and apply all the power we’ve got.”

  “What do we do if we’re caught in the other side?” Kelly asked.

  “Pray,” Blake said.

  “I don’t get how one side can be worse than the other,” Doc said. “Same storm.”

  “It has to do with the rotation of the cyclone,” Blake said. “The other side’s more dangerous because the wind speed’s greater, compounded by the forward motion of the storm. Add the two speeds together, the speed of the wind and the speed of the storm, and you’ve got an ‘E’ ticket ride. Also, the direction is such that it would carry us into the forward part of the semicircle, directly in front of the storm. We don’t want to be there.”

  “But what if we do get caught in it?” Kelly asked.

  “If we can’t avoid it, we’ll maneuver in the opposite direction,” Blake said. “We’ll head her into the wind, bring the wind on the port bow, hold a relative course of 315 degrees and give it all the power we can muster.”

  “I’m sure glad you know a lot about this stuff, Lieutenant,” Doc said.

  Blake stared through the binoculars, feeling a warm flush creep up his neck. The maneuvers he was glibly quoting had come from a quick reading of the chapter on tropical cyclones in the American Practical Navigator not more than an hour ago. He wasn’t sure he knew what half of it meant. Even if he did, he had no idea whether he could make any of it happen in the chaos and confusion of a tropical cyclone. “All I know is what I read in the book.”

  “Don’t be modest,” Kelly said. “If anyone can get us through this storm, you can.”

  “Right on,” Doc said. “Everybody knows you used to be on merchant ships before you were a Navy officer. Bet you’ve been through lots of these.”

  Blake smiled wryly, touched at their eagerness to believe in him. He hated pretense, especially in himself, and wanted to confess his ignorance, but doubted if he could convince them. And even if he could, what purpose would it serve? If they knew how little he knew, they’d be as terrified as he was.

  Kelly looked nervously out the fogged bridge window. The seas were pitching violently. “How do we know it’s really a cyclone? Maybe it’s just crummy weather.”

  Blake nodded to the instruments mounted on the bulkhead behind the ship’s wheel. “Three hours ago the barometer stood at 29.29. Now it’s at 29.14. That’s a fifteen-point drop in a few hours. It doesn’t take a meteorologist to figure that one out. It’s a cyclone all right.”

  “It doesn’t look bad so far,” Kelly said.

  “You haven’t seen anything yet,” Blake said.

  “Everybody talks about ‘em, but I don’t know anyone who’s ever actually seen one,” Doc said.

  “They don’t occur that often,” Blake said, “and they’re not that hard to avoid with modern weather satellites and navigation equipment.”

  “So how come Captain Hammer got so close to this one?” Doc asked.

  Blake didn’t answer. Why did Captain Hammer do anything? He hoped the Colombian frigate had at least been able to find the Carlyle and t
ow her clear of the area, even if she hadn’t been able to find them.

  “For something that doesn’t happen much, people sure do spend a lot of time talking about them,” Doc said. “Everywhere I go on the Carlyle, people are laid back telling sea stories, typhoon this and hurricane that.”

  “Sailors have always been a little paranoid about cyclones,” Blake said. “Not hard to see why. They always originate over water, and they’re the most destructive type of storm on earth.”

  “You’ve been through ‘em before, right, Skipper?” Doc asked.

  Blake shook his head. “The closest I ever came was 200 miles from a typhoon in the South China Sea.” And that was close enough. In six years at sea on merchant ships and naval vessels, he had steamed through the fringes of tropical cyclones, but he had never steamed through one. There weren’t many people around who had. The smart ones avoided them, and the dumb ones were dead.

  The ship pitched up and took a sickening cant to starboard, sending everyone teetering to keep their balance.

  “I can’t imagine what it’s like, if it’s worse than what we’re experiencing now,” Kelly said, clinging to the telegraph stand.

  “It’s a lot worse,” Blake said. “A lot.” He wanted to prepare them for what was coming but didn’t know how to do it without scaring them to death. From the look of the clouds forming over the southern horizon, they would see for themselves soon enough.

  “I thought they weren’t even supposed to be in these waters,” Kelly said, sounding a little indignant.

  “It’s rare to find one this far east in the Pacific,” Blake said. “But it happens. They can pop up anywhere over a tropical ocean. The only place they’ve never been seen is the South Atlantic.”

  “Wonder where they come from, what causes them?” Doc asked. The corpsman seemed a little crestfallen with his disclosure that he’d never been through one.

  “I could tell you the theories, but I don’t think anyone really knows for sure,” Blake said, remembering the textbookish words he’d read in the American Practical Navigator. Something about warm air and cold air colliding, causing the warm air to rise and the cold air to rush in to fill the void. The earth’s rotation gave a spin to the cold air in the process, and a potentially lethal cyclone was born.